NEARLY Trilogy

by Ashley, Devon

  I saw the way his face changed. That moment of pain he expressed before wiping it away.

  And unfortunately, Friggs saw it too, so he knew he struck gold.

  I didn’t know who the man was, but he was older. Sixties maybe, with thinning silver hair and overweight. His clothes were dirty and wrinkled, and he was beaten like Zander had been. Which made me wonder what they had done to him to get him to tell on Zander. His face was slack and listless, like he’d been drugged recently too. He looked hung over and ready to collapse.

  The man behind him gave him a hard push. He fell to the ground with a grunt, not getting back up afterwards.

  Out of nowhere, my mouth exclaimed, “God, you’re a dick.”

  Friggs’ gaze transferred to me. There was an eerie calmness to his face with an even creepier smile beginning to form. “Don’t you worry, Princess. You and I will get to our unfinished business soon enough.”

  I could feel the hate seething deep inside my chest, could feel all the muscles down below tightening in response.

  “She’s right,” Zander mumbled, looking toward the man flat on the ground. He spit blood to the side. “You are a dick.”

  “Maybe so,” Friggs replied nonchalantly. “But by the end of this I’ll be an ever richer dick. And I’ll be the one still alive. So…” He stood to his feet, arms open, acting as if having the three of us in the same cell was an impressive feat or something.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to reacquaint yourselves.” Nudging his foot against the collapsed man, he added, “Maybe he can persuade you it’s in your best interest to give me what I want.”

  Surprisingly, all three of them actually did leave, closing the cell door and walking off. But with all the echoes bouncing around, it was impossible to decipher if two or three pairs of feet were leaving.

  Zander didn’t hesitate to move closer to the man, grunting and groaning with every move. I shuffled my way over, helping to roll him onto his back. I felt the pulse in his neck. I wasn’t an expert, but it seemed slow and weak. At least compared to the vein pulsating in my own neck.

  “Donatello?” he asked hoarsely, giving the man a shake. He remained unconscious.

  “Donatello? The man who raised you? You said he was dead.”

  Zander didn’t answer, too busy lightly slapping the man’s face, trying to wake him up.

  “You lied to me,” I whispered, completely baffled. I’d never caught him in a lie before. Now I was questioning everything we’d ever said to one another.

  “I was trying to protect him,” he replied. His voice was still weak, but the soft tone of his voice made it easier to understand him. “I told everyone he was dead so they’d never go looking into it. Friggs must’ve learned about him from the contact I sent in. That man knew nothing about our whereabouts, but he knew my past. Friggs dug deep to find Donatello.”

  I sat there watching him as he awkwardly held the old man’s head. “Come here,” I said quietly, reaching for his hands. “Give me your binds.”

  He laid Donatello’s head gently on the ground, then held out the underside of his wrists. I began working on the knots. “No point in keeping these if they’re dumb enough to give us something we can undo.”

  “It’ll probably cost a beating, but at this point, what would it matter?”

  “Somehow I doubt it’s a beating he has planned for me.”

  In fact, I’d rather not think about what twisted plan Friggs had for me, but the silence that lingered between us made it hard to focus on anything else. After a few minutes, I finally unraveled the last of his knots. He rubbed his wrists down before working on mine.

  “You didn’t happen to see Thea, did you?”

  “They kept me distracted, but no, I haven’t seen any captives. I didn’t even know Donatello was here until just now.”

  I’d be lying if I said that didn’t weaken my resolve some. Where was she? Please tell me she was here and I hadn’t gotten myself into this situation for nothing.

  He was quicker with my knots – free hands and all. Now that they were free, they hurt like a mother, all red and itchy, with striations burned across my skin. We did our best to position the old man’s head as best we could, but it wasn’t like it would last. Friggs was going to come back and continue what he started earlier.

  “Do you know where we are? Were you conscious for the ride over?” Were we outside Leavenworth like we thought?

  He shook his head. Growing frustrated with his lack of knowledge over everything, I bit, “Do you know anything?”

  “I know it’s daytime out, so we’re still fucked for a while.”

  “Wonderful.” I scooted backwards until I hit the wall, throwing my head against it. “Fucking wonderful.”

  Zander followed my lead and moved to rest against the wall, too.

  “So do you have a plan?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Stall. For as long as I can.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. We sat in comfortable silence, both of us smart enough to realize we’d need every ounce of strength we had to spare. My eyes didn’t open again until footsteps grew louder as they advanced the hallway. We looked to each other right before they reached our cell, both us looking as tired and run down as we felt.

  Oh, shit, was my first instinct, because Friggs didn’t come back with just two men. He came back with four. And considering our third party was unconscious on the floor, that meant the men were just for us.

  “Feeling chatty yet?” Friggs asked pompously, all four men taking up flanks behind him.

  Zander just stared.

  “Remove her,” he ordered. My heart sped up instantaneously. I jumped to my feet, ready to fight. So did Zander, who was in front of me before they were. Outnumbered and as beaten up as he was, the struggle didn’t last long. I got in a few punches and kicks myself, but I completely froze when something stabbed my thigh. I yipped and slapped at the guy’s hand. He backed off to help push Zander down to the ground and I soon realized why. I was no longer a threat. My body numbed so fast it was scary. It began where he stabbed me, spreading outward in rushing waves. Soon I couldn’t feel my leg. The numbing sensation traveled up my spine and down my other leg. I fell on my ass, completely frozen with fear as it continued spreading.

  “What the hell did you do?” I screamed in panic.

  “Just a little something to slow you down. Won’t last too long.”

  As the sensation made its way over my chest, my lungs found it hard to breathe. My throat found it hard to swallow. I think Zander got shot up with the same thing, because they were slowly coming off of him one by one. Stuck on his chest, I watched him struggle to push up with his arms, but nothing ever happened. His body eventually collapsed, which was where I was at. It was like I had a body suit of heavy weights forced over my skin. I could slightly feel, could even feel the shake in my limbs as I tried to overcome it, but I just couldn’t get enough movement going to do anything. And I feared that even if I could, my lungs wouldn’t be able to supply enough oxygen to keep up.

  Friggs bent down to balance in a squat, but Zander’s head was facing the other direction. “Just had to do this the hard way, didn’t you?”

  It was unlikely Zander would’ve responded, but given how hard it was for me to talk right now, I knew it kept him quiet anyways. And so did Friggs, so he was clearly just determined to be an ass.

  As if he could sense I was thinking of him, Friggs’ head rotated my direction. I was focusing everything I had to get decent breaths. “One of you take her.”

  The guy nearest me complied, and I was helpless to do anything as he lifted me up and tossed me over his shoulder. He was the fittest of the four, and perhaps the youngest, still late in his twenties. The others seemed similar to Friggs’ and Zander’s ages. But those three hadn’t taken care of themselves as well.

  The stupid chemise slipped down my back some, so my half-covered ass was out for all the world to see. He turned and made his way down the hall. My blanke
t of hair kept me from seeing anything, and the cell remained quiet as we slipped out of sight.

  He carried me down several halls, then up an effing elevator. I had no idea how many floors this house had, but I counted three dings as we made our way upward. After several more turns through hallways, he carried me past a door. Again, I still couldn’t see, but soon I was tossed onto a king-sized bed. My body was still too heavy to move, and the man laughed at me for trying. He sat down beside me and made a show of eyeing my body, getting off on how I couldn’t do anything as his fingertips lightly trailed wherever they wanted to go.

  I forced myself not to react and just stared hard at the ceiling. He moved on to positioning my body so that my arms and legs were down, then dragged me up so my head rested on a pillow in the middle of the bed. Mockingly, he squeezed my left breast and asked, “Comfy?”

  I tightened my jaw and tried to shrug him off. My shoulder twitched, but that was all. He laughed again, then pulled my strap down far enough to expose my breast so he could spend the next several seconds sucking on me. My body wiggled slightly, trying to come alive, but I couldn’t even activate my voice to tell him to fuck off. Worse, every breath I took only lifted myself farther into his mouth.

  It was bad enough I could see what he was doing, but thank God I could hardly feel it.

  The jackass gave me a final kiss on the tip before covering me back up. He hovered his head over mine with a burning gaze. He was average looking, but there was a pure creepiness to the hunger behind his eyes. “Here’s hoping he’ll share once he’s done with you.” He winked his left eye before pulling away. Only once he’d left did I realize my heart was working harder, slightly panicked over what could’ve happened right then. I was completely helpless and unable to act.

  What the hell did he give me?

  I tried to get my body rocking, tried to get my voice going – though for what purpose I didn’t know. It wasn’t like anyone here was going to come to my rescue. My real rescue hadn’t even been notified yet, and for all I knew, Friggs found the tracker while I was unconscious. And it wasn’t like I could ask him about it. I’d just have to move forward on the hope that my tracker was still in play.

  I was beyond frustrated with my rocking failures when I heard a door close in another room. Friggs entered shortly after, swinging the bedroom door shut behind him. More than ever I tried to move, but I barely budged two inches.

  “Don’t bother,” he said casually as he crossed the room, unbuttoning his linen shirt as he went. “With your body weight, the amount shot into your system will have you numb for at least fifteen more minutes.” He tossed his shirt onto the chair in the corner. His pants went with it, leaving him in nothing but a black pair of snugly fitted boxer briefs. Then he dug through a drawer in the bedside table between us.

  I tried to ask where Thea was, but all I could get out was a wha- sound over and over again. My heart felt like it sank heavier within my chest when he dumped various straps beside me on the bed. He grabbed a pair of cuffs and connected my wrist to something on the headboard that I couldn’t see. Then he walked around and did the same thing to my other wrist. And my fucking body couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  “Thanks to you and Zander I don’t have my normal supplies. Which were all custom made, by the way.” He held up a ratchet strap and waved it about. “So I’ve had to get creative.” He leaned over me to secure one end of the strap to the bed. “You know, I used to have this outstanding collection of bars and spreaders and suspension equipment. Even this special one that attached metal clamps to your clit.”

  My face matched the disgust I felt perfectly. And now that my mouth was able to move around, I worked hard to slowly form some words. “What? No fucking table this time?”

  He took a moment to eye me, probably calculating how long he had until I really began moving around. “No. I had to special order another. Won’t be ready for another two weeks.”

  “Bummer,” I sassed with tightening eyes.

  He smirked as he leaned over to whisper in my ear. “You were beautiful in it.”

  Anger spread like a wildfire through my veins, making me feel as red as that godawful dress he’d put me in that night.

  He chuckled as he pulled away, getting back to connecting the strap he’d tied to the bed to my thigh, right above the knee. I worked on gathering my strength, desperately trying to keep my other thigh free of the bind, but he won out. I still tried to roll and kick as he yanked on the strap, keeping it taut using the metal ratchet. Eventually, he had both straps so tight that my knees were forced in the air, practically over my head.

  The rest of the straps got dropped back into the drawer before he stripped his underwear off and climbed over the foot of the bed, settling down before me on his knees, already stroking his hardened length.

  In a panic, I blurted, “Where’s Zander?” If anything, to stall like Zander had suggested.

  “Why? Did you want him to watch? I’m not completely opposed to that idea.”

  Like I suspected, my underwear was crotchless, and he had two fingers inside me before I could give a reply. I squirmed the second he touched me. I was finally moving but everything was tied in a way that I barely had an inch of slack.

  I closed my eyes and soured my expression. God, I hated having him in me, and he hadn’t even stuck me with his worst yet. I could feel tears stinging the back of my eyes, but I refused to let them make their way around. No way in hell I was going to cry for this dick. No. Way.

  All too soon he was done. I was barely wet, but it disgusted me that he got anything. His lips were suddenly on my skin above my underwear, his tongue slowly tracing its way north. I could feel him climbing over me, bringing his dick incredibly close to where I didn’t want it to go.

  “Just relax and enjoy yourself, because this is going to be the best night of your life.”

  I practically snorted all over him. It was just the kind of comment I needed to stoke the fire. Opening my eyes, I angled my head forward to face him. Boldly, I said, “No it won’t. I don’t care how big your dick is or how well you think you use it. You’ll never be the best I’ve ever had because I don’t love you. Fuck, I don’t even like you.”

  He was slow to position himself even higher over me, bringing his head above mine, his eyes locking hard onto mine. He snatched my hair, yanking my neck back. It hurt like a motherfucker but I denied him the pleasure of vocalizing it. Those eyes getting closer and closer, I could see the rage building behind them. “I don’t care if you goddamn hate me, Princess, so long as your legs stay spread.” He eyed my thighs caught up in the straps with admiration. “Kind of hard not to, huh?”

  “I don’t hate you either,” I stalled. My neck was so far extended my words were raspy, but his confusion must’ve been the reason he loosened the slack just enough. My body still arcing into him, our sexes pressing together, I blandly told him, “You see, love and hate require for me to have some type of actual emotional reaction. And you’re not worth it. You are nothing to me.” With a dramatic whisper, I tilted my chin even higher, repeating, “Nothing.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to rectify that, won’t we?”

  After that comment, I expected him to shove himself inside me, to be rough and do his damnest to hurt me. Hell, maybe that was what I was pushing for, because I’d much rather feel pain than anything else right now. But instead, he reached for something above my head, pulling back a long strip of satin. He forced it between my lips and cinched it tightly behind my head. I grunted and whined, trying to curse, but none of my sounds made any sense.

  “Oh, you’re not going to ruin this for me. I’ve waited patiently for the chance to put you in your place. So now it’s your turn to be patient. Because we’ve got plenty of time to kill while they work your boyfriend.”

  I tried to scream that he wasn’t my boyfriend, buy my words were lost. He ignored me anyway, reaching for the ties that kept the two sides of the chemise from splitting across my chest.
He pulled on it slowly, and I could feel the lace across my breasts slacken and lose their form. He brought his lips to my sensitive skin, and cruelly took his time letting his mouth explore every centimeter of curve I had to offer. His fingers reentered while he did it, matching his slow assault push for pinch. My jaw tensed harder and harder.

  “It sure seems like you’re feeling something right now,” he taunted. “Maybe you do feel some hatred for me.” He wasn’t wrong. I totally fucking hated him, but I refused to let him know it by mumbling an answer this time, refused to give him something more to get off on.

  I could feel myself getting wet for him, and this time, I had to choke back the tears. I stared at the ceiling, trying to make myself feel as lifeless as possible. I tried to imagine I was elsewhere. I even tried to make myself believe it was Nick I was with, but it scared the hell out of me to risk poisoning every wonderful sexual memory I had of him.

  When he finally forced his way inside me, he propped himself up on his elbows and flattened his stomach over me, using his thumbs to force my eyes open every time I tried to check out. He repeatedly told me that he owned me now, and that I was going to feel everything he wanted me to feel. Over and over and over again. Until I was too ragged to bother with anymore.

  It took too long for the end to come, and by that time I was so emotionally whipped I wanted to curl up and die. He rolled off and redressed himself without a care in the world, while mine was severely crumbling apart. He gave me some slack on my legs, but just a few inches. Truthfully, it made my legs hurt even worse, which was probably why he did it. Then he left the suite without saying a word. Which was the worst, because now I didn’t know when or if he’d come back. Was he done for the night or planning to force himself on me again? I hated not knowing what to expect.

  I wanted to close my eyes and erase the world, but my mind found it hard to do anything while I lay stuck in a vulnerable position in a house full of rapists. When the doors reopened, I felt another piece of myself begin to dissolve and die.