When I come to, Sean’s cousin is standing over me. I can only see his silhouette in the dark.

Panic floods me after I have a split second of peace and respite. After I realize where I am, and what happened.

And after the panic begins to flood my veins, I taste the metallic liquid inside my mouth. My lip is split open, and blood is trickling between my parted lips. I don’t know what’s happened to me. I don’t know what he’s done.

“Please,” I say to him. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Just please let me go.”

He looks at me with malice, dismissing me with one glance. He isn’t interested in my pleas. He’s going to do what he wants to me.

“This all could have been so simple, Cherry.” He laughs at gets up from the mattress in the middle of the room. We’re in a windowless room with simple white walls. There are no sheets on the bed. “You know that prostitution is legal in Nevada, don’t you?”

“Y...yes,” I choke. “I know that. Look, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me go.” My voice is barely a whimper. The taste of my own blood is making me feel weak. It’s making me feel unable to fight. I’ve already been hurt.

He laughs and pulls a cigarette from his pack, tossing it onto the bed and taking a deep drag from it. He looks like Sean’s doppelganger, an evil twin sent to hurt me instead of save me.

But Sean didn’t save me. I thought he saved me, but he didn’t...he ruined me.

“I’m not a sick fuck, Cherry. I’m a nice guy.” He walks over to a small table and pours a small glass with a clear liquid from a bottle nearby on the table. “I don’t want this to hurt. But you have to learn how to behave.”

He presses the cigarette between his lips and walks over to me, the glass pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Squatting down in front of me, he puts his hand on my knee and puts the glass up to my lips. It’s vodka, or maybe something stronger, and I move my head away. The sharp scent fills my nostrils and makes my mouth water with sickness.

“No,” I say. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s okay, you won’t even feel a thing. Be a good girl and take a sip.”

I press my lips into a tight line and he takes the cigarette out of his mouth, blowing the smoke straight into my eyes. I wince and whimper, keeping my mouth shut as he reaches out to tip my chin up and press the rim of the glass between my lips. I can’t say no. I just keep dodging the rim of the glass, until he forces it between my lips. The smell is so strong and I feel so weak next to it. But still, I fight, even as hot tears begin to swell in my eyes and roll down my cheeks, mixing with the blood on my lips, falling into the glass.

“That’s a good girl,” he says, tipping my mouth back farther. I close my eyes and hold my breath as he forces my mouth open, tilting the contents of the glass into me. The liquid isn’t vodka; it’s something else, and it burns my tongue and then my throat as it goes down. Its stinging stench hits my core, and I cough, desperate to close my mouth and my throat, but it goes down anyway.

“Don’t fight,” he says, a twisted smile spreading across his face. He doesn’t look into my eyes. He looks at me everywhere else, though. At my lips, my cheeks. I’m wearing a thin white t-shit and no bra or panties, and his eyes drag down my body, lingering on the swell of my breasts. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’m not a bad guy, you know that? I’m not going to hurt you.”

The stinging liquid feels thick in my throat, even after I’ve swallowed it. I can still feel it. My guts still churn, but the panic is beginning to subside. He’s made my anger begin to falter. The liquid did that to me.

He goes over to the table again, stamping out his cigarette and refilling the glass with the liquid. I think now that it’s grain alcohol, and it’s positively sickening. It feels like lighter fluid inside my empty belly. I feel it seeping into my brain, making me become weaker by the second.

I try struggling against the restraints again, but it’s no use. I will never get out of this chair on my own.

“You know, I think you’ll learn to like this,” he says, turning his back to me. His muscles flex inside his shirt as he takes a sip from the glass. There’s specks of blood on the rim, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. “You could have done very well for yourself on the open market. But you know that already, don’t you? I bet now you wish you could have sold yourself to Cullen after all.”

My heart races and drops into my stomach.

“You think I like this?” I look up at him as he walks over, averting my eyes. He’s focused on my body, his eyes taking in every inch of me. “You think I want to be tied up like this just because I was ready to make a stupid choice in a moment of desperation?”

He lunges at me and takes my chin in his hand, nearly lifting me off the floor with the chair I’m strapped into. He licks his lips, a lewd grunt coming from inside his chest as he looks at my busted lip.

“Why don’t you look me in the eye?” I spit out. “Or don’t you really want to see what you’re doing to me?”

His eyes shift and lock onto mine, their ferocious intensity frightening, making me wish I hadn’t pushed him.

“Like this, Cherry?” He presses his thumb to the cut in my lip, the alcohol on his hand burning into my busted flesh. “This what you want?”