Trust Me - Prologue (Section: Elyza)

IT STARTED WITH A STREET CORNER STRUGGLE.
"Seeley," the made-up but not too made-up (glam but not too glam) girl showed her pearly whites with a small smile to rival any American supermodel.
She struggled against his grip, but remained cool in the face of masculine terror. Tremors rippled through her, knocking impulse over her ringletted hair in one strong wave, one overly-bold stroke of nausea.
"Come on, Elyza. Trust me, please?" I don't even know you.
Her broken defenses unwillingly caved, "I have to go," she breathed out evenly, giving the false illusion to passers-by that they were fine, even when they weren't fine - when they were really, really not fine.
Not calm, and too calm at the same time, mixed together to make really unstable fright and shivering cold sweat; and some drunken ghosts of fear and horror that she couldn't put a name to out loud and could even scarcely identify in her head.
It wasn't even safe there anymore because he was everywhere and everything and everyone all at once and she swayed until he pushed her firm against a wall, which immediately steadied her. Her head hung low in shame.
He touched her waist with deft fingers.
Don't do this, stop it. Not here, not now. I can't, no, wait. Please. Stop. Get off me! Not like this. I have to go. They'll be wondering where I am. Please, don't.
All the things she wanted to say waited, lingering venomous but vulnerable in her mouth, on her tongue and they wilted in the air when she opened it to try.
She, instead, tried to breathe and he caught her breath with his lips and pushed the words back down into her throat with his tongue; so she swallows hard, and they're gone. She jerked her head hard and their mouths detach painfully with a less-than-graceful clanking of teeth. He grits his and she purses her lips, before judging him wrong and making a run for the space between buildings behind him.
Her heels click-click-click on the floor as she tries hard to out-dash him because she doesn't have time to stop and take them off because she remembered how long it took her to get them on before she came out.
His feet stamp-stamp-stamp after her and he catches up quick, clawing at her arm, spinning her dangerously fast, and slamming her back, crash, against the ribbed brick wall. Her shoulder blades are scraped and bleeding.
The darkness surrounds he and she like a shroud and panic rises like flame in her throat. She's ready to scream but he raises a hand and clamps it over her jaw before she can take the time to breathe in. His hand flexes over her mouth.
She remains silent and the darkness hugs her close with the empty alley and his bad ideas. He hadn't said anything at all since she'd said his name and now his voice was different, "If you scream, you're dead."
He meant it. He turned his hand to grab her jaw tight and he pressed his thumb hard into the hollow of her cheek so she whimpered over the sensation of the forming bruise. His laugh was strangely musical.
"I don't want to hurt you, Cooper." For some sick, twisted reason his hips fit to hers like a sort of grim jigsaw. His meretricious smile was contagious and she grinned through tears in spite of herself, "Just because I am... means you're being difficult."
She tried to look anywhere but his eyes, keeping her gaze averted at all times but his hand was still locked to her mandible and he forced her to connect her stare to his. Her cheek ached and he let go of her face, but not her waist and there was no escape she just stayed pinned there, pressed against him.
He ghosted a kiss at the base of her neck and she tried not to react how he wanted but in reality her kneecaps were melting, "But you like being difficult, don't you, Elyza Beth?" He drew out her full name, the shape of his lips printed hot into her skin.
"I don't want this," she hissed, trying to regain control of her body, but the way his thumbs were rubbing circles around her hipbones was distracting the hell out of her.
"Is that right!" He barked, darkness dancing behind his eyes; he seemed faintly and dangerously amused. She wished she hadn't been honest. He raised a hand again and she was desperate to shrink away but stayed defiant and senselessly brave.
For a second, his hand caressed her face, sliding his fingers over the bruise he made. She folded into his touch; until he rooted his fingers firmly in her hair, laced through her locks; "Oh, I know you can't say Elyza without revealing a lie." – And pulling her scalp he yanked once forwards, and once back hard.
Her hair tumbled around his fingers as her skull made an ugly crack on the pitted brick wall, reverberating echoes down the close walls. He swore and pulled his hand away, bloody, and made sure he finished what he started whether she was conscious or not.

She woke up early Saturday morning in an alley with her skirt round her ankles and her underwear soaked with blood; vaguely concussed, bleeding and sore, she tried to revel in a second of terrified confusion, tried hard to piece it together.
Got drunk, got low, got out; got—
Then she remembered.
—raped.