by Pam Godwin
His darkening expression blasted her anger to her stomach. That look had trained her to avert her eyes and drop to her knees. But sometimes, in the dark, the intensity of his stare and the openness of his lust almost felt like love.
A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Someday, I hope to matter to you, because you are the only one who matters to me. You will always be mine, Liv.”
The promise propelled her to the night he’d preyed on her fear of him, comforting her while piercing past her virginal barrier. In that moment of frailty, wrapped in his strong arms, that scared, lonely girl had wanted nothing more than his devotion. She should’ve fought, should’ve retained some inkling of dignity.
That girl had realized, too late, something wasn’t quite right with his adoring smile. After that night, the matching scars, and the loss of Mattie, that girl fell so far the hand of God couldn’t pull her back. If manufacturing sex slaves in the house of evil was the only way to protect Mom and Mattie, to hell with God and everyone else.
Van rolled the toothpick between his lips and knelt in the V of her legs. “Shall we head to bed?”
The desire in his eyes knocked her backward. She pulled her knees up and pivoted, scrambling off the couch. “I have a job to do.”
He caught her before she reached the stairs, slamming her back against the wall, his lips a toothpick away from hers. His hand moved over her waist, fingers slipping beneath her waistband.
The way his breath hitched and the heat melting his steely eyes swept an uninvited warmth through her womb. When he spit the pick on the floor and slanted his mouth toward hers, she jerked her face away. Damn, his fucking lips. His kisses were potent, and she was too emotionally exhausted to pretend like they weren’t.
A strong finger on her chin turned her face back to his. “Don’t you dare look away from me.” He captured her bottom lip between his, nuzzling, and pulled back. Her heart raced and her weak fucking knees wobbled. His gaze roamed over her eyes, hair, and mouth, gorging on every detail. “Christ, Liv, you’re so fucking beautiful.”
She shivered at the compliment. Or was it the nausea tumbling her stomach? Why wasn’t she fighting him? Spitting and punching and running away? Was it his strength holding her against the door? The conditioning instilled in her as a slave? The connection they shared through Mattie? Or was it as shallow as lust in the proximity of those stark gray eyes and talented lips?
He shoved a hand through her hair and licked the corner of her mouth. “I won’t touch your defenses. Just give me everything else.”
Yet he’d already taken everything, and her walls against him were splintering. Even if she could bring herself to kill him, she was restrained by the contract on Mom and Mattie’s lives. A contract that would mobilize a hit man if he or Mr. E died suspiciously.
Her chest hurt, and her heartbeat thrashed in her ears. Sure, she could run. She could disappear somewhere they couldn’t find her. But Mr. E had promised that if she vanished, he’d make Mom and Mattie’s death so vile, it would reach national attention. Just to ensure it reached her attention.
Trapped in paranoia, she was terrified to make a mistake, her every action watched, judged, and used to threaten her family. Her nerves were so raw, she trusted nothing, connected to no one, and her loneliness was exasperated by her complicated fucking relationship with the man peppering kisses over her lips. She wanted to love him even as her fingers twitched to run a blade across his throat.
She spoke against his persistent mouth. “If the boy is suffocating on his own vomit, I won’t be around long enough to give you anything.”
His face tightened. “Very well. Go check on him.” He stepped back to give her just enough room to slip around him. As she did, a recognizable pang assaulted her scalp. She didn’t have to look back to know he held a chunk of her hair in his fist.
His creepy hair-thing fueled her race up the stairs, to the safety of her bedroom and to the boy she would destroy to keep her family alive.
CHAPTER 8
Liv rested her head against the box, absorbed by the rueful tune braiding through her mind, her ass numb from sitting on the subfloor. She should check on the boy, but the sight of his suffering would shred her already crumbling composure. The raw groans echoing from within the box were doing that enough on their own.
The other captives had fought her with vicious desperation. This boy’s determination was quieter, more calculating. She heard it in his steady, low-pitched voice, saw it in his alert gaze and tightening fists, and felt it in her increased body temperature and rapid heartbeat.
Dammit, she’d trained herself not to get attached to these boys. She uncrossed her knees and straightened her legs along the floor. She would need extreme mental focus to smother her attraction to this boy and maintain her icy indifference.
The lid was closed, but she could imagine the terror creasing his beautiful face. It set off her own memories, shooting pain into body parts that had been shackled, whipped, and violated by Van’s hand.
She pushed that aside. Self-pity would only earn her a stumbling misstep and a black-eye from Van’s fist. Her own punishments certainly wouldn’t make this experience easier on the boy. He needed a confident hand to guide him through the next few weeks. She climbed to her feet, her muscles tight with reluctance.
She opened the lid, knowing he wouldn’t hear the squeaking hinges nor would he sense her leaning over him. The Solfeggio frequency piping through the headphones overpowered his perceptions, his ability to reason, his entire universe. So much so, he probably wouldn’t even sense the change of air.
His lips stretched back in misery as he panted through his teeth. Perspiration wet his skin, streaking drips down his ribs with the heave of his chest. A lonely, weak moan reached from his throat and penetrated her chest.
As his body writhed against the walls in the narrow space and a pang of guilt cramped her gut, she forced herself to evaluate his distress. His rush of breath was panicked but not unrestricted. The chains confined his flailing but didn’t cut off blood flow. As for his mind, she just needed it intact enough to be trained, to pass the introductory meeting with the buyer, the final delivery, and receipt of the client’s payment.
After she delivered him, he would be dead to her. The same way she thought of the others.
Her eyes caught on his sculpted pecs, traveled along the dips and juts of his abs, and lingered on the impressive length of his cock where it lay against his thigh. Her fingers burned to touch him.
She gripped her stomach, disgusted with herself. He was even more attractive than the others, but he wasn’t like them. His matured masculinity was prominent in the thickness of his build and the determined set of his jaw. Most importantly, he had a family and community that would miss him. What a god-awful choice she’d been forced to make.
The turmoil inside her hardened into resolve. Ten weeks, a disciplined slave, and Mom and Mattie would be safe for another few months. It was how she measured her life, wasn’t it? In ten week increments, in the trade of slaves, one body at a time.
She checked the music player. The one-hour recording rolled through its second of twenty-four repeats. He’d only been in the box for an hour, but it would’ve felt like days to him.
Ironically, the drone of the 528 hertz was used in meditation as harmonic healing. When Van had shoved her in the box and slapped the earphones on her head, he’d said, “That’s a load of new age bullshit. After twenty-four hours of the same goddamned electrical wave passing through your skull, you won’t be healed. You’ll be fucking manic.”
He’d been right. She’d emerged wild-eyed, delusional, and willing to do anything he demanded to avoid another minute in that box.
Fuck Van and his thrills. When she’d fled from him downstairs twenty minutes earlier, the desire in his eyes had been vulgar in its blatancy. Why had he let her escape so easily? He didn’t give a shit if the boy vomited in the box, and he was too damned calculating to accept that excuse.
Always, h
e fucked her when he wanted her. Never did she participate with a willing heart. Yet their scrimmages didn’t involve physical force. He’d wear her down with a skilled tongue or prey on her guilt through the mistreatment of a slave. Sometimes, he’d simply threaten to alert Mr. E of her disobedience. It wasn’t until she’d met him that she’d understood the meaning of coerced consent.
She stared at the door, terrified to open it, terrified not to.
Surely he went to bed in his room downstairs instead of following her to the attic. If he’d followed her, he’d be out there with that poor girl, who had been asleep when Liv had dashed by in the race to her room.
Fucking hell. Checking on the girl was the right thing to do, no matter how badly she didn’t want to open the door. Mr. E didn’t give a shit how Van treated the captives as long as they met the requirements at the end of ten weeks.
Her stomach turned as she agonized leaving the boy alone. Goddammit, she was weakening already, and it was only his first night. Her chin trembled. He had to remain in the box. She couldn’t bend the rules and expect to mold him into an acceptable slave. But the girl was already trained and didn’t deserve Van’s needless tormenting.
She closed the lid and jogged to the keypad. If he was waiting on the other side, she could shut it quickly. If he was messing with the girl, she’d have to distract him. Deep breath. She entered the code and cracked the door.
Across the room, the incarnation of her fears sat on the cot, back slouched against the wall. The girl’s head dipped up and down between his spread legs, her face and his dick shrouded by her hair.
Memories ripped in Liv’s mind, sharp and desolate. She saw her own brown hair instead of the girl’s blond. She felt his cock punching the back of her throat and his fingers digging into her scalp. Their baby moved inside her, stretching her belly, making her bent position agonizing to endure.
Her blood pooled away from her core, leaving the frigid numbness of her year as a slave—nine of those months pregnant.
She swallowed the apparition of her past before it consumed her. The girl sucking him still retained her virginity, yet she was adept with her lips, mouth, and tongue. As one of the buyer’s requirements, Liv had spent the prior eight weeks teaching her the skill on Van. And in two weeks, Liv would deliver her to a man whose hand was as heavy as his wallet.
Van looked up and caught her eyes, flames of greed blazing in his. “Come out here and show her how it’s done, Liv.”
God, she hated him when he was like this. When he watched her with such hunger as he pumped his dick in whatever hole he could command. This wasn’t a training session for the girl. It was about Liv and him, and he was using the girl to tunnel Liv’s guilt.
She could tuck her chin, shut the door, and fall asleep in the musty familiarity of her mattress inside the safety of her room.
And let the girl stroke and suck him until he was done with her. She’d blown him a dozen times before during practice. Did one more time really matter?
Van pushed down on the back of her head, and her hands convulsed on the mattress.
Compassion was lethal to Liv’s well-being, but she couldn’t stop it as it shuddered over her skin and swallowed up her heart. She opened the door, passed the cot, another keypad, another code, and down the stairs, her insides bucking and tumbling. At the end of the hall, she stopped at the only closed door and dropped her forehead against it.
What was more horrifying? The footsteps pounding down the stairs after her or all the creepy shit waiting on the other side of his bedroom door?
His body slammed against her back, his exhales hot on her neck, his erection stabbing her tail bone. He hadn’t bothered to put his pants back on.
She mustered a stoic tone. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Oh, the sweet seduction of your words.” He slapped her ass, lighting fire through her jeans, and swung open the door.
CHAPTER 9
Liv stumbled into Van’s bedroom, unable to look away from the antique gun cabinet on the back wall, with walnut crests carved around the double glass doors. One might’ve expected a dozen prized shotguns displayed on the racks within. Instead, the cabinet was crammed with a menagerie of dolls and mannequins piled atop one another. Arms and legs askew, some still attached to molded bodies. Most were not. All of them bald and nude.
She rubbed the chill prickling her arms. “Little girls everywhere want to know, ‘Where do all the broken dollies go?’”
“Shut up, Liv.” He sidled around her, and his foot sent a tiny headless torso careening under the bed, its jointed legs tumbling after.
Why wasn’t that one with all the hollow-eyed faces pressed against the glass of the cabinet? Some of the heads were upside down. Others leered to the side or stared out into the room from beneath hinged eyelids. Dust-laced cobwebs drooped between the dirt-smudged body parts. If she shook the case, how many eyes would wiggle and blink back? She shivered. “You need to—” She cleared her throat, tried to put oomf in her voice “—do some housecleaning.”
“Nah.” He threw himself on the bed, naked from the waist down. His erection hadn’t lost interest. It stood tall and unabashed between the flex of his thighs as he reclined on one elbow and watched her with his unnatural patience.
His interest in his collection, however, didn’t appear to be sexual. None of his plastic friends were anatomically correct nor did they look well-loved. Much the opposite, in fact. A hairless mannequin slumped in the corner of the room, grime coating its nippleless coned breasts from years of inattention. One arm lay beside it, unattached. Its face was punched away, exposing the dark cavern of its head.
Above him, another mannequin hung from something like a meat hook jutting out of the wall. Bent at the waist, its arms and head lolled forward as if reaching for the bed, the far-away gaze on its face frighteningly reminiscent of young Pat Benatar.
“Van…” She jerked her chin at the aberration above him. He’d never answered her years of questions about his fetishes, but he’d agreed to tuck away the ones that chilled her the most. He knew Plasti-Pat Benatar topped the list.
He rose, unhooked it from the wall, and tossed it under the bed to join who knew how many others. Then he turned to her, gripping the base of his cock, and pulled, one long lazy stroke. “Your turn, Liv. Show the pink.”
A shudder bunched her shoulders to her ears. God, she couldn’t do this. Her panties were bone-dry, and her throat felt like a fucking Texas drought. “I can’t do this.”
His expression hardened, his thoughts likely sifting through his arsenal of manipulations. Of course, he could punch her or choke her, but he never had to. She wagered he’d either return to the girl or call Mr. E.
She moved to the narrow bed and perched on the edge. “Not like this.”
The muscles in his jaw relaxed, and he sat beside her, dragging a blanket over his lap. He didn’t touch her. They both knew he would fuck her before she left that room, and his ability to endure her dawdling was something she always used to her advantage. Which was stupid. It never helped her in the end.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the dirt-matted carpet. A wrinkle creased his brow, his tone hesitant. “You want foreplay? Seduction?”
She wanted real. She wanted to feel an essential, basic emotion that wasn’t bound to the wounds he’d inflicted on her, the ones that wouldn’t heal. “What I want, you can’t give.”
He swung his head toward her, eyes alight with pain. “I dried your face when you cried. I held you when you screamed. I haven’t left your side once in all these years. You have me. All of me!”
She masked her flinch with the stillness she’d perfected. The absence of motion made her feel less visible under his constant attention. She didn’t want him ogling at her. She didn’t want him. How could she? His kisses haunted her, the grip of his voice too painfully familiar in the dark. He was the cause of those tears, those screams, her fears.
The cup of his palm on her cheek dr
ew her eyes to his, and the tenderness in his tone snagged her breath. “Sing to me.”
His other hand caught her chin, preventing her from looking away. She shook her head in the cage of his fingers.
“If you need your distraction, your defense tonight, then by all means, sing.” His timbre dipped, a sultry intrusion in her ears. “Your voice makes me so fucking hard.” He shifted his hands to curl around her neck, thumbs caressing her cheeks, her scar. “Sing to me while I’m fucking you.”
She hated that he’d figured out her defense. There were two mournful truths about their intimacy. One, he understood why she didn’t want to fuck him. Two, he was able to convince her to do it anyway. He knew her feelings for him were as complicated as her situation. He also knew that if he led her to that dead place inside herself, she would hide there without struggling while he fucked her. It was a tactic she resented and appreciated. “Which song?”
A happy hum vibrated in his chest, his scar a macabre extension of his smile. “Bring Me To Life.”
His requests never strayed from Evanescence, the essence of grace in despair.
She let the trembling dread roll off her spine, drew in a long breath, and warbled through the first verse. Slipping into steady, lilting tones, her reluctance to fuck floated away with the notes. She held his eyes and sang the words he wanted to hear as he removed her sneakers, shirt, and jeans. When he traced her c-section scar, she kept her mind on the song, on its expression of the life she couldn’t have and the broken shell she’d become.
He touched her hip bones with reverence, kissed the lace that covered her most private parts, and stripped the material with a ragged groan.
“I can’t wake up…” she sang, the lyrics infused with a longing he couldn’t sate.