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I turn over my shoulder slightly, my heart beating when I see Eli standing at the threshold, holding a glass of water and wearing gray sweatpants.
“Ohhh, lucky me…” I shimmy in the spot, smiling at Eli. He watches me as he takes a sip of water. As if he hasn’t decided what he’s going to do yet.
“No,” Kyrin says, wrapping his arm around the back of me and sliding me into the bedcovers. “You need to sleep, Lil.”
All the butterflies that Eli put in my belly were just burned to a crisp from Kyrin’s use of a nickname, but I wriggle deeper into my sheets. When Kyrin swings his legs over the bed, my hand comes out to stop him.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head while looking up at him. “Stay?” I look to where Eli is still standing, water now empty. “Both of you? Please?”
Kyrin turns frozen in my grip, but it’s Eli who takes the first step into my room, closing my door behind himself while flicking off the light.
“Fine,” Eli says. “Damn, you don’t have to beg me…”
I giggle into my pillow as Kyrin falls back to where he was, only this time beneath the covers. I hear the clink of Eli placing his empty glass on top of the other bedside table before he tears off the covers and slides in on the other side of me.
“You’re trouble,” Eli says softly, brushing his warm lips over my forehead. Kyrin’s arm is already around my waist, his other beneath my pillow, while stretching wide to Eli.
“And that wasn’t water in your glass…” I say through my yawn, scrunching my nose at the potent smell of vodka.
“You don’t like vodka?” Eli chuckles, his other hand now resting just beneath Kyrin’s.
I let out another yawn, my eyes so heavy I can barely keep them open. “It reminds me of a certain Russian.”
I sat curled in the corner of my bedroom. It was pretty in there, but it was all an illusion. The house, the rooms, the decor—everything. All to hide the ugliness that would happen underneath. I knew what was coming. I had been bad. I had done bad. I knew the punishment this time was going to be so, so much worse than ever… Because instead of me offering the five men my service, the fifth one tried to take me. Buy me. Save me. Whoever they were, they held power, because although the transaction for a favor from Patience didn’t go through, they were still allowed to walk away with their lives. As for me, I’d be left here with his eyes burning into my skull until the day I die, because whoever that was, he would be my undoing.
But it didn’t matter that they were the ones who retracted. It was still a failure on my part in their eyes. I wasn’t hot enough, not alluring enough, not woman enough. Now I’d be punished.
But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t know how to prepare myself for what was about to happen to me.
My bedroom door opened and closed. I didn’t look up. I knew who was standing there.
He didn’t say a word, and I kept my head bowed to the ground. I was going to be punished.
A single metal blade dropped to the floor in front of me, right near his dark loafer.
“I—” My mouth opened to ask him the question I wanted to know. “You want me to kill myself?” This made more sense than him wanting me to scar myself, because The Dolls were products of perfection. We walked and talked that way and were trained, too. If any of us so much as got a pimple, we would not show face until it was gone. That was their absolute rule.
He leaned down in front of me, his fingers wrapping around my chin. “No, dear. But I’m going to make you wish you could.” He stood, stepping backward farther until he was sitting on my bed. “You failed us tonight, Little Doll.”
My mouth snapped closed. I waited for something, anything, to tug in my throat like when it did during training, or recruitment, but nothing came.
“He tried to save me,” I answered, which was the truth.
There was a long stretch of silence that spilled between us until Kij tossed his tie to the floor. “Get up and strip. Bring the razor blade with you.” I stood up strongly, swiping the blade up from the ground and wincing when I felt the sharp edge cut into the cushion of my thumb. “That’s it… Now walk to me.”
“What—what are you going to do?”
As soon as I reached him, he took the blade from me with a smile that made my stomach recoil. “I saw the way you looked at him, Little Doll, and he you. I won’t tell you or show you who it is behind the face paint, but I am going to make sure every time you have sex for the next couple weeks it is going to hurt.” He grabbed me by the backs of my thighs and threw me onto the bed. I lay still, emotionless, as he widened my legs. I felt the first slice like a slash of venom being cut inside of me.
