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That cunt of Red’s. Her slit beckoned. If I fucked her there, when all was arranged...finalized...it should be okay.

My fingers tightened on the fork, my other fingers pressed into my scalp. Hurting myself was preferable to hurting others. Not that it always worked.

I moved my fingers up the fork and squeezed the pad of my forefinger into the sharp end of the tines until blood leaked around the point.

Red shifted on the chair. I’m sure she didn’t mean to reveal more, to tease me, but I could see my tongue in her, licking out that pussy, crushing her to the floor with my weight, fucking her unconscious. I knew what was good for the world – for me to stay put, revolving in my own mess.

Her slit though, it put things into perspective. Was I really this self-sacrificing?

Chapter 6

Walking on the beach below his villa helped me think. There was despair. There was also hope. I might be mentally the equivalent of a drugged-up addict much of the time with him but I did recover.

When allowed. When he allowed me to think.

I bit my lip until it hurt and stared at the suck and surge of waves further out and to the side, where the villa’s decks hung over the sea. He wanted an argument from me and I was afraid. The aftermath last time had been not at all logical. I’d won and he’d done bad things.

“Come here!”

He stood a few yards higher, among the sea grass, feet sunken in sand, arms out, hands making a come-hither motion. A big man made bigger by his position on the land, by his supremacy over my mind.

Bravery was doing something even when you’re afraid. I pulled in a ragged breath and trudged up the dune, to stand before him in the red bikini he’d given me.

He took both my hands, smoothing fingers and thumbs over my palms. I shuddered, watching his heavy, ink-stained fingers move over my skin, hating this forced gesture of intimacy. The ink was still showing on me. He’d showered me, let me swim even, and still I had his writing on me – pretty and elegant letters written by this bastard.

Felt like I was some element of a magic spell, with incantations lined up and waiting to be spoken.

“Tell me your next argument.”

“And you’ll let me go?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes. Sort of...you said maybe.” But he was also planning to keep me back then. Now, I wasn’t sure what he meant by not being able to keep me. “Are you going to let me go anyway?”

His cheek twitched. “I’ve arrangements pending.”

My hands chilled. “Then why should I bother with saying anything if it’s decided?”

“Because I want you to and maybe it will make me change those arrangements.” He leaned in to say quietly, “Because if you don’t I will get distracted by other things.”

Other things was ominous.

His thumbs inscribed never-ending circles on my skin.

“Follow.” With his hand at the small of my back, with his will solidly in place, he drew me higher to where a blanket waited.

Past the paved driveway and the parked and polished cars, the white wall of his compound cut off the sky. Palms planted at the base of the wall waved in a breeze. I could run and climb the wall.

“No, you can’t,” Isak whispered, kissing my neck then pulling me to the blanket, to sit between his outstretched legs. He wrapped his arms around me.

Kisses were for lovers, not for enemies. How could he simply kiss me?

Waves roared and sucked the sand into its embrace. The sun baked my legs. Wearing a bikini, sitting on a beach in a beautiful place, and all I wanted was to be gone from here.

I slumped my shoulders, swallowed my misgivings and fear.

“You want words from me? Illegal. Keeping me here, making me do things I don’t want to, it’s illegal.”