Fallen Angel

Briar

“This can be scary at the beginning, I know, but it isn’t the beginning anymore,” William criticized. “You are behind where you should be. Do you want to stay in this room? Do you want to show Lucas that you can’t move on with him? Now stop crying.”

I couldn’t, I hadn’t been able to for some time now.

My head bowed as sobs tormented my body. My arms and shoulders ached, and my right calf was cramping, but I knew he had no plans to release me unless I did what he was asking.

Sometime before—what had seemed like hours, but I knew wasn’t—William had grabbed my arm and forced me across the room to an alcove that I had always thought was a small, unfinished closet. Now I was rethinking the purpose of the space. A metal bar ran the length of the alcove high above me, and after tearing my comforter away, William had stripped off his belt and used it to tie my hands to the bar as I’d screamed and kicked at him.

He had looked at me as if my kicks were nothing more than a kitten pawing at him.

I had been on the balls of my feet ever since to take away the feeling that my arms were about to be ripped from their sockets, but my calves and thighs were shaking and I didn’t know how much longer I could stand like that.

“Stop crying,” William demanded again. “You have to be comfortable naked. You have to be comfortable with him watching you. You can’t cry while he does that. Do you understand?”

I nodded, but my tears fell harder. I could hear the devil’s words in William’s, and I knew William had not lied to me.

William had to be Lucas’s mentor.

The same words, the same demands, the same heartless tone. I found soon that my heart was big enough to hate more than one person.

“You have to look up,” he gritted out, and suddenly he was in front of me, yanking my head up. “You have to make eye contact; you have to be proud; you cannot be scared. Stop crying!” He released my head, only for the back of his hand to come across my right cheek.

The force of his hit stunned me and made me lose the balance I’d been struggling to maintain on my toes. A sharp cry tore from my chest when it felt like my arms would tear from the sockets—my shoulders bearing all my weight until I could get back on my toes. Blood coated my tongue from where I’d bitten down on my cheek, and I had to fight to catch my breath when my sobs came faster than before.

“I have never had a girl struggle this much, or for this long, with this part of the process,” he said in a bored tone when my cries became steady again.

“I can’t do this,” I sobbed.

“You have to. Stop crying. People stare at themselves in the mirror all the time. Studying their bodies, finding imperfections,” he lectured harshly. “Think of Lucas as that mirror.”

Hard sobs continued to force their way from my chest, and I shook my head quickly. “I—”

William gripped my cheeks roughly in his hand, forcing me to look at him, ignoring the way I tried to jerk away from him when my cheek smarted from the action. “This no longer belongs to you. It belongs to Lucas, and he does what he wants with it. You no longer hide it. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t respond but tried to nod against his firm hold.

He released my face so forcefully it was as if he shoved my head back. But just as fast, his hands were on my breasts, painfully squeezing as he tested their weight and squeezed my nipples.

“No,” I yelled, my voice hoarse as I tried in vain to twist away from his hold. “No, no, stop!”

“These no longer belong to you. They belong to him, and he does what he wants with them. You no longer hide them. Do you understand?”

“Stop touch—”

“I asked you a question, and you will answer me, girl,” he seethed. “When Lucas asks you a question, you answer. You do not make demands.” He paused for only a second before repeating, “Do you understand?”

I nodded numbly as the room filled with my cries. I choked over my tears and thrashed in the alcove when he suddenly cupped my sex, one of his fingers sliding into my folds just as roughly as he’d touched the rest of me.

“Stop!”

“This no long—”

Long ago memories flashed, and I screamed, “Don’t touch me!”

“Briar!”

My head snapped up at the loud boom I would have sworn shook the house, and my heart raced. More tears pricked at my eyes—these different, these from the intense relief that pounded through me.

“Briar!” Lucas yelled again, closer.

William stepped back leisurely to stand silently a few feet away from me, looking at the closed doorway to my room expectantly. He almost seemed bored as he waited.

The devil, however, was anything but bored. His dark eyes were murderous when he charged into the room, but the look fell when he saw me being forced to stand in the alcove.

“Briar,” he whispered, and quickly closed the distance between us. His hands went to my face first then my neck as his eyes searched my face wildly. “Are you okay? It’s going to be okay,” he assured me before I could answer.

“She needed to learn,” William said from behind Lucas, and like a switch had been flipped, the murderous look was back in his eyes.

Lucas wrapped an arm around my waist to lift me off the ground as he untied the belt, and a muscle in his jaw popped while his nostrils flared. “This is too far; this is outside the rules. She’s not yours to fucking touch,” he hissed. His eyes never left my face, but it was clear his words weren’t meant for me.

As soon as my hands were free, I let my arms fall like dead weights around Lucas’s neck, curled my legs around his body, and sobbed against his white button-down shirt.

“It’s okay.” He ran his hand over my hair soothingly while he walked me back across the room. “It’s okay.” William began talking, but Lucas gritted out, “Enough!”

William continued on smugly. “It worked. You are welcome. She’s progressed greatly today if she’s also clinging to you rather than trying to get away.”

When Lucas set me on the bed, his face was frozen in a terrifying mask of rage, and it didn’t fit how gently he cupped my cheek. “Cover yourself.”

I scrambled to pull the sheet over my body and flinched when Lucas turned and punched William in the jaw. Just as William started to stumble away from the force of Lucas’s fist, Lucas grabbed him by the collar and forced him closer until they were face to face.

Other than working his jaw a couple times, William showed no signs of having been hit. His breathing remained calm and face impassive.

Lucas looked as if he was trying to talk himself out of doing it again, or more.

“You do not have the right to touch or teach what is mine,” Lucas snapped.

“Ah ah, I didn’t teach,” William said, attempting a smug grin. “There are rules after all, Lucas. I merely . . . bent her so she would be more willing to comply to you.”

Lucas’s face became unreadable. The dark tension in the room became suffocating as he silently raged.

“If you were anyone less, you know exactly how this would end,” he seethed in a calm, terrifying tone. “Now leave my home and don’t come back unless you’re invited. And if you ever touch Briar, or any of my girls, again, know that I will end this, and it will be with a heartbeat on your door.”

I wasn’t on the receiving end of those threats, but I was shaking from them. Most of the words meant nothing to me—didn’t make sense—but it was his voice and the look in his eyes. Detached, dark, lethal.

He is darkness; he is the devil.

William maintained his aloof expression as he shoved away from Lucas. “I will expect your thanks soon,” he called out as he walked from the room.

My mind was racing, trying to decipher the cryptic threat. “What do you mean, a heartbeat on his door?” I whispered softly when William left.

Lucas paused on his way back to me, continued, and shook his head. “Not today, Briar.”

From some of the horrific images that came to mind, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know, so I didn’t push for him to explain. I just clung to his forearms when he held my face in his hands.

“What did he do to you?”

I shook my head absentmindedly, my gaze drifted to the alcove when I wasn’t able to speak.

He breathed out roughly through his nose, and if I hadn’t been holding on to him so tightly, I might have missed the way his body began vibrating. “How long was he here?”

“I don’t know,” I choked out.

“Blackbird,” he whispered soothingly, “I need to know if he hurt you. I need to know what he did to you.”

My tears came harder as I tried to tell Lucas everything that had happened. Once I’d finished, I choked out, “Why does it matter? He’s your mentor. I could hear you in his words. Your words in his voice.”

Lucas’s body stilled. His dark eyes bored into mine and his head tilted as if he was going to deny it, but he paused for a second and then sighed. “Yes, he’s my mentor, but that doesn’t allow him to be in this house without me, and it will never give him permission to be alone with you. It doesn’t give him permission to touch you. And it matters because what happened today shouldn’t have. Do you understand? I will do everything to make sure no one ever touches what’s mine again.”

I understood. I just wasn’t sure if I responded in any way because I was suddenly at war with myself, questioning my sanity.

My unexpected thought that his touch felt nice and wanted during his explanation left my mind reeling. I told myself to let go of his arms and push away from him.

My fingers betrayed me by gripping tighter.

I looked from his eyes to my hands then back again. The entire time I was internally screaming, reminding myself I was clinging to the devil and needed to get far away—but another part of me shouted that he was also my safety.

No! No, he will never be safe.

But he came for me. He protected me.

I thought of the way his voice twisted with torment when he yelled my name, of the way he looked when he ran into the room: like an avenging angel.

Fallen angel, I automatically corrected myself. Because he is darkness, and he has done worse to me than William. Stop thinking that any good can come from him.

But some disturbed part of me still wanted to fall into his arms, to let him comfort me. My body was aching with the effort it took to keep myself from him, and a harsh breath rushed from my lungs as I continued to fight.

Fight with what I knew of the devil and the angel I was making myself believe I had caught a glimpse of.

Back and forth, back and forth.

He was still cradling my face in his large hands, and I had yet to let go of him. Every now and then he would brush his thumb across my un-bruised cheekbone, and I hated how much I craved those little brushes. But I did.

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. I felt safer in that moment with Lucas than I had since I’d been stolen from Atlanta. The idea of feeling safety within his arms should terrify me, but the only terror that day had been in William’s presence.

Dark eyes searched mine as he said my name like a question.

The sound of my name from his lips made me tremble with unspoken words that were bursting from that traitorous part of me. Safe, safe, safe.

No!

He is darkness. He is the devil.

My eyes fell to his mouth, and mine opened when my breaths grew heavy.

And I want him.

What is wrong with me?

I looked up when I felt his arms tense and found him staring at my body. Before I could follow his line of sight, his eyes met mine behind those thick, dark lashes, desire and sin swirling there.

Gently enough not to hurt me, but forcefully enough that I couldn’t stop him, he released my face and removed my hands from his arms.

“Where are you going?” I asked without hesitation when he took two steps away from me.

He rubbed at his jaw then shoved his hands into his pockets. Just like that, Lucas was gone and the devil was back. “Leaving. When your time with William wears off, your hatred of me will return. The only reason you aren’t afraid of me right now is because I’m the lesser of two evils today. You’re safe and will be all right. I won’t take advantage of this time where you think you want me around.”

I pressed my lips firmly together before my lust-hazed mind could spout off something I’d regret.

His eyes dipped to my body. “After lunch you can pick a room.”

I finally glanced down to see that the sheet had pooled around my hips and hurried to cover myself—but he was already gone.

What is happening to me?