Chapter Two
Cosima
There was a second of clarity as her head snapped to the side, pain blooming on her cheek.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die because he’s going to kill me.
Cosima had thought Master was going to kill her before, but never with the certainty she was experiencing now. She thought she tasted blood in her mouth—the coppery-salt tang wasn’t unfamiliar—but she didn’t dare lift a hand to check.
“You ungrateful, conniving little whore.”
Her eyes watered as Master hit her again, her head snapping in the other direction. If he didn’t kill her, he was going to give her a concussion. She might have one already, it was hard to tell.
“I take you out as a special treat and what do you do?”
A punch to her temple sent Cosima swaying and stumbling which only made Master angrier. She could tell by the way he kicked her to send her sprawling to the floor. Usually when he was beating her she was to stand and take it—be grateful for it. But this? This was meant to injure, meant to devastate, and her head swam while blackness encroached on her vision. She didn’t want to know what would happen if she threw up.
“I bet you were flirting with him, you filthy promiscuous cunt. Why he would want a stupid, scrawny, used-up piece of shit I don’t know. Maybe you fooled him same way you fooled me. Is that it?”
Judah grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her head away from the floor, held her upright on her knees and she blinked at him.
She wasn’t supposed to think of him as Judah. Not ever. He’d “trained” her out of calling him Judah and nearly succeeded in beating his name out of her head. But it came to her at the most incongruous and inconvenient of times. Mostly when he was explosively angry and he didn’t seem in control the way a master ought to be.
The raging man in front of her, face a rictus of fury and violence, didn’t look anything like the sweet man who had flirted with her, flattered her, charmed her, and—she had completely believed—lovedher.
She’d been sixteen and he’d said he was twenty-six when they met in a chatroom online. She’d thought he was the answer to all her problems. Empathetic and generous Judah was going to be her savior and teach her everything she wanted to know about kink. He was going to give her everything she’d ever wanted, and he wasn’t going to tell her to come back when she was legal. Because no one ever knew they were kinky before they were eighteen, of course. Pfft. Could no one understand when you were sixteen, two years seemed like a lifetime away?
But Judah had. And in a way he’d kept his word. He’d shown her everything she wanted to know and far, far more than that.
He snarled as he shook her head with the fistful of hair he’d grabbed so hard she thought he might pull it out. Probably could have if that were his goal. But no, he’d dragged her up from the floor so he could punch her again. This time, when his fist made contact with the side of her neck, she blacked out.
* * *
It was cold, she hurt all over, and it was dark. Not that the pallet where she usually slept was exactly comfortable, but it didn’t feel like…this. Turning her head made her nauseated and her brain was throbbing in her skull.
Master had hit her before—a lot. Actually, she couldn’t remember a day when hehadn’thit her. Most of the time it was fine. Hell, she often enjoyed it. But this? No. No one would enjoy this.
There was a sick sense of gratitude and relief though, because she was alive and that hadn’t been promised. Not after what he had said to her, done to her earlier. She hadn’t thought when her head went dark that she would wake up again. But here she was. And Master would probably expect her to be thankful for that too.
Except when Cosima managed to pry her eyes open—both of them feeling sticky and swollen like they hadn’t escaped Master’s assault—she didn’t recognize where she was.
She’d been punished by having to sleep out in the yard before. For an entire summer she’d slept behind the house, chained to a doghouse he’d built. Rotting wooden slats that let the rain drip in with whatever grass clippings she could gather from the yard to sleep on. But this wasn’t the yard.
No, it didn’t smell right and there were too many trees and too much noise. She could be just down the road for all she knew but except for last night, she hadn’t left Master’s land in probably two years. And under a dozen times total since she’d come to live with him eight years ago.
Going to Hive last night was supposed to be a “treat” for her, but like most of his rewards, it hadn’t felt like one. There were so many people there that she’d felt suffocated. It had been months since she’d seen another person besides Master and years since she’d been around that many people at once. It was terrifying and overwhelming and her heart had been pounding. She’d felt an inch away from passing out the entire time.
Before they’d gone inside, Master had threatened her as he dug his fingers into her throat.
“You don’t talk to anyone. You do everything I say, no questions asked. Don’t you fucking dare embarrass me—at least any more than you already do, you mangy little bitch. If you ruin this for me, I’m going to kill you.”
People had looked at her once they were inside the club and she’d wanted to hide. There weren’t any mirrors she was allowed to look at in the house so she wasn’t sure quite what they were staring at. All she knew was that her sallow skin hung off her bones because she didn’t have hardly any muscle, and Master had cut her hair with kitchen shears a few weeks ago because she’d spilled his glass of water at the table and it had gotten in his dinner. Not a lot, but he’d forced her to eat every bite of the soggy tacos and then beat her senseless when she’d thrown up because she wasn’t used to having that much food in her stomach.
There had been flinty assessment in some people’s eyes, and curiosity in some other guests' gazes—too much for Master’s taste. He’d pinched her hard on the welts he’d left on her backside the night before and hissed in her ear to stop flirting and attracting attention or he’d nail her to the cross in the basement when they got home and leave her there for the night. It wasn’t an idle threat; he’d done it before.
The situation she found herself in now was worse. He’d taken her somewhere and left her there. Abandoned her. And now? Panic gripped her like Master’s hand at her throat.
It had been a while since she’d worried about the fact that he’d taken everything from her. She had no license, no ID, no money, no phone, no friends, no family, no education beyond her sophomore year in high school, no nothing.