Twisted - Esme Devlin Page 0,84
is like a dream and I don’t know if it’s a good one or a nightmare.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just let it all go?
Get over the bad things he does to other people?
There is a huge part of me that wants to. But there is a small voice inside my head that’s warning me against it.
The same small voice that clings on to the hope of escaping him. Or changing him. Or that one day, I’ll wake up to discover that it was all, indeed, just a beautiful dream or a terrifying nightmare.
He forces my head around to look at him. “What do you say to that?”
He says I’m pretending. That I say no when deep down I mean yes. “I say you’re a far worse a pretender than I am.”
The sound of his cruel laugh floats in the air between us and also seals my fate. “Of all the answers… that’s one I can’t say I anticipated.”
He spins me around so I’m in front of him and then forces me to my knees in the middle of the hallway.
I feel him kneeling down behind me, the metal of his mask cool on my neck. “And what, exactly, makes you think I’m pretending?”
“I’ve been here for weeks now, and you’ve lost your temper precisely once. For a man who claims to not have a conscience, to only want my fear, to be a monster in a mask… for the most part, your bite doesn’t match your bark.”
He’s silent for a long moment, and a knot forms in my stomach.
Then he chuckles quietly, his fingers curving up around my neck. His hands are gentle, his gestures tender.
Have I won?
Was that what he wanted, for me to work it out?
“My precious little girl,” he whispers, barely audible through the layer that separates his mouth from my skin. “Naive, as always. I will have to relieve you of your nonsense. Get your cheek on the carpet.”
There is no sign in his tone that he is anything other than deadly serious, but still I turn around to reason with him.
That’s when I feel his free hand in my hair, wrapping my ponytail around his fist. “No, no. None of that.”
He forces my head down, and I lay my palms out flat to stop some of the impact. “You won’t move from that spot,” he tells me.
Tells me.
My whole body burns as his hand runs up my inner thigh, stopping just short of the place heat is radiating from. I gasp as he pulls my dress up and over my hips, completely exposing me to him.
I should run.
He’s not holding me down. I know I wouldn’t get very far, but I should at least attempt it.
But something has me rooted in place.
Do I actually want to run? I don’t fucking know. I hate the man, but I love what he does to me.
There, I admitted it.
I love this fucked-up existence he’s made me dependent on.
His arm crosses over the small of my back and forces me to arch farther for him, to lift my ass higher in the air.
“There’s my perfect girl,” he says, and his voice makes me aware of how empty I am. How desperate I am for him to take that emptiness away. My cheeks burn, and although he can’t see it because of the paint, I close my eyes in shame.
“Tell me, how do you feel about me right now?”
I don’t even hesitate. “I hate you.”
He laughs, as if quite proud. “But you don’t hate this. You’d hate this if you were to choose it, but not when I force it upon you. Truth?”
“Yes.”
Yes, I think that is true.
When he forces me, I don’t have to let it sit on my conscience. I’m not betraying myself, or any other woman who lives here, by fucking him because I want to.
It’s easier when he makes the choices for me. When he tells me what to do.
“This game,” he says, sliding my knees apart with his. “This game is a simple one. I’m going to fuck you, and all you need to do is come before someone walks around that corner and I shoot them. It doesn’t end until you finish.”
As he slides the head of his cock inside me, he lets out a sigh, and so do I. “And don’t try to fake it, sweet girl, because I’ve felt you fall apart on my cock before, and it’s a feeling I won’t likely forget.”
My heart thuds against the carpet