Scorch (Virtues & Lies 2)

Spinning me on the spot, he grumbles something about fucking drugs and idiots.

Squeezing my eyes together, I refuse to tear up as he yanks at the chain holding my dress together. It doesn’t take much to tear it from its clasp.

My eyes open to a petrified blue gaze. The girl swallows. I swallow.

Steeling as he tries to pull my dress down my body, I refuse to let him touch me without a fight. The images from the articles burn in mind.

“I fight harder,” he warns in his crude accent. His voice is dry like he’s spent the evening chain-smoking.

He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He doesn’t know what it is to fight. He may be stronger physically, but I’m a bigger, badder monster than him mentally.

I won’t let him destroy me.

“I’m not scared of you.” I level him with my best impassive stare when he turns me back to him.

“Your bravery is stupid.”

My smile throws him through a loop. Confusion loosens his hold on me.

It doesn’t take long for him to fix that, but I’ve found a weakness.

He knows it too because he wrestles the fabric of my dre

ss, grunting with the exertion it takes him to fight my resistance.

Of course, he overpowers me, and eventually the fabric gives and I’m left in nothing but my thong.

Throwing my dress on the floor, he takes a step back, giving me room to turn from him.

The girl’s eyes fall to my scars. Wonder fills her face, or maybe it’s curiosity? I don’t know, but there’s a shift in her spirit. I see it in the furrow of her brows. The hard set of her jaw.

Fight with me, I implore her silently. For a moment I think she will, but as Tomasz rounds me, her demeanour falls once again.

He doesn’t stop or pause. His hands close the tops of my arms, pushing me back until the back of my legs hit the soft padding of the futon.

“Are you scared now?” The smirk on his face is leering.

“No.” Fear will do nothing now. My energy is better spent on fighting. And I fight him. Every touch, every push, and every pull at my flesh.

I hold in the whimper of pain as he winds his fingers in my hair and pulls hard enough to make me bow towards him. I fight the force of his strength as he drags me onto the couch. Even when he kicks my feet from under me, I kick back. I drive my fists at him hard and relentlessly as he continues to physically overpower me.

He manages to push me down onto the edge of the seat, pressing his groin to my chest with hungry eyes and angry breaths.

It’s then that fear swallows me. My fingers bleed from all the ways I’ve tried to keep him from ruining me. My lungs burn with my exertion. My vision clouds with the oceans of tears I’ve held back.

Tightening his hand in my hair, he yanks my head back, slowly forcing me onto my back while straddling my body with his thighs.

I’m trying to push back with everything I have. I’m trying to save myself. I keep trying even as he overpowers me. My head swims with my anxiety.

With a grunt he traps my right forearm with his leg. A scream of pain bursts from me as the bone threatens to break under his weight.

“You know what happens to lying whores?” he jeers, twisting my other arm until it’s also trapped by the side of my head.

He’s straddling my stomach, rubbing his hardness on my chest.

Oh God.

Oh God.