Chapter 58

I spit at him and slap him in the chest, stupidly, not caring if he goes back to hard thrusting. I’m so not ready to back down, and maybe he might be the first guy who gets me to an orgasmic climax with a few more aggressive moves if I rile him up again. I can hate him and still get off on his manhood. Alexi just watches me for a moment before pulling out of me and gets up, yanking me with him harshly by my arm and hauling me like I am a weightless nothing. I am somewhere between rage, hatred and ‘get back inside of me and finish this, you arsehole’. My body is overheating from his attention and my skin blushed rosy, everywhere. Alexi takes a second to look me over and just grins in that self-assured ‘master of his universe’ way of his.

He practically throws me on the couch. Somehow, I trip and end up face down, my face buried harshly on black leather that starts suffocating me. I pull my hands to lever myself up, instantly trying to rectify my position and try to breathe, but he has my wrists faster than I can pull them and yanks them behind my back cruelly. I have no way of getting up from this bent over position or refuse his advances while held this way. Immediate horror hitting home that despite my refusal, he’s going to fuck me this way. I start fighting him, wriggling and making smothered yells and cries into the smooth fabric blinding me. Choking myself as I panic and squirm when he grabs my hip from behind to manoeuvre me into doggy position. Kicking my ankles apart and I almost crumble to my knees with the sudden movement—he has me powerless, my legs shaking and giving out as fear consumes me and I try like crazy to get my wrists from his cruel biting hold.

A wave of terror overtakes me and I literally freak out at being face down while he tries to take me from behind. This is one thing that sends me into a psychotic rage and fear, and I will battle to the death before I let anyone do this to me again. That inner mental crazy who occasionally surfaces, lashes out and fights, twists and turns.

Strength from God knows where. I push all my weight onto my chest and use my legs to break his hold on me, tears streaming and smearing across the couch as I cry out in desperation. Panic consuming me and turning me into a blubbering emotional mess in a nanosecond. I manage to get loose, enough to flip to my back and pull myself fully onto the sofa, to safety. Using my feet to shove him away as I curl up defensively and I can’t help the eruption of words that come out of me.

‘‘NO! NO! NO! GET FUCKING OFF ME. STOP IT! DON’T TOUCH ME!’’ I scream at him, lifting hands and legs defensively in readiness to fight, to save myself. A deranged little wildcat who has been backed into a corner and not caring about the spectacle of nakedness I am like this. He just pauses and looks at me as though I have lost my ever-loving mind. ‘‘What the hell are you doing?’’ He lifts his hands away, no longer trying to capture me and just looks blank. That typical Carrero response as I break and sob, hating that he reduced me to panic induced tears of fear. He has no idea how afraid he makes me or how doing that to me adds a whole new level of trauma. I have memories and scars that he knows nothing about.

I’m breathing heavily and feeling stupid for my overreaction, but I just can’t. It’s how HE, that bastard boyfriend of my mother’s, always used to do this to me … hold me face down, suffocating in the blankets of my bed and hurt me from behind. He made me stand that way and if I buckled while he did it, then he would beat me black and blue and start again. I can’t be taken from behind, it just makes me flip out irrationally and all I can see, hear, feel and smell is that fucking room back home and how many times he made me take this, tied, bound and gagged.

I was a child.

Warm tears slide down my cheeks and I just feel stupid and ashamed that he broke me enough to see this part. That I had a moment of weakness with him of all people and let my past and present collide so openly while playing into his hands and giving him more fuel for that sadistic smug mind of his. I swear since the day I met him he has been pulling apart the carefully laid bricks of my unbreakable wall and ruining the entire persona I built for myself.

I don’t know how he even does it. I hate him so much!

‘‘What are you doing?’’ He asks again more edge to his tone as I stay in my stupidly childish position, holding up my palms and feet as though somehow nakedly I can stop him in this way. I have not a chance in hell of stopping the freight train that is Carrero, trembling like a pathetic feeble kid and sobbing in front of the one person who has complete immunity to tears.

‘‘Someone hurt me this way, repeatedly … Please don’t.’’ It comes out impulsively, broken and small and I curse myself for giving him this weapon over me. Information is everything to him and he uses your own scars against you effectively. I just feel so raw and fragile and start scrambling to rebuild the self-defence system I normally hide behind.