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He closes his eyes and sighs again, pulling me closer into his embrace. “Sleep.”
Sleep? But we’ve finally started talking, and there’s so much I still have to say, so much I still want to ask.
“But I haven’t even asked you about your past yet,” I say.
He grumbles, “You don’t want to know. Trust me.”
“Yes, I do,” I say.
“No, you don’t,” he growls back. “Now sleep.”
I sigh out loud. “Fine.”
He smiles against my forehead and presses another kiss. “I will tell you another time … Kitten.”
I didn’t mean to purr against his chest, but I can’t stop my body’s reactions to his words. Every time he touches me, I want more; every time he inches closer, he steals my breath away; and when he kisses me, I die a little inside.
As I close my eyes, I make a wish …
That when I go to sleep, we can stay here forever … and that I don’t have to regret the beauty falling for the beast.
When I open my eyes, everything around me ceases to exist. What’s left of the hut is replaced by violent red streaks of blood. Clothes are scattered all around me, and in the distance, behind the door, I hear the calls of men.
I hesitate to step out of my bed but still tread toward the light shining behind the door. I don’t know what pushes me to open it, but when I do, my heart stops, and my knees almost cave in on me.
Fifty men and women are dancing away … naked … while some are fucked in the middle of the rooftop. And I’m left scrambling for air, wishing I understood why. But before I can ask, someone jumps toward me, grabs my hand, and drags me into the crowd.
Straight toward the middle.
While my clothes are ripped off my body.
And my lungs refuse to expel the air needed to scream.
Let me out. Let me go.
I’m crying, but no tears fall down my cheeks.
All I can do is pray for mercy and hope they hear.
But when I blink, all of it vanishes, and I drag much-needed oxygen into my lungs. I’m back in the cabin, back in the bed with Soren resting right beside me. My bed is soaked and the sheets clammy, so it must’ve been a nightmare.
But I can’t shake this dread filling my bones as I look at Soren and how peacefully he seems to sleep compared to me. Every time I close my eyes, I risk dreaming about that place again.
The cult.
The Holy Land where they forced me to do their bidding.
To sleep, dress, eat, and speak however they wanted.
They even wanted to marry me off.
I shiver in place and throw the blanket off. I’m sick to my stomach, so I close my eyes and suck in a few more breaths, trying to rid myself of this poison, but it’s hard.
All I can think of are the conversations I had with Soren and how interested he was in learning about that cult. He never asked me before, and when I tried to tell him, he wasn’t interested. Yet suddenly, he wants to know more. Why?
My body goes from hot to cold in the span of a single second as it begins to dawn on me.
What if …?
My head begins to spin.
No, no, he can’t really be thinking of taking me back there?
My eyes widen.
That was his plan.
That’s why he didn’t want to tell me.
In complete panic, I shoot up from the bed and back away from him. Not because I’m terrified of him … but because I’m terrified of the implications when I stay when he takes me back to the only place I swore I would never return to.
My skin begins to crawl as I pick up my clothes and put them on in a hurry. I go out into the main area and grab whatever I can from the cabinets to fill the bag with necessary supplies. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do.
When I pass the door to the bedroom again, I pause and peek inside. Soren’s still there, happily snoring away as if there isn’t a thing in the world that could harm him. But there is something that can.
I swallow.
I’m about to do the one thing I promised not to do.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, not having the heart to tell him out loud.
I hate to know what he might be thinking when he discovers I’m gone, how he might despise me for leaving him without even saying goodbye, but I cannot risk him waking up.
So I grab the door handle and push open the door while blowing him a final kiss, hoping he might dream of me.
“Goodbye.”
Chapter 34
Soren
I wake up to a cold draft entering the room. I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve been asleep, but I didn’t plan on going down. It just happened. But the cold is what shakes me up and makes me shiver, so I reach for the blanket and pull it up closer, searching for a warm body to hug with my other hand.
