Page 44 of Crushed
His jade green eyes held me, daring me to look away, knowing that I wouldn’t. His set jaw stayed strong.
“Trust is hard for you,” he said. My lips fluttered open, but he continued: “It’s written on your face, Scarlett. In the way you push. You’re holding back. Not much, but there is something inside of you that’s hesitant of me. But for what I want to do to you now, I need you to trust me completely.”
My heart pulsed at the thought. “What do you want to do to me?”
“I want to play with your fears.”
Nothing seemed real at that moment. Not my fears. Not us. We weren’t in a private entertainment club for rich men. We weren’t even real people with jobs. I wasn’t an assassin, and he wasn’t my target. We were simply two humans existing in the world.
Still, I ventured forth, because anything I did with Cormac, be it sexual or conversational, would get me closer to the confirmation I needed, that he was evil.
“What do I get from it?” I asked playfully.
“Freedom.” What did he mean by that? Did he mean the debts that the servers had?
Or did he mean freedom from me, freedom from myself?
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t lying when I said my answer: “Yes.”
He took my hand and led me to the Terrariums, to the same dungeon as before. But as soon as he opened the door, I knew it was different. A harness hung from the ceiling, and several large buckets of water were spread throughout the room. The buckets were big enough to fit an entire person inside.
My heart raced in my chest. It was almost painful to imagine what he had planned. I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs. I had always known this was coming.
Hadn’t I?
He pushed me into the room, holding my lower back. Energy surged to that point of contact.
“Where are the impact toys?” I asked, my voice squeaking. “I thought—” I stammered, but it was no use. “I thought—”
“What did you think, exactly?” he asked. He ran both hands down my sides and I blinked rapidly, not letting myself think about my burning throat or how it was hard to breathe. “Scarlett.” He bent down, meeting me at eye level, making sure I was staring deep into his pupils. “I won’t let anything harm you. You have to trust me.”
“But water, it’s—”
“Your biggest fear is to die by water.” My stomach dropped. Those words meant that he had crafted this room with the coordinators of the Dahlia District, arranging it for me. “You can back out now. I wouldn’t hold it against you. But if we do this, I need you to trust me that I won’t let you die.”
I took a deep breath. Counted to ten. Like Lizzy had taught me. Maybe I could pretend to be someone I wasn’t. Someone who wasn’t afraid of water.
“I’m going to drown you, but I’m not going to let you die. I’m going to fuck you and tease you while I do. And you’re going to fight me and everything inside of you is going to beg me to make it stop, to not kill you.” He paused and lowered his voice. “And if you trust me, you’ll see that you can survive. That you can face your fears and still find pleasure in the midst of it.” He squeezed my shoulders. “But you have to trust me.”
All of the hair on my body was standing on end. I held my arms around myself.
“You won’t hurt me,” I repeated to myself quietly. “And I’m not afraid,” I tried, but the words were false.
“I promise you, you will make it out alive, Scarlett.”
I met his green eyes, feeling small and weak. Even if it was the best way to gain his trust, I couldn’t do this.
No. Fuck that. It was a fetish, a kink, like any other. Cormac liked playing with fear. That’s all it was. Power and trust. It would be over before I knew it.
I wasn’t afraid.
These are the things I told myself again, and again, my mantra, as he lowered the harness from the ceiling and unbuckled it. He gestured at my sports bra and booty shorts, and I took them off, dropping them on the floor. I held my arms around myself, completely bare. Then he held open the straps so that my legs went in, then my arms. It covered my torso and most of my upper thighs, leaving an exposed space at my sex and ass. He ran a hand between my legs, making sure that everything was secure. Was I imagining it, or was the harness getting tighter by the second?
A steady stream of water dripped into one of the buckets, getting louder and louder the longer we were in there. Cormac removed his jacket, placing it on a table to the side, then motioned for me to turn around. He buckled the harness into the rigging.
“When this lifts, it will turn upside down,” he said.
