Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(39)

“I want you to scream for me,” he hissed. “The way you used to make me scream for you.”

Oh God, oh God, he was going to rape her. This couldn’t be happening; how could this be happening to her?

“N-n-no,” she choked out. “D-d-dirty, please, you’re dreaming.”

Her sweatpants were wrenched down and—

She found her voice and screamed at the top of her lungs, desperately trying to turn her body, no longer caring that there was a gun pressed to her throat, only caring that she was seconds away from being nearly raped again and she was not going to let that happen. At the very least, she was going to do everything she could to not let that happen.

The next thing she knew Dirty’s weight was gone and she spun around to find he’d backed several feet away from her. He was shaking violently, his eyes wide, focused solely on the gun in his hands.

Trembling, she reached behind her, trying to find the doorknob, when he glanced up and caught her gaze. She froze, waiting for it, waiting for him to come at her again but he did nothing, said nothing, just stood there looking horrified and terrified and pained and sad and, oh God, so utterly broken.

The gun fell from his hands and dropped to the floor with a loud thud. Ellie used that moment to pull up her pants, yank open the door, and burst into the hallway. She was only five steps into her mad dash to safety when she heard a slapping thud and a superseding grunt of pain. She faltered, paused, and then decided to continue when she heard another noise, this one worse than before, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning.

Dirty had fallen to his knees, his gun in his hand, the barrel pressed up against the bottom of his chin while he slammed his face forward and into the wall. Ellie winced as the meaty thud radiated out of the apartment and into the hall. Blood ran down the side of his face and yet he didn’t let up; he continued to smash his face into the wall over and over again.

Ellie’s skin began to crawl as nausea settled low in her gut. It made sense now; Dirty made sense. Dirty wasn’t the biker pig she’d remembered him to be; in fact, she was pretty sure he wasn’t a pig at all, but instead a damaged, deranged shell of a man more than likely with a past worthy of a Lifetime movie. She’d taken enough psychology classes and had interned at women and children’s shelters to know a history of abuse when she saw it.

Please don’t hurt me…please…please, Mommy.

He’d been crying out in pain yet simultaneously jerking off, screaming and begging for whatever demons his memory was forcing him to relive, to stop…

Bile rose in her throat. Her vision grew fuzzy and her body heavy.

“Oh God,” she breathed, reaching out for the wall, suddenly no longer able to bear her own weight.

His mother. His mother had hurt him. His own…mother.

Her vision swimming with unshed tears, she backtracked her steps into the apartment and shut the door softly behind her.

Blood dripping down his face, he warily watched her approach him, his body suddenly rigid. She made sure to keep her distance for both his sake and her own, and took a seat several feet away from him but still close enough that she was able to extend her arm and offer him her hand.

He stared at her hand, unblinking, unmoving, until eventually the hand holding the gun to his jaw slowly lowered.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, his voice strained.

Ellie immediately retracted her hand and placed it in her lap. Dirty turned away from her, but not before she saw the tears that had slipped from his eyes, joining and blending with the rivulets of blood still streaming down his cheeks. Her eyes traveled from his face to his bare chest where she couldn’t help but stare, horrified by what she found. And then lower, to his groin and his thighs and, oh my God, he was covered, literally covered in scars.

He’d been burned repeatedly. There were small circular burns as well as larger rectangular ones scattered in between long thin slashes, all spaced evenly apart, some running diagonal, some horizontal, all apparently methodically administered.

Releasing a deep breath, she let her head fall back against the wall.

It was so pitiful and yet rage-inducing. How could anyone hurt an innocent child? How could a mother hurt her child?

She didn’t feel safe by any means, but as strange as it was, she felt safer with Dirty than she did knowing that, if she were anywhere else, Daniel could get to her.

Was that weird?

Maybe. But she was too damn exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to really give a damn.

? ? ?

“You need stitches,” Ellie said, both looking and sounding irritated.

From his seat on the windowsill, Dirty turned to glare at her. “I’m fine,” he muttered and took another drag off his cigarette. He didn’t have a clue why she’d hadn’t continued her screaming run for safety but had instead come back inside and taken a seat beside him, had even gone so far as to offer him comfort.

What the f*ck?

He’d been seconds away from raping and killing her and she’d offered him comfort?

Jesus, God only f*cking knew what she’d heard come out of his mouth during his nightmare. He could only imagine.

Fuck, he hadn’t had a nightmare in so f*cking long. Years. It was all this shit with Ellie, seeing her being attacked, her touching him, seeing her naked.

Then watching her cry while she asked to stay with him. With him? No one needed him. No one had ever once, not f*cking once, needed him for anything. But she’d needed him.