Read Online Her Secret Pleasure by Jordan Bell - Free Book Online Page A

disgusted. “You have nothing.”
    “I’m s-sorry,” I begged against the floor and watched as a perfect tear drop shape of blood fell from my cheek to splatter and stain a single tile beneath me. My arms shook to hold me still, too afraid to move. To even scream.
    “Please don’t hurt me.”
    I’d been mugged before, once, on the street outside a subway station not long after college. He’d taken my purse and my laptop but he never laid a hand on me. I’d been scared, but this was different. This man pretended to be kind and then turned into a monster. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The monsters were supposed to be obvious , right?
    I was such a careless fool.
    As if he could read my racing thoughts, he fell on me, pushed me to the ground with a knee in my back. I screamed then, like a banshee, and my voice bounced down the lonely tunnels. He groped furiously through my pockets, along the side of my body. This…this was too much. He shoved my face down against the tile and told me to shut up.
    A growl of rage echoed off the tile walls and the weight of the man on my back lifted. I immediately twisted away, scrambled to my feet, and headed straight at the emergency box without looking back. I flipped the plastic door open and smashed the button as hard as I could. Adrenaline spiked my heart and sent it catapulting against my rib cage.
    The emergency lights flicked on and the alarm sounded throughout the tunnels, too loud and not loud enough at the same time. I turned in time to see Sean throw my attacker into the tiled floor with a whump loud enough to be heard despite the alarm’s cry for help.
    He kicked the knife away and it skittered off onto the tracks.
    Sean bared his teeth, his muscular shoulders tensed. He growled like an animal as he fell on the man who whined and begged for forgiveness. He swore he meant no harm, but Sean gave him no mercy. He captured his shirt in his fist, pulled the man’s chest off the floor and punched him back down over and over again like a man possessed. For a split second I thought Sean might kill him, the way he beat his anger into him.
    Somewhere nearby I could hear boots hitting tile, the urgency of protection against the alarm wailing Danger ! I ran to Sean then, wanting so badly to get away from all the noise and terror.
    I grabbed his shoulders, wrapped my fingers around his fists to hold him back. He stumbled, twisted into me, and somehow we ended up wrapped in each other, his hand in my hair holding my face against his chest and me with my fingers locked tight around knots of his shirt. 
     
     
     
     
    7
    ____________
     
     
     
    “Can I take her home now?” Sean kept his voice low, the mayhem of the station subdued. Two police officers and one of the transport authority deputies had answered the call for help, but by the time they’d arrived my attacker was on the ground moaning and Sean and I knelt several feel away holding onto each other for all we were worth. There was nothing for them to do but take our statements and haul the criminal off to jail.
    At the other end of the platform, my attacker sat slumped over, hands cuffed behind his back. He bent his head down but I could see bruises the size of apples already showing through his scruff. I’d repeated my story three times already, and by the third description I was done . Exhausted. I didn’t care that my cheek throbbed, that my body hurt. I’d gone through the five stages of grief in about sixty seconds and now I wanted to go home.
    My eyes traced the spill of my belongings across the tile. Lipstick. Wallet. Tampon. Paperback book. A pound of change. Having these strangers analyze my belongings and write down a list of all the things that made up me , Kara Mahoney, made me feel strangely more violated than when my attacker had done it looking for money. I didn’t want any of it back.
    “We have all we need. This isn’t his first time attacking a woman, though he’s never hurt one of his victims