by Livia Grant
"Yes, sir. He only arrived a few minutes ago and is getting settled in his box. You should be able to begin on time."
"Excellent." Jake's pace quickened, as if he were excited to get to their next destination. Hannah, on the other hand, was beginning to hyperventilate from the stress. The fact that she'd not heard from Dylan for over thirty minutes filled her with a combination of anger and fear.
Surely he wouldn't leave me in here without trying to help me?
The fear of being deserted by the alpha men who'd promised to keep her safe gripped her. Her mind raced with the possibilities of what could have gone wrong, each one worse than the last. By the time Jake was dragging her through yet another security door, she was back to digging her heels in, attempting to slow him down.
Rather than reason with her, Jake simply turned and backhanded her across the face—hard. Stars danced around the edges of her vision as her body absorbed the violence. His voice seemed far away as he issued his threat. "I've had enough. You will not like how I handle insubordinate employees, Hannah. This is your last warning."
She shuddered, but kept her mouth shut as they resumed their walk through a long, dark corridor. It felt like they were in basement of a large hospital and were about to reach the morgue. She could taste blood as her cheek throbbed, and said a silent prayer that she was wrong about dead bodies being involved in the activities perpetrated in the belly of the building.
They headed down another eerily deserted corridor with no doors. Hannah was confused when they got to the dead-end. It looked as if they were trapped with nowhere to go. She watched Jake pull out a small fob from his pants pocket, and press a red button. The wall in front of them began to slide open to disclose a frightening room with three burly security guards wearing black leather pants, and tight black tee shirts that clung to their massive muscles. All wore shoulder holsters securing their handguns. She caught more than a few knives sheathed in cases attached to wide leather belts.
She forced herself to look around the room, praying that even if her protectors couldn't talk to her, they were at least still watching. She wanted them to have an inside track on what defenses they would be up against when they raided the building.
The walls of the small room were filled with TV monitors showing varying vantage points of the perimeter and interior of the building. Guards had their eyes peeled watching for intruders, and Hannah's heart hurt as she realized just how hard it was going to be for Dylan to rescue her. The second Lukus and his team pulled up out front, the guards would go on offense, and it could take forever for the men to get deep enough in the building to find her.
Hannah's panic turned to defeat. She'd unknowingly agreed to a suicide mission. Even if Jake didn't kill her tonight, she was pretty sure she'd be praying for death before long. She couldn't go through another torture session like the ones she'd suffered at the hands of first her father, and then again a few days ago with Jake.
Then she remembered Connor. Sweet, innocent Connor, who deserved a good life free of violence. She was all he had left in the world.
I have to be strong for him.
She tried to push down her fear, bolstering herself to get through whatever hell Jake had planned for her that night so she could get home to Connor, and it was working—right up until they went through the next door and stepped into a small room, only six feet by six feet. There was a modern-looking low leather couch just inside the door facing a wall of dark red drapes.
Jake pulled her forward, letting the heavy door thud closed behind them, trapping them in pitch darkness. Within seconds, the sound of the drapes being opened by an automatic pulley filled the small space, exposing a scene that had her knees buckling from under her. Jake did nothing to cushion her fall, letting her crash her knees hard into the plush carpet. Unfortunately for her, the wall of windows went from the floor to the ceiling, ensuring she could still see the horror in front of her.
Five naked women were trussed up in the middle of an octagon-shaped room no bigger than twenty-by-twenty. That she knew two of the five broke her heart.
Mia and Lucy looked terrified in the center of the small room, each with women on their other side. All five were stretched high by chains attached to cuffs at their wrists. The chains were pulled tight so that each crying woman had to extend to balance on her tippy toes, wiggling uncomfortably as they knew they were being scrutinized by God-only-knew who from the other side of what looked like two-way mirrors surrounding them. From Hannah's vantage point, it looked as if the room went on to infinity as the images of their naked bodies bounced off the many mirrors.
The only other person visible was Mohammed, who stood slightly behind the women, riding crop in hand. When a woman's whimpers would die down slightly, he used the crop to stripe a breast or ass cheek, eliciting a scream or cry from the woman at the end of the punishment device. It was as if his sole job was to ensure the unwilling captives remained in pain.
"Make him stop!" Hannah screamed, as Mohammed's crop connected with the front of Mia's thighs, leaving a bright red welt in its wake. Mia's scream tore at Hannah's heart.
Jake's voice was almost jovial. "Sorry, kiddo. We're just getting started." He looked down at his smartphone, typing a message to someone. Mohammed took his own phone out of his pocket to read a message and, when he looked up towards his boss, his eyes gleamed with a sadistic glee.
The bastard is having fun.
Mohammed's accented voice boomed through a speaker near the door.
"All guests have now arrived. Strictly Disciplined would like to thank all who have come from afar to partake in tonight's auction. As a gift of appreciation to you, we've added two additional lots to the docket tonight. Two Asian-American sisters in desperate need of breaking. While we don't have a portfolio write-up for them, as they were last minute additions, I can tell you that they are both confirmed to be disease free, anal virgins, and without any other living relatives."
Hannah's brain raced to internalize his words. Why would that last comment be important? The memory of Jake's stray comment earlier at the hole party flooded back to her. He'd described tonight's party as the kind where 'you never go home afterwards.'
She crawled forward, pounding on the window between them, but the glass was thick. The sound didn't even seem to register inside the small room.
"It's bullet-proof glass, Hannah. You're wasting your time. You can't break it, and they can't hear you," Jake said.
She watched in horror as Mohammed pushed a button on the remote control in his hand and a long, narrow hole opened in the floor just behind the women. A long bar with a six inch rounded banister rose from the floor, stopping at waist level just behind the women.
In unison, the rig in the ceiling securing the women's hands began moving back on automatic pulleys, forcing the women to fall backwards. Their bodies were being manipulated like puppets, made to bend back to expose their naked bodies for inspection.
Mohammed's words rang in the air. "We'll start with a demonstration of their pain tolerance and breast sensitivity." He started with the redhead next to Lucy, bringing the damn riding crop down across the underside of her small breasts. "As you can see, Penny is exceptionally responsive to pain." Her blood-curdling scream went on for so long that Hannah threw her hands over her ears to block it out.
Jake ripped her hands from her ears, pinning her arms painfully behind her back and forcing her to listen to every tragic moment. The torturer's next swipe had the end of the crop flicking against Penny's nipple before he moved to repeat his demonstration on Lucy.
When he moved on to Mia, Hannah could see her best friend trying to rally enough anger to deal with what was happening to her against her will, but when the leather tip of the crop slapped Mia's nipples over and over, her bravery crumbled and she screamed a long, forlorn cry of pain.
When the last of the five women had been cropped, Hannah let out a sigh, hoping the worst was over.
It wasn't.
Jake's demo
nic employee took his time, running his long fingers almost sensually down each woman's flat stomach to stroke their now on-display pussy until the captive would moan, a reluctant physical response to his manipulation of their clit. He roughly stroked each pussy as if to prove to prospective buyers that, despite their debasement, the women could be made to become sexually excited.
One by one, Mohammed brought each woman to near orgasm, only to stop short of delivering any satisfaction. Instead, he moved his juice-covered fingers to each woman's mouth, humiliating each of them by making them suck their own sexual excitement from his digits before he moved down the line.
When he had finished with his last victim, his remote control came back out, forcing the women's bodies into new, embarrassing contortions meant to humiliate and scare them.
It was working.
The next long bar came up slightly in front of the line of strung-up women. Before it was fully locked in place, their arms were pulled forward, bringing them off the supporting rail at their backs and thrusting them forward until their asses were sticking out, courtesy of the bar they were now bent over. The first bar returned to the floor, closing the long gap.
Hannah watched as Mohammed pulled a bag of what looked like clothespins out of his jacket pocket and began roughly clamping the ten nipples protruding from the breasts now hanging down towards the floor, pulled by gravity.
Mohammed started talking as if he were a used car dealer, hawking his wares to the buyers cloaked in anonymity behind two-way mirrors. He shared tidbits on each woman's medical history, pain tolerance, and personal attributes as if they were livestock. Hannah's heart broke at the fear in Mia's frantic eyes as the psycho in the room with her shoved his fingers into her pussy, pulling them out to show the prospective buyers the glistening juice her body was producing. He nicknamed her 'a closet submissive in need of training and discipline'.
Lucy, on the other hand, was still fighting her restraints like a madwoman. In a way, Hannah was proud of her for fighting, but it was clear that Lucy's spirit was going to work against her with the present crowd. Mohammed's phone hummed with an incoming message and he grinned an evil smile.
"Bidder number three would like to see a demonstration, to see how long it may take to get this little filly to settle down. I'd be happy to accommodate your request."
Mohammed moved to a small table at the edge of the room that held the tools of his torture trade. He picked up a heavy wooden paddle with three holes drilled down the middle and wasted no time in bringing it down with full force against Lucy's ass. The blood-curdling scream torn from her chilled Hannah's blood. She returned her hands to her ears to try to block out the sound of Lucy's agony, but it was too loud.
When Hannah shut her eyes, Jake reached down to squeeze the back of her neck, hard.
"Be a good girl. Open your eyes and put your hands at your sides. You'll watch every minute, and remember that the only thing keeping you on this side of the glass is my generosity. Like those women, you have no family to miss you. I could make you disappear in a heartbeat, never to be seen again. So if you want to see Connor again, I suggest you get with the program, Hannah. You've already been bought. You're mine now. I own you, just like tonight's buyers will own those five women on the other side of the glass in a few minutes."
His words began to sink in. The man was insane.
Things went from bad to worse when a second man joined Mohammed, entering through the narrow door into the space. He was tall, with a broad chest and shoulders. He had a fierce scowl on his face. The scar running from his right temple to his lip made him the most menacing man Hannah had ever seen.
Mohammed explained. "One of the buyers has requested a personal inspection of the merchandise prior to bidding, and we've granted his request."
Scar-man pulled a latex glove from his pocket, pulling it onto his right hand and stepping up behind Lucy. It was hard for Hannah to see what he was doing from this angle, but based on the squeal wrenched from Lucy, Hannah suspected he was testing her anal cavity. Her screech increased when his arm began going back and forth, apparently finger fucking her.
Lucy flailed against her restraints as much as the small amount of slack would allow. When she started calling scar-man every foul name she could think of, Mohammed pushed him away from Lucy so he could bring the wooden paddle down across both cheeks of her ass. The assailant delivered ten swats in rapid fire. Hannah watched as Lucy's defiance was beaten out of her, literally. By the time the tenth strong stroke rained on her sore ass, she was sobbing; begging for the pain to stop.
Without delay, the bidder moved to repeat his examination, this time on Mia. The terror in Mia's eyes slowly dimmed as latex fingers slid rapidly in and out of her wet pussy. The sound of his fingers exploring Mia's copious wetness had embarrassment replacing fear in her friend's eyes. The knowledge that Mia was getting turned on shocked Hannah to the core, but then again, her own body had betrayed her when Jake was raping her, too.
Another bidder had entered the small space to test the wares. He was focusing on the fair-skinned redhead, excited by how easily her skin marked, commenting how his favorite slaves were those who showed the marks of their discipline the longest.
Hannah fought the urge to throw up as Jake yanked her closer to his seated location on the couch. Only now did she notice he had his cock out of his pants and was nursing it with gentle strokes meant to prepare his tool for his next rape. As he pulled her mouth to his dick, holding her against his crotch with strong hands, Hannah thought of Dylan and what a terrible judge of character she had been yet again. She could have sworn she'd be able to trust him to save her, yet here she was, about to be raped again by a sadistic bastard.
If I get out of this alive, I'm never trusting another man as long as I live.
She tried to block out the sounds of her friends' piercing screams as the bidders continued to use their bodies for their own pleasure, all in the guise of taking them for a 'test drive'. Jake rode Hannah's throat hard, chasing his own orgasm as he periodically blocked her breathing.
It went on for so long she felt faint, the horrific noises surrounding her sounding as if they were in a tunnel. She barely registered the muffled slamming of doors in the distance, and didn't know what to make of the sudden tensing of Jake's whole body. She pushed with all her strength, but Jake sat frozen, holding her against him, his cock thrust into her throat, completely blocking off her air.
Her eyesight had faded by the time Jake jumped to his feet, thrusting her away from him with such velocity she fell back, slamming her head against the two-way mirror. Feeling nauseous, she slumped to the ground, curling into a small ball and tucking her forehead against her knees in a reflexive protection move. Hannah gasped, trying to fill her burning lungs with air. Her mind raced, trying to understand what was happening, but the crack to her head had been hard. Darkness was claiming her fast.
She was just about to lose consciousness when she heard his voice. Dylan was screaming her name in the distance. She fought to call out to him, but her voice wouldn't cooperate. The last picture she saw before the blackness claimed her was Jake Davenport drawing his gun.
Chapter Twelve
Dylan
Dylan insisted on staying near the front of the contingent of law enforcement agencies rushing the warehouse, intent upon finding Hannah. The authorities may have been slow to react, but once Lukus had shared the evidence of women being held hostage inside, the district attorney agreed to issue a search warrant.
The forty-five minutes they'd been forced to wait for the green light to enter the warehouse had been the longest of his life. Guilt threatened to consume him for allowing Hannah to be put into danger with their fucked-up plan.
As they'd prepared to raid the building, the four men from Titan Securities had been split up, each being assigned partners from the local law enforcement teams. Dylan was shocked that the police had even let civilians join in the search at all, but Lukus had been extremely persuasive. H
e convinced the police that his team had insider information on the security of the building; and, since time was of the essence, they'd been allowed to go in hot with the police. Of course, they'd been their Kevlar vests and were lectured ad nauseam about their role as civilians, first.
As Dylan and the couple of SWAT officers he was paired with moved deeper into the building, he scanned each location quickly, pressing forward, determined to find the only person he cared about at that moment. Flashbacks to his time in the military crashed in, as if he were sweeping enemy shacks in Afghanistan again.
They left the uniformed cops to handle securing the recording studio and call center filled with surprised naked employees tied to their desks. The men in the lead knew they were running out of time to get to the victims being held against their will.
When they got to the lower level, Hannah's last known location, Dylan wanted to call out her name, but resisted the impulse to do so. He knew they needed the element of surprise. Once they had neutralized Davenport's security team in the Strictly Business security office, the men stopped to watch the wall of monitors, hoping to catch a glimpse of enemy number one.
"There. This has to be where he's hiding." Lukus was pointing at a monitor showing five naked women strung up and on display. Each of them had lines of welts across their bodies as if they'd been beaten. Dylan cringed as he recognized Hannah's best friend Mia among them, and then felt like a total ass for feeling relief that Hannah wasn't on display alongside her friend.
Fear tightened in Dylan's chest as they waited long minutes for the heavy security doors to be blown open to allow their entry to the final part of the building.
As soon as they got past that last secure door, Dylan knew they were in trouble. Strobe lights flashed a warning to all inside. The officers spread out, searching the space quickly, opening door after door, only to find small observation rooms empty. The perverted occupants hadn't been gone for long. Half-full tumblers of amber alcohol and lit cigars had been left behind in their rush to escape.