Read Online Trust in Me by Skye Warren - Free Book Online

head that my father tied me down or that Carlos put a gun to my head to get me in here, you’re all wrong. Okay? You’re wrong.”
    The vision of Tyler swam before my eyes like one of those swirly paintings, beautiful and morbid. I felt his breath in my hair, shushing me, telling me to stop, that it would be okay, and his hands on my arms, pulling me close, burning the cuts there. He probably didn’t remember I was bruised there too, not just my back, but I didn’t want him to stop. Whatever touch he had to offer me, I would take. Whatever pain he would give me, I deserved.
    I choked out a sob against his chest, so warm, so solid.
    “Mia,” he said. “Mia.”
    Whatever he meant by that, it didn’t matter. He was here. I had to be grateful for that.
    Don’t leave, I wanted to beg. Don’t ever leave. But begging never worked. My cheeks dampened with impotent tears, as I mourned the loss of the man, of his comfort, before he’d even left.
    “Shhh,” he said. “I’m going to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but I am.”
    A watery laugh trickled out of me. I thought of that nursery rhyme, the one about Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
    “You can’t fix me,” I whispered, the tears catching on my lips. “No one can.”
    “No,” he said fiercely. “This is my fault. I should have known. I think…maybe I did know, but I was too fucking stupid to know what to do about it. If I would have done something back then, got you out of there…”
    The image rose up in my mind, like a specter from the grave. Me, without shame. Without fear. It was a laughable thought, but somehow…somehow hopeful. Somehow heartbreaking.
    “God, don’t do this,” I told him. “Don’t make me think impossible things.”
    “Listen. Let’s just get through this. We’ll get through this thing with Carlos together, you and me. And when it’s all over, we’ll work on fixing this together. I don’t know exactly how it will go. A lot of that will depend on you and what you want to do. But sure as hell you’re not going to be anyone’s whore, not ever again.”
    He sounded so sure, so confident. So much the fresh-faced young man about to set off on his adventure. Like maybe he’d sit down next to me on an old, dirty tire and say, “It can’t be as bad as all that.” Just as optimistic, just as wrong.
    I didn’t want to tell him that I probably wouldn’t survive this , this thing we were doing with Carlos. I could feel myself weakening after each session with him. Each time it took me a little longer to recover, more time to heal. And Carlos was getting more brutal, not less, even though I was mostly obedient.
    I didn’t want to tell him that even if by some miracle I made it out of this alive, that I had nothing and nowhere to go. And if Tyler ended up helping me in exchange for sex, I had no doubt that I would be his prostitute. He might be a gentler master, but that didn’t make me any less a whore.
    I didn’t want to say any of that because it would ruin this moment, this moment where Tyler acted like he cared about me. Hell, in this moment, he probably did care about me. So I just leaned into him, letting my make-up smudge, letting my aches and bruises cry out for respite, because this feeling was worth a million lashes.
    When my tears dried, I looked up at him. Some of the fierceness in his expression was now explained away. He felt some responsibility for what happened to me. But he wasn’t my knight in shining armor, no matter how much I might have wished him to be.
    “Tell me what you need me to do,” I said.
    His mouth firmed in refusal, which told me that he did, in fact, have something he needed me to do.
    “Come on,” I cajoled, with a soft rock of my breasts into his chest. It was almost instinctual at this point, not something mapped out or planned, using my body to get on a guy’s good side. Even broken and battered, it worked.
    “I