Page 35 of Corrupt Crown
Then, even as I buck against him, nausea curdling my stomach, he thrusts fully inside me. Red-hot pain joins the humiliation flowing through my veins as a deep groan leaves his chest.
He pumps once, twice, and on the third time, his whole body jerks as all fight leaves me. I lay there uselessly, tears silently slipping down the sides of my face and onto the pillow beneath my head.
Heavy breathing fills my ears for what feels like a long time until he raises himself onto his elbows and then kisses my forehead ever-so gently. “Thank you.”
Bile rises up my throat, and I inhale sharply as he finally removes his hand from my mouth. As he slips out of me, I feelhis climax leak out of my body, and I swallow a sob, reaching for my comforter to cover myself.
And it’s then, as I stare numbly at the ceiling while Jeremy is silently re-dressing, that Harrison finally enters my room. His face falls as he looks from my tear-streaked face to his father’s indifferent one.
“Jesus Christ, Elodie. MyDad? Of all fucking people?—”
“I didn’t—he forced me—” I rush to defend myself, but my voice is hoarse. Fractured, just like my soul.
“That’s a lie, son.” Jeremy jumps in, spinning to face me. “I didn’t force you to come on my tongue, baby. That was all you.”
I hesitate, knowing it’s a half-truth, if even that, and it’s all the evidence Harrison needs.
“You’re a lying whore, Elodie Rivers.” His eyes are filled with vitriol, and my throat aches from the force of keeping my emotions at bay. There’s nothing I could do or say to make him believe me. “Stay the hell away from me and my family.”
Jeremy glances over his shoulder as he moves to follow his son. “Even if you won’t admit it, I know you wanted it, baby.”
With that, he leaves, and I jump up to lock the door, feeling his cum sliding down my inner thighs with each step. I barely make it to my ensuite before I throw up all over the tiles, retching over and over until there’s nothing left.
Then I silently clean it up before climbing into the shower to scrub my skin until I’m red from head to toe. As though the water can wash away the stain of the sins committed against me.
CHAPTER 11
RAFE
“It wasa little over a month later, when the morning sickness hit, that I realized I’d missed a period.”
Elodie shrugs as she presses her lips together. “I told my parents what had happened, and they…” she trails off, a crease forming between her eyebrows as she brings her fingertips up to brush tears from her left cheek. “My mother slapped me across the face so hard, there was a bruise for weeks. Told me to stop telling lies.”
During the entire time she’s been speaking, my body has been on edge, humming with ill-concealed fury. My jaw is tightly clenching, my teeth ache, but Elodie is the picture of calm under pressure.
The frown she’s wearing is her only physical reaction to reliving her story.
“Harrison stepped up—probably at Jeremy’s urging—andlied. He told my parents the baby was his…” She continues with a weary sigh. “Mother told everyone I was spending the semester abroad. In reality, I was under house arrest until I delivered Skye three weeks early and?—”
It’s then she breaks, her voice catching on a low keen as she buries her face in her palms, and as though magnetized, I slide closer to gather her in my embrace.
She sags against me and cries quietly with my face buried in her hair, whispering mindless Italian as my mind races. Visions of torturing the motherfucker who raped her fill my mind’s eye, and it eases the burn in my chest, knowing I can make him pay.
That Iwillmake him pay.
When Elodie raises her glassy eyes to meet mine, she looks so utterly broken, that I want nothing more than to maim and murder every single person who’s ever hurt her.
“Mother told everyone she’d adopted Skye when her estranged sister died in childbirth. The lie was already in effect while I was pregnant… There was nothing I could do…”
Her throat works to swallow before she shrugs once more, at a total loss. “So, I did the only thing Icould. I stayed.”
Her chin juts up slightly in that signature determination I’m becoming more accustomed to than I should.
“I stayedfor her. Everything that came after was to keep her safe. To ensure she had the best life that I could give her. Even when Jeremy kept finding ways to trap me alone?—”
She stops at the low growl deep inside my chest, and whatever she sees on my face makes her cup my cheek in her palm. Her eyes fill with appreciation, and something more, and I know here and now I’d go to war to keep this woman from harm.
“Thank you,” she murmurs as her eyes unflinchingly hold mine.