Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (37 page)

THREE

After he’s finished cutting my tattooed flesh away, leaving a mess of weeping blood and pain, he leaves. But first, he unties me. I wonder why, until he throws me a stained towel that used to be white and gestures to my stomach.

“Keep pressure on it,” he says, his black eyes gleaming in the harsh light. “If you fucking die on me before I’m finished with you, I’ll come down and drag you out of hell myself.”

As he slams the door, I stare at it blankly, holding the towel to my stomach to staunch the bleeding. The pain is worse than the needlework from any intricate tattoo, and more intense than any blunt-edged knife dipped in fire and pressed to unmarred flesh. But I don’t cry anymore, despite the flames of pain licking at my torso. I’m just relieved that I’m alone, and untied, and for the moment, alive.

It makes me think of the last thing he said before he slammed the door and left me in here.

If you fucking die on me, I’ll drag you out of hell myself.

I believe him.

Mostly, though, I’m glad that my comment had the desired effect – get him so angry he forgot what he was here for. Getting the truth from me. My mind already feels a lot clearer than it did, and relief soothes me like a balm. He didn’t ask me about Elliot. He didn’t ask me about Kayla. He didn’t ask me about
Jase.

I’d give every last scrap of my battered flesh to keep them safe. He can cut it all away so there’s nothing left but blood and bone, and I’ll die happy if it means
they
all survive Dornan Ross.

A few hours later, I can tell night is approaching. The air around me has turned from thick and muggy to slightly chilly, making me shiver violently, still damp with my own blood. I have to peel the blood-soaked towel from my torso to get it away from my skin, and then when I look, I wish I hadn’t. My entire left side is a mess of blood and bits of torn flesh.
Hacked
is about the only word that could accurately describe what he’s done to me. He’s effectively excised the top layers of my skin so that no trace of ink remains.

It looks horrific. It hurts more the longer I stare at it, wondering how it will ever heal with no flesh to knit back together, but then I remember that it doesn’t need to heal, because
I’ll be dead soon.

At some point I must nod off, because when I come to, it’s to a tray of food sliding along the floor toward me, and to the door slamming shut quickly behind it.

A chance to escape, and I was too fucking slow to even open my eyes.

Too fucking slow to even try. I’m
pathetic.

I survey the food tray with interest; I’m suddenly reminded of the grueling flight I took to Thailand to have my surgery. I cringe inwardly as I realize that was mere months ago, and now I’m sitting in a death chamber, waiting for the Reaper to take me.

The same feeling of claustrophobia I experienced on that long flight is kind of like what I’m going through now. One shitty meal delivered at some point during the long hours. I’m uncomfortable, and I’m not in control, and I just want to get off this ride.

I crawl over to the metal tray and survey today’s contents. A sandwich made with dry bread and deli meat, a small red apple, and a glass of water used as a makeshift vase, holding a bunch of the most potently sweet-smelling flowers I’ve ever encountered. I don’t touch the flowers, despite how pretty they are with their long, thin green stalks and sprays of tiny, white bell-shaped blossoms hanging down. I swallow thickly as I wonder what kind of message Dornan is trying to send by including a deliberate gesture reserved for lovers and mourners.

I grab hold of the sandwich and disassemble it as best I can. Salami and cheese, cut in half, two seemingly innocent triangles on a plastic plate. I’m so hungry, and yet every time they bring me food, I’m terrified. Eating something Dornan has served me always makes me nervous with every bite, convinced I’ll bite into a human ear or a piece of glass or poison. So far I’ve been fine, but I still don’t trust.

Thorough inspection done, I grab one of the triangles and devour it. At first I tried to eat slowly, but I can’t. I’m starving, and this one meal a day is barely sustaining me. Plus, I’m afraid if I take too long to eat it, someone might come in and take it off me before I’ve finished.

As soon as the food hits my stomach, a wave of nausea shakes me. I hurry to the bucket in the corner of the room and retch painfully, vomiting up everything I’ve just scarfed down.

The food tastes strangely metallic on the way back up. Desperation and hunger rises with the last heave of food and I spit the taste away from my mouth as fresh tears prick at my eyes.

Poison. He’s fucking
poisoning
my food.

I’m starving, and I look upon the other half of the sandwich with both desperation and disdain. I want to eat it. I want to devour it. I’m ravenous and I need something to fill my hollow stomach. But not something that’s going to make me vomit.

I sit on the floor, huddled against the wall opposite the door. Watching. Waiting. Glancing at the half sandwich. The seemingly innocuous apple that’s probably full of maggots. The glass of water that has the stems of a highly poisonous flower immersed within.
He’s fucking poisoning me.

Finally, I can’t stand it any longer. I hurl myself upon the last half of the sandwich, ramming it into my mouth as fast as I can, unable to stop myself even though I know the end result will likely be more vomiting and subsequent hunger.

The second half of the sandwich eaten, I pep-talk my fragile self.
Even if it’s poisoned, you need sustenance
.
You need to eat or you’ll die
. I brace myself against the wall and choke uncomfortably as fresh nausea rises in my chest, burning like acid.
Keep it down, keep it down.

Finally, after what seems like forever, the urge to open my mouth and bring everything back up gradually lessens. My stomach still churns away, but the food stops trying to escape.

I sit there for what seems like hours, waiting. For what, I’m not sure.

Maybe for death.

And death returns eventually, his knife back in his hands. I slide up to my feet unsteadily, feeling fragile as a feather, like I might crumple if he breathes on me. He smiles as he watches me waver unsteadily on my feet.

“Nice flowers,” I huff. “Did you think I was too stupid to realize they’re fucking poisonous?”

He ignores my words. “I was trying to be romantic, Julie. You’re my baby girl, aren’t you?” He’s playing with the blade in his hands, the same slim switchblade he stabbed into my thigh months ago, when he thought I was a girl called Sammi.

I shudder. “What did you put in the food?”

His smile turns to a look of irritation; a frown and a smirk all in one. “That won’t work, Julie. Distracting me. You should know that by now.”

I snort, the energy it takes to converse almost too much to bear. “You put something in it that made me sick. Why don’t you just kill me already?” I glance at the blade in his hand. “Aren’t you tired of this?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer, just stares me down with those back eyes that remind me so painfully of other eyes.
Jase.
I push the thought of his beautiful face away. Because it hurts too much to even think of him.

I will never see him again.

I take a tentative step toward Dornan and his blade, my legs shaking with the sheer effort of trying to move limbs that are literally starving and wasting away.

He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t stop me. I guess he knows at this point that I can’t overpower him, can’t outsmart him, can’t get past him. There is nothing I can do to him that could cause him to worry.

I reach up slowly and curl my fingers around his fist, the one that clutches the switchblade.

“You could do it now. Slice my neck open.”

I don’t want to die. I’m not encouraging him to pull the proverbial trigger and splatter my brains on the wall out of any bravery or lack of regard for my life. It’s not about being brave.

I just want this to be over.

Amusement fills his face as he uses his free hand to peel my fingers from his fist.

“I’m not tired,” he says, chuckling. “Do you really think you’ve suffered enough?”

I think of when the suffering started, of the seven scars that are now gone from my flesh, of the burning and the agony and the sorrow of it all.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I do.”

“Well I disagree,” he says. “In fact, I think we’ve only just started.”

Anger wells up in my chest and I snap. “You’re poisoning me now?” I screech. “You’re fucking
poisoning
me?” I point emphatically at the bucket of puke in the corner. “You coward. Use your hands. Use your knife. Only a coward would poison his fucking prisoner.”

He reaches out and stabs my chest with his finger, making me step back until my back is up against the wall.

“I’ll tell you why you’re sick,” he says. “It’s not the sandwiches, baby girl. It’s the poison inside you. It’s the souls of my sons tearing you apart from the inside out.”

He grins, his words nonsensical but nevertheless a disturbing visual. I shudder as I imagine worms that look like Chad, Maxi and company crawling in my veins like sludgy syrup, black and toxic, burning through my veins until I’m nothing but a bleeding, infested corpse.

“Is that the sons I’ve already killed?” I snap, “Or the ones I’m still going to?”

His wide grin twitches, and suddenly, I’m so fucking over this dance that we’ve been doing for the past few weeks, so fucking tired of everything.

“If you’re going to poison me to death, you might as well just shoot me,” I say morosely, before I can stop myself. Jesus Christ! I want to slap my hand over my mouth, to shake myself by the shoulders. What’s wrong with me? I’m strong, I’m unbreakable, I’m vengeance personified - and yet I’m asking my enemy to just hurry up and shoot me already.

“You’re pathetic,” Dornan growls, amusement in his voice.

I feel crazy. I am literally going insane in this room with him.

“So are you,” I reply, before I can stop myself. “Four sons dead before you even fucking
noticed
me.”

His amusement at my apathy transforms to unbridled rage as my words hit home. He bunches his fist and draws it back, aiming directly for my face.

At the beginning, I used to flinch. I used to shield my face with my hands, trying to avoid the pain, but as Dornan’s fist travels toward my face in slow motion, I smile and ready myself for the pain.

Crack!
My head snaps back, hitting the wall behind me with enough force to knock me out for a moment. I feel my body crumple to the floor, paper-fragile and ready to shatter completely, my eyes slammed shut but my lips are pursed into a triumphant smile.

Because every time he strikes out at me is one step closer to death, and with it, an eternal sleep; a blissful relief from the tyranny of this agonizing existence.

And I’m so very, very tired.

FOUR

Something cold pours over my head and I gasp, spluttering as I jerk awake.

I peer up to see Dornan standing above me, an empty water glass in his hand and a look of irritation on his face so scathing, it makes me want to giggle.

I’m a pile of tangled limbs on the floor, and I can taste blood in my mouth. The fresh blood swims around on my tongue, mixing with my saliva and the old blood that’s stuck to my teeth after weeks of being hit in the face. So much blood, it has become a normal thing for me to taste.

I lean over and spit some of the blood on the floor beside me, completely uncaring at how that might look. After all, Dornan’s the only one watching, and I’m pretty sure he’s used to my blood by now. The room reeks of dying - of dried metallic blood, and piss, and resignation. It doesn’t reek of death yet - death has a completely different smell to actually dying. Death smells of rotting flesh and old blood that’s no longer circulating, no longer able to well up on a blade’s painful cue. Dying,
my
dying, is full of energy and pain, but death is quiet and cold and so
very
final.

Soon, I’m sure of it, death and I are going to meet in this room, and then I might finally have some relief from this hell.

***

Time passes, but everything remains the same. The torture. The food. The sickness. Until one day, Dornan visits me, and he does something different.

“Do you want to die today?” he asks me. I stare at the ceiling from my spot, tied to the bed frame, still wearing the same bra and panties and ruined shirt.

How nice of him, giving me the choice. I shiver as his hand slides down between my legs.

“Do you know what the French call an orgasm?” I gasp in surprise as he applies pressure to my clit and begins to knead it ever so gently. Tears prick at the corner of my eyes as I fight to retain some semblance of control.

It feels awful. It feels
good.

I’ve had nothing but pain for the past days and weeks. Nothing but blood and electric shocks and water boarding. Nothing but knives and broken glass and hate.

“They call it
petit mort
. The little death. What do you want today, baby girl? The little death? Or the big one?”

He stops, and I take a long, shuddering breath attempting to compose myself.

The word
please
sits on the tip of my tongue, feathery and desperate, and I physically bite down to stop myself from uttering it. Begging would be foolish. Begging just makes it worse.

He licks his bottom lip thoughtfully and grabs the knife from beside my head, holding it vertical with the pointed end of the blade pressing lightly into the bare flesh directly above my heart. I try to recoil, but flat on my back, there’s nowhere to go.

“I could cut out your heart,” he says, pressing the tip of the blade a little harder. I wince as it breaks into my skin, a nasty, stinging warmth bubbling up from my chest. My blood. Again. He seems to read my thoughts.

“I wonder how much blood you have left inside you, Julie?” he muses cruelly. “I could drain it all out of you, slowly. I can make your death last a lifetime.”

Part of me wants to say
Better get started, then
but I don’t. I close my eyes tightly as his other hand takes some of the blood seeping from my chest and pushes my bra down, smearing the blood over my nipple. It’s warm at first but turns cold almost immediately, and I cringe as I feel my nipple stiffen to a hard peak.

He repeats the action on my other nipple, pinching it hard. The cold blood makes my skin prickle and I shiver involuntarily.

“You like that?”

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter as he dips his fingertips in the wound on my chest and applies that same finger to my clit, pushing my panties to the side and rubbing shallow, wet circles.

“Open your eyes,” he says.

I don’t. He responds to my disobedience by pressing the knife harder into my chest.

“Open.Your.Fucking.Eyes.”

The blade reaches deeper into my chest, hitting that hard spot above my ribcage. I cry out and open my eyes.

“Good,” he says. “Now, you didn’t answer my question did you?”

I just stare dully into his black eyes.

“Do you want to die today, Julie?”

Fresh tears prick at my eyes and anger blossoms in my fragile heart.

He started this. He got what he deserved for killing my father and setting his sons upon a defenseless teenage girl.

“Funny,” I whisper. “I never gave your sons a choice.”

It’s suicidal talking like this, but I can’t help it. I’m battered and broken and beyond caring what happens next. Rage fills his features and he clenches his teeth so hard, I could imagine them shattering from the pressure.

But as Dornan’s knife sinks deeper into my chest, millimeter by agonizing millimeter, I can’t help but struggle. I pull at the ropes binding my wrists and ankles, twisting while at the same time trying to keep my chest from moving. Trying to keep Dornan’s blade from going any deeper.

Is this it? Is this really the end? It can’t be, not yet. Surely he’s not finished with me.

And of course, he’s not. He removes the knife from my chest with a sickening squelch noise and places it beside my head. I turn my eyes and strain to see it, laying on the coiled bedsprings beside me. It’s so tantalizingly close, but with my arms bound tightly, there’s no way I can reach it.

I’m torn back to the moment by his hands at my panties. He tries to yank them down, but my weight is on them and they won’t budge past my thighs. And I’m not exactly helping him out with my dead weight and my clenched thighs.

He reaches for the knife and with two swift movements, he’s sliced my panties off and thrown them on the ground. Now I’m wearing nothing except the shirt and the bra he’s already cut open.

In an instant, before I can blink, he’s straddling me, still fully dressed, his pants unzipped, and his cock hard and ready in his palm.

And once he begins, I want to die. I want him to stab me with the knife. Anything but
this.

I can’t describe the feeling so much as what’s happening to my heart. It’s breaking, like an old porcelain mug—the crack that goes deep but just looks like an innocent little line in the pattern, until one day you lift it to your lips to drink and it shatters in your hand, sending boiling hot liquid down your chest, scalding your skin and making you scream.

That’s what my heart breaking feels like.

He leans over me, his tattooed arms on either side of my head, so that no matter where I look, all I can see is Dornan. He fills my gaze just as he fills me inside. Roughly. Painfully.

I begin to cry as I close my eyes, tears running down my face and pooling in my ears, some making it past and sliding down my neck. He doesn’t miss them either; swooping down, he presses his lips to the tender spot just below my ear.

“Does that feel good?” he asks, smiling widely, his lashes drooping ever-so-slightly from the pleasure he’s obviously feeling.

I shake my head angrily back and forth. No. It doesn’t feel good. It feels like I want to die.

The springs pull at my hair as he continues to drive into me, pushing me up the bed with every upward thrust until I’m convinced most of my hair is embedded in the bed springs forevermore.

“I’ll try harder,” he murmurs, biting my neck as he reaches down and applies a thumb to my swollen bud of nerves.

My legs begin to shake and my breath quickens as I fight to resist his touch, the way he’s scratching the itch inside me. If I weren’t tied up, if he weren’t a monster, we might be two lovers entwined, bringing each other close to the edge, to—as he called it—the little death.

I can’t. I won’t. “Please, stop,” I beg, as the circles he’s rubbing threaten to make me explode.

What’s happening to me? The way he’s touching me shouldn’t matter, because it’s Dornan. The man who destroyed everything; the man who
is
destroying the last pieces of me right now on this bare bed. I should feel nothing, but after weeks upon weeks of horror and pain, the primitive part of me is screaming for this release, for this small act of pleasure, for some fucking break from the relentless agony that is my existence.

But my brain interjects – my higher intelligence demands that I can’t possibly let this happen.

“Stop!” I cry, louder this time. What else can I do? This is far, far worse than any pain he’s inflicted on me yet.

Because my body
likes
it.

He doesn’t stop. He kisses me instead, right on the mouth, and before I can think to bite down I’m opening my mouth wider, groaning, exploding into a million dying stars. My heart sinks as I clench tightly around him. Pleasure and devastation mark my voice as I weep and come underneath him, crying out into his mouth.

“Good girl,” he says, his grin wicked, his pace quickening. I close my eyes and sob as he pulls out of me, and a moment later I feel hot spurts cover the spot on my torso where he’s excised all the pretty colors and left a giant, weeping mess of blood.

I squeeze my eyes shut and continue to sob brokenly as his weight shifts from the bed, my loud wails tearing through the tiny room.

He waits patiently while I cry and scream, making noise until there’s nothing left. Then, I stare at the low ceiling, at the spider webs and cracks and the dull, flaking paint that someone must have put up a long time ago. He stays still beside me for so long, I almost forget he’s there.

“I thought it was pain that would break you,” he says finally. “But pleasure? What a fucking surprise.”

He reaches down and wipes the tears from my cheeks, then sucks every bit of my blood and my tears from each fingertip.

“And as far as tears go,” he adds darkly, “I think yours taste the best.”