Текст книги "Pretty When You Cry "

Автор книги: Skye Warren

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Chapter Fourteen

Ivan shows up an hour later. I’m simultaneously annoyed that he took this long and annoyed that he showed up at all. The limo pulls to a stop a few hundred feet ahead of me, leaving me with the awkward choice of walking straight toward him or turning around.

“Let’s get this over with,” I mutter to myself.

Ivan steps out and leans against the car. The walk is longer than it looks, and he watches me the whole time. I watch him right back, taking in his broad shoulders and trim waist. The cut of his suit is the kind only ten thousand dollars can buy, custom designed to contour his powerful body. No doubt the gravel being kicked up by the eight-lane highway would ruin his Italian leather oxfords.

At least the shoulder is wide enough that I can walk in relative safety. Zooming cars create a wall of light and noise. Night blocks us in from the other side, and it forms an intimate hallway for the two of us. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, casting a weirdly romantic sepia glow.

Up close, I can feel the fury emanating from him. That’s okay. I’m angry too.

“How?” I bite out.

His expression is made of marble, his voice pure steel. “You don’t want to do this here.”

I laugh, which is kind of like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But I’m feeling just that reckless at the moment. I’ve left my home of three years with nothing but a few folded bills in my pocket, all so I can be safe. And now I don’t even have that much. “And you know what I want? If you want me to get in that car, you’re going to have to tell me how.”

He’s silent while my mind fills in the blanks. Did he follow me all the way from his house? I don’t think so. I’ve gotten pretty good at evading his security measures—and his men. That’s what he gets for having them tail me all the time. I know how to lose them.

Did Clara give me up? I didn’t think she would, but obviously something went wrong.

“Your phone,” he says between gritted teeth.

I spread my hands. “I don’t have one anymore. It died. I tossed it.”

“Not a tracker,” he says after a minute.

“Ivan…” I know he doesn’t want to give up his secrets. But he doesn’t want to bodily force me into the car either, not with all these witnesses. Not when there’s still a chance I could run away. He doesn’t have any particular desire to run across eight packed lanes, but in my darker moments, I do.

“A tap,” he says.

Surprise and anger and the smallest bit of hurt battle in my chest. “You listened to my conversations?”

“Not all of them.”

In other words, a lot of them. “Fuck you, Ivan. Really just…fuck you. And you wonder why I don’t trust you. So you know Clara picked me up.”

In one fluid motion he grabs my wrist and twists my arm behind my back. The front of my body slams against the car where he’d been leaning. The metal is still warm from his body.

His voice is low by my ear. “Yes, we knew she picked you up. She wouldn’t tell us anything when we found her, but her phone history led us to the truck stop. Every man there remembered the pretty little girl wandering around. For the right price they gave up which truck she was in and which way they were headed.”

Of course they did. The cars whiz by, no one stopping to check on the girl being held against her will. No one wants to fuck with Ivan, even people who don’t know his reputation. It’s in the way he holds himself.

“You’re hurting me,” I whimper.

He twists harder. “Is that enough information for you? Or do you need me to draw you a fucking diagram?”

“You should have let me go.” My voice is muffled against the car, thick from unshed tears. “I didn’t want to be found. I wanted to disappear.”

He pulls me back only enough to push me into the car. I stumble onto the leather seats and curl into a ball. “Congratulations,” he says, his voice toneless and cruel. “You’ve got your wish. You’re going to disappear from the side of the road tonight, and no one will ever find you.”

Chapter Fifteen

Ivan is silent on the ride home, but that silence speaks volumes. I hear what a bad girl I am, how he’ll punish me. I know it won’t be like before—a spanking while I finger myself. That’s way too generous for how he feels right now. It will be something bad.

What do you want? More money? More pain? Should I start using a cane on you?

He asked me that. And I might find out what a cane feels like today. Or worse.

I’m angry too. Angry that he found me, that he’s dragging me back. But it’s hard to hold on to that in the face of my fear. I never really wanted him to hurt me. I already feel torn up inside, flayed with the barbed-wire bonds of love for a man who can never return it. It’s hard to imagine he can make me feel worse than I already do.

I can count on his determination to find a way.

“Upstairs,” he says as soon as we walk in the door.

It’s blazing daylight outside, but in his house it’s like we’re down in the basement. The windows are tightly sealed, shutters and blinds and curtains locking out the cheery sun. The only light comes from overhead, recessed lighting that leads the way to my room.

My room. I slept here for a year before I convinced Ivan to let me dance at the club and could afford my own place, such as it was. And in that year I never put up a picture, never painted a wall. Never did anything that would mark the bare walls as my own.

I stand in the center of the room, waiting.

He stops at the door, his eyes hard and glittering like diamonds. “No.”

I raise my eyebrows. “No?”

He nods toward the stairs. Keep going. The third floor.

The place he never let me go.

My heart beats faster at the realization that he might tear that wall down.

I take a step toward the door. “Your room?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t seem pleased about it. No, he seems furious. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To sleep in my bed and suck on my cock.”

I flinch at the crude words. It is what I wanted, but he makes it sound dirty. No, he makes it sound sinful. And it is a sin. That’s all I’m made of, sin after sin, sewn together with a string of desire.

“Move,” he says shortly, and I know he’s going to make this as painful as possible.

I climb the stairs with trembling legs, clinging to the railing so I don’t trip and fall. He’s right behind me. I know he’d catch me. He’d drag me up to the room if he had to.

At the landing, I don’t know which way to go. “At the end,” he says, nodding to the right.

The room is massive, but it’s only fitting, considering the bed. There’s a heavy-looking dresser. Other than that, it’s sparse. Kind of like my room one floor down.

“Strip,” he says.

I face him, understanding dawning. This is his punishment for running away. He’s going to give me exactly what I’ve always wanted—sex with him. I wanted that because then he’d be treating me like a woman. Like an equal. Only, he’s not going to do it like that. He’s going to do it painful and cruel. He’s going to make it hurt.

My hands can barely work the button on my jeans, and I shove them down. There’s no grace now. He’s seen me dance onstage. He knows what I look like, practiced, seductive. He’s never seen me like this, falling apart. I’ve never felt like this. Even the first time I met him, afraid and alone, I had determination. I had hope. Now I don’t even have that.

You’re going to disappear from the side of the road tonight, and no one will ever find you.

I take off my tank top and drop it to the floor. Now I’m completely naked.

And he has all his clothes on. I want him to take them off, but I know he won’t. He doesn’t ever. And besides, that wouldn’t make it a punishment.

“Ivan,” I whisper.

“On the bed.”

My eyelids fall shut and push the gathering tears down my cheeks. “Ivan.”

“No?” he asks. A hand clamps onto my wrist, pulling me across the room. “All right then. The dresser. Bend over.”

I don’t really have a choice, the way he throws me against it. I catch myself on my palms. The sound of a zipper comes from behind me, and I look over my shoulder. I can’t see anything, but I can feel it. God, he’s already lined up against me.

I’m just repeating his name now, a plea and a prayer. “Ivan. Ivan, please.”

I brace myself for the pain, but then he’s gone. His fingers press against my pussy, almost as blunt and far more rough. They slide along my folds, feeling my slickness.

He chuckles. “Do you want this, little one? Your body says yes.”

I’ve never done this. I’m a virgin. Please don’t hurt me.

The words catch in my throat. His fingers are on my clit, rubbing me from behind. I groan and rock my hips into his touch. It’s the only relief I feel, the only relief I’ve ever felt. He fondles roughly, which only seems to drive me higher. My legs are like jelly. The only things holding me up are my hands on the dresser and his fingers on my clit.

I don’t think he knows I’ve never done this, not with how rough he’s being. He must think I gave it up sometime in the club or at one of the parties. His fingers are too fast, too hard, and I’m on the brink of orgasm, hovering on the razor’s edge. He takes his hand away, and the loss is a physical pain, sharp and cold.

“This is what you wanted,” he says. “You think I didn’t know the way you looked at me? Fuck, you looked at me like that the first fucking night I met you, and you didn’t even know what it meant.”

He pushes the head of his cock against my slickness. Oh God.

The memories come back to me. I slept in the same room as my mother, on a mat on the floor. The room was connected to Leader Allen’s. He would wake her in the middle of the night, bring her to his room. The door was open. I could hear everything. And sometimes, when I crawled across the floor, see everything.

Kneel, he would tell her. And she would get on her knees beside the bed and pray. When she was done, when she had begged forgiveness, he would lift her up enough so her body was half on the bed. Then he would pull up his robes and—

A sharp pain presses me open, and I gasp. It hurts too much to speak, hurts too much to cry. My body is rejecting him, pushing him out—and losing the fight. I hold on to the dresser like my life depends on it, but it won’t matter. I’m being split apart. I can’t imagine I’ll survive it, but at least when I die, it will be over. It feels like my whole body is impaled.

Rough hands grab my hips, thick fingers bruising flesh. Another push and he’s farther in. God, how is there more? A sob finally escapes me.

“Ivan.”

“You’re so fucking tight,” he says between clenched teeth. “How the fuck are you so tight?”

My inner muscles clench and release, fighting his entrance every step of the way. I couldn’t relax them even if I wanted to. The burn is too much, the stretch is too wide. I pant against the dresser, my hands clasped together, praying for it to end.

“I’ve never—” My breath is coming too fast. Blackness is closing in. It’s like in the basement, except his hands aren’t around my throat. No, this time his cock is pushing inside my pussy—and it’s even worse. I can’t breathe, can hardly speak. “Never done this before.”

He freezes.

A long minute passes where the only thing I can feel is the throb of his cock, and the only thing I can see is black. I’m still conscious—barely. I’m panting, struggling to keep breathing, to stay here with him. To experience this thing I’ve wanted for so long, even if it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

“What did you say?” His voice sounds far away again, but strangely controlled. Completely unlike how he sounded two minutes ago, his fury uncontained.

In a painful wrench, he removes himself—it somehow hurts worse than it did going in, the salt of him stinging the tears in my skin. Without his hands or his cock, I collapse on the ground, leaning against the dresser. My hands are covering my sex, protective, though they do nothing to take away the pain.

A hand fists in my hair and pulls. I’m facing him, looking up at him while he looms over me. He’s still wearing his suit, his cock hard and jutting out. It’s an angry red from arousal, tinged glossy and pink with my blood. And it’s terrifying. It would have scared me if I had seen it anytime, but now that I know how much it can hurt, I’m even more scared.

He gives me a little shake by my hair. “What did you say?”

My throat feels raw, as if I’ve been screaming even though I haven’t. “I’m a virgin,” I whisper.

Or at least I used to be.

Chapter Sixteen

I always thought it was a little ironic, my virginity. My so-called virtue. I should have been keeping it safe to save my immortal soul, but the truth is I assume I’ve already lost any chance at heaven. I’m far from innocent regardless of what has or hasn’t been inside my pussy. I’ve given men lap dances, seen their come stain their pants as they explode. I’ve even fooled around with guys at parties, flirted and almost fucked.

Ivan’s expression is more angry than incredulous. “How the fuck is that possible?”

I manage a watery laugh, my voice somehow wry through my tears. “I’m a cock tease, Ivan. I thought you knew that about me.”

His hands curl into fists. “What the fuck were you saving yourself for? For marriage? For love?”

He sounds almost more disgusted by the idea of love than he is by marriage. “Maybe.”

The truth is I was saving myself for him, but I can’t deny his words. I did want him to love me, to marry me, even while I understood how impossible that was. I have a long history of wanting the impossible. I wanted Ivan to love me, even though he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word. He’s made of ice. I wanted to feel powerful with my body, even though most of the men who come through our doors would hold me down and fuck me if they got the chance.

And most of all, I wanted to be free from my past, free from Harmony Hills and its scriptures. Now that someone is leaving Bible verses at the Grand, I know I will never be free. Not only from a man, but from the teachings I thought I’d left behind.

“It’s too late now,” he says, his tone indecipherable.

I look down between my legs, where my hands are still cupped protectively. Too late. “Yes.”

His hand fists his cock, stroking once, twice. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to take it easy on you because of this.”

Fear tightens my throat as I watch him. “It hurt too much. It’s too big.”

“Not too big. Your body was designed to take men. To take me. Now get on the bed.”

I scramble to the bed, skirting him as far as I can, as if his cock might reach out and impale me while I’m not looking.

I’m sore between my legs. It was only a dull throb when I sat on the floor, but when I move, it’s so much worse, fire licking me from inside. It wasn’t just precum from his body that stung my cuts and tears. It’s my own wetness too, because I can’t deny how he makes me feel. Even when I’m hurting, when I’m dying from the pain of him stretching me, breaking me, I want him.

That’s how we are together—depraved and beautiful.

I scramble beneath the covers, hiding my body, the cool sheets a thin barrier.

He studies me, his expression softening a fraction. But if I thought it would make him gentle, I’d be wrong. He grasps the corner of the sheet and pulls. It slinks to the ground, leaving me bare. Cool air washes over me.

One large hand circles my ankle. That’s the only warning I have before he pulls me toward him. Then I’m sprawled on the bed, legs open to his view. “I didn’t prepare you before,” he says, and it’s the closest he will ever come to an apology.

Then he bends his head, and I gasp. “What—”

My voice is choked off when his lips find my clit, a gentle kiss. Pleasure arcs through me, and I twist my body. “No, wait,” I tell him. “Wait.”

He lifts his head only slightly, raising one eyebrow. I can read his expression. He has no intention of stopping because I want him to, but he’s curious about what I’m going to say. I’m curious too, because I don’t even know. I can’t even think. My brain shorted out the second his mouth touched my sex.

“I’m—I’m bleeding,” I tell him. There’s blood on his cock, and it’s mine.

Amusement flits over his face. “You think because there’s blood on your pussy, I can’t lick you?”

“Yes,” I whisper. A flush makes my face hot to hear him say the words, to even think about him tasting me—tasting my arousal, tasting my blood.

His expression hardens. “It’s mine, Candy. Your blood, your body. Your virginity. You belong to me now. You don’t get to tell me no. And if you think I’m not going to fuck you, or lick you, or do anything I damn well please because of a little blood, then you have a lot to learn, little one.”

Then his head dips again, and it’s like electricity zings from the base of my sex up to the top of my clit. He presses his tongue against my hole, soothing the place that he hurt, making it burn even more.

The soft fabric of his suit whispers against the insides of my thighs. Rough fingers play with my folds before they hold me open for his assault. His tongue is wet and hot and knowledgeable as it flicks me, using just the right rhythm. My hips rock up to meet him. Unforgiving hands press my thighs down, forcing me flat on the bed.

He focuses on my clit, merciless as he lashes me again and again.

I clutch the sheets and twist my upper body, my legs held down by him. The orgasm hits me like a tidal wave, pushing me under and stealing my breath. I can’t even cry out, can’t beg or scream. I can only jerk my body against the bonds of his hands as the orgasm drags on and on. My lungs burn from lack of air. Even then he doesn’t let up, his tongue dipping into my hole, drinking the juices I make for him.

Only when he pulls back can I finally suck in air—and let it out on a pitiful wail.

My defenses are broken, battered. He tore them down with single-minded intent, and now what’s left of me? I want him to do it again. More than that, I want him to be naked while he does it. I want him to be as vulnerable as I am, as open to me as I am to him.

Clumsy hands push at his suit jacket. “Take it off,” I say brokenly. “Take it—”

Gray eyes narrow. “Stop, Candace.”

He hitches the head of his cock against my pussy. My whole body goes tense, knowing exactly how much it will hurt. “No. Don’t. Please.”

“Excuse me?”

“Take it off.” I’m begging, pleading. I don’t really want him to stop. Even if he splits me in two pieces, I want him to do it. I just want him to be naked when he does it. Naked with me. Intimate. “At least the suit jacket. Please.”

He tenses up, clearly angry. “Stop asking for that. You won’t like what happens.”

That again. “You don’t know what I like,” I cry. “You don’t.”

I think that’s a lie. We both know it. The way he just played my body, his tongue against my clit, proves he knows exactly what I like. The way I came, so hard my body almost broke under the strain, proves it too.

He laughs, an almost metallic sound. “You want me to take my clothes off.”

My voice is shaky. “Yes.”

“You want me to strip for you?”

“Yes.” Stronger now.

A knowing expression lights his pale eyes as his hands go to his lapels. He looks dangerous like this, almost insane with it. It makes me scared for what I’ll see underneath. I never thought his clothes were anything more than a wall between us. I never even realized they might be armor, the same way ruffles and glitter have been for me.

He takes off the jacket in rough, careless movements. It drops to the floor in a whisper of expensive fabric. The shirt comes next, one button at a time. His eyes never leave mine. There’s challenge in them. He expects me to balk. But why?

When all the buttons are undone, he opens each cuff. Then he shrugs off the shirt.

It joins the jacket on the floor, but I can’t focus on that. Not with his chest bared to me.

Not with the scars.

They steal my breath away. There are too many scars to count, a patchwork quilt of pain. A lifetime of war and abuse. Some of the girls at the Grand came from rough backgrounds. Some of the customers too. So I recognize the small, circular marks as cigarette burns. They are old and faded and poignant. Crisscrossing them are slashes—knife wounds? Not straight enough for that. Maybe the torn edge of a beer can. Or the jagged blade of a broken bottle.

He hasn’t stopped moving under my perusal. He takes off his belt buckle and pushes down his pants, then his boxer briefs, too proud to flinch when I see what’s underneath. I flinch though, and let out a sound of pure, undiluted horror.

The scars don’t stop at his waist. They continue down, over lean hips and muscular thighs. Cuts and burns and dark, disfigured patches where I don’t even know what happened. It’s such a contrast to his smooth, cultured appearance in his bespoke suits that my mind can’t really comprehend what I’m seeing. This is more than fistfights. More even than the gun and knife warfare of criminals. This is torture. Long-term torture from many years ago.

When he could have only been a child.

My eyes fill with tears. “Oh God, Ivan.”

“No,” he says roughly. “You wanted to see this. A monster fucking you.”

“Daddy—”

He covers my mouth with his hand, cutting off my plea.

Then his cock is pushing into me, spearing me slowly but inexorably. My muscles flutter and clench against the invasion. It hurts just as much the second time—more, somehow. I feel my eyes go wide and then fill with tears. My body jerks against his weight, fighting him, completely involuntary as I push him away.

I don’t mean to fight though. As much as it hurts. As much as it burns. I wouldn’t say a single word to stop him from doing this. Not after seeing what pain he’s endured. This can never be worse than that.

His hand remains over my mouth as he presses in to the hilt. The black hair at his base feels foreign against my bare pussy, scratchy against oversensitized skin. I’m dizzy with being this full, almost light-headed. I think his hand is blocking some of my air too, and I have to move. I don’t mean to fight him, but my body does it for me, jerking against him, trying to squirm away and buck him off. I fight his hand too, pulling at it, trying to get more air. No matter how much I struggle, it doesn’t work. He’s too strong like this. Too determined. Too cruel.

A monster fucking you.

That’s what he called himself, a monster. And that’s how he seems. Not because of the scars I can see moving over me in a blur. Because of the light in his eyes, the one that says he’ll make this hurt. It’s a promise he makes, a promise he keeps as he pulls back and then plunges in again. There’s no time to adjust to his size; he just starts fucking me. Pounding me. The pain overwhelms me, and I feel tears stream down the sides of my face, shockingly cool against the heat of my body.

I struggle in earnest now, using all my strength to push him off me. Because it’s terrifying to see him this way, because it hurts worse than anything. Because I think he wants me to fight. I can almost hear his voice in my head. That’s what monsters do to pretty little girls.

And pretty little girls are expected to fight.

I yank and pull at his arm, trying to dislodge it. I twist my hips, fighting to close my legs. None of it moves him. I’m trapped by his hand and his cock. Trapped by the relentless pain.

He could end this quickly.

He’s waited so long to do it. Minutes, hours. Years. He could have come inside me and been done. That’s not what monsters do. He’ll make this last for just as long he wants it to. I could be held underneath him for eternity, feeling his cock spear into me, rubbing me raw.

His expression is torn, somehow both despairing and smug. I must seem like some kind of sacrificial lamb to him, a sacrifice on the altar of his wickedness.

It’s how I feel as the pain consumes me, threatening to tear down my sanity. I think I might really be losing it. My sanity, my consciousness. I almost wish I could black out, so I wouldn’t have to feel this. He could fuck my limp body until the end of time, and I wouldn’t feel a thing.

The bed rolls with every thrust. The scent of our combined musk fills the air, along with the metal of my blood. It feels like I’m adrift on an angry ocean, and he’s the storm bearing down on me. He batters me without a care for how I’m ripped apart and torn.

He closes his eyes against whatever he sees in my eyes, focused on his own pleasure now. He’s in his own world, fucking me, using me, drenching his cock with me again and again.

His breathing is harsh, surrounding me. I listen to him breathe in and out, the sound pained. Tortured. Does this hurt him, fucking me forever? Or is he always hurting, the caress of my inner flesh a temporary reprieve from a lifetime of suffering?

His eyes fly open, and I see in them so many things—possession and hunger, anger and fear. He shouts into the huge room, and it echoes off the walls. He jerks roughly, losing his rhythm. Then again.

Then he stills, pushing and pulsing against my hips, his whole body trembling.

He stares into my eyes the entire time, letting me see everything inside him, a vortex that sucks me in deep. His cock flexes as he bathes my sex with warm come. It stings the newly stretched skin, and I flinch as we both hold ourselves rigid and locked.

The second the last pulse of his cock ends, he wrenches his entire body away from me, pushing off the bed.

It’s strange to breathe easy after being constrained for so long. Strange to have nothing on top of me, between my legs. I can’t move, though. I’m collapsed on the bed, just wreckage left behind.

His hand is shaking as he runs it over his face.

He gives me one last look. Full of accusations. And longing?

Then he stalks from the room, leaving me behind in a puddle of my own arousal and blood.