Page 53 of Ruin

Claw marks run up and down his arm, it’s the first thing I see when he steps back inside the room, his hands empty of the ice cream I was promised. I don’t have a watch, no clock on the wall, but I know he’s been gone much longer than he promised.

Despite the fresh injuries to his skin, jeans hanging open, lower than normal on his slender hips. I would have known he had been with someone else.

He smells like them, whoever they are, and I hate it.

Something citrusy and fresh, creamy and mild beneath it, nothing like I must smell. Stuck down here without a proper bathroom, washing only when he does it for me. I suddenly feel shy. I’ve been without clothes for as long as I can remember and only over the last few days have I been given a toothbrush, well, Charlie did it for me. Brushing my teeth with foamy mint paste and it felt like he enjoyed doing it. He was careful and thorough, and I felt like I belonged nowhere else but in his strong, lean arms, letting him take care of me.

Charlie stalks forward, those grisly green eyes on me, one scored with my claw mark, glaring as he trails across the cold space. Unseeing, he drops into a crouch at my open gate, coiling my chain around the knuckles of his right hand, and I numb myself in preparation.

As he untangles my legs from under me, roughly yanking me out of my cage in such sharp contrast to the way he so tenderly placed me back inside.

I go somewhere else.

Disappear inside my head as he pins me over his workbench, thrusts inside my body. Jolting me forward, my cheek jerking over the splintery wood. I stare at the wall, the empty door frame that leads to the heavy mechanical doors I listen intently to whenever he’s not here.

Wishing he’d come back.

To me.

Even if it’s just to do this.

A fist in my hair snaps me back into the room, sharp pain racing across my scalp. Charlie wrenches me up, my back to his front, the long length of my chain slithering across the floor with every piston of his hips.

His cool breath feathers down the column of my neck, fanning across my shoulder as his mouth drops to my skin. Lips mauling and teeth tearing, he bites into me over and over, up and down the length of space between neck shackle and shoulder. The pain so unbearable, I can hardly stay conscious. My eyes flutter and his mouth finds my cheek. One arm banded around me, fingers squeezing the divots of space between my ribs. His other hand comes up, gripping my jaw, tilting my head back as far as he’s able, the crown of my skull smacking viciously into the front of his shoulder.

“Open your eyes, Baby Bird,” he growls, nipping at my cheekbone so savagely I almost yelp.

My words almost break free, building the courage to say his name, untangle my vocal cords, unlock my voice box. Tell him to be gentle with me, that I’ll be good, that I’ll fight, whatever it is that he wants, I’ll comply.

I know he’s upset about something, the way he fucks me in the same brutalising manner as he savaged that man in front of me with a cleaver. And I want to know who hurt him, so I can comfort him, tell him it’s okay, because he’s got me, and I won’t ever tell him no.

Even now.

Even as he fucks me so hard, I know I’ll tear, that I’ll bleed from more than one place today. My cheek dragging over splintered wood, hips colliding with the sharp cornered edge of the workbench.

I just want him to always want me, even if it’s like this. I know he can be tender; I can separate myself from the pain to keep the good. I’ve never had anything good before.

And Charlie’s given me a glimpse of it.

No matter how small.

“My good little Ava,” he praises, plump lips worshipping my gaunt cheek after abusing it, his tooth marks embedded deep in my skin, and my vocal cords tighten, twisting, locking my voice back up once more. “Such a good girl for me, Ava.” His cock slams in and out of me and I feel my body start to melt into him, “Yes,” he hisses, feeling the tension bleed out of my limbs, the word mouthing into my cheek. “So good, let me in, don’t fight me, you’re all for me. I’m never letting you go, let me in,” he coos it, the chanting words, and I soften in his hold.

His arm tightening around my waist like he wants to hold me close rather than stop me breaking away. He lifts me higher, straightening my spine, legs dangling where his hips still pin me against the table. Splinters of wood cut into my bare hips, the bones banging into the workbench. Charlie’s breath is flooding down my neck, hot and damp and his teeth bite into me almost desperately as his cock punches into the entrance of my cervix harder and harder. Bruising my insides to match my already tender outsides.

I think of Dillon beneath the bench, a witness to it all, and I wonder what would have happened, had Charlie come back here with a sweet treat like he promised. Instead of wounds on his skin and hatred in his heart.

Even still, his hand cupping my jaw, keeping my shackled neck arched back against his shoulder, other arm around my middle. I don’t want him to stop. I crave his attention more than anything I think I ever have. I want him to stay down here forever, with me.

And no matter how weird it may be, I like waking up to the sound of wet thunks and grunted snaps. Watching the muscles in his lean shoulders and back shift beneath his tattooed skin as he butchers bodies atop this blood-stained workbench.

I like when he touches me violently as much as when holds me tenderly.

Because it’s only me.

And him.

I am his entire focus for however long those precious seconds, minutes, hours, last. I’m all he thinks about.

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