Page 71 of Unorthodox
I mouth his name, my nails scratching at his hand, but he still doesn’t let go. Instead, both hands come around my throat, and he’s not smiling anymore. He’s squeezing so hard, spots pop in front of my eyes, and the rooms seems to spin around me.
“I could hit you back,” he says, his mouth over mine as I try desperately to breathe. To get him off of me. “Or I could just fucking kill you and put us both out of our goddamn misery.” He squeezes harder still, and my vision goes white, my fingers limp against his hand.
I’m going to die.
It’s the last thought I have before he…releases me.
I choke down air, my chest heaving as my vision clears, but before I can move, his fingers go to my hair, yanking me around, so my back is to him. He shoves me forward and my palms come down against the mattress to brace myself, tears welling in my eyes as I gasp for breath, my mind stunned.
Even still, immediately, I push away from the bed, even though my adrenaline is fading, the rage from smashing the mirror, from attacking him abating as terror fills me instead.
But if he’s really going to hurt me like that, I won’t make it fucking easy for him. I won’t let him make me feel how my father did.
My stomach churns with those memories, but I push back on them.
Instead, I try to spin around, but he’s on me, his body pinning mine to the bed, both of us half on and half off, my feet still on the floor.
I try to shove back against him, but it’s impossible, and my arms tremble beneath me before finally giving out from the weight of his body on mine. My chest is against the mattress, his hands planted on either side of me.
Then one moves, and just as I try to take a breath, try to think of something to say to fix this, there’s a gun in my face.
“Open your mouth.”
I press my lips together.
His face is suddenly next to mine, his cheek pressing against my own as he uses his free hand to yank my hair, lifting my head up, all of his weight against my back.
“You can open your mouth so I can get you ready for what comes next, or this,” he taps the side of the barrel against my head, “can go in without lubricant. I personally don’t give a fuck either way.”
I feel bile burn in the back of my throat.He can’t know.
And if he doesn’t know…No.
He wouldn’t.
He won’t.
My entire body starts to tremble as I stare at the gun, feel my scalp burning as his hold grows tighter, his impatience evident in his grip.
“Addison.”
I open my mouth.
“Good girl,” he whispers in my ear, and just like before, in the basement, and just like when I was a child and I walked in on my father in the middle of the night when he was alone in his study, stressing over something work related, I taste the steel of the gun in my mouth.
I remember my father’s blank eyes as he forced it down my throat.
I remember how I peed in my pants, and it dripped through my cotton pajamas, onto his office floor.
I remember how he made me clean it up.
How he touched me as I did it.
I close my eyes tight, against the memory, and what’s happening now.
Max pulls the barrel out, slowly, then pushes it back in, just as slow.
My stomach heaves, but as he pulls the gun out again, I swallow quickly, not willing to make another mess.
