“I said ride me.”
Every command is more confusing than the last. He pulls me by the throat to his lap, spreading my thighs over his. He doesn’t wait for me to position myself but snatches me up and slams me down onto his dick. The air whooshes out of me when he spears up into my tightness. He grips my hip painfully, coaxing me into a rhythm I can’t find. He pulls me flush to his body, crushing my breasts to his chest and shoving the pistol into my side.
“You’re still wet. You came for him, didn’t you?” he snarls. “When was the last time you were this wet for me?”
Fear ripples over my body. This could be the night he kills me. He reaches for my throat, fingers tightening until there’s no air.
I grasp desperately for the manacle at my neck. Black spots speckle my vision, and cotton fills my head. Just when I think I’ll pass out, he releases my throat.
“Did he touch you here?” Fury strains his voice to the point of snapping. “In your pussy, Iris? My pussy?”
“Stop.” I choke on the word and the nausea filling my throat the longer he fills me. “Please stop.”
“I’ll stop.” He lifts me off his lap and shoves me onto the bed behind him. “You asked for it.”
Relief floods me, my body releasing the fear that held my muscles tight. All I want is a shower. I’m sure there will be repercussions when I least expect it, but maybe not tonight.
No sooner has the thought formed than Caleb rises over me and flips me onto my stomach. A prickle of foreboding tickles my consciousness. “Caleb, what are you—”
“You think I’ll follow behind West?” he growls.
“You aren’t,” I say, desperate and struggling to loosen his hold. “We didn’t, Caleb.”
“So I’m a fool now?” A laugh, void of humor, whips the air. “I’ll just go somewhere he hasn’t been.”
I can’t submit to this. I squirm loose and spring off the bed, sprinting toward the bathroom, but I’m no match for Caleb’s long arms and legs, for the lightning speed of his well-conditioned athlete’s body. He’s at the door ahead of me, blocking my way, laughing in my face. I turn to flee in the other direction.
His arm snakes around my waist and he lifts me from the floor, tossing me back onto the bed. His hold feels bionic when he jerks me to all fours, and I buck my back into his chest, trying to dislodge him. My arms flail wildly. I claw at his thigh and feel his skin curl under my fingernails. I slap any part of him I can reach, until the cold steel of that pistol at the base of my skull petrifies my fight.
“How dare you let him touch what’s mine?” he growls behind me, jerking my hair painfully.
Tears crawl from my eyes and over my cheeks. His large hand slams between my shoulder blades and he grasps my hip, lining himself up with my ass.
“Please don’t,” I beg unashamedly, fisting the sheet. “God, Caleb, don’t do this.”
It’s not like in the movies where the woman wrestles for minutes, and you keep thinking there’s a chance she’ll get away, undefiled. That someone intervenes just in time to save her.
No, it’s not like that for me.
With one brutal thrust, Caleb invades a place no one has ever been. He’s hinted at it, threatened it, but never taken me this way.
There’s no lubrication. No preparation. No warning.
Just dry agony.
The pain steals my breath. It snatches my words. I can’t even scream for a moment. It’s that dizzying hurt that muzzles you, silences you completely. Every part of you is focused on surviving that injury, and you can’t spare the energy to even speak.
I feel tissues tearing as he knifes into me repeatedly, a sharpened weapon wielded mercilessly. Tears roll unchecked into my mouth. My words dissolve into a pleading litany, pathetic syllables that spill out of me while he grunts and moans and pistons, a tireless machine. I don’t even know how long he goes. I feel wetness between my legs and know it’s blood. My elbows slide from under me, my chest collapsing to the bed.
“Fuck, stay still,” he rasps. “It’s not all in.”
Oh, God. There can’t be more, but he shoves himself in farther, and I scrape the very bottom of my soul for the scream that rips through the bedroom. I pray for numbness, but I feel every thrust, like a burning poker ravaging me.
“Please stop. Please. Please,” I beg, my voice scratchy, my heart racing, my body wretched.
But Caleb is lost in a paroxysm of wicked pleasure, coming long and loud inside my raw, stretched entrance.
Once he has milked himself empty, he slaps my ass almost affectionately and pulls out. The relief is immediate, but the pain lingers. He flops onto the bed beside me, releasing a long exhale.
I lie completely still, a woman mauled and afraid the predator could return. I play dead, except I’m not sure I’m pretending. Some part of me has withdrawn—is curled up in a tomb begging for death. Welcoming the end with open arms.
Caleb strokes a finger over the faint bruising August caressed and soothed. “You always do stupid things that make me have to hurt you,” he says. “Why do you do that when I love you more than anything, Iris?” He sounds genuinely perplexed and sincerely irritated.
I’m dealing with a madman.
I turn my head in slow inches until my eyes settle on his handsome face. “Fuck you, Caleb.”
His expression freezes, eyes narrow, and his lips flatten. “You stupid bitch. You’re such a masochist, aren’t you?”
I’ve been careful all these months. Plotting. Looking for just the right moment, just the right time. But caution’s gone, and though provoking him might ultimately hurt me more, I look for a way to hurt him. After what he just did, I want to hurt him back.
I gingerly scoot to the head of the bed, wincing at the discomfort between my legs and the pain of his invasion. I dispassionately note the streak of blood on the sheets. I know it’s mine, but I feel no fear, no connection to it.
“I never answered your question,” I say quietly.
“What question?” He bends his brows into a perplexed frown.
“You know.” I deliberately look at him and smile. “You asked if I came for him.”
A tornado touches down on his face, his brows. Lightning strikes over stormy eyes.
“I did.” My voice is soft, but my eyes meet his unwaveringly. “It was the best orgasm of my life, Caleb. In a closet with August West. What are you going to do? Break his other leg? Break my leg? Keep breaking everything around you like a spoiled little boy smashing his toys?”
He lunges for me, his teeth bared, and his fist drawn back to strike. But I’m drawn back, too. I grab the bedside lamp, jerking it so the cord wrenches from the wall.
I smash it against his head. Pain and shock skitter over his face, quickly followed by fury. He touches the line of blood skating from his hairline, bemusedly rubbing the wetness between his fingers. I know the shock of seeing your blood drawn from a blow you didn’t see coming.
“You have a death wish,” he bellows, reaching for me. As quickly as my soreness will allow, I run-hobble to the door. I get it open, not caring that I’m naked. I have to run. After all these weeks of waiting and watching, I’ve chosen the worst time to fight back. The worst time to run. When there’s no escape route. No plan.