Chapter 40 Vanna
FORTY
VANNA
“You need to leave!” I gasp, completely taken aback by the man barging into my room.
He stares at me, glassy eyed and chest retracting with heavy breaths.
“Nah, not this time, Van.”
“I’m serious, Hunter. I don’t want you here. I told you that last night when I kicked you out.”
His tongue laps the length of his bottom lip as his mouth curls into a malicious smile. As he inches closer to my bed, he starts to unbutton his shirt.
I stay seated, leaning against my headboard with my knees tucked into me. My arms tighten around them with his approach.
“I spent years taking care of you and for what? For you to find some other jackass to fuck you? I don’t think so.”
I slide my legs off the side of my bed to distance myself from it as if it would be the hint Hunter needs to see I’m not into this.
But he’s clearly drunk and angry. He’s never listened before so I can’t imagine he’ll start now.
“Fuck off, Hunter.”
His disgusted smirk taunts me as he unzips his jeans, letting them drop to the floor.
Sucking in a breath, I decide to walk away. Words have no meaning to him.
As I push past him, his hand wraps around my upper arm and he yanks me into his chest. His dick brushes against my stomach just over my black camisole and the threatening thrust of his hips causes my stomach to churn.
“This is wrong and you know it.”
With his free hand cupped behind my head, he brings my ear to his mouth whispering, “What’s wrong is how selfish you are.”
His words ignite a deep seeded fury to resurrect within me, growing until my blood boils with hatred. In this moment, he’s every man that’s ever taken advantage of me, hurt me, and used me.
Not again.
Balling my hands, I retract my arm and catapult my fist until it hits the side of his face. Completely unexpected, he stumbles sideways, cupping the blooming splash of rouge along his cheekbone.
My knuckles ache fiercely, but I raise my fists again ready to keep going if I have to.
Except, I’ve never fought before. I was too young, and silence was survival. So, when he crouches before me and sprints, I don’t know what to do.
His shoulder collides with my stomach as his arms wrap around my waist. Within seconds, I’m hauled off my feet and slammed back down to the ground.
Air evades me as my lungs seize with the impact. I struggle, fighting for a single breath to come back to me. By the time it does, Hunter’s shoving my shorts down my thighs.
Like a wild animal, I claw at him. Desperate to snag anything as long as it makes him bleed. Frustrated, he bats my hands away and when he realizes I won’t give up, he cocks his fist back and releases.
My vision blurs as pain bleeds through my face, sinking beneath my eye sockets and webbing through my bones.
The force of his punch is disorienting. Enough so that he’s able to rid me of the clothes between us and flip me to my stomach.
As my fight dwindles and defeat begins to grow roots, I shut my eyes hoping to find that happy place inside my head. The one I haven’t visited in quite some time.
Serene trails engulfed by greenery, midnight skies twinkling with a million diamond stars, fresh coffee on a chilly morning. Anything other than his cock nudging my entrance.
My fists clench as he presses, barging his way inside, but when he pulls back to gain more momentum, that horrid intrusion never comes. My eyes peel open when I realize his weight has vanished. Confused, I spin around and push up on my elbows to find Stone straddling Hunter.
Sounds of bone crunching fills my ears as I watch him bash his face until it swells and bleeds.
It’s not until Hunter is whimpering plea after plea for Stone to stop that I finally come back to reality. Standing, I go to them, placing a hand on Stone’s shoulder. The gentlest touch is all it takes to deactivate him.
Pushing to his feet, Stone wraps me in his arms and nuzzles his head into my neck.
With soft strokes, he caresses my hair away from my face and reassures me that I’m okay. He tells me over and over again until I believe him, but something tells me I’m not the one he’s trying to convince.
Finally, he tears himself off me to take inventory of my face and when he does, the rage inside of him builds all over again. I can see it, growing and growing with each breath he takes.
His fingers graze over the wound on my cheek and then follows the bruise that bleeds across my nose and into the corners of my eyes.
“I’m so sorry. I should have been here.” He chokes out.
Lifting on my toes, I kiss him. With all the words I’ve saved over the last month, I use this moment to show him instead. Show him that I love him with my entire soul and that I’ll try harder.
“Thank you.” I whisper against his mouth.
“I’ve missed you.”
“Yeah? Show me how much, Lover Boy. Show him how much.” He smirks, probably wondering if my sanity has cracked completely.
And he’d be right.
“First, I need to know that you’ll never see him again.”
I sigh and he grips the sides of my face.
His eyes glued to mine, searching inside of me as he says, “Vanna, whatever life you thought you could’ve had with that bastard, it’s all a lie you tell yourself.
Look what he’s done to you. Fuck what you think I can handle or deserve because you do not belong with this waste of air.
You do not get to punish yourself by choosing him.
“Maybe he would’ve apologized and treated you well for a few years. Give you a ring, a house, a baby. Then he’d do it again, only now you have a kid to think of. You’d divorce him, go on the run to get away from his psycho ass and you would wonder what a life with me could’ve been like.
“So, let me tell you. It’s not going to be perfect.
I’m an asshole. I’m going to mess up and piss you off, but at the end of the day, I’m going to love you with my whole soul.
I’m going to beg for your forgiveness. You’ll torture me.
Withhold sex, make me get on my knees and lick your cum off the floor after you’ve fucked yourself because I’ve failed you in some way.
And I’ll do it. I’ll do it because I’ll miss the taste of you and will only settle for you.
“Then, once I’m back in your good graces, I’ll cherish the ever-loving shit out of you.
We’ll have five kids, and I’ll be present and take care of them right alongside of you.
We will be a team and raise them to be perfect little shitheads just like us.
And they’ll fuck up too, but we’ll love them for it.
“We’ll eventually grow old and gross. Our skin will wrinkle, and our tats will fade, but I’ll still bathe you with my tongue and wash you with my cum because you’ll still be the most beautiful thing I have ever set my eyes on.
“Darkness, a life with me will be a life you’ll never second guess.”
A single tear crawls down my cheek, and he catches it with his thumb. Wiping it away, he crushes his lips to mine once more.
I wrap my hands around his wrists as he holds my face steady.
“I want that, Stone. I want that life with you.” A rush of breath expels from his mouth as if he was worried how I’d respond. “You don’t have to worry about Hunter anymore. You’re it for me. I never want to see his fucking face again.”
He nods, a crazed grin transforming him from playboy to maniacal demon.
Pivoting on his feet, he finds Hunter knocked out on the ground.
He cocks his head toward his body, silently asking me to help him.
I grab Hunter’s legs and Stone hooks his arms under his shoulders to haul him up onto the bed.
We lay him so his feet touch the headboard.
“Rope. Got any rope?”
Rummaging around my closet, I find a roll of red ribbon and toss it to him. He chuckles, shaking his head.
“This will do, I guess.”
I stand back as I watch Stone tie Hunter’s ankles and wrists to the bed posts.
Pretending I had any reluctance for what was about to happen would be a bold-faced lie, but the moment Hunter tried taking what wasn’t his, something inside me broke.
It cracked and shattered becoming completely irreparable.
Call it my sanity and perhaps, right along with it, my fucking empathy for shit bags like him.
And unfortunately, Hunter’s about to experience a lifetime of vengeance for every man who’s ever had the nerve to take, take, take.