CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #4
With a deep inhale, I did as she’d said while a disgusting churning began in the pit of my gut. She closed the door behind me, and the sound of the lock clicking into place rang like sirens.
She was going to have her way, and there was nothing I was going to do about it.
I was unarmed but knew I could still kill her. I could do it easily. Break her bones before she had the chance to fire her weapon, wrap my hands around her neck, and choke the life out of her until she fell limp from my grasp.
But it was the aftermath I feared.
Gerald's wrath.
What he'd do to me, my brothers, the business Leonard and the people who had come before him worked so hard to build.
There was no telling what lengths he'd go to in order to avenge the deviant he’d married.
Maybe he'd hurt Dean, his wife, the two little girls we'd rescued from Marco’s house.
Maybe he'd even hurt Analise.
No, I didn't have a choice but to let Virginia do what she wanted with me.
I had forfeited every right to have a choice of anything having to do with my own life the moment I attended that damn party.
Virginia Seint-Crowley held the pistol in one hand as the other lay against my chest and smoothed over the material of my suit jacket.
"Hmm … very nice," she complimented before looking up at my face. "Remember, if you protest, if you fight me … I shoot. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” I murmured.
“Would you like something to … make this easier for you? A drink perhaps?”
I swallowed against a wave of nausea and shook my head. “No.”
She pushed the jacket off my shoulders, tugged the sleeves off my arms, and let it drop to the floor. My throat worked against my gag reflex, fighting off the need to heave and expel what little was in my gut.
I was a child again, standing in this room, frozen and unable to do anything but let her have her way. She'd manipulate my body and make it work against me. She'd tell me I wanted it, wanted her, and if she told me enough, maybe I'd start to believe it, if for only a little while, to endure.
"At least you got laid," I remembered one of the other kids in the foster home saying when he'd found out I'd lost my virginity to the woman of the house.
But I'd been thirteen, and she'd been old enough to know better than to seduce a boy, let alone one in her care.
Now, at thirty-four, I wasn't as powerless as I'd been then.
I was taller, stronger. But standing there as she worked the buttons of my vest and shirt open with deft fingers, with a gun pointing at my stomach, I felt no different than I had at thirteen.
Confused and disgusted, with a painfully clear idea of what right and wrong was.
I didn't want to be here. I didn't want her hands on me, undoing my belt and unzipping my pants, but when did what I wanted ever matter?
My life has never been mine, I realized, and that realization alone was enough to break my heart into a million jagged pieces.
"On the bed," she ordered. "Lie down."
With a sigh, I did as she’d said.
She nudged the barrel of the gun toward the wrought iron headboard.
I followed her line of sight to see the handcuffs hanging there from the black iron.
How long they'd been there, I couldn't say. I never noticed before, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there.
How long had she prepared for this, waiting for the right opportunity to strike?
"You know what to do," she said, authority in her voice.
I looked at the gun, considered my options one last time. But all I could see was the trouble I'd bring to my brothers if I fucked this up.
So, I reached up, attached one wrist to the first pair of cuffs.
"I can't do the other one-handed," I said, my mouth dry.
She rounded the bed, pocketed the pistol, and secured my wrist.
"Very good," she praised, smoothing her hand over my bare chest. "You're a very attractive man—do you know that?"
I said nothing.
"I'll let you keep that silly mask on this time, though I don't honestly see the point," she went on, kneeling on the bed beside me. "I know what you look like, Abraham Crowley … or do you prefer Llewellyn?”
My gut churned, my gag reflex worked, but I said nothing. I did nothing.
“I know where you work. I know what you do … I know the things you've done."
She slipped her hand beneath the waistband of my underwear to manipulate me further, touching the part of me I had denied her daughter.
Her hand stroked, moving with determination as she leaned over and brushed her lips against my chest, and, oh God, I hated my body for stirring, awakening.
But I hated this house even more and everyone I'd met within its walls.
I wanted to burn the whole place to the ground and send it back to Hell, where it belonged.
But not Analise. No matter how hard I tried, I could never hate her.
Virginia must've gone through Gerald's files. I bet he had one on Dean, on every person he had working for him. Blackmail for whenever he needed.
"I will admit," she mumbled, continuing to use her hand as her lips moved across my chest, then down my stomach, "I wasn't so sure about you when Gerry wanted to bring you into our little … circle. But you have certainly become my favorite of his pets."
She sat up, pulled my semi-erect dick from my pants, and untied her robe, allowing it to fall open to reveal her nudity.
I closed my eyes and turned away.
She straddled my waist and situated herself, until I fitted inside her body against my will.
"Yes," she moaned with a sigh. "You are a very good boy."
She used me then, scratching my chest as she lured herself toward orgasm, and I could do nothing but lie there, cursing myself for reacting in ways I didn't want to react.
And I thought about Analise. I thought about what she'd said, and I agreed.
I was so fucking sick of being told what to do.
But what other choice did I have?
Would what I wanted ever matter in this lifetime?
Or would I have to die to finally be free?