I have no idea why I came back to him. I could easily argue that using his motel room saves me money, but I’ve banked nearly every check I’ve ever gotten while working for the Bureau. You don’t need much when you’re always on assignment. I stopped leasing apartments because you can’t exactly press the pause button while caged in South America because your lease is up.
Money isn’t an issue, and even if it was, it would be less concerning than why I’m right back where I said I never wanted to be.
Angel scares me and not just in the physical sense. There’s something about him that keeps drawing me in. No matter how much time I spend with him, no matter how many times he hurts me, I still want to be close to him.
He’s not safe. There’s not an ounce of security I feel around him. Yet, here I am, using the already opened bar of motel soap that he used before leaving the room like it’s my fucking right to do so.
I feel his presence in the room as I rinse soap from my hair, closing my eyes when the suds drift into them.
I expect him to be angry, to tell me to get the fuck out of his room.
What I don’t expect is for him to reach behind the flimsy shower curtain and drag me from under the stream by the hair.
If anyone with a lick of sense saw me right now, they’d question my insanity. They’d demand to know why, as my feet are flailing, trying to find purchase, there’s a smile on my face and a laugh threatening to bubble out of my throat.
I used to be that person.
I was once an FBI agent that would cry when others were being hurt. Seeing women, honest to God, getting abused used to make me cringe.
It made me so angry.
Then it made me wish I were them. I didn’t know their stories or how they ended up captured and sold into sexual slavery. There’s no level ofyou should’ve seen how she was dressed or she was begging for itthat could explain a man thinking he had the right to just snatch someone off the street and own her.
Deep inside of me, I knew I deserved it. I wanted to take that pain from them. I wanted to swim in it, wanted it to leave marks on my skin. The physical discomfort helped keep all the internal shit at bay. It made living just a little easier, and if those men should cross that line, then all the pain would be gone forever. It’s good to have end goals. The aches and pains leading up to it are just a bonus as far as I’m concerned.
“I’d tell you you’re a fucking lunatic, but I think you already know,” he growls as he drags me toward the bed.
I fight him because that’s my role in this, but my nails on his skin are ineffective, the water preventing me from gaining any real purchase.
“I just wanted a shower,” I snap, trying to hit him in the face, but he’s just too damn big.
“And you think you can get those things off of me?” He pulls me by the hair until his lips are right at my ear. “You think I fucking owe you something?”
I’m trembling, the ancient heater in the room unable to keep up with the winter weather outside.
I’m not shaking from fear, and that thought allows a level of disappointment to settle inside of me.
The first time he did this, I was terrified. The second time on the side of the road still managed to hold that level of what-if to it.
Right now? He’s proven more than once that he has boundaries, but then I think maybe I haven’t pushed him as far as he can go.
That thought makes unease swim inside of me.
Would pushing him work? Or would I regret it? Would he hurt me too badly?
Isn’t that what I want?
Wasn’t I shocked to even wake up this morning? It was too late to make a different decision when I realized the man has the ability to seriously hurt or kill me, but instead of even fucking me while unconscious, he put me in the fucking bed, so I could sleep more comfortably.
Just as I’m thinking he’s nothing like I expected, nothing like I needed, he shakes my entire body with the force of his hand tangled in my hair.
I yell as my scalp screams like it’s on fire, each tug and shake making me ache from head to toe.
“Answer me, Lauren.”
“I’m-I-I just wanted to shower,” I say, because I’m not capable of even recalling what he asked.
“Why do you keep coming back when all I do is hurt you?”