Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
It shouldn’t hurt, right? I never agreed to go to his house tonight. He never even asked. Just another guy making you feel obligated to show him how grateful you are for his attention.
I pumped some shampoo into my hand from the dispenser on the wall and washed my hair, trying to hurry. I still had to make dinner, do homework, and I’d promised my grandma we’d watch a movie in her room tonight.
And I still wanted to get to the gazebo tonight to get some work done.
Will could come to me. If he found me.
I rinsed my hair and conditioned, pumping some soap into my hand and scrubbing the pool off my body. But I stopped, feeling the nubs on my legs.
Maybe I should shave again. I mean, if he found me, I…
Then I shook my head and stood up straight. For Christ’s sake. Get it together.
I finished washing and ducked my head under the water again, rinsing the conditioner out of my hair as I stared ahead.
But then a shadow moved on the other side of the shower curtain, and I froze.
It stopped, standing there, the dark form looming just outside.
My heart skipped a beat. Only the emergency lighting remained on since there wasn’t supposed to be anyone staying after school for any sports or band today, so I blinked as if that would clear my vision.
Shit, I needed my glasses. I could see okay without them, but I was nearsighted.
“Hello?” I called out. “Who is that?”
Forgetting to turn off the shower, I reached over and grabbed my towel, holding it up to my body.
“Martin?” I said.
The shadow peeled back the curtain slowly, and a lump swelled in my throat as Damon Torrance stepped into the shower with me.
“What the hell?” I barked.
But he just came closer, closing the curtain and approaching me with a towel around his waist, his smile coming into view.
“Martin?” he repeated. “Why would your brother be stalking the girls’ locker room?”
“Why are you?”
I backed into the wall, the shower spilling over my shoulders and drenching the towel I clasped to my body.
He shrugged. “Practice just ended. I needed a shower.”
“The team isn’t practicing tonight.” I shoved him in the chest, pushing him away. “You’ve been here. Were you waiting for me?”
But he just came right back in, pinning me to the wall. “Shhh…”
He stroked my hair, pressing his body into mine as he breathed down on me.
My knees started to tremble, and I clenched my thighs, suddenly feeling like I was going to wet myself.
I jerked away, pushing at him with one hand and holding my towel with the other. “What do you want?”
He pinned my wrist to the wall at my side as he smiled down. “I want to know what he sees in you. Maybe I’ll see it, too.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. I’d rather fucking die.
I looked up into his black eyes and smelled that shit he smoked, a scream lodged in my throat.
Just scream.
Scream.
There was no one here to hear me, and even if there were, Martin Scott wouldn’t believe me. I was going to pay for this either way.
“Get out,” I gritted through my teeth. “Get the hell away from me!”
“I thought you’d have more fight,” he said, studying me. “You’re kind of disappointing.”
What, you can only get hard if I’m scared?
I was scared.
“Leave.” I glared up into his eyes and then slapped him, but he shot out for my hands, trying to get a hold of them as I fought.
My towel fell, and he caught both my wrists, bending my arms at the elbows and holding my hands between our chests, using his weight to keep them pinned.
“Leave!” I growled.
“Then scream,” he demanded instead.
I locked my jaw, pretending I was tough, but I was breathing a mile a minute.
He looked into my eyes, the water falling over both of us as he searched my face. “Why don’t you scream?”
You wouldn’t understand.
I gathered it was new for him. He preyed, because it got him off, but it ruined all of his plans when he wasn’t the victim’s first rodeo, didn’t it?
Because it wasn’t the blood he was after, but the fear.
It wasn’t the sex, but the power.
His eyes trailed down my neck and slowly down my arm, narrowing.
I don’t scream, because….
“Because screaming doesn’t help,” he murmured. “Does it?”
My heart thundered in my chest, but I remained frozen, staring up at him as he looked at my body and the bruises in the shapes of fingers wrapped around my upper arm. The scrapes on my legs and the blue and purple on my shoulders.
“Because you get tired of being the victim,” he said, like he was thinking out loud, “and it’s easier to just let it happen.”
He raised his eyes, meeting mine again, and my throat stretched painfully as his words burrowed into me.