Page 89 of Wicked Vile King
I stand there, chained to the wall and my bad arm bound. Around and around, he goes, circling my chest and hiding my breasts first, then the rest of my t-shirt, binding me with rope and cloth and bits of leather.
Why am I letting him do this?
Because in a strange place, he feels like home.
"Saint," I say, not looking at him. It hurts too much to look at him. "Anyone could walk in."
"They won't." His gaze darts to me before he returns to his work.
"They could," I murmur.
He shakes his head. "They won't, Willow, because I locked the door."
It's unfair, how he says my name, how he makes me more than his pet, hisWillowinstead.
Some part of me thinks this is unnatural as I watch him continue in his work, bandaging me with rope, cloth, and leather. My heart batters against my ribs, but I'm motionless as he continues wrapping me, his touch delicate and almost loving. He continues, covering me until my injured arm is bound to my body, my chest is covered, and my throat is tied in heavy strips that lay flat and tight across my skin. He keeps going, adding more weight, and the more he adds and the tighter he pulls, the calmer I feel.
I should tell him to stop, but I don't want him to.
He wraps me like it's all going to be okay, like we can go back to normal, even though I know we cannot.
I should be screaming. I should run, but a stranger attacked me with a butcher knife, and all I want in the world is to feel safe. Something is wrong with me, I think, that this should calm me right now. Maybe something was always wrong, and Papa just saw it first.
My breath advances and retreats in shallow, quick bursts beneath the burden of a hundred pieces of tattered fabric, maybe more.
Saint starts on my middle again, using rope now and knotting it tight behind my back in heavy binds that squeeze all the bad out and cinch my breath away with it.
"What did you tell her?" I ask with a swallow. "What did you tell the girl at the end?"
He stills in his work, looking at me for a long moment, and I wish we were back on campus in our uniforms because he is gorgeous in all black. He wears a black Henley with black buttons over matching jeans and boots that also match his inky, shaggy hair. It makes the blue in his eyes strike even harder, and I can't decide which one wins today in his gaze, Blue Morpho butterflies or glacial ice, but he doesn't blink until he says the words.
"I told her if I saw her again, I would push her off the roof myself and watch to make sure she died."
Oh God.
"Would you have killed her now if she'd refused?"
"Yes." He says it so nonchalantly, like it's completely normal for him to be okay with ending someone's life. It makes my stomach somersault and bile nip at my throat.
Why does it hurt so much when he says it? And why is he looking at me like he can see the pain written all over my face? I know why it hurts so much though. Because when I looked at her, I didn't just see some broken, confused girl. I saw someone who could so easily be me.
He returns to his work, taking bits of cloth and circling them around my forehead and across my nose, forcing me to breathe out of my mouth.
Around and around, he goes, until I can barely see him through a sliver in the ribbons, until it weighs heavily on my face, like a blanket wrapped tight.
I can't breathe as he continues to wrap me in bandages and leather and whatever else he can find, continuing until each breath is a struggle against the pressure binding my ribs.
I cry, and he doesn't see it. The fabric catches it instead.
One tear falls and then another and another, and the bandages soak up my misery.
When he runs out of wrappings, he reaches out to touch little openings he's left in the bandages, those between my legs, at my breasts, and on my lips. His touch is calloused yet gentle, and I feel it there, between the slips of ribbon, calming me.
"Are you feeling better?" he says at my side, but his voice is muffled from the bandages around my ear.
Yes and no.
I don't want to.
