Page 90 of Wicked Vile King
I don't answer him as he nudges my knees further apart, and I back against the wall.
His fingers trace over the material next, but I can still feel it, even beneath the bandages—his touch thick and deadened by the barrier. His hands dip down low to my belly, to where my skin is exposed by the wrappings and my ruffled shirt beneath. All of me burns when he runs the pad of his thumb slowly across the bare flesh.
Another tear falls.
"You're still upset," he says, cocking his head, his expression perfectly calm. "Why?"
"You need to let go of me, Saint," I say with a swallow.
His thumb dips, catching on my jeans and running down to my thigh as a piece of cloth untangles itself from my face and falls to the floor between our feet.
"Tell me why you're upset, pet," he commands.
I hate that he calls me that now.
And I hate that he called her that back then.
His hand slides carefully over to where he left my jeans exposed. My breath is faster now, coming in short bursts to accommodate the weight squeezing my lungs. He lifts his hand away and tilts my chin, forcing me to look at him.
I've lost track of my tears.
"Untie me, Saint," I tell him, the words hoarse and split apart by my unspoken sobs.
He blinks. "Why?"
I sniffle or do my best approximation of it beneath the wrappings.
Does he really not understand? Can he not see why any reasonable person would be upset?
"Please," I say, and more tears fall.
"I could fuck it out of you," he threatens, his gaze narrowed.
"No, you can't." I don't know if it's a lie, but I don't intend to find out.
"Please," I say once more, "then I will tell you everything."
He searches my face for something—sincerity, maybe—and with a sigh, begins to unbind me, leaving bits of cloth and rope and leather on the floor at our feet. With every lifted weight, I feel myself start to break a little more until I'm shaking and crying silently beneath his touch, surrounded by a pile of bandages that can't protect me.
"Why are you crying?" he asks, his expression devastatingly ambivalent. I grit my teeth and nearly pass out when I move my arm to undo the last restraint, the one on my shoulder.
"I'm crying," I say, looking up at his perfect, emotionless face, "because one day, you're going to break me just like you did that girl, and I'm going to end up jumping off a roof too."
Another tear falls, and this time there's nothing there to catch it when it does.
25
SAINT
She walks away, side-stepping me, and I don't understand why she says she's going to end up like Alice.
She's not like Alice. At all. It couldn't be farther from the fucking truth.
"You are not the same as Alice," I say.
"How would you know?" she snaps, her eyes burning like molten gold. "You think you have all the answers, Saint? Well, let me be the first to tell you, you don't. You don't know shit about me."
"I know you're angry," I tell her, taking a step forward, closer to her.
