by Sam Mariano
“Hell yeah, it’s a fucking problem,” Ethan said, making a face. “Man, I can’t get hard with you and Chuck watching. That’s some voyeuristic bullshit right there.”
Lane glanced over at Chuck, but Chuck was as dumb as a bag of socks and didn’t smell anything fishy.
Ethan was starting to get really fucking nervous. It was all he could do to keep from checking to see if Lane had his pistol tucked into his pants. That would be even more suspicious.
He needed to stay cool. He needed to stay fucking cool. Yeah, he wanted to go home—but not in a body bag. Images of his beautiful raven-haired wife, their daughter and two sons flashed before his eyes.
Peering at the girl, he also knew intellectually that someone would “break her in.” Chuck was salivating at the chance. Lane… Ethan suspected Lane was a sadist, so she definitely wouldn’t want Lane to touch her.
Not that she wanted any of them to touch her.
Tito came strolling in from the back room where the rest of the girls were kept. “I could get used to having all these girls around.” Then, noticing the tension in the room, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
Lane spoke first. “Jack here seems to be prudish about where he fucks.” Glancing at Jack, he smiled thinly and said, “You were going to fuck her in the back room, weren’t you? The empty one?”
“Of course,” Ethan said, and instantly flinched, hearing the defensiveness in his own tone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was fucking everything up. Tito caught his eye, and he was staring daggers—since Tito vouched for him, if they thought something was up with Jack/Ethan, they would blame Tito.
The mental body count was getting a little nerve-racking.
He attempted to manufacture an excuse they could believe.
“I just… honestly, you can bust my balls all you want, but I don’t think I can get it up with you guys watching. I’m not into that shit.”
“Let’s see,” Lane replied, walking over to the girl and removing her blindfold. When it looked like she might protest again, he grabbed her roughly by the jaw, jerking her gaze to his. “If you open your fucking mouth again, I’m going to give you something decidedly less pleasant than a gag to occupy it, are we clear?”
The girl’s gray eyes widened in terror and she nodded jerkily.
Hit with recognition, Ethan felt like someone socked him in the stomach. The girl they wanted him to rape was the same 18-year-old missing person he had been emailed about hours earlier.
“No one’s had a turn with her yet?”
Lane shook his head. “All yours, Jackie-boy.”
Although she still appeared to be frightened, the girl raised her gaze to meet his and briefly appraised him. He knew what she was seeing—tall, lean, pitch black hair, ice blue eyes, dark stubble along his strong jaw since he hadn’t had a chance to shave in a couple of days. Ethan knew he was attractive, especially when the only other guys in the room were Tito, Lane and Chuck.
But attractive didn’t make rape go down any easier.
Just thinking about it made him sick to his stomach. There was no way in hell he’d be able to perform. Sure, he’d be mocked mercilessly, but at least he would have a valid excuse. Then he’d take the girl into a private room where he wouldn’t be so “shy” and he’d pretend to have sex with her. It would get the guys off his back and hopefully save her from being raped by one of them.
It was the best plan he could come up with under the circumstances.
They needed to transport the fucking girls so he could get the one he came for and get the fuck out of their shitty-ass thug life.
Never, ever again. He was never going undercover so deep ever, ever again. Once he got himself out of there alive, it would be cheating spouses, fraudulent injury claims, and finding girls who hadn’t been abducted by crime rings. Nothing more strenuous than that.
Ethan wished he could let her in on his plan without signaling everyone else, but he couldn’t, so as he shook his head and unzipped his jeans, the horror in her eyes grew. The look of accusation she leveled at him went straight to his gut, but that was good—made it even more unlikely he would be able to rise to the occasion.
As expected, he was not aroused. When he moved to stand behind the girl and lifted up the tiny skirt they had put on her (nothing underneath) he tried not to look right at her round, firm ass as moved his hand over it, giving it a light smack that made the girl jump.
He had to make it seem like he was really trying.
“Is that one Antonio’s daughter?” Tito suddenly asked.
Lane merely nodded, that thin smile spreading across his face again.
“Wouldn’t we make more money off this bitch if we just ransomed her to her daddy?” Tito pointed out, probably trying to think of a way to save Ethan.
“Fuck Antonio. We’ll get our money—out of the bitch’s pussy,” Lane stated.
If they were talking about the Antonio he thought they were talking about, he suddenly wanted to fuck the girl even less. Even if he made it out of the little leagues unscathed, her father would probably track him down and burn his house to the ground with Ethan and his whole family still inside.
A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. What the fuck had he gotten himself into? Amanda had been telling him ever since Alison was born that he needed to stop taking dangerous cases, that one day he would get himself into a mess he couldn’t get out of.
Of all the things for her to be right about.
“He has a point,” Ethan chimed in. “Antonio’s her dad? Antonio Castellanos? You would make a lot more if you ransomed her. I also… don’t want to be castrated when he finds out I raped his daughter.”
“They’re not close,” Lane said, as if that made all the difference. “She was illegitimate, a fling—not a daughter he actually raised. Still, he’ll be insulted when he finds out she’s making Delmonico money on her back.”
Ethan knew Delmonico didn’t like Castellanos, but that seemed like a truly terrible idea—especially for him.
That time, the girl spoke up. “He’ll pay a ransom. We aren’t that close but he’ll pay a ransom as long as I’m unharmed.”
“What did I say about speaking?” Lane snapped.
Ethan couldn’t see her face since he was behind her, so he had to look to Lane to see if he seemed satisfied. He did, so she must have submitted.
“Get on with it,” Lane said, throwing his arms into the air. “I don’t have all day to sit around waiting for you to get hard.”
“It’s not happening,” Ethan said, making a show of trying again to get himself going. “I’m telling you, I can’t perform with an audience.”
“Please,” the girl said, her face tilted up toward Lane.
The least sympathetic person in the room, Lane’s eyes flashed to the girl’s face, cool fury gracing his features. “What did I say about that mouth of yours?” Then, taking a step toward the girl, he took her jaw roughly in his hand. “I think I have a solution to your little problem, Jackie. And it solves my obedience problem as well. Girl, turn and face Jack.”
Well, that made him nervous. The girl unsteadily turned around, cautiously glancing up at him through the curtain of coppery brown hair that fell in her face.
“It’ll be your job to get Jackie here up to the occasion. I warned you about that mouth, but you can’t seem to keep it shut, so we might as well put it to good use.”
Oh God, he couldn’t mean… Ethan shook his head before he could stop himself. “No way, she’ll bite it off.”
“No, she won’t,” Lane said calmly, extracting the gun Ethan had been wondering about from his waistband and pointing it at the girl’s temple. She whimpered, her face crumpling, and Ethan felt like a monster, even though none of it was his fault.
“On your knees,” Lane directed.
The girl dropped to her knees, tears glistening in her eyes.
Ethan struggled to keep it together. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. More aware of how trapped he was than ever before,
he glanced around the room, pondering what kind of chance he had of making it out alive if he grabbed the girl and started shooting. Assuming Lane didn’t shoot him first, since he already had his gun at the ready.
Not good chances.
Even if he did, he’d be marked a traitor and they’d come looking for him. The way he intended to exit, no one would ever know Jack didn’t actually exist.
He couldn’t put his family in potential danger, and he wasn’t ready to die.
Consequently, even though he hated himself, when she leaned in, reluctantly anchoring one hand on his hip, he watched her take his flaccid cock in her soft hand and start rubbing. When the traitorous little bastard sprang to life, he tilted his head back and groaned as she licked her lips and slowly closed her mouth over the length of him.
Just like that, his valid excuse evaporated.
Even trying to think about the onlookers didn’t make him go limp. The girl’s mouth and tongue were on the opposing team, and they were much more persuasive.
“All right,” Lane said sharply. “You don’t want to finish him off.”
The girl pulled back, her pale face wet, red splotches all over each cheek.
That helped a little, but he still had a fucking hard-on.
With one more thin smile, Lane told Ethan to get to it, and even though a piece of his soul died as he did, Ethan had no choice; he helped the girl up and turned her around—he didn’t want to look at her face while he did it—bent her over, and spread her feminine lips with his thumbs, easing the tip of his cock inside before stopping.
“Wait, I need a condom. I don’t have a condom.”
Ever helpful, Chuck pulled one out of his wallet and tossed it at him.
Swallowing back the bile that rose as the girl in front of him began to sob, Ethan withdrew the tip and slid the condom down over his penis.
Why couldn’t it just deflate? He should have tried harder to get into the oral so he could’ve finished in her mouth instead.
“Oh, fuck,” he practically hissed as he gradually pushed himself inside of her unwilling body. Holy fuck, was she tight. Grabbing her by the hips for leverage, he slowly pulled back out and then thrust forward with more force.
The girl cried out in pain, then sobbed even harder.
His cock softened a little at the sound. He rubbed his hand over her ass again, then moved his hand between her legs, wishing she was even the slightest bit wet to ease his passage. Since she wasn’t, he located her clit and stimulated the little bundle of nerves. Her body shuddered and he heard her gasp, so he kept rubbing it, for a split second enjoying the sound of her helpless little moans, then he caught himself, remembering the circumstances and feeling like a sack of shit.
“This isn’t for her,” Lane reminded him. “Don’t spoil the bitch.”
Fucker. But Ethan stopped, not wanting to piss Lane off, repositioning one hand on her ass and the other on her hip.
As soon as he began thrusting inside of her again, her crying picked back up. It was already done at that point, so he allowed himself a few peeks at her to keep up his stimulation, figuring it best for both of them if he powered through it as quickly as possible.
When he came, for a split second he was able to forget everything else, and have one last moment of peace.
Then he pulled out of her and she crumpled to her knees, hugging herself as she crouched in the floor, still crying.
Then he looked down at the condom, and it got a million times worse. There was blood on the condom. Quite a bit of blood. Glancing at the girl, he saw a streak of blood smeared on the inside of her thigh.
He knew he had to have hurt her, but as he reviewed the blood and the moment when she had cried out sharply….
His heart plummeted; his blood froze in his veins.
“Were you a virgin?” he asked without thought, and without containing his horror.
It was barely perceptible, but the tiny nodding movement her head made broke even more of his soul.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself, bringing his hand to his eyes and tiredly passing his hand up over his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Lane. You gave me a fucking virgin?”
“How was I supposed to know?” Lane asked, without remorse. “I didn’t ask. As old as she is, I assumed she wasn’t.”
Looking down at the girl, Ethan so badly wanted to apologize. It wouldn’t fix anything, of course, he had already wronged her in a way he could never right, and that knowledge would eat away at him for the rest of his life.
But he wished there was someone to console her in that moment, even if it was him.
No one would. He couldn’t.
His stomach pitched and for a split second, he thought he was going to be sick.
He managed to keep from vomiting, but the roiling in his stomach was unpleasant and persistent. Guilt, newly blossomed, already began to eat away at him, and he hadn’t even taken the fucking condom off yet.
If they didn’t get out of there soon, he wasn’t sure he would have a life to go back to.
They finally nailed down the details.
In the two days leading up to the big one, Ethan had kept close watch on the gray-eyed girl—and more importantly, any of the guys who looked in her direction.
He still felt like a huge sack of shit, but he had already determined if another guy tried to rape her, he would do whatever he could to stop it. Short of gunfire, because he had mulled it over again and any way he looked at it, that was a bad option. He could feign being territorial over her—or, really, not even feign it. Since he wanted to ensure that she made it to safety at least without being gang raped, he would be territorial over her if it helped her.
Chuck went sniffing around her the previous night, but Ethan leveled a contentious glare in his direction. Chuck held his hands up in mock surrender and walked off smirking.
Since the rape, being around the guys who watched him do it made him ill. Before that, he had been able to stomach them by getting lost in the character he was playing, but actually harming someone… that had prematurely strangled his ability to pretend he was someone else.
Nope, he was Ethan Wilde, married father of three. He had a little girl—just like the girl he raped was someone’s little girl.
It made him absolutely sick.
He didn’t know how he was ever going to look his daughter in the eye again.
Virgin or not it was unforgivable, of course, but knowing that for whatever reason, she had chosen not to have sex with anyone up to that point—and knowing based on her looks it couldn’t be from lack of opportunity—seemed to amplify his sins. How was she going to cope with what happened to her? How would any of them? The other ones he had only been unable to help, but the one with the gray eyes…he damaged her himself, and he would probably be seeing her in his nightmares for the rest of his life.
She would probably be seeing him in hers.
It wasn’t until the day following the rape that he realized saving her would mean ruining himself.
If everything went as planned and they got out, the police would take her statement about what ills she had suffered while in captivity.
He was going to be arrested. For real.
And then, if Antonio was her father and he liked her enough to be protective, he was going to have a very bad time in the system. Hell, he might never make it out, and even if he did, Amanda would be gone, the kids would have grown up without him.
The full gravity of the situation was suddenly hitting him, and it was not a pretty picture. He couldn’t look at the girl without thinking about how saving her would ruin his life. For a split second, he reconsidered, but then his soul felt even blacker, and of course he couldn’t actually leave her in hell to save his own ass.
Maybe he could talk to her before the police did, beg her not to—
No, he couldn’t do that either. He wanted to, but he had done enough damage, and asking her to protect her attacker was something he couldn’t bring himself to do.
None of the best case scenarios seemed like much to look forward to.
---
Max’s place was technically a pizza parlor, but he ran an illicit prostitution ring out of the back rooms. Up until that point, he’d used local women who “worked” there, but the women he had were getting old and tired, and he needed some younger girls to lure in the clientele.
The girls in question were loaded into a pewter colored Astro van with tinted windows and shuttled to Max’s place. Three of the girls were silent the whole time, per Lane’s barked orders—the one he was originally there to extract sobbing quietly, afraid of what was going to happen to her next. The one with the gray eyes didn’t cry, she merely stared straight ahead until she finally asked, “Where are you taking us?”
Nobody answered her, and when Ethan glanced at her she promptly put her head down.
They pulled up behind the back door to unload the girls. Ethan and Chuck were charged with taking the girls inside, while Tito stood guard outside the back door. Since there were four girls and two guys, Ethan wanted to make sure he had the two girls he needed to extract close by, so he took each girl by the wrist, leaving Chuck with the other two. The gray-eyed girl flinched when he grabbed her, while the other merely glanced at him, unfazed.
Now that it was getting down to go-time, he would typically feel sharper, more focused, but because of everything that happened, he was distracted, off his game, and that made him nervous. He wasn’t doing anyone any favors if he fucked up in the final lap.
After escorting the girls into the back room, Ethan volunteered to stay and keep an eye on them while Chuck went to verify that the girls were in their room.
It wasn’t much of a room. A tiny area with block walls, no window, a unit of beat up metal lockers in the back corner, an end table with a tall lamp beside it, and three cots squeezed in there corner to corner. Honestly he didn’t even know how they managed to cram it all in there. He also didn’t understand why three cots for four girls. The ground was cold cement, so it wasn’t exactly a good place for the girls to sleep.