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The only thing Felix liked more than his pleasure was my pain. It wouldn’t matter how much I screamed or begged him to stop as my blood soaked through his white sheets. As long as he was having fun, the pain just went on and on.
Or until I passed out, which didn’t happen as often as I hoped it would.
Felix wasn’t the best of Rylan’s pack because there weren’t any, but he wasn’t the worst either. He was the only one who fed me. It didn’t happen all the times that I went with him, but sometimes he would untie me from the bed, sit me up, and feed me cut-up steak, eggs, and fries.
Once he even left a steak knife beside my hand. Just once. After that, he never fed me steak or anything ever again.
I shouldn’t care that he’s dead—that I killed him—after everything he did to me. Things I learned the hard way would only hurt worse if I didn’t do what I was supposed to with a smile and a moan.
I hated every last one of them. But you wouldn’t have known it to look in my eyes. My smiles were flawless, my moans so convincing no one could’ve guessed I was counting down the seconds till I could wash the stink of sex and stale sweat off my body in the shower.
Tears prickle my eyes and I will them not to fall because no shifter deserves my tears. Not a single fucking one of them.
I’mgladFelix is dead. I’m only sorry I wasn’t conscious to see it happen.
“I’ll be back to check on you later,” the doctor says, “so try to rest.”
His footsteps move away from me, and I hear him open the door and close it firmly behind him.
The second he’s gone, my eyes snap open and I force myself into a seated position. My world goes hazy with pain and I swallow my scream at the stabbing pain in my chest before it can emerge.
For several seconds I don’t move, just concentrate on breathing around the pain as I wait for it to fade. When it has, I turn my head to the side and spot a slim white remote which must control the small black screen on the wall opposite. I grab it because a remote means TV, and a TV means news about what could be happening in the city.
I can’t imagine a Porsche being driven off a bridge and into a river wouldn’t have made the news.
The first channel is an old black and white movie. The second, a sports game. Baseball. But the third… the third I strike gold. The evening news.
Perfect.
I hold my breath as I wait, my hand clenched tight around the remote, for an image of my face to flash on TV with my name and the hospital the paramedics brought me to.
“In other news. The police are no closer to identifying the cause of the fatal car crash on the Lancaster Bridge north of the city last Friday night. Now, back to…”
I tune out the rest of the female reporter's words.
That’s it? That’s all you have to say?
I stop clutching the remote so tight as I wait for more news about the crash. But there’s nothing. Just muggings, burglaries, the usual bad things that happen in every major city, then the weather, and it’s over. So I click to the next channel, and then the next in case I missed a more detailed report while I was out cold.
An hour passes this way, and on no channel, and in no news report, is there any report other than a tragic fatal car crash on the bridge. There’s no mention even of how many people died.
Is that why Rylan hasn’t found me yet? He thinks I’m dead?
When the door swings open, I drop the remote in a panic. It bounces off my bed and clatters to the floor. A round-faced nurse in her forties, with her dark hair pulled tight back from her face, and exhaustion creasing her eyes, steps in. “Awake now?”
I nod.
Her gaze dips to the tray beside my bed. “You haven’t touched your meal.”
“I’m not hungry.”
When her lips tighten, I lift a hand and gesture toward my ribs. “My ribs hurt, so…” I let my voice trail off so she can fill in the rest with whatever she wants to think.
The tightness around her eyes and mouth melts away, and sympathy fills her eyes. “Ah, broken ribs are no fun. Well, I’ll make a note on your file and we’ll see if the doctor can do something about upping your pain medication so you can eat. You’re all skin and bones as it is.”
A diet of two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day will do that.
I nod. “I’d just like to sleep if that’s okay? Maybe tomorrow it won’t hurt so much that I can eat.”
