Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4)

by Cari Silverwood

  Seize me From Darkness

  Book 4, Pierced Hearts

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author

  Early Praise for Seize me From Darkness

  “There’s something classic about captives falling in love through mutual suffering, but Cari Silverwood finds a way to twist all you believe will happen. From a dirty, painful hell to one with nicer surroundings, but you still aren’t free. And may not want to be.”

  Bianca Sommerland – author of the Deadly Captive Trilogy

  Copyright 2014 Cari Silverwood

  Published by Cari Silverwood

  Editor: Nerine Dorman

  Proof reader: Donna J.

  Cover Artist: Thomas Dorman aka Dr. Benway on Deviantart and Facebook

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  About Seize me From Darkness

  This book is part of a dark erotic fiction series and may disturb readers who are uncomfortable with dubious consent or graphic violence.

  If you’ve processed that and are headed onward, strap yourself in and hang on tight. The twisted fantasies in this story will take you to the edge of the abyss.

  In this dirty, bloody world we live in, the answers to prayers aren’t always pretty angels.

  Retaken by human traffickers, Jazmine’s one hope is ex-cop, ex-mercenary, Pieter, a man with a glower that stops lesser men in their tracks.

  She prays he can save her.

  But this savior is far from perfect, and his flaws may prove as devastating to Jazmine as the torture of her captors.

  The fire of dominance never dies.

  Disclaimer

  This book contains descriptions of BDSM themed sexual practices but this is a work of fiction and as such should not be used in any way as a guide. The author will not be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained within.

  Acknowledgements

  My great thanks goes out to my beta readers Shannon Wichman, Jennifer Zeffer, Bianca Sarble, Tequila Rose, Sorcha Black, and Jody Rhoton. I pestered them all endlessly and they gave me so much of their time. I love you all and I hope I’ve not scarred you for life. Free kittens, hugs, coffee, and spanks – whichever you choose. Just no feet kissing.

  A special thank you to Nerine Dorman, my South African editor, for looking out for goofs to do with Afrikaans and her country.

  Chapter 1

  “Head down, cunt up, until I say you can look at me.” The growled command and smack on the back of my head by a rough hand was enough to make me snap my gaze to the gritty concrete. My bare knees hurt. My torn and stained dress concealed almost nothing. Tears slipped down my sticky face and shivers wracked me despite the tropical heat.

  Out there, beyond, were men. I could see their shoes and the legs of their jeans, hear their soft laughter.

  I was helpless, alone, shaking.

  I knew where I was. On the way here, curled on the floor of the small plane, men had spoken. Even with the bag on my head and the drone of the engine, I knew my destination.

  In Australia, I’d been desperate to escape but the concrete I knelt on was in Papua New Guinea. I hadn’t a clue as to where I could go. Had no friends. I didn’t even have Pieter, the strange guard with the Good Samaritan tendencies. He was probably dead. I squeezed shut my eyes, as if that would make my memory of him go away. I’d messed up, like half my life, by getting him involved.

  My hopes of escape had become nothing. I was nothing. I was so lost.

  My heart hurt from beating too fast for too long – fight or flight response, but I could do neither. Being scared for days on end was exhausting.

  Run. Run. Run. The single word popped up unexpectedly. It would go round and round in a loop in my thoughts until I slept or something distracted me. I couldn’t not think it, even if its meaning had evaporated as soon as they bundled me like an express package onto the plane.

  We must have crossed the sea to the north of Australia. I’d lived with the fact that if the plane had gone down in the ocean, I’d have been unable to do more than sink with it.

  “They tell me you tried to get away. No more of that. You try and you get punished. Badly. I know who you are, little miss posh bitch. Jazmine. Hey? My name, you don’t need. If you have to talk to me, you call me Sir. Nod, so I know you have ears.”

  Fear had slowed my thoughts to a sluggish drag. In the few seconds it took me to figure out what to do, he hit me. A single swish and whack sent a stripe of fire across my ass. I gasped but didn’t speak. My nods were jerky, swishing my hair, as I prayed he’d not hit me again.

  “Good. You behave and we’ll get along. For your sins, you’re being sold to the meanest bastard on our books. Three days, give or take a day, and he’ll be here to claim you.” His stick tapped the backs of my thighs. “What a pretty cunt. Hmmm?”

  I squeezed my legs in closer.

  The man nudged my chin with his stick. “Up.”

  I raised my head to find him squatting a few feet in front of me. Jeans, neat blue short-sleeved shirt, heavily muscled thighs and arms. Shaven scalp. A man who could do what he liked with me.

  Like some sort of macabre decoration theme, the walls of the room were hung with instruments of torture – pincers, floggers, ugly leather masks, whips, and handcuffs. I couldn’t fathom the use of some of the devices. This surreal place could have been just another made-up location for a magazine shoot. If only. I didn’t fool myself for long.

  There was a long, dark-glassed window and on the other side, were the vague shapes of richly upholstered chairs as if, perhaps, there was sometimes a classier audience than the three hulking men now propping up the walls with their shoulders.

  At my whimper, one of them grinned and licked the remains of his lunch from his fingers.

  If I had a chance, if I could and did run, would they shoot me?

  They’d just catch me and beat me, again. My bruises throbbed. I was too chicken to volunteer for that, even if death seemed to beckon.

  This man’s dark gaze swept from my bodice, where my breasts spilled, to my face. He spoke softly while staring into my eyes.

  “You’re pretty. The ladies with black hair make me think they’re wild women. Quick to anger. Feral. Yes?” With the tip of the stick, he stirred the loose hair that fell over my ear – picking it up and letting it slide away. “Even if you are wild, I doubt you’ll be that way long. He wears out slaves fast. To be fair, he doesn’t ask for training or a perfectly intact woman. Obey me and I won’t need to hurt you before he does.”

  His smile was a miniscule upward tilt of his lips, as if he couldn’t be bothered doing a proper smile. He poked his stick at the chains wrapping my wrists, traced the line of my arm to my neck, then skipped to my face and let the tip rest near my eye.

  “Nod.”

  I swallowed in my dry throat then nodded. The stick slid closer to my eye. Cold, I was so horribly cold.

  Chapter 2

  The back of the truck had been left
open, as if my guards no longer cared who saw the trussed, chained, and beaten man inside. I tasted the blood from the last blow. My ear rang. Being whacked on the side of the face while your ear is against a metal floor wasn’t good. I snorted back some of the blood in my nose. In the bright rectangle between the two sides of the door, I observed green, big-leafed jungle, as well as a motley collection of men, bearing machetes and pistols, from a local raskol gang.

  Three of my guards were there too – they’d jumped out when we slowed and stopped. From the chatter it was just a meet-up of friends. Pity. If they’d had a fight, I might’ve had a chance to...

  I strained against my bonds for the umpteenth time, felt the ropes tighten on my biceps at my back, the metal cut my wrists, and I gave up. My uppermost arm stung from the injection I’d just been given.

  A chance to do fuck all. Who was I fooling? They’d locked my wrists and elbows behind me with handcuffs and chain and rope, as well as done my feet and thighs. My one bit of fortune was the hogtie link between hands and ankles had been left off since they’d hoisted me off the plane at some tiny airstrip.

  I was in Papua New Guinea, back in my old haunts, and from what I’d heard of Vetrov, soon to be tortured to death for my misdemeanor of helping a woman to almost escape from his little slave house back in Australia. Wherever Jazmine was, I prayed she was better off than me.

  Not likely, but I could hope.

  Sweat dribbled into my eye and I blinked it away.

  Maybe I could sweat away all my muscle bulk and slip free like a skinny Spiderman instead of the Incredible Hulk people liked to compare me to. From my para-military experience I was all too aware that muscles or even fighting skill didn’t mean invincibility. Men died from being shot and macheted and burned all the same – skinny, superfat, or superfit.

  Yeah, I was slightly fucked.

  Never give up, never give in.

  I resumed my watching of the proceedings outside on the dirt track. Birds whooped and whistled up in the trees. I counted five raskols armed with homemade pistols and various knives and machetes. Plus three of my guards, all ex-mil like me, and armed to the fillings in their teeth. Wasn’t legal at all here, to carry, but they did. Their shotguns and shiny Sigs and Rugers were pretty weapons the raskols would be drooling to get their hands on.

  The minutes ticked by. I was in no hurry. At the end of this drive might be my death.

  Then a little girl in a grimy dress hopped up on the back of the truck and smiled at me. Nine, ten years old?

  What the... I blinked. Still there. I wasn’t tripping out on dehydration or concussion or whatever drug they’d injected me with a few minutes ago.

  I croaked out a sound, then licked my lips and swallowed, tried again. “Hello.”

  Her smile widened.

  Here was someone who might be innocent enough to help. I knew some of the pidjin English they spoke here. “Want gut moni?” But would I get her in trouble?

  If I told her an address, would I get my friends killed? They were...

  My surroundings fuzzed out, my tongue thickened.

  Drug...

  And fuzzed back in. And she was gone. Fuck.

  My windpipe gurgled as I breathed and I coughed. Then the girl was back again, screaming and running from a snarling beast of a dog. She leaped into the truck and scrambled to me, the dog’s jaws snapping shut just a few inches shy of her leg. With my tied-together feet, I booted the mutt in the jaw and sent it sprawling back a few yards. A young man yelled at and kicked the dog then chained it up.

  He levelled his gun at me where the girl huddled quivering my side.

  Typical New Guinea justice. They’d probably trained the beast to attack but that didn’t help its case. Not that I wanted the girl mauled.

  Last I saw of the boy was a scowling face as he hauled her out of there. A sheathed knife fell from his belt and I stared stupidly at it, almost scraped it to me with my heel before he snatched that up too.

  “Fluck it,” I slurred, my tongue now thick enough to use for toast. Missed a chance. And goodbye world. I could feel myself going.

  Blackness swirled in.

  I awoke staked out, flat on my back, in an open yard. Glaring sun above. Dirt all around me. My sight was still hazy. Damn it. Who was paying for this trip? I wasn’t even getting an in-focus view of my holiday resort.

  “Who is this?” someone asked from just beyond my vision. Male or female? They could’ve been Martian for all I could tell.

  I swung my head, dirt grating against the back of my head. My thick lips were stuck together. My eyelids too. But I kept that one eye open a half an inch.

  “Pieter. A traitor. He let us down, helped the Jazmine girl escape, got men killed.”

  My hearing seemed filtered through a ton of mud.

  “He’s acceptable in appearance. I like him. I don’t know why you thought you could get rid of the girl without my agreement. She’s special to me. I need to see her damaged and humiliated, slowly. Clean him up. I want to see him play with her. Maybe more if he does well.”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “Then take care with him. I pay well. Vetrov will agree.”

  The crunch of boots came closer and someone blocked out the sun.

  Time sludged past, the blue sky fading in and out.

  He leaned over me. “You lucky bastard. I don’t get to see you die today. We were filming you today too. One last kick for luck.”

  His boot thudded into my side and the world fuzzed out again.

  Chapter 3

  On the second day, a guard yelled through the door, “The manager will be seeing you later.”

  Overnight I’d heard others, outside, speaking to this manager, the man who wanted me to call him sir. They called him sir too. Or sometimes Gregor. I decided not to try calling him that without permission. It seemed likely to earn a punishment. How easily I slipped into the mind-set of the conquered.

  His weird, stilted accent sounded Scandinavian, and already I could imagine that voice haunting my nightmares.

  I’d not seen anything when they delivered me, but the wind brushing through the trees and the animal noises betrayed that on the other side of that high-up window was the outdoors. I’d also heard the cries of women, their screams of pain, and some general all-purpose sobbing. There were other captives. If anyone here was having fun, they disguised it well. I’d thought this was some sort of way-point before they sent women elsewhere, after selling them. Maybe I was wrong.

  Or maybe just some of them got to stay longer, have other things done to them?

  The awfulness of this place never failed to impress me.

  My memoirs, if...when I got away, would get me a nomination for horror writer of the year.

  I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands tucked into my armpits and hugged myself. No one had left me so much as a nail file, let alone a way to tunnel out.

  My room was simple. One single bed. Clean sheets. Across from the door was a deep alcove containing a toilet with a push-button flush and a sink with no taps, just a big button for cold water. A shower was next to it, also open to anyone walking in the door. I had a curiosity streak wide enough to embarrass a cat. I’d stared at my tapless sink and shower for a few minutes before it clicked. Taps could be unscrewed, made into weapons perhaps. Though I couldn’t imagine a woman overcoming any of the hard men policing this place, I guess they were being thorough.

  I rose and went to the sink to stare in the steel mirror. Just the steel collar on my neck said I was in deep trouble. Though I wore a clean black dress, with my red-rimmed eyes, streaked face, and messed-up hair, I looked like death warmed up. Where were all the other women I’d been grouped with in Australia? Had that been some of them screaming last night?

  I leaned my forearms on the sink and though I stayed calm for a while, I wanted that release, here, now, when nobody was watching. The first tears merely dribbled down my face. I waited some more, my forehead throbbing, for the dam inside
me to break. A sob cracked from my aching chest. I lowered my head and cried my heart out. The tears pattered into the sink. My sobs grew weaker. My legs trembled and gave way. I ended up on my knees, hanging onto the sink, still crying in silence.

  Least when I was done, it wasn’t far to go to wash my puffy face.

  I was drying my face with my dress when I heard the small hatch in the door being slid aside. Then the door unlocked and I turned to look. Mr. Gregor himself. Where some big men stalked, his steps were careful and calculated. The blond stubble on his head looked unchanged. I imagined him beginning each day staring in the mirror, seeing his own incisive blue eyes, while he painstakingly scraped a razor over his scalp.

  A chill shivered through me.

  “Come here.” The door shut behind him as he beckoned.

  I hated that he could see I’d been crying. Hated my weakness showing. But I took a breath, pressed my forearm into my eyes and did a quick sniff as if it was nothing and maybe I’d had something in my eye. I walked to him even though hugging the wall was where I wanted to be.

  Whenever I was close to one of my captors, fear kicked in. I’d been in their hands for long enough to have memories that haunted me. Zoe being made to sit still for the knife as Scrim taunted her – that was one of the worst.

  “If I do this.” He clicked his fingers. “You’re to kneel.” Again he clicked them.

  I kneeled and felt the skirt of the dress settle on my thighs. I waited, staring at his shorts. The man had bright green surfer shorts on today and it was so weird seeing those, and his hairy knees. Slice was the brand name. How apt.

  “Give me your arm, Jazmine.”