No one moves. Including myself. I'm not even breathing I'm so scared. He's betrayed me. The one thing he knows I am not okay with.
He's walked me in here, a naive little prey who's helped prep herself to be devoured by merciless men with sadistic intentions. Have I learned nothing from living with a monster?
A chorus of laughter enshrouds the room until the walls fucking vibrate with it, until even my heart and breathing accommodates the beat of their shrilly guffaws.
I pull against the men who have my arms bound, eyes trained on the one with the knife who seems like he's itching to insert that thing inside of me, until I dare another glance at Levi.
Levi.
My undoing.
He doesn't give me even a piece of remorse. Nothing.
"Would you like me to prep her for you?" He goads, before he's stepping in front of me, which ultimately pushes the man with the knife out of the way, and for that, I am thankful.
Levi reaches for me and I recoil from his touch. I see something flash in his eyes but it's gone with a blink and that soulless demon returns, his hand stroking my face before he roughly cups my chin.
"I'll make her nice and wet for you. Maybe even show you how she looks when she comes-" he hisses, before I feel his hand moving past the waistband of the pants he tried to tie tightly on my waist. The tips of his fingers graze the top of my slit, and I shake, before my senses return and I jerk my hips back to pull his hand out of my pants.
It's the only move I have considering my arms are apprehended, but in this moment, I'll do whatever the hell it takes to keep him from touching me.
"Awe, come on, be a good little toy, and spread your fucking thighs for me, huh?" He presses, coldly, before his hand is back in my pants.
"Get off me!" I shout at him, that uncertainty causing my voice to quiver. The same uncertainty I feel when he's near because my feelings for him are never definite, and lust is more powerful than logic. But he's evil in my eyes now. Purely evil. Logic seems to win.
"Don't fucking touch me!" I scream, and it only makes the men laugh, as I wince from Levi.
"Enough," Jesse concludes. I'm surprised to hear that come from him considering he was the one flirting with the idea of having me pleasure the men in the room.
"Have her leave us, Levi. Now. We have a lot to discuss," Jesse adds, and I'm released by the men, before Levi shoots a frigid look at me.
"Go," he hisses, and he doesn't have to tell me twice. I'm bolting out of the room. Stumbling just as I get to the door, only to have my lower back grazed by unfamiliar hands.
I yelp, and shove through the door, cringing at the bark of laughter from the man that had just touched me.
I never want to come here again. Hell, I don't want Levi to ever touch me again. Not after that... that horrid disregard for my safety.
It disgusts me. Fully. I'm covering my mouth with my hand as nausea swirls in my stomach as I get to the front door. The maid greets me, but I don't acknowledge her.
Instead, I shove past the door and eye the car we came in, hurrying until I get to the door and throw it open, sliding into the seat as if it will keep me safe from the boogymen.
I keep telling myself to breathe. In. Out. Supposedly involuntary but in the face of danger, my breathing has become sporadic and painful, gasps of air that don't feel like enough, causing more panic to set in.
I'm dizzy with it. I have to force my eyes closed to try and talk the anxiousness away, but even behind closed eyelids, I am thrown back into that room with Levi and those hungry eyes; A repetitive show of degradation.
"How could he?" I question, disbelievingly to myself. "How could he do that.... I was beginning to trust him. I'm so stupid!"
I bang my fists against the dashboard, fingers aching when I finally throw myself back in the seat, frowning as I peer forward angrily.
I don't know when he'll emerge from this house. This house of blood and pain, and penance. One in which you move through the front doors and feel the presence of mistakes made - morbid mistakes - and the heavy weight of prices that have been paid in blood.
It's crushing. Suffocating even.
No wonder all it houses are monsters.
And of course, the foolish girl I am, I am housed with one too.
Levi.
His name sounds foreign in my mouth now. My idiotic affection no longer present. All that's left is resentment and sheer duty to be here.
It's hours until he returns. Hours. The moon shifts in the sky. My exhaustion presses me deeper into the seat, until I can barely move, and keep my eyes open.
I'm shivering. I curl up in the seat, quickly locking the car when I glimpse the front door again. I wouldn't want any stray businessmen finding their way to the car.
He's in there for so many minutes I lose track.
I think that's punishment too. Make me wait in the car, a trapped animal in the front seat. Maybe he hopes I'll suffocate from the pressure and fear so he can make another example out of me.
I wait.
And I wait some more, until I hear those familiar footsteps, and I dare a glimpse out of the window to find him bounding down the steps towards me.
My tormentor.
He unlocks the car as if he knows I wouldn't dare leave it unlocked. He's learned my behavior. Learned the patterns so he can always be two steps a head of me.
Maybe that's why I felt so free when I took that razor to my wrists - why I was so careful to avoid him and lay in my bed as I waited for oblivion. He didn't see it coming. He couldn't control it.
Couldn't control me for once.
When he returns to the car, he's silent as he closes the door behind him. I keep my eyes forward, refusing to look at him.
I know he's looking at me. I can feel the searing heat of his eyes.
It's almost too much, but I don't indulge him. I won't anymore.
"Look at me," he says, his voice painfully low, and demanding. I keep my eyes trained forward. "Sasha, fucking look at me."
I ignore him continuously. A man like him shouldn't give up. I wouldn't expect him too.
But he does.
He lets me stew in silence. A tense, but relieving silence as we head back to his home.
That's what I will call it. His home, because nothing is home to me anymore.
"Sasha," he says when we are close - I can tell by some things I recall seeing as soon as we left his home - but he doesn't finish his sentence. Naive me almost believes I hear shame, but that's not it. I shake my head, dispelling that thought.
"Please don't," I reply. My voice sounds so small, so weak and pathetic. I don't know what else to say. If this were years ago, and my life hadn't fallen completely apart, I'd have a different home to go to.
I'd tell him to drop me off and I'd never pick up the phone when I saw he'd called me, ever again.
But I can't escape him in my reality.
He is every waking moment of my life. And each moment is damning.
“Sasha, I won’t apologize for what I’ve done.”
Clearly he knows what he’s done is wrong.
“I didn’t expect you to.”
He inhales a sharp breath as if I’ve slapped him, but I don’t press anything further until he speaks again, which isn’t for another five minutes.
“This is my world.”
Excuses.
Stupid excuses that do nothing to rid me of the bottomless feeling in my gut. The pit that has swallowed any shred of respect or happiness I thought was forming from this shitty situation.
“Men like that are all around, taking what they want from the world. You either assert your dominance, or you’re rolled over.”
So that was him asserting his dominance?
Playing with me and preparing me for other men?
“I never thought you’d enjoy sharing me. Not now. Not after the club,” I admit. “I was wrong.”
He’s silent.
We arrive. He shuts off the car but doesn’t move to climb out of the car. I pull the torn sweatshirt tightly closed.
“Don’t take me back there ever again,” I say before I shove open the car door. I climb up the steps to the front of his house, reaching for the front door, thankful it’s unlocked so I don’t have to wait for him, because I plan on going right up to bed.
Anything for distance.
I move up the stairs quickly, sighing with relief when I get into the bathroom that’s attached to my room. I shed my clothes quickly, closing the door behind me before I turn on the shower and let the heat and steam fill the room.
Who knows what he’s up to. Who cares. I don’t. Not anymore.
I have decided I want nothing from him. Nothing but the money and stability he will provide me with. From the club, I am able to get 10% of that profit in six months. Clubs stipulations. If at any point he ends things early I still get the money.
Just as I go to step into the shower, he’s behind me, his voice stopping me.
“Sasha.”
“When did you get in here?” I whip around. Immediately his eyes slide over my body, that same desire flaring up in his gaze but there’s a determination in them that makes me curious for a moment.
“Get out,” I say firmly when he doesn’t answer.
“No. I did what I had to do.”
“With no regard for me,” I reply curtly, before I move to spin around, but he grabs my arm and tugs so I’ll spin once more until my naked front is pressed against his body. He’s all delicious sinew, muscles that make my tongue go dry with treacherous delight from my body, but I stomp it away.
“It was for you!” He shouts. I wince.
“How? How was that for me?” I press. “Enlighten me, Levi.”
“What happens when you tell a child they can’t have something? Or when you tell a teenager that something is forbidden? You add excitement to it, so much so that it becomes a fucking fetish to indulge your curiosity.”
Confusion fills me.
What the hell is he talking about?
He continues.
“That’s what you are to Jesse. A fascination purely based on what you mean to me; What my fucking reaction to you is.”
“T-then why bring me there?” I snap. “Why bring me to him if you knew he’d gain some weird obsession?”
“Judas already told him about you. And where Judas is concerned, nothing good ever comes..... so you have to understand, I had to take away that excitement.”
His fingers flex on my wrist.
“I had to show him you mean nothing to me. That he couldn’t fucking use you to hurt me, because believe me, he would’ve tried. He would’ve tried and it would’ve -“
He doesn’t finish his sentence, and my eyes widen, because I have to hear it. I have to know what he was going to say. It’ll eat me up inside if I don’t.
“Because why?” I question.
He shakes his head and I move my face closer to him.
“Because why, Levi?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he kisses me. His kiss is boundless, all encompassing, as he takes me in his arms.
And I know just from the possessive capture of my lips with his, that if I were to get hurt, it would break something inside of him. Possibly the last thing that keeps him alive.