Three Years Read online

  KINDLE EDITION

  Published by Lili Saint Germain

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance it bears to reality is entirely coincidental.

  Produced by Lili Saint Germain at Lili Saint Germain Publishing

  Formatting by Max Henry of Max Effect Author Services

  Copyright© 2014 by Lili Saint Germain

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Two Roads

  About the Author

  I loved Jason Ross for seven years. One together, then six spent apart, while I festered in my rage and he grieved my supposed death.

  Then finally, we were reunited again.

  He knew me as a stranger before he finally saw me for who I really am.

  Juliette Portland.

  A dead girl. A lover. A murderer.

  My heart was finally whole again.

  But none of it matters anymore.

  Because now, it’s all been torn away.

  I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.

  Before Dornan breaks me.

  “Shallow cuts.”

  I whimper again, struggling against my ropes as darkness threatens to pull me under.

  And I want it to pull me under. Mercy. Blackness. Please, just let me pass out.

  He stops, his black eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he surveys his handiwork. My head sags forward, my chin hitting my chest, and I can see the scores of small cuts he’s marked into the skin on my stomach. So far, he’s avoided my tattoo, and the scars that hover below it, but he keeps touching it, caressing me there, and I know he’s planning something painful for that spot.

  I’m tied to a chair today, my wrists bound behind me. My ankles are completely numb, tied tightly against the chair legs. Some days he ties me to the bed, each limb stretched painfully and attached securely to the corners of the bare frame. There’s no mattress, and the bedsprings bite at my back as he takes his pleasure making me bleed. I’m still wearing the same thing I had on when he snatched me - a black T-shirt, sliced open down the front so that it hangs loosely at my sides and black cotton bra and panties. He’s taken my jeans from me, probably so I feel the bitter cold at night.

  Or to have easy access to my legs so he can drag his knife along every inch of exposed flesh.

  He still hasn’t raped me. Hasn’t even touched me down there. It confuses me, and it makes me afraid. I want him to get it over and done with. Do what he’s going to do, instead of leaving me for days at a time, starving and cold, as my blood dries on my skin, coating the tops of my thighs.

  “Shallow, shallow cuts,” he murmurs, his low voice rocky and rough. I moan as he drags the blade through my skin again, breaking it open like paper and pressing his fingers into the wound he’s created. He leans forward and I whimper again, knowing what he’s about to do.

  I jolt back suddenly as his tongue scrapes along my opened skin like sandpaper, claiming the blood that he’s spilled, drinking in my sorrow. His breath is hot against my cold skin, his tongue like a dirty worm burrowing inside of me.

  Agony.

  I’ve been down here for so long, I’ve lost track of time. There’s no sunlight in here, only concrete, dampness, and cold. At night I freeze, and during the day I swelter. That is the only way I know if it’s night or day, and even these things are starting to become muddled. I count my days by the fresh wounds, having nothing else to reference time with.

  It doesn’t matter, anyway. I could have been down here for a day or a year, and the fact remains the same:

  I am never getting out.

  I know this now. I fought against him for the first few days, until he broke me. Starved me and beat me and broke my spirit. It’s shameful, really.

  I always thought I was stronger than this.

  Assumed that he’d never be able to break me - but he did. So quickly.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you today,” he says, his mouth quirked into a dark smile, a smile that feeds off my suffering. A smile marked with my blood, his full lips coated in a red sheen.

  Surprises are bad. I don’t like his surprises. They always hurt me, make me bleed. I don’t even know if I’ve got any blood left to bleed for him.

  I cry softly as I remember the last words he spoke to me in his office before he pressed the rag to my face, and held it there until the noxious fumes in the material stole my consciousness.

  “I know you think this is going to be bad,” he had said, his grip against my face almost enough to break my jaw, “but however bad you think this is going to be? It’s going to be so. Much. Worse.”

  The door to my room - to my dungeon - slams shut loudly, and I jerk awake from the sleep I’d finally been able to succumb to.

  It feels like I’ve only been asleep for a moment at the most, and when I see my blood still wet on his bottom lip, my suspicions are confirmed.

  Damn. I was really enjoying that brief interlude of calm unconsciousness.

  He’s not holding the knife anymore. Instead, he’s got a small vial of something in one hand, and a slim plastic package in the other. He places both on the small wooden table that sits just inside the room and stalks over to me.

  I gasp as he undoes my ropes. Blood rushes to my ankles, which creates incredible pain, too. I cry out as he fists a hand in my hair and drags me from the chair, throwing me onto the narrow single bed face down. Wire springs grab at my wounded skin, tearing at me, and I force myself to lie still, my face pressed into biting metal, and my eyes staring at the bloodstained floor beneath it. I don’t even fight as ropes are wrapped around my ankles and wrists, flaying my aching limbs in four directions, making me completely vulnerable to his whims.

  “Look at me.”

  I turn my head to the side and see him sitting on the chair I’ve been tied to for the last several hours. He rips the plastic package open with his teeth, and I feel my eyes grow wider when I see it’s a hypodermic needle. I swallow thickly as he stabs the tip of it into the small glass vial he’s holding, and draws liquid into it.

  “What’s that?” I ask, stunned and scared.

  He tuts. “It won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He scoots closer, brings the sharp metal tip down to my arm.

  It’s automatic, my struggle. I cry out at him as I fight my restraints, as I press my knees into the bed and try desperately to get up onto them.

  “Stop.” One hand on my back, pressing me down, but I ignore him. He chuckles. “I didn’t think you had any fight left in you, Julie. I was getting disappointed there.”

  I continue to struggle, even though I know it’s futile. In the position I’m in, legs wide and ankles tied painfully tight to the bed corners, I’ve got no leverage. Face down, with my arms painfully twisted into ropes behind my back, I can’t get away. All I’m doing is wasting my precious energy.

  “I said, stop.” He’s less amused this time, trying to stop m
e as I thrash around, drawing away from the tip of the needle. I can only hope that he needs to hit my vein, and can’t just shove the stuff into my arm.

  His smile disappears and he recaps the syringe, shoving it in his jeans pocket. He twists me painfully so I’m on my side and covers my mouth with his large hand. I kick and scream, but he easily holds me in place. I panic as he reaches down with his other hand and pinches my nose shut with his thumb and forefinger.

  I gasp against his palm, desperately trying to suck air in, but I get nothing. Before I know it, blurry grey dots are in front of me, and then the world goes black.

  ***

  Black and light. Unconscious and awake.

  I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep normally.

  Was it beside Jase the night before we fought? The night before I went and fucked everything up?

  We should have just run away.

  But I couldn’t. The vengeful fire that burns within me hasn’t abated - it’s just been temporarily smothered by my torment and despair. My plan to wreak revenge, interrupted by Dornan’s sick fascination with my blood and screams.

  My most primal desires, my basest emotions, are still tied to my desire to see Dornan suffer and die. In the long hours as my legs cramp and my arms go numb, I fantasize about the different ways it could happen.

  Maybe he’ll put the knife down. Maybe I could pretend I was still unconscious and take him by surprise. Hide behind the door and storm him as he enters, dig my fingernails into his eyeballs until they burst. Oh, the pathetic fantasies that swim in my mind.

  But I can’t get away. I’m always tied to either the bed or the chair – or—more humiliatingly—held by a wrist as I pee in a bucket in the corner. Thank fuck he takes me to the toilet once a day. But even in there, I’m chained to the wall and given exactly ten minutes to get done before he comes back in to get me. So there’s no escaping from there, either.

  He’s smart. He knows that no matter how much he hurts me, I’ll always try to run away at the first opportunity. There’s no Stockholm shit going on here. I hate him and he hates me and only one of us is leaving this fight alive.

  So until I find some kind of way to outsmart him, to overpower him, to just fucking get past him, I’m screwed. I’m as good as dead.

  When I come to I’m still tied to the bed, face down in a pile of bedsprings. A sharp pain in my arm lets me know the needle has found its vein. I moan as liquid burns a fire inside me, spreading from my elbow to my shoulder and then enveloping my entire body. It hurts like nothing else I’ve ever had injected into my body, and I panic as I wonder if he’s decided to just be done with me and kill me already.

  He must see the panic in my eyes, because he laughs.

  “Don’t worry,” he practically sings. “It’s not poison. At least, not the kind you think it is.”

  My limbs feel heavy and my brain feels like it’s been stuffed with tissue paper. It’s all scrunchy and vague inside, and I can’t quite see from one thought to another, each synapse shrouded from the next.

  “I thought you were going to kill me,” I say, confused. Why am I talking? I curse myself for engaging with him and bite down on my lip to try and wake myself up a little.

  “Are you afraid?” Dornan asks.

  “Yes,” I answer without hesitation.

  And that’s when it dawns on me. He’s given me something that makes it almost impossible for me to resist his questions. A sedative. A truth serum of some kind.

  The name of it swims somewhere in my brain, the brain that no longer has a filter.

  “You’re a fucking coward,” I say, noticing that my words are slightly slurred. “You should be the one strapped down like a fucking animal.”

  He grins. “Maybe. But look who’s top dog today?”

  He traces a line down my arm, and though I can barely feel it, the casual affection he feigns makes me quiver noticeably.

  “Do you like it when I touch you like that?” he asks quietly, his gravel voice rattling my chest.

  I blink slowly, groggily. “It confuses me,” I answer. I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life. Well, maybe once. But right here, stripped of every ability to resist his questions, I feel dumb and drugged and completely fucking at his mercy.

  And so very, very alone.

  I glance up at him and I can see how much he’s enjoying this - this absolute position of power and domination. Not even my mind is safe from him now. All of my secrets, the ones buried deep, are his for the taking.

  Elliot. Jase. Grandma. Kayla. Oh, Jesus. Nobody is safe right now. Please, fucking please don’t ask me about them.

  He seems to read my thoughts, or perhaps he’s just reading the panic washing over my face in crushing waves that threaten to drown me.

  “Tell me,” he says conversationally. “Did you like it when I fucked you, Juliette? I’m not talking about six years ago. I’m talking about in the clubhouse just weeks ago.” He trails his hand down to my ass, covered only with a pair of black panties. He slides his hand under the thin material and grabs a handful of ass, squeezing tightly.

  “When you gave me your body to use exactly as I pleased? When I licked you here?” he slides his hand out of the material and reaches through my legs, pressing against my sensitive nub.

  “Yes,” I reply blankly, staring off into the distance. I can’t lie. My brain won’t let me. But I can tell the truth.

  Memories of our horrifying tryst come back to me like a tidal wave. His mouth on my most sensitive of places. The way he filled me, every last part of me smothered by his larger-than-life presence, until I was drowning in his darkness.

  “Ask me what my favorite time was,” I say quietly. He seems taken aback.

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” I shrug as much as my restraints allow, which isn’t much, but he gets the idea. “Don’t you want to know how I liked you best?”

  My voice is shaking, but I speak quickly. I want to get it out before he punches me or strangles me unconscious.

  He laughs throatily, regaining his self-control. “Of course,” he says. “Tell me all about it, baby girl.”

  I smile to myself as the words begin to form through my drugged haze. “I loved it when you held me against the wall and fucked me until I saw stars,” I say in a calm, measured voice. “I loved the way you made me come alive as you choked the life out of me. Because I’d just licked the tears from your face, and I could taste your grief on my tongue while you squeezed my sorrow away.”

  My lips quiver into a smile as he roars loudly. Fucker. I’ve still got it, even drugged, bound and half-naked. I’ve still got that fire burning inside me that just wants to completely fucking obliterate Dornan Ross and everything he’s ever touched.

  He snatches the knife up and for a moment I think he’s going to completely lose his shit and stab me to death, but instead he flips me over. I moan as the bed springs grab at me, trying to stop me from moving. After he’s finished I’m laying on my side, my blank hip pressed into the bed and my tattooed, scarred hip sticking up toward the ceiling.

  “I don’t like that you covered my marks, Julie.” He brings the blade down and now I know what he’s got in store. I feel my eyes widen as I take a sharp breath, and then the searing, ripping pain begins.

  “No matter,” he spits, cutting into my skin. “I’ll just put them back.”

  The only thing that relieves the pain in any tiny way is making a lot of noise. It gives the pain somewhere to go - a voice in the world. It acknowledges what’s happening to each screaming nerve ending that’s being ripped apart.

  So that’s what I do. I open my mouth, and I scream, and I don’t stop screaming until he’s finished cutting any trace of Elliot’s beautiful work from my flesh.

  After he’s finished cutting my tattooed flesh away, leaving a mess of weeping blood and pain, he leaves. But first, he unties me. I wonder why, until he throws me a stained towel that used to be white and gestures to my stomach.

  “K
eep pressure on it,” he says, his black eyes gleaming in the harsh light. “If you fucking die on me before I’m finished with you, I’ll come down and drag you out of hell myself.”

  As he slams the door, I stare at it blankly, holding the towel to my stomach to staunch the bleeding. The pain is worse than the needlework from any intricate tattoo, and more intense than any blunt-edged knife dipped in fire and pressed to unmarred flesh. But I don’t cry anymore, despite the flames of pain licking at my torso. I’m just relieved that I’m alone, and untied, and for the moment, alive.

  It makes me think of the last thing he said before he slammed the door and left me in here.

  If you fucking die on me, I’ll drag you out of hell myself.

  I believe him.

  Mostly, though, I’m glad that my comment had the desired effect – get him so angry he forgot what he was here for. Getting the truth from me. My mind already feels a lot clearer than it did, and relief soothes me like a balm. He didn’t ask me about Elliot. He didn’t ask me about Kayla. He didn’t ask me about Jase.

  I’d give every last scrap of my battered flesh to keep them safe. He can cut it all away so there’s nothing left but blood and bone, and I’ll die happy if it means they all survive Dornan Ross.

  A few hours later, I can tell night is approaching. The air around me has turned from thick and muggy to slightly chilly, making me shiver violently, still damp with my own blood. I have to peel the blood-soaked towel from my torso to get it away from my skin, and then when I look, I wish I hadn’t. My entire left side is a mess of blood and bits of torn flesh. Hacked is about the only word that could accurately describe what he’s done to me. He’s effectively excised the top layers of my skin so that no trace of ink remains.

  It looks horrific. It hurts more the longer I stare at it, wondering how it will ever heal with no flesh to knit back together, but then I remember that it doesn’t need to heal, because I’ll be dead soon.

  At some point I must nod off, because when I come to, it’s to a tray of food sliding along the floor toward me, and to the door slamming shut quickly behind it.