Being Me(Inside Out 02)(88)

“What are you saying?”
“He goes too far when he’s like this. The report I received upon arriving is that tonight is only different from the past in that he’s beyond even his worst extreme.”
My nails dig into my palms. “Take me to him.”
He walks to the monitor and retrieves a remote control mounted to the wall. “I need to know you can handle what you’re going to find before I let you inside.”
“Then show me now,” I demand, balling one of my fists on my chest, as if that might keep my heart from exploding where it beats furiously.
“The reasons people enjoy our play here vary. Most of us simply find it an adrenaline rush and a pleasurable escape. Chris isn’t about pleasure. He’s about punishing himself.”
“Damn it, Mark, show me.”
His lips tighten and he punches the button on the remote.
The screen comes to life. I hear Chris before I see him, his raspy, harsh breathing. I try to process what I’m seeing. Chris is inside a round concrete cell, shirtless, wearing only his jeans. His arms are outstretched and tied to some kind of poles. He isn’t wearing a mask, but the woman standing behind him from a small boxed window at the top of the monitor is. She’s in some kind of leather barely-there outfit with high boots, and oh, God. I cover my mouth and jump as she lays a harrowing strike of a whip against Chris’s back. His body jerks with the impact.
“Harder!” Chris snarls, sweat gathering on his forehead.
“Fucking hit me like you mean it, or send someone in who can do the job.”
She hits him again. He bucks under the lash and then laughs bitterly. “Are you the * or am I?”
The woman pulls the whip back, and I shout, “No! No more!” I dart for the door and yank it open and Mark doesn’t stop me. I enter the dungeon’s circle from behind Chris and the sight of Chris’s welts, bleeding down his back, is almost too much to bear.
“Finally,” Chris growls at the sound of my entry, unaware it’s
me. “A replacement. I hope you’re better than she is.”
“Cut him loose,” I hiss at the masked woman even as I’m rounding the poles to stand in front of Chris. Tears streak his face, torment spiraling in the depths of his bloodshot eyes.
“Sara.” My name falls from Chris’s lips before he throws his head back and growls in complete, utter anguish.
“Chris.” His name is a pained whisper wrenched deep from my soul. I start to cry, trembling as I touch his face, forcing him to look me. He lowers his lashes, refusing to look at me. “Cut him loose!” I shout, because the woman hasn’t moved.
I hear Mark speak through some kind of intercom. “Do it.”
I wrap my arms around Chris. My broken, beautiful man.
“Why didn’t you come to me? Why?”

His chest heaves against mine, his words heavy, pained. “You were never supposed to see me like this.”
One of his arms goes slack and then the next and we sink together to the ground, where Chris buries his face in my neck and whispers, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I belong with you.”
“No, Sara. You don’t. I was wrong. We were wrong.”
His words are like a hand plunging into my chest and ripping out my heart. This is the moment I’ve feared. The moment when his secrets destroy us if I let them. I press my lips to his. “I love you, damn it. We can get through this!”
He cups my head and his breath is hot on my skin. “No. We can’t.” He pushes to his feet and takes me with him. “Come with me.” He leads me to a doorway to our left, directly into a private room. Chris immediately releases me. Reeling, I barely process the hotel-like bedroom, much like the one we’d visited on my prior trip to the club.
He grabs his shirt from I don’t know where and yanks it over his head, and I hear the hiss of pain he tries to suppress. He turns away from me, spiking his fingers into his hair and just holding them there.
I walk to him and reach out to touch him but pull back, afraid of hurting him. “Chris—”
He turns to stare down at me, his eyes bloodshot, haunted.
“I tried to warn you away,” he whispers. “Over and over, I tried.”
“I’m still here, Chris.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
I flinch at the venomous tone he’s used, but I remind myself this is the pain speaking. “Yes, I should. I love you.”
His jaw clenches and unclenches and his reply is agonizingly slow. “I’m going to fly out and help Dylan’s family.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” The word is as sharp as the whip that is tearing us apart. “I need to do this alone.”