“I could hate you right now,” I whisper, turning away from him. If I’m going to tell this story, I can’t do it looking at him. I don’t have that much courage. Will it change how he sees me? Will he leave? When he finds out how stupid I am…was…how stupid I was—will he want nothing more to do with me? With Maggie?

I walk to the window. I stare up at the moon and use the next few minutes to try and bring order to my chaotic thoughts. I close my eyes and try to breathe, knowing this will hurt. For so long, I’ve dealt with memories and nightmares, but I beat them down. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to relive that time. I ran from Blade and the Dwellers, but I also ran from the person I was. Can I make Michael understand that? It’s so important I reach him. He didn’t know I cared about him? I care too much.

“Hayden?” Michael asks, his voice softer, and I think I hear a trace of regret.

I want to beg him to just let it go, but I don’t. I need to get this out, if only to know for sure if Michael isn’t the man I hope he is.

“At first, when I learned that my brother had sold me to the Dwellers, I didn’t understand. This is America, right? These things don’t happen. We have laws. I have rights. It didn’t take long before I realized that I had nothing. My brother used me to try and save his own skin. I was a payment—nothing more, nothing less.”

“Hayden, it’s okay you don’t—”

“You wanted to know, might as well hear the whole story now, Michael,” I answer, not taking the easy way out. “When you’re sold into a club you have limited choices…mostly you have no choices. I was there to be a toy for the club. A whore. I was twenty-one, I had a total of one boyfriend in my past. Besides some limited making out, I’d never…I’d never been with a man. With the life I lived and what I saw with my mom, sex wasn’t something I wanted. I never wanted to be…her. Which was kind of ironic, because that’s exactly what the Dwellers wanted me to be—what they made me be.”

“Damn it, Hayden!” Beast growls, but now I’m too deep into the memories to stop.

“I was terrified. They made no secret about what was going to happen. They took pleasure in delaying it. They put me in a metal cage in the middle of their bar, like I was some kind of animal. They made me watch what their whores would do, they wanted me to know what I was going to be doing. They tortured me with it.”

“Fuck…” he rumbles, and I take a deep breath and continue on, hating the way my voice trembles.

“One night, some of the boys decided they had waited long enough. They pulled me out of the cage by the hair on my head. I fought. I kicked, slapped, punched, and scratched, but one small girl against three men, that’s never going to be a fair fight. They pulled me out and held me down, and I really thought that was it, I was out of options…Until I caught the eye of the man in charge,” I tell Michael, and by now, I’m talking so quietly I’m not sure he can hear me. I can’t bring myself to talk louder, however. “Blade ordered them to stop. He had me sent to his room and had some of the girls clean me up. They left me alone, and I tried to escape, I really did, Michael, but the door was locked and the window had bars on it. There was no escape. Blade came in a few hours later, and I didn’t know what to expect—I was prepared for the worst, but he was…nice. We sat on the bed and talked. He told me his name and that he was the president of the club. I had no idea what that meant. I was so green.” I breathe against the window and watch as the condensation forms, fogging up the glass. I let my finger trail through it as I relive the memories.

“He was blunt, telling me exactly what my brother did and how he couldn’t pay his debts so offered me up in trade. He said that Jack—though he kept referring to him as Pistol, had got into some trouble and was trying to find protection to save him from a crime syndicate, though I don’t think that’s the words he used. I guess it doesn’t matter. Bottom line, he sold me, and I was now Dweller’s property. Normally, I’d be a club whore automatically, but he said that he liked me. He told me that he thought I was special,” I confess with a small laugh full of bitterness.

“It was flattering. I’ve never been that type. The type to catch a man’s eye from across the room, I mean. I thought it was a good thing, maybe it was. It kept me from being gang-raped by monsters.” I sigh, take a deep breath, and decide to dive into the part that hurts the most. The part that shows clearly how stupid I am. “He told me I was beautiful. Something to be treasured, but his club would view him as weak if he didn’t do something with me—he explained that’s how his world worked. When he first told me that he wanted me to be a dancer, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t have the big breasts, the body that those type of women had.”

“You’re perfect, Beauty,” I hear him say gruffly.

I don’t turn around to look at him. To do so would mean I’d lose my nerve. “Turns out I had a knack for dancing. I was good at it, but then why wouldn’t I be? I was my mother’s daughter,” I add, hatefully.

“Hayden—”

“I took what came natural, watched the other women, and I learned. At first, it was for survival, but then I noticed I was making Blade proud. He liked how the other men looked at me. He liked them getting turned on by me. It is kind of an aphrodisiac having men looking at you and thinking you’re sexy and hot. I can’t lie. Especially when it makes the one guy you like out of the whole place want you more. The more Blade seemed to like me, the more I wanted to learn. I needed to be the best dancer, to tease the others. Pathetic, right?” I ask him, risking a look in his direction.

His face is hard, it makes nervous butterflies take flight in my stomach, and not the good kind.

My body shudders as I take a quick breath. I turn away from Michael to look out the window once again. “The game went on for the first seven months or so. The other men didn’t bother me. I wondered why, and when I asked Blade, he told me it was because he had claimed me as his property. At that point, we had kissed, but not much more. Yet, I was so glad to be called his, I stupidly asked him if I was. The club had given me a nickname by then, because of the way I could work the stripper’s pole. Tricks. The whole club watched as Blade carried me to the bedroom and from that night on, the nickname took new meaning. Blade told them all the next morning I was officially his old lady and that my new name, Tricks was even more true in the bedroom. I was embarrassed, but I let it slide. Blade changed some after that, but he was always sweet to me and there were parts of being his old lady that I loved. I liked riding on the back of his bike, I liked how wearing his jacket made me feel and the respect it gave me. All of that was like a drug to a young girl who had been thrown down and forgotten about all her life. Looking back, there were always warning signs, that I didn’t know the real man. I’d push those thoughts away though. I ignored them. How could I be with someone for so long and not see the real person? But I didn’t. Not really. I began to think of it like he was two people. The man he showed his club, and the man who shared my bed every night. I told Blade that once, and maybe that was just another mistake, because he played into that. He told me what he did outside our room, in front of his club was all just for show, all to keep up his image that the club respected. He promised I was the only one he loved, the only one he shared his body with, the only one who saw the real him.”

“Yeah, right.” Michael snorts, and I can feel the shame surge through me.

“I warned you. I was stupid—I was naïve. I was also the laughingstock of the club, and I didn’t even know it. What’s worse is that whenever I would question it, Blade would carry me away from the club, fix me a drink and show me all the reasons I shouldn’t worry. I thought we were perfect together, I didn’t even realize he was drugging me.” I can hear Michael’s growl behind me and the bed move, but I ignore it. “I didn’t catch on for a year… until I started realizing I was losing time. I couldn’t remember the simplest of things I did the day before.”

“Motherfucker. Damn it, Hayden…”

“It’s not easy stopping drugs cold-turkey. It’s even harder trying to hide that you’re doing it. I managed to though, and what I began to see scared me. It scared me so much that I began planning on how I could escape.”

“That’s enough, Hayden.”

I ignore him yet again, continuing on…just wanting the story finished. “But even while planning on leaving, I didn’t stop sleeping with Blade, Michael,” I tell him and it’s then that the tears start to fall. Maybe they were falling before, but I don’t think so. Memories wash over me and that feeling that always comes with it…that feeling of being…less…of being dirty hits me. “I was scared of what would happen if I refused him. Terrified. Do you see, Michael? Do you see how truly weak I am? I let him crawl into bed with me, even knowing what kind of man he was. I let him touch me, I let him inside my body. It wasn’t rape. I let him. I did everything he asked in the bedroom, just to keep him happy—all while trying to find a way to leave.”

Memories hit me. Memories of Blade kissing me, of his hands moving over my body. The remembrances of the smell of alcohol on his breath and the horrible things he’d say to me, while he thrust inside of me.

“I let him have my body,” I gasp, the tears falling harder. “Out of fear,” I whisper, feeling broken. I let my head fall against the window. “He wasn’t concerned that I was crying, didn’t notice that I wasn’t aroused…he simply didn’t care.” My hand moves to my neck. I’m completely lost in the memories now. “I can still feel the way he would hold me, tightening his hand tighter and tighter, until I couldn’t breathe. His laughter would get louder every time the panic took over and, I would dig my nails into his back, drawing blood. I can still remember how he would roll off me, light up a cigarette, pull up his pants and walk back out, never looking back. He’d laugh and tell the boys I was feeling extra wild tonight, and I’d lay in bed feeling used and dirty….” I drift off, for the moment I’m not able to speak, to give voice to the darkness inside of me.

“Shh…Hayden, no more,” Michael says into my neck, as he comes up behind me, putting a hand on each of my arms. “That’s enough, Beauty,” he whispers gruffly, kissing the pulse that’s pounding in my throat. It’s not enough, though. I have to finish the whole story, because I never want him to ask me again.

Never again….