Chapter Twenty Three
I feel nothing as Mateo takes me into his bedroom. I try to break away, I use my body weight, but he’s too strong and I’m too depleted. When he throws me down on his bed, I try to crawl away, but he’s on me too fast, slamming my arms down against the soft pillow top and straddling my body. His eyes gleam like a lion about to consume a gazelle, like he’s won. I wonder if it’s a relief not to have to pretend to be nice anymore.
“Get off me,” I cry, angrily throwing my useless body.
“Oh, no. This is the fun part,” he tells me, leaning in to kiss my neck. “Do you know how hard it was not to speak when I fucked you, Mia? It was torture.”
“Stop saying that—it wasn’t sex.”
Rolling his eyes, he says, “Fine, when I raped you. Is that better? Do you like that word? Does it turn you on?”
“You’re sick,” I hiss, glaring up at him.
“Well, if you like that word, you’re going to love what happens next. What we did before, whatever you want to call it, that was sex. You wanted it. Now? Now I’m going to take your sweet little pussy while you beg me not to. Now I’ll give you rape.”
It’s not fair that he’s cheating me out of the anger I have every right to feel, but speaking so plainly about his intentions, he’s pushing me over into fear.
Even though it kills me to ask him for anything, especially something I should never have to ask for, I say, “Please don’t.”
“It can be a game,” he tells me, taunting. “You can pretend you have a choice, if it makes you feel better. Would you like a safe word?”
It’s obviously a trick, so I don’t speak.
“Go ahead, pick one,” he says, leaning down on my arms with more force as he kisses my neck again.
I hate this game and I don’t want to play, but I throw out, “Red light.”
“Okay, your safe word is red light.”
“Red light,” I say, immediately.
His hands shift again, holding my arms with just the one, and the second snakes up under my shirt. He lifts my bra, shoving his hand inside and squeezing my breast, ignoring my utterance completely.
“That was fun, wasn’t it? We should do that again sometime,” he states, his hand moving around to the clasp of my bra.
“Mateo, please,” I say uselessly, as he gets it unclasped. “Please.”
Squeezing my nipple until it hurts, he says, “Beg all you want; I like it.”
Eventually, he has to let go of my arms to get my jeans off, so I wait until he does to attack. Throwing myself at him with everything I’ve got, I growl, I scratch, I hit—and I end up wrapped in his arms, wrestled until I’m belly-down on the bed, my jeans around my knees.
Growling at the injustice of my defeat, I try again, rearing back against him, attempting to curl into a position where, even if he can get my clothes off, he won’t be able to rape me. Not easily, at least.
Finally seeming agitated, he gives me one more violent toss to the bed and sits up on his knees. I scurry, about to climb off, when I hear the metallic click.
One foot touches the floor, the other leg still bearing the brunt of my weight on the bed, and I come face to face with Mateo’s gun—again.
“Let’s try this a different way,” he says, finger on the trigger.
I’m not terribly confident, but I say shakily, “You’re not going to shoot me. I could be…” I pause, the words too horrible to come out.
“Eight hours pregnant?” he questions. “Become a big enough pain in my ass and I think I’ll survive without ever knowing.”
I won’t accept defeat—I won’t. That’s not what this feeling of a thousand bricks resting atop my lungs is—it’s not defeat. It’s not.
But I don’t move the rest of the way off the bed. I’m too afraid.
Using the gun to gesture, he says, “Back on the bed.”
I swallow, slowly easing back onto the bed, my eyes glued to the barrel of the gun. “You wanna hear something stupid?” I ask him, shakily, as I sit down.
“Sure,” he says.
“After we talked in the library that night….” I shake my head, seeing now how foolish I must have looked to him. “I thought you never would have done it. I thought you never would have actually shot me before, in your study. I thought it was…”
“A front?” he finishes, almost sympathetic.
I nod, choking on the acidic taste of my own foolishness.
“Sadly, no. I don’t make threats I’m not prepared to follow through with.” Nodding toward my lower half, he says, “Take off your panties.”
Lips turned down in a helpless pout, I steel myself, pushing down my panties.
Trying one more time, I say, “You don’t have to do this.”
“I’ve already been inside you, Mia. It doesn’t have to be so dramatic.”
Bastard.
Swallowing convulsively, I will away the nausea gripping me, threatening to make me sick. Mateo moves over me, the gun falling to the side for a moment. With his free hand, he jerks my chin until I’m looking into his eyes, then he leans down and kisses me.
I try to turn my face away, refusing to take part in this. When he gets nothing back, he lets the gun trail up my arm, bringing the barrel to a hard rest at my neck, just below my ear. A fearful sob escapes me but I open my mouth, letting him have access.
“Kiss me,” he growls, before his tongue pushes into my mouth, catching mine and overpowering it, just like he’s overpowering the rest of me. The gun is still pressed firmly against me, digging into my skin uncomfortably, so I do. I kiss the bastard back, just like he demanded.
The worst of it is, my blood races, my heart pounds, and even though I tell myself there’s only fear here, I feel a sudden tingle between my legs that fills me to the brim with self-loathing.
Willing it away, I remind myself he’s a monster. He tricked me and now he’s forcing himself on me—he’s threatening my life, for fuck’s sake.
Withdrawing from my mouth, he leans back. He holds my gaze as he unbuttons and unzips his black slacks, and I feel a throb of fear and arousal confused and mashed together. Befuddlement and resistance sweep through me, but there’s no time—free of his pants, he’s now running his hands over my legs, up over my knees and trailing up my thighs.
“Do you remember how it felt when I was eating your pussy, Mia? When you were clutching the bed sheets, crying out in pleasure, writhing as I fucked you with nothing more than my mouth?”
Another awful throb of arousal. “Stop talking like that,” I say.
“Why?” he asks, smiling as he enters me with a single finger. “Because you like it?”
I do my best to hold my body still while he touches me, first with one finger, then with two. I close my eyes, afraid of what he’ll see if he looks into them, knowing he will taunt me if he sees anything but loathing, and I can’t take that. Not when I’m feeling so uncertain about it myself.
Maybe I’m sick.
He brings the gun up my bare torso, and in a sickening twist, I feel relieved. Relieved at the reminder that I have no choice, that this terrible, terrible man is going to do what he wants to me no matter what I say, and that my body is just… experiencing physiological confusion. He has turned me on before, he has brought me to orgasm before, and he has been inside me, pounding into me until I cried out — even though I didn’t know it was him, it still happened. My body still knows he’s capable of bringing me physical pleasure.
I open my eyes and see him watching me. He withdraws his fingers from my body, bringing the gun down slowly, trailing lightly down my abdomen, and along the inside of my thigh. I hold my body still as goose bumps rise up, but I can’t keep from gasping when I feel the cool tip of the gun being pushed inside me.
“Mateo,” I say, gasping. Fear floods me, trying to remember if it’s still cocked. What if he accidentally fires it? “Please…”
“Mm, ask again.”
I hate that he’s enjoying this, but I can hardly breathe with the barrel of his gun pressing against my clit.
“Please. Please, Mateo. Please.”
Instead of removing it, he moves it in and out, in and out, mocking me.
“Please,” I say again, my breath hitching. “You’re scaring me.”
The gun is finally pulled out of me, and better, he deposits it on his night stand. I can’t help staring as he sets it down, wondering if I could get to it….
“Don’t even think about it,” he says coldly.
My gaze jerks to his.
“You’ll miss, for one thing. You don’t know how to fire a gun, and you damn sure won’t be able to fire it when I’m wresting it away from you. And when you miss, or even if your finger never makes it to the trigger, I will finish raping you, and then I’ll kill you and your entire family. Trust me, it’s not worth it.”
I think he’s probably right, but I sure would like to try.
I’m not fighting now like I was when he first got me in his bed, but he still pins my arms over my head before climbing between my legs. I think he just likes it.
“If you stop now… we can pretend this didn’t happen,” I say, even knowing it’s useless. There’s no consequence for him. He isn’t afraid to do this to me—he knows he’ll be fine.
Smiling, he drops a little kiss on my lips, as if I’ve amused him.
Then he thrusts his hips forward and his cock moves into my unwilling body, sealing the deal.
Caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob, I try to rear up, forgetting I’m pinned. Uselessly I plead, “Stop!”
But he doesn’t.
I watch him close his eyes, experiencing pleasure as he moves, thrusting deep inside my body, then pulling back, thrusting deep, then pulling back. It doesn’t hurt like I expect it to—there’s a fair amount of discomfort as he stretches me, but not outright pain. I give up fighting altogether. I turn my head to the side so I don’t have to watch, but I can feel him everywhere—his breath when he leans in to kiss my neck, his cock battering its way inside me, his hands, still nailing me to the bed. The weight on my arms hurts more than the actual act, but I don’t bother complaining.
He finally releases my arms, hiking my legs up and fucking me from a different angle. The friction starts to feel less awful and I close my eyes, praying he’ll finish before he notices my body reacting to him.
Remembering what started this whole mess, I do murmur, “Please don’t finish inside me.”
Then, out of spite, I guess, he groans against my mouth as he buries himself deep, coming as deep inside me as he possibly can.
He remains inside me afterward, but he’s spent, so he relaxes against me. I lay motionless, blessedly empty on an emotional level, but so aware of him still filling me physically.
It takes two to tango, I remember saying.
But Cherie was right.
It doesn’t.