Page 37 of Cold Bastard
My hand flew to my throat, fingers pressing against the tender flesh. It hurt. God, it hurt. I could feel the bruises forming already, the imprint of his fingers burned into my skin like a brand. His fingers. My breath hitched. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t pull in enough air. My chest heaved, and my lungs screamed, but nothing was working right. The room tilted as the walls closed in, and I stumbled backward until my shoulders hit the concrete.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold floor, my knees pulled up to my chest. My whole body was shaking now, tremors I couldn’t control, and I wrapped my arms aroundmyself like I could hold the pieces together. But I couldn’t. Because the pieces inside me were already broken.
He saw. The thought hit me like a physical blow, and I pressed my face against my knees, a sound escaping my throat that was half sob, half whimper. He saw. Not just my fear, but the fractured, unwilling curiosity I was wrestling with.
Nano. That was the name on his cut. A predator with his cold eyes and his cruel hands andhis arousal.
I felt it. When he was dragging me across the parking lot, when he slammed me against the wall, when his hand closed around my throat and squeezed until I thought I was going to die. He had been hard. I felt him press his cock against me when he leaned in close, felt the unmistakable ridge of his dick straining against his jeans. Saw the dark satisfaction in his eyes as he watched me choke, watched my face turn purple, watched me realize he could kill me and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
He had gotten off on it. On my pain. My terror. My helplessness. And the most damning thing of all? In that moment, trapped in his grip, a horrifying part of me had been morbidly fascinated. A part of me I now desperately wanted to tear out and destroy. I hated myself for it. Hated myself more than I hated him, and that was saying something. I was no better than him, was I? Just a different kind of monster, hidden beneath a veneer of victimhood. The thought was a fresh wave of nausea, a confession I could never utter.
Just like Michael.
No. No, don’t think about Michael. Don’t—but it was too late as the memory crashed over me and dragged me under.
Michael’s apartment. The smell of whiskey and sweat as his hands tightened around my throat, squeezing, cutting off my air as he fucked me from behind. A suffocating pressure thatshould have repulsed me, should have sent me spiraling into a righteous fury. Yet, a traitorous part of me, the part that craved a release from the relentless ache of being unseen, responded.
“You like this, don’t you?” His voice in my ear, rough and breathless. “You like it when I hurt you.”
I did. God, I did. The words clawed at my throat, a confession I wanted to bury deep. I was crying, choking, my mind screaming for him to squeeze harder, to push me past the edge of my own will, and then oblivion.
This wasn’t consent.
This was a horrifying surrender, a betrayal of every principle I held dear. The lack of oxygen, the pressure, the terror, all twisted into something else. Something dark and erotic and completely beyond my control. My vision went black at the edges, my mind fragmenting, and my body convulsed, and then I came.
Hard. Violently. My muscles clenched around him as he groaned and thrust deeper, his fingers digging into my throat until I thought my neck would snap. A primal response that terrified me more than his grip. This was the precipice, the moment when my carefully constructed sense of self shattered.
This wasn’t passion; it was a desperate, animalistic plea for something I couldn’t name, a dark echo of a void I desperately tried to fill with anything, even this violation.
“Fuck, I knew it,” he panted, his breath hot against my ear. “I knew you were a dirty little slut. You fucking love this.”
I didn’t love it. The accusation was a razor’s edge against my already shredded insides.
I hated it. I hated him. I hated the weakness in myself that made this possible, the inherent ugliness that responded to his cruelty. But my body didn’t care what I hated. It had chosen its own path, a path of degradation that left me feeling utterly lost, a stranger to myself, and irrevocably tainted. I had failedmyself, surrendered to a darkness I never knew I possessed, and the shame was a cold, suffocating blanket, heavier than his hands.
I dragged in a shuddering breath as my nails dug into my arms hard enough to leave marks. The pressure of Nano’s hand was still there, a phantom fist clenching my throat.
It had happened again.
Tonight. The betrayal, the worst kind of betrayal, wasn’t just his power.
It was my body’s utter, abject surrender. With his hand around my throat, with his eyes watching me die, with his cock hard against his jeans, my body had done it again. I felt it building as the oxygen left my brain, as my pulse hammered against his palm, as everything went dark and distant and wrong. Felt that sick, twisted heat coiling low in my belly, and felt my thighs clench.
I came. Right there in the clubhouse, with a room full of bikers watching, with Nano’s hand crushing my windpipe, I fucking came harder than I ever had before, and he knew. The thought sent another wave of nausea through me. It wasn’t just pleasure; it was a scream of my own flesh against my will, a hideous affirmation that my body was not my own. My mind recoiled from the sensation, from the sheer filth of it, yet my body had betrayed me, reveling in the very thing that broke me.
I was sure of it.
I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes, saw the way his gaze had dropped to my jeans, saw the corner of his mouth twitch like he was fighting back a smile. He saw the wet spot spreading across my jeans. Saw the way my body had gone rigid, the way my hips had jerked involuntarily, the way I shuddered even as I choked.
He saw my shame, and he liked it. But what gnawed at me, what made me want to claw my own eyes out, was that a sliver of me, a dark, hidden part I refused to acknowledge, had also felt something in that moment. A monstrous satisfaction that he could elicit such a response, a perverse thrill at being the focal point of his attention, even if that attention was laced with pure malice. It was a thought so repugnant, so utterly alien to the person I wanted to be, that it threatened to shatter the very core of my being.
A sob tore out of me, raw and ugly, and I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle it. But it didn’t matter. No one was coming to check on me. No one cared if I cried myself to pieces in this concrete box. I was alone.
Completely, utterly alone, knowing that my own body was a traitor.
Why?The question screamed through my mind, desperate and furious.Why does this happen? Why does my body respond to violence like it’s pleasure? Why can’t I control it?A part of me, the rational part that fought for survival, raged against this. It was a biological anomaly, a twisted survival mechanism. It wasn’t pleasure; it was a desperate, primal response to perceived death. But another, darker part, the part that craved validation, the part that had been slowly eroded by years of wanting to be desired, whispered insidious questions.Is it truly involuntary? Is there a sliver of something else, something I’m too ashamed to admit, that responds to the edge of oblivion?This thought was a poison, tainting the pure horror of the situation, making me recoil from myself.
I knew the answer, or at least, what I was told was the answer.
