“You love that, don’t you?” he whispers in my ear. “My dirty Little Red loves having her ass spanked.”
Fuck.
“It’s been too long, baby,” he groans. “This is going to be quick.” Which is perfectly fine with me. I am already standing at the edge of a precipice, and when he tweaks my nipple through my drenched silk shirt, I crack.
“Such a good girl,” he coos in my ear. “Taking me like a fucking champ.”
“Matthias.” I barely get his name out before he pinches my oversensitive clit and sends me spiraling over the edge again, bringing himself along with me. We fall, shattering against the rocks into a million pieces, just like our marriage. Our love. We are never meant to be, and I know that.
“I love it when you scream my name,” he breathes. “Moan it. Curse it. You’re mine, Ava Dashkov, and I will prove that to you repeatedly until you believe it.”
“You don’t need to prove it,” I whisper brokenly. “Because it’s never going to happen, Matthias. You broke me and there isn’t any way I am going to allow you to do it again.”
“We’ll see about that, my little psycho.”
For a moment neither of us speaks. We stand, leaning against one another, relishing in each other’s warmth as the rain continues to pour down around us, our breaths heavy and ragged. I lean my head against one of the arms bracketing me in and just let myself relish the fact that he is alive.
With a reluctant sigh, he withdraws himself from inside of me, tucking himself away. He bends down and shimmies my panties and jeans up my legs, buttoning me back in place. The evidence of our union is lost in the deluge around us.
Then he kisses me.
Soft and slow. Full of sorrow and affection. He has never kissed me like that before. Like I am precious. Like he loves me.
Nope.
I am not ready to analyze that just yet.
nineteen
“I’ve been searching this barn since Kenzi left.” I stiffen when he says her name. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. “She made it sound like there would be something here, but so far, I haven’t found anything.”
“What did she say?” I ask, pulling away from him slightly. It doesn’t get me far since I am still blocked in on one side by the car.
“She says this place has memories. Painful ones,” he repeats. “Then she told me to dig up the past while I can.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Other than it being a normal horse stable,” he huffs. “Nothing.”
Stable.
That term still sends a shiver through me whenever I hear it. It is sad how such an innocuous word can have such a dark and powerful impact on someone.
Wait—stable.
Elias wouldn’t have been the only one to have a horse stable set up to traffic women. From the look of the barn before me, this one is far older than the one he set up. Matthias wouldn’t have known to look for a hidden door because he has never been to the stable back home.
Striding past him, I make my way down the center of the dilapidated building and count out the beams where the horse stalls would have been. If this is a place where they held trafficked women, then they would have placed the door at one end of the barn, most likely in the last stable. There is only ever one exit and entrance to make it harder for women to escape.
Elias’s was larger than the one we stand in now, but the length of the barn had been tripled to hold more women when he got greedy.
I step into the last stall on the right and move the hay around with my feet, ignoring the mice and spiders that scatter at the motion. When I don’t find what I am looking for, I move to the other side.
And bingo.
It is barely noticeable even after all these years. The boards have been cut to look exactly like their surroundings, and the handle looks to be nothing more than notched wood from horses’ hooves. Grasping the underside of the wood-carved handle, I grunt as I lift the heavy door.
The smell of mildew and rotting eggs fills the air. We cough, the scent strong, even with the fresh rain.