Manipulate (Deliver 6)

She shook her head wildly, tears rising and burning. This wasn’t happening. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.

“I was promised safety.” Her legs trembled uncontrollably, shuffling her away until her back hit the wall. “I paid that guard to bring me to a better place. He said I would have protection here.”

She’d been too desperate to believe him, blindly holding onto a grain of hope so that she wouldn’t completely lose it.

“You don’t like the arrangement?” He charged toward her. “Then you go back.” He gripped her hair and hauled her toward the door.

“No! Wait!” She reached for the phone, arms outstretched as the bed blurred by, too far away. “Please, don’t send me back. I’ll work. I can cook, wash clothes, clean bathrooms. I’ll do anything!”

“You do this.” He grabbed her hips and ground his erection against her backside. “Or you go back and let a dozen men take a turn with you every night.”

Bile simmered in her chest, and her breaths heaved through great, choking sobs.

“No. Please, anything else.” She thrashed in his arms, her feet scrambling across the floor as he dragged her into the hall. She needed that phone, the private toilet, the soft bed… “Please, don’t send me back.”

“You pay the rent or go.”

His indifference about whether she stayed crushed her willpower. Fighting him only quickened his strides as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her. He’d given her a choice and wouldn’t bend the rules. She wasn’t worth the trouble.

She was nothing to him.

A low, agony-soaked sound gurgled in her throat as resignation sucked the life from her limbs. “I’ll pay.”

He didn’t give her time to change her mind. Turning back, he hauled her into her cell and tossed her on the mattress, face down. A zipper sounded behind her, followed by the tear of a condom packet.

Violent, full-body tremors chattered her teeth and rattled the metal frame of the bed.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t bring herself to look behind her. She just lay there, frozen in shock and horror, aching to be anywhere but here facing what was about to happen.

Her body stiffened with the instinct to protect itself, everything inside her screaming to kick, bite, and come unhinged. But fighting him wouldn’t get her that phone.

The device lay inches from her face. Her only way out of this nightmare.

As he wrenched down her jeans and panties, her fingernails stabbed into her palms.

As he forced himself into her dehydrated body, something broke inside her.

As he pounded the singed, electrocuted flesh between her legs, she swallowed her cries, buried the anguish, and didn’t make a sound.

But her silence came at a price.

The only way to hold still beneath the violation was to shed the pieces of herself that cared. With each merciless thrust, she lost her naiveté, her kindness, and her hope in mankind. She carved up the vulnerable parts that wouldn’t survive in Jaulaso and let it all go.

Gentle, sentimental fragments of her existence tore away and crumbled to dust, and she knew she would never get those pieces back. Something hard and unfeeling filled the jagged gaps.

Her mind contorted and adjusted, trying to protect itself, to become immune to the damage. She felt herself grow cold and vacant, hardening like a concrete wall.

But she had fractures. God, they were everywhere, letting in the pain from his thrusts, the anguish of being used so despicably, and the fear of tomorrow, and the next day, and the month after that.

She mentally repaired the cracks, stopped the leaks, and shut out the agony. It was a lonely, excruciating effort. As she toughened herself against the stabbing motion of his hips, her edges started to splinter.

The threat of tears burned her throat. It would be so easy to release her grief in a fit of sobbing cries. Maybe someone would hear and take pity on her. Maybe this man would stop hurting her and feel horrible about what he’d done. Maybe, just maybe, her tears would make all this go away.

That wouldn’t happen. No one would feel sorry for her. No one would come to her rescue.

She was in Jaulaso. To survive, she needed to become like them.

Wrapping herself in coldness, she erected shields, closed mental doors, and formed layers of impenetrable resilience.

I will not cry.

I will not show weakness.

I will bear this, bury it, and survive.

A strangled groan sounded behind her, and the weight on her back disappeared.

She looked down at her balled hands and uncurled her fingers. Blood trickled from crescent-shaped gouges in her palms and soaked her nail beds.

The pain didn’t register.

She slowly rose, pulled up her jeans with numb fingers, and turned to meet his eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Garra.” He fastened his pants and ran a hand over his black hair, slicking the strands into place.

“Congratulations, Garra. You forced yourself on an unarmed woman half your size. Your mother must be proud.” Her voice echoed in her head with icy detachment. “If you ever touch me again, I’ll kill you.”