With the world crumbling in on me, I twist my head in just enough time to stop Trey’s lips landing on my mouth. I need air, badly, and not even the furious growl rolling up Trey’s throat can take from that. He’s mad I’m rejecting him, when in reality, I am doing everything I can not to pass out. My past is clutching my throat even worse than the past ten weeks of torture did. It’s asphyxiating me, killing me with the same painstaking slowness of the past six years.
Trey doesn’t realize that, though. “My kisses not good enough for you, Duchess? Do you have someone else you’d rather kiss? Perhaps a rich aristocrat who likes fiddling with his staff?” Vomit races up my food pipe when he growls in my ear, “From what I heard, you still married him. How long did it take you to forget me? A week, possibly two?”
I almost bend in two when reality smacks into me. This is just another game. A sick and twisted mindfuck that’ll maim me more than any of Vladimir’s guests.
Haven’t I been through enough?
Will this nightmare ever end?
It won’t end until I make it end.
Grunting, I push Trey away from me before attempting to slap him across the face. My hand barely skims his cheek when he grips my wrist so hard I’m certain it’s seconds from snapping.
After roaring like the torment inside of him is as dark as mine, he tugs me away from the wall, wraps an arm around my thighs, then throws me over his shoulder as if I’m the weight of a feather. “If you want to play with the big boys, Duchess, I’ll show you how we truly play.”
Through the thumps of my fists colliding with Trey’s back as he stomps us across the room, I hear someone mumble, “Trey… it’s my fault she’s out here. I invited her to sit with us. If you want to be angry at anyone, be angry at me.”
Trey either doesn’t believe Eight or he’s disinterested in what he has to say because he wants any excuse to punish me, which he does not even two seconds later when he slips into the warm water of the jacuzzi with me attached to his front.
To anyone without open wounds, the soothing water would be heavenly for their exhaustive bodies. To me, it’s like being dipped into boiling lava.
The screams ripping through me are soundless. Trey can’t say the same thing. He howls like a wolf under a moon when I claw my nails into his pecs so I can climb up his body. I want to run as far away from him as possible, but the pain is too intense. It’s taking everything I have for me not to cry, so I can’t waste an ounce of energy fleeing.
After burrowing my head into Trey’s neck, I use his stiff-as-a-board body to weaken the severity of the shakes hampering mine. Although my screams are soundless, I’m certain Trey hears every one of them. My breaths batter his neck as forcefully as my nails dig into his shoulders. I can also feel his raging heart. It’s as sky-high as mine.
I’m so deep in my pain cycle, I don’t realize Trey is moving us until his shouted words overtake the frantic thumps of his feet. “Get Dok!”
After bolting down the corridor I walked only minutes ago, holding me tighter with every step he trudges, he kicks open his door, heads to the bathroom, then yanks on the faucet in the freestanding shower. Even with it being super muggy this evening, my teeth chatter in protest to the cold water pumping out of the showerhead when he steps us into the stall. Although the rest of my body is freezing, my burning back soaks up the water like a desert being hit with its first sprinkling of rain. It’s heavenly to my oozing welts.
“I’m sorry, Duchess, I’m so fucking sorry,” Trey mutters through the heavy thuds of his heart booming into my ear. “I forgot about your marks. My fucked-up head forgot about them.” He bangs himself on the forehead two times, hopeful a couple of hard thumps will draw him out of the drug-fueled binge he’s on. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just mad. Not at you. At myself…and at fucking her.” His last four words are barely whispers, and they rip my heart to shreds.
After pulling back the strands of dirty hair hanging in front of my eyes, he lifts my head via my chin, locking our eyes. “You’re fucking with my head. Having you here is fucking with my head. I thought the past was dead. You’re reminding me it isn’t.”
I want to say something, but even if I could get my mouth to follow the prompts of my brain, he wouldn’t understand me. I don’t speak English, and he doesn’t understand Czech. We have no way of communicating, not to mention the fact I truly don’t know what to say. My head is reeling as much as his, so I doubt anything I could say would offer much help.
After running the back of his hand down my cheek, Trey tracks his rough thumb over my lips before he pulls me in close to his chest. We stay huddled in the shower until the burn on my back cools right along with the heat trekking through Trey’s veins.
Once he has me wrapped in a thick, fluffy towel that should be more comfortable than his rigid body but isn’t, he sits me on his bed. He grabs a tube of ointment off a big set of overflowing drawers in his room, shouts out the door for them to hurry the fuck up and find Dok before returning to my side.
“It’s just ointment,” he assures me after joining me on the mattress and tugging down the back of my towel. “It’ll take away the remaining burn. Dok gave it to me earlier when you were sleeping. Before I…” He doesn’t finalize his sentence, but the sorrow pumping out of him does. He’s sobering up remarkably fast, which isn’t surprising considering the circumstances.
My teeth grit when he rubs the ointment into my skin. It doesn’t burn as much as chlorine, but it still isn’t pleasant. Trey is being as gentle as possible. He’s touching me with a kindness I haven’t experienced in years, however, worry still flows through me. He’s only being gentleafterhurting me. That’s not okay, and something I thought I’d stop experiencing once I left the dungeon Vladimir kept his captives in.
Mistaking the second grit of my teeth as upset instead of determination for a better life, Trey says, “You can cry, K. It’s okay to cry.” His switchback in nickname reveals his drug binge is coming to an end. I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried. I’m more stunned than anything. If any of this is true, I’ve just been thrust from one nightmare to another.
After rubbing his ointment-sticky fingers onto the towel wrapped around his waist, Trey gently tugs on my shoulder, wordlessly requesting for me to twist around and face him.
When I do as requested, he looks like he has an arsenal of questions he wants to ask me. I have just as many, but before either of us can work through our confusion, much less categorize the importance of our questions, the shuffling of multiple feet sound from outside his door.
I’m covered by a towel, but you wouldn’t know it when Trey darts up to place himself between me and the doorway. Although his treatment of my wounds soothed the burn, and I tell myself time and time again that Trey’s visitors won’t hurt me, nothing can keep my head out of the dark place it convenes in when the shadows of my past catch up with me.
Darkness doesn’t scare me. I’ve been hurt, beaten, and raped in the light, so I’ll never fear the dark. Furthermore, evil doesn’t live in the dark, it thrives off people too scared to realize it’s worthless without fear.
Evil is powerless
if the good are unafraid.
--Ronald Reagan.
