Trust in Me (6 page)

“You are
nothing
to me. Just a whore, and a stupid one at that.”

Crack.
The belt bit into my back, coiling around my ribs to lick the underside of my breast. A short scream escaped me, abruptly cut off with the impact of the next blow. It rang in the air though—the searing pain, my agony—as he beat me.

He was hurting me because I’d annoyed him, but the truth of the matter was that I’d only done it for Tyler. I’d betrayed Carlos, and so I deserved the punishment. I deserved worse than this, though as my body lit on fire from the outside in, I couldn’t imagine anything more painful.

What could hell have to offer me that could compete with this? Maybe God was just expedient that way, getting in some of my licks while I still lived. Or maybe I’d already died, and I would be stuck in this hell for eternity. That was the scariest thought of all. The only thing that made this bearable was knowing that one day I would be free of it. Even hell had to be better than this.

I heard the slice come through the air, just an innocuous whistle, before the single tail whip flayed my skin. The screams rang out from my throat, wholly detached from my mind. I couldn’t control them anymore than I could control the whip. My skin seared where it split open. As the pain tore through my body, sweat broke out, dripping into the open wounds, burning me. Even my own body betrayed me, causing more pain, showing more weakness.

They went on and on, each flail of the whip cutting me open, tearing me apart until I was sure I’d never get put back together again. The pain crashed over me in never-ending waves, pulling me under only to thrust me back up to the awareness again.

Pain continued to reverberate through my back as if he’d never stopped, but he was in front of me, waving his dick in my face. Slapping me, wetting me with the pre-cum at the tip. A jerk of my hair opened my mouth, and then it was filled with cock. Years of training, a lifetime of it, kicked in and I laved the underside with my tongue, relaxed my throat to allow him in deep.

Bite him.
The thought occurred to me, not for the first time, as he fucked my face harshly. I’d die for the transgression, an ugly, painful death with no dignity. Fear and an unshakeable desire for survival had kept me from doing it all this time, but now it wasn’t just my own hide, broken and scarred as it was, on the line. There were those nameless, faceless girls who still had hope for a life.

And there was Tyler. He was counting on me to help him. He’d asked me to distract Carlos. This was the only way I could. So I sucked him and let my face be raped mercilessly. Every rough thrust was like a coin slipped into the game for one more round—he’d be distracted that much longer. Tyler would be that much safer. The piercing pain of Carlos’s dick popping into my throat, the acute cramp in my neck from craning upward, the hands tight in my hair were the ride itself, a fun-house torture chamber.

He came with a soft grunt, music to my ears. Salty liquid splashed into the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, knowing that a single drop lost would only mean more pain. The only people who said that you attracted more bees with honey had never been whipped.

Only once I had balked at swallowing. My childhood training had taught me a lot of things about being a woman, but that particular lesson had been missing. I’d been surprised at the gush of ejaculate. I’d gagged and coughed it out. My punishment that night had been to swallow from every man Carlos had working for him. I learned that lesson well.

A soft beep pierced the curtain my mind had constructed to protect me from reality, the innocuous bleep of the cell phone incongruous to the noxious blend of blood and rage that hung in the air.

“Tyler. You back yet?” Carlos snapped. “All right. I’ll be up in a minute.”

The phone clapped shut and his boots stomped away from me. Without a word, he left, shutting the door and closing me in darkness. I hung my head and slipped away.

* * *

My jaw felt like it had turned to stone, clenched shut. Only the low moan emanating from it—from me—told me I was alive. I didn’t want to move. Even in the cocoon of sleep I knew that as soon as I became conscious, as soon as I moved a muscle, the pain would retaliate. A jealous mistress, pain would be too eager to make up for the time lost to dreams.

But a body keeps on living. I’d learned that lesson early on. Would he come back? Was my punishment over?
God, let it be over.

I wasn’t in the basement. The smell of blood and leather wasn’t here. I figured Carlos had sent Leo down to free me, to put me back in my room. I just hoped he hadn’t given Leo permission to use me first, like he sometimes did.

My eyes flickered open, shooting warning shocks of pain through me and signaling the nausea to begin. I was coming back to life, despite myself.

“Shhh. I’ve got you.” I heard Tyler’s soothing over a mournful wail. It was coming from me.

His hand stroked down my face in a calming caress, but its path was carefully picked, as if to avoid the bruises there like brambles in a thicket. I’d never wanted him to see me like this.

I tried to speak again. A croaked sound emerged.

“Shh, just rest. You’re okay.”

He sounded so sure, but I had to know. “Where is he?”

“He’s not here, don’t worry.” But the reassurance came on a razor’s edge.

I tossed restlessly in the bed, ferreting out every ache, every bruise.

“Where is he?” I whispered again.

“He’s out meeting with the suppliers. Trying to calm them down.” Tyler paused. “We got the guy out. You did it.” His voice cracked at the last. “God,” he said, more a sob than a word. “I thought—I never imagined he would do
this
. Why, Mia? Why do you stay?”

“Where would I go?” It was a rhetorical question, a flippant answer, but it was the closest thing to the truth. Blinking, I recognized the open ceiling of the warehouse I called home, the exposed rafters and pipes blanketed with dust like moss on a tree. The sheets weren’t slippery like Carlos’s silk or coarse like the threadbare sheets in my own bed. These were soft, and like Goldilocks, I found them just right. I guessed we were in Tyler’s room in the compound, though how he’d gotten me out of the basement I had no idea.

“But—
fuck
, Mia. I thought maybe he’d fuck you. Maybe even slap you, if I let myself think about it. But not
this
. Your back…” His eyes held the horror of what had been done to me, they begged to understand, so I searched for something more concrete.

I struggled with that, understanding it all myself. “Carlos isn’t all bad,” I finally said.

Tyler’s eyes flitted down to my bruises and then back to my face in a tacit denial.

I sighed. “He took me in when I was starving, when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“When was this?” Tyler asked tightly.

I’d have to tell him my story, I realized. I did owe him that. Or maybe that was just an excuse for wanting to unload on someone. I could share my story as long as I left out certain details about my father. I saw the guilt that pricked him from what had happened to me today and knew, instinctively, that it would eat him up to know the full situation in which he’d left me back then. I knew that he hadn’t owed me anything, couldn’t have known, but he wouldn’t see it that way.

“My father was…well, he got drunk a lot. And when he got drunk, he got violent.” I ignored the sharp intake of Tyler’s breath. I didn’t think my father’s rages could have been totally unknown to Tyler, living so closely to me as he had, but he hadn’t realized the extent. And he never would, not if I could help it.

I could see him forming the questions already. H
ow soon did the violence start?
W
as I there when you were getting hurt?
He wouldn’t like the answers to them, not if I was honest, so I moved on quickly.

“I got fed up and ran away,” I said. “I lived on the streets, but I was starving. Starving and broke. I don’t think I had more than a few days left in me when Carlos found me in an alley.”

I gave Tyler a wry smile. “He was popping some guy for who knows what. I was behind some boxes, but I must have made a sound. Carlos pulled me out and I thought for sure he’d kill me. But instead he took me home. He cleaned me up, fed me, took care of me all this time.”

Tyler’s jaw was clenched hard, with only a vein popping in his temple and the faint flare of his nostrils for movement. His eyes turned on me, a revelation of shared pain. “He took advantage of you.”

I laughed softly. “There wasn’t anything to take advantage of, just skin and bones. He had to nurse me back to health. And then, yes, he did expect repayment, but it was only fair.” I’d been paying for my food and clothes and a roof over my head with my body since I was young. That wasn’t going to change in my lifetime. It was my one constant.

Tyler stood up and walked away from me, only the stiff correctness of his posture betraying his upset. If he had only been a little agitated, only a tiny bit unnerved, it would have been okay. But he was beyond that, beyond bothered and well into rage. I couldn’t help but be scared so soon after my recent encounter with Carlos’s fury.

He must have seen my reaction, a small withdrawal, because he turned stricken.

I softened at that. “It’s okay. It’s been okay. Not so bad. But a few months ago…there was this girl. I mean, I’m not the only girl to have ever been here, but this one was different. Carlos really gave her a hard time, more than usual, and I could tell—” I wasn’t sure how to explain the wounded look in her eyes, the one I recognized in the mirror. “—I could tell she’d had it rough. It was bad enough, but when he tried to kill her, I couldn’t let it happen.”

I shrugged. “So I saved her. Her and Zachary. Then Zachary told me about the trafficking and recruited me as an informant. And…well, at least I can do some good here.”

Tyler hung his head. “Fuck, Mia. I know you said you weren’t his girlfriend, but I thought you were. And I guess you are, in a way, but it wasn’t…I never thought he’d do this to you. I thought you were just like any other girlfriend of a criminal, that you either didn’t care about what he did or you liked the rewards too much to bother with it.”

“Hey,” I said with a hand on his arm. “That’s pretty much true. For a long time I didn’t care about the bad stuff he did.”

“You were a kid!” he burst out.

I cringed at his volume, his words.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice as hoarse as if he’d been shouting for hours instead of minutes. “I’m sorry. I just can’t…I can’t quite get a handle on it. It’ll take me some time.”

He looked up at me, earnestness glistening in his eyes, never looking more like the young golden boy than right now. “I’m just ashamed that I didn’t know you did this out of desperation. I knew it wasn’t good for you here, but I thought that you chose to be here.”

“I did.”

But we both knew what would happen to me if I left. I’d known for a long time that the only way out of Carlos’s cold embrace was six feet under. And after seeing the results of Carlos’s punishment, it seemed Tyler understood as well. But just because death was unsavory didn’t make it any less of a choice, and one day soon, I’d give in to it. Just not today.

“I want you to leave.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you say that to all the ladies? Because I can’t imagine that gets you a lot of play.”

“I’m serious,” he insisted. “It’s like I told you before. You can go into Witness Protection. I can keep you safe.”

He might as well have been offering to ship me to a colony on Mars for all that a safe life meant anything real to me.

“And what’s going to happen to those girls?” I reminded him. “Carlos was already freaked about a traitor. If I wind up missing, he’s going to know something was up. And he’ll probably suspect I had help getting away, too. The whole operation will be blown. Those girls will end up sold somewhere else entirely and you’ll never find them.”

Tyler said nothing, knew I was right.

“So I’ll stay,” I said quietly. There was a solemnity, a finality, to the statement that I felt in my bones. This would be the last thing I did with Carlos. However it ended, with success or failure, it
would
end. And then maybe I’d find peace, even if it was in a pine box.

“I’ll protect you,” Tyler swore vehemently.

I smiled, tinged with sadness. “You can’t even trust me. How can you protect me?”

“I will,” he insisted. “And I trust you now. I’m sorry, so sorry. And I want to make that up to you, too, but for now I hope you’ll settle for protection and trust.”

“Okay,” I agreed, with a detached indulgence.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, though who he was trying to convince, I didn’t know. “And when this is all over, I’ll set you up somewhere safe. You’ll start a new life, away from all this.”

I told him okay to that, too. There was time enough for the truth later.

Chapter Six

I studied Tyler’s unfathomable expression through the mirror as I applied foundation to my bruises. I worked at my vanity, fixing myself, hiding. He lounged in the corner chair, watching me.

The casual pose might have fooled a woman with less experience in reading a man’s body language. But the wide flung arms and spread thighs were taut like a panther ready to pounce. His eyes held an intensity I’d learned to be wary of many men ago.

He’d insisted on walking me back to my room and making sure I was settled—and stable—before getting back to work. Apparently that included voyeurism of my cosmetic routine. Not that his gaze was sexual. It was predatory.

After the base and foundation, I laid on the loose powder. A good make-up job was a matter of thin layers, well-blended, as opposed to thick smudges. I could probably have an alternate career as a make-up artist, assuming I lived long enough to stop being a whore. Assuming I were normal enough not to be a whore. Not that respectable places would hire me. I was already dead on paper, having disappeared from school at sixteen and never having filed any official paperwork or taxes since then. The system probably counted me rotting in an alley years ago. Sometimes I wondered if that wouldn’t have been the better fate.