Bind Me

Chapter 3

3Yulia

“It’s your fault, b***h. It’s all your fault.”

A heavy body presses me into the floor, cruel hands tearing at my clothes, and then there’s pain, brutal, searing pain as he thrusts into me, telling me that it’s my punishment, that I deserve to pay.

“Don’t!” I scream, fighting, but I can’t move, can’t breathe underneath him. “Stop, please stop!”

“Calm down,” he whispers in my ear in English. “Just calm the f**k down.”

The incongruity of Kirill speaking English jolts me for a second, but I’m in too much of a panic to analyze it fully. The pain of the violation and the shame are like a vise crushing my chest. I’m suffocating, spinning into the cold darkness, and all I can do is fight, scream and fight.

“Yulia. f**k, stop that!” His voice is deeper than I remembered, and he’s speaking English again. Why is he doing that? We’re not in training right now. The oddity nags at me, and I realize it’s not the only thing that’s strange.

He’s not wearing cologne either.

Confused, I still underneath him and realize I’m not actually in pain.

He’s on top of me, but he’s not hurting me.

Reality shifts and realigns, and I remember.

Kirill was seven years ago. I’m not in Kiev—I’m in Colombia, captive of another man who wants to punish me for what I’ve done.

“Yulia.” Lucas’s quiet voice is near my ear. “Can I let you go?”

“Yes,” I whisper into the pillow. My muscles are trembling from overexertion, and my breathing is labored, as if I’ve been running. I must’ve been fighting Lucas instead of the phantom in my nightmare. “I’m fine now. Really.”

Lucas rolls off me, and I feel a tug on my left wrist, where the handcuffs still join us. My skin underneath the metal is stinging and raw. I must’ve been yanking on the shackle during the fight.

He stretches away from me, and a second later, a soft light comes on, illuminating the room. The sight of the clean white walls serves as additional proof that I was dreaming and Kirill is nowhere near me.

Lucas reaches into the nightstand and extracts a key to unlock the handcuffs. When he puts the key back in the drawer, I automatically note its location, though my teeth are already beginning to chatter. I haven’t had a nightmare this strong and realistic in years, and I’ve forgotten how bad it can be.

Lucas turns to face me. “Yulia.” His gaze is somber as he reaches for me. “What happened?”

I let him draw me into his lap, so I can feel the heat of his body on my frozen skin. I can’t stop trembling, the shadow of the nightmare still hovering over me. “I—” My voice cracks. “I had a bad dream.”

“No.” He tilts my chin up with one hand, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “Tell me why you had this dream. What happened to you?”

I clamp my lips shut, fighting an illogical urge to obey that quiet command. Something about the way he’s holding me—almost like a parent comforting a child—makes me want to confide in him, tell him things I’ve only shared with the agency therapist.

“What happened?” Lucas presses, his tone softening, and I feel a swell of longing, a desire for the connection I imagined between us before. Except maybe I didn’t imagine it. Maybe there’s something there.

I so badly want there to be something there.

“Yulia.” Curving his palm over my jaw, Lucas strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Tell me. Please.”

It’s that last word that breaks me, coming as it does from a man so hard and domineering. There’s no anger in the way he’s touching me, no violent lust. It’s true that he hurt me earlier, but he also gave me pleasure and some semblance of tenderness afterwards. And right now he’s not demanding answers from me—he’s asking.

He’s asking, and I can’t refuse him.

Not while I feel so lost and alone.

“All right,” I whisper, looking at the man I dreamed about for the last two months. “What do you want to know?”