Page 8 of Claimed Through Deception

He releases my jaw. He steps back, the sudden absence of his heat leaving me cold and entirely hollow. He doesn't say another word to me. He turns his back, adjusting the cuffs of his suit jacket as if he didn't just rip the air straight out of my lungs, and walks toward the front doors.

His men follow him, dragging the sobbing patron between them.

The heavy wooden doors swing shut behind them.

They are gone.

The silence in the bar lasts for ten agonizing seconds. And then, the noise violently rushes back in. The jukebox seems twice as loud. People start whispering, moving, picking up overturned chairs.

I don't move.

I am frozen against the wooden booth, my hands gripping the edge of the table behind my back so tightly my knuckles are white.

"Liv!"

Sofia’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. She rushes across the aisle, grabbing my shoulders. Her eyes are wide with panic, her face as pale as mine.

"Liv, are you crazy? Are you out of your fucking mind?" She gives me a hard shake. "Do you have any idea how close you just came to dying?"

I blink, the blurry shapes of the bar slowly coming back into focus.

"I..." My voice cracks. I clear my throat, trying to force the words out. "I'm fine. He's gone."

"He didn't hurt you?" Sofia asks, her hands frantically checking my arms, my face, looking for blood.

"No. He didn't."

"I have to clean this up," I mutter, pointing a shaking finger at the shattered glass and the smear of blood on the floorboards.

"I'll do it," Sofia says firmly, pushing me gently toward the back hallway. "Go to the back. Go take a minute. You are ghost-white."

I don't argue. I can't.

I turn and walk on numb legs, pushing through the swinging doors and stumbling down the narrow, dimly lit hallway toward the employee bathroom.

I push the heavy door open, slip inside, and lock the deadbolt with a loud, metallic click.

The bathroom is tiny, smelling of cheap bleach and damp paper towels. I walk over to the cracked mirror above the sink and grip the porcelain edges with both hands.

I look at my reflection.

My eyes are wide, feral, and completely terrified. My chest is heaving. But it isn't the fear that makes a hot, sickening wave of nausea rise in my throat.

It is the heavy, pulsing heat completely pooling between my thighs.

My knees buckle. I sink to the dirty tile floor, pressing my back against the locked door, and pull my knees tight against my chest.

I am shaking. My entire body is trembling uncontrollably.

No. No, no, no.

I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my face in my knees. I want to scrub my skin raw. I want to bleach my brain.

I fought him. I looked at a violent, dangerous man who was hurting someone, a man who represented every single thing I swore to hate in this world, and my body betrayed me.

Maybe it’s true what psychologists say. ‘Adults end up repeating the childhood they had. It is a vicious circle the mind hardly breaks free from.”

My core aches. My skin is hypersensitive, burning where his heavy hands caged me in. The ghost of his rough thumb dragging across my lower lip sends another sharp, humiliating twist of desire straight to my center.