Page 85 of Dark Surrender

“How do you know?”

“I… I remember… before him. Sorta. Little blips. A woman smoking a cigarette. I had a bedroom and a dog that slept in there with me. He smelled bad, like smoke and urine. His fur was greasy to touch.” Is it weird that I remember the dog more than anything else?

“Christ. When did he take you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. As a toddler? Maybe. I was too afraid to ask.” He would have killed me if I had. So I never brought it up.

“And your sister?” Dark asks, angry on our behalf.

“We aren’t related by blood. I don’t even think Dee knows that. I think we were taken around the same time, but I don’t remember.” Trust me, I wish I did. If I had any idea of where either of us came from, I would’ve looked it up long ago. But when you have nothing to go on, what are you supposed to do?

“Fuck.”

Not knowing what to say, as I’ve already said too much, I hum.

Fuck is right.

This is why I don’t get close to people. They don’t understand. They can’t. What do you say to someone who’s covered in scars? How do you react to a woman who doesn’t have a mother, and her only father was a man who kidnapped her as a child to raise her into this? That’s without considering what I look like…

I have no hair.

None.

Not in my nose.

Not on my legs.

Nowhere.

And while I’ve accepted this about myself… adding up the whole package, including a psychotic sister who kills men, how can you expect to get close to anyone?

You can’t.

Yet, here I am, in my bed, with a man staring at my back, touching my scars, and I’m not scared in the normal sense, and I don’t hate it.

Dark’s fingertips slide up my spine, and just like the night in the store, he cuffs his hand around the base of my neck.

“You may not know it yet, and that’s okay… But listen to my words… You’re mine, sweetheart. Today. Tomorrow. A week from now. A month. Next year. Five years. It don’t matter. We’re doin’ this. I’m not goin’ anywhere. I couldn’t, even if I tried.”

He can’t mean that.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tuck my arms under my pillow, ball my hands into fists, and shove Dark’s words from my mind.

I am no one’s.

This isn’t real.

Nothing ever is.

Dark doesn’t say anything more when he covers my bare back, cock nestled against my ass, and kisses me from shoulder to shoulder, slowly, before he settles beside me, curls his arm around my middle, and tugs me into the heat of his embrace.

And I’m too tired to fight him.

So, I don’t. I let it be and fall asleep with a tattooed arm around my waist, his breath on my neck, and wait for tomorrow to come. When the shoe drops… and he disappears again…

Like he always does.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE