Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Read online

  “Max,” I gasp as his mouth comes to my jaw, his teeth digging into my skin. “What are you—”

  He places his finger on my lips, pulling down my sore bottom one. “Shh,” he says against my neck, “don’t talk, love.”

  Then his hands are on my shorts, and before my brain can really register what the fuck is happening, he’s pulled them down, where they fall into a puddle at my feet. He threads his fingers into my hair and drags me to the bed like I’m a fucking dog and my hair is my leash.

  I stumble to keep up, my scalp burning.

  He tries to shove me against the bed, but I spin around to face him, anger burning through me again.

  “Stop, Max.”

  He yanks my hair tighter in his fist, pulling me toward him by the strands. My eyes prick with tears, and he’s in my face, his brow against mine. “You don’t get to decide what happens in this house, do you understand?” His eyes are blank, almost bleary. I wonder when he last slept. I wonder where he was the past five fucking days.

  I reach for his shirt, fisting it in my own hands. “Get off of me.”

  He just stares at me a moment, my scalp still burning as he pulls at my hair. “You want to fight me?” His eyes rake over my body and I clench my thighs, feeling my face heat at the fact that I don’t have any shorts on, and he’s completely dressed.

  “I want you to leave me alone.”

  He smiles, his eyes coming back up to meet mine. “You didn’t want Dante to leave you alone, though, did you, love?”

  I try to shove him away, letting go of his shirt and planting my hands against his chest. But he still has my hair in his fist, and he doesn’t let go. Doesn’t budge as I push him.

  For one second, I wonder if he knows. Did Dante tell him? But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  “Try it again,” Max warns me.

  I do, pushing as hard as I can.

  He doesn’t move.

  “Let go of me!” I scream at him, trying to pull away from his grip, but he doesn’t loosen his hold and I end up hurting myself more as I try to get away, hairs ripping from my scalp. “Max, let go of me!”

  He doesn’t.

  My neck is bent at an angle, the way he’s pulling my hair to the side, but my hands are free, and I lift one and slap him as hard as I can.

  He doesn’t move.

  His head doesn’t turn to the side. He barely even blinks.

  I close my fist.

  Then I punch him.

  I know, even before I connect with his jaw, that it won’t hurt him. That it was a poor attempt at getting myself free. That what comes after won’t be good for me.

  But it’s too late.

  It’s too late, and when he lets go of my hair and I feel a second of relief against my scalp, it’s obliterated by his hand crashing against my face.

  My head spins to the side, and my fingers go to my cheek as I stumble backward, eyes watering.

  “You want to hit me again?” he asks, moving with me, backing me up against the bed. He yanks my hand from my face, his grip painful as it circles my wrist.

  I try to shake him free, and he lets me.

  With my face burning, I scream, lunging toward him again, hitting every inch of him I can reach. His chest, his face, his arms.

  For a moment, he just lets me waste my energy, and it’s almost satisfying. Getting my hands on him in this way.

  I don’t register his face, his posture, the look in his eyes. I just hit him blindly, wearing myself down, and when I have to stop, when I hang my head, my palms flat against his shirt as I catch my breath, I know I fucked up.

  I know, because all he says is, “It’s my turn now.”

  I pick my head up, meeting his gaze, and my fingers tremble against his shirt. “Max, I didn’t—”

  Before I can finish my sentence, he reaches for my throat, his hand wrapping so tightly around me I can’t breathe.

  A slow smile curves his lips and I feel physically sick as he walks me backward, toward the bed, one hand still squeezing my throat, the other around my back.

  When my legs hit the back of the bed, I sink down, but he doesn’t let go. I can’t breathe, and I think, in this moment, more than any other, he’s actually going to kill me.

  I mouth his name, my nails scratching at his hand, but he still doesn’t let go. Instead, both hands come around my throat, and he’s not smiling anymore. He’s squeezing so hard, spots pop in front of my eyes, and the rooms seems to spin around me.

  “I could hit you back,” he says, his mouth over mine as I try desperately to breathe. To get him off of me. “Or I could just fucking kill you and put us both out of our goddamn misery.” He squeezes harder still, and my vision goes white, my fingers limp against his hand.

  I’m going to die.

  It’s the last thought I have before he…releases me.

  I choke down air, my chest heaving as my vision clears, but before I can move, his fingers go to my hair, yanking me around, so my back is to him. He shoves me forward and my palms come down against the mattress to brace myself, tears welling in my eyes as I gasp for breath, my mind stunned.

  Even still, immediately, I push away from the bed, even though my adrenaline is fading, the rage from smashing the mirror, from attacking him abating as terror fills me instead.

  But if he’s really going to hurt me like that, I won’t make it fucking easy for him. I won’t let him make me feel how my father did.

  My stomach churns with those memories, but I push back on them.

  Instead, I try to spin around, but he’s on me, his body pinning mine to the bed, both of us half on and half off, my feet still on the floor.

  I try to shove back against him, but it’s impossible, and my arms tremble beneath me before finally giving out from the weight of his body on mine. My chest is against the mattress, his hands planted on either side of me.

  Then one moves, and just as I try to take a breath, try to think of something to say to fix this, there’s a gun in my face.

  “Open your mouth.”

  I press my lips together.

  His face is suddenly next to mine, his cheek pressing against my own as he uses his free hand to yank my hair, lifting my head up, all of his weight against my back.

  “You can open your mouth so I can get you ready for what comes next, or this,” he taps the side of the barrel against my head, “can go in without lubricant. I personally don’t give a fuck either way.”

  I feel bile burn in the back of my throat. He can’t know.

  And if he doesn’t know… No.

  He wouldn’t.

  He won’t.

  My entire body starts to tremble as I stare at the gun, feel my scalp burning as his hold grows tighter, his impatience evident in his grip.

  “Addison.”

  I open my mouth.

  “Good girl,” he whispers in my ear, and just like before, in the basement, and just like when I was a child and I walked in on my father in the middle of the night when he was alone in his study, stressing over something work related, I taste the steel of the gun in my mouth.

  I remember my father’s blank eyes as he forced it down my throat.

  I remember how I peed in my pants, and it dripped through my cotton pajamas, onto his office floor.

  I remember how he made me clean it up.

  How he touched me as I did it.

  I close my eyes tight, against the memory, and what’s happening now.

  Max pulls the barrel out, slowly, then pushes it back in, just as slow.

  My stomach heaves, but as he pulls the gun out again, I swallow quickly, not willing to make another mess.

  My teeth hit steel and Max sighs against my ear.

  “Careful as you suck it, love. No one wants your fucking teeth. If you leave here, your owner might knock them all out if you make that mistake again.”

  Tears well up behind my eyes as he continues pushing it in, pulling it out.

  Finally, he stops, yanks me by my hair and
spins me around, so I’m facing him.

  His eyes are empty, but there’s that smile on his face that makes my trembling worse, my entire body nearly convulsing as he watches me, gun in one hand, fingers still tangled in my hair.

  “You’re so nervous,” he says quietly, raking his eyes over my half-naked body. “I promise I’ll make it good for you.” He nods his head toward the bed. “Lie down.”

  Without waiting for me to comply, he moves his fingers from my hair to underneath me, around my waist, and he shifts me up, so my head is back against my pillow, my legs stretched out on the bed.

  “If you listen to me, this won’t hurt as much as it should.” Standing to the side of the bed, he points toward my knee with the gun and I shudder. “Bend your knee so the sole of your foot is against your calf.”

  “Max,” I try, my fingers gripping the sheets at my side. My voice is hoarse, my throat aching. I shake my head, my lips trembling, tears falling freely down my face. “Don’t.” I know this won’t be like last time, in the basement. This won’t be a tease. He choked me. He’ll do this, too. “Please don’t.”

  He smiles again. “Begging, Addison? You should’ve done that a long time ago.” He gestures toward me with the gun. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

  “You can’t,” I try instead, making to sit up but he calmly touches the barrel of the gun to my chest, keeping me down. My eyes widen, fear momentarily stealing my breath, but I refuse to look anywhere but at his face, even as I can feel the cold barrel through my shirt. “You can’t, because if you do, then you can’t still s-sell me.” He can’t know.

  His eyes gleam, as if I’ve just told a funny joke that he’s quite proud of. “Sell you?” he repeats, shaking his head as he leans down closer, the gun still to my heart. “At this point, love, I don’t think there’s going to be anything left of you to sell.” His mouth is over mine, my lips trembling against his own as he stares at me. “Some things are worth the loss, I suppose.”

  “Please don’t,” I whisper, closing my eyes. “Please don’t, Max.” I can feel his soft lips against my own as I speak. “I’m sorry I…I’m sorry I hit you. I’m sorry I broke the mirror. I’m sorry I—”

  “Is that so?” he asks me, running his mouth over my own.

  I stop breathing. I don’t open my eyes.

  “Are you sorry you did it, or are you only sorry because now I’m going to punish you for it?” He brushes his mouth over mine again, in something that’s not quite a kiss.

  I grip the sheets tighter. “Don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want, but please don’t—”

  His hand is around my throat again, making me wince, but the gun is off of my chest. I open my eyes as he stares down at me. “Of course, you’ll do whatever I want. Did you think you ever had a choice in that? Don’t bargain with things I already have, baby girl. That just makes you look stupid.”

  His grip is tight, but not like it was, not enough to cut off my words, or my breath. “I don’t have anything else to give you,” I tell him, my voice cracking. “I don’t…I don’t have anything to bargain with.” I don’t let myself think of the times I begged my father. I don’t let myself think of how he laughed, how he told me I was his daughter, and I was his to do with as he pleased.

  No. No. No. Shoving it all in the box, I hold my breath.

  Max stares at me for a long, long while.

  It feels like an eternity.

  It’s probably only a minute, but in that minute, I know he’s deciding what, exactly, he wants to do with me. My fate rests in his hands, just like it has since I stepped foot into this house.

  He reaches behind him, and I realize, when I hear the contact of steel against wood, that he’s put the gun on my nightstand.

  I don’t dare exhale a sigh of relief.

  He moves his fingers from my throat to my temple as he sits on the bed beside me. He traces the curve of my cheekbone, his eyes tracking the movement. I hold my breath, wondering if he’s going to hurt me again, but I force myself to focus on something else.

  Anything else.

  And I notice, in this moment, that he looks so, so tired. The circles under his eyes that I first saw when he came into the room look worse, as if this entire thing has exhausted him.

  I’m sure Max is used to being brutal and cruel, and what he’s done to me is nothing different from his everyday life. Still, as his fingers are gentle against my face and I try not to think about what he just did, I wonder instead why he doesn’t sleep.

  I wonder what happened to him, and why he can’t put those things into a box.

  I wonder why I’m stronger than he is, even if it’s in all the ways that don’t count.

  “Did you think that if Dante fucked you, you’d go free?” he asks me suddenly, his eyes on mine, his fingers still running along my face.

  My stomach twists into knots, because no matter what I say to this, it’s not going to end well. I decide to go with the truth. At least part of it. Because he doesn’t know.

  “Yes.” My voice is rough, and my lips tremble while I say the word, but I get it out.

  He doesn’t stop stroking my face, and his expression doesn’t change. After a moment, he nods, almost as if I said something else, even though I’m barely breathing, never mind speaking. “I’m going to tell you a secret, Addison.”

  My legs lock up with those words, and I’m rigid beneath him as he keeps touching my face, and keeps talking, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “Your buyer really, really wants you.” He shrugs, his fingers trailing down along my jaw, curving toward my mouth, running along the seam of my lips. “I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But I think, no matter how broken in you are, he’s still going to want you.”

  Time seems to slow as he watches me take this in. I avert my eyes from his, instead staring at his muscles outlined beneath his white shirt. I watch his chest rise and fall, steady, even, as if he does shit like this every day.

  “I personally don’t like fucking virgins. They’re clumsy and awkward and don’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

  I’m not a virgin, you dumb fuck. I don’t say it, but it takes effort to keep the words in. He thinks I’m valuable this way. He assumed I’d told him all my secrets when he asked who made me come, but the idea of telling him about my father, about who really stole my virginity, it makes me want to die. I’d rather suffer Max’s violent hands than that confession.

  He runs his thumb along my bottom lip as he watches me.

  “But if anyone in this house is going to have you, it’s going to be me. And if you make me do that, if you make me fuck you, just like you made me hurt you, I’ll make sure it’s the worst experience of your miserable fucking life.”

  His words blind me with rage, like a living thing in my bloodstream. Even though my mind tries to warn me, even though the logical part of my brain tries to protect me, I can’t stop the hate-filled half-confession that spews from my mouth. “It’s not going to be you,” I sneer, grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand away from my mouth, nails biting in his skin. “It’s not going to be you, because Dante already fucked me.”

  In the aftermath of my revelation, time stands still.

  For a long, long moment, nothing happens.

  My nails are still digging into his wrist, and he’s still standing beside my bed, staring at me with an unreadable expression on his face.

  A sliver of unease pricks at the back of my neck as I try to keep breathing. Try not to long for a way to undo what I just said. To snatch that admission from the air between us, stuff it back down my throat.

  But it’s too late.

  It’s too fucking late, and when he pulls his wrist from my grip and goes for my throat, I know what’s going to happen.

  It doesn’t make it any better.

  When he shoves down his pants with his free hand, kicks off his shoes and pulls off his black boxer briefs, when he’s on top of me, pinning my hands above my head, my body elongated beneath him
as he straddles me, keeping me in place with his hips, I feel sick.

  Physically sick all over again, and my stomach convulses as he positions his hard cock against my entrance, watching me all the while.

  “Do you want to take back what you just said?” he asks me coldly, his grey-blue eyes gleaming in the light from the bathroom at his back.

  I try to move underneath him, try not to watch him stroking himself, his cock long and thick in his hand.

  It’ll hurt.

  Tears fill my eyes as I squirm, but he lets go of himself, shoves up my shirt and pulls one nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then twists it. Hard.

  I cry out, hating myself for being weak. For reacting to his pain.

  Surprising me, he lets go, smoothing his hand over my breast, calming the ache.

  “Do you want to take it back, or did you really let him fuck you, love?” he asks quietly, leaning over me so his mouth is nearly touching mine. His breath smells like mint, his beachy scent full of a divinity the devil shouldn’t possess. “Did he really get inside of your tight cunt?”

  I swallow down the lump in my throat as he caresses me, still holding my wrists above my head. I try to fight back the tears, but I feel one betray me, warm as it falls down my face. I should be used to this by now, being used as the men in my life see fit.

  But with Dante, there was a glimmer of hope. Of revelation, that it doesn’t always have to be this way.

  Max regards my tears with disdain, his brow furrowing in anger before he flicks his gaze back to me and pinches my other nipple. I whimper again, my body lurching beneath him.

  “Fucking answer me Addison.” He pushes closer to me, his cock hard against my stomach as once more, he soothes where he pinched me.

  “Y-yes,” I answer him, my eyes closed tight. “Yes.”

  Silence as Max palms me, and I hold my breath, waiting for the pain.

  “Did he force you?” That question is dark. Deadly.

  My eyes fly open, locking on his. “No.” I shake my head, biting my lip as he caresses me, thinking of all the men that did force me. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t say those words aloud for anyone. “No, it was…” I trail off, taking a shaky breath in. “No, he didn’t force me.”