Page 35 of Red Waters

Confused, I tried to smile. “No. I could barely eat without—” My neck was in his vice grip, and I was being lifted from the ground. “You just couldn’t wait for me to set you free before you rushed to your Link.” I pulled and tugged at his arm, but he refused to release me or let me breathe. I could feel my windpipe closing. It was awful. Yury was seething. “I trusted you!” My hand frantically flung toward the desk, trying to remind Yury of his note, but he took my gesture all wrong. “Trying to reach out to your lover?” Now, my hands patted Yury’s chest, begging him to believe I was his. Yury was too far gone in rage to hear me. I was dragged from his bedroom and down the marble stairs while coughing, desperate to get air into my lungs.

My feet tried to go the opposite direction of the basement, but I was completely overpowered. On the way down the next set of stairs, I tried, “Yury, please—”

He stopped us, slamming my back into the grey block wall, and roared in my face, “That is not my name!” I wanted to argue, but my head hitting the concrete so hard had me stunned into silence. As he continued to drag me down the stairs, I kept blinking, trying to clear away my concussion. Absolutely furious, he mumbled, “After all I have just done for you…”

In the hallway, I was starting to gather my bearings. Yury was smacking his palm on a wall, yelling Russian. Male employees came running. As they gathered around us, Yury stared at me with disgust and a hunger for me to hurt as much as he did.

I will never forget his pain… or his revenge.

Savagely, he ripped the leash from my neck and then backed away, glaring at me the whole time. “My father was correct. You are a curse. You’re making me crazy!” Then he went back to speaking to his men in Russian.

Naked, unleashed, I stood there, knowing my worst fear was coming true. Yury’s word soiled was now even more haunting.

At first, none of the men accepted the offer. They were probably fearful of being shot. To my horror, the man I had made love to picked two men and shouted. The two men jumped. It was their names that had been called.

Yury sneered to me, “I will let them have you like others had your mother.”

I shook my head, trying to wake from the nightmare. “No.”

The two nervous men quickly recovered, pushing my stunned body into a room I hadn’t been in for many weeks. “M-Master?” I begged before he drifted from sight.

As the door closed, his voice faded. “I am not your master, anymore.”