My entire body starts to shake violently, and he’s barely touched me. My worst nightmare is to be raped. I don’t accept drinks from strangers, I never walk alone at night, and there’s been exactly one man in my bed the past eight years - Will, the guy I’ve been madly in love with. The kind of guy who wouldn’t so much as ask me twice if I said I didn’t want to have sex. Because my nightmare isn’t just rooted in the fact that I’m a woman, from a powerful family, a family with more enemies than we could ever count. My worst fear is so precise because it’s happened before.
I foolishly thought the money and the Capulet name and the bodyguards and my general sense of extreme caution in life would mean that I’d always be safe, from that day forth. Something bad happened to me when I was younger because I had been careless. Foolish. Rebellious. A secret party, a single cup of something sweet, laced without my knowledge, and I’d been a sitting duck. An easy fuck. A girl who blacked out. A girl who woke up in a dark room with no underwear and blood where I had been broken without my consent. I blamed myself, because if I had been at home, in bed, asleep, like I was supposed to be, it would never have happened.
At least, that’s what my uncle Enzo said when he found out what had happened to me.
I believed him.
I changed everything to make sure I would always be safe, so that nobody could ever hurt me like that again. And in my arrogance, I felt completely secure.
How wrong I was.
Look at where I am.
My captor’s large body leans over mine, blocking out much of the weak light. He takes one of his leather gloves off, trailing his fingers along my slit before circling my clit gently. Gently - like a lover would. I thrash around, trying to escape his touch, but all I succeed in doing is making the friction of his finger against me more intense. I stop moving, tensing my fists, my abdominal muscles, my ass, everything.
“Please stop,” I whisper, staring up at the ceiling, feeling hot tears roll from the corners of my eyes and trace their way down my temples, slowly bleeding into my hairline. God, I hate to beg. It fills me with rage. I’ve never begged for anything in my life, except perhaps this morning, when I begged my father to not have to marry Joshua Grayson.
A sob rocks my chest, piercing the statue stillness I’ve forced my body to become, my lungs gasping for breath as everything narrows. A panic attack. What fucking use is a panic attack going to do for me right now?
Though, maybe I’ll pass out if I hyperventilate enough. It’s happened before. My blackouts have been few and far between, but dramatic enough when they come in the middle of a funeral, or a party, or in a hospital corridor when you discover your sister is, indeed, dead. Here? If I pass out, this asshole will probably set me on fire to wake me up again.
Still, that's the thing about a panic attack. It creeps up and attacks you. It’s happening. It’s not like I have a choice in the matter. Breathing exercises might work in social situations, and meditation apps might work when you’re at a yoga retreat in Cabo, but when your captor is finger-fucking you in the dark after shooting your fellow captive, a panic attack goes and goes without any possible intervention.
I sob and gasp for air as his finger moves almost casually against my clit.
If he does this to me, I want it to hurt. It makes it easier if it hurts. I don’t want his gentle touch. I don’t want his steady rub.
And I think he knows that.
Jesus fucking Christ, who is this guy? How the fuck does he know that the only thing more terrifying than him brutally raping me is him gently bringing me to orgasm as if I want it?
He stops momentarily, and it takes every ounce of self-control that I possess to stop from raising my hips to find his finger again. Shame floods through my body, a poison that spreads to every extremity, and I imagine my naked body blazing red with embarrassment. Just make it cold, I wish feverishly. Make it clinical. Make it terrible, if you’re going to steal this from me. Don’t make it feel like the most pleasurable feeling I’ve had since I fucked Will in the mausoleum.
But I can’t say that. I can’t spoon feed this psychopath with all of the things that frighten me the most. He’ll take each one, mold them into shiny daggers, and use them to make me bleed.
The crinkle of a condom wrapper has me shaking even more violently. This is happening. It’s fucking happening. I crane my head up and to the side, needing to know what he’s doing, desperate to find a way to stop him. In my peripheral vision, I see Rome, his chest rising and falling too quickly, one hand staunching the river of blood pumping from his shoulder. He’s so close I could almost reach out and touch him, but my hands are shackled, and what could I do, anyway? I focus my attention on my captor — our captor — wincing as I see him rolling a condom onto his erection, the tip of his cock dark with arousal. A tiny part of me is relieved he’s wearing protection, because I don’t want any part of him left inside me after this horror is finally over. But on the other hand, a condom means no DNA, and if I survive this, am I really going to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when he’s going to show up and grab me again?
Is that how this ends? Without an ending at all?
Then I remember the XO he painted on my chest in my own blood and all thoughts of survival float away with the rest of my hope. The XO killer doesn’t leave survivors.
He leaves bodies.
He must notice me eyeing his condom-wrapped dick intently. He pushes my thighs apart so hard I feel like I might snap in two, making room for his body between my spread legs as I fight to press them closed. The mask muffles his sigh, as he pushes the tip of his cock against my entrance and stays there.
Resignation punches me in the gut as the fight goes out of me. My knees fall open, no force required to keep them apart anymore. He’s inside me, now, even though he hasn’t seated himself fully inside me. He’s breached my body, and I’m too weak to keep struggling. The back of my head hits the table with a resounding thud, and I turn it to the side, exhausted.
Rome. I blink the film of tears away from my eyes, trying to focus on him through the haze of salt water flooding my vision. He’s in a bad way — worse than me — and I feel my heartbeat speed up when I see how ashen his skin is. Even in this weak light, it’s impossible to miss the grey pallor he’s suddenly taken on, the blood everywhere, the glassy film over his eyes as he meets my eyes, but doesn’t entirely see me.
At least, I don’t think he sees me. His stare is too fixed, his expression too distant. For a moment, I wonder if he’s dead. But then he mouths I’m sorry to me, and my heart fucking shatters.
Our captor starts circling my clit again, long, deliberate strokes with his thumb that make my body react eagerly, despite my abject horror. I hate this man. I want to sit up and tear his eyes out, choke him to death with my bare hands, slice away at his flesh until he bleeds out at my feet. I’ve never much had the stomach for blood, but here, in this room, the air thick with the copper scent of Capulet and Montague blood as it all mixes together — I thirst for the spilling of this madman’s lifeblood like nothing else.
“So wet,” he says, pulling away a little so that he can trail the head of his cock through my soaked pussy lips, the lust in his voice evident even underneath whatever it is that’s altering his voice inside that mask. I make a mental note to rip his mask off the moment I have my hands free, and at least see who he is before he murders me.
I feel blood rise in my cheeks when he says that, because it’s true. I am wet, not because I want this, but because he’s pressing my flesh in ways that reduce it to the most animalistic of vessels. I am a lioness in the savannah, forced down in the dirt as a larger male lion does whatever he pleases to her, while she growls and lies still and waits for it to be over. We’re in the wild, down here, and we’re nothing but animals writhing in sweat and blood.
His thumb continues to draw pleasure from my treacherous body, a pleasant throb intensifying deep in my belly that I can’t run away from. I bite down on th
e inside of my cheek, digging my fingernails into my palms at the same time to distract myself with the pain. He’s patient, though, and somehow, even though I’ve never experienced a forced orgasm before, I know instinctively that I’m on the edge of breaking apart underneath his savage touch.
Do I bear down? Do I hold my breath? Do I scream? I frantically catalog my limited options to dull the frenetic sparks building deep inside my womb, as I try desperately to hold back the tsunami of white-hot pleasure I can hear roaring toward me.
“Do it,” my captor demands.
“Fuck you!” I spit back.
He slaps me across the face so hard, I can feel my ear buzzing loudly in protest. I’m once again eye-to-eye with Rome, whose eyes are rolling around in his head something vicious. He looks freakishly bloodless, his pale skin almost translucent, but when he catches my eye again he seems to focus in on me. The tattoos covering his body seem even brighter in the absence of the normal tan his skin would have. He looks like a ghost. Soon, he might actually become one. And for some reason, that makes me sadder than I thought possible.
I’m so tired. So, so weary. The slap jolted me out of my focused detachment, and with the fresh pain seared into my cheek I start to float away, still acutely aware of the man nudging my entrance with his swollen cock, his thumb massaging my bundle of nerves to tortured heights I’ve never experienced before. I lock eyes with Rome, the blue in his a welcome distraction in the near-darkness. In my mind, I am floating in the azure-blue ocean of Rome Montague’s eyes as a tsunami of oxytocin slams into me and pulls me under, a choked moan ripped from my mouth as my hips press forward, eager to be filled up. My physical body betrays me entirely, achingly empty as I come so hard, so painfully, I almost black out.
But I don’t black out. I keep my eyes trained on Rome Montague as I wait out the pleasure and pain, the tiny lighter-blue flecks in his stormy eyes like flames that I hold on to, little reflections of light in the darkness. Sadness spreads through my chest as my orgasm fades, as I watch Rome struggle to breathe. Don’t you die and leave me here alone, I think, my fear at losing him sudden and visceral … and strangely out of place. Don’t you fucking die on me, Rome Montague. I open my mouth to say … I don’t know. To say something. His name.
Rome, I mouth, no sound coming out.
“Rome,” I choke, my eyes never leaving his, because I won’t even give my captor the satisfaction of my gaze as he destroys me completely.
Rome blinks, and seems to straighten a little. I’m relieved, for one tiny second in time, and then I’m screaming again as, without warning, the man draped over my body slams into me, hard and deep and vicious.
He doesn’t keep fucking me, though. My captor pulls out of me as I’m looking at Rome, his cock immediately replaced by his fingers. At first I’m confused, and then I’m filled with dread.
“What is this?” he growls, his featureless face only amplified by whatever is changing his voice under that mask. I open my mouth to protest as he wraps his fingers around one of the strings attached to my IUD and tugs.
I scream. Louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life. Everything in my vision turns red as a stabbing pain deep inside my womb spreads, sharp and clear and utterly unbearable.
He tugs again. Oh, God. He thinks I’m wearing a tampon, I suppose, but I’m not. The strings are attached to the brand-new IUD I had fitted in my doctor’s office a few weeks ago, a tiny, plastic T-shaped device that sits in the bottom of my uterus, the attached strings just outside my cervix.
I had it updated to a new one, knowing that my birthday was drawing closer, guessing that my father would have something up his sleeve concerning myself and Joshua and how eager he was to marry me off so I could start bearing Capulet heirs. I chose one of the little plastic devices that releases a measured dose of hormones that prevent pregnancy for five whole years. I was supposed to go back to the doctor the day after my birthday to have the strings attached to the IUD trimmed down, so they wouldn’t bother me or anyone I might be sleeping with.
I vaguely recall Will mentioning something about the little strings attached to the device when we had sex the week after I had it inserted. He said he could feel them, but he didn’t seem too bothered. This guy, on the other hand — he’s pulling so hard it feels like he’s going to rip my uterus out with his bare hands. I don’t even have my hands free to try to fight his away — I’m completely useless. I try to string words together to warn him.
PleaseIt’sAnIUDPleaseDon’tPullItPleaseDon’tPlease
I don’t even know what I’m saying. Words are falling out of my mouth unbidden, as the pain in my womb intensifies and I feel what I think is blood coming out of me. I had to read a pamphlet and sign a waiver before the doctor would implant the tiny device, a legal document full of statistics and rare side-effects that include sudden death if the IUD is inserted incorrectly, or perforates the uterus. Which is exact-fucking-ly what it feels like is happening right now.
Is this how I die? Am I going to bleed to death thanks to my fucking birth control? The irony isn’t completely lost on me, but I’m more concerned with getting this guy to stop pulling on it before he tears my insides apart.
He takes his hands away. “Explain.”
The pain recedes somewhat, since he’s no longer pulling the damn thing, but it’s still sharp enough that the room is spinning around me with wild abandon.
“It’s an IUD,” I say quickly, the bright edge of pain biting down on me as I try to speak. “It’s a birth control implant. It’s in my uterus. If you pull it out, I’ll probably bleed to death.”
Well, maybe I won’t — plenty of women pull theirs out with no problems whatsoever — but after the doctor inserting it just a few weeks ago called my cervix the “cutest little cervix he’s ever seen,” I’m pretty sure I’d be horrifically injured if he kept pulling until the device was out of me.
“Take it out,” he orders. I open my mouth to protest when I realize he’s reaching for my hands. Undoing the metal cuffs that hold my arms up. He pulls me to my feet, the rush of blood to my numb arms a shock. My knees buckle immediately, even as I try to stand. I need to pull his mask off, I think. I need to see who he is.
“Can’t,” I pant. “I need surgery to take it out.”
That makes him angry. I can’t see his face, but I can feel how his body tenses. He spins me around, pliable little puppet I am, and forces me down onto the table so that my palms are flat against the wood grains. I try to thrash again, to get away from his grip, but before I can do anything his fingers snake through my hair and grip, pulling at my scalp as he slams the side of my head down onto the table’s unforgiving surface. I make one last move to try to buck him off of me, fully aware that he’s not finished raping me, not by a long shot — and that damn gun is in his hand again, pressed against my cheekbone.
I go limp. I’d like to say I’m brave enough to risk being shot in the name of fighting to get away, but the reality is, the sight of Rome bleeding to death on the floor has me compliant. The Capulet blood that roars in my head, a steady, aching thump, begs me to resist him, even if it means certain death. The prehistoric part of my brain, however, the fight, fight or freeze programming, jams on freeze. I’m frozen. Another sob falls from my mouth as he pushes back into me, thrust after violent thrust. Maybe it’s not as deep for him like this, fucking me from behind, with me draped over the table face-down. Or maybe it hurts him the way it hurts me. Maybe it’s worth the pain for him.
He doesn’t speak again. He just ruts into me, again and again. Please let it be over soon. I keep focused on Rome, his eyes closed now, and I don’t think I blink until there’s a groan, a final violent thrust as my rapist beds into me, and the pulse of knowing he’s finished.
Chapter Fifteen
ROME
She mouths my fucking name while he’s raping her.
Rome…
And she lets out a little breath of air as she moves her mouth. The smell of sex and sweat and blood fil
ls the tiny room we’re in, and inside my chest, my heart slows down.
I’ve been stabbed before. Walked through fire - I have the scars up my arms to prove it, or at least I did until I tattooed over them. But being shot?
Being shot is a first for me.
And I’ve gotta say, it hurts like a motherfucker. It hurts more than being stabbed, but less than being burnt alive. The pain from standing in the middle of a burning building as flames lick your flesh is a pain that consumes your every nerve ending until your entire body screams. Being stabbed is more dull, especially when it’s in the back, and you weren’t expecting it. When I was stabbed in prison, I thought I’d been punched at first. The knife was sharp, but the pain was dull. It wasn’t until the asshole who stabbed me wrenched his knife out of my side and plunged it back in that I understood what he was doing. The sharp edge of pain wouldn’t come until much, much later, in the aftermath, after he’d been wrestled to the ground and I was being stitched up in the infirmary with no painkillers.
But being shot. Sweet Mother Mary, being shot is a whole new level of agony. It’s like being stabbed with fire, the pain localized as it throbs in tune with my heart. Thump.Thump.Thump. I can feel more of my blood leaving my body with every beat of my heart, and that freaks me out. I put my left hand over my right shoulder, feeling the mess of broken flesh underneath my palm, the rush of blood as it finds its way out of my veins and slides down my arm. Between Avery and I, it’s like a damn slaughterhouse in here, and the only man left standing is a man whose identity I have no idea of.
Chapter Sixteen
AVERY
You know those moments where you thought you knew what was happening, only to have your whole world crumble as the illusion you believed was reality broke apart and showed the truth?