Luke has overpowered the brute, and quickly. I feel a quick rush of respect for him. Then that fades and I hear the sound of someone walking away.
"Neil…" Luke's voice grows faint as he moves away, "Bind her so she can’t escape, then lock her in. And guard her."
I flinch at the unspoken meaning in his words. He’s asking one of the other shifters to keep an eye on me to protect me from Gabriel.
"Keep your distance, Gabriel," Luke warns. "Else you’ll pay for it with your head."
"Of course, boss. Whatever you say," the other grovels.
But all I hear is the sly edge, that fake sincerity in the brute's voice, and beneath it all the feel of someone more animal than human, someone blinded by a need to hurt.
He has no intention of standing by his words. This one’s going to come for me at the first chance. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
Chapter Forty-Three
When I come to next it’s to find something stuffed in my mouth and I choke as the smell of fish and sweat fills my nose.
I try to scream but the sound comes out muffled. Then the images rush over me – Jai falling. Me being taken.
Terror twists my gut.
For him.
For me.
For why I’ve been brought here.
I try to shove against whatever’s holding me down, a red rage of madness descending on my eyes, covering my senses. Till I realize my hands and legs are tied.
And it’s dark, so dark.
A wave of terror washes over me. I try to open my eyes, only to become aware that I’ve been blindfolded as well.
And that sends another burst of horror scrambling over me. My skin feels slick with sweat, and I can smell my own fear. Pungent, salty, metallic with the cold bit of ice. And strangely that cuts through the panic in my head.
I also realize I’m alone and sprawled on my side, hunched over like a fetus.
But I’m not as helpless.
I’m not.
I survived the Jungle. The journey back to London. Survived Jai's insane plan of jumping off the ship.
Jai.
Thinking of him sends a burst of anxiety through me. But I also have a strong sense that he’s alive. And that he will come for me. He will. All I have to do is survive till then. Hold on. Find a way to stay alive. And whole. I will not let this shifter get to me.
Another spasm of fear has me doubling up with pain. It’s as if my mind is jumping ahead, imagining the worst of what could happen. Of what the beast could do to me.
No.
Jai will come. Will come. Come.
I chant the words in my head. Keep chanting till the edge of fear subsides.
I sprawl there, getting my breath back, becoming aware of my surroundings for the first time. Below me is the throbbing of engines. We are moving, and…I am in a boat. We’ve left the beach behind, and are going towards…Bombay?
A dull pulse begins to hammer away in my head, sending little shivers of panic through me. And I take another breath.
In.
Out.
In.
Keep breathing, trying to calm myself down.
The boat seems to pick up speed and that spurs me into action. I slither around, trying to see how much space I have around me. I move again and again till I’m tired. Till I’ve managed to dislodge the blindfold enough to peer under it.
I can at least see my surroundings. But that doesn’t reassure me. I make out a small space. It's a cabin, probably the only one on the boat. There's faint starlight shining through a grimy porthole.
There's a bed, bare, no mattress. And I’m on the floor near it. When I move again, my back comes up against the wall and I manage to slither into a sitting position.
Feeling marginally better, I stay there for a few seconds. My feet are spread out, my hands still tied in front of me. But at least I can see the door and keep watch on anyone coming in.
I don’t dare to close my eyes and yet the vibrations against my back soothe me a little. Make me float. My thoughts ebb and flow as the boat makes its way through the night.
All I can think is that I never told him how I felt for him. I hadn’t bothered to reach out to him. I’d spent the last few weeks on the ship avoiding him.
And then I’d tried to seduce him.
I wish he’d let me seduce him, let me sleep with him…that way I’d have at least known how it’d felt.
I swear to myself. If I could turn back the clock, I’d tell him…tell him…what? That I love him? That I’ve been obsessed with him from the first time I’d seen him?
From the first glimpse of him at the camp when I’d been hiding in the background, trying to blend into the crowds. A scrawny girl who had watched the son of the Mayor, the handsome soldier with a heart, the one rumored to be a poet who wove his words into the kind of sentences that would tug your heart, and leave you wanting more. The reluctant soldier who’d help refugees when he could. But I hadn’t seen that, hadn’t seen the risk he’d taken hiding me for a few days, letting me stay. And yet a part of me had known even then, that he’d felt something…that he’d been attracted to me.
I’d blamed him for not finding a way to save me and my family.
Blamed him for having to flee from there.
Blamed him for what Vishal had forced me to do. And it’s only now, when I’m about to lose everything, when I know I’ll never see him again that the loss hits home.
As the thoughts rattle around my head, making it spin, the boat picks up speed and heads out into the open sea.
Desperate, I shove away from the wall, trying to slither to the porthole. But I only end up falling to the floor, uncaring when my chin hits the ground, sending a jolt of pain through me.
Swearing aloud, I shake my head, trying to jerk the hair away from where it’s fallen into my eyes. I’ve just managed to crawl a few more inches when the door is flung open.
Through the gap in my blindfold I see massive feet walk up to me and stop. My eyes travel up thighs like boulders and even as I strain to see more, the blindfold is torn off me.
Chapter Forty-Four
I see him then.
His large expanse of chest, muscles clearly outlined against the blood-stained vest over which he’s folded his arms. Large, corded muscles, well-defined. Arms that can hurt, that can hold me up as if I don’t weigh anything. I know who it is even before I see his face.
Gabriel, the brute-shifter.
I shrink back against the floor, falling flat on my back in my hurry to get away. My mind is screaming in alarm or perhaps I’m screaming aloud, I can’t tell.
He takes a step forward, then another.
Waves of greed, a twisted want, emanates from him. It rams into me, engulfs me; holds me immobile. Fear twists my gut and I jerk back and try to move away. But all I end up doing is falling to the floor, my arms still tied in front of me.
He stands at my feet, staring down at me.
He raises his hands and I choke and squeeze my eyes shut, only to hear a sound. He’s unhooked the sword – Jai’s sword – from the scabbard over his back and dropped it to the side.
Then he bends down and I shrink back. And freeze. Knife in hand, he reaches out for me. I scream again. Silently at first, then the sound hurtles into my ears when he pulls off the gag. It’s so sudden that it cuts through the noise in my head and that shuts me up again.
In the silence that follows, he fixes me with coal-black eyes. Eyes that hold no life, no feeling. As if it’s all been wiped out of him. As if the beast is all there’s left.
He places one massive foot on each side of my knees, standing over me.
I press against the floor, press into it, try to fold myself into me. Away from him. I need to be away from him.
He continues staring at me and I can’t look away, almost perversely fascinated by the intent I can read on his face. His puerile need to hurt; that twists around my neck. I gasp aloud, a strangled noise, and the muscles in his neck twitch.
<
br /> He can sense my fear, my almost inescapable need to escape from here. He drops to his knees and a small scream escapes my lips. Gone, absorbed in the darkness around him. An intense, corrupted black that’s beyond redemption. He bends over and sniffs my crotch, still not touching, but it’s worse. It’s as if he’s trying to rip into me and pull out my very essence, that part of me that I’ve kept hidden from the world.
Hidden from Jai.
Hidden even from me. And I know then that he won’t let me go. Not till he’s ravaged me, taken me, used me to fill that sick need inside of him.
He sniffs again, his nostrils twitching – a flicker of the beast inside – then he looks up at me. "Do you know how good you smell?" His voice is hoarse as if trying to contain himself.
And my eyes dart down to the apex of his legs, to where his arousal is evident, straining against his leather pants.
"Virgin," he says, and it’s not a question but a statement. "Have you any idea how rare it is to come across a virgin human female, one who has reached puberty and not yet been touched."
He bends over me. His hot breath gushes over my face, almost burning my skin. I swallow, fear courses through me. A muddy-brown sludge that fills my mouth with an acrid taste of sickness.
"I am going to fuck you, initiate you to shifter cock. I’m going to ram into you, cleave you in half, till you smell and walk like one of us. Till you feel more shifter than human. Till you carry one of us within you." He leans closer as he says this and I try to sink into the floor, further away from him, but of course there’s nowhere to go.
"Don’t be afraid, little runt, by the time I’m done, you’ll be asking for more. Do you know what it feels like to be initiated by a true male shifter?"
A strange look comes into his eyes, his pupils dilate, growing almost gray as if just the thought of the act is arousing him.
A sharp sting of dread fills my senses, a roaring sound in my ears that propels me to get out of here. Go. Escape. Find a way to escape. Delay him. Buy time. But how?
"How is shifter cock different from human cock?" I ask, my voice stumbling over the words.
Distract him.
"Ah! You are a curious one, little virgin." He breathes out again, forming his lips around the words almost reverently.
"Is being a virgin so important?"
Keep him speaking.
"Yes." His voice comes out short, irritated. "Unlike human males, we don’t share. And the human female must be a virgin for the union to produce strong, untainted shifter pups. But your race is so promiscuous, so open to selling your virginity for survival that it’s difficult to find a girl who’s a virgin, let alone someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
Jai, where are you? You'd better hurry or else...
"Your blood," he replies.
As if reminded of it, he bends down and nips my hand, not too hard, but enough to break skin and send pain shooting up my arm.
I recoil, try to make myself smaller.
"Your scent." Once more he presses his nose to my skin. "It hints at a purity, a rare kind of gene that makes for strong descendants."
He smiles, a baring of teeth.
"I’m going to make you mine. Own you. Pump into you day after day after day until you breed." Greed, a look of pure lust, crawls across his features.
My gut twists at what he’s saying. And I know he means it. He’s going to keep me prisoner. And not let me go. A shudder of revulsion, of helplessness runs down my spine. I have to get out of here.
Before I can say anything more, his tongue flicks out over my cheek and something inside me dies. My knees reflexively press together, a pathetic attempt at hiding, and as if sensing that slight movement he grabs both my hands and yanks them up over my head so my knuckles crash against the hard floor.
Pain jolts through my body and I bite down on my lips, determined not to scream out. Knowing he’d use it and throw it back at me. Use it to hurt me.
He moves then, so quickly that I don’t even have time to react before he’s grabbed the two halves of my shirt and torn them apart with such force that the cloth shreds into pieces. Air hits my exposed skin, my chest rising-falling-rising with panic.
Crazed fright fills my eyes, blinding me till I can’t see. Giving up all pretense of containing my fear, I scream again and again and again until he slams his chunky palm across my mouth, gagging me more effectively than the netting he’d stuffed in it earlier.
But that only makes me struggle even more.
At which he simply slides down and throws one massive leg over both of mine. He leans his weight on me, holding me captive. I can barely move.
Panting, my breath coming in short puffs, I try to push my body further into the floor. When I make to bring down my bound arms on his head, he simply swats at me and flings up his free arm to hold that in place.
Lowering his mouth, he runs his tongue down my neck, down the exposed top of my breasts. Down over my waist, down to the core of me. It’s like a thick prickly brush is being swept over my skin. Revulsion crawls under my skin. I shut my eyes tight to avoid having to look at him. Trying to retreat into that corner of my mind where I can separate myself from my body. Where I can pretend it’s not me lying here.
It’s not me who’s being licked by this beast.
It’s not me whose crotch he sniffs at and pauses, blowing a plume of hot air that almost burns that most sensitive part. I cry out in pain.
It’s not me who cringes, whose skin shrivels, whose knees try to close in on each other on their own. He forces his knee between mine. Gripping the edge of my jeans with his sharp teeth he forces the zipper down.
He lets go of my hands, not even flinching when I rain blows on his head, on whatever part of him I’m able to reach.
He tears my panties off so roughly the material burns my thighs. A fresh wave of panic has me struggling, trying to move, to get out from under him even as the rational part of me insists there’s no way out.
He grips my hips, squeezing so hard that pain shoots up my sides, almost blinding me. Then he buries his face against my center, breathing me in again. The weight of his head is like a rock and at the touch of his lips on me, I feel terror, the fear so intense I almost leave my body for a second.
And then something strange happens. He groans aloud as if his body is being split into two, and the air around him shimmers, flares, black sparks flare out of his body, tinged with an angry red. It should be pretty but it’s not. It’s as if the raging arousal is forcing him to shift, forcing the beast inside to come to the fore. For a second I forget the terror inside, forget what he’s doing to me.
I’ve heard of how shifters shift but I’ve never seen it. And I wish I didn’t have to see this either. I wish I didn’t have to feel the ugliness inside this half-human take over. I wish I didn’t have to feel the sickness in him sink through my skin.
And yet a part of me realizes it doesn’t have to be like this. That where there is evil there is good. That not all shifters can be this perverted. And yet there’s a macabre beauty in watching this man turn into a beast. Then all there is, his hate, his loathing for humans, his need to hurt me, to take away what I cherish the most in me. And it’s not just physical, no. He wants to sink his teeth into me and take that essence, that which is pure and clean. And I know nothing will stop him now.
My stomach lurches, bile rises to my throat, leaving me gasping for air.
There’s no escape.
Even as that realization sinks in, I struggle again, still unable to move my legs. A fresh wave of panic jolts me. Fear cuts through my mind, almost blinding me with the inevitability of what is to come. Trapped. Can’t escape. And that sends another fresh surge of anger vibrating up my spine.
I cannot let him do this to me.
Cannot.
Will not.
Gripping the palms of my still-bound hands together, I make a fist and, heaving the force of my entire body behind them, I ram them on his head. Ther
e’s a sharp crack of sound and a jolt of pain runs up my arm.
He grunts and his body goes stiff. Then the black and dirty-gold sparks pull back as if sucked right inside him, settling back into the parts of him they had come from. He is in human form again. And he is angry. Maddened that I’ve stopped his shift. Desperate because I haven’t let him take me in his animal form.
Lifting his head, he fixes me with those coal-black eyes. Rage sparks in them. They darken further, turning pitch dark. A muscle in his cheek twitches, then he slaps me once, twice. Red, hot pain cracks through my head and the world goes black.
Chapter Forty-Five
I come to flat on my back. I am on the bed, legs spread eagle and tied down. My hands spread out and bound to the bedposts.
The acrid taste of fear fills my mouth and something else from the gag he’s stuffed back in. A part of me notices all these details, yet I can’t take my eyes off him. The fear washes over me in waves of red and white, making thoughts blabber through my head. But something deep inside me asserts itself. Pushes up through the mindless chaos that I have become. I can’t give up. I can’t let this happen.
"So, you're awake." His voice is fierce, final. "You should be when I take you for the first time." I don’t hear the words, all I can see is the sword in his hands.
Jai’s sword.
If I die now it’d be by the blade of his sword.
And I know what I have to do.
He reaches down, sliding the sword under my bra with the intention of slashing through it, and I jerk up then so the blade cuts my skin.
Red-hot pain, more hot, more intense than anything I’ve ever felt, slices through me. It feels like I’m being sliced in half. Tears pour down my cheek as the agony bursts through my brain but already I know it’s not enough. It’s not deep enough, not nearly serious enough to kill me.
He flicks the blade up, my bra snaps apart but I don’t notice.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 142