Free Always Unique by Nikki Turner Page A

into complete darkness. She figured Kennard had come back up and caught her in the shower and was in a joking mood.
    “Ha-ha, Kennard, real funny. Now turn the lights back on. I’m running late as it is,” she said, while trying to feel for the knob to turn the water off.
    “Maybe you will think this is funny now.” The voice shocked the hell out of her. It wasn’t Kennard.
    Fear replaced the water enveloping her entire body and within a blink of an eye, a pair of hands ripped her from the shower and then punched her in the face so hard it rattled her teeth.
    “Where’s your pistol now, bitch?”
    Unique absorbed the punch and was still on her feet. Hell, if she made it through this mess, maybe she’d be Kennard’s next big prizefighter. She could take a blow, that was for sure. And to take a blow of that magnitude from a dude like a champ showed that if she was in the ring with a broad she’d definitely make it to the final round. But then again, hadn’t she always been the last bitch standing?
    “You ain’t bad now, is ya, bitch?”
    She wondered how in the hell Fat Tee had gotten into her secured hotel room. And why had she left the gun in her purse in the chair? Of course, she hadn’t expected a maniac to break into the room of a five-star hotel’s Presidential Suite.
    The initial shock of the moment waning, Unique took a looping right-handed swing that clipped Fat Tee on the chin. To spend extra quality time with Kennard and to stay in shape, she had taken boxing and self-defense classes at the boxing gym. The trainer had said she was a natural. But with the slippery floor under bare, wet feet, she wasn’t stable enough to create the force behind the blow that she tried to throw.
    Fat Tee wasted no time landing another sledgehammer against her temple. This time, Unique’s legs wobbled like a bowl of cheap ramen noodles before quitting on the job.
    Once Unique hit the cold marble floor, Fat Tee dropped down on top of her, knees straddling her upper body. The bastard moved around like he had been slithering in the dark all of his life. Who knew shit would play out like this? But then again, Unique should have known, for it had already been written.
    “I told you this wasn’t over until I said it was over. But you wanted to play rough. So,” he said, with one hand around her neck and the other holding her wrists above her head, “I’ll show you what the fuck rough looks like, bitch.”
    She could smell the Hennessy on his breath.
    Unique wanted to beat herself up for underestimating Fat Tee, but there was no time for woulda-shouldas. Besides, Fat Tee had literally beaten her to the punch anyway.
    But regardless of how daunting the situation seemed, she didn’t intend to be raped by Fat Tee again. Unique was going to fight with everything she had—for herself and for the baby growing inside of her.
    Fat Tee had enough pressure on her neck to prevent her from screaming. And she could barely breathe. The hold was similar to the way he had handled her when he had overtaken her at the house. But this time Unique was determined not to let him achieve the same results. One was her maximum limit in this lifetime to be raped by this stupid fuck-off.
    “It didn’t have to be this way,” he said.
    Unique tried to speak but the words couldn’t get past the grip he had on her neck.
    Fat Tee sensed that she was trying to say something, and he loosened his grip … slightly. Unique mumbled, but there was no way he could discern what she was saying. She couldn’t even recognize the garbled words as they squeezed through her windpipe.
    “What did you say, bitch?”
    She heard the greed in his voice. He probably thought she was giving in, trying to tell him how he could rob Kennard.
    She spewed off a few more, low words.
    Fat Tee bent over, placing his ear closer to her mouth so that he could hear better. He wasn’t taking any chances by loosening the choke hold, allowing her to scream for help.
    The side of