Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Believing that his enemy had indeed shared all with me, he’d admitted to everything, but the kicker was when he’d tried to convince me that it was all for me, for my future. I was already feeling raw and confused over my time with Nicolo. I was ashamed of the fact that I’d fallen in love with my captor.
I read everything I could get my hands on looking for an explanation. At first I thought it was Stockholm syndrome and I’m sure every psychiatrist worth his or her salt would’ve labeled it that, but somehow I wasn’t buying it. I craved him like a drug. Being apart from him was like leaving a limb behind and the pain of not being close to him was unbearable.
I would never have believed in the beginning that things would turn out this way. I’m still not sure what it is about him that had started me looking at him in a different light. At first I thought he was a lying criminal who had some sort of beef with my dad and was trying to muscle him into doing his bidding. But as time went by and I watched him, I got the sense that he wasn’t the type.
There was something about him that said he was more straightforward than that. It was a shock to realize that this man who’d taken me, who’d done such monstrous things to my body, was more honest with me than the man I’d spent my whole life looking up to.
I’d come to crave his touch, whether it was being tied to his bed and used for his own pleasure, or coming on to the end when he’d touch me as though I were the most precious thing in his world. He’d probably freak if he knew I’d seen more than what he was willing to share with the world.
When he wasn’t growling and threatening, I could see behind the mask and what I saw made my heart squeeze. Of course I had to deal with the guilt I felt. It was a betrayal of my dad. I hated myself the first time I wanted him. Until then he had initiated all our encounters. And even though my body responded I was confident that he hadn’t breached the recesses of my mind.
And then that fateful day I’d asked him to stay and talk to me. He’d been telling me for days that he was taking me back to dad but each day I woke up in his bed. I’d been trying to get to his soft side if he had one, but something had changed while he was telling me about himself.
Not only did he have a soft side, which he hid very well, but he was also one of the most honest men I’d ever met. I started seeing his strength not as something to fear, but as a comfort. I fought these new feelings even as I sat there falling under his spell. But once he touched me with such reverence, with such care, I was a goner.
Up until the morning he took me back I was silently hoping that he’d change his mind. I couldn’t come right out and ask him to keep me that would’ve been too much. But I’d wished for it nonetheless. And when he drove me to my family mansion himself, the way he’d refused to look at me even though he’d held my hand all the way there as though he’d never let go, it had taken everything in me not to utter out loud the words that had been screaming in my head.
Dad had mistaken my melancholy mood in the days following for something else. He’d bent over backwards to make it up to me, but I noticed he hadn’t told the cops what had really happened. Instead he’d spun a story of me going off for a breather because college life had gotten to me and I needed a break.
I’d already accepted Nicolo’s story, but that right there confirmed it for me and it only took dad saying the words once pressed to remove any doubts I might’ve had. If he’d only known that the reason I couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings was because I missed my lover, missed waking up with his arms wrapped around me the way they had been the last few mornings we’d spent together.
Or, that I sometimes missed his rough treatment of me. Missed having my hands tied behind my back while he drove into me from behind. Missed having him pound himself into me until we were both screaming and scratching at each other while he spilled inside me as I throbbed and clutched at him to hold him prisoner within my walls.
I’d left dad’s house after telling him what I thought of him. He’s been trying ever since to get back into my good graces, but this was sure to put an end to that. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was keeping my baby. I was in turns scared and elated. Scared to be doing this alone, and happy that I would have a piece of Nicolo with me forever.