I didn’t care.

His joints didn’t make a sound as he slid to his haunches and grabbed my chin. “Under no circumstances are you to do that again, do you hear me?”

I looked blankly past him.

He shook me. “Pay attention. Don’t disappear on me. Don’t treat me like that bastard. Don’t make me become something I’ve fought so fucking long to avoid. I won’t slip. Not for you. Not for anyone.” His fingers dug into my cheeks. “As much as you expect me to and as gratifying as it would be, I said I wouldn’t hurt you. And I meant it.”

Words were cheap.

I knew how lies worked.

With a heavy growl, Elder stood.

My stomach muscles clenched, waiting for his kick but nothing came. Instead, he scooped me into his arms and picked me up just like the day he’d carried me bleeding and mostly dead from the white mansion.

Kicking open the dining room door, he stalked through the boat, taking the stairs rather than waiting for the lift and carrying me gruffly back to my room.

Every step was a full stop to the confusing conversation we’d shared. Every breath was a bracket around the truths we’d revealed and then smothered just as fast with falsehoods.

I didn’t know what was real anymore: what threat was truth and what truth was a lie.

The moment we were behind closed doors, Elder shoved me on the bed and paced away, jerking both hands over his face. “Goddammit, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

I lay there, naked and waiting, knowing enough not to move.

He continued pacing, muttering to himself. Finally, he prowled back. His large hands landed on my hips, dragging my body to the edge of the bed where he wedged his jean clad legs between mine. “This is what you want? To be fucked against your will? To be used against your permission?”

His fingers left bruises. It was nothing new.

“Tell me why? Why do you want pain when I want to give you safety? When I’m doing my damn fucking hardest to be a better man—to protect you from myself just like I protected you from him.”

I barely heard the question in my protective bubble.

I didn’t blink or swallow, merely stared back unaffected.

“You know what I think, Pimlico?” He used my name as if it was a witch’s curse. “I think you’re lost. For the first time, you have permission to rest and relax with no threat of agony on the horizon. You finally remember how life should be, and it fucking terrifies you how much you want it.”

He squeezed me harder. “And when your mind started to accept that—that, yes you deserve this and, yes, this is how it could be from now on—you became fucking petrified.” He bowed over me, wedging his hot, hard muscle on top of my breakable body.

He didn’t hide the erection in his jeans, pressing it against me unashamedly. “You’re weak. For all the strength I saw in you, all the power and unbreakable courage, you let questions strip that away. You let the unknown steal who you truly are, and you’ve slipped back into the only role you know. I fucking pity you.”

His lips trailed over my cheekbone, his tongue tracing the shell of my ear. “I could fuck you right now. I could kiss you, hit you, string you up, and do all manner of disgusting things to you, and you wouldn’t fight me. Hell, you expect me to do it, and that’s what’s so bloody sick about this. I gave you my word that I wouldn’t touch you, and you didn’t listen.”

His hips rocked, pressing against me.

It didn’t feel good or bad. It was just pressure. Pressure I’d long since grown used to while I curled into a nonreachable ball inside myself.

“Not only did you not listen but you didn’t believe, and I have a good mind to do exactly what you expect. I want to fuck you.” His hips thrust again. “I want to hurt you.” His teeth nipped at my ear. “Because then you might stop looking for the worst.”

His heat made my skin prickle with sweat.

I couldn’t breathe with his weight, but I wouldn’t shift or beg. If he wanted to smother me, then that was one of the easier ways to welcome death. A kind way to go compared to so many others.

But then he was gone, folding off me, rearranging the steelness in his trousers.

“But that would be too easy. You think you can control me? Get me to do something I would never do? Become someone I’ve fought all my life never to be again? Well, fuck you. Fuck you and whatever conditioning that’s ruined you.”

Striding to the door, he jerked a hand down his t-shirt as if preparing himself to enter a room full of well-dressed diplomats. “Until you have the balls to accept that I won’t lay a finger on you; until you’ve addressed what that cunt did to you, you won’t see me again. I don’t have time for broken things; especially slaves who I believed were so much stronger than what they turned out to be.”

He turned and strode out the door without another look.

Silence fell like a guillotine as he slammed the wood into place.

For a second, I didn’t breathe. I remained locked inside and safe, able to ignore the smarting agony of what had just happened. Of the degradation of what I’d become, the shame of what I was, and the guilt that I wasn’t as good as I thought.

And then rage came again, hurling me from my bubble, dragging me back into liveliness.

For so long, I’d tempered my anger so it curled around me but never exploded. There was nowhere for it to explode, no sobs I could shed, no screams I could utter.