He helps her tuck her head into the crook of his armpit. He’s in the most uncomfortable and awkward position with his head leaned against the headboard too. Nonetheless…that’s how he falls asleep…with one arm wrapped around her shoulder.
Chapter Ten
Her mother’s plea plays in a loop. Over and over again. Maybe she’s awake and trapped in the nightmare that’s become her life though. She can’t be sure. All she knows is she’s blanketed in warmth now. But her skin is on fire from the inside out. Like tiny fire ants crawling and chewing to get out.
How much longer will this torment last until she can breathe again…or can she simply die now? She’s at rock bottom ready to accept death if it comes. She can feel herself smiling at the thought.
Death. No more drugs. No more skin burning. No more debt.
She hopes that Isabella and Cristian don’t follow her to wherever she ends up to collect what she owes them. Any hell would be better than this current one.
She can feel the light of the sun on her skin. It burns her too. Oh, how she used to love the sunshine before all of this.
There was only a crack of a window in her bedroom in the cottage at the Romano’s estate. She giggles softly, remembering how she used to entertain herself with her drawings inside that cottage she shared with her mother.
Her drawings. She misses them now. She missed drawing.
She can feel the pencil between her fingers. She can feel the coolness of a fresh sheet of drawing paper beneath her hand. Drawing was her escape and though her life was a living hell, her art wasn’t always dark. It was more light and carefree.
Her fingers feather the wall over the many taped up sheets of paper. She’s unsure how she’s in her room doing this but she’ll take what she can get.
Drawings of a park she visited with her mother for a picnic glide beneath her fingers. One of five picnics their during their life together before her mother passed ten years ago, two weeks before her twenty-third birthday.
She’s thirty-three now and has lived a miserable life, accomplishing nothing but living to pay a debt that has never lessened. It only keeps growing.
A firm hand grips her fingers and holds her still, stopping them from floating across her drawings.
“You're tickling me. I hate that shit,” a man’s voice grumbles.
Oh, God. She’s back at the den, Eden’s basement. She’s asleep next to yet another man who’s used her, she thinks to herself. If she remains still, he should be leaving soon. She didn’t want to open her eyes and see what monster has paid for her this time anyway. It didn’t matter what he would look like. The faces have blurred from one to the next after so long.
“It’s time to get up,” the voice firmly tells her. Compassionate yet merciless. “If you want to lie down and die then say the words. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time.”
She peels her eyes open at the familiar voice and manages to move her head, angling to look up even over the ache in her neck.
Adam King.
She stares into the beautiful grey eyes of Isabella’s betrothed. She floats into the endless darkness of those orbs on his Adonis-like face, remembering the moment she saw him the first time. Remembering him fucking Isabella as if she didn’t exist right there in the room with them.
Immediately, she slides back. Away from the warmth of his hard chiseled body. She bunches the comforters up to her chin and then raises the comforter to see if her clothes are still present.
She’s fully clothed but Isabella will kill her anyway.
How did she get here? What the heck is going on?
Adam swings his legs off to the side of the bed and stretches. The swift movement of his arms sends the scent of his cologne wafting to her nostrils. It’s spicy and manly unlike Cristian’s.
“Think you can manage to bathe yourself?” he asks. “You might feel better.”
She’s too stunned at finding him in bed that she can’t answer. For how long? She can’t be sure. He swings his head and glares at her with those piercing eyes. Piercing into her like the first time they locked.
“Y-yes,” she stutters out.
He points to the bathroom and then gets out of bed and leaves the room altogether.
“I-I can’t breathe,” she tells the man sitting on the floor next to her. Marcus, that’s his name.
He doesn’t say anything as she leans over the porcelain toilet and heaves again. There’s nothing left to expel. She’d eaten an apple and the stomach cramps immediately made her regurgitate it.
She wonders if anyone else can hear her. Why does she even care? She’d long lost her sense to be self-conscious. Shame isn’t in her vocabulary since the time she lost her virginity to Brian Donahue her senior year of high school. He’d been the winning bidder in Cristian’s auction, the first of many, even though she didn’t know it at the time. Cristian made sure she knew why Brian was handing him a wad of cash before she even got her panties back on.
It’d broken her mother’s heart when she came home and cried about it. Yet her mother merely told her that she was sorry and that they owed the Romanos a debt. She didn’t know at the time that it was a debt that she can’t seem to ever repay.
“Slowly,” Marcus tells her. “In through your nose and then out. One at a time, Ariana.” He holds her still damp hair out of her face as she heaves again. “Your body knows how to breathe,” he tells her softly.
She nods and then sits back, leaning against the cool tub now.
“You’re going to go through this in the days to come but you have to get something in you for the strength to fight this. Okay?” Marcus asks.
She nods without looking at him.
“You’re not dead, Ariana. Count that as a win.”
A win? Yeah right. She wonders if Marcus knows what she’ll be returning to. No one could call that a win.
As of right now, she didn’t even know what the hell is going on. She didn’t know why she’s here but she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Isabella to walk through those doors to slice her throat open.
Adam King. He was gone by the time she stepped out of the shower. There was a fresh set of satin pajamas folded neatly on top of the bed for her as well. It felt amazing on her skin. Soothing and cool against the fire that burned beneath.
The man was gorgeous the night she’d seen him at Eden. He’d been different from the others. He spoke to her like a person. Not a plaything even though she’d expected to be when Isabella had called her into the room.
He seemed kind and his eyes seem to read to the depths of her. And for the first time in a long time, she’d been ashamed to be on her knees next to him while he was fucking Isabella. Or getting fucked by Isabella. Except, when he’d held her hand that night, it felt like an apology of some sort.
It was her mind playing tricks on her. It was the pills that Cristian made sure she took an hour earlier. A concoction of pills if she had bothered to count them. Why would he be apologizing to her?
“Let’s get you back in bed,” Marcus says.
He stands and helps her up to her feet. Her legs feel like jelly. Her knees buckle and Marcus grips her around her waist to hold her up and help her walk.