“How dare you let him touch what’s mine?” he growls behind me, jerking my hair painfully.

Tears crawl from my eyes and over my cheeks. His large hand slams between my shoulder blades and he grasps my hip, lining himself up with my ass.

“Please don’t,” I beg unashamedly, fisting the sheet. “God, Caleb, don’t do this.”

It’s not like in the movies where the woman wrestles for minutes, and you keep thinking there’s a chance she’ll get away, undefiled. That someone intervenes just in time to save her.

No, it’s not like that for me.

With one brutal thrust, Caleb invades a place no one has ever been. He’s hinted at it, threatened it, but never taken me this way.

There’s no lubrication. No preparation. No warning.

Just dry agony.

The pain steals my breath. It snatches my words. I can’t even scream for a moment. It’s that dizzying hurt that muzzles you, silences you completely. Every part of you is focused on surviving that injury, and you can’t spare the energy to even speak.

I feel tissues tearing as he knifes into me repeatedly, a sharpened weapon wielded mercilessly. Tears roll unchecked into my mouth. My words dissolve into a pleading litany, pathetic syllables that spill out of me while he grunts and moans and pistons, a tireless machine. I don’t even know how long he goes. I feel wetness between my legs and know it’s blood. My elbows slide from under me, my chest collapsing to the bed.

“Fuck, stay still,” he rasps. “It’s not all in.”

Oh, God. There can’t be more, but he shoves himself in farther, and I scrape the very bottom of my soul for the scream that rips through the bedroom. I pray for numbness, but I feel every thrust, like a burning poker ravaging me.

“Please stop. Please. Please,” I beg, my voice scratchy, my heart racing, my body wretched.

But Caleb is lost in a paroxysm of wicked pleasure, coming long and loud inside my raw, stretched entrance.

Once he has milked himself empty, he slaps my ass almost affectionately and pulls out. The relief is immediate, but the pain lingers. He flops onto the bed beside me, releasing a long exhale.

I lie completely still, a woman mauled and afraid the predator could return. I play dead, except I’m not sure I’m pretending. Some part of me has withdrawn—is curled up in a tomb begging for death. Welcoming the end with open arms.

Caleb strokes a finger over the faint bruising August caressed and soothed. “You always do stupid things that make me have to hurt you,” he says. “Why do you do that when I love you more than anything, Iris?” He sounds genuinely perplexed and sincerely irritated.

I’m dealing with a madman.

I turn my head in slow inches until my eyes settle on his handsome face. “Fuck you, Caleb.”

His expression freezes, eyes narrow, and his lips flatten. “You stupid bitch. You’re such a masochist, aren’t you?”

I’ve been careful all these months. Plotting. Looking for just the right moment, just the right time. But caution’s gone, and though provoking him might ultimately hurt me more, I look for a way to hurt him. After what he just did, I want to hurt him back.

I gingerly scoot to the head of the bed, wincing at the discomfort between my legs and the pain of his invasion. I dispassionately note the streak of blood on the sheets. I know it’s mine, but I feel no fear, no connection to it.

“I never answered your question,” I say quietly.

“What question?” He bends his brows into a perplexed frown.

“You know.” I deliberately look at him and smile. “You asked if I came for him.”

A tornado touches down on his face, his brows. Lightning strikes over stormy eyes.

“I did.” My voice is soft, but my eyes meet his unwaveringly. “It was the best orgasm of my life, Caleb. In a closet with August West. What are you going to do? Break his other leg? Break my leg? Keep breaking everything around you like a spoiled little boy smashing his toys?”

He lunges for me, his teeth bared, and his fist drawn back to strike. But I’m drawn back, too. I grab the bedside lamp, jerking it so the cord wrenches from the wall.

I smash it against his head. Pain and shock skitter over his face, quickly followed by fury. He touches the line of blood skating from his hairline, bemusedly rubbing the wetness between his fingers. I know the shock of seeing your blood drawn from a blow you didn’t see coming.

“You have a death wish,” he bellows, reaching for me. As quickly as my soreness will allow, I run-hobble to the door. I get it open, not caring that I’m naked. I have to run. After all these weeks of waiting and watching, I’ve chosen the worst time to fight back. The worst time to run. When there’s no escape route. No plan.

No chance.

His booted foot slams into my back, the momentum sending me forward and skidding across the marble floor, chafing the bare skin of my stomach. I rise only as far as my elbows. I try to drag myself up, but that boot connects with my ribs, forcing all the air from my body. Doubled over, I’m shocked when maniacal laughter unspools from my belly. I flip onto my back, meeting his rage head on and with a bedlam smile.

“Now what? The pistol?” I taunt. “That’s the only way you can keep me under your control, right? The big man with the gun? You pitiful coward.”

“A gun?” His own demented grin cracks the polished surface of his face, and we are two witless loons in a death match. “I could kill you with my bare hands.”

With blood smeared on my thighs, bruises blooming on my ribs like African violets, and a new defiance boiling in my bones, I look up through a tangled curtain of hair and say the most reckless words of my life. “Then fight me like a man.”

And he does.

I was there when the levees broke.

Though I was safe in my ward when the monster lost all restraint and unleashed watery havoc on New Orleans, I lived in the city.

I later saw the devastation left in the wake of the beastly storm. We frantically gathered our things, fled our home for higher ground. My family left to survive.

There were those who stayed too long. Remained when they should have fled.

They did not live to regret it.

In this torrent, this chaos of cruelty, I realize I’ve made the same mistake. I’ve remained when I should have fled. Now, I witness the exact moment when this monster loses all restraint. And his fury, his rage rushes at me like a wall of water. Like a gale-force wind, he blows over me, and I am the devastation left in his wake. His fist and his open palm are untiring anvils that bruise my flesh and crack my bones. His fury is swift and efficient, a mesmerizing brutality of syncopated slaps and perfectly spaced blows.

The mind is a master strategist, knowing instinctively when to advance and when to withdraw. My mind is a haven when the pain is beyond bearing. With no escape in sight, I seek the only freedom left to me—my thoughts, my dreams, and my memories. I remember a magical night under the stars, under a streetlight on the eve of greatness. A night filled with laughter and confidences, pregnant with promise. And I see him so clearly, my prince, asking for a kiss.

Sometimes, we stand at a juncture on which our path, our very life can turn. A fork in the road. Sometimes the heart speaks in whispers, and by the time we hear, by the time we listen, it’s too late and we don’t know. We don’t know that we should have turned right instead of left. Chosen one instead of the other. But now, in the retreat of my mind, I know.

And I kiss him.

In my dreams I choose him, my prince, instead of the fraud. In this parallel universe, at this second-chance juncture, I turn right instead of choosing wrong . . . and there, only there, we are together.

But that’s not my universe, not the one I chose. So the world goes black, in a galaxy of pain and brutality, and I see stars. A flash of brilliance. A light I should have acknowledged long ago.

As the stars dim and the darkness encroaches, I understand I’m like those in my ward who stayed too long, assuming their survival. I fear that I, like them, will not live to regret it.

30

Iris

Light creeps in through one cracked lid. With my awareness comes not only light, but pain. It’s universal, all over, seeming to leave no part of my body untouched. Even my nails ache, but I have to press through this. Caleb’s never hurt Sarai, but he’s never hurt me this badly before, either.

I have to get up.

“Ramone, you did good.” Caleb’s voice comes from the hall. “You showed real loyalty alerting me so quickly about West.”

At the sound of his voice just outside the door, my beaten muscles tense involuntarily, trained to brace for a blow.

“Thank you, sir,” Ramone answers stoically, his voice pitched low and gruff.

“You’ll find a bonus already wired to your account,” Caleb says. “I have a flight to catch. Leaving China early threw a few things off. My agent needs me in New York tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow, though.”

Fury percolates in my pores. Oddly, no fear. I’m done with fear, and I’m done waiting.

The stars and moon have aligned. The circumstances are right, and today I will strike.

The door swings open, and I go limp, close my eyes, and play possum one last time for the hunter.

I’d know Caleb’s footfalls anywhere. The sound of him approaching has struck terror in me many times. His steps are heavy and deliberate. He wants you to know he’s coming, but to feel helpless. His steps say you can run, but you can’t hide.

I’ll always catch you.

His expensive cologne wafts over my face. Even with my eyes closed, I know he’s standing over me, assessing the worth of his prize.

“Why did you do it?” he asks, voice tortured. “Why did you let him touch you? Why did you make me hurt you?”

The toughened bend of his knuckle brushes the hair away from my face, skimming a tender spot. I suppress the urge to wince, still feigning sleep.

“Andrew will be here soon to . . .” Caleb pauses in his one-sided conversation to clear his throat. For the first time, I wonder if he feels any real guilt when he hurts me. If in the husk where this psychopath’s heart used to be, occasionally there is a Lazarus sign—a reflexive heartbeat.