by Ker Dukey
“How are you feeling?”
She whimpers. “Been better.”
“You look like shit,” I admit with a laugh. Her wounds are superficial, painful, but she will heal.
“Feel like it too. Ya roigrala etu igru.” I lost this game, she whispers for only my ears.
Benny slams his fist down on the front of her cage. “You’ve checked on her. Now tell me, goddammit. Who’s been stalking Bethany!”
Kami’s eyes widen, fear flashing in her pretty eyes. I hate the look on her. She’s always so brave and fierce. It’s been engrained in her since birth. Why is she giving up so easily?
I found out Lucy had been using my company system to hack through my networks and computers when the IP address for a client on Elizabeth’s site led back to my fucking club.
Lucy had been with me a long fucking time, and loyal to a fault, so her betrayal stung more than I’d ever like to feel for someone so worthless.
She deserves my wrath more than Monster’s. Together would be ideal, but I’m not sure he’s willing to play with me any longer.
“It was Lucy,” I snap over my shoulder. “Now, are you going to let me stay out of the cage so I can do my damn job to help you?”
Fuck, I hate when my mask slips around Benny. Sometimes I let it slip on purpose. The motherfucking glee in his eyes when I do is all the power I need to know he gets off on it.
Confusion creases his brow as a million questions seemingly battle inside his head. “I hate that cunt. I’m going to fucking kill her.” The evil glint in his dark eyes promises just that. His jaw clenches. “If you want me to trust you, Tanner, or Cassian, or fucking Viktor, then you need to start showing me where your loyalty truly lies. Right now, I feel like you see me as your fucking puppet, for you to pull and tighten the strings as you see fit.” His muscles pull taunt under the tanned tattooed skin, as if it’s his demons moving through his blood.
“I’ve always been loyal to you, Benjamin. It’s Monster and Master. You know this. You feel it.”
I’m showing him my vulnerability. He’s a weakness in my shield, but he needs to see what this is. What we are. I didn’t play him.
“I want to strip Lucy layer by layer for what she has done,” I growl. “She infiltrated my network to set me up. Let me have my vengeance too. We can gut the bitch together.”
His nostrils flare, the black of his pupils expanding and swallowing any speck of color. Twisting his lips into a snarl, he nods down at Kami.
“Until then, I want you to show me it’s Monster and Master like you say. Hurt this bitch for me.” He says me like a caress. It would be a gift to him in his eyes.
I clench my jaw, knowing what I must do to earn his trust. Without hesitation, I snag Kami’s wrist and jerk her into a sitting position. My eyes meet hers for a moment, and I implore her to understand. The instant I think she gets my message, I twist her hand hard.
A bloodcurdling scream fills the air. Now, seemingly afraid of me, Kami leans away from me, jerking her injured hand toward her chest.
“Ublyudok,” she pants. And she’s right, I am a bastard.
But I broke the wrist on her right. She’s dominant with her left. There was some leniency shown in my move, and it’s not the first time I’ve broken something of hers. She’ll get over it. She always does.
Benny growls, but it’s one of approval. I scoot out of the cage, then slam the door shut. She gapes at me as I lock the cage back, venom in her stare. Rising, I walk straight up to Benny. His gaze drops to my bare chest, curiosity dancing in his eyes. I’ve always been careful around him. Dangling the mystery in front of him like a tasty treat for a puppy. He’s so hungry for it.
Our eyes lock for a heated stare. Benny’s not gay, but neither am I. I’m just a very sexual person. I’ve been attracted to both males and females. It has nothing to do with what’s between their legs and everything to do with what’s inside their skull.
If I think it’ll be a challenge to possess them, I want them with every ounce of my being.
Benjamin Stanton is the most difficult of them all.
Which means he gets my dick very hard.
With alarming speed, he jerks me around and shoves me against the outer cage door I just occupied. He’s fucking strong in his monstrous state, easily able to pin me. I want to go wild and crush my fist through his nose at the thought of being owned when I’m used to doing all the owning. But then his stone-hard erection presses into my ass.
Is this how Niko felt when I’d exert my power of him?
A tiny thrill shoots through me and my own cock stirs.
“Is this what you want?” he snarls, the taunt hateful. “For me to rape you?” He rubs himself against me—one of his power moves. Again, there’s that gleam in his eyes whenever he uses my sexuality over me. But he doesn’t realize he’s slowly beginning to like our sexual charge. He may not understand it, but he likes it. His cock is hard for me. The desire swims in his eyes at times for me. It’s always been just a matter of time before I’ll win this little game with him and show him what it’s like to fuck a god.
“We make a good team,” I grit out, the urge to fist my cock overwhelming.
“I want you to lure Lucy here so I can crush her windpipe with my bare hands,” he snarls. “Make it happen. And then, I want to get my doll back here so I can put my dick inside her. You want to watch so fucking badly, you’re going to watch. I’ll put you back in this cage and fuck her right against the glass like this.” He thunders his hips against me, his cock mashing painfully against my ass.
Benny and I both know he would never share his precious dolly.
It’s as though he’s convinced himself the reason I did it was because I’m a pervert dead set on watching him fuck her. But I know him. He’d carve my eyeballs out with a spoon before he let me be a voyeur to them.
“I never cared about seeing her,” I utter, my voice low with insinuation. “You know who I wanted to watch.”
His cock thumps against my ass, and I fight off a triumphant smile. With a growl, he releases me and jerks away. “Make it happen. Get Lucy here.”
I turn around to make sure he sees my own hard-on. To let him know he has some sexual power over me. I need for him to see this so we can slip back into our dominant roles of master and monster. His gaze drops for a second before he pins me with a glare.
“Now, Viktor.” He growls with another wicked gleam in his eyes.
I yank my phone from the pocket of my slacks and dial Lucy. She doesn’t answer, so I leave her a message.
“Something important has come up and we need to talk. Meet me in an hour at the club,” I say for the recording, my voice calm, not wanting to alert her.
I hang up and level Benny with a hard stare. “I’ll get ahold of Lucy, then I’ll let you do whatever it is you want to do to her. Master takes care of Monster.”
A flicker of relief dances in his stormy eyes.
I’m just about to speak when my phone buzzes. As soon as I see the picture, my chest tightens. This game just got a whole lot more complicated.
“Fuck,” I hiss, fury at Lucy threatening to consume me.
Benny’s scowl is murderous and the vein in his neck throbs. “What is it?”
With an irritated sigh, I turn my phone toward him to show him the picture of Elizabeth Stanton—his Bethany doll—tied up naked to a chair. Her mark that Benny created on her chest weeping blood. It should read,
Benny’s Doll.
Lucy, the woman with a death wish, has cut through his name and carved a new word above that one.
My Doll.
Here I thought the game was getting close to ending. There are more players than I anticipated. Smart, cunning, vicious players.
The game is just getting started.
An animalistic roar from the beast before me signifies it’s most definitely just begun.
Benny
THUD.
Thud.
Thud.
A roar rips
from my ribcage, pulling and snapping tendons. Every muscle tightens and flexes, the skin-stretching taut over them. This vibrating intensity thunders through my veins and settles in my chest. I swear, I can see the fucking heart I let feel again beat from the cage containing it.
Black clouds roll into my thoughts and acid rain pelts down through the marrow of my being, corroding and destroying all rationality. Rage, blinding and terrifying, takes hold of me, igniting into an inferno of inescapable wrath. I rush Tanner, snatching the cell phone from him, and stare down at my Bethany.
This can’t be real.
She’s mine.
She’s fucking mine.
How dare Lucy touch her. Carve into her perfect skin. It’s mine to blemish. Not hers. She belongs to me.
Static hums in my mind. I want to kill. Maim and destroy. Annihilate. I just found her. Just got her back with me, and this nobody sadistic freak thinks she can play games with me? Me!
“Listen, Benjamin.” Tanner, or Viktor, or whoever the fuck he is, tries to placate me. Does he not see the dragon is about to breathe fucking fire?
Grabbing him around the throat, I force his head back against the glass of his cage.
“Is she working under your command?” I will open him up from gullet to groin if this is him playing me.
What a shame that would be.
His eyes narrow and there’s something in them. Hurt maybe. Well, fuck him. His blade bitch has my Bethany. “She fucked us both,” he growls.
Why is the question. Why the hell would she want my doll?
“Where would she go?” An unexplainable blanket of calm shrouds me. Every emotion ripping through me shrinks into an explosive vault that I push down into my soul. I need to focus. I have to get her back. Tanner has taught me many things over the years, and losing your mind in a moment of chaos is the worst thing you can do.
Tanner’s eyes flare with uncertainty, the façade he hides behind so well slipping more and more in my company. “We need to check the cameras, and I have everyone tracked. Cells. Cars. Necks,” he answers coolly. Of course he fucking does. My eyes flare in warning, and he shakes his head.
“Your neck doesn’t have a tracker,” he confirms. I guess he gets to be a free dolly…for now. “We need to go to the club.” The nagging voices keep tapping at my skull to speak, to encourage me to let the rage out, but if I do, I’ll lose myself to it, then lose her because of it.
I want to rampage and kill every living thing on this earth so there’s not a single threat to my doll.
My fucking doll.
“If you play me in anyway, I won’t go for caging you next time,” I snarl, my voice low and deadly. “I will bleed you out instead, then split your Kami straight up the fucking center with a hacksaw and hang her from the entrance of your damn club for all to see what a gaping cunt she is.”
“Are we not friends, Benjamin?” he asks me, a sadness in his tone I’ve never heard before.
“I don’t know, Tanner, are we?”
His features grow stormy. “We are. And since we’re friends, no more secrets. My given name is Viktor. It’s what my friends called me back home.”
A soft voice calls from next to him, and my eyes drag over to the cop bitch I took earlier.
She’s scrambling, trying to get to her feet. “Oh crap,” she groans. “I knew you two were freaking weird. Detective Scott is going to have my ass.”
She’s too flippant for someone locked in a fucking cage with a monster prowling outside. Two long strides and I’m in front of her, my breath misting the glass in wake of my heavy exhales.
“What makes you think Detective Shit Face is going to get anywhere near that ass? Do you not see where you are?” I roar.
She glances between Viktor and I before muttering a string of curse words under her breath. I didn’t really pay her much attention before, but now, close-up, the youthfulness of her skin and her unsure stance becomes obvious. Her gaze falls to Kami two cells over. I like this whole glass thing. They can see the brutality of my wrath when they disobey and are bad dollies.
Kami looks like she’s on the brink of passing out, and I relish that sting she must have felt deep in her soul when her precious Viktor betrayed her.
“Is she dead?” Cop Doll whispers, her arms wrapping around her waist as the true realization of what she’s in for settles into her bones. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I should have listened and kept my nose out of it.”
My fist hammers on the cage. I don’t have time for some ditzy bitch to have a panic attack on me. I need to get to Bethany. I could take some of my aggression out on this bitch. Make her bleed, then dump her body at Dillon’s feet as a “fuck you” on the way out of town once I have my doll back.
“You don’t act like a detective,” Viktor pipes up, his gaze probing and assessing. Always the calculating one, my friend.
She bites down on her lip and brushes some stray hairs from her face. “I’m not a detective.” She shakes her head. “Not yet, anyhow.” Then, a shrug. She says it like there’s a chance she’ll be leaving here. Do I give off a unicorn vibe? Like this is a fucking vacation home?
“If you don’t explain further, I’m going to lose my temper and end up using your head as a basketball. How many times do you think I could bounce you before your fucking skull pops?” I growl, my patience wearing thin.
“That’s terrifying,” she states with a curl of her lip. “And gross.”
What the fuck? I’ve slipped into the twilight zone.
“Dillon,” Viktor barks, interrupting this obnoxious exchange. “Who are you to him?”
She’s still frowning at me as she answers him. “No one. Well…I’m his partner’s responsibility. He was just showing me the ropes and I got carried away. I thought I could help.”
I slam my palm down to stop her annoying chatter. “And look where it got you.” I smirk, hoping I look evil as fuck doing it.
Another dimwitted detective they’re training.
“I sent him pictures of you.” She raises a brow. A “fuck you” if I ever saw one. I thought my dirty doll had balls. This one’s are pretty fucking big.
“You’re lying,” I grate out.
How would she have done that? She couldn’t have. Stupid doll.
“When I was at the club and you two were arguing. He will know you have me. Everything will be okay.” She’s trying to reassure herself, and in doing so, she’s poking the fucking giant hungry beast in front of her.
If Dillon knows I’m alive, my life just got ten times more complicated.
Bethany.
Fuck, I don’t have time for this.
I snag the keys and unlock her cell door. She backs up as far into the corner as she can.
“Nothing to say now?” I snarl as I approach.
“Benjamin, she could prove useful,” Viktor says in that cool, level tone of his. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time.” He jerks his head, gesturing for us to leave.
What use could she possibly be to me?
I reach toward her, and she flinches. The beast beneath my skin roars with power. Savagely, I tear at her clothes. She begins to cry, soft and pitiful. It’s music to my goddamn ears.
“Please don’t. Please don’t,” she begs as I strip her down to her white grandma panties. She isn’t wearing a bra, but instead has her tits wrapped in a bandage. Why?
“What’s that for?”
She’s glaring at me, and I almost want her to fight back.
“I don’t like having breasts,” she mumbles.
“I could relieve you of them if you’d like?” I grin, pulling my blade from my boot.
“Monster, Bethany is suffering while we’re delaying. Come,” Viktor demands, and he’s right. This will have to wait.
I back out of her cage and slam the door, locking it back up. “Clothes are a privilege, Cop Doll. I’ll let you know if you ever earn the right to wear them again.”
She doesn’t respond. I don’t expect her to.
Slipping
back into his shirt and grabbing his jacket, Victor’s eyes train on Kami, who has wiggled herself up into less of a slouch.
“Cassian,” she wheezes, her eyes widening as he begins backing toward the doorway. She already fucked up and told me his real name. No tricking me now. Stupid cunt.
“Don’t you dare leave me in here, Cass,” she begins, tears leaking from her eyes. I want to cum all over the glass at the sight of them.
He is my fucking doll, you broken, used-up whore.
Master bows for one.
Me.
“Viktor,” she chokes out, once again using his real name, her sobs overwhelming her. But he’s already leading the way out of the bunker. With everything that’s been exchanged between us, I’m not one hundred percent sure I should trust him. However, I don’t have any choice right now. This wasn’t how the day was supposed to pan out. Bethany and I were supposed to be the ones on the road together. To start a new life.
Slipping into the car, Viktor checks his appearance in the vanity mirror over his sunshade, then looks over to me. “You loosened a tooth.”
“Is that all?” I scoff. He’s fucking lucky.
The name Kami called him still rattles around inside my skull, questions dancing around because of it. Viktor. I’ve never heard that one before, and she used a thick accent when calling him it.
“So, Viktor, huh?” I ask him. “Sounds foreign.”
His jaw tightens. The air around us thickens and closes in until it’s too hard to take a breath. I have to open the window to relieve the tension.
“My birth name is Viktor Vasiliev,” he says, finally. “When I moved here, I was given the name Cassian Harris. A whole record was made for me. To make me a United States citizen.”
A United States citizen?
“You’re not American? Where are you from?”
He appears to ponder my question, and I study him for the answer, to catch him in any lies. “Russia,” he finally announces on an exhale. Like he’s just lifted a giant boulder from his shoulders.
What the fuck?