Faithless (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (39 page)

“What happened? Calm down and stop trying to kill me,” Wil grunts. “God,
you’re fucking tough.” Wil flips me to my back. His muscular legs wrapped around my hips like a wrestler on a mat. I buck him off and retake the upper-hand. It’s when Wil tries for my wrists, tries to control me, that fear trickles into my system and panic is born.

“NO!” I release a blood-curdling scream
, fighting for my life. Wil no longer holds back. He elbows me in the side of the head.

Black.

Lights fire in my vision. But I don’t go down. I fight harder. I use whatever weapon I have- teeth, fists, arms, legs, feet, even my forehead. I rabidly battle, knowing I don’t have a chance to win the war. My punches get lighter as exhaustion closes in around me, as Wil’s hits get harder. He’s angry now- I hate the confusion on his face but love the agony. Wil should know why we are grappling, and he needs to feel how I feel inside.

“Stop it,” Wil hisses a second before he bites the forearm that’s trying
to put pressure across his windpipe- the arm that tries to suffocate the life out of him. Wil’s teeth sink, ripping a scream from my throat. “How did you get do damn strong? Calm the fuck down before I really hurt you.”

The fact that he isn’t even trying spikes anger in my blood. A burst of energy comes from my center as I explode in a fury. I tear at anything I can reach. My elbow connects with Wil’s jaw, releasing a pain
ed grunt from his chest that has me smiling in ecstasy.

I see it a heartbeat before… A fist angled at the side of my head
. I don’t even get to feel the pain.

Black
Peace
Daddy- an apparition tells me to be a good girl and protect my family at any cost, and then the vision poofs as fast as it appeared. My mind grasps the tendrils of the vision- wailing for more.

“Daddy,” I keen as I renew my fight, finding it impossible to move or speak.

“Pixy,” Wil says in stark relief. “Thank God, she’s awake. No, I have no idea what’s wrong with her. She hasn’t said a word. Faith tried to kill me and damn near did,” Wil says into the phone at his ear as he paces in front of me.

My eyes do an inventory before my mind and body can catch up to what’s happening. I’m tied to that fucking wooden dining chair that Wil is so fond of. No matter how hard I bounce, it doesn’t move. I writhe like a wild animal trying to get free of a trap. I try to scream and snarl but something is lodged in my mouth.

“Pixy, calm down,” Wil chastises me as he hangs up the phone. I fight harder, chair banging on the floor, scraping-ruining the linoleum. I hear his words but I have no comprehension of the meaning. I turn feral.

Whoosh
.

I yell in shock, sound escaping the edges of the handkerchief
lodged in my mouth. Wil, looking very concerned, confused, and highly proud of himself, stands over me with an empty mop bucket. The contents now cover my body and the floor around me. I glare up at him while shaking the water from my hair, and hiss through my gag- more animal than human.

“Well, I said I’d tie you down and make you listen,” Wil growls at me. “This wasn’t
exactly what I had in mind.” He angrily tosses the bucket into the kitchen. “My house is a fucking disaster. Are you proud of yourself? You ruined my door, my couch, a chair, the fucking wall.” My eyes dart to the floor and his follow. “Motherfucker, the floor, too,” he says in disbelief.

I snarl around my gag, silently saying
your face, too, buddy.
Wil’s stern face looks like one very large bruise. I’m glad that I’m tied up or I’d be able to see what he did to my body in retaliation.

“What in the hell happened?” Wil asks me
. I arch an eyebrow. How the hell do I answer that with a gag in my mouth? “You almost killed me- multiple times. I thought I’d killed you, but I had to knock you out to save myself.”

My eyes go wide when I
stare through the ruined door into the hallway. I renew my efforts to kill whatever stands in my path of
her
. A vision of myself at thirty years old, stares at me from between the broken splinters of the door.

“Why are you going crazy again?” Wil hisses. “Don’t make me refill the bucket.” 

“Don’t bother,” my mother the whore purrs more than speaks. No, we do not sound the same.

I watch in surprise as Wil swallows and
backs the fuck up as if Satan is prowling through Wil’s broken door with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at his heels. “Gwen, I have no idea what is wrong with her. Thank you for coming.”

Part of me screams
TRAITOR,
and a smaller part thanks Wil for bringing her so close to me that I can taste the end of her heinously evil life.

“I see she got my message,” my mother says in her purring lilt.

I viciously unhinge. My wrists bleed from the force of the ropes cutting into my skin. The chair rocks so violently that I fall to my side, slowly dragging myself and the attached chair across the floor, trying to get to
her
. My nails bite into the linoleum, leaving blood and pieces of nail in the groves I gouge.

“What the hell did you do, Gwen?” Wil shouts in a panic as he tries to catch me as I crawl to my mother. He grabs the back of the chair and hauls me across the room. He firmly plants me in the kitchen. I watch Gwen with one eye and Wil with the other. He pulls another length of rope out of a kitchen drawer and ties my chair to the cabinetry.

“Try that again and we’ll do a repeat of knocking your lights out,” Wil seethes. He tosses a kitchen towel over my head and starts to dry me. Wil’s caretaking only pisses me off more.

“She did that to you?” Gwen says in awe.

“Faith almost killed me a half dozen times, Gwen.” He pauses to sigh out his battered nose. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“She’s so strong,”
my mother says in a creepy, lulling tone, like she’s listing my pros and cons in her slut of a skull. “I didn’t really think she loved Cortez Abernathy at all. I knew it would piss her off that it was Fate. Father wanted to send a message to his future nemesis, Ezra Zeitler. Faith feelings were just collateral damage.”

I cock my head to the side, listening and watching her as she listens and watches me. We are like mirror images of one another. Her light to my dark, but everything is the same. She doesn’t even look thirty-four.

When she’s no longer purring out her words, I hear it. We sound the same. My mother even draws breath the same as I do. I hold my breath to prove that theory wrong.

“Jesus Christ, Faith. You’re so damned stubborn and obstinate. You’re suffocating yourself.” Wil bitches at me while he unties the hanky from around my face and pull
s out the one lodged in my mouth.

“Got you to…” I gasp for air. “
Take the gag out… didn’t it?” I nastily sneer. “Thanks for having my sister fuck my boyfriend, and thanks for timing it so that Ez and I got to witness the finale.”

“Seriously, Gwen? You’re just begging Faith to kill you,” Wil chastises his employer. “What good was that?”

“She wanted Ezra and me to never trust your future partner. My mother was drawing battle lines. She’s just too stupid to realize nothing will separate those boys after seventeen years of history,” I taunt. “Too stupid to live.”

“Like it was my idea,” Gwen says with an attitude that is identical
to mine. I’m never speaking again. Is that what I look like? A bitch?  “Father’s genius plan,” rolls off her tongue as she leans a hip against the counter.

“Will you act like a civil
ized human being if I untie you?” Wil stares into my eyes, looking for tells that have changed over the months since he really spent time with me. I’ve changed, and he’s about to find out just how much.

“Yes, Wil,” I whimper as if in pain. I roll my neck like it’s uncomfortable and strained. I quiver my bottom lip and release a tear.

A perverse light fills my system as I see sympathy flash across Wil’s face- a light I mask with a pitiful expression. “Be good,” Wil softly orders as his nimble fingers untie my binds. I patiently sit, looking as pathetic as I can.

Wil, distracted with the rope on the chair, doesn’t see me coming. The instant I have freedom, I launch myself across the kitchen and tackle my mother to the floor. We are the same height, the same build. But I am almost two decades younger and a
heluva lot stronger. My fingers wrap around her throat as I spit words of pure hatred into her face.

“My daddy is dead. I don’t even care if you were the one to order it. I blame you,” I scream an unholy sound of agony as my fingers tighten around her throat, nails digging in so deep that  warm blood is drawn
and trickles down my fingers. Eyes identical to my own, stare up at me as they pop from my mother’s skull from the intense pressure of my strangling hands. I look at my mother and see her death reflect in her eyes… from mine.

A sharp, buzzing sound reverberates through my skull. Shadows creep in from the sides of my vision until all I see is black. I slump to the floor with a loud thud, the force jarring my injuries. All I hear is the blood rushing through my veins and Wil saying,
Thomas is dead? What the fuck did you do?

~Chapter Thirty~

Warm blood relentlessly trickles down my face, neck, and my naked breasts. It scorches my inflamed, raw skin. I whimper as my nerves register the intense pain firing across my flesh. Each drop pelts me as if ma
de of molten glass.

Naked?

I start by wiggling my fingers to prove that I’m still alive.
Toes.
Ankles.
Wrists.

The wrists don’t move.
I rock and find the movement familiar. I try to open my eyes, but the warm liquid clumps on my eyelashes and fogs my vision. I rock again, the sound is off- the surface beneath my feet is wet, slippery.

“Wakey. Wakey,” a calm voice murmurs against
my ear. I whimper as fabric touches my skin and rubs the flesh from my bone.

“No… hurts…” I weakly protest.

“I’m washing the blood off and cleaning your wounds. Goddammit, Faith. Why did you make me hurt you? I… I didn’t want to touch you like that. But you were going to kill me or hurt yourself.” Wil scolds me in a soft, yet irritated voice.

“Shoulda… let me… kill… ‘er,” I rasp.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea that you put absolutely no thought into,” Wil snidely says as he sweeps the hair off my forehead with a gentle fingertip. “You do know what would happen if Gwen dies, right?”

“I… I’m…” swallow. “I’m not sure… What?” I mumble in confusion.
“She dies? Why can’t I move?”

Fingertips clear the water from my eyes. I blink a few times
, and it takes years for me to understand my surroundings. The raining blood is the spray of the shower. I am naked. Wil is naked. And I’m tied to that fucking wooden chair in the middle of Wil’s bathtub.

I close
my eyes, not wanting to see the shame called Faith.

“
First, you would become Mitchell’s heir- meaning he would own you. Second, if Gwen dies we will never know what happened to Tom. I’m so sorry, Pixy- so sorry for so damned much.” Wil kneels in front of me, and takes my head in his hands as if my face is made of spun glass- glass he tried to shatter moments ago. He connects with me via our eyes.

“I know how much you loved your father. I just went through this
, and I’d love to tell you that the pain goes away. But I refuse to lie to you. The hurt is a living, breathing entity that nothing will drown out. I will give you the pleasure of justice. I never found out who killed my father and it haunts me night and day. Allow Gwen to do this service for you, and then you can mete out justice.”

“I don’t care who did it, they are dead,” I hoarsely whisper.

“I’ll be there for you, Faith. I promise.” Wil’s fingers swiftly and efficiently go to work on the ropes. “I didn’t tie you to the chair because I thought you’d run away,” Wil laughs. “This time,” he adds with a blush. “I feared you’d fall and hurt yourself or drown while I got supplies. It was to stabilize your unconscious body. You were only out for a few seconds at a time. You kept going back under for some reason.”

“Because life sucks,” I weakly say, having to swallow and clear my throat to be heard.

“Let’s get you comfortable. The mean lady is coming back with news,” Wil teases me. “I highly doubt you want to be naked in the shower with me when she arrives.”

The mention of naked draws my eyes to his body- Wil’s battered and bruised body. “Sorry,” I weakly mumble.

Wil barks out a happy sound- not quite a laugh because it sounds so sarcastic. “The other guy looks worse,” he says with a wink.

I’m carried to Wil’s bed, clothed in a pair of his sweats and an old t-shirt. He props me up in the center with my back to the headboard. After a lot of sports tape, surgical-taped gauze, and a handful of painkillers, I’m comfortable. Wil took care of his own injuries
, and now he sits next to me on his bed.