Page 24 of Resilience

Then the most horrible thing yet happened. Hunter grabbed both her wrists and held them together in one of his hands.

He was raping her. With intention. And there wasn’t a single fucking thing she could do to stop him. It didn’t matter that she knew Krav Maga. It didn’t matter that the man on top of her said he loved her. She was getting raped anyway.

She fought the whole time, but it didn’t stop until he was done. When he came he bit down on her neck so hard she thought he might have taken a chunk. Like a fucking animal.

Then he rolled off of her and went instantly still beside her. Passed out.

Athena lay there in shock and horror for a few minutes. She was sore from fighting, and from his rough entry, but the only part of her that felt actually injured was the side of her neck. And the whole of her psyche.

When she could move, she let herself roll off the side of the bed and land on the floor. Blanche rushed over at once, agitated and alerting all over the place, so yes, the dog had known something was wrong but, like Athena, had been unable to do anything about it.

And nobody beyond that door had come to help. Had the whole thing been too quiet to be heard? What kind of noises had been made while her boyfriend fucking raped her? Or was the music so loud it drowned them out?

It was too late for help, so Athena gave Blanche the sign for ‘all’s well,’ and the dog settled at once. Athena sat against the wall, under the window, and stared at the rim of light around the closed door. A whole party full of guests. Her family and friends. Her best friend. Not one of them had been a help. She had no idea if anyone had even been near enough to hear, or if there had been anything to hear.

Never had her deafness been more isolating than in this moment.

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~oOo~

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Athena sat against the wall and stared at the door for hours. By the time the night lightened and became dawn, she’d made some decisions.

First, Hunter was dead to her. Obviously. The second he woke up, she was telling him to get the fuck out of her life and stay out. They worked together, or at least in the same place, and there was no way in hell she was giving up her job, but she meant to tell him to quit, and if he didn’t she’d report what he’d done.

That might be an empty threat, though. Because second, she had to make sure Sam didn’t find out about this. Or any of her family. Sam would kill him for this, literally, and most likely painfully and messily. Any of their family would—Jesus, what her father would do to him!—and she couldn’t be responsible for that. Not because she cared if Hunter lived or died—just now, she’d happily kill him herself—but because he wasn’t part of their world. He was a civilian; he had a family who loved him and would demand answers about his disappearance or death. Civilian deaths put Bulls at risk. And Hunter’s father had pull in Tulsa, so the risk was all the greater.

Not because of her. No way.

Third—and this was the worst—she had to come up with a story, because the bite on her neck was sore and throbbing, and Sam would notice. That meant she had to pretend they’d merely had rough sex. The thought nauseated her, and the teasing she knew she’d get maybe forever made her want to tear her hair out, but after hours of thinking, it was all she could figure: she had to pass it off as a particularly intense hickey.

But if she was careful about the way she told her made-up story, and how much of it she told, she might be able to fold in a breakup as well. Not just rough sex. Break-up sex. Angry sex. She had to make sure all the gun-toting men in her family who knew (and those butts gossiped more than any woman, so eventually they’d all know) thought it had been consensual.

God, she really was going to be sick.

For the first time since she’d rolled out of bed, Athena got up from the floor. She rose to her feet and went out of the bedroom. As she hurried to the bathroom to puke her guts out, she registered that there wasn’t anybody around—nobody conscious, at least.

Except for the dog at her heels, she was alone.

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~oOo~

While she was puking, she had a new idea. After she cleaned herself up and examined the bite on her neck—only two spots of barely broken skin, very little blood, but wow, a lot of bruising—Athena padded to the kitchen. Three couples were passed out in various sprawls around the living room. Monty’s bare ass was draped over one arm of the nearest sofa, and a naked sweetbutt named Dani was passed out with her legs over his shoulders. The whole scene was gross and upsetting right now.

Ignoring all that, she went into the ransacked kitchen and took her knitting out of a cupboard. She’d tucked it in there so none of their guests would get any drunken ideas with it. Then she returned to the bedroom and closed Blanche out of the room.

Hunter was sprawled on his back, naked. His stupid cock lay limp on his thigh. She pulled her long metal knitting needles from her tote and went to the side of the bed. Using the needles like chopsticks, she lifted that disgusting worm and gave it a pinch and a tug. When that didn’t wake him, she let it drop—gross, it was getting hard—and instead poked it with the sharp tip of a needle. Just a little. Not enough to draw blood. Yet.

That didn’t wake him, either, so she poked his balls instead.

That got his attention. He flinched, and his eyes popped open. When he registered that she had a stainless-steel knitting needle pointed at his man parts, he jerked himself to a seated position and dropped both hands over his crotch.

Protecting himself, he couldn’t communicate. When she didn’t make any words, either, he finally, eyeing her warily, lifted one hand to ask, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Still pointing the needle at the part of him she hated most, Athena tipped her head to show the bruise on her neck and signed, “You raped me last night.”

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