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When Ellie finally arrived, I was on beer
number two and Tequila shot number three and already feeling the heady effects
of the alcohol.  She waltzed in her face flushed with happiness; I guess she
had seen Eli, her flush being the result of a recent orgasm.  I grinned knowingly,
and she giggled as she followed my train of thought.

When the men swaggered through the door,
at gone nine-thirty, Ellie and I were both tipsy and incredibly pleased to see
them.  They made their way directly to the bar, to collect a beer each,
before sauntering over towards us. 

I watched Nate approach, our eyes fixed
as he stopped just short of my personal space.  My heart pitter-patters in
my chest as he leans down and places a soft kiss on my lips.  He wasn’t
mad at me anymore.

‘You look striking,’ he murmurs down into
my eyes.

I imagine in the world of Nate that is as
good as an apology.

‘Thank you,’ I smile sweetly. ‘Do we get makeup
sex?’ I ask, gazing up through my haze of alcohol.

‘You get sex, any way you want it,’ he mutters,
bringing his hand around my waist and pulling me against him.  ‘I love
that you’re a fucking nymphomaniac,’ he cups my backside, and I wrap my arms
around his neck.

‘Yeah? I flirt.

‘Oh yeah,’ his eyes are alight with
desire as they regard me intently, my stomach tips, and I can hardly breathe.

‘That’s good to know seeing as I left my
battery operated boyfriend in London, so…’ I lift my lips and place them on
his, ‘I may need help with a little problem. You see, I get horny when I drink,
and I have drunk a considerable amount of alcohol tonight,’ I leave the rest to
his imagination.

His palm cups my jaw and he kisses me
full on, his velvet tongue stroking seductively against mine leaving me giddy
and gasping. ‘Bring it on, London.’

The rest of the night was wild. The girls
were all kicking back and enjoying the reprieve from their work weeks. 
The men simply stood by with tolerant amusement. Every time I glanced over to
Nate, his eyes held mine with a promise of what he was going to do to me when
we got back to the apartment.  He had stopped pretending to drop his
belongings off at Marnie’s this past week and arrived instead with his weekend
bag in his clutches.  He hadn’t spent a night at the hotel since we returned
from Boston.

It is towards the end of the night, as I am
making my way to the restroom, that I receive a sense of unease, as if someone
was watching me.  Shaking it off as paranoia, I continue my path down the
small corridor towards the ladies’ bathroom, and find myself shoved from behind
with force into a doorway, that has a plaque with
private
, printed on
it.

I screech, unexpectedly, at the heavy thud
of a body against mine.  ‘What the fuck!’ I groan, winded as I hit against
a wall, in the pitched dark. 

‘Don’t move, bitch!’ A crazed voice spits
against my ear.  I feel the sharpness of a blade pushed against my cheek
and my lungs empty of oxygen.

‘What do you want?’ My voice is breathy,
fright evident in the trembling of my tone.

‘What I want is the twenty-three grand
your brother owed me, whore!’ He growls into my neck.

‘I don’t have that kind of money,’ I
mumble, a ball of tension holding deep in the pit of my stomach.

‘Then, I suggest you find it, slag,’ the
vehemence of his words sends spittle flying to my cheek.

‘I don’t have any means of getting it,’ I
sob.

‘You have forty-eight hours to get the cash.
I’ll be in touch.’ He digs the knife in deeper to my cheek.  I’ll be
watching you, whore, when you fuck that boyfriend of yours,’ his tone is thick,
threatening.

‘Please,’ I am begging for my life.

His nose moves into my hair.  ‘You
smell good, maybe I’ll take something as a deposit,’ he moves one hand around
my front to cup my sex over my lace shorts.

‘No!’ I scream, as loud as I can.

‘Quiet, bitch,’ the knife moves to my throat,
and I immediately stop screaming. 

His
disgustingly stinking
body shoves into the back of me, pushing me further into the wall and further against
his hand painfully clenching my sex. I can feel his erection against my back,
and I want to vomit.  His fingers move under the hem of my shorts and
panic descends as I feel his rancid coarse fingers against my flesh.

Why didn’t I change when Nate had pointed
out that he could see my pussy through my scanty shorts, a couple of hours ago? 

I am sobbing as he rubs his fingers along
the seam of my sex, humming in pleasure as he does so, before plunging two
fingers deep inside my dry entrance, ‘that’s good, bitch,’ he is humping
against my back with his erection still contained within his trousers. If I
move an inch, the knife will cut my throat.

 ‘Oh yeah,’ he moans. I feel pain at
the aggression of his probing fingers against my resisting muscles.  ‘I
want to fuck you, Pixie,’ he pants. I try to push away, but the knife tears the
skin of my neck, I cry out. ‘If it weren't for the fact I am in a hurry, I
would fuck you raw. I’m going to take my knife away from your throat, you scream,
and I’ll come back with my friends, and we’ll all have a go, you hear
me?’  Blood is pounding in my ears, as I nod, my sobs hiccupping through
my body.  He releases the knife.

‘Please, don’t hurt me,’ I whimper, ‘I’ll
get you the money, please don’t hurt me.’

He releases his erection from the
confines of his clothes, and I feel it touch the skin of my back.  I want
to die on the spot.  He begins to grunt as he pumps his hand up the
lengths of his hardness.  He tries to push more fingers inside me, but my
body is naturally closing, denying him entrance. All I feel is the pain of his
long fingernails against my soft flesh as I cry, helplessly against the
wall.  Hurry up, I think, please hurry up. 

Finally, he comes.

I feel the wetness stick to my back as it
dribbles down my camisole and he growls.  ‘You fucking whore, walking
around with your cunt hanging out, you asked for that.’ Pulling his hand out of
my shorts, he sucks on them at the side of my ear.  ‘You taste so good. 
Next time I’ll fuck you with my tongue,’ he snarls before he releases his hold
on me.

I collapse into a heap on the floor, ‘now
look what you made me do, bitch.’ I feel his gaze peering down on me, but I’m
too scared to look up.  If I see his face, he may have to dispose of me. 
‘I’ll be in touch about the money, your fucking boyfriend gets involved, and
he’ll end up the same way your brother did, you get me?’

I cry out as his boot hits my side. 

‘You hear?’ He growls.

‘Yes,’ I squeak, my body crying out in
pain.

Sniffling in the darkness, I stay where I
am, even when he’s left, I am too frightened to move. 

It seems like forever until I hear Nate’s
loud voice booming my name.  The door is suddenly flung open, and the
light switched on, and his crazed eyes move to find me trembling against the
wall.

‘What the fuck!’ He growls, ‘Eli,’ he
calls, crouching down beside me.  ‘You hurt, baby?’ He asks harshly.

‘He touched me,’ I sob, ‘get this off of
me,’ I try to take my camisole top off, but Nate prevents me. 

‘Don’t move!’ He snarls.  Eli appears
a gun in his hand, his jaw tense.  ‘Don’t let anyone out,’ he roars to
Eli, who immediately takes in the scene before exiting the room. 

‘I need to get him off of me, Nate,’ the
sticky semen is plastered to my back.

‘Sophie, listen to me,’ he holds me
static in by my arms. ‘This is evidence, don’t move baby,’ he pleads. 
‘I’ll fucking kill him,’ his voice is low, but commanding.  ‘Did you see
his face?’

‘No,’ I shake my head.  ‘He smelt
dirty, his hands were…’ I sob, ‘God,’ I cry out.

‘What happened?’ Ellie appears in the
doorway, her face ashen.  ‘What the fuck happened?’ She cries, dropping to
kneel beside me, her hand grasping mine.

‘Sophie, this is really important, baby,’
Nates arm moves around my shoulders, in a comforting gesture, ‘did he,’ he
closes his eyes, ‘did he rape you?’

‘No,’ I shake my head, ‘he used his
fingers, he had a knife,’ I sob. ‘I need to shower,’ tears are rolling down my
cheeks.  ‘Please, Nate, I need to shower.’

‘You can’t shower, baby,’ he wipes the
tears from my face with his thumb, ‘we need to take some samples, nail this
bastard.  Listen, Sophie, I need to go and find Eli, find this fucker that
did this to you. Ellie will stay with you.’

‘No, don’t leave me,’ I cling to Nates
shirt.

‘I won’t be far,’ he promises, as he
pulls away from me.

‘Eli called it in,’ Ellie tells her
brother. 

‘Okay, look after her El,’ his voice
turns frosty as he leaves me in a crumpled heap on the floor of what looks like
a storeroom.   

********

The next few hours are a blur.  The
police arrive first, then the ambulance and, despite my protest, I am taken to
the emergency room where a woman doctor checks out my injuries.  I had a
bruised rib from the kick, I received, a small superficial cut on my cheek and
a larger one on my neck.  I was given an internal examination, which
confirmed I had been violated against my will, judging by the abrasions that I
had sustained from his persistent long-nailed fingers ripping in and out of me,
along with some bruising.

My clothes were bagged and taken to forensics,
and I was finally allowed to shower.  Ellie had called Beth to go to her
place and fetch something for me to wear home, as she wouldn’t leave me. Then a
woman police officer appeared, one that was specially trained in rape and
sexual assaults, to take a statement and give me a card with the name of a
reputable therapist. 

Nate and Eli remained at Jessie’s, taking
statements, but Nate promised he would meet me at the hospital.

It’s amazing how rapidly a great evening can
turn so sour.

When I exit the shower room, dressed in
jogging bottoms and a t-shirt of Ellie’s, Nate is already there, waiting
patiently, phone at his ear looking like he wants to rip someone’s head
off.  His concerned eyes meet mine and mine blur with tears.  He
drops the phone from his ear and shoves it in his pocket as he makes his way
towards me, enfolding me in his embrace.

I hold on tight, my face at his neck as
the tears roll.

‘I’ll get him, baby, I’ll get him,’ he
promises, his voice tight, alien.

‘I want to go home,’ I sob.

‘We’re going right now,’ he turns me to
his side and walks down the corridor followed closely by Eli and Ellie.

‘I want to go home, to London,’ I
sob.  ‘I can’t stay here, Nate.  He’ll come back; he said he’ll come
back with his friends,’ I feel him tense.

‘He won’t be able to do anything when I
get hold of him, Sophie,’ he declares.  ‘I’ll rip his balls off,’ he
growls. 

‘But he promised,’ I gaze up
panicked.  ‘He said if I got you involved, you would get the same as Ollie.
I couldn’t live with that, Nate.  Not you.  It’s best if I disappear,’
I reason, ‘go back to London and leave you all to resume your normal lives.’

‘You seriously believe a pond of water
will prevent them from recouping the debt if they are determined to get it?’ He
questions, earnestly.

‘You think they’ll follow me to London?’
I gasp. ‘You told me the debt has been paid, Oliver’s life paid the debt. Why
is this happening?’

‘It seems they want more than a pound of
flesh,’ he runs a frustrated hand through his hair, before pulling me
closer.  ‘You’re staying with me, we’ll stay at the hotel,’ he announces,
as we walk into the car park.

********

Marnie is clucking around me like a
mother hen, Nate and I had arrived late last night, and she already had the
honeymoon suite awaiting us. Neither Nate or I were in the mood to comment on
her choice of room. 

We strolled into the suite where I headed
directly for the bathroom. I stripped down and stood in the shower cubicle for
the second time in an hour and tried to eliminate the stench of the bastard
from my nose.  After ten minutes of standing static, under the cooling
water, trying not to think about the implications of tonight, a naked Nate
appears and wordlessly takes me into his arms, holding me close while the spray
cascades over both of our naked bodies.  This was the first time Nate and
I had been intimately close without being aroused.

Nate dried me off, taking extra caution
at my rib, where the huge purple bruise was already forming, his lips pursed,
his jaw tense. I knew then that he wasn’t as calm as he would have me
believe. 

‘It’s okay,’ I assure him.

‘No, it’s not, Sophie,’ he had whispered.
‘It will never be okay, you were on my watch. If anyone else had been
protecting you, they would be wearing their balls as earrings for allowing this
to happen.’

‘You can’t watch me every second of the
day,’ I sigh.  ‘I need something to sleep in, a t-shirt or something,’
Nate disappears and reappears with his shirt from earlier, which covers the
important parts down to my mid-thigh.