by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
Her fingernails stabbed her palms. She was such a selfish, vile bitch.
Van shoved her away, turned her over the counter, and pressed her face against the laminate. “And the way he was looking at you really pisses me the fuck off.”
When his hand tunneled between her thighs, her heart sputtered. “No.” She jerked beneath the prison of his immovable body. “No, Van. I have a job to do. I need to be in the right frame of mind.”
The intrusion of his fingers speared between her labia, pinching dry flesh. “What frame of mind is that?” His tone, as cold and penetrating as his touch, froze her to her bones.
“I am a Mistress, not your sex slave.” She tried to match his iciness, but it came out desperate and high-pitched.
He yanked her from the counter and slammed his knuckles into her face. She managed to stay on her feet as jolts of pain fired through her skull. A warm trickle wet her lashes and smudged her vision. The ache in her heart was worse, but she would not give him the perception he’d hurt her beyond the cut of his fist. She kept her hands to her sides and met his biting silver gaze head-on.
Angry red splotches stained his neck and cheek, and she imagined his blood simmering beneath the skin. He clutched the counter’s edge on either side of her hips, his face level with hers. “When I dispose of your body, no one will ever find it.” His voice dropped to a chilling rasp. “You know why?”
Her heart sped up, increasing the throb above her eye. She held her muscles as motionless as her glare.
“Because no one will care enough to search for it.” He angled over the plates and hocked a foaming bubble of spit on one of the sandwiches. “Clean up your face.” His smirk flared the bruise around her heart. “You look more like a slave than your little cunt boy.” He grabbed an unsoiled sandwich, sat at the table, and dug into the roast beef.
What they were, what they’d become together, wasn’t sane or healthy. It was in his blood to spew nasty things in a fit of rage, including threats on her life, and she’d conditioned herself over the years to bury it. His temper would eventually ebb, and the hurt from his words would, too. Because she didn’t love him, he didn’t have the power to leave a permanent scar on her heart. But that reminder didn’t help the rawness of the moment as she moved to the sink and turned the tap to warm.
Ducking her head, the spray showered her face, renewing the pain around her eye. The water ran red, but no amount of cleaning would remove the evidence that she was just as much a prisoner as the ones in chains. And somehow, she would have to stand before the boy with a black eye as his Mistress.
Van finished his meal and reclined in the chair, studying her. No hint of civility, but the tension in his jaw loosened. “If you spent your allowance on makeup instead of your skydiving bullshit, you’d be able to cover that before you went upstairs.”
She dried her face, blotting the hurt over her eye. Her fingers recoiled from the bubbled scar on her cheek, the cut that makeup could never cover. Not that she would waste a dime on meaningless luxuries. Their monthly funds from Mr. E paid for basic expenses, groceries, gas, and tools for training. She and Van split whatever was leftover, and she used her allotment on freefalling. Her only freedom.
As she replaced the ruined sandwich top with a new slice of bread, Van tossed a bag of frozen peas on the counter beside her. It wasn’t an apology, but an offer to move on.
She held the icy bag to her eye. Too bad it couldn’t numb the emotions swelling her throat.
Chapter Seventeen
Josh chewed the hell out of his cheek. Fifteen minutes alone with the naked girl and she wouldn’t answer any of his questions. She was probably thinking, Fifteen minutes with the naked man, and he wouldn’t shut up. Too bad. The need to hear about her experience coiled him into a restless chatterbox. He didn’t just want to make sure she was okay. He needed to hear everything she knew.
He tried to draw her in with highlights from his family farm, his coursework, and football achievements while shifting his weight from one knee to the other to transfer his discomfort on the hard floor. When she said nothing, he switched back to questioning. “Do you know what they have planned next or why Van was ticked off?”
She remained statuesque in her folded pose on the cot.
He pressed his lips together and tried to rein in his frustration. “Does anyone ever visit?”
Her hands and arms were limp, her silence ominous, indicative of psychological trauma.
He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Have you ever left this room?”
She stared at her lap.
“Who is Mr. E?” His stomach growled. What he wouldn’t do for Mom’s biscuits and gravy right now. He winced, thinking about her safety. “Have you ever met him?”
A big empty nothing.
He sighed but refused to admit defeat. “You seem like a nice girl. Pretty, too, though I’ve yet to see beyond the top of your head.” Okay, that last part wasn’t entirely true. “I’m not looking at the rest, I promise.”
Funny how quickly he’d become unconcerned with his own nudity. He yanked his wrists, clattering the chains, and her head didn’t move from its downward position.
“We’re in this together, right? I just need your help understanding what this is.”
Was she even breathing? The threat that compelled her to ignore him could walk through the door any moment, which only fueled his impatience. “Look at me,” he shouted.
Her head snapped up. Finally! The deep set blue of her eyes widened, flitted to the door, and back to him.
“Hi.” He kept his smile soft and unassuming. “I’m Josh.”
“Your name is boy.” A whisper. “Please, stop talking.” From the thready plea, the tensing of her body, and the heave of her chest, she seemed to be crawling in her skin with fear.
Pressure swelled behind his ribs. “Hey, it’s okay.” He stretched his arms to reach for her. Impossible. He let them drop, his elbows bent on either side of his head. “We’re just chatting. What’s your name?”
“Girl.”
He had to strain his hearing to make out her heartbreaking whisper. Commands were clearly more effective than questions. He hardened his voice. “Give me your birth name.”
She glanced at the door, and the nervous twitches in her cheeks tightened his chest. At least she wasn’t peeking around the room at hidden cameras. Perhaps Liv had been honest about no recording devices. Or maybe the girl was as in the dark as he was.
Her attention dropped to the floor between them. “Kate.”
Kate. The excited race of his heart redoubled as he considered what to ask, or demand, next. How much time did he have? Something had been tightly stretched between their captors when they left. Perhaps they were just eating lunch. Or planning the next training session. Maybe they were having sex.
He slammed his teeth together. Good grief. Where the hell did that thought come from? “Tell me about the relationship between Van and Liv.”
With another peek at the door, she shook her head.
Did the huddle of her shoulders mean this subject terrified her? “Does he force you or Liv to have sex with him?”
Her chin lowered, her body returning to its earlier frozen state.
Dammit, now he was glancing at the door, the hairs on his nape standing on end. What bothered him wasn’t the hostility vibrating from Van so much as the song humming from Liv’s throat when she ran out.
She’d sung in his truck as she’d led him into this nightmare. She’d sung when he was in the box, right before she closed the lid. Singing seemed to be a mechanism she employed when something bad was about to happen. So what was going to happen? What made her bolt from the room? All of his questions liquefied to one conclusion. “Van’s in charge, not Liv. She puts on a good show, but the fact is he’s a rapist—”
“Master is not a rapist.” Her eyes flashed to his, lit with fire, her words heated and rushed. “He doesn’t touch me like that, because he loves Mistress, and she loves
him.”
What? No way in unholy hell did Liv love that man. His insides twisted and turned at the idea, and it pained him to see Kate’s perception so emotionally distorted by what she’d been through. And what did she mean, he didn’t touch her like that? Forcibly or not all? “You’ve been here a month? Two months?”
She shrugged, and it was wooden and completely absent of hope. “I don’t know.”
Was he staring at the harbinger of his own future mental state? How would his judgment fare after ten weeks of captivity? His head ached, and his impatience with her and the chains that held him set his skin on fire. He rolled his arms in a useless attempt to escape the shackles. “I want to help you, Kate. Please, talk—”
The door clicked open. Rage cinched his throat and accelerated his pulse. He lowered his head with a frustrated jerk and glared at the floor.
Chapter Eighteen
Josh’s breathing grew heavier, louder. His body temperature boiled from his blood to his skin.
Liv’s bare feet skimmed over the floor and passed by his knees. Van’s sneakers trailed close behind. They stopped at the cot, and the mattress creaked under Van’s weight, a plate of food balancing on his lap. Josh’s stomach gave a miserable groan.
“Tell me what I missed, girl.” The cool clip of Liv’s voice sliced the air, but there was a strained edge to it. “I want to hear every word that was uttered.”
Surely her other slaves talked and even befriended each other when they were alone. Did she punish them for it? Locking his eyes on her feet was pure torture. He wanted to read her face, observe what wasn’t being vocalized. In the outer edge of his vision, Van raised a sandwich toward Kate’s mouth.
“He said his parents are cotton farmers. He plays football at Baylor…” Between meager bites and swallows, she repeated the conversation verbatim with much better recollection than his own. When every morsel was consumed, and all of his words betrayed, she finished with, “I told him Master wasn’t a…rapist, that you love each other.”
The heels of Liv’s feet twitched outward so slightly the movement would’ve gone unnoticed if he’d been staring a couple inches higher. Her knees bent even more subtly as if she were pressing her feet to the floor to mute the reaction. A sign of objection.
He was so distracted by the dichotomy between her genuine responses and her facade that he hadn’t considered the consequences of Kate’s tattling until Van stood.
“Roll to your stomach, girl.” He moved out of Josh’s field of vision, his voice pitching through the room. “Face pressed against the mattress. Ass and pussy in the air and spread for your Mistress’s punishment.”
Punishment? The biting claw of dread shivered down Josh’s spine. No, it hadn’t been nice of Kate to tattle on him, but she didn’t deserve a punishment for answering his questions.
Van returned with a thin rod that resembled the riding crop Josh had used in his horse riding lessons as a boy. His brain twisted into knots trying to piece together what was happening and what he could do to stop it. And with his eyes on the floor, his field of vision was limited to below their waists.
When Van pressed the handle into Liv’s hand, she didn’t close her fingers around it. The exchange was swift, but Josh was certain Van bent her pinkie at an awkward angle to persuade her to take the crop.
She traced Kate’s raised backside with the leather-tipped end. “Boy, you violated requirement number nine.”
Requirement nine? He didn’t know them by number. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could recite them all. But nine was the last requirement she’d taught him, right? The one about not talking—
Whack.
The crack of the crop left a red mark on Kate’s upper thigh. Her legs trembled, and her cry muffled against the mattress.
Josh drew a lungful of air and swallowed the protests springing forward. Kate would suffer even more for his outbursts.
Van crouched beside Josh, his scar pulling at his lips, intensifying the threat of his proximity. “Hey, buddy. The Mistress is a real stickler about rules, but don’t worry. The girl will accept your punishment.”
A roar pummeled through Josh’s throat, and he slammed his jaw shut, trapping it. This horsecrap wasn’t directed by Liv, and Van knew that punishing Kate would hurt Josh the most.
Van stood, sidled up to Liv, and circled a finger on the back of her thigh, just below the hem of the minidress. “Twenty strokes. Right, Mistress?”
A battle of emotions coursed through him, heating his blood and rushing his breaths. He clutched the chains with white-knuckled fists and braced for the most messed up moment of his life.
And so it went. A garbled scream followed every whack, each one corkscrewing through his heart, stripping away pieces that would never be recovered. Liv kept unimaginable control of her swings, bringing down her arm in a rhythmic tempo as if moving to a cadence no one but her could hear.
He shuddered with the smack of leather on flesh, the pierce of Kate’s wails in his ears and the twitch of her small body receiving his punishment under his gaze. Guilt fisted his stomach and shoved the turmoil to his throat.
Each strike fell hard and steady, but the more Liv swung, the more noticeable the trembling became in her free hand. Her fingers pressed against her thigh and her body seemed to lose its upright, stiff posture. It was a subtle change, but something was definitely pulling at her resolve.
Finally, she lowered the crop. A pattern of red welts striped Kate’s backside and thighs but did not break the skin.
Liv circled around him to stand at his back. He hadn’t seen her face since she’d returned, didn’t know what mask she was wearing, if one at all. What was she feeling beneath her stony exterior? What held her here, bending her to do things he knew she didn’t want to do?
Maybe he was just imagining her reluctance. Lord knew he prayed for it. There were so many unyielding barriers between them. Her masks. His chains. Van.
When Van released Kate from her restraints, she lowered her eyes and her knees to the floor, crawling toward Liv, legs trembling. “Thank you for the discipline, Mistress.”
Her words plunged Josh deeper into the cold clutch of his new reality. It was a terrifying feeling to be enchained by people who could break a girl so unequivocally she thanked them for it. And while Liv delivered the strikes, he was convinced she was nothing more than an instrument operated by another.
Across the room, Van leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression slack but watchful.
No doubt there would be a profusion of defining moments in the weeks to come, but Josh suspended this one in his mind, branding it to memory, and made a vow to himself. He would adapt to this environment, but he would not become an instrument, an empty shell, or a grateful slave. His parents would surrender their lives before they’d want him to become something less than he was. His heart ached at the thought of anything happening to them, but he sat lighter in his resolve, his shoulders loosened and his jaw unlocked.
“This training session will focus on requirement two.” Liv’s detached voice tiptoed over his shoulder. “Given your inability to remember the requirements, repeat after me. Slave will service Master sexually with exceptional skill, and his body will be prepared to make it easy for Master.”
Ugh. He never wanted to hear that rule again. He climbed to his feet. “Slave will break through Mistress’s mask with exceptional skill—”
Crack.
Fire erupted on his backside, a concentrated burn in the crease of his butt and thigh. Dear God, she had an arm on her. He breathed through it and hung on the support of the chains. He glanced over his shoulder, not giving a crap about the rules. His throat dried at what he found there.
Red bled over the white of her left eye, surrounded by pink, swollen skin. His heart roared in his ears, and his fingers curled into his palms. With the ragged half-inch cut on her brow bone and the scar marring the length of her cheek, she looked like a battered mess. Worse was the pleading fragility softening the edges of he
r gaze. She was begging him for something. To obey her? To ignore the beating Van had obviously given her?
Van held his relaxed pose against the wall, but there were signs of edginess. His arms were crossed too tightly, his fingers pressed against his biceps, and the skin around the indentations of his grip blanched.
With Kate in her kneeling position beside Josh and Liv at his back, a division was drawn in his mind. There was a significant intersection in the room. Josh stood with the girls and faced the true threat.
A toothpick rolled slowly between Van’s lips as he studied Josh. Perhaps Van was measuring him the way he weighed Van. Josh’s limited counseling experience taught him that an abuser’s violence was rooted in arrogance, in a belief that no one was as good as he was. Liv was someone Van could control and possess, someone to serve him. That sense of ownership bred jealousy not love.
Van was a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a few anger-management sessions, not that the man would be willing to talk through his issues. Because even if he could be rehabilitated, one harrowing fact remained. Josh was on the wrong side of the bars—or chains.
If Van moved close enough, could Josh hold himself by the chains, swing his legs up, and wrap them around the man’s throat? What then? He’d seen them both remove weapons hidden in their clothes. Even if his arms were free, he would still be outmatched by muscle and whatever Van was armed with. Despite the challenge charging his nerves, there was nothing he could say or do to stop this training session.
To top it off, Liv’s pleading eyes held a desperate grip around his heart. He didn’t want to make this harder on her, and with that certainty, he turned toward her with his head lowered. Kneeling at her feet, the chains crisscrossing above him, he tried to repeat the requirement from memory, with a few adjustments. “Slave will service Mistress with exceptional skill, and his body will be prepared to make it easy for her.”
Her toes flexed. She seemed to be digesting his wording changes. “Slaves, stand and face me.”