Free Romance: Gibson's Legacy ( New Adult Contemporary Erotic Romance) (Last Score Book 1) by K.L. Shandwick

seemed to hate everything I did. The spite he then levelled toward me was frightening.
    Ultimately, my decision had been to completely submit my body to him and let him have sex, rather than to put up a fight. I wasn’t submitting to him out of trust but out of fear of what might have happened if I refused, and if I just lay there the whole ordeal was over much quicker.
    Bruising my neck when he bit me on the last occasion gave me feelings of another level of degradation. Feeling low and dirty at the hands of my own partner had my stomach churning over with nerves, but I sucked it all up and waited for him to go to work the next day before I let my feelings out.
    Once he had left for work, I scrubbed my skin for hours. My own focus on my work wasn’t on form and it had suffered because of what was happening at home. Eventually, by mutual agreement I had to resign my post.
    Being stuck home was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me. At twenty two years old, I had become a master at concealing my bruises from my friends and family. I also discovered how good an actress I was in the presence of them.
    I knew instantly the first time he had an affair, because he came home with a huge bouquet of flowers, and I saw glimmers of the old Kace in his attentive, complimentary behavior. The guilty look and the sudden attention he paid me spoke volumes.
    Devastated by his treatment of me, I had felt even lower both in my mood and my self- esteem. Kace had me feeling so unattractive I had begun to have skewed thoughts that he deserved to be with women who could be more attentive towards him.
    When he knew I knew about her, he projected his anger onto me, telling me I didn’t care enough about him when I could let him do that and this was the first time he really lost it and hit me.
    One hard slap across my face was all it took to change my life completely. Our loving relationship was gone forever. Mistrust and fear had taken over and his domineering and manipulative behavior came to the fore.
    Kace threatened that if I ever told anyone he’d hit me, he’d tell them it happened under extreme provocation, when he had found out about my affairs. That kept me scared because I knew that Kace always held the room captivated when he spoke, so I knew he was very clever and capable of convincing people that his life was so awful, that by the time he was done spinning his story they would have been lining up to give him a medal for staying with me.
    I couldn’t have risked that happening. There was no way I wanted to be put in the position of defending myself, especially to my parents, they idolized me. So, I said nothing and the mental abuse continued, but the physical violence was on hold again.
    To be honest, I was thankful for Kace’s affairs because when he was with those women, he wasn’t at home beating on me. Although I was repulsed one morning when he’d come home smelling of sex, perfume and liquor and had tried to climb on top of me.
    That was the one time I fought back and paid dearly for it. He hit me so hard, I was dizzy and sick. I read up on it and from the bang on the head he gave me when he struck it on the wall, I knew I had a concussion.
    Stuck in hell. That was how I felt, and I couldn’t see any way out of the horrible life I had fallen into. Kace’s mind games had messed with my head to such an extent, I was scared to be around him, but even more frightened to be without him.
    However, that all changed the day of my twenty fourth birthday. For almost two years I had suffered the life he was dealing me, when the letter threw me a life line.
    I had been stuck in a terrible situation and I couldn’t see any way out of the horrible life I had fallen into. Kace’s mind games had messed with my head to such an extent I was scared to be around him, but even more frightened to be without him.
    Collecting the mail from the box at our apartment block, there was a rare letter for me. Apart from the two birthday cards