Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) (16 page)

I started to feel a twinge of desire then, just a strange fluttering of need between my thighs. As if sensing it, his hand moved there and stoked through my lips, sinking a finger inside after a minute. “Wet,” he groaned against my neck and I could feel him reaching between us to undo his pants and free himself.

The desire quickly got replaced with genuine fear as I felt the head of his dick press against me, feeling too big. But before I could even draw a breath to consider that, he was inside me, not slow and gentle, not inch by inch, one thrust and he was buried to the hilt. I let out a scream at the kind of pain I couldn't describe stabbing at the contact of our bodies.

The only bit of relief I got was the fact that after less than a minute or two of rough thrusting (and accompanying pain), he let out a groan and came inside me.

He was breathing into my neck as I tried to blink the tears away.

All I could think was- it was nothing like I had read, like I had fantasized about. If that was what sex was, I couldn't imagine why anyone wanted to do it. Let alone write books about it.

He pushed himself up and looked down at me, giving me a white-toothed smile and the pain felt like a dull ache as I looked at him- my husband, the boy I had known since I was six years old, the man I had entrusted with my future.

“You're mine now,” he said and I felt a flutter in my belly. It sounded like something one of my fictional heroes would say to their women- always alpha and possessive. In that moment, I felt my smile spread to match his and everything felt right in the world.

I had no idea what the reality of belonging to Damian Crane meant. If I had, I would have waited for him to fall into a sex-lulled sleep, slipped back into my clothes, and ran like hell as far and as fast as I could.

It was alright at first. He was demanding, at times, even more so than my father had been. But I was a wife, not a daughter. My duties were amplified. I cooked, I cleaned, I did our laundry, I paid the bills. Then at night, I would lay on my back or get onto all fours and he would fuck me. That was what it was too- fucking. We didn't have sex. We damn sure never made love. And to even say “we” was inappropriate.
We
didn't do anything. He fucked. I laid there. I took it. After the first two or three times, it stopped hurting. The lack of pain, however, didn't help the fact that it did nothing for me. Nothing. I was a newlywed woman who didn't know what an orgasm felt like.

It wasn't long before the name-calling started. At first, I thought it was Damian's version of dirty talk.
Bitch
.
Slut. Cunt. Whore.
I should have known that wasn't what it was because each time he said it, I winced because I heard the malice underneath. I heard it, but I refused to acknowledge it.

Besides, having sex that did nothing for you while being called names, well, that wasn't that bad. What was bad was when he was too lazy to fuck me. That was when I learned that the loving, passionate way women went down on their heroes in my books was going to be as far from my reality as the sex itself was. Because when Damian wanted my mouth, he wanted it hard and he wanted it deep. He wanted it so that I was gagging all over him, his cock buried in my throat, my mascara running down my face, his cum coming out of my nose. He wanted it brutal. And that was how I started to feel afterward in the bathroom as I cried silently, wiping my face, brushing my teeth, trying to swallow past the razor-blade sensation of my throat- brutalized.

But he was my husband.

That was my job.

It never even crossed my mind to refuse him.

Then, like some prayer answered, he was deployed. I felt so guilty even thinking that- that I was happy that he was being shipped off to do god-knew what, maybe to never return. But that was what I felt- happiness.

He was gone and while I was still a kept woman, his little barefoot wife, I had more freedom too. I went out with girls I went to school with and had lost touch. I took a couple cheap classes at the night school. If I didn't want to wash the dishes every night, I didn't. If I didn't want to wear makeup the way he liked it (mascara, red lips)... I didn't bother. They were small things, but at twenty years old and having never known even a taste of independence, I reveled in each tiny victory.

Then he was coming home again.

I tried (and failed) to be glad for it, to have my husband back. Granted, he was rough with me in bed and he made a lot of demands on me... but he was still the boy I used to make mud pies with, who I first kissed when I was fifteen, who told me I was the prettiest girl in town. And sometimes, he could still be that sweet. I would catch him watching me as I did something stupid like ironing and ask him what he was thinking and he would say things like... 'the best thing that ever happened to me' or 'I still can't believe you're mine'. They were words that made little flutterings move through my belly. They were things that made the never-ending work tolerable.

He let himself in the apartment slamming the door, making me yelp and turn, dropping the glass I was drying. I was supposed to pick him up from the airport. I was supposed to get pretty and go greet him like a good wife, let him squeeze me too tight, kiss me too intimate for a public place. That was what was supposed to happen. But not for another two hours.

“What the fuck did you do, Willow?” he growled, dropping his bag and stomping toward where I stood frozen, barefoot in the kitchen, surrounded by shards of glass.

“I... I wasn't expecting you. You scared me,” I said, taking a deep breath.

“You fucking sayin' it's my fault you broke a glass? Who pays for that shit, Willow? Huh? Who!”

He'd never yelled at me before. Been a little gruff, a little unnecessarily forceful in his tone? Sure. But he had never outright yelled. I felt my body jolt away from the sound, fear uncurling like a snake in my belly, jaws unhinged, ready to swallow me up from the inside.

“I'm sorry, Damian. I didn't mean to...”

“No. You're not sorry. Not yet. But you're going to be.”

I didn't even register that I should be terrified when he reached down and started to unfasten his belt. In my world, that didn't pose a threat. If anything, I thought he was going to make me suck him off or fuck him or something. And, well, who could blame him for wanting that as soon as he was home after so long without it?

“Throw the rest of that in the sink, bitch.”

Bitch?
Bitch?
I threw the rest of the glass in the sink, my hands suddenly trembling. “I'm so glad you're hom...”

“Shut the fuck up. I know what you've been up to.” Oh, shit. Shit shit shit. He knew about the classes and the friends. Alright. That was okay. I could smooth that all over. I just needed to talk to him and say... “Fucking everything with a cock,” he accused, taking his belt and folding it in half, gripping the end tight.

“What? Damian, no! I've only ever been with yo...”

“Don't you fucking lie to me you dirty slut! I know you've been giving away my cunt to every man you could.”

Suddenly, my eyes went to the belt and I understood. Oh, god, I understood. The feeling I felt then was hard to describe. Fear, yes, but it was different than any fear I had ever known before because it was mingled with something else. It was mingled with the knowledge that unlike a random mugging on the street, that this would not be the only time. If my husband was going to beat me, he was going to keep beating me. There would be no end in sight. The nausea rose up in my throat and I had to swallow hard through it to keep it down.

“I'm gonna show you what happens when my woman steps out on me. I guess I have to teach you a lesson, huh?”

His arm lifted, cocked back, and all that was after that was the searing, indescribable pain of leather biting into my skin. It was simply... blinding. All consuming. It was all there was in the world, the pain. I lost my footing early, slamming down on all fours on the floor, feeling the glass cutting into my palms and my legs as I tried to scramble away, tears pouring down my face. But on my hands and knees, I was in the perfect position for him to whip my skirt up, rip my panties off, and apply the belt to the bare, unprotected skin of my ass. The sick came up then, leaving me gagging all over the kitchen floor as the belt broke into the already raised welts on my skin.

“You belong to
me,
” he growled, getting down behind me and I knew what was next. Somehow, I preferred it. I didn't even bother to say no. If it took the belt away, I would let him fuck me until my legs gave out. The belt moved upward and I felt him slide it around my neck, tightening it into a collar and pulling until I couldn't even try to gasp for breath. It was then that he pushed inside of me.

After, he left me on the floor to cry. And, lord, how I cried. I had never cried like that before in my life- loud, loud enough to alert the neighbors if they hadn't already heard me screaming through my beating, and uncontrolled, my entire body convulsing hard with the sobs that I felt would never end.

He came out when I was quieter, still crying and I was pretty sure I would never stop crying, picked me up, and carried me to the bathroom where he dropped me on my ass in the tub, chuckling when I screamed at the pressure against the open wounds across my back and bottom. I watched in horror as he moved toward the medicine cabinet and grabbed alcohol, tweezers, triple antibiotic, and gauze. He came back toward me, not bothering to look at my face as he unscrewed the cap and poured the alcohol all down my legs and over my palms, ignoring my cries of pain.

“Next time you'll act right, Wills,” he chided as he pulled out the tweezers and went to work pulling the glass out of my skin. Once finished, he applied the antibiotic liberally and wrapped me up before pushing me onto my stomach and seeing to the cuts on my back.

See the thing was... it wasn't regret. Him taking care of me? It wasn't out of regret or out of concern for my well being. He took care of my wounds because he didn't want there to be any reason for me to ever have to go to the hospital, to ever get a chance to tell anyone what was going on.

He left me in the tub when he was finished cleaning me up. I didn't cry. I suddenly found myself out of tears. All I felt was sad. So incredibly sad.

My husband had beat me.

I was a battered woman.

I was a cliché.

But there was nothing I could do about it.

I did what every trapped, abused woman did at first- I stayed.

I stayed and I got beat in different ways, depending on my offense. Sometimes it was bare-handed spanking. Sometimes it was the belt again. Later, it was his bare fists slamming into my face, into my sides.

It was my twenty-fourth birthday when I decided I couldn't take it anymore. The night before, Damian thought the shorts I wore to the market were too revealing and when I got home, I was called my new names:
bitch, slut, cunt, whore.
Then he pulled off the shorts in question and he beat my ass until I wet myself.

And. I. Was. Done.

The actual word 'done' took on a whole new meaning as I sat in the bathtub where he always dealt with the aftermath of his anger on my skin and I twirled the knife around in my hand, trying to get to the point where I knew I could do it- sink it into my wrist and drag it up my arm, slicing open the vein and making it impossible for them to fix me, to give me back to him.

I was never going to belong to him again. Never. He was never going to get a chance to lay his hands on me again. He was never going to be able to be the reason I cried at night.

If that meant my only way out was to slice myself open and take myself out of the world, then so be it.

The only problem was... Damian came home from work early. Damian came home from work and I flew out of that tub, tucking the knife behind my back when he threw the bathroom door open without knocking. There was no such thing as privacy in my life. He had once stood there and watched me pull out a tampon and nothing had ever felt more mortifying.

“Why isn't dinner ready?” he demanded, ready for a fight already.

It was three in the afternoon, that was why dinner wasn't ready. Well, that and the fact that I didn't plan to live to see dinner when I got up in the morning.

“Answer me, bitch!” he roared, closing in on me.

I don't know where the urge came from, where it had been buried all the other times he had come at me, why it hadn't surfaced before. Wherever it had been hiding, it was showing itself then, an all-consuming burst of self-preservation. I felt the handle of the knife in my hand and I squeezed it hard, feeling a calmness settle over me as I did.

“Answer me, cunt.”

“No,” I said, taking a step forward instead of in retreat like he had come to expect from me.

The confused look on his face was seared into my memory. It was the only time I let his face pop into my head, when I was trying to remember that dumbfounded look.

“What the fuck did you just say to me, bitch?”

“I said no,” I shot back, my jaw clenched tight as I kept talking. “You should be familiar with it. You've heard me scream it out every time you've beaten me the past four years, you son of a bitch.”

His brows went up, but the rage I had been expecting didn't surface. If anything, he almost looked calm, amused. A evil smirk toyed with his lips. “I guess I have to teach you a lesson, huh?”