I squeeze my eyes shut, jerking my hands free of my clenched thighs, and try to breathe, forcing myself not to cry. I don’t want to shed another tear over him, but the hollow emptiness in my chest feels like almost too much to bear.
I’m still aching when I fall asleep, craving something that I can’t even put a name to. But even in my sleep, I can’t escape it.
I dream about him, forbidding and gentle by turns, my hands bound to the bed, my body stretched out and on display for him as he strikes me over and over again, sending flushes of pleasure through me along with the stinging pain. I dream about his hands smoothing over the marks, his lips tracing them until I’m begging for him to touch me in the places where I need it the most, begging him to let me come. I dream of his smile, gloriously cruel in his handsome face, his breath hovering over my drenched folds as he teases me, making me beg for every caress of his tongue, every press of his lips. I twist and writhe under his touch, so close to a climax, until he pulls away, denying it to me as he starts to stroke himself, watching my twisting, squirming body as he strokes his cock and makes me watch.
The dream is nothing like what I’d imagined as I touched myself. It’s Viktor at his cruelest, leaving me punished and wet, aching and needy, forced to watch him pleasure himself until he comes with a groan into his palm, denying me even the feeling of his hot cum on my skin, marking me as his.
I’m not his anymore. I’m nothing. Just something he bought and paid for, another purchased girl meant to serve a purpose.
Those words fill my ears, echoing as he finally reaches for me.
You don’t deserve my cock. You don’t deserve anything other than this.
His fingers push inside of me, shoving his cum into my clenching, aching pussy, as deeply as he can. I buck upwards, the shame of what he’s doing forgotten in my desperation to come, but it lasts only a moment. He pumps his fingers into me twice, three times, rubbing his palm over my heated skin until he’s pushed as much of his release into me as he can. And then he stands up, looking at me coldly as he reaches for his clothes.
I hope that gets you pregnant, so I don’t have to fucking touch you ever again. You disgust me.
And then his face shifts into Franco’s, cruel and mocking, looking down at me.
You disgust me.
Disgust me.
I jerk awake, gasping, my body pulsing with need at the same time that tears are dripping down my face, making me feel almost crazed with the tangle of emotions surging inside of me. I’m painfully aroused and twisted with hurt all at the same time, my heart pounding with fear at the sight of my first husband at the end of the dream. Viktor isn’t Franco, he could never be as terrible as Franco was, but the dream lingers all the same, cold chills running over my skin.
I want this to be over.It’s all I can think, over and over again, as I curl into a tight ball, trying to push the dream away. I want to forget it, but it lingers, keeping me awake as I shiver despite the warmth of the room.
Will it ever stop hurting? Will I ever stop feeling this way, as if my heart is being torn to shreds? As if I want something so terrible that I hate myself for it?
I don’t get any sleep for the rest of the night. I’m too afraid of the dream returning, of making me imagine things worse than anything Viktor has actually done, of making me see him shift into Franco again. I lie awake in the dark instead, waiting for the sunlight to creep through the curtains and push away the worst of it.
The days ahead of me feel endless and nearly unbearable.
Is this what he does? Makes a woman love him and then breaks her?
It would be enough to make me hate him. But the truth is that I don’t think he meant to do it. I don’t think he meant to break Vera, to turn her life into something so unbearable that she could only see one way out. And I don’t think he meant to hurt me.
He certainly didn’t mean for either of us to have feelings for the other.A marriage of convenience.
That’s all I was ever meant to be to him.Convenient.It all went too far, and now we’re paying the price.
I have to stop thinking of how different it could have been. There’s no future in that.
But as the sunlight starts to filter into the room, driving away the worst of the nightmares, I admit something to myself finally, in the silence, somewhere deep in my mind.
I love Viktor.When, I don’t know. Maybe in the cabin, when he tended to me, bathing me and feeding me and doing all he could to keep me alive. I can’t pinpoint the moment between all the fights and violence and hurt. But somewhere in there, my heart betrayed me as surely as my body ever has with him.
I love him.
If only there were even a single fucking thing I could do about it.