Page 37 of Swallow Your Sorries

I swallow.

“You thought you could get away from me without suffering any consequences for what you did to my family? You thought you could fuck off and have your little happily ever after?”

I wouldn’t call homelessness and constantly smelling like bologna happily ever after.

“WhatIdid toyourfamily?” I ask incredulously. “Don’t you mean what your mother did? She’s the one that cheated that day—”

“And you’re the one that killed her that day.”

I blink.What?

Time seems to move in slow motion as realisation trickles over me.

Madame is…dead?

“W-what happened to Madame?” I whisper, my dreadful curiosity overtaking my humiliation. In my peripheral vision, I can see Stassi and Aria charging forward, as well as the other boys who’d been staring at me. His friends, apparently.

But as I focus back on Gant, I can see for one beat, for one second, that he isn’t there.

He’s gone somewhere, and when he returns, it’s with a vengeance.

Before I can breathe, or blink, something shoves my head down so fast and hard that I don’t register what it is, until I blink up at the sole of Gant’s filthy boot digging into my cheek and pinning my head against the hardwood.

“Get off of me!” I attempt to dig my fingers into his ankle, but my arms twist and white hot pain shoots through my shoulder blades and down my spine as each boy digs a knee into my elbows, pinning them to the floorboards. Gant presses harder, crushing my face until my lips part and blood and saliva trickle out.

Through Gant’s legs, I see Stassi gasp beside Aria, but both girls are blocked from view by the boy from the front steps. A silent warning telling them to stay where they are. And they do.

“All this time you don’t know what you’ve done?” he asks, twisting his boot into my flesh with so much torque that I swear he’s broken the skin. “How badly you’ve fucked my life up?”

I can only sputter, and try to lift my head against his heel, but he doesn’t budge.

“Liar.I can see the sins swirling in your eyes and it makes me fucking sick.”

I hear the sound in his throat before I see it. Before I feel it.

Spit, thick and hot, flies from his lips straight into my eyes which squeeze shut a half second too late.

My stomach roils, my body buckling violently in response as my entire soul tries to flee my body. “You fuckinganimal!”

“Do you know how animals mark their territory in the wild?” he asks, and through the thick, slimy globs, I see him reaching for his belt. Then I hear the zip of a zipper. “Because you are my territory. From now on, you’re mine. Every breath you breathe ismine.”

His cock…his thick, bare cock springs free. Semi-hard, and veined, he points it at me.

“Don’t scream,” the boy with the long hair advises coolly as he steps back, taking a seat on the armrest of the nearest chair.

“I think she should. I think she’s a swallower,” the blonde coos, digging his knee harder into my elbow. He dares to run his fingers through my hair almost affectionately, but he’s only moving the strands to make sure my face is fully exposed.

The motion sends pure ice down my spine.

Hale follows suit with his knee, pinning me harder as his laughter rings in my ear, almost in slow motion.

No. NO!

Between Gant’s legs, I spot Stassi’s horrified face and Aria’s unreadable one peeking around the boy from the steps.

That’s the last thing I see before warm, golden liquid shields them from view.

It splashes my cheek, flying into my eyes and up my nose. Drops seep between my lips because I hadn’t heeded Rapunzel’s advice, and my body’s first reaction is to gasp. To inhale a mouthful of piss.

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