His smile was sad but tinged with something sharper—something like hatred. “There are men out there who would hurt a woman. Emotionally. Physically. Can you believe that?”

I didn’t answer. My heart thumped in my chest.

“I couldn’t, at one time. Couldn’t imagine what would make someone be cruel like that. It didn’t seem human.”

“And then?” I whispered. What changed that you are the way you are?

“And then I realized we aren’t all human, at least not the way we were supposed to be. Sometimes our soul dies and then we’re just…muscle and bone walking around, with no purpose, no morals to contain us.”

I remembered the way I had felt in that motel room: only skin, no heart. Only a body, no feelings.

“What made you that way?”

Something glittered in his eyes, something that made my breath hitch in my throat. “You know, don’t you?” he asked. “You know what would make a person like this. What might take away their power, their consent.”

He spat the last word, as if it were vile. What was he saying, that he had been raped? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, I knew it was true. It was as much a confession as I could ever hope to get. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle even if I couldn’t yet step back and see the whole.

I wanted to cry but my eyes were dry as bone, wide and shocked. He was strength and vitality, how could someone…? How could anyone…? But they had. He’d fought off three men at the diner, but somehow one man, or maybe more than one, had overpowered him enough to do that. How helpless he must have felt, how worthless.

“I’m sorry.”

He sucked in a breath. “You would apologize to me? After what I…”

My insides twisted at the few words of admission, the small sign of his guilt. “I let you.”

“Don’t fool yourself. I made you do it. You aren’t responsible for any of this. I absolve you.”

I absolve you. The words didn’t sound as strange as they should have spoken out loud.

“Your room is ready,” Laura said cheerfully, emerging from the hallway with the basement. I wondered how much of the conversation she had heard, but her eyes were guileless, her small smile genuine.

I almost wished she had heard, so someone else could know without the pain of telling her. But she was clueless, and I was still alone.

Hunter seemed to recognize my disappointment. He smiled sadly. “You won’t find friends here. At least, not ones who will stand up against me.”

*     *     *

I lay awake, held captive by the iron-hard bands of his arms, clenched in his legs, completely imprisoned by the hot brand of Hunter’s body. He overpowered me, overheated me until I sweat and wriggled uncomfortably in his embrace.

“What?” he said, slurred.

I froze and remained still for a few minutes until his breathing evened out, then I pulled gently from his arms. I made it to the edge of the bed when he caught my wrist. He tugged me back, and I slammed against the hard wall of his chest. Breath whooshed out of me.

“Where are you going?” His voice was gravelly with sleep.

“Drink of water,” I managed to get out.

He released me. “Go then.”

I stumbled to the bathroom and cupped the water from the faucet in my hand, sipping it, gulping it down greedily while I wondered if I’d lost my one chance to get away.

The bathroom light shut off, plunging me into darkness. My hands fell open, splashing water in the basin. I felt the air rustle behind me then his hands grabbed my hips, yanking down the underwear I’d worn to bed. I grasped the edge of the counter, expecting him to enter me from behind.

Instead he spread my legs even farther, so I could barely keep my balance except for his hands supporting my thighs. Then I felt the touch of his tongue on my sex, gently running over the outer lips and between. He suckled me and kissed me, and I understood it to be an apology in the dark, a plea for relief from the anger I harbored for him. But anger was like a flame and without fuel, it would gently peter out. I was awash in pleasure, rocking gently against his face, completely succumbed to wherever the currents would take me.

His lips found my clit, sucking me, nibbling me. He licked there insistently with the hard, insistent press of his tongue, and I cried out softly and came in small shudders, feeling wetness spill from my sex into his mouth.

When I had come, I tried to move away, but he held me in place, leaving bruises in the soft inner flesh of my thighs as he held me open for more of his mouth. The curl of his tongue, the lightest touch of his teeth. My fingers ached from holding onto the counter, but I thrust my hips madly, wildly, until I came again and a tear ran down my cheek.

He released me then, but only to pull me over to the bed. He tossed me onto the sheets like I weighed nothing, like I was nothing, and I splayed there, waiting patiently for whatever he would do. He shrugged down his jeans, and even in the dark I admired his form. Now I could only see the lean lines of his silhouette but I knew from experience how his abs were marked by the muscles there, his hips sloping inward, his body beautifully formed.

He climbed over me, straddling my face with his knees. He liked it this way, I had learned. He liked the control it gave him, and maybe now I understood better why. I could do nothing but take the broad head and thick shaft into my mouth. He controlled the depth, the angle—everything. I couldn’t even move my hands, my arms trapped tightly to my sides.

He pushed into me again and again, rocking and rocking, muttering about how fucking sexy I was, how he couldn’t control himself around me, how he wanted to do everything to me, everything, everything and I would let him, wouldn’t I?

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked me, but my mouth was full of him, and I could only mumble a muffled answer, my tongue undulating futilely against the underside of his cock while I said yes, anything, everything.

“You trust me, don’t you?” he asked. His eyes were black in the dark light, glittering down at me. He pulled out so just the tip was in my mouth and leaned down so that his mouth was closer to my ear.

“You trust me not to break you?” he whispered.

And it was ridiculous, of course, because I couldn’t trust him at all. I knew that and so did he, but I nodded, rocking the hard, pulsing flesh in my mouth as I did so. He released a small amount of precum, salty and sharp on my tongue. The taste of it made my sex clench and liquefy, because we were in tune like that. Even when our mouths spoke lies and our hearts cried out, our bodies knew how to communicate with each other.

At my acquiescence, he reached back and pushed my hands to my sex.

“Touch yourself. Make yourself come.”

I rubbed the same way he had rubbed me, fingers pressed against the hard nub and pushing, frantic.

He pushed back inside my mouth, deeper this time. Slow and steady but farther in. In fact, I hadn’t realized how far he could really go—that he must have been holding back all this time. He hit some barrier, and I felt my eyes widen, panicking.

“Keep fucking yourself,” he muttered, and my fingers sped up.

With a grunt, he pushed deeper, popping back into my throat, and I felt my eyes roll back. It stretched and pained me, but my sex throbbed with the entry, welcoming him. I kept rubbing my clit, and it felt almost like an orgasm but instead of a few short pulses, it seemed to climb even higher.

He reached down and covered my nose, pinching gently.

“We’re going to do this,” he whispered, though I wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

Tears streamed from my eyes and fell down the sides of my face. He was blocking all my air, with his cock, with his fingers, but the weirdest part of all was that my fingers never stopped.

Everything grew hazy and dreamlike, like the whole world going out of focus except for the sharp and blinding pleasure of my sex. I might have screamed around his cock as I came, shuddering and begging and feeling more than I had ever thought possible.