Page 13 of Break Me
Something compels me to pull up the striped sleeve on my right arm, and my world spins as I see a line of six numbers tattooed into my skin.
A scream fills the air, and I drag my feet to slow the pace, but the chains force me along. A nauseating sensation churns in my belly as the scream cuts through the air anew, grating against my eardrums. I slam my hands over my ears, but someone grabs my wrists, and the sound keeps cutting into my senses with a keening force.
***
“Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” I cry.
The scream fades for a moment, but then it’s ripping through the air again, and I realize it’s my own as my throat burns.
“No one’s gonna kill you,” a deep voice says close to my ear.
I don’t believe it, and I kick and scream as I try to jerk free. But a heavy weight on my back pins me to the mattress, and my wrists remain trapped in strong hands.
Reality seeps in as I blink against my surroundings, but the images of the dream linger in my mind, flickering before my inner eye and mixing with the real images. The two go frighteningly well together, and I can barely tell one from the other.
“My hair!” I try to reach for my head, but my hands remain trapped in strong hands.
“Your hair is still there.” The man on top of me lifts one of my hands to my head, and tears spill from my eyes at the feeling of my long locks. But it’s only a minuscule relief among all the terrors that keep clutching at my chest. I try to remember whether the tattoo is real. Monochrome images flicker through my mind, and I’m about to think the mark was a dream too. But then an image in stark colors pops up.DAX001.Not just numbers.Hisname. The man who marked me as property and is now holding me down.
Panic becomes a vise around my chest.
“I can’t do this, I can’t do this!” I cry through shallow breaths. “I need to get out of here.” My voice rises as my desperation grows. “Get me out of here!”
Dax wraps his legs around mine and pulls my arms to my sides, restricting all my movement under the tight confinement of his body.
“Breathe, little sub,” he soothes next to my ear. “Nothing’s going to happen right now. It’s just you and me. I’ve got you.”
“No!” I try to resist his words, but they hold such softness and promise that they seep into my frazzled soul and stick like honey, coating me in a sense of false security. “Let me go!” I scream with more force, trying to expel his words.
But as he keeps talking and the warmth of his body seeps into my nervous skin, surrounding me in a tight, warm cocoon, my resistance fades, little by little.
“Listen to the sound of my voice,” he says with a steady tone that resonates through my system, beckoning me to let go and give in. “It’s all you have to do. Just listen and breathe.”
I don’t want to—God, I don’t—but my mind is so broken I can’t think straight, and the nightmares of my sleep and my reality cloud the urge to resist, awakening a need for comfort that he keeps feeding.
“Feel my heartbeat. The strength in my body. I won’t use it to hurt you. But I will use it to protect you if anyone else tries to do so.”
Tears leak faster from my eyes as my screams morph into sobs and whimpers. His words hit straight into a place more barren than I ever knew—a place so starved that it will take anything that will feed it no matter where it comes from.
No one has ever said they would protect me. All I’ve ever heard waslearn to stand up for yourselfandbe strong.Castigations for being sensitive and ridicule for being shy. But now, someone is promising me protection when I need it the most.
The metal door creaks, and I look up to see a huge, burly man—even bigger than Dax—with a menacing scar slashing down the side of his mouth enter. His lips curl with menace as he grabs a thick baton hanging from his belt. “Get the bitch to quiet down, she’s waking up the other girls.”
“Get out,” Dax barks, softening the blow of his words with a hand over my ear.
The humongous man makes something like a snarl, but leaves nonetheless. It’s a testament to the truth of Dax’s words. Hecanprotect me.He just did.
I go still beneath him. The fight and desperation dissipate as I take in his protective power. His strong body shielding me from all the dangers out there. His heat engulfing me.
“Good girl,” he says, rewarding me with a stroke across my hair. “Just breathe and listen.”
He keeps whispering soothing words into my ear as he strokes my hair, and before long, I drift away to the soothing sound of his voice—my tormentor and protector’s voice.
9
EMMA
When I wake again at the grating creak of the door, I feel like I’ve slept for hours upon hours. Yet, I feel utterly depleted. Gutted. Weak in mind and body. Despite the many blankets Dax brought me when he carried me back after bathing me last night, I feel cold to the bone, but my body is warm, my skin covered in a sheen of sweat.