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her backside. The shield absorbed some of it, but she still felt. Damn him, she felt it, and the realism was hell on her body.
    He gripped her waist and punched his hips, in and out, again and again. “Did you fuck him?”
    Her defensive haze convulsed. “What?”
    The invasion in her body disappeared as he pulled out, but the relief was short lived.
    Whack.
    Agony annihilated the back of her thigh. Acute, localized, like a bolt of fire to the bone. Only one implement could do that.
    “I do
not
repeat myself.”
    Whack.
    Skin swelled beneath the cut of rattan.
    Whack. Whack.
    Sweat stung her eyes, and her limbs shook through the blows.
No more. No more
.
    Whack. Whack.
    What was the question?
Sweet mother, make it stop
. “Y-yes, Sir.” She licked cracked lips. “Yes, I fucked him.” She didn’t even try to hide the self-loathing in her voice.
    The cane clattered to the floor, and he plowed into her vagina, fierce and punishing. Pound after pound, he took from her. Flesh. Blood. Tears. It was disgusting. She was disgusting. Why did he want her? Why?
    He grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, shooting pain down her back. “Your body was created for my pleasure.”
    She shuddered. Had she asked that out loud?
    “No one bends to my cane or takes my dick like you do. No one feels as good as you do. I own you.”
    Tears clogged her throat, and he shoved her head away. Minutes blurred into hours. He violated every orifice, over and over without pause, and somewhere in the haze of anguish she panicked over his possible use of Viagra. He could go for hours on that horrible pill.
    When her armor eventually crumbled, she tried to crawl away from her body, tried to project her mind and all its nerve endings to the corners of the room where the darkness stood still.
    He spanked and caned, licked and bit, and spared no surface. Then he fucked her again.
    Her breath wheezed through a parched throat. Dried stripes of tears burned her cheeks. When the blaze from his penetration dulled, she sunk into a listless fog of acceptance. The shadows crept in from the walls and guttered the lights until there was nothing. Nothing but the echo of his painful smile and the promise it imparted.
    I’ll go easy on you tonight.

7
    Daybreak glowed through the expansive room. Mounds of bedding cradled Charlee’s bruises and welts, and she buried her face in the foam mattress. The acidic stench of cologne scorched her nose.
    Sixty floors up. Down a long corridor. Last door on the right. Roy’s bedroom.
    She’d dreamt of Noah. He’d busted into Roy’s bedroom with guns drawn and nothing standing between him and Roy but a few dozen bullets. But she knew better. Dreams were dangerous in this place. She wiped it from her mind.
    Quiet mantled the hollow space, but the atmosphere churned. He was near.
    Beside her, the bed was empty, but a man-size indentation remained. A muscle quivered in her lower lip. She bit down on it and shoved away the connecting thoughts.
    “Charlee.”
    She flinched, a full body spasm, and tried to downplay it by stretching her arms and steadying her breath. Then she turned her head.
    He stood before the dresser mirror, chin raised, knotting a blood-red tie. “I have meetings all morning, some things I couldn’t cancel. I cleared my schedule for the remainder of the week.”
    The nerves beneath her skin rioted as he approached. He perched beside her hip, grabbed her throat, and used it to roll her body to face him.
    Violet eyes sparked in the sunlight. “My beautiful girl. My bed. Perfection.” He petted her hair, his gaze clinging to her face, fixated with obsessive longing. “I don’t want to leave.”
    “Let me go,” she said, quietly, swallowing against his fist.
    He smiled, and it illuminated his eyes. “Never.”
    “Why do you hurt me?” His fingers dug in, pinching her esophagus. Where had her voice come from? Even when he wasn’t choking her, she’d never had the guts to question him. But that was