Page 94 of The Club

When his fingers brush the back of my neck, a weird, toxic mix of feelings rushes through me. Horror. An awful, unwanted longing. An awful, unwanted arousal. My body remembers what it’s supposed to do, how it’s required to respond.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what, sweetheart? Touch you? You knew coming here that I would. You knew, coming here, that I would own you again. You came to trade yourself, to give yourself to me.”

I’m shaking so hard I can barely speak, because he’s right, he’s right, he’s right, but somehow I manage, “Just let Dominic go. I’ll whatever you want.”

A muffled shout comes from across the pool again, but it can’t reach me here. No one can—except him.

His fingers curl lightly in my hair. “You’ll do whatever I want regardless.”

Tears spill from my eyes. My body is like a live wire, overreacting to the smallest things. His touch. His voice.

But I have to think. I have to stay in the present for a little longer. Then I can yield. I can give up.

Some distant part of my mind knows that’s not the plan. Somewhere in the darkness, Noah, Dante, and Rocco are waiting.

But that doesn’t feel like reality right now. I’m in a bubble with him, and it’s very, very familiar.

Once, I wanted that bubble. He washed my parents’ blood from me. He comforted me during my nightmares. Even when he punished me, I loved him for it. It created a space to exist within. Boundaries. Rules. I wanted that, then.

I loved pleasing him, how he would smile. I loved, then, how he would touch me. Even when it was scary, even when it hurt, he was there to help me.

I thought he loved me. I thought he would keep me.

He didn’t.

He sent me away when he didn’t like my voice anymore, when it started getting deeper.

Then there were other men, and I tried, always, desperately, to recreate what I’d had with him, to make them love me, to make them smile at me, to hold their gazes.

But none of it was real.

I knew that, of course. Alone, I always cried. Alone, I tried to die.

But I lived—and Noah came. And after I tried to suck his cock because I wanted him to love me too, and he took me to a therapist who tried to convince me that what I felt was twisted, I snapped. I couldn’t let her say that. I couldn’t let her destroy everything that made sense to me.

When Noah came to pick me up from her office and found her on the floor and me covered in her blood under the desk, he said,We’re gonna have to do this a little differently.

But she was right, and I knew it and I couldn’t forget, after that, how pathetic I’d made myself with all those men.

I still needed the attention. I couldn’t live without it. I still needed sex, all the time. But I learned not to think of it as love.

Until Dominic.

Maybe I’m wrong again. Maybe I’m pathetic again.

But I want him so much, I need him so much, that I’ll give myself up before I give him up.

So I say, “If you kill Dominic, I’ll fight you. Every step. Every second.”

The Collector twirls a lock of my hair around his finger. I’m still on my face on the ground. He’s still above me.

“I’m going to kill you, Rafael. You know that.”

“But you want something first.” I know he does. But my heart races all the same, because if I’m wrong …

“Get him up,” the Collector orders. “On his knees.”