Bound by Love's Gravity (21 page)

“Nice try, sweet Sarah. He left,” Shannon declared. “He’s not going to save you.”

Sarah wondered if she could throw a strawberry off the tray beside her at her friend’s head or if that would be childish. Deciding it wouldn’t be appropriate, she gritted her teeth. “I haven’t done anything with their…man parts.”

Jaycee wheezed, “What?”

“Excuse me?” Katie-Anne questioned incredulously.

“You’re joking,” Shannon accused.

Sarah nibbled her lower lip, trying to figure out what to say next. “Well, they just wanted me to get used to their touch. You know…after the attack and all, they’re worried about me. It’s kind of sweet actually.”

Three curses ripped through the air, a sudden tension raining down on them.

Shannon recovered first. “How are you doing with that?” she asked, her notorious inner mama bear making an appearance.

“Better,” Sarah replied. The ease of her answer astounded her. “Much better.”

“Good,” Katie-Anne mumbled as she got to her feet and grabbed a bottle of water. Twisting off the cap, she sucked down a healthy portion of the bottle. “That’s, um, good.”

Of everyone, her sister-in-law knew the most about Gavin. She’d told her in the hospital after the attack.

* * * *

Serenity General Hospital, February of last year…

Lying in the ICU, Sarah was in more pain than she’d ever known. She felt beaten and broken. But the agonizing aches and torturous throbbing were not wholly from the surgery repairing her ruptured spleen and massive internal bleeding she’d just endured. No, Gavin’s damage ran far deeper than that. The embarrassment, the belittling, and the degrading acts he’d put her through in a matter of hours would scar her soul as much as the cuts marring her body.

As Sarah darted her eyes around the room, claustrophobia plagued her. The space felt excruciatingly tight, and she wanted nothing more than to open the lone window and let in some sort of fresh air—preferably the cold kind.

While she’d been still under the influence of anesthesia, someone had evidently cranked the heat up to full blast, causing an unexpected rise in temperature inside the shadowed room. With the sweltering heat wave and the limited light peeking through the tiny slats of the closed blinds, not to mention the pile of blankets they’d covered her with, she felt stifled.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in the air around her, immediately regretting it when the pungent smell of antiseptic burned her nostrils. Wrinkling her nose as though that would rid her of the offending scent, she switched to breathing from her mouth when it didn’t.

Just as she was ready to succumb to sleep, she heard a sigh over the incessant drone of medical machinery. Lifting her too-heavy lids, she watched Katie-Anne ease into her room then stroll over to an open chair by the window. At no point did her sister-in-law look her way.

Katie-Anne kept her eyes averted as she grabbed the chair then lugged it halfway across the room to sit by the bed. Without speaking, she lowered herself into the chair, bracing her elbows on top of her thighs and bending her head down to stare at something on the floor.

Time ticked by. One endless second after another and still, nothing changed.

Finally, Katie-Anne raised her head and looked at Sarah. She immediately winced.

Do I look that bad?
She knew she probably did. From what the doctors had said, she was swollen, bruised, and discolored from head to toe. But her surgeon, Dr. Chason Maddock, had refused to let her get a mirror. He thought it would set her back further.
As if.

Next to her, Katie-Anne seemed to inspect the blemishes on her face, one by one, before eventually speaking. “Hey, Sarah. How are you doing?” She cleared her throat. “I mean…well, I don’t know what I mean. I’m not really good at this sort of thing.”

Neither was Sarah. She didn’t know what to say or how to act right now. And it wasn’t like she felt up to talking to anyone anyway. Not even to Katie-Anne. She was too tired, and she just wanted to be left alone.

So rather than acknowledging her sister-in-law, Sarah lay silently in the bed. She lifted her gaze to the drop ceiling and bored a hole into the mundane panels. She didn’t move a muscle. Or at least she tried not to.

“So, Sarah…” Katie-Anne trailed off.

Feeling guilty for snubbing her obviously upset sister-in-law, she rotated her head to the right, staring at her, eyeballing her closely. Still though, she didn’t speak. But at the very least, she gave Katie-Anne her attention.

Katie-Anne met her gaze. “So, Sarah,” she repeated. “I heard a bit of juicy gossip in the waiting area. Who would have thought I would find out salacious details about Serenitians in the hospital. Wait. Is that a word? Serenitians.” Katie-Anne smiled. “Okay, probably not. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. I heard Ella tell Micah they needed to talk about last night. There was an undertone between them—an ‘oh, baby, I want to strip you naked and fuck you in the closet’ undertone. It was so fucking hot that the two were about to set off the sprinkler system.”

Katie-Anne sounded insane, but Sarah didn’t mind. She needed that normalcy, the comfort to know that not everything in the world was dark and painful.

“I might be exaggerating,” Katie-Anne confessed, “but there were definitely some sparks flying there.” She paused before grinning and prattling on. “Oh! Deke and Adam are here. They’re up to no good—as usual. Whenever all these men get together, things get interesting”—halting midsentence, she winked—“really interesting. Lucky us. Huh?”

As she listened to Katie-Anne ramble, her body loosened, and she felt her breathing slow, relaxing appreciably.

“Let’s see. What else?” Katie-Anne cocked her head to the side, seeming to be rummaging through her mind for more to chatter about. “Ooh, I read one of those tabloid magazines,” she said with a cheeky grin. “They are horrid, I know. But I must admit they give me a good laugh. Well, this one story about Caedon Asher and his special”—she paused to air quote—“friend, Adeline Raine, caught my attention so I flipped over to it.”

Katie-Anne sighed. “Caedon’s that movie-star jerk Ella dated for a while. Anyway, the scandalous story said that Caedon and Adeline are getting married because she’s pregnant with his sextuplets. Can you believe it? That tiny little actress is carrying six babies!” She giggled. “I don’t know what’s more likely—Mr. Playboy getting married or America’s Sweetheart having babies.”

Without thinking, Sarah blurted out, “Me either.” Her voice sounded strangled. Then, unexpectedly, she half-coughed and half-laughed. Well, she mostly coughed. But there was a distinct laugh in there somewhere.

Katie-Anne touched her chest and threw back her head. “Oh, my God. You speak,” she teased.

Sarah sort of laughed again, but this time her amusement turned into a fit of coughs that left her panting for air and groaning in pain.

Katie-Anne leaped out of her seat and grabbed a pitcher of ice water and plastic glass from the nightstand. She poured the clear fluid into the cup then handed it to Sarah.

Between coughs, Sarah took a drink. The cold fluid felt good as it slithered down her throat, helping her clear the obstruction. When she finally caught her breath, she murmured, “Thank you.”

Katie-Anne nodded then returned to her seat, dropping down in an unladylike fashion that almost amused Sarah. Her sister-in-law went quiet as she twisted and turned in the boring-colored chair she sat in.

Silence stretched out between them until Katie-Anne broke the silence. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Do I? Big fat, N-O.
Quickly, she rushed to reply. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She sighed, giving in to the truth of the matter. “But I know I need to. I–I–I just don’t know what to say or how to say it.”

Katie-Anne leaned forward, brushing Sarah’s hair back from her face.

At first, Sarah flinched, but after her initial hesitation, she managed to relax.

Katie-Anne continued to caress Sarah’s hair, sliding her hand slowly and softly through the strands like a mother would for her injured child. “Tell me what he did to you,” she whispered. “We can go from there.”

Feeling her sister-in-law’s maternal touch and knowing her as well as she did, Sarah realized that she was the one to confide in. So she did.

As she stared over Katie-Anne’s shoulder, she riveted her eyes on the drab picture hanging on the wall. Then she began her harrowing tale. “W–W–We went out last night. Well, it was a disaster. Gavin is very”—she trailed off, unsure how to explain her attacker, with a sigh—“controlling and just plain mean. At first, I thought it was because he was a Dom and maybe that is still it. I don’t know. He confused me with all the things he said and did.”

That was an understatement. Her ex-boyfriend had spent many hours recounting his experience as a Dom. He’d sounded like a sadist, but not in the good way like she’d read about in the BDSM books her friend Ella had given her. Remembering his stories, she cringed at some of the things he’d shared with her.

And that hadn’t been the worst of it. Last night when she’d slept with him for the first time, he’d scared her. When she’d confessed her fear, he’d told her good. He wanted her to be terrified of him—the more frightened, the better. Then he’d only gotten worse. Losing her virginity to a man who treated her as callously as he had, hurting her and treating her like a doll for his own personal use, had been almost as bad as his attack.

Katie-Anne rushed to the defense of Doms everywhere. Or that’s what it sounded like when she said, “It was him. Doms aren’t cruel, and it sounds like he was.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Sarah snapped, her voice harsher than she’d ever heard it. “I won’t participate in that…that…that sort of thing again.” Tears formed in her eyes. “I can’t.”

Katie-Anne’s hand stalled in Sarah’s hair, and she frowned. “Don’t make any rash decisions. I get what you’re saying, but I think you need to give yourself time. Let Deke and Adam help you. They’ll show you what BDSM truly is about—being safe, loved, and cherished.”

Refusing to look at Katie-Anne, Sarah closed her eyes and turned her head away then growled. “Whatever. Last night, he wanted to fuck me. I hate that word, but that is what he called it. He wanted to fuck me, so he did, and I let him. I gave him my virginity. Only I couldn’t…well, you know…orgasm. And it made him mad, so he coaxed me into his car by saying he would take me home.” She’d been so relieved when he’d offered that she didn’t think about it. She’d followed him like a lamb for slaughter.

Snorting in derision, Sarah went on. “Like an idiot, I believed him, but he didn’t take me home. He drove straight out of town, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late for me to escape. We drove for a while in silence, and then he told me…”

Craving a moment to catch her breath, Sarah trailed off again, her sudden silence clogging the room. When she eventually resumed her story where she had left off, the emotion in the highly charged air had ramped up until it was nearly suffocating her. “He told me that he was taking me to The Edge. He th–th–thought that would solve my problem. If he could do more of the things that he’d been talking about for weeks, I could orgasm and everything would be hunky-dory between us. After the things he’d done and said to me, I was desperate to stop him, so I told him that Deke and Adam wouldn’t let us in. It pissed him off.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and her body trembled stormily. But she didn’t let that stop her. “He hit me across the face, but he kept going, his driving growing erratic and fast. While he gave me a lecture, he pushed every button that he could and threatened me in every way possible. And, yet again, I took it like a spineless jellyfish. Then he brought Deke and Adam back into it. Without thinking I said something back to him, and it set him off.”

By now, tears were gushing down Sarah’s face. “H–He pulled over on the side of the road. He punched me, dragged me out of the car, cut my clothes off, and then tied me up. He beat me with a cane then started to rape me. B–B–But, thank goodness, he didn’t. He had a hang-up about rape. Rather than violating me that way, he…you know, masturbated and ejaculated on me.” She shuddered, her violent tremor shaking the entire bed. “I know why he didn’t rape me, and I know why he came on me. He told me—explicitly.”

“Why?” Katie-Anne asked, her voice a mere croak. “Why didn’t he rape you?”

Turning her head back to Katie-Anne, she peered at her. “H–H–He loves me.” As soon as she whispered the words, she broke down completely, openly sobbing. She explained the rest of the story as best she could, talking between sobs and gulping breaths. “H–He said that I’ll come to him and that I’ll be his little toy for the rest of my life, but that wasn’t all he said. His next words were worse.”

Katie-Anne grimaced. “My God. What could he have said to you that was worse than this?”

Could she do it? God, she hoped so, because she had to try. Trying not to think about what she was going to say, Sarah whispered through dry, cracked lips, “Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Promise me that this one thing will be between us and us alone. If you tell me that, I will believe you and tell you what he said.”

Katie-Anne sighed. “I promise.”

“He said that his cum marked me like a dog pissing on his territory.”

“Oh, my God.” Katie-Anne gasped.