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  Wicked Fascination

  J. M. Brister

  Wicked Fascination Copyright © 2020 by J. M. Brister. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Blake Design

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  J. M. Brister

  Visit my website at http://jmbrister.blogspot.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: August 2020

  Kindle Direct Publishing

  ISBN 9798652951740

  Dedication

  To all sexual assault survivors…

  Gray Tower Series

  Dark Prison

  Troubled Paradise

  Perilous Games

  Stand Alone Novels

  Wicked Fascination

  Special Thanks

  To Michael –For sticking with me through thick and thin.

  To Katherine – The best daughter ever.

  My family for encouraging me to keep going.

  My Twitter besties for the support you’ve given me all these months.

  Jack, Rygel, and Dixie for comforting me when I needed it.

  All the people who have read my books. You guys rock!

  Trigger Warning

  This book deals with the aftermath of sexual assault. If you feel that you may be triggered by these story elements, it is not recommended that you read this book.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, January 9

  11:13 AM

  Freya Morgan woke up slowly and painfully, a fuzzy fog surrounding her mind. For a moment, she almost had forgotten where she was and what had happened to her. For that instant, all she could do was search her mind, but nothing was processing properly. Then she opened her eyes and saw the stark whiteness of her environment. She glanced down at her body, staring at the thin dressing gown and the IVs that were connected to her arms.

  It was then that she remembered. The words slowly filled her mind, one at a time, processing through her thoughts.

  Hospital.

  Painkillers.

  Rape.

  She suddenly wished she could go back to the doped-up state that she had been in before. She didn’t want to remember. Her mind reeled as she sorted out what she had gone through.

  Ugly, savage flashbacks ran through her head that made her weep and her body shake. She thought of the man who she had trusted, painfully violating her. She thought of the ropes that had cut into her wrists, ropes that had held her to her bed for days on end. She thought of the brutal hits to the face and body that she had had to endure. And she thought of the knife that he had used on her, the one that had been used to carve into her back. She flinched at the thought.

  Freya had not seen her back yet. She was too scared to look at herself, and the hospital staff had been very careful not to show her just yet. But she knew what it said. He had told her what he would put when he did it. He had repeated it to her again and again when he had first sliced into the skin right at her shoulder blades. Now she would have to bear the message forever scarred on her body: SLUT.

  She still couldn’t figure out why he had chosen that word. Freya had been a virgin before he had violated her. She had been so careful with the men she had dated. If anything, she had been a bit of a prude. Now, she was just a shell.

  Tears started to involuntarily stream down her face. All she had left in her life were tears. He had stolen everything else from her.

  “She’s awake,” Freya heard from the other side of the cream-colored hospital curtain someone had pulled around her bed.

  The curtain was opened to reveal a gray-haired nurse and her father standing next to the bed.

  Freya tried to wipe the tears away from her face, but her arms still hurt so much. She didn’t want to worry her father any more than she had to. She knew how upset he was about the whole ordeal; he had been the one who had found her. Her father most likely had saved her life.

  “How are you feeling, Freya?” The nurse asked politely.

  Since she didn’t want to upset her father any more than she had to, she lied and said in a cracked voice, “Just a little pain. I feel better than yesterday.”

  Every part of her body hurt. She had stitches across her upper back where she had been cut. Her body was banged up and bruised. Her wrists had been bandaged. There was not one part of her body that didn’t hurt.

  The worst of it was the embarrassment and shame she felt. Although her father had not talked to her about how she was rescued, she knew it was him who had found her. The embarrassment burned her cheeks. She had wished that no one knew so that she could suffer in private. She didn't want anyone to know that she was...tainted, dirty...broken.

  “Freya,” her father spoke up, his eyes sparkling with held-back tears. “You don’t have to lie for my sake. You need to tell the doctors and nurses everything so you can get well.”

  Leave it to her father to be so optimistic. Joe Morgan was a go-getter. He owned a publishing company, Morgan Books, that was incredibly successful because he had staked a lot of assets in the now ever-popular e-book market. He was a handsome guy too. He had a strong, commanding face with dark brown hair streaked with gray. He was a regular at the gym and kept in great shape.

  Despite the loss of Freya’s mom several years ago, her father had always been so upbeat. He had even started dating a little bit again, finally trying to move on from the devastating loss to the family. Freya had always looked up to him. He had been Freya’s rock for so long. Now, she could see tiny cracks in that rock starting to form.

  “I…” Freya started, but she trailed off.

  She was so tired even after sleeping the day away. The painkillers that the hospital had been giving her had been making her drowsy. And she honestly didn’t want to be awake. Blackness was the welcoming oblivion. Being conscious was the defeating reality.

  “How about this,” the nurse started, sitting a hand on her hip. “You tell me from one to ten how your pain level is. Ten being the highest and one being the lowest.”

  This nurse had been no-nonsense ever since Freya had woke up in the hospital yesterday. Freya had first thought that the lady was plain mean and insensitive. However, she was starting to realize that the nurse was doing it for her benefit. Someone had to push away the emotions, and it certainly wasn’t going to be Freya or her father.

  Freya paused for a moment.

  She didn’t want to upset her father, so she fibbed only a little and said, “Nine.”

  In reality,
she felt like a fifteen.

  The nurse raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  “I’ll go get you some more pain meds for your IV. Then the doctor should be in to go over your test results.”

  Freya shuddered at that thought. She didn’t want to know what diseases she had been forcefully given.

  When the nurse spun around and left the stark hospital room, her father turned to her and said, “A detective is coming by to see you today. I’ve made a lot of calls. Many people want to help get the scumbag who did this to you.”

  Freya’s eyes flicked from her father’s worried face to his clothes: the same suit and tie that he had been wearing yesterday. He hadn’t shaven either. She had never seen her father so disheveled before, and it worried her.

  Another thought crept into her mind: I wonder what the hell I look like.

  She knew she had bruises all over her face. One of the nurses had pulled Freya’s long dark brown wavy hair into a ponytail, but her hair felt dirty and oily from days without washing. If she looked even half as tired as she felt, she probably looked like a zombie. She certainly didn't feel twenty-five years old. She felt like she was a thousand.

  “Freya, we’re going to get him, okay?” Her father said, squeezing her arm slightly.

  She nodded but couldn’t say anything, suddenly feeling very tired again. She wanted to stay awake for her father, but she felt so exhausted that she could barely keep her eyes open. As she drifted off again, she wondered if anything in her life would ever be “normal” again.

  12:30 PM

  Joe Morgan was pacing back and forth in his daughter’s hospital room. He was wired on too many cups of coffee and too little hours of sleep. Not that he could sleep. He was too infuriated with what had happened to Freya. It had been three days of hell he had been through, and if he had been through hell, then what had poor Freya been through?

  He had gotten a call from Freya’s school on Monday, asking if he knew why she hadn’t reported to work that day. The school had tried to contact her with no success. It was then that he began the frantic desperation of trying to get a hold of her. Joe had no idea how many times he had called her cellphone to no avail. If he hadn’t been in New York City at the time, he would have driven over to Freya’s Charlotte, North Carolina apartment immediately. What had disturbed him was that she hadn’t posted on her Facebook account in many days, nor had she updated her teaching blog, a place in which she posted information several times a day, even on the weekends.

  After a few hours of calling, he had even tried to call Charlotte police to file a missing person’s report. They had promptly told him that she would have to be out of contact for at least twenty-four hours before they could do anything. So, he had rushed to the airport and gotten the first flight to Charlotte, his and Freya’s hometown. When he had finally gotten to her apartment early Tuesday morning, he was beside himself when he realized her little Hyundai was parked in the lot. There was nothing to prepare him for what he saw when he opened her apartment with his key.

  The living room had been overturned with chairs flipped over and pictures knocked off the walls. When Joe had made his way to her bedroom, there was nothing that could have prepared him for the sight that he saw: his daughter, tied with rope to the bedposts, naked, beaten, and bleeding. His only saving grace was that she had been unconscious at the time. He didn’t know if he could bear seeing her awake and stumbling upon her like that.

  Unfortunately, Joe had been so astounded that he hadn’t realized that the bastard who had stolen his baby’s innocence was still in the apartment. The perpetrator had heard the door open and had hidden in the bathroom. While Joe had run to his daughter and checked to see if she was still even breathing, the bastard had run out of the apartment. When Joe had realized that her attacker was still in the apartment, he took off after him like a man possessed.

  But he hadn’t been fast enough. Freya's attacker had gotten away, and Joe blamed himself. He should have gotten there sooner. He should have been faster. He should have done more.

  The next few days had been full of police and paramedics and waiting. At first, Joe hadn’t even realized what the bastard had done to her back. This was his baby girl. Freya had always been such a good girl. She had kept out of trouble, even became a teacher. Freya had lived to help others. She didn’t deserve any of it.

  And Joe would never forgive himself for not stopping it. He should have been there to protect her. At least her mother didn't have to face what had happened to their daughter. Grace had never been the one to be strong emotionally.

  “Mr. Morgan?” Came the calm, collected voice from behind him.

  Joe shook his head and stopped his train of thought. He couldn't dwell on the negativity, at least not for now. His little girl needed him right now. Turning toward the voice, he saw the doctor, a younger guy who looked as if he was at the end of his shift. Joe wondered how he personally looked after the last couple of days.

  “Yeah,” Joe replied, a little more gruffly than he intended.

  “I'm Dr. Roberts,” the younger man said with a slight smile, apparently trying to lighten the mood. “I'm here to go over Freya's test results.”

  Joe's chest tightened. He had known that this talk was going to come. Besides the police completing a rape kit on Freya, the hospital had also done some STD tests and a pregnancy test, even though some of the testing was too early to tell. Joe was both anxious and scared to hear the results. That bastard had already scarred her on the outside. He didn't know what he would do if there were even more complications.

  “Doc, please tell me you've got some good news,” Joe told him. “I could use a little good news right now.”

  The doctor nodded and said, “Yeah, I do have at least some good news. Is Freya awake so I can tell you both?”

  “She's sleeping, but I can probably wake her.”

  “It's up to you. I can always come back later.”

  Knowing the way this hospital worked, Joe knew that “later” meant God knows when. He knew Freya was anxious about the results too, though she hadn't said anything. He could just see the worry in her eyes.

  “I'll wake her,” Joe told the doctor. “I know she's been anxious to hear as well.”

  When he stepped over to her bed, he couldn't help but cringe when he saw her physical appearance: bruised face, bandaged wrists, darkened under eyes. And then there was her back. He hadn't seen it, though he knew that she had gotten a lot of stitches. He couldn't understand how someone would do that to another human being, especially someone as sweet as Freya.

  A psycho—that was what that bastard was.

  Lightly tapping her on the arm, he said softly, “Hey, sweetheart, it's time to wake up.”

  Her body stirred for a moment before she slowly opened her eyes. Joe's heart sank every time he looked at her. She had such beautiful, expressive brown eyes. Now, they looked dull, defeated.

  “Dad,” she mumbled, her voice soft.

  “Hey, sweetheart, the doctor is here with your test results,” he told her.

  A wave of emotions crossed his daughter's face, none of them discernible. Joe squeezed her arm in reassurance.

  “Hi. I'm Doctor Roberts,” the doc said, walking to the bed and extending his hand.

  Freya held up a shaking hand to take his in a very gentle handshake.

  “I have some good news for you,” the doctor continued.” You came up negative for STDs and pregnancy during your initial test.”

  There might have been a slight brightening of Freya's face, but Joe couldn't quite tell.

  “However, the issue is that it will take a little longer to completely rule out pregnancy, and HIV has three months before it will show up on a test, which means you'll have to retest to make sure.”

  Freya nodded slowly. Joe left her bed and started pacing the length of the room. He was typically a patient man, but the thought of putting Freya through three months of anxiety unnerved him.

  “It will be okay,” Dr. Rob
erts assured them. “Regardless of what happens, she will be able to live a long, healthy life.”

  It was not exactly what a father wanted to hear about his daughter, but Freya seemed to be handling the news remarkably well. He had sometimes caught her crying when she thought no one was looking. He knew it was because she didn't want him to worry. Leave it to her to try and consider his feelings when she had the absolute right to be a wreck right now.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything or have any questions,” Roberts told them. At least the man knew when to make himself scarce. Right now, Joe just needed some alone time with his little girl.

  When the doctor had left, Joe turned to Freya and said as sincerely as he possibly could, “You know you'll be okay, right? We'll get through this. Time will pass. Life will move on.”

  She nodded, but Joe knew his daughter better than anyone. She was trying to hide her anguish from him. And unfortunately, it wasn't working.

  2:35 PM

  Detective Howard Greene of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police stood in the elevator of Charlotte Medical Center trying to run through in his head how he was going to deal with the victim of his latest case. He had read the files on Freya Morgan and had visited her apartment, which was now an active crime scene. He had also visited the perp's supposed last known address, though that had been a bust. The guy had lied to her about where he lived. But that was okay. Howard knew they'd find the guy eventually. It was only a matter of time.

  He knew she was in a very fragile state right now, but there were a lot of questions that she was going to need to answer. The previous day, she had given a brief recollection to another officer. She was out of it at the time and had not been a lot of help. When Howard had been assigned to the case, one of his first orders of business was to get an accurate statement from her.