by R. A. Smyth
“You’re not the usual guy.” He eyes me warily.
“No. He couldn’t make it. I’m here in his place.”
Finishing his assessment of me, he moves on to the guard, giving him a once-over. He still doesn’t relax his tense stance, and I’m getting annoyed with every passing second I have to spend in this STD-infested room.
“Well?” I snap impatiently. “Have you got information for me or not?”
Focusing his gaze back on me, he hesitates before nodding his head.
“Everyone’s been fightin’ over Beast territory the last year,” he begins. I’ve gleaned enough from the last few days to know the Beasts were a formidable gang that ran half the town until a few years ago when something happened. No one seems to know what exactly, just that they’re dead and buried, and their territory is up for grabs. “But The Reaper Rejects have been makin’ a name fer themselves recently. They’ve been claimin’ the land fer themselves.”
Reaper Rejects? The name sounds strangely familiar, but I can’t place it. I can’t think where the fuck I’d know a Black Creek gang name from. “Who are they?”
The guy shrugs. “No one knows. They’re small, but they’re gainin’ territory fast enough to be noticed.”
The guard lifts out a wad of bills and hands them over. “Keep an eye on them. We’ll want to know more when we’re back next time.”
Snatching the money out of the guard’s hands, the guy mumbles an agreement and scurries out of the room. I don’t really know what any of that meant, or why it matters to our parents.
***
I’ve spent the past several hours lying on top of my bed in my motel room—yes, that’s right, a fucking motel, and a run-down ramshackle one at that—fucking around on my phone, texting the guys to see how they’re all getting on—doesn’t seem like they’re fairing much better than I am—and chatting with Hadley. Thankfully, we’re heading home in the morning, and I’ll be back in bed with her by tomorrow night. I’ve missed her more than I thought I would. It’s weird, I’ve never felt this way before. I care about the guys, obviously, but I’ve never felt this overpowering need to spend all my time with another living soul before, but if the distance between us this week has taught me anything, it’s that I can no longer live without Hadley in my life, in my arms, every fucking day.
She’s started sending these teasing videos every day into the group chat with me, West, and Cam that West set up before we left for Easter break, and as I respond to the guys’ latest string of messages in our own private chat, a notification comes up from her, showing there’s a video attached.
Clicking into the chat, an image comes up showing her very naked chest, with the triangle ‘play’ button in the middle of the image.
Faster than lightning, I jump up from the bed and cross the small space to flick the lock between mine and the bodyguard’s adjoining rooms, and I do the same with the door leading outside before collapsing back on the bed and getting comfy.
There’s already a reply from Cam, but I ignore it as I press play, watching as she lifts the video, giving me an up-close view of her soft, puffy lips and hooded eyes before she slowly trails her fingers down the valley between her breasts, moving the phone to follow the movement.
She stops to massage her tit, pulling on her nipple, moaning softly, and I push my hand beneath my boxers, tugging on my growing erection. Moving back to the center of her body, she paints a line with her finger all the way to her clit as I pump myself.
Just as she sinks her fingers inside herself, she moans, ending on an evil sounding giggle before the video comes to an end.
What the fuck?
After staring, confused, at the screen for a second, I start frantically typing a reply, ignoring Cam’s grievances about leaving him hanging.
Mason: Touch yourself.
Her reply is instantaneous.
Little Warrior: I am.
Mason: Show us.
An image pops up of her fingers knuckle deep inside her dripping wet pussy, but it’s not enough. I need to hear her come.
Pressing the button for a video call, it rings once before she accepts, and I get to see her beautiful flushed cheeks.
“You wet for me, baby?” I smirk, running my thumb over my tip and wetting the head of my dick.
“So wet,” she pants.
“Show me.” The words are barely more than a growl as she lowers the phone to give me the perfect view of her pussy. She lazily pumps her fingers as I watch, jerking harder on my dick as I pretend I’m sinking into her hot center.
“Rub your clit, baby.”
She moans as she does what I tell her.
“That’s it, baby. Tell me what you’re picturing.”
“You,” she pants.
“What am I doing?”
Another few breathless pants before she responds, “You’re using your mouth on me.”
“Yeah, I’m working you up real good.”
“Uh huh.” They’re the only words she seems capable of forming.
“Are the others there too?”
“Yeah.”
“What are they doing?”
“West’s—”
I pump faster on my dick as I add the guys to the video call. Cam’s topless, and by the looks of things, he’s halfway to getting himself off already, while West looks as stoic as always.
Before either of them can say anything, Hadley moans, and I focus back on her image, clicking on it so it fills the whole screen—I definitely don’t need to see either of those guys’ jizz faces.
“Fuck, baby, yeah. I’m fucking your ass so hard right now,” Cam growls, making Hadley moan.
“Pinch your nipples, Firefly. Pretend it’s my teeth,” West commands. After another moment of breathy moans, West fires out his next order. “Reach into my bottom drawer. There’s a rabbit and some lube, lift it out.”
Doing as he says, she lifts out the vibrator and lubes it up.
“That’s it. Pretend it’s Mason’s dick filling you up.”
I watch enraptured as the pink device sinks into her sweet cunt. I’m staving off my own release, not ready for this to be over with, but her moans make it so goddamn difficult as I twist and pull on my cock, I imagine I’m actually sinking into her wet heat.
“Mason,” she moans.
Hadley cries out our names as she comes, and a second later, I hear a door open. “Well, well, what do we have here? Looks like I’m missing out on all the fun,” I hear Beck say.
In the next second, the phone is tossed onto the floor and all I can hear is Hadley giggling before she starts to moan again, the obvious sounds of fucking coming down the line. Lucky bastard.
I quickly disconnect and clean myself up, deciding to go check with the bodyguard what we’re doing for dinner tonight. Maybe I can ply him with greasy food and a few beers and whittle some useful information out of him.
I knock lightly on the door between our adjoining rooms. When he doesn’t respond, I flick the lock, testing to see if his side is unlocked. It is, and the door swings open.
Before I can announce my presence, I hear him talking to someone. Peering my head through the doorway, I catch him looking at something on his laptop at the small two-person table.
“This kid, he’s impressive,” he says to whoever is on the other end of the line. Focusing on his laptop screen, there’s a video playing and as I watch, a kid barely older than eight or nine, tackles a kid that looks twice his age with all the ferocity of a grizzly bear. Taking him to the ground, the kid beats on his opponent until he’s unmoving and bloody beneath him. “He’ll make an excellent recruit. We should get someone out there to pick him up ASAP.”
What the fuck? I stand frozen in the doorway, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing and hearing. The shitty tequila from earlier must have warped my brain. There’s no way I fucking heard that right. Kids? They’re recruiting kids? Surely not. I must have misunderstood.
“There’s a couple of other potentials too.”
He laughs. “In the tape I watched yesterday, one kid lit another on fire, over a loaf of bread. He's definitely worth bringing in.”
Fucking hell. There goes the idea of misinterpreting him.
“Oh yeah?” Pausing the video, he comes out of the program while I stand there frozen. “Got it, one sec.” Clicking on something, another recording pops up. This one is of a dark room and it’s difficult to make out what’s happening from this far away, but as a high-pitched scream blasts out from the speaker, I shudder. I’ve never heard anything like it. The loud cry is filled with unimaginable agony before it suddenly cuts off, making the room suddenly feel even quieter than it did before.
“Fuck, I love it when they scream.” The bodyguard chuckles, staring riveted at the screen. Bile climbs up the back of my throat and I stumble back to my room in a daze, that scream playing on repeat in my head. I couldn’t see what was happening on the screen, but I don’t need to, to know whoever it was, was being fucking tortured.
My mind races as questions fly across it. What the hell was going on in that video? Why are our parents recruiting kids? I mean, kids?! I can’t wrap my head around it. I always knew my dad was a sick man. The glee in his eye when he’d bring his belt down on me with all the force he could muster was enough of an indicator into the cruelty he hid inside him, but this? It’s a whole other level of sick and twisted.
Ensuring the lock on the adjoining door is engaged, I collapse onto the bed. My hunger is long gone as I stare unseeingly at the damp ceiling. Kids. That’s what all of this is about. And they’re fucking torturing them. Why? As punishment? To keep them in line?
Sighing, I rub the heel of my hand against my eyelids as I try to erase the echo of that girl’s pain-soaked screams from my brain. It’s so much fucking worse than we ever imagined. Being involved in black market, assassins-for-hire services, is one thing, but stealing kids off the street and forcing them to become monsters is just…fuck, I don’t even know the word. Mind blowing. Sick. Incomprehensible.
How did our parents ever expect us to be on board with this? Or was their plan all along to get us so wrapped up in the illegal shit they’re up to that when they did eventually tell us, we’d have no way out of it all.
I’m still in a daze the next day. Thankfully, my usual quiet demeanor and the hard, cold mask I wear around others comes in handy, and the bodyguard doesn't pick up on the maelstrom going on inside my head. All the way home, I keep opening up the group chat with all six of us, desperately wanting to tell them what I found out, but we agreed to keep any information until we were face to face, just to be safe.
After a final debrief in our parents’ offices—one I don’t pay attention to—the four of us exit and quickly get in the car to head back to campus. The mood is subdued, and I have the feeling I’m not the only one with grim news to share. On the bright side, I get to spend all day tomorrow in bed with my girl. Nothing like a lazy Sunday with your best friends and your girl to reset your mood after a shitty week.
It’s late by the time we arrive back on campus, and there's a cold chill in the air now the sun has set. Hawk’s phone goes off as we’re all grabbing our bags from the trunk. “Yeah?” he answers. I’m not paying him much attention as I reach for my own duffel, closing the trunk. “What the hell do you mean, you can’t find her?”
Those four words, combined with his snarling, venomous tone, has all of us focusing on him. What the fuck has happened now? His jaw is clenched so tight I’m surprised his teeth don’t shatter as he listens to whatever is being said on the other end of the line.
“We’re coming now. We’d better find her or you’re a dead man.”
Hanging up the phone, he looks at each of us with unadulterated fury blooming in his eyes. The next words he bites out destroy any hope I had of curling up with my girl for the rest of the night.
“Hadley’s missing.”
Chapter 25
My head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton wool. Where the fuck am I? What the hell happened last night? It’s not like I drink or do drugs….drugs.
The flicker of an image skitters across my memory, but I lose it before I can catch a hold of it. I try to dig deeper into my forgotten memories, desperately trying to find something that could tell me what happened last night, but I only succeed in giving myself a headache.
Something doesn’t feel right, though. The pounding in my skull as I try to turn my head only confirms that, and when I lift my arm, something cold presses painfully against the skin, a rattle echoing around the room as something pinches my wrist.
What the fuck?
I pry my eyes open and squint down at my hand. It takes me a second to focus and I blink furiously. Even once my vision clears, I still can’t process what I’m seeing. There’s a metal cuff around my wrist, the other end attached to a ring on the wall, chaining me to it like I’m a fucking animal.
My heart rate picks up as sweat breaks out along my forehead and down my back, and I force myself to think through the fog in my head. My eyes dart around the dimly lit room, nausea churning in my stomach, and I have to swallow it down before I throw up all over the floor.
This is my worst nightmare come to life. I slam my eyes shut, breathing past the nausea as I plead to whatever God is above that this is a dream. There’s no way this is real. It can’t be. I already escaped from here. I won’t live to escape a second time.
Another memory flashes across the back of my eyes, and I manage to latch on to it before it disappears. Flashes of meeting Michael at the dining hall—he wanted to apologize—followed by flickers of the two of us walking toward the lake. I vaguely remember it was a nice evening and he suggested going for a walk.
Everything after that is hazy. God, do they have Michael too? Is he okay? Another round of bile works its way up the back of my throat and it takes everything in me to swallow it down. No way am I going to puke up my guts and let whoever comes in here next realize how deathly terrified I am.
Time passes in a meaningless blur, and I’m still trying to come to terms with my new reality when the door unlocks and swings open, the light from beyond blinding me and painting the large man blocking the doorway in darkness, preventing me from seeing who it is as I squint up at him from my less-than-ideal position on the narrow bed.
“Ah, good, you’re awake.” Lawrence’s cold voice runs over me like water, instantly chilling me to the bone. Being back here is one thing; being back here with him is something else entirely.
As he strides into the room, the door slams shut behind him. I hurriedly try to sit up, wanting to be in a better position to defend myself should I need to, but my muscles feel like jelly and I fall back down when I put my weight on my free arm.
The asshole laughs at my attempt. “It will be a while longer before you gain full control of your muscles, but that works in my favor for now.” His smug tone, and the way his lip curls maliciously has me swallowing around the lump in my throat.
He moves to stand in front of me so I’m forced to tilt my head back and look up at him. He reaches his hand out to stroke my hair and the second his fingers wrap around the wavy strands, I jerk my head away. His other hand whips up to slap me across the face faster than I can blink, my head snapping to the side. The sudden movement only adds to the pounding headache I’ve got going, and I can feel the sting and flush of my cheek as blood rushes to the surface.
He goes back to stroking my hair reverently, as though nothing happened. “Tut tut…” He laments disappointedly, sounding as though he’s reprimanding a disobedient child. “I told you, Dove. I told you, you were mine. I wanted to give you everything.”
“Yeah, everything but my freedom,” I snap vehemently. I have no idea where the sudden courage has come to talk to him like that. Maybe it’s the drugs, or knowing I’m probably going to die in this cell—or even worse, wish I had.
He shrugs uncaringly. “Your mother had freedom and she made the wrong choice. I couldn’t have you do the same.”
> My mother? What the fuck does she have to do with any of this?
“Yet you still found a way to defy me. At first I kind of liked the challenge of chasing you.” His fingers move to stroke over my cheek before running down my neck, the light touch making me shiver with revulsion.
In the next second, his hand is wrapped securely around my throat, squeezing until I can’t inhale more than the smallest wisp of air. “But you just had to take it too far, didn’t you? You just had to fuck him, you dirty slut.”
I’m barely paying attention to his words as I focus on trying to push him away with my hands, but there’s no energy in my movements.
He moves to straddle me, pinning me beneath him as panic courses through me. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this helpless and my fear only escalates as dark spots bloom in my vision, and he uses his weight to push me further into the thin mattress.
He lowers his face in front of me so it’s all I can see, even as darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision. “You’re exactly like your mother,” he growls furiously. “Whores.” Spittle hits my lips and cheeks as he sneers down at me. “But that’s fine. You want to act like a slut, I’ll treat you like one. I was going to give you everything. Now, I’m going to lock you away here and leave you to the mercy of the men that have been dying for a taste of you since the day you arrived.” He laughs spitefully. “You thought this place was a nightmare you needed to escape before? You’ll be wishing for death by the end of the week.
“I was too soft with you. I thought killing your little friend would be enough to break you.” My eyes flare at that revelation, even as the darkness seeps across my vision, blurring his devil-like features. “Clearly, I was wrong. Well, I won’t make that mistake again. You’ll be well and truly broken this time. Who knows, maybe then, when you’re nothing more than an empty shell, begging for death to claim you, I'll take you back and save you from this hell.” His fingers trail down over my abdomen and he pushes his way beneath my panties while his other hand tightens around my throat painfully, cutting off the last of my air. My energy quickly wanes as the black spots become large blobs. The last thing I’m aware of as everything goes black is the feel of his fingers shoving their way inside me.