The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

Chapter 3 (Raine): Maybe You'll Survive

Somehow, I didn't think Butcher had gathered my friends together to talk and have a champagne brunch. I would have bet my life savings, my studio and my car that there wouldn't be a linen napkin in sight, nor would I be offered a choice of veggie omelet or strawberry French toast. With a bit of whipped cream and strawberry syrup. Possibly some crispy bacon. It all sounded good in theory, but I knew what my stomach would do if I attempted any of that. No, thank you.

Butcher grabbed my upper arm, and I pulled back, shaking my arm, but couldn't break his grip. I didn't want his hands on me any more, not in any way, not after this.

"Let go of me!"

"What? Are you afraid I'm not holding you hard enough to leave more bruises that you've been begging for all these weeks? The bruises you were so desperate to get you let a strange man fuck you repeatedly just because he could give you what you were gagging for?"

I sucked in a breath. He did not. He did not just throw that in my face.

A brief time out. There are a lot of things men can say to you. A lot. They can get mouthy, they can get nasty if their pride is tweaked enough and they feel the need to soothe their fragile male egos. The vast majority of their words are harmless in the long run, little cuts that sting, but when you tell your girlfriends, you realize how pathetic they were being and move on. But having your sexual preferences thrown back in your face? Making you sound cheap and easy just because you had desires and fantasies that had never been fulfilled until a certain beast of a man walked into your life and fulfilled them? Disparaging you just because you enjoyed sex and made no bones about it?

I'll leave bruises. I'm going to fuck you harder than you've ever been fucked in your life.

I hope you mean that. And if you deliver what you promise, I can guarantee you'll be wearing your own marks from me.

"You were right there with me," I reminded him with so much hostility in my tone I'm surprised it didn't leave welts, and that was a mistake. I was about to discover that just because Butcher never said much, it didn't mean he couldn't.

"You were a job. If you had said you wanted gentle, I would have fucked you gentle. If you said you wanted no words, I would have fucked you silently. Bottom line, I did whatever I needed to do to distract you, and I gotta say, you were the easiest job I ever had. Barely made eye contact with you and you were throwing down the welcome mat. Maybe don't give it away so quickly next time. Men don't keep easy around."

For the record, I liked quiet Butcher much better.

Once again, I tried to yank my arm from his hand, and when I couldn't, I did the grown up thing and kicked him in the shin. Hard.

He didn't even bat an eye, but he looked at me quizzically, as if he couldn't quite figure me out. Or he couldn't quite believe I'd been stupid enough to do that. Or he was contemplating many and various ways to end me.

For a moment, I thought I'd scored a victory. Some could argue that I did manage to get Butcher to let go of my arm. He did. He immediately let go of my arm. However, it was to curl one gigantic hand around my neck and use his thumb to tip up my chin.

"You're making me want to snap your neck. Keep pushing and I will."

That threat could be delivered many ways. Casually. Scarily. Angrily. Sneeringly.

But Butcher delivered it without inflection, without tone, without any emotion whatsoever. Just another day in the life of a psychopath.

Psychopath.

Great. My child was going to inherit half of his DNA. If I managed to survive this, and I couldn't even imagine what the odds were on me walking out of here, my child's genetic makeup would be half Butcher. That pissed me off. I was a careful woman and was absolutely obsessive about taking my birth control pill at the same exact second every night. I also insisted the man use condoms, and I bought new ones every month so I was dealing with condoms I knew were brand new and not tampered with. And still, despite all precautions, I was pregnant by this man in front of me who'd never had a human emotion in his life. It was probably those freaking piercings of his.

So before I could think better of it and talk myself out of this ill-conceived impulse born of absolute fury and a feeling of impotence I wasn't used to experiencing, I grabbed Butcher's hand and bent it back as far as I could while putting my leg behind his and punching him in the temple with everything I had.

He should have gone down. He should have stepped back and fallen over the foot I had behind his leg. At the very least, he should have staggered back, his head should have whipped to the side...something.

Butcher didn't even move. Didn't even blink. He continued to look curiously at me like I was the oddity. News flash, Butcher! You're the one who's not normal!

Now, with my knuckles throbbing in pain, I could only stare at him, wondering what his next move --

His face was suddenly inches from mine. "Don't do that again."

"Or what?" I moved my face closer to his.

"Or you may not need to worry about being cold tonight."

"I have a blanket so I'm not worried in the least."

"You only need a blanket if you're alive."

"Are you kidding me? I'm pregnant with your child."

"Yet to be proven. I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least five other contenders in the running for your baby daddy."

I reared back from him. Apparently death threats didn't faze me, but insinuating that I was so promiscuous that I wasn't even sure who the father of my baby was, well, that was just going too far.

Thwack!

This time, I had pulled the typical girl move and slapped Butcher across the face.

Before I could even blink, Butcher had my hands zip tied behind my back. Who carried zip ties on them? Psychopaths, that's who and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.

What am I going to do with you, Raine?

My mother's words rang in my head, and I blinked rapidly, fighting the tears. I was treating this like a fucking joke, not taking Butcher seriously...and I needed to. He'd tied me to a chair, run a knife over my skin, thrown me in a jail cell and had now zip tied my hands behind my back. And here I was mouthing off to him, figuring he would end up being like all the other men I'd been with. 

Easily controllable.

He wasn't. I needed to treat this like my life depended on it...because it did. Mine and the baby's.

"The last person who hit me, I cut off his hands right before I killed him."

I nodded, his message to me clear.

"Now, let's go meet your friends. Maybe you'll survive the discussion."

He opened the door for me because I obviously couldn't.

"But maybe you won't," he said as I walked past him.