Page 20 of Unorthodox
I don’t look away, even though my body wants to run. Even though my mind is screaming at me to bolt.
I don’t move, and I don’t look away.
“This will only hurt you if I want it to,” he says, nodding toward the weapon he’s using to run up against my inner thigh. “It’s harmless without my touch, Addison. And right now? I don’t want to hurt you, baby girl.”
I focus on breathing. I focus on the grey in his eyes. The light, pale blue. The dark lashes that frame them.
“Right now, I want to make you feel really, really good, Addison. Because you deserve that.”
I bite my lip, so many words on the tip of my tongue but none that I can say.
“I need you to do something for me, okay?” He only speaks like this in the night. But it’s morning now, proof that everything is all fucked up in this prison that’s my own personal hell.
There’s a fucking body just a few feet from us.
My legs lock up, muscles going rigid, and Max notices. He rolls his eyes. Before I can think, before I can take my next breath, he yanks me away from the wall, then pushes down on my chest, so I’m flat on the floor.
Pinning my hands above my head with his fingers circled around my wrists, his eyes rake over my body, pulled taut beneath him.
“I need you to look at me, and only me, until I tell you that you can look away, do you understand?” His gaze finds mine again.
I think about Ben.
Ben’s body.
Ben’s brain.
Max presses the barrel of the gun to my temple.
I’m not thinking about Ben anymore.
My breath leaves me as my eyes cross, focusing on the warm steel against my forehead.
“You’re so pretty when you’re scared, baby girl,” he whispers. My eyes find his, past the gun, and I see that he means it. He means what he’s saying.
He likes this.
He likes this.
“But you don’t have anything to fear from me. Not right now.”
I’m still not sure I’m breathing. I’m not sure my heart is beating. I’m not sure of anything but this gun against my head and Max’s voice. His eyes. His fingers circling my wrists, painfully tight, but keeping me grounded all the same.
“Trust me right now, love.”
I want to tell him I don’t have a choice. He has a gun to my head. He has total control. And that’s what he likes.
We never have a conversation in the night. If I tried to talk, he’d clamp his hand over my mouth. On the drive here, from Danik’s, I was blindfolded. I don’t even know where we are.
The blindfold didn’t come off until I was inside his house. That’s when I panicked. That’s when I fought. That’s when I was drugged.
He wants me to submit to him, but he doesn’t even give me the choice. Just like with Ben. When I rebelled, Max fed me to the wolves.
“Trust me, and I’ll take care of you.”
I don’t trust him. I don’t believe him. But I have no other option.
“Keep looking at me.” Slowly, he trails the tip of the gun down my nose, over my mouth, my chin, my throat.
