CHAPTER SEVEN
SERAPHINA
“How do you know that name?”
His voice was curt, all traces of humor lost at the mention of the group I now knew for a fact he belonged to. The fucking Society … again. How much did the universe hate me to pluck me from the moment I thought it all would end, just to plant me back at the beginning?
Refusing to ease the confusion that was obvious in his voice, I remained silent. I’d be damned to acquiesce to the charm and beauty of a strange man again.
I should have known he wouldn’t make it easy. Within seconds his hands gripped me, one caught in the tangles of my hair while the other was a vice across my chin.
The chains at my wrists and ankles rattled, the cheap bed beneath me squeaking out its protest at my weight. And when the crush of crippling cold slapped across my skin, I was delivered back to a memory.
“The first thing you need to accept is that you are now owned. For now, I am your Master. I give orders - you follow them. It’s a simple formula that will keep you alive. Any disobedience on your part will result in punishment. You have one job and one alone – to be a courtesan. You will refer to me as Master and I will refer to you in any way I please. My satisfaction and pleasure are the only two things that will matter to you. Your life no longer exists, nor does it matter.”
The words echoed within the darkness, the memories of my first nights with Aiden, the callousness of his cruelty grating against my mind. How long had it been since I’d woken from the numbing arms of one beautiful monster, only to open my eyes and stare into the face of another? I’d done everything he’d asked me to do. I became the woman he’d envisioned I would be. But in the end, he’d tossed me aside so easily. Stood silently while money changed hands and I was led away. Had he thought of me since the moment he saw me last? Had he cared what became of my life?
“Tell me,” Anthony demanded, his voice barely controlled from the way I knew he could roar. He was tempering his strength because he feared I was fragile. What he didn’t know is that the only person who would break me completely in the end was me.
“Why don’t you ask him? He certainly had his fun back in the day. Your friend was the son of bitch who started this mess of my life. I’m sure he can fill you in on the details.”
I felt the mattress shift beneath me, pressed down by Anthony’s weight. As my eyes adjusted to the thick, velvet darkness, I could just make out his profile. He wasn’t looking at me, simply staring at the doorway under which the light of the hallway streamed in. Even that scant amount of glowing yellow couldn’t penetrate the blanket of darkness in the room, and I remembered that’s the way it had always been.
“I can’t figure out why you fight so hard. You made it so easy for me to steal you away. Will you miss the cloud of numbness your lover could provide you? Because, with me, those days are gone. I don’t fuck whores with needles in their arms.”
At one time I would have sworn the drugs would be my end. That one day I’d inject too much, my eyes slowly closing, my body falling back until the last bit of air I had in me leaked out on a soft whisper, releasing me from the arms of a hostile world into the warm embrace of oblivion.
However, Aiden found me before the drugs could take my life, and I’d fallen for the siren’s call. I’d allowed myself to be swept away by the type of seduction that bit down with its razor sharp teeth. My body had been the ultimate traitor until my will had followed closely behind. My personality stripped until I felt like dying, only to be reborn into a woman he’d claimed would be as beautiful as lightning fracturing out from the storm clouds of a chaotic night sky.
He should have saved his poetic promises. Should have stuffed them away in the box he kept that contained my individuality.
Unlike Aiden, who at the time I’d known him hadn’t been perfectly polished in his game, Anthony wore a cloak of patience; his strength, his anger and rage, simmered beneath the false sense of tranquility and peace. He didn’t fool me with his soft voice and exotic accent. Behind his eyes lingered the shadow of a monster, of a person that had no qualms in stealing a woman away.
Why was I dragged back here?
How much cruelty could one life contain?
“If you won’t tell me willingly, I have ways of forcing it from you, my darling.”
Sensual and whisper soft, he spoke without turning his gaze in my direction.
“Will you take me like he did? Shove yourself so far inside that it forces the breath from my lungs? Do me a favor and be sure to pump deeply. I like it rough.”
There had once been a time where I would have preferred a soft caress to the sting of a whip, when I’d imagined a man whispering to me his promises of the life we could have if I just walked by his side. Never believing I was worth the dream that wrapped me each night I laid down my weary head, I’d turned to the poison that made it easier to escape my life.
That night in the park – the moment when I’d made the mistake of shedding patience in favor of a fast, immediate fix – it was the end of the girl I had been, and the beginning of the whore I would become.
Aiden found me while I was sleeping. And he’d waken me to show me the dungeon that held me, his young face awash with lust and determination, until the blank mask had moved in to add mystery to the beauty of his features.
Green, sparkling eyes had followed me through my nightmare. His voice speaking to me in the moments when I could no longer endure the pain.
I was pulled from the memory by an exotic voice. “I’ll get to the bottom of this, Seraphina. I already know a lot about your life.”
A bark of laughter shot from my throat to float over my parted lips. Why did he act so surprised to learn I knew his friend from the past? Especially with his claim that he already knew the facts about what my life had once been?
“Are you going to fuck me now?” Challenging him to act, I hoped he would lose control, that he would choke me out while holding me down, that he would send me off into the oblivion I sought while thrusting inside to chase more of my soul away.
“With the way you look and smell? Hardly.”
The scorn in his voice cut me, the rejection somehow causing me pain. Growing up, I’d always craved the acceptance of a family that didn’t want me. I’d also desired the acceptance of the Master I believed had wanted me before. They all rejected me when the time came. They all turned their backs as I was led through the door.
“I’ll bathe you tomorrow.”
Yanking on the chain that bound one of my wrists, I clenched my teeth when the metal cuff pinched my skin. “Then we’ll fight tomorrow. I won’t give you what you want.”
“We’ll see.” His voice was exasperated. “As for now I’m too tired to deal with your crap.”
The word sounded wrong from his lips. He was a man of finer things, a person who traveled this life never knowing what it was to want something you couldn’t have. If I had to guess, I would say that this man had never experienced the pain of loss, the endless days that bled, one into another, as he counted down how many remained until he was lying still within his grave.
Life was pointless. Especially when everything you loved about it could so easily be taken away.
“Tell me you want me to fuck you, Pet…”
“Tell me how wonderful it feels when I make you scream.”
For the first time in years, tears escaped my eyes. The memories assaulted me with their violent recognition of the love, the fear, and the pleasure that had been forced out of my body.
But that pleasure didn’t remain.
A soft touch turned into abusive fists. Elegant words transitioned into cackles and insults that cut into my chest, stabbing me each time a word was screamed or a promise was whispered and then delivered, again and again.
A rectangle of fractured light.
The sound of a lid being closed over the top of a hole that held me.
It was all there suddenly mocking me with the memory, laughing for the pain that returned as each image danced through my head.
Death was the only release I could hope would eventually save me.
But now, this bastard, this beautiful, cultured man, had stolen finality from me and replaced it with the unknown and the all too familiar promise that another man had made when my captivity began.
I wouldn’t fall for it again, wouldn’t succumb to monsters that were hidden behind alluring masks.
“Like I said,” he announced, his voice tired as it broke through the silence of the room, “It’s late. I’m exhausted. As I’m sure you are, too. If tomorrow will lead to a fight then I’d better prepare.”
He stood up and the mattress shifted beneath me. For a second, he turned to gaze down at me, his hands tucked in his pockets. I couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, but I knew they glared down at me in a beautiful amber shade.
Footsteps across a floor announced his exit, the door opening to flood the room with light, before closing again and leaving me to the memories of my first cold, dark and hopeless cage.