Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Drowning in the moment would have been acceptable.
It would have meant I was forced to do something against my will, and I shut myself off mentally and emotionally.
Drowning would have meant I compartmentalized and hid my mind from what was happening.
That was understandable.
I could've lived with that.
I was just a girl trapped in an awful situation, and I did what I needed to do to survive.
Survival was acceptable.
What I did wasn't about survival.
I gave myself over to it, to him.
It didn't matter that I hated him.
I didn't want what happened, but I didn't fight it either.
I submitted to him, to his power.
My body responded in ways that it shouldn't have.
I didn't recoil from his kiss.
I melted into it.
Into him.
When he put me on my knees, warmth sparked between my thighs, then grew, spreading to my limbs.
No. That wasn't true.
If I was going to be completely honest with myself, I was aroused the second our eyes met.
My heart caught in my throat, some emotion that I should not have felt at that moment.
That was why it took me a moment to run.
That was why I couldn't escape that moment.
I was struck by him, by his handsome features, his air of dominance and power.
For a second, I was frozen in admiration for the man I saw in front of me.
He wasn't a coward who would sell his daughter and mother out to cover his gambling debts.
He wasn't a loser who would cheat on a woman and then throw her out.
Pavel Ivanov wasn't some little boy who would take from those he loved.
He was a man.
A warrior who would protect his family.
For just a moment, I allowed myself to fantasize what it would be like to have a man wrap me in his arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay. That I didn't have to worry. That he would handle everything.
That I wasn't alone anymore.
That just for one fucking second, I didn't have to be the strong one. The independent one. The responsible one. The one who wasn't allowed to buckle under the weight of all her problems.
That just once, I could hear someone else say “I got this” and be able to believe it. Trust in it.
When he had me cornered under that desk, I was scared, but I was curious too. I wanted to know what he would do to me and then, when he put me on my knees, I didn't fight him.
I preened under him calling me a good girl, and I leaned into it because some broken part of me wanted that praise. I wanted to show him I could be good, I could be worthy of—
No. I shut that line of thought down.
It was just the adrenaline talking, and I refused to believe it was anything else.
The truth gnawed at my gut, and I needed to shut it up. I desperately needed to silence that insidious whisper in the back of my mind, the one that suggested I liked being dominated by a powerful man.
That wasn’t who I was. That was not who I wanted to be.
Maybe under different circumstances, maybe in a different life with a different man who wasn't so dangerous I could be that girl, but not like this.
If it were different circumstances, if it was any man other than Pavel Ivanov, then you wouldn't have reacted the way you did.
The voice in the back of my head taunted me with a truth that I refused to acknowledge.
I needed to forget.
I needed to shut that little voice up and pretend that none of this ever happened.
This memory, along with the other ones too painful to dwell on, would be locked in a vault deep in my mind to never be brought up or examined again.
Crawling across the cramped floor of my studio, I reached for the half-empty bottle of cheap wine sitting on the rickety nightstand. There was only one way to silence that little voice and to make sure that memory never came to the surface again.
The first gulp burned, my throat still raw from the way Pavel's cock was so rough and—
The second gulp went down smoother, dulling the ache. By the time I finished the bottle, my limbs were numb, my eyelids heavy, and my head had finally stopped spinning with truths I refused to acknowledge.
Bright mid-morning sunlight stabbed through the broken blinds and my skull throbbed in protest.
I squinted at the clock.
The bright red numbers read 9:42.
Shit.
I was late.
I shot up so fast my stomach lurched. My head pounded from that ill-advised half bottle of cheap merlot. It was the wine. It had to be the wine. I refused to allow it to be anything else.
Stumbling to the sink, I choked down the last two aspirin in the bottle and swallowed them with a handful of stale tap water before wiping my face with trembling hands.