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 Some part of me has withdrawn—is curled up in a tomb begging for death.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.
No chance.
His booted foot slams into my back, the momentum sending me forward and skidding across the marble floor, chafing the bare skin of my stomach. I rise only as far as my elbows. I try to drag myself up, but that boot connects with my ribs, forcing all the air from my body. Doubled over, I’m shocked when maniacal laughter unspools from my belly. I flip onto my back, meeting his rage head on and with a bedlam smile.
“Now what? The pistol?” I taunt. “That’s the only way you can keep me under your control, right? The big man with the gun? You pitiful coward.”
“A gun?” His own demented grin cracks the polished surface of his face, and we are two witless loons in a death match. “I could kill you with my bare hands.”
With blood smeared on my thighs, bruises blooming on my ribs like African violets, and a new defiance boiling in my bones, I look up through a tangled curtain of hair and say the most reckless words of my life. “Then fight me like a man.”
And he does.
I was there when the levees broke.