CHAPTER EIGHT #3
“You look your best when you’re bleeding,” Cameron murmurs, his voice low, his gaze fixed on the blood trailing down my face.
I don’t react. I can’t. I hold myself perfectly still in his grip, my every tender muscle locked, even as tears burn behind my eyes, and all I want to do is crumble.
I try to focus on something else. The wall.
The floor. Anything but his cold hands pressed against my skin, and the pain threatens to swallow me whole.
“Black and blue. Pale as snow.” His thumb drags down my lower lip, forcing it open.
I flinch before I can stop myself, the movement small enough he doesn’t catch it.
If he does, he ignores it. “But these lips…” He slowly smears my blood across them, and my stomach starts to coil.
My chest is pounding now, and I can’t tell if it’s from the pain of my broken ribs, or the panic clawing up my throat.
My breathing grows tighter, my vision blurred.
“The only time they look any good is when you’re choking on my cock.
But right now, I’d say they’re perfect. Covered in blood. ”
My body jerks as the cold chain wraps around me, metal biting into my skin.
Pain rips through my torso with every pull, stealing even more air from my tired lungs.
I bite down hard, copper flooding my mouth, and hold my breath to keep from making a sound.
Don’t give him any more than you already have, Winter.
I squeeze my eyes shut, as if doing so would somehow make me disappear into nothing, but the chain yanks hard, the force rattling through me, causing me to cry out and my eyes to fly open as Cameron’s grip grows tighter than ever.
“Did I fucking say you could hide, Snow?” Cameron’s voice shatters over me as the chain tightens again, the others wrapping it around my body as I cry in silence.
“Did you hear that?” Gio whispers, crouching down to my level at my opposite side, his presence swallowing the only free space in my vision. “Plans have changed. Which means so has our use for you.”
Why won’t they let me die? Please just let me die.
“I want you to watch,” Dashiel says coldly from somewhere behind me.
“Watch as we take our time finally fucking your virgin cunt.” Hands claw at the back of my dress before I have a chance to process his words, my body jerking as the fabric tears from my body in one, jolting rip.
Cameron’s fingers find my jaw again, digging into my skin even harder than before as he holds me in place.
I want to scream. I want to tell them all to stop.
That I will arrange for my father to give them whatever they want if they take me to him, but I can’t find the words.
“It seems you need to be reminded exactly who’s in charge here.
Maybe then you’ll think twice before you disobey our orders again.
” Hands clamp around my hips as Cameron lets go of my hair, sending me crashing head first to the floor.
I hold out my hands to break my fall, and pain shoots through my knee as it scrapes against the hardwood.
“Stay down!” Harry barks, and I do as I’m told, my body shaking from the ache flaring beneath their forceful hands as they each start to touch my skin.
The cool air hits the exposed flesh of my back, and I tremble despite myself.
From the pain. From the tears that so uselessly fall before turning into an uncontrollable sob.
The chain now around my waist pulls tighter against my torso with each movement.
My dress is bunched and twisted around me and my restraints, half on, half off, leaving me exposed.
When the air hits my bare backside, I squeeze my eyes shut in time, bracing myself just before the first blow lands.
“Don’t you ever—” whack. “—try to run!” whack.
“—from us again!” whack. The burning sensation scatters across my skin, and I tell myself not to recoil as a rough finger invades me, trailing a line down my sensitive flesh and in between my bottom.
I hold my breath as the burning forms into an abrupt sting, as he forcefully enters my body.
An arm wraps around my middle and all the breath leaves my lungs as my ribs threaten to shatter beneath my skin.
“Shut the fuck up! You don’t get to cry.
You don’t get to do anything but fucking take us like the useless, dirty slut you are for thinking you could leave!
” But…I wasn’t going to leave. I know better not to.
I say none of this as he adjusts his grip on me, pinning me against him as he starts to thrust and thrust, taking the last shred of hope I may have had that I was closer to my freedom.
I leave before they break me. Slip somewhere deeper, somewhere none of them can follow.
The burn of their hands dulls first, then the ache, then the raw bite of metal against my skin as my body moves and jolts from them taking me.
It all fades, little by little, until there is nothing but noise behind me.
The dark behind my eyes opens into trees instead of paint-chipped walls.
Into air that doesn’t suffocate me. The hushed forest opens up for me, stretching wide and endless, leading me home.
To the tall, waiting house. The one that belongs to Death.
I know it isn’t real.
I know I’ll never walk these paths again.
Never feel the earth beneath my feet or hear their voices the way I used to.
But they’re there anyway. My friends. Waiting right where I left them.
Shadows of lonely lost souls between the trees, whole, untouched…
Free. Guiding me forward. I hold onto that version of them.
Of me. The last thing these men didn’t take.
Out here, my body is a distant thing somewhere far behind me.
Whatever they’re doing doesn’t reach this place.
Doesn’t reach me. And then, I see him. Standing at the edge of the clearing, the field that separates his home from this purgatory.
Cloaked in his usual darkness, surrounded by white stained red.
Like he’s stepped out of his grave just to find me.
Watching me. Always watching me. Not a stranger.
Not a man. The one with blood on his hands and kindness in his heart. Death.
My death.
My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with this torment, because if he’s here, if he’s come for me, then it means it’s finally over.
I don’t have to fight anymore. Slowly, I walk toward him, through the cool air heavy with the familiar scent of sin and frosted meadow, wrapping around me like something warm and safe.
He doesn’t move. He simply waits. Like he always knew I’d come back.
Perhaps that was his test. A test to see if I’d return to him.
Maybe this time, he’ll actually take me.
Maybe this time, he’ll free me from this place.
I wonder if, after this, I’ll wake up and none of this will have ever happened.
Like it was just a cruel nightmare. I only hope that he’s still waiting for me if I do.