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For you are with me.
She squeezes my hand, as she keeps her eyes trained on mine.
A boot slams into my back, right under my ribs, forcing me harder into poor broken Penny. She screeches, her fingers clawing at the mattress, as she continues to whisper unintelligible words. I watch her lips move, trying to pick up the words again.
… in the presence of my enemies.
Another kick to my back. Another ragged scream from Penny.
You anoint my head with oil.
I watch as blood from my broken eardrum drips onto her cheek.
My cup overflows.
I’m so sorry, I want to tell this girl. I don’t want to do this. But nothing I say could ever comfort her enough.
“You’re not finished until you’re finished,” the masked man grinds out, his distorted voice reaching my blown eardrum through what seems like an entire ocean.
“You have to keep going,” Penny urges me.
“I can’t,” I choke.
“Think about somebody you love,” she says. “I’ll try to stop screaming.”
I have to keep going.
I pull back on Penny’s hips, as gently as I fucking dare, fucking her deeper, and she claps a hand over her mouth to drown out an anguished moan. Try as I might, I’m not very gentle. I’m not exactlyaroused. Her blood is the lubricant that moves our bodies against each other. It’s repulsive and horrific, and at this rate, I’mnevergoing to finish. I’m just hoping my body can take over and get us all out of this alive.
I close my eyes, and there she is.
Avery.
And not the Avery who’s beaten and bruised with no life left in her eyes. Avery Capulet, the girl who lit the world on fire wherever she went. Avery, who always walked around with a lift to her chin. Avery, whose gold-flecked eyes give me a bewildering surge of adrenaline every time we look at each other.
It’s awful with Penny. It’s fucking horrible. But I think of Avery, on her back, moaning. Happy. Begging me for more with a smile. Fisting my t-shirt. Kissing me hard. Saying my name.
It does the trick.
The halfhearted pumps of my hips become the real thing. Penny is in agony, but after I get a few strokes in, she starts to loosen up a little.
And I don’t want this—I don’t want this, I don’t fucking want this—but I do it anyway. Avery bent over my couch. Avery bent over my bed. Avery’s fingernails in my back. Avery crying Rome, Rome, Rome, her voice ragged with pleasure.
My hips jerk forward, and I come. It’s a death sentence. The thought rings loud and clear in my mind. This moment will end everything.Everything.
I pull myself away from Penny, and she pulls herself into the fetal position in the center of the mattress, sobbing loudly. It takes me a minute to stand up and tuck myself back into my jeans. A guy in my condition shouldn’t befuckinganybody. When I’m finally on my feet, I toss a shrug in his direction like this isn’t killing me.
“Hope you can get off on that tonight.” I can’t manage even a dickish smile.
He throws Avery to the side like a rag doll, and everything in me freezes as if my veins run with ice instead of blood. I’ve been keeping up this act because letting it go will make us easier targets. What I didn’t count on was that there’s a much easier target, crumpled there on the mattress.
I rush to Avery’s side, helping her up, as we watch in shock. As that fucking bastard hauls Penny up by her hair. Her throat must be raw from all the screaming. He yanks her up high, so high that he can press his face to hers, staring deep into her eyes.
“Penny. Look at me.”
Penny whimpers, but she does it. She looks right into the eyes of the man who has destroyed her, and I wonder what she sees.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” Penny says rapidly, the end of her anguished prayer, “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever…”
