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“I’ll shoot. I mean it.”
My back touches the wall. I didn’t realize I was still backing up. But Lev keeps coming, taking that last step until he’s pressing his chest into the barrel of the gun, leaning into it.
“No, you won’t.”
“Please,” I sob. I’m the one with the gun, yet I’m pleading with him.
He cocks his head, eyes matching the cold steel of the weapon. He closes his big hand over mine, and I have no choice. I have to do this. I have to shoot.
And I do.
I pull the trigger.
The sound isn’t like the night at Nina’s. That popping was quieter. This shot, it’s loud. And we’re both falling.
As we go down, Lev shifts his position, changing his grip of my gun hand to my wrist, aiming it over my head.
Another shot goes off, and I hear myself scream as glass shatters somewhere behind me.
His other hand comes around to cup the back of my head just as I hit the floor, the wood hard as I slam into it with his weight on top of me.
I’m not sure if it’s the force of the fall or his grip on my wrist that has my hand opening, but the gun slides across the floor and under the bed. I watch it, then turn to him. I should see blood. I shot him.
Didn’t I?
But there’s no blood, and Lev isn’t hurt. He’s just really, really pissed.
He takes my jaw and squeezes so hard I think he’s going to break it. “Didn’t I tell you not to do anything stupid?” he asks through gritted teeth.
I claw at his forearm, feeling his skin under my fingernails. Instinct takes over, and I ram my knee up into his balls.
Lev curses, and it’s only then that I can move.
I flip over onto my belly, and I clamber toward the bed, trying to drag my legs out from under him, but he grips the waistband of my jeans and hauls me backward. Standing, he lifts me with him. He’s still cursing, still not quite upright after my assault on his balls.
He tosses me on the bed again, laying all his weight over me so I’m trapped. He pushes the hair away from my face, and his breath is warm on my cheek.
“Didn’t I fucking tell you not to do anything stupid?” His hand slides between us, and he’s fumbling with something. “And that was about as stupid as it gets.”
He straightens, and I start to, too, but he shoves me back down, jamming his knee into my lower back.
I can’t move more than a few inches, and I crane my neck to look back at him, and I see what he’s fumbling with. What he’s opening.
“Lev, no,” I plead as he unbuckles his belt. I claw at the bed, trying to drag myself away, but it’s hopeless.
“Kat, yes,” he says, mimicking me as his hands slide between the bed and my belly. I fight and twist and turn to get away, but I can’t. He’s too strong. And when he tugs my jeans down, I scream.
His fingers are in my hair, hauling me backward against him. Looking around, he finds a scarf I’d tossed over the back of the chair and drags me with him as he picks it up. He squeezes his fingers and makes me look at him. He’s a blur through my tears.
“You made me do this. You brought this on yourself.”
“Lev—”
But before I can finish, he has me back over the bed and ties the scarf over my mouth, and when I open it to scream or to plead, he tightens it. Then he finishes stripping me of my underwear so they and my jeans are down around my knees, and I think he’s going to do it. Do that.
Everything stops for a minute then. Or maybe it’s a split second. It gets quiet and perfectly still, and the only sound is my breathing, my pleading through that gag. I turn my head to find him looking at me.
“I don’t like hurting you, Katerina,” he says.
I want to tell him not to, that he doesn’t have to, but I’m gagged. He tugs his belt through the loops of his jeans and doubles it over. When I understand what he intends to do, another panic, a different sort of panic takes hold of me.
I shake my head, and when I try to claw against the bed to get away, he takes his knee off my back, captures my wrists, and holds them at my lower back.
“But you have to learn this lesson, and you have to learn it now.”
I watch in shock as he raises his arm and brings it down hard.
Silence after that reverberating sound of leather against flesh. Silence as it echoes, and my breath catches as fire slices through me.
