“It’s ugly. There’s no other way to describe it, Hunter. There are some dark things in there, and if you see them, you’ll turn and walk away.”
“What if I told you I won’t? I’ll make you a promise, Buttercup.” He looks at me with such urgency, so deeply, that it feels like he already sees the darkness I hide. “I want you. To know you, to learn who you are. You have to let someone in at some point.”
“It’s been a long while since I revisited that place.”
“Then lie in my arms. You don’t have to look at me.” He pulls me in, cocooning me in his warm embrace. “Close your eyes if you have to, but just let me in.”
Inhaling a deep breath, I close my eyes, listening to Hunter’s heartbeat, and I start my story. And deep down, I hope my heart and soul will survive going back there.
“I was thirteen when I arrived at that place. The large foreboding mansion that saved me from a life on the street, but it also changed me in ways no child should witness. I was a loner, kept to myself, until a girl came up to me in the second week. Rosalie. Her sweet nature and kind words held me in her orbit. She was fourteen, with long blonde hair and soft blue eyes.”
My throat is thick with emotion as I recall my once best friend. She was like the sister I’d never had. Hunter’s hand strokes my back in calming trails, up and down. I take in another deep breath and continue.
“For six months, we spent every moment together. They didn’t care what we did as long as we did the chores assigned to us. We were mostly on kitchen duty. Helping the chefs make the meals. It was there I met . . .” My words trail off, and I wonder how to talk about Archer when my heart still aches for him.
“It’s okay, Buttercup, I know he’s part of your past,” Hunter assures me, and I nod against his chest.
“We became thick as thieves. The three of us would play together, work together, and we’d share secrets about what we wanted from life. For three long years, it was just us. And . . . and then one night, on my sixteenth birthday, I learned what The Factory really was.”
“I’m here,” Hunt tells me, his tone soft and calming.
“Archer and I, we went looking for Rosalie. She didn’t meet us on the roof where we’d planned. We were worried about her, and as we roamed the darkened halls, we came across a closed-off staircase. We’d always been warned to never go down there, but of course, being the curious rebels we were at that age . . .”
“You went downstairs,” he says, and I nod.
“I . . . we heard talking, three men and a woman. No names, just them discussing what to do about the new doll as they called her. Then I heard the muffled screams, as if someone was being hurt but their mouth was covered by something. It chilled me right to the bone. Felt like ice had been shot into my bloodstream.”
Hunter’s touch grounds me as I recall the moment I saw Rosalie. She was fourteen. A beautiful girl who would have passed for a princess. She had most of the boys trying to get into her panties. At the time, we thought it was funny. We knew about sex and how it happened, but the way we grew up taught us that if we so much as went near the opposite sex in that way, we’d be whipped.
I recall one of Archer’s bunk buddies got a lashing that caused him to lie in bed for a week. He and one of the girls were caught kissing and touching each other. The sight of his bloodied back ensured that we would steer clear of any sexual contact.
Although, later on, Archer and I found ways around it. We didn’t go farther than him touching me between my thighs. I was sixteen. He was eighteen. We both would’ve been punished severely.
“Buttercup?” Hunter’s voice drags me from the memory of Archer’s fingers inside my pussy, stroking me until I bit his shoulder to keep from screaming out as I had my first orgasm.
“We rounded the corner. Hidden in shadows, we saw Rosalie bound by thick leather cuffs to a bed. I almost screamed to her, but Arch held me back. And we . . . They had stripped her naked.” My throat tightens as emotion grips me in a feral hold. Threatening to cut off my air supply.
“One of the men took a dildo . . . I didn’t know what it was at the time, but the phallic object looked horrific. There were studs in it. I only noticed them because they glinted in the low light.”