Chapter Two

In the attack, Arianna's brain didn’t even get the chance to numb itself. She was pulled inside, her mind consumed and screaming in the terror of uncertainty.

His head went down and tasted her lips before she could even see his face. She just saw that he was tall. She felt pain as his big, heavy body pushed against her and pinned her to the back of the door he had shut with a bang behind her.

He was a big man, and his fingers grasped at her hair, his teeth nipped at her jaw when his lips slipped from her lips as if he wanted to kiss her whole face, which made her gasp. But he assaulted her mouth again, licked her lips with a careless, wet kiss, and she drowned in the aggressive assault of his lips.

Arianna closed her eyes as the smell of alcohol assailed her nostrils. Hands went down and slid between them and cupped her breasts, and she stifled another scream.

He squeezed, but not as hard or harsh as she thought he would. As if he was sizing them up, testing their softness. Then he grunted against her face as if he was satisfied, since his lips was kissing her cheek now, as if he was finding trouble locating her lips again. He was quite drunk.

Then his hand on her breast slid down and grabbed one of her thighs to lift around his lower torso. Another hand cupped her behind the back of her head and angled her face so that he found her mouth successfully this time, and his offensive kiss caught her gasp at the bulging hardness, as hard as a rock, that pushed at the apex of her thighs.

Naked... he... was naked under the material that her hand was grasping now, which was a silk robe. She recoiled in horror as what was about to happen to her truly struck her.

My god, my god, don't be like this. Don't. Don't be so scared!

But she was more terrified than before. He would take her there against the door, just like that. And who knew what else he planned to do to her tonight, drunk as he was?

She couldn’t run. Can’t escape. 

No one knew where she was now except Madame Venus. Her mother would die in despair if she knew what her only daughter was going through right now, or where her youngest child was.

No one was going to save her from this brutal monster.

She forced the bitter cry down and pushed the fear to where it couldn't overcome her. She couldn't make any move that showed revulsion. She didn't know much else, but she at least knew this. He might hurt her further… and then complain about her later. Madam Venus could consider the job a fail… and then what?

Tommy. He can't stay there. I can't let him suffer for doing something to help our mother! I have to survive this. I have to get out of here in one piece.

The man raised his head and barked angrily at her. “Kiss me, damn it! Are you a brick, whore? Kiss me now!”

She stared, her mouth gaping. She was grateful she couldn’t see his face in the dark interior of his house. She did not want to see him or recognize him anywhere. Nor did she want him to see her and remember her if they stumbled upon each other outside, in the future. So she looked down.

Then she remembered what he ordered her to do, and she winced.

Kiss. 

She didn't know how to kiss. 

She hadn't even been this close to a man, with his whole body plastered all over her like glue. She hadn't been with any man. How was she to kiss him?

She remembered what Madame Venus told her.

“Just be beautiful. You show more flesh. Put color on your face. When he sees how beautiful you are, he knows what to do.” 

That was the sage advice in the hooker’s manual, she hysterically thought.

“You don't have to work hard. Just lie there on the bed and bear it and it will be all over before you know it,” the consensus of the other girls.

But there wasn't even time for bed. He was trying to do her right there on the door!

“Damn it!”

She managed not to jump at his bark this time.

Kiss him. Right. 

She raised her face, but he was sighing heavily. He stepped back and swayed a little. As her leg was still around him because he still held her thigh in place, her hips were pulled towards him, and a gap appeared between their upper bodies.

And he stopped, then looked down at her quizzically.

She could see the outline of a straight nose and the shadow of arched eyebrows. Strong jaws, and—

Before she could catch herself for looking, he had encased her in his arms, lifted her to him and carried her further inside. The moonlight penetrated the thin curtains in this part of the living room, and it was a spacious place.

With a gigantic couch.

He slid her down his hard body, and she cringed as she felt that rigid part of him again. She could now see his intent eyes as he pushed her a little to look down at her clothed body, as if contemplating what to do with it. She shuddered as she watched his hooded eyes. She couldn't help it. There was tension in him that still made her want to run.

Then he moved. 

For a drunk man, he was fast, and she heard the tearing of cloth. She would have screamed again but he'd claimed her lips again, surer in his direction this time, his hands throwing away the remnants of her dress.

Then, in the next instant, the cups of her bra were pulled up and over her breasts, its straps entangling in her upper arms so he cursed and tore those, too, with his bare hands. She was lifted off her feet and was unceremoniously dropped on the couch. Her breath whooshed out of her chest.

Bra off. Dress off. She was only in her panties as she lay there.

She was numb by now. Her hands were fists, crossed over her breasts. Inside her head was a litany of prayers to a god who seemed to have forgotten her, but she stubbornly prayed because there was nothing else to do.

When her father died, her grandmother was crying so hard, screaming how god had forsaken them. But even when her Arianna’s heart was also breaking, she felt it wasn't true at all. God wasn't the driver who'd gotten drunk and ran over her father on the freeway. It wasn't god who'd killed him and left his wife a widow and his children fatherless. It was a man, not god.

She closed her eyes and instructed herself that she would not open them again until it was over.

And she waited.

And waited.

Her skin remained exposed to the cold draft of the evening air as she continued to lie there, until she heard the gasp of the man hovering over her.

Arianna almost fainted from fear. What had she done wrong now? What had she not done yet?

He was waiting for something.

She opened her eyes, and the man was just staring down at her. She stared back. It was lighter now in there. She could see his face clearly.

A handsome face, one that was very familiar to her that her heart stopped.

My god.

It was Señorito Enrique!