Billie Bossa Nova

46.

“What are you hiding from me?”

To lie to him would be of no use, because eventually she would have to get up. He would see the marks anyway. Then he would ask questions. Which would make her have to lie to him for the sake of Adan and Klide, which would hurt her perhaps far more than the lying on its own would. However, it was for his sake.

Adan and Klide were Billie's job to make pay. Kai wasn't putting blood on his own fingers for her sake. She wouldn't allow that. A killer's nights are sleepless, whether the intention was good or bad.

“Let me see.”

He took her hips and tried to shift her, but Billie adjusted back. “There's nothing —”

“Don't lie to me. Don't.”

Kai never raised his voice. Billie firmly believed it came with the manner he was raised in. But there was a tightness to his voice, a strict hiss when he was upset that anyone could decipher. And it was lethal. For the first time, Billie was not just hearing it, she was receiving it.

Billie said, “I don't want you worrying over it. It's just little marks.”

“It's not about that, it's how you got them. I asked if they touched you. Billie.” Her head lifted to him. She'd been staring down at his lap, not exactly knowing how to fix the situation. “Who was it?”

The look he gave her was not directed to her. It was to someone else. Someone who wasn't in the room. His eyes were on hers, but he was blindly imagining whose name was about to pass her lips.

“I don't know,” she lied. Grated the words out like they were hard cheese.

His jaw pressed together. He huffed out a breath, the leg that Billie wasn't sitting on bouncing rapidly. His gaze shifted from her, staring at the far wall across the room while he rubbed his fingers across his chiseled chin. He brooded something that appeared to be doing nothing to placate his frustration. And then he spoke.

“What did he do to you?”

The memory faded in. Clearer than a polished crystal. Kayden's hands trailing her body. His lips pressing forcefully against her own. The leather of his belt smacking against her skin. The pleasured groans that came when she cried out after each strike. That sickening smile. Heavy breathing when he rested before hitting her again. Endless. Countless. A repetitive cycle that left her feeling like she was living that moment in a loop.

“Billie...” She jolted when Kai took her wrist. The look he gave her, a mixture of rage fading into concern, made her relax. She would definitely need to speak to her counselor after this. It took far more of a toll on her than she had thought.

“He hit me,” she whispered eventually, but didn't meet his eye. Couldn't. How could she when Kayden had hit her in Kai's name. Reminded her continuously that she was his property and not Kai's, that those marks would convey exactly that. “Kayden did it.”

She looked up at Kai. Fire stroke his irises. High sparks that sizzled and cracked. She couldn't keep it from him. Couldn't protect the gruesome acts that he'd committed not just on her alone but on the rest of the girls as he called it their punishment. As he enjoyed their suffering to the highest degree.

“He was going to do it to Lula, but I couldn't let him. There was a rope  above the ceiling and he tied me to it and...”

Billie stopped talking because Kai's expression was so tight that she thought he'd heard enough. But he placed a hand on her thigh and said, “Say it all.”

She swallowed as the harsh memory returned. “He touched me.”

“Where?”

Billie shuddered, “Everywhere.”