2. Chapter 2 #3
“You haven’t asked to leave, and I haven’t declined your request.” He moves toward the hallway, then pauses. “But the doors are locked, the property is gated, there’s no cell signal for miles. So don’t bother trying to run. You won’t get far, and I’ll be annoyed when I have to come find you.”
I watch him disappear down the hall. A door closes somewhere in the cabin.
After a few minutes, I make myself move. The guest room is really nice. There is a king bed with white linens and a rustic comforter. I peek in the attached bathroom and find a rain shower with multiple shower heads and heated floors.
The closet has a robe and a few garments for men and women. I can’t help but wonder how many other women he has brought here. How many of them walked out?
I open one of the dresser drawers and find a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. I put them on. They are too big for me, but it’s better than sleeping in my dress, or naked.
I go to wash my face in the bathroom, watching myself in the mirror. My lipstick is gone, worn off hours ago. My mascara is smudged. I look like a woman who’s been through something, which I guess I have.
I sucked a stranger’s cock in a hallway tonight. That feels like it happened to a different person, a million years ago.
I did that to feel in control. I picked a man, used him, walked away. That’s how I remind myself that I have power. That I’m not just a thing to be passed around. He only gets what I give, and I’m done.
But then Michael’s car was waiting for me. And all that power disappeared like it was never there at all.
After I finish washing my face, I turn off the light and fall onto the bed. It’s soft. The sheets are expensive. I lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my mind racing through everything that happened tonight.
Tate Sinclair wants information about my father. That’s dangerous. If my father finds out I’m here and finds out I’m talking to a Sinclair . . .
But then I didn’t meet Michael like I was supposed to. I don’t know how I am going to explain that.
Fuck.
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about any of it.
My fingers find my lips. I let them rest there, just barely touching. No one is watching. I can have this.
I trace the curve of my mouth, back and forth, slow and soothing. The tension in my shoulders starts to ease. My breathing slows.
This is pathetic. I know it is. A grown woman, comforting herself like a child. But it helps. It always helps.
I drift off to sleep with my fingers still pressed against my lips.
Then the nightmares come like they usually do in the night.
There are countless hands holding me down.
I can almost smell the cigars and expensive cologne.
There are voices I try to forget telling me what a slut I am, how lucky I am, how grateful I should be.
My father’s face in the doorway, watching.
Always watching. Getting off on the power and money he gets from my body.
The first time. The tenth time. The hundredth. They blur together into one endless nightmare of being touched by men I didn’t choose, men who paid my father, men who looked at a sixteen-year-old girl and saw something to consume.
I wake up choking on a scream.
My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard it hurts. My skin is covered in sweat, sheets twisted around my legs like restraints. I don’t know where I am for a few seconds, and then I remember—the cabin. Tate Sinclair. The interrogation. Being trapped.
Trapped. I’m trapped again. I’m always trapped.
The panic hits so hard and fast I can’t fight it. I can’t breathe. My chest is too tight and the room is too dark and I can feel their hands on me. I can still feel them even though it was years ago. I can’t make it stop—
My fingers are in my mouth before I realize what I’m doing.
I suck on them, hard, desperate. Two fingers pressed against my tongue, filling that space, giving me something to focus on that isn’t the memories.
The motion is automatic, instinctive, something my body learned to do years ago when the only way to survive was to go somewhere else in my head and let my body do whatever it needed to do to get through.
Slowly, my heart rate drops. My breathing evens out. The panic recedes, leaving me hollow and shaky and so fucking tired of being broken.
I don’t stop. I can’t. I need this, even though I hate that I need it. Even though the shame burns in my chest every time I catch myself doing it.
But there’s no one here to see.
So I let myself have it.
I fall back asleep with my fingers in my mouth, sucking gently, hating myself just a little bit less than I hate everyone who made me this way.
I search my brain for one time or person that made me feel safe in my entire fucking life. Then Tate’s face is there.
It doesn’t make any fucking sense, but just the thought of him makes some of the tension leave my shoulders. As I lay there in the dark, I hold onto his face to try to keep everything else away.
Tate Sinclair said I was going to beg him to fuck me.
I’m starting to think that won’t be the most dangerous thing I’ll beg him for.