Page 39 of Crushed
“Humiliation and degradation.”
“Like what?”
“Name-calling. Forced crawling. Making you play with yourself while I watched.”
I blushed, turning away. He had been fully clothed while I was exposed. Yeah, I remembered that.
“Yes.”
“And water play?”
The image of my parents’ car driving over the bridge and crashing into the water filled my mind. Their floating bodies. The bloated skin. Mom’s yellow eyes, her swollen lips and cheeks, the purple veins. Dad with his back to the sun, his arms wide as if he was hugging the lake. I hadn’t seen the crime scene, but the nightmares had always been visceral.
“Water play?” I whispered.
“‘Play’ has such an innocent ring to it. But it’s notplay, per se, when the bottom doesn’t enjoy it. Some might even call it water torture. Waterboarding. Drowning. To some extent, these things are a form of breath play. Does that do anything for you?”
My skin was hot and I froze in place. I had seen their bodies at the coroner’s office. The image of their blotchy skin peeled back in sheets had always haunted me. Those yellow and red eyes. The puffy skin. Those images burned into my memory mixed with the memories of bubbles floating up around me. The light from the sun growing fainter and fainter, the water closing in on my chest, burning in my nose and throat.
“No,” I whispered.
“No?”
“I’m scared of water.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you know how to swim?”
Only because my mother taught me before she passed. And because Lizzy had forced us into a car, making sure we could get out of it alive. Two to three minutes was all we had. Lizzy had refused to carry a hammer or a center punch, saying that it would be unreasonable to expect us to carry those tools at all times. We had to rely on the windows, and when they were too hard to open, we had to wait until the last minute, when the pressure on the outside of the car was equal with the water inside of it. And in the panic of a typical eleven-year-old, I had forgotten my seatbelt.
“Scarlett?” Cormac asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I know how to swim.”
Lizzy thought it would teach me to not be afraid. To prepare for the worst. But the fear never stopped. It showed me that I could die at any second. Even when your guardian was teaching you a lesson, panic could make you both forget how to escape.
Lizzy had saved me, unbuckling me at the last second, but since then, I had refused to be in a body of water. I even refused a case Lizzy had wanted me to do because the owner lived on the lake. But Lizzy never pressed it.
“Is it a phobia, or a fear?”
I shook myself out of the fog. “There’s a difference?”
“Fear is an emotional response. A phobia interferes with your everyday life.”
I tilted my head. “Are you a CEO for a psychological institution too?”
“Do you avoid the water, Scarlett?” he asked, his voice suddenly stern. No, not really. I didn’t have to go out of my way to avoid water. I took showers. I washed dishes. I drank water. I stayed on land. I didn’t have to avoid it.
“I don’t.”
“It’s all in shades and degrees, isn’t it? Phobia and fear are on a spectrum.” He gestured toward me. “Like your beliefs about good and evil.”
Sure, I guess. “What about them?”
“You believe that we all fall on one side or the other. Good, or evil.”
At least this topic didn’t make me freeze up. “There’s no one in this world that falls on that middle line of good and evil. We’re either on one side, or the other.”
“Then where do you fall, Scarlett?”
He came towards me slowly, then stood between my knees, looking down at me. Those green eyes were deep and burning, beckoning for my answers.
“Are you good, Scarlett?”
My lips trembled, but I don’t know why. He was a predator looking down on me, about to sink his teeth into my neck. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I was an assassin. I had been trained to make him believe whatever he wanted to believe, to use hints of the truth to create a believable facade. The world would be a better place when there weren’t men like Cormac Stone in it, men who were willing to take hard-earned livelihoods and healthy lives, for the sake of total control.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m good.” But I was going to kill him, wasn’t I? What did that mean? “I’m good,” I repeated, but my voice faltered.
“I’m not convinced,” he said. His fingers laced in my hair, he pulled me back, wrenching my neck up, and our lips met. A harsh kiss, deep with longing, his coiling tongue relentless, searching my body and soul for the answers he needed. I forgot everything. The fears. Their deaths. The assignment. Good and evil. His life. His mouth lingered over mine in that moment, and my tongue was tight between his teeth. He was the one in power. He was taking from me, so much from me, so much more than I had ever bargained for.
And I wanted him to take more of me.
