Page 182 of Burning Ember

He smiles a beautiful smile, one that used to make me smile in return. “No. See that’s a good girl.” He tries to pull the necklace over my head.

I snatch it from his hand and hold on to it for all I’m worth. “No. I won’t take it off.”

His smile slowly fades. His eyes roam over me as his lip starts to curl. The muscles in his neck strain. “Take it off, Em. This is the only warning you’re going to get.”

I shake my head and brace for the consequences of my choice to hold on to Mav, because I think the hope of seeing him, Will, and Sunny again is all I have to live for at this point.

Warner grabs my face, digs his fingers into my cheeks, and slams my head against the window of the Escalade, making me rise to the tips of my toes. “Then wear it. Be a biker whore if that’s what you want to be. But don’t cry like a little bitch when I treat you like one.”

His other hand goes to his belt. He quickly unlatches it then pulls it from his pants. He spins me around and shoves me against the SUV. My face smashes against the glass.

The first hit of the belt lands across my shoulder blades. When I cry, buck, and squirm to break free, he tangles his hand in my hair and uses it to keep me where he wants me. Each time the belt lands somewhere new. My lower back, my ass, across my thighs, and then he starts from the top again and works his way down.

After it ends, before I can sag to my knees, I hear him unzip.

And I am nothing . . . nothing but fire. Fire is all I feel. Flaming through me as tears coat my face and neck, and mix with the sweat coating my skin. Panting, I suck oxygen into my lungs.

The boxers I’m wearing are ripped down my thighs and I know I have little time before he forces himself inside me.

“I slept with one of them last night. He didn’t use a condom.” If Warner’s anything, he’s a clean freak. And if I know him like I think I do, the idea of being inside me where another man has recently been, will repulse him.

Then I hear the rip of foil, and he pulls me back a step only to push me down to my knees. He forces my face into the dirt, so that with each inhale it’s sucked into my nose and mouth. I cough and try to wrestle away, but I have nothing left.

I sob, “No,” into the dirt. And I cry Mav’s name. Before it leaves my mouth, Warner buries himself inside me.

I break and break and break. Everything I am shatters to dust. I close my eyes and stop fighting.

Why did I ever dare hope my life could be more than pain and misery and disappointment?

With each thrust, he grunts from the force of it, and my vision grows darker. I give in and let it take hold of me.

Embracing your dark side can set you free.

EMBER

This time when I wake, it’s because fluid is going down my nose and into my mouth. Sputtering I roll to my side, crying out as I do.

Warner stands over me. When the last drop of water leaves the bottle he poured over my face, he throws it into the dirt.

“Get up,” he snaps.

Still coughing, I groan, “No. Leave me here.”

Snagging my arm, he pulls me up, and sets me on my feet, and then shimmies the boxers back up and over my hips. “Don’t. Don’t piss me off again. Damn it, Em, it didn’t need to be this way. Just stop saying things you know will set me off. God, baby. Do you know what it does to me to hear you say someone else touched you? Makes me insane. I realize now it wasn’t true. That you were just trying to get back at me for what I did to you before. But we need to let that go. We’re going to start over. And I’m not going to hurt you anymore. Okay? Let’s forget about the past, start over as new people in a new place and it will be like when we first met.”

I’m staring at sagebrush, and thinking about how warm and soft the ground would be if it became my new home. If he left me, how long would it take before I died of dehydration? Or would the animals do me in first? I’d prefer a fast death over a slow one.

“Em?”

“I want to stay.”

He turns in a circle. “Um, Em, we can’t stay here. We’re—”

“No. Not you and me. Just me. You go. Go . . .”Find someone new to break. No, I don’t really want that.

He cups his hand over my forehead. “Jesus, baby, you’re burning up.” He leaves me to get another bottle of water, a shirt, and the towel. He wets the shirt, grabs my unresponsive hand, and tries to make me hold it to my forehead.

My hand flops back to my side and the shirt lands in the dirt.