Page 120 of The Devastation You Reap

She tries to scramble away, but she’s too slow. I’m on her in a flash, my hands pinning her hips to the wood beneath her.

“You were right, you know.” She stares at me, her breath racing past her lips, fear in her blue eyes. “We were meant to meet. I’d been looking for you for ten fucking years. Never in my wildest dreams did I think you’d just walk into my life completely innocent.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Yes, you do,” I shout, startling her. “Yes, you fucking do.”

Wrapping my hand around the neck of her shirt, I pull until the thin fabric rips from her body.

“I’ve waited so fucking long for this.”

24

Macie

“Oh my God,” I gasp as my shirt practically disintegrates around me.

I stare at Leon, my chest heaving with a weird mixture of fear and excitement racing through my veins.

His eyes are dark and wild like they were the night he turned up on my doorstep covered in blood.

Right now, he’s not the Leon I know, the guy I’ve been falling for despite my better judgement, he’s someone else entirely. Someone full of pain, anguish, and torment.

A memory hovers on the periphery of my mind, but like almost everything that’s happened in my time under this room, I force it back down in the box I learned to lock it all in.

Forgetting has been the only way I’ve been able to deal with it all.

I couldn’t talk. I was too terrified of what he would do. So instead, I ignored it.

I know it’s not healthy, that it will continue to eat at me until my dying day but it was—it is—my only option.

Use my pain to help others. Use it to push me forward, to motivate me, to do everything I can not to allow others to be hurt in the same way.

His fingers deftly pinch the clasp of my bra between my breasts, allowing them to spill free. He doesn’t even see the new white lace lingerie I bought just for him.

He’s gone. Lost to whatever is controlling him right now.

“Leon, please.” I’ve got no idea what I’m asking for. I should be begging for him to release me, to treat me like he usually does with tender touches and light kisses.

But being back here. In a place that holds so much pain. It feels right.

I want to feel everything right now. And—stupidly—I want to help him. I want to take his pain too, allow it to blend with mine.

Maybe, just maybe, it can make us stronger.

I almost laugh at my crazy thoughts.

But then his mouth closes around my nipple and everything leaves my head as a spark of pleasure so strong hits me between the legs.

“You bit me,” I gasp when he pulls away and I notice the deep teeth marks on my breast.

“Yeah, and you loved it. You act all innocent, don’t you, Macie? But deep down, you’re just like all the others. Kinky little whore who’ll do anything a football player wants of her.”

“W-what, n-no? I’m not like— argh,” I cry out again as he moves to the other side.

My hips lift off the desk, my panties soaked as the pain mixes with pleasure and sends me into a head spin like I’ve never experienced before.

“See, Red. You love it.”