Page 7 of Speak

“Oh my god! Raven? Is that you?”

TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP

“Oh my god, hold on, sweetheart! I gotta open the locker. They fused the fucking thing, oh my god, sweet girl, oh my god, hold on!”

Taptaptaptaptaptap

“I’m coming, sweet Jesus, please.”

Each whatever he’s doing that’s pounding into the locker, reverberates every ache in my body.

The door swings open and brightness fills my eyes, blinding me I have to close them. He tries to lift me out but when he sees the state of my leg, my bone sticking out of my skin, he shakes his head. “I gotta call 911. Okay? Jesus, Raven, they’ve been looking for you.”

They’ve been looking for me.

But I was here. I washere.

After the paramedics show up they pull me out of the locker. Even though the gag has been pulled out, and that thing, which I was right, was a leash, my throat hurts too much to thank him. Lex takesoff his black leather jacket and puts it over me, not letting anyone see me like this.

Tears in both our eyes, I mouththank youas the paramedics close the door to the ambulance and they dash to the hospital.

It’s the last words I ever attempt to speak.

Chapter One

Damon.

Present Day

Forty-nine minutes.

“Miss Monroe, you have eleven minutes until our very last session is complete. How do you feel about that?”

Nothing. Silence.

Cat-like honey brown eyes stare at my forehead and then above my head at the digital clock that’s behind me. It’s been four years of stone-cold silence. Her fingers grasp at the hem of her sleeves, fidgeting. “Did you get any gifts for your twenty-fourth birthday?” I ask.

She blinks, then looks down at her chest to a rose gold raven with a diamond for an eye. The chain is also thin and rose gold and glitters against her pale skin. It looks beautiful, delicate. She looks back at me, then up at the clock. Nine minutes left. I know she’s counting. My broken little doll always does.

I know she loved my gift. I watched her open it when the orderlies brought in her mail. I pulled the camera feed to her room up on my phone just in time. The smile that spread across her face was dazzling and my heart lurched in my chest. The anger that rose inside of me of not being able to tell her it was from me, had made me fidgety.

Beautiful Raven. Dark chocolate hair with a silver streak due to the stress of her trauma at her temple that’s as long as the rest of her hair, dark, arched brows, warm honey brown eyes framed by longdark lashes, perfect, pillowy lips she always gnaws on, a cute, straight nose that buttons at the end. Teardrop breasts that need a bra, and yet she never wears one, so I make sure to keep it extra cool in my room so her nipples pop, and those luscious thick thighs always bouncing. She’s tried to hide her anxiety from me, but it’s no use.

I am her doctor.

Isee everything, Raven.I want to say.I even see the way you sleep with your adorable, purple, crescent moon shaped nightlight on at home.

She’s refused to learn ASL, refused to even learn Morse code. But she’swickedwhen it comes to her self-defense training, or so her stepbrother, Axel, says. I believe him.

Yes, of courseI believe him because I also notice how she limps just a little when she comes back to Lorne Wood Mental Institution utterly exhausted. I always want to touch her afterward, massage her aching leg, run her a bath with lavender Epsom salt, then have her lay back, legs resting on my shoulders so I can ravish her with my tongue until she cries out my name.

Diabolical, I know.

I never said I was a good doctor. Well, for anyone else, I’m a good doctor. The best. But for her? I’d lose my license.

I put my ankle over my other knee to hide my growing erection.

I bet that’s how I could get her to break for me.Singfor me. Usingextremelyunorthodox, unethical, and dirty methods.

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