CHAPTER 40 ELODIE
ELODIE
I shove my way through the party downstairs on shaking legs.
The adrenaline dribbling out of my body, replaced by agony, the rest of my body heavy with defeat.
Through my haze, I notice how not a single man in the house looks at me.
If they catch my eye, they instantly look the other way.
Not that I care. I don’t care about any of these people.
My legs are killing me. Stupid Fiz ruined me yesterday, I can’t believe I didn’t see what he was doing.
When I’d woken this morning, my legs were so stiff and sore I could have cried.
I’m surprised how long I was able to run for tonight, fuelled by nothing but sheer will, determination and adrenaline.
And Caden’s injury, I guess. I knew he was lying to me.
When Alfie was telling me the story yesterday in the gym, he outed Caden, telling me he’s always been the fastest. I let it go, thinking the hole in his stomach would surely hinder him and give me an advantage.
But all it did was prolong the inevitable.
He was always going to catch me. He’s never letting me go.
I’m on my way to Caden’s bedroom to wash off this dirt and mud and nurse my wounds, internal and external. The dread of what’s to come for me is threatening to swallow me whole when a distinct sound rattles through me.
I pause, listening. It’s the unmistakable sound of skin slapping on wet skin. My blood fills with fresh hot adrenaline as my trembling legs carry me closer to the sound. It’s a couple doors down from Caden’s room, and the door’s slightly ajar. I know I shouldn’t, but sick curiosity always wins.
I lean in to the open slit, and my stomach drops.
I don’t know who I was expecting to see.
I know this is Alfie’s bedroom, but my curiosity was clearly clouding anything else.
I know he’s not mine. I know he’s clearly not interested in me, but it doesn’t shove the rising nausea back down my tightening throat as I watch Alfie fuck into that girl from behind.
Even though my eyes fill with unjustified tears, I can’t look away from his huge, rippling back muscles as he punches his cock into this small girl.
His tattoos glisten with sweat. The veins in his arms bulge as he digs his fingers into the thick flesh of her ass while his other hand grips hard on her long dark hair and pulls her body into a U shape.
Her body’s flawless. A filled-out frame around a deep curve of her spine as she arches her back for him. Smooth, unblemished skin.
Her cries ring through me, slicing through my weak self-esteem while his growly grunts of effort pierce my heart like needles.
I’m not upset, not really, it’s just a shock to see him in this way and realise it’s what I wanted him to be like with me.
Unleashed, masculine, vulnerable. I’ve never seen that much of his skin, but now I’m seeing too much.
The tight mounds of his ass cheeks tightening and plunging forward and back.
My legs squeeze together at the image. Of his rock-hard cock driving into me instead of her.
A deep ache appears between my legs. Fuck.
I want this man. I want the only one that doesn’t want me back.
The revelation is nothing short of having my skin grated off inch by inch. Sheer, screeching, relentless pain.
“Enjoying the show?”
I start at the voice unbearably close to me. I was so mesmerised I didn’t hear footsteps approaching me.
I don’t turn back to look at Caden, my eyes can’t pull away from the spectacle of dominance in front of me. He feels different now, though. The overbearing, animalistic predator is no longer emanating from him. He feels heavy, tired. I hope I hurt him enough.
“Why aren’t you doing that with someone right now?” I say. “Forty days of celibacy, I thought this would be the first thing you all do.”
He answers stiffly, “Because I’m betrothed to a woman already. A woman I thought might be hungry.”
Surely he can’t mean me. Not after that act in the woods.
He had every opportunity to do whatever he wanted.
I felt how hard he was, pressing into my body like a brick.
But he didn’t. A foiled plate comes into view beside me, the smell of roasted meats floating around me and making my stomach twist.
I don’t respond, nor do I take the plate. The only sounds filling the silence being Alfie’s growls and the girl’s screams.
With their brutal slap of skin meeting wetly, he continues, “I’m betrothed to you, Elodie, whether I like it or not. I’m spoken for. My cock isn’t going anywhere near another woman.” He’s so close behind me I can feel the brush of his body against my ass.
“That’s a ridiculous amount of loyalty.” I know he’s expecting me to say the same, but if I’m not fucking him, I can’t go the rest of my life without – I stare at Alfie’s stretched neck as he tilts his head back in rapture – that.
“Yes,” Caden hisses, “and I hope you’re reciprocating. Or is there another man in your mind right now while you’re watching my cousin fuck that slut like an animal?”
Well, obviously. I’m imagining Alfie doing that to me instead of her. I don’t say that though, and that’s basically the same answer. Which he doesn’t like.
He grabs my wrist and flings me round, slamming me into the wall, the plate now discarded and sliding across the floor. “Tell me, Elodie, who would you like to fuck you tonight?”
I don’t answer and his fist comes flying into the wall beside my head. Alfie’s rhythm stills.
“Why does it matter so much to you? You don’t want to fuck me, so why can’t I think about someone else?” I sneer.
His eyes are as wild as they were in the woods, he still hasn’t released all that he needs to. “I don’t want to fuck you because you don’t deserve it. You’re not half the woman I go for.”
“So why do you even want me to stay?” I can’t hide the whine in my voice. “Just let me go. Why take me if you find me so repulsive?”
He studies me, dark eyes darting all over my face with a pensive depth I don’t understand. “Because it was what my father wanted. We have an understanding, I have faith in those above us. My father approved of you, wanted you, for whatever unknown reason, so I accept it. It’s honour.”
“Sounds more like being a little bitch boy to me.”
“It’s called respect, you bratty little whore,” he spits.
“Tell your dad I ran away or whatever. Get yourself a girl you actually want.”
“No. This is what’s expected of us, and I intend to see it through. I never fail, Elodie, you should learn that quickly, because my challenge is now moulding you into something worthy of me. I do not fail.”
I take a deep breath in, my expanding chest brushing against his. “I can’t be what you want me to be, Caden, this is me. This is the best it can get.”
“I don’t accept that. Everyone can change. You will change. I see the potential, you just have to submit.”
I snort in his face. “Please, you think I’ll submit now? Unless you change, Caden, I won’t either.”
His eyes darken into something unforgiving.
He doesn’t reply to me when he grabs me by the arm and starts dragging me to the bedroom.
He kicks the door shut behind us and shoves me onto the bed.
I fight every step of the way, but I’m spent, and he still has forty days’ worth of pent-up aggression running through those lean muscles.
I kick my legs as he climbs onto the bed, but he easily pries them open and drops his body between them. His warmth swarms me, my heart’s beating erratically as I desperately search for a way out of this. Out of him.
“I may not want to fuck a dirty slut like you, but there are other ways to make you submit, princess.” He pins me down with his body but tilts his hip to the side to push down his trousers. His cock springs free. Panic sets a fresh bout of adrenaline rushing through me, and I claw at his face.
He growls with impatience. “That’s fucking it.” He leaps off me and storms away.
I don’t watch where he’s going, my whole attention is on running to the door. I don’t even make it halfway before he catches me again, a strong arm wrapping around my waist and hauling me off the ground, carrying me back to the bed like I’m nothing more than a pillow under his arm.
“Please, Caden, stop.” I don’t care about pride now, I care about survival. I care about not going through this shit again.
He ignores me and throws me back on the bed by the pillows. I scramble, but he’s mounting me before I get anywhere. I see now what he grabbed in his other hand. Cuffs. Metal cuffs.
Red lights. Metal cuffs. Skin.
Get out of here! the darkness screams and it’s the loudest warning siren I’ve ever heard, filling my body with dread and despair.
I become hysteric. “Caden, please stop! Please don’t restrain me, I’m sorry, I’ll be good, I promise!”
My wrists and ankles ache with the phantom pain of being shackled.
I didn’t mind the cells in the end, I got used to the dark, the silence, the hollowness.
It’s the restraints I couldn’t bear. So much comes with it.
Claustrophobia, the irrational fear of a fire starting and you’re trapped.
The prospect of anyone doing anything to your mind, your body, your soul, and you not being able to do a damn thing about it.
What’s already been done to me while I’ve been shackled. I can’t go through that again.
Tears are streaming down my cheeks in racking sobs as Caden completely ignores me and puts the cuffs on my wrists, attaching them to an iron bar of the bed frame above my head.
“You know, your begging may have worked on me before,” he says, deathly calm, like I’m one of his boring jobs. “I wanted to be good to you, Elodie, I really did. But you push me to this every time.”
This is an evil man, the darkness hisses with such venom I’m surprised Caden doesn’t hear it.
“Please,” it comes out in a thick, staggered whine, broken by two hitches of breath.