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Eve spoke to Marius. “Dial it down, warrior. Please.” To Shayna, she dipped her chin. “Go ahead. Tell me about the last time.”
Just thinking about it brought tears flowing down Shayna’s cheeks, something she hadn’t intended or thought would happen. “I had no pleasure that time, and hadn’t had for the last few sessions as far as that goes. I faked it the whole time because of course he’d get mad if I didn’t appear to be enjoying sex with him. But I was barely aroused. The truth was, I was afraid of being left tied up again. And by then, he had only one goal, to have his release, which he would insist gave him some kind of inspiration for his work that he had to attend to while I was lying tied up in his bed.
“But this time, when he left me, he was gone for hours. But he didn’t go to his desk and work. Not this time. No, he got in his car and left because I heard the car on the gravel drive pull away. I screamed my rage not once but several times as the hours passed. Later, I fell asleep, having worn myself out.
“When he came back, he told me how thrilling it was to know that I was waiting for him. I remember forcing a smile and telling him how glad I was that he’d had a good time because by then I was scared to death.”
“You thought he’d hurt you?” Eve asked.
“Yes and no. Truthfully, I was afraid that if I gave vent to the rage and humiliation I felt in that moment, I’d kill him. I’d go into the kitchen, wait till he was asleep, and take a knife to him. I’m not proud of having had those thoughts or feelings, but it was one more reason I knew this would be the last time I was with him.
“I ached from head to foot from having been in the same position for so long. I had bruises on my wrists and ankles from trying to get out of the knots, because he sure knew how to tie them.”
“No one heard you screaming?”
“He has a big piece of property outside the city limits. So the answer is no.”
“Shayna,” Eve said very quietly. “Let me make this clear to you. He isn’t just without a conscience, he’s a psychopath and I’m sure if you compared notes with some of his previous girlfriends you’d find he’d been practicing this routine for a long time. My guess is each time he lures another young woman in, he pushes the limits to see how far he can go. He’ll keep escalating as well until he’s done something a lot worse than leaving a woman tied up on his bed while he goes out with some friends.”
Shayna finally leaned back against the couch cushions. “I’ve had those thoughts as well, but dismissed them. I’ve even thought about going to the police.”
Only then, after she’d said it all, did she become fully aware of the state of Marius’s emotions.
He rose up from the couch and shouted in a kind of guttural animal way that made her stiffen her arms, pinning them to her sides, preparing for what, she didn’t know. But the vampire was in a rage.
Eve rose up as well and went to Marius. She got in his face. “Knock it off. You’re not helping. You’re scaring her. Look at Shayna, Marius. Look at her.”
He shifted his gaze to Shayna and in quick stages, he got his temper under control. “I’m sorry, but I want to kill him for doing that to you. I want to kill him. Do you understand?” His hands were balled into fists.
Shayna jumped up and ran to him. He opened his arms as he’d done before and she fell into them. The floodgates opened and she wept on his chest and he just held her, petting her back. She actually hadn’t known until that moment how much Michelson had traumatized her, how much fear she’d had of what he might do to her, what he could have done, how much of a victim she’d become. “I didn’t understand. I didn’t. I thought I was fine. I just thought I needed to realize he was bad for me. I didn’t understand. Who would ever do that to another human being?”
* * *
The rage Marius felt went bone-deep. His whole body felt on fire with suppressed anger, feelings from his childhood and now for Shayna’s past. He knew exactly what it felt like to be tied down and abandoned. Daniel had once left him shackled, bruised, and cut up on the table for two days, one of the times he’d almost died.
The feeling of impotence left him enraged beyond words. The only difference was that Michelson had somehow drawn the line at not inflicting physical pain beyond the hurt the bindings would cause. He never hit her; therefore, he could justify what he’d done to her.
He met Eve’s gaze and saw the speculative look in her eye. She had her arms folded over her chest as though she, too, had to hold herself together by sheer force of will. She’d bought a lot of slaves in the past for the purpose of healing and freeing them.
“I’m so sick of this shit,” Eve said, shaking her head back and forth. “I love what I do, but everyone involved participates by choice and no one is hurt or left to suffer like that. I hate what this man did to you.” She unfolded her arms throwing them in the air at the same time.
“Me, too,” Marius said quietly.
Shayna still wept. “Me, three.” She hiccuped, then drew back to look up at him. “I didn’t expect to start crying like this.”
He wiped her cheeks with his fingers. “And I’m sorry I lost it. I wasn’t even the one injured, but I hate that he put you through that. If he walked into this room, I’d pound him into a pulp.”
She drew a deep breath. “Right after me. You know, it was one long seduction at first; then he slowly turned into a control freak and wore down my self-esteem just a little bit every day until I actually let myself be treated that way. The first time he abandoned me for the sake of his ‘inspiration,’ setting his needs well above my own, I should have kicked him in the nuts.” She pulled out of his arms and lifted her top shirt to wipe her face.
He could sense she was working hard at calming herself as she turned in Eve’s direction. “So what do I do next? I mean, do you think just admitting how blind I was to what I’d actually experienced will help me with the visions?”
Eve paced, a frown between her brows, her ponytail swinging. “I’m trying to figure that out but I do have an idea. Sometimes it helps to relive traumatic events by way of proxy, but change the outcome.” She stopped in her tracks and held Marius’s gaze. “Shayna should see my next show. With a couple of tweaks it will be perfect, since the submissive is a woman.”
Marius shook his head. “Eve. No.” He didn’t want Shayna exposed to a full-on show like the kind Eve ran in her Ruby Cave club.
But Shayna placed her hand on his arm. “Actually, I think Eve has it right. My gut tells me that I would benefit from it because I’m guessing the woman either breaks free or the man releases her the moment she’s ready to be free.”
Eve nodded. “He releases her.”
