Chapter 8
ZINNIA
“Ah . . . beautiful Zinnia. I love to hear your cries as I fuck you. No other puta compares to you,” Basa purrs, pulling from my rear entrance.
I flinch at the pain he inflicts on my ass as he does so without making another peep. Basa already got his reaction out of me. Just as he does each and every time he rapes me.
Basa glides his hand up my spine and wraps his fingers around my throat, and squeezes tightly. “Such a sweetness that belongs only to me. Remember beautiful Zinnia, who owns you.”
Shooting up right, gasping for breath, I reach up, clutching at my throat. My body trembles with fear and sweat coats every inch of my flesh.
The door to my room is thrown open, and I clench the sheet tighter to my front and let out a small cry.
Last night, I was hot and kicked off all the blankets except for the thin sheet.
I guess you can say my body is still trying to get over the fact it’s no longer getting an ample supply of the sex drug Basa had used to make sure I begged him for it.
“Zinnia,” Gunner calls my name, his tone alert, and worry hits my ears. His eyes come to me, and he does a body scan, his chest heaving heavily. “You, okay? I heard you scream?” He closes the distance between the two of us, furrowing his brow.
“J-just . . .” I clear my throat and shake my head to clear the rest of the fog in my mind away. “Just a dream, Gunner. I’m okay.” I clutch the sheet tighter to my front as a few of his other brothers fill the doorway. “I-I’m sorry I woke you all.”
“Don’t apologize,” Gunner says and looks over his shoulder at his brothers. With a jerk of a chin, they all communicate without words before they leave the two of us alone. I never understood it, but it seems to work for them, and they’re able to do it.
Gunner brings his gaze back to me, and I fidget with the sheet, unsure of him being this close.
My body feels like it’s on fire right now with a need unlike any other, and he’s here.
So many times, I was used and abused by Basa.
I’d fantasized about Gunner, him being the one taking me and using my body so wantonly, making me feel exotic from his touch.
I tighten my legs, hoping to relieve the pressure building there.
“Zinnia?” His frown deepens, and he takes in my unease at him being so close. “What was your dream about?” he asks.
I shake my head, not wanting to answer his question and appear to be focusing on the wall.
There’s no way in hell I want to tell him about the dream.
I definitely don’t want to tell him the rest of what I didn’t tell him.
He doesn’t need to know about the sex drug Basa had used on me all the time. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Look at me,” Gunner commands. From the sternness, I know better, from all those years ago, to go against him when he uses that tone. Though back then, after he got over whatever had him using said tone, it ended with us in bed making out and feeling each other up.
I try to hide the way my breathing becomes heavier at the thought and slowly meet his gaze once more.
“What was the dream about?” he demands.
“It’s nothing,” I whisper and lick my bottom lip nervously.
“Bullshit, baby, now tell me.”
“If I don’t want to tell you, I don’t have to, Gunner,” I state, surprising myself I am able to say it without flinching. Anytime I’d talked back to Basa, he beat me for it. I learned quickly to watch myself around him.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Zinnia. You woke me up and half the damn club with your screams. You sounded as if someone was in here murdering you.”
At this, I do flinch, because I didn’t mean to wake anyone up. Hell, I didn’t even know I had screamed so loudly. At what part of the dream did I do that?
“Talk to me, baby. Was it because of earlier today . . . you, telling me about what you went through over the past years?” His eyes glitter with fury as he mentions our talk earlier.
“Somewhat,” I answer, nodding. He’s not going to give up until he knows. Lowering my gaze to my lap, I wring the sheet between my fingers. “I didn’t tell you something earlier when we . . . um, when I told you about what I’d been through.”
“Tell me,” he urges, shifting to sit fully on the bed and caging me in with both his arms on either side of my body.
“To . . . um, well, Basa . . . to make me agreeable to, ugh . . . Basa would drug me. He has this stuff, not the stuff they use for others.”
“Are you talking about Heavenly Rose?” he asks.
I nod in answer and bite my lip, surprised he knows about the drug. Then again, it’s gotten popular. “The creator of it is dead, but they have the formula. They got it when they took over production. Basa had them make a different form of Heavenly Rose . . . he, um, he used it on me.”
“Fuck. We’ll get into the fact they took over the creation of Heavenly Rose, and I’ll have questions about that shit later, Zinnia. Important ones you’ll have to answer for me. But right now, tell me about this drug he gave you and what it does to you.”
I flinch at the snarling commanding tone of Gunner’s voice and the way he tenses.
Without looking up, I tell him. I explain the drug’s effects on me and how it made me beg for more.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I detail all that I went through with the drug and how I could go weeks without it, months even, and then wham, I’d get hit with this unbearable need for it.
Or more like a need to have someone fuck me.
There’s no pretty way of saying it for him to understand. The ugliness of it all coats me, and I feel dirty just telling him about it. It’s like I’ll never get clean again, permanently stained.
“Baby,” Gunner whispers, the edge of fury coming off him in waves.
I finally lift my gaze to his. I stare into those dark orbs of rage with tear-filled eyes. “This is why you have to let me go. I’m not worth anything more than filth now. You don’t want that around you or your daughter. You don’t deserve to have me taint—”
Before I can finish, I find myself flat on my back and Gunner hovering over me.
“You say one more word about me letting you go, and I’ll tie you to my fuckin’ bed,” he snarls, his lip curling at the side in anger.
“I won’t lose you again, Zinnia. You have always been meant to be mine.
We’ll deal with the rest as we go. As for the fact you’re dealing with the side effects of a fuckin’ date rape drug, I’ll help you with that too.
And we’ll start with working through the tension filling your body to the point you’re all but trembling with a need I can help you get rid of. ”
I open my mouth only to have him slam his down to mine, lighting a fire that’s already burning within me, turning it into an inferno.