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“Everything was amazing for a while, like it’d been when we’d first met,” Sawyer murmured. “And then it started all over again. It was probably about a month before he brought another guy home… another escort. If he’d tried to force me into it, things probably would have been different. But he begged me to give him this one thing because he needed it. He said he didn’t understand why and he was ashamed of it and that he had never asked me for anything else. He began to cry and said he knew he was sick and disgusting.”
Sawyer shook his head and laughed. “I agreed to do it.” He paused and added, “Again.”
Clearly ashamed, Sawyer pulled away from me, but I refused to release him completely. When his eyes met mine, he said, “Still want to hitch your wagon to someone so fucking desperate and stupid?”
“Hey—” I began but this time Sawyer did pull free of my hold. Thankfully, he didn’t take off. He just put enough space between us that we were no longer touching.
“Deep down I knew how fucked up it all was, but I had this pathetic hope that if I proved to Marcus that I’d do anything for him then things would be like they’d been when we’d first met. He knew how to feed that fire too. Even though the stuff he told the men to do to me was degrading and the things he said to me were humiliating, afterwards he’d hold me in his arms and tell me how perfect I’d been and how much he loved me. So I kept doing it,” Sawyer admitted. “And I lost a little more of myself each time.”
I desperately wanted to touch him, to pull him back in my arms and tell him none of it mattered, but I could tell he was on the brink of running so I remained where I was. “What made you leave him for good?”
Sawyer laughed. “You’d think it would have been the fact that he put a tracker on my car so he would know where I’d gone each day. Or finding out he was reading all my texts and emails. Or having him tell me one day he’d gotten me a new job that wouldn’t have me coming home smelling like elephant shit each night.”
There were a million things I wanted to say in response to the self-loathing he was clearly experiencing, but I held my tongue because if Sawyer didn’t get this shit out now, he never would.
“It happened on the night of our fifth anniversary. Marcus had been promising me for more than a week that he had something really exciting planned. I figured he was taking me to Paris or something.” Sawyer began picking at a small scratch on his wrist. It was likely just a mild wound he’d gotten while treating one of the smaller members of the sanctuary, but it didn’t take long for it to get redder and redder. I suppressed the urge to stop him because I knew even one wrong move or word would likely break him.
“It wasn’t a trip to Paris,” Sawyer continued. His voice was hollow, emotionless. The mere fact that he was mentally distancing himself from the memory scared the hell out of me.
“When I got home, he was waiting with champagne. He couldn’t stop touching me, kissing me softly, telling me how beautiful I was. I don’t think I was ever more in love with him than I was in that moment,” Sawyer whispered.
A hint of sadness had crept into his voice but when he continued, the words were stilted and robotic.
“After we finished the champagne, he blindfolded me. As he led me through the house, he’d stop every few seconds to kiss me. The closer we got to what I figured was our bedroom, the more intense his touches became. I started to feel really lightheaded but figured it was the combination of an empty stomach, the champagne, and the excitement of knowing Marcus was going to make love to me.”
I stiffened at Sawyer’s comment about being lightheaded. No, there was no way…
“I wasn’t even sure if we’d made it to the bedroom or not when Marcus began to undress me because I was having trouble focusing. My balance was off, and I remember thinking how glad I was that Marcus had been able to keep me on my feet even as he’d taken my clothes off. I began to feel sick to my stomach but when I opened my mouth to tell Marcus I needed a minute, I couldn’t form any words.”
“Fuck,” I whispered as I realized what Sawyer was saying without actually using the words. Marcus had fucking drugged him.
“I knew something was wrong as soon as my back hit the mattress. There were too many hands touching me, too many voices all around me. I couldn’t make sense of any of it at first but when I was turned onto my stomach and dragged backwards against something hard, my instincts must have taken over because I began fighting for everything I was worth.” Sawyer paused before adding, “Which wasn’t much. The drug was just too strong.”
