I hate him.
But slowly, I lowered.
I fell to my knees, my teeth clenched but still shaking as his hand stayed in my hair.
“Please,” I whispered, closing my eyes in disgust at myself. “Please.”
“Again.”
“Please,” I begged.
I waited for him to say something—to say I could have my dog back—but he just stood there, holding me by my hair.
He just stood there.
Was this what he wanted to see? Me degraded? Me scared?
He loved me scared. It got him excited.
I actually thought I liked it, too, once.
And as the seconds passed, and he held me there as my heart thumped in my chest, it was like we were teenagers again for a moment.
When I liked the games he played with me. Before I realized I was the toy.
The terror and the dread. But the exhilaration and the safety I felt in his arms.
How I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated him, but how I loved what I felt with him more than I loved anything I felt with anyone else, either. I was so stupid.
His fingers started to move, caressing me so softly as his breathing turned heavy and strained. “Winter…”
My clit throbbed once, and I broke, silently crying as shame heated my cheeks.
What the hell had he done to me?
He pulled me up, pushing my hair behind my shoulder and his voice suddenly normal.
“Good girl,” he told me. “Of course, you can have your dog. Did you think I was a monster?
I jerked away from his hands. “It hardly matters. You already ruined my life. Long ago.”
“In the treehouse when you were eight,” he finished my thought for me. “I remember that party. It’s funny, though. That’s all you do remember, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The fountain,” he pointed out. “Do you remember what happened in the fountain before we went to the treehouse that day?”
The fountain? I searched my brain through my confusion, not coming up with anything that stood out as out of the ordinary. I was eight, so I couldn’t remember every detail after all this time. Just that he was hurt, and I’d tried to help. The events after the fountain were what mattered.
“Nothing happened,” I told him.
I wasn’t letting him take what happened that day and turn it around on me. I was nice to him. Nothing I did or said deserved what happened after. Neither did anything I did or said years later in high school deserve what else he took from me.
Part of me was still curious about what he was getting at, though, and I thought he might elaborate, but he didn’t. He left me in the dark.
He sighed. “I’m out of my own control, Winter,” he said, not explaining any further. “There are no choices. We are who we are, and we do what we do. It’s nature. Like game pieces, I will play my part, because I can’t resist. I can’t be what I’m not.”
I frowned. He sounded resolute. Like this was the end for me.