DangeroustoKnow by Lily Harlem Read Free Book Online Page B

find one of the good guys to play with.”
    A sob hiccupped up from my chest and I spun and grasped the
door latch.
    I started to open it but he shoved into my back. He spanned
his broad palm over the seam of the door and held it shut. “Do what I say,
‘cause your body would never be found. You’ll have been used and abused and
destroyed like all the other poor fucking whores out there then dumped into the
Hudson.”
    Goo from my nose ran into my mouth. Slimy saline coated my
tongue. “Please,” I whimpered, staring at the ashy cigarette mark on the door.
“Please, let me go.”
    With a flourish, he released the door and stepped back. “Go.
Get the fuck out of here.”

Chapter Five
     
    My stagger home was fretful and undignified. I could barely
see for the tears in my eyes, and pain sliced through my ankle with each
limping step. But adrenaline sparked me on, past a blur of faces scurrying on
the dark sidewalk. Everyone stared straight ahead, uninterested in a messed-up
whore.
    Before I knew it I was stumbling into my building, heart
thudding, and riding the fortunately empty elevator. I fell into my apartment
and froze for several long seconds, expecting someone to jump out of the
darkness and wrap their hands around my throat.
    They didn’t.
    Quickly I kicked off my heels and hobbled around, pulling
curtains and turning on lights. Four times I checked the front door was
securely bolted and locked. I chased a neat gin with another neat gin then
wrenched on the shower.
    Standing beneath the piping-hot water, I let it rain down on
my face. A medley of images from the evening bombarded me. I was stripping in
his grubby room and having my tits sucked. I was gorging on his cock then
rubbing cum into the word WHORE on my chest.
    I sponged between my legs and realized how bruised and hot
my pussy was. I could still feel his huge cock shunting in and dragging me to a
sublimely carnal orgasm. An image of the porn film flooded my mind; a tight,
wrinkled rosebud of an anus being breached by a glossy black dick. Hesitantly I
touched my own hole—it too was tender and stung like a bee when I clenched it.
The remembered sensation of fullness had my knees weakening and my breath
coming short. I reached for the shower gel, soaped up a washcloth and wiped it
over my chest, scrubbing and scratching at the ink. The “W” faded quickly, the
other letters more stubborn. I didn’t rub energetically for my skin was
scratched and red, the deep purple hickies evidence of Jovica’s lascivious
claim on me for the hour that I was his whore.
    Except it wasn’t just that hour. He’d left a mark on my body
that would last for days.
    He’d left a mark in my mind forever.
    * * * * *
    After a night of little sleep, I eventually drifted into a
fitful slumber and woke at noon. It was Sunday. I had no plans, so after taking
medication for my twisted ankle, slipped into a pale-cream pair of sweats and a
gray cashmere sweater. I tied my hair back and applied a sweep of moisturizer
to my cheeks and a slick of balm to my lips. I wrapped an exquisite silk scarf
from India around my neck, enjoying the sheerness of the soft material on skin
mottled with bruises.
    Glancing in the mirror, I paused. Apart from the circles
beneath my eyes I looked like an all-American girl—pretty and wholesome. Who
would have guessed that my chest still read HORE and was bitten black and blue,
or that my two intimate orifices were swollen and delicate and my throat ached
from my brush with strangulation?
    I drank coffee and sifted through my emotions. My evening as
a sexual object had been as wonderful as it had been terrifying, as satisfying
as it was distressing. The pendulum of acute excitement and breakneck terror
was a dizzying ride every time I thought of it.
    I moved to the window and glanced down at the park. Habit.
    My heart picked up, my breath caught. There he was, sitting
on the bench reading a paper and smoking a roll-up.
    Gripping my mug, I shifted the