Billionaire Romance: Flame by Stephanie Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

Howard?”  John asked.
    She broke down as the memories came flooding back into her mind.  John grabbed her again, holding her tightly, letting her body melt against his.  “You’ll be okay.”  He said as he patted her head.
    After she had finished crying, she looked up at him.  “You won’t take me back to him will you?  He’ll kill me.”
                  “Why would I do that?  Not I just want to know who he is, he needs to be dealt with.”  John answered.
                  “He’s a monster.  I met him 6 years ago, I was young and he was charming.  I thought that he loved me.  He said he loved me.  But do you hit someone you love?”  Janice started.
    John wrapped her up closer to him, giving her the comfort she needed to tell him the story.  “No you don’t.”  He answered.
                  “It was okay at first.  He didn’t hit me right away.  Maybe after about six months it happened the first time though.  It wasn’t something I was expecting.  He had a friend over, we were all talking.  I was being a good host, listening to him.  You know acting like I was interested, nothing more.  Howard pulled me upstairs.  His friend was still sitting there, he grabbed me and yanked me up the stairs.  He was rich, it was his mansion.  The stairs there were so many of them, he dragged me up them.  I didn’t know why, I had no idea what I had done wrong.”  She stopped, her body was shaking hard.
                  “It’s okay, I’m here.”  John said stroking her hair.
                  “We got upstairs to the bedroom.  He hit me that first time, broke my nose, the first of many times.  He yelled at me, asked me why I was flirting with his friend.  Asked me wasn’t he good enough?  Did I want to leave him?  He had given me everything.  He told me that his friend would never give me everything he had, and hit me again.  I was bleeding all over the place.  He yelled at me for making a mess.  Told me to get up and clean it up.  That if there was any blood on his sheets I would pay for it.”  She sobbed.  “I couldn’t clean it all up, I had to make my nose stop bleeding.  He did make me pay for it later.  He went back down to his friend, spent hours down there.  When he came back up he was drunk and even meaner.” 
    She stopped for a minute, steeling herself to tell more of the story.  “He raped me that night and hit me more.  I thought for sure he was going to kill me that time.  I hurt all over.  My ribs were bruised, maybe even broken.  It hurt to breath and my ass hurt from him raping me too.  He was rough.  He told me the whole time that this was all my fault.  I shouldn’t have been flirting with his friend.”
    Janice looked around at John, tears were streaming down her eyes.  He kissed her forehead, trying to make her feel safe.
                  “I don’t know why I put up with it for so long.  Hell I wouldn’t have left him this time either.  He was the one who dumped me.  He got rid of me.  Why did I put up with it for all that time?  I don’t know, really.  I guess I always felt like he saved me the first time we met, and I should appreciate everything he did.  I thought I really had caused him to hurt me all those times.  It was my fault, there was something wrong with me.  Maybe there really is, I don’t know.”  She looked at John again.  He saw the overwhelming sadness in them.
    John wanted to hold her and make the pain go away.  He wanted to keep her safe and allow her to see what a real life was like.  How a real man treated a woman.  Not that thing who was her ex-boyfriend.  Howard, he would pay if John had anything to do with it.
                  “He never really was nice to me after that first time he hit me.  The beatings came on a regular basis.  You know what’s sad?”  She looked at him, not really expecting an answer.  “It