“Who bent you over and fucked you in the ass?”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” His voice was deceptively mild.
“Oh, you don’t like it when I use bad words, is that it? You like me innocent and compliant, right? Is that how you were when someone shoved their…their cock in your asshole? Did it hurt?”
“Yeah.”
I blinked, surprised he had answered me. “How did he do it?”
“They. How did they get the jump on me and hold me down? That’s what you want to know?”
No, not really. It sounded horrible, even if I had cause to hate him. I would never wish that on anyone, not even Hunter. Especially Hunter.
“How?” I whispered, some demon inside me, some spirit who knew he needed to tell me.
He shrugged slightly, a lift of one muscular shoulder. “It’s not that hard when a man isn’t expecting it, when he’s caught unaware and alone. When there’s no one to help him. They were experienced, and I wasn’t as tough then. I didn’t need to be.”
A deep breath. “Did no one hear you?”
He looked back, his gaze hard. “I didn’t scream, Evie. I prayed.”
I closed my eyes against the turmoil in his gaze but that only gave canvas to the horrible picture of his words. Hunter on his knees, Hunter held down, Hunter praying…for help, for mercy? It didn’t matter. It made me want to throw up.
“Besides,” he said as casually as if he were speaking about the weather. “It isn’t muscles that make you strong. It’s how much you want it. Those guys at the diner? I won that fight because they didn’t want it as badly as I did. They didn’t want you as bad as I do.”
“Why?” I asked evenly. “Am I some sort of revenge against the world? Or we’re all animals so who cares anyway?”
“Doesn’t matter how it started. I’m not letting you go.”
“But you said…in the kitchen…not much longer. You said so.”
He paused, at war with himself. “You want this as much as I do.”
My breath left me for a minute.
“You’re delusional,” I forced out. “You’re telling yourself that so you feel better about what you’re doing.”
“Who the hell else are you going to let touch you now?” he burst out. “Even before I got to you, you were so damn tied up in knots that I can’t believe you actually drove all the way out there. Now I’ve…”
Broken me. I remembered his question from earlier. Did I trust him not to break me? But he believed he already had. He believed I would never fight back, and maybe he was right to think so. Even if I’d had a good reason not to fight in the beginning, when I’d thought he might truly hurt me, why not now?
Strangely, I realized that he wouldn’t really harm me. He’d physically restrain me from getting away, but he wouldn’t kill me for trying. So what was stopping me? Unless I really did like this. Not fighting had become a choice now. If he’d ever stolen my free will, it had surfaced completely now. If I wanted to get away from him, I could.
How much did I want my freedom?
Enough to fight a man I’d come to care about? Enough to break my promise to him not to flee in exchange for the places he showed me? As wonderful as these weeks had been, I was still his prisoner. I’d been given toys for my cage, been taken on walks to sniff around, but in the end I was put away at night on the mattress in his truck where he used me for his pleasure—and for mine.
Carefully, I scooted down in the bed and rolled over, pulling the sheet up over me. After a minute, I felt the bedsprings shift.
“That’s it?” he said, and I knew I’d surprised him.
It wasn’t hard to sound tired. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”
He chuckled softly. “Are you shutting me out like we’re an old married couple? Should I go sleep on the couch?”
I ignored him, snuggling deeper against the pillow and tugging the sheet up to my chin.
He muttered something I couldn’t understand. The bed dipped, and then I heard his steady footfalls creaking the wood across the floor. He reached the small bathroom where he’d grabbed me earlier—and gone down on me.
The door closed.
A squeak and shudder as the shower turned on.
He’d already taken a shower—we both had—but he’d seemed agitated. Just like he had at the diner when he’d left me inside. His past was his vulnerability, an Achilles heel on a body otherwise flush with armor. Even thinking about it, talking about it, made him need to be alone. He left me alone.
Last time I had made a run for it and it hadn’t worked out, because the people were too afraid of Hunter and whatever retribution he might hold for them. Would James and Laura be scared of him too? No, they seemed completely unafraid, but that was because they didn’t know what he’d done to me—what he was truly capable of. They had more to lose, considering Billy.
I didn’t believe Hunter would take retribution on Billy or any of them. But it was a gamble and for once, the stakes weren’t only my life.