Wainscott Hollow

Prologue

Katelyn

I taste salt on my tongue, and I can’t tell whether it’s blood, the ocean, or my tears.

The wind whips my hair around wildly, and the roar of the surf drowns out my screams. Adrenaline courses through me, and my throat feels like it’s closing up.

My nightshirt and silk shorts are saturated with sea spray, dew, and sweat.

He stalks me like a ruthless predator, my husband, and my heartbeat thuds against my ribcage in terror of what he’ll do to me once he catches me.

Blindly, I stumble through the pitch-dark dunes in search of a modicum of comfort.

The beach where, in my youth, I passed the day idly with Heath is the only spot that brings me a sense of peace.

I taste the salt air and hear the waves pound the shore as I draw near, and swallow as I remember the quiet afternoons spent with him here.

“Katelyn!” Eddie’s call tears through my fraudulent sense of calm. “Get back here, you bitch. I’m done playing nice!”

My heart thunders anew. He’s never played nice. He hates me because he knows I don’t love him. Because my heart belongs to another so totally and completely that I’m a slave to that love.

I jump from a dune and land in soft, cold sand below. Eddie will see the white of my pajamas and spot me against the dark horizon of the ocean and night sky. Panic consumes me as I try to make myself small.

“Too late,” he grits as his strong arms come around me.

His body weight slams into me, and he takes me to the ground in one fell swoop.

My husband straddles me and yanks my arms above my head.

The aggression makes the last button on my night shirt pop, and the fabric falls open to reveal my bare chest. My nipples pucker in reaction to the cool night and ocean breeze.

“You do what I say, or you pay the price of your disobedience,” he spits in my face.

His anger is a palpable, red-hot rage that matches the engorged erection in his pajama pants, which he thrusts against my sex.

“What happened to my good girl? What happened to my little Kat, who’d do anything for a little bit of love and attention? ”

I turn my face away so I don’t have to look at his imposing form. Eddie Lind is beautiful, but I don’t let his looks fool me. He’s a ruthless man who always gets what he wants.

And what he wants is me. Obedient, pliant, always at his beck and call. He wants a woman with a broken spirit and one he can control.

He grabs my chin and forces my face straight so I can’t avoid his eyes.

The full moon behind him gives an eerie silver glow to the almost starless night.

His hard cock presses into my sex, and I hate myself as I begin to feel the heat rise inside me.

Arousal blooms between my legs despite—and perhaps because of—his tyranny and cruelty.

“What a little horny bitch in heat you are, my Kat,” he says smugly.

I want to spit in his face. Head butt him and crack his beautiful and perfect skull, his debonair, aristocratic face, his regal aquiline nose.

I want to bite his lips until they bleed a bright crimson and mar his perfect pearly whites.

But instead, I bite my tongue, close my eyes, and try to even out my heaving breaths.

Eddie leans down slowly, deliberately, and flicks his wicked tongue over my sensitive straining nipple. Then switches to the other. I flood with humiliation as my panties dampen with my shameful arousal.

He sucks my nipple long and hard, pulling in practically my whole breast while he thumbs the other into a tender, hard bud.

I physically bite my tongue in madness. With a mind of their own, my hips press up into his hardness.

His long, thick erection twitches in response, and the delicious weight of it hits exactly on my swollen clit.

Then his mouth is on my neck and he devours the flesh there, nipping and sucking, biting, and licking until I’m so wet, my arousal slips down my thighs.

“Beg for it, you little slut. Beg for my cock, and maybe I’ll be nice,” he grits.

I know his games, his dark manipulations. My only recourse is to submit and give him what he wants. My body plays along while my head and heart scream this is all so wrong.

Eddie tears my shorts from my waist and shoves them down my legs before wrenching down his own. His sculpted frame is on full display in the moonlight; he came out here barefoot and without his shirt. Eddie might be a brute, but he looks like an underwear model and has the strength of a marine.

He flips me on my stomach so fast that it practically knocks the wind out of me, and my mouth fills with sand as he presses my face into it.

My husband spreads my legs while I try to push up onto my elbows for purchase.

One shove to the middle of my back sends me face-first into the sand dune again.

“Stick your ass in the air, Kat,” he grunts before slapping it briskly.

I obey his demands because when I comply, life is easier for both of us.

He enters me in one thrust with a hand braced on my hip. No time for adjusting or making sure I’m lubricated enough to ease the shock of his massive erection.

“Still so fucking tight,” he growls.

His hips slam into my ass as he fucks me savagely, ruthlessly. This is fast and furious, not tender or sweet. My breasts reverberate with his thrusts, and my face scrapes against the hard sand.

“Touch your clit and make yourself come,” he pants, once again out of breath.

I obey to avoid the fight, but when I touch myself, I’m flooded with memories of running down these dunes as a teenager, Heath ahead of me by a good stretch of beach, his longish hair glinting in the sunlight, his smile as he turned to wait for me. I wanted Heath with a desire that consumed me.

In a burst of strength, I squirm away and end up on my back, Eddie on top of me, pinning me to the sand.

I reach out to slap him, and he grabs my wrist. Helpless and furious, I spit in his face. A smile filled with rancor creeps across his face. He slaps me so hard I see stars in the starless night.

He enters me again and renews his vigorous thrusts, one arm pinned to my stomach, and the other above me in the sand as he fucks me viciously.

His wrist grazes my temple as he pins my arm, and all I have to do is tip my head back lightly until I can bite it.

My teeth sink into the flesh and I feel his pulse beat under the sensitive skin of my lips.

I taste blood again, this time Eddie’s, as the warm, sickeningly familiar taste pools on my tongue.

“You fucking feral bitch!” he roars.

My bite only spurs him on and he thrusts hard enough that I fear he’ll split me in half. There will be bruises for sure.

“Next time, I’ll fuck you in the ass and make sure your face is in the dirt where it belongs,” he grits. “You’re good for nothing except this, a worthless cum bank.”

I release my jaw and teeth, and he yanks his arm behind him, wiping away the blood. This isn’t the first time I’ve bitten him, and it’s not the first time he’s chased me down and forced himself on me. I’ve lost count of the bruises and the scrapes and the drawn blood.

After he comes in a roar of explosive testosterone, he cradles my jaw fondly before pulling out.

“Next time I catch you looking at those pictures, I’ll burn the whole fucking house down,” he says before gently slapping my cheek.

He stands, spits in the sand, and pulls on his pajama bottoms without even offering me a hand. I curl into a fetal position in the cold, soft sand.

Part of me wants to cry, but my emotions are dead. Another part of me wants to break his nose or poison his brandy, stab him in the back while he sleeps.

“Don’t wear white next time. At least make it fun for me,” he says before turning away.

I watch his impressive frame grow smaller and smaller as he returns to the house.

The wind whips up sea spray, and the waves continue to pound the shore.

Maybe when the tide comes in, it will catch me asleep and whisk me away from Wainscott Hollow.

The sea in Montauk is benevolent to broken women, rocking them to eternal sleep in its soothing embrace. Just ask my dead mother.