by Pam Godwin
“They trade in untouched, underage pussy.” Van folded his arms around Amber, taking her with him as he leaned forward, his glower carved from stone. “Have you forgotten how I know that, Tate?”
“Not one person in this room has forgotten who you are, Van.” Tate bolted from the chair and faced the wall of windows.
Arms across his chest, spine stiff, Tate stared out into the darkness. Or maybe he was glaring at his reflection. She knew he hated the way he looked, but he hated Van more for capturing him because he was attractive.
Van closed his eyes, his expression unreadable. Amber curled tighter against his chest and whispered in his ear. Across the room, Josh reached for Liv’s hand and pulled it into his lap.
They had all been Van’s slaves once. And there were more at home—Ricky, Tomas, Luke, Martin, and Kate—all nursing their own invisible wounds under Camila’s roof. She didn’t spend as much time with Van as she did with the others, but the dynamic between him and his former captives was improving, slowly adapting into something a little less hostile.
Van had been the one to initiate a truce. The money Mr. E had collected—the payments from buyers who didn’t live long enough to indulge in their purchases—totaled in the millions. Van could’ve hoarded that money after Liv killed Mr. E, and maybe he did keep some of it. But he’d given an ungodly amount to the nine people he’d abducted and tortured.
Camila’s share funded her vigilantism. Did that mean she owed him her forgiveness? She wasn’t sure she’d ever reach that level of acceptance, and she wasn’t the only one.
Every person in the room fought inner battles, their fears birthed in the same attic, their perspectives cut by the same whip. Tragedy had shackled them together, but when the locks fell away, they remained unified in their soul-deep appreciation for freedom. They understood one another in a way no one outside their group could.
That intimate camaraderie was palpable now in the stillness that enveloped them. The silence didn’t isolate her. It connected her to them, her fellow survivors, her fighters, her closest friends.
“Camila wasn’t underage,” Tate said, glancing over his shoulder at Van. “She was seventeen when you took her. When you chose her.”
Not helping. Camila pinched the bridge of her nose. “Tate—”
“I didn’t choose her.” Van addressed Tate, but his eyes drilled into hers.
“What do you mean?” A chill hit her core.
“I was given your identity, location, and the buyer’s contact number for the delivery when I finished your training.”
She looked at Liv for validation.
“You were our first transaction.” Liv absently traced Josh’s fingers where they tangled with hers. “The only one Mr. E set up for us. Van and I handpicked all the others.”
Her hand slid up Josh’s thigh, fingernails scraping across denim, teasing the curve of his groin. She might’ve picked Josh because he met the buyer’s requirements, but in the end, she’d chosen him for herself.
“I’m sure your plan is one-hundred-percent vetted.” Liv stood and folded her hands behind her.
The capped sleeves of her corset-style shirt accentuated her delicate shoulders. The tiny waistline flared over the curves of her hips, drawing the eye along the tight fit of black denim on her legs. She wore casual clothes like lingerie, as if every cinch of fabric and peek of skin was deliberately designed to tantalize and distract. If she hid a knife behind her back, it would go unnoticed. Until it was too late.
“You’re fully prepared to walk into a nightmare. Your worst nightmare.” Liv prowled toward Camila, her lilt hypnotic, seductive. “You’ve envisioned the vilest scenarios even as you know your imagination hasn’t scratched the surface.”
True, she’d mentally prepared herself, but it didn’t stop her heart from racing. “Yes. Of course.”
“They’ll restrain you.” Liv circled her, trailing fingers along her arms. “Humiliate you. Whip you.”
“I survived it all before.” She stood taller.
“They’ll rape you.” Pausing inches from her face, Liv glared with enough potency to summon goose bumps. “You haven’t survived that.”
Liv’s fathomless brown eyes brimmed with tortured experience. Torture she’d both inflicted and received.
“I was trained how to submit.” Camila rolled back her shoulders. “I know how to keep my head down and attached to my body. I’ll survive.”
As if she’d have a choice. She wasn’t naïve. She could be raped, mutilated, then killed. But she wouldn’t let fear put the brakes on this plan. At that very moment, there were girls, trapped and alone, suffering the exact things Liv outlined.
“Maybe so.” Liv stroked a finger along Camila’s hairline, her gaze following the movement. “But I can’t let you return to that life.”
“I can’t let other girls—other people’s daughters—endure that life without doing something about it. I’m not asking for your permission.”
Liv closed her eyes. When she opened them, her resigned expression said she wouldn’t fight this. Nor would she support it.
“Your daughter is waiting for you.” Camila stepped back. “Go home. Keep her safe.”
Closing the gap, Liv framed Camila’s face with her hands and touched their foreheads together. With a brush of lips, she delivered a kiss, closed-mouthed but no less penetrating. “You will come back.”
With that, she left. Josh lifted Camila in a rib-breaking hug then followed Liv out, leaving Camila alone with Van, Amber, and Tate.
“Liv’s right,” Van said after a long period of silence. “You survived me, but I’m not them.”
“So you won’t help me?” Her stomach knotted.
She’d chased this trafficking operation for four years, and this was the first time she’d petitioned Van for help—beyond his financial support and the use of his home. She needed him now to deliver her into hell, because he was the only one who could.
“I know you’re not them.” She approached him, hands at her sides.
He leaned back on the couch, his eyes flinty and cold as he stroked Amber’s hair.
“I also know,” Camila said through a dry throat, “you have the grit to drag me in there by my hair, force me to my knees, and leave me there without a backward glance.”
Tate turned from the window, devastation rumpling his handsome face.
She would’ve rather asked him to play the part of the asshole slave trader. He might’ve been able to pull it off. Right up until it came time to leave her.
“Let’s say I can fill that role.” Van dug through his pockets and paused when Amber held up a toothpick. He bit it out of her hand, rolled it to the corner of his mouth, and looked at Camila. “You’re not a virgin.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? How would—?”
“I was trained to spot these things, and you…” He waved an arm, gesturing up and down her body. “You’re like a walking advertisement for fluid exchange. Hungry flesh and—”
“Van, take it down a notch.” Amber smacked away his waving hand and turned to Camila. “What he means is you radiate sex. It’s beautiful, really, how comfortable you are with your body and sexual appetites. You wouldn’t be that way if you hadn’t experienced pleasure with another—on your terms.”
Okaaaay. That was weird and intrusive and… Good God, was she that transparent? She locked down her muscles, trying to shut off any and all sexual oozing. But now she was hyper-aware, and the heat of Tate’s gaze roaming over her tight tank top wasn’t helping.
“Whether your experiences were good or bad,” Amber said, “you long for more. I can tell because your hunger, it…it sensualizes the way you carry yourself and how you interact with people. Like him.”
She followed Amber’s gaze to Tate.
Confusion stormed across his face as he stared at her. Had he assumed she was a virgin? She’d confessed her desires to him, but she never told him about the long line of nameless men, the years of meaningless sex,
all her failed attempts to find something or someone that would touch the places inside her she couldn’t feel anymore.
Camila refocused on Van. “So you have virgin radar. Congratulations. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had sex.” She’d given up on one-night stands over four years ago.
“Your hymen doesn’t grow back, girl.” Van smirked around the toothpick. “They’ll check.”
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t have to.”
Right. All he’d had to do was beat her into submission. But none of that mattered. The purpose of this tangent was to make a point, one Van had walked right into.
“When they check me”—she hid her disgust beneath a lazy shrug—“they won’t be able to sell me off.”
“They’ll kill you.” Van grinned, the fucker.
“They’ll keep her.” Tate rubbed the back of his head. “That’s her plan.”
“Bingo.” She sat on the arm of the love seat. “They won’t kill me, because I have a working vagina, and I’m not ugly.”
“You’re gorgeous,” Amber said with a small smile.
“Thanks. So they’ll take me to the head asshole. I’ll cry and beg for my life. Of course, that’ll just turn him on. He’ll try to fuck me and…” She looked at Van, his gaze bright with curiosity. “I’m not the same girl I was in that attic.”
“I know.”
Was that pride in his voice?
She’d spent the past ten years in dojos, learning how to use her body like a weapon. “I may not be able to defend myself against a gang bang, but I know how to unman a dick when it’s between my legs.”
“Larry McGregor?” Van raised a brow.
“Triangle choke. Killing him would’ve been easier than knocking him out.”
“Jesus, Camila.” Tate’s chest rose and fell. “What if you’re outnumbered?”
“That’s where the tracking device comes in. I know a guy. A dentist.” She opened her mouth and tapped the molar that would cost her fifty grand to drill tomorrow. “I’ve had him on standby to do a special kind of dental restoration.”
“A GPS chip in a dental filling?” Van rolled the toothpick between his lips. “Smart. But the battery life—”
“It’ll last two weeks, sending a signal every thirty minutes. It only uses the battery when I’m moving.”
Oh, the creative and illegal things one could buy on the web’s black markets.
Van sawed his jaw side to side. Was he loosening it up to snap at her? Or was he thinking through her plan?
He blew out a breath and looked her firmly in the eye. “I’ll do it.”
Amber gripped his hand as relief fluttered through Camila’s veins.
“Tate.” She met his frigid eyes. “You’ll track my position through the chip?”
He blinked, nodded. “Two weeks…You’ll most likely be in the belly of the operation before the battery dies.”
She hoped. “If I’m successful, if I kill him, I’ll contact you, and you won’t need to do anything.” She rubbed her slick palms on her jeans. “If you don’t hear from me, you’ll have the location of the operation and—”
“We’ll save you.” The conviction in his voice vibrated through her.
“No.” She matched his tone.
She picked at her cuticles, forcing her shoulders to relax.
“You and the others…” The freedom fighters. She smiled at that, because she knew she could count on her team. “You’ll finish where I failed.”
TWO DAYS LATER, CAMILA SAT on Tate’s bed, transfixed by the contours of muscle playing across his back as he dug through a mountain of dirty clothes. His sex appeal aggravated the nervous energy twitching through her, but she couldn’t look away. There was something she wanted, something Tate could give her.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m listening.” He shook out a wrinkled shirt, sniffed it, and tossed it back in the pile.
Van would arrive in three hours—three hours until she surrendered her freedom. Maybe only for a couple of weeks. Maybe forever.
The gravity of forever had plunged her into hours of introspection, creeping paralysis through her limbs and gnawing at her resolve. She wasn’t putting herself in chains simply for the cause of justice. There was a darker motive. A selfish desire to overpower the fears that haunted her. Her enslavement had wrought a deep dissatisfaction with her own life, and though her body had healed from the trauma, her bleeding soul demanded she do this.
With a roll of her tongue, she sought out the new filling in her molar. Indiscernible to the eye, the composite material felt foreign and obtrusive in her mouth. The GPS chip, however, instilled a sense of confidence in her plan. Seeing her movements on the software program and knowing Tate would be tracking her made her feel a little less alone.
She thought about giving Matias’ contact information to Tate. If Tate didn’t hear from her, he could pass along her last known position to the one person who might increase her chance of survival.
But she didn’t want to go into this with that seed of hope. Didn’t want to find herself tied to a bed in a pool of her own failure, waiting for someone who might not come for her. Matias had already abandoned her once. For that to happen a second time? The destitution that would follow might very well kill her. He was the only person from her past she had left.
Therein lay the root of her loneliness. Van had given her a taste of how depraved men could be. Matias had shown her how to turn innocent love into a lifetime of bitterness. The only sex she’d experienced had been quick, unsatisfying fucks.
She’d known Tate for six years, and now, in her final hours of freedom, she wanted to know him on a deeper level.
“I’ve never made love.” She held her breath.
He paused with his hand in the pile of clothes and glowered over his shoulder, his eyebrows drawn together. “Wait…so you are a virgin?”
“No. I’m—” She straightened her spine. “I’ve never had sex with someone I know.”
Strangers, all of them. No connection. No emotion. Just sex. She blamed herself for that. She didn’t let people in, didn’t trust anyone outside of those she lived with.
His lips pressed together in a grimace as he turned away.
Was he judging her? Self-righteous anger burned beneath her skin.
Digging at the bottom of the dirty clothes pile, he smelled another shirt and reared back with a pinched face.
“This one should work.” He tossed it at her.
It landed on her lap, and a waft of mold and sweat hit her nose. Jesus, did he have a month’s worth of wet towels in that pile? For a guy who was fussy about hygiene, he had some strange abhorrence to doing laundry.
He joined her on the bed, lifted a lock of her hair, and sniffed it. “You stink, but not enough.”
“What?” She slammed her teeth together and immediately slackened her jaw, remembering the expensive electronics in her molar. “I haven’t showered in three days.”
She’d spent hours working in the garden and running outside, letting herself get sweaty and dehydrated. A glance at the mirror earlier confirmed she looked appropriately filthy and starved, like a girl who’d been locked in Larry McGregor’s barn for a week.
“I’ll smell straight-up offensive after I put on this shirt.” She set it aside and met his eyes. “You’re evading my question.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
No, she hadn’t. She didn’t want to demand it. “It’s different, right? Better when you have sex with someone who cares about you?”
He leaned forward, elbows braced on his spread knees, and stared at her out of the corner of his eye.
As secretive as she’d been about her one-night stands, he was even more surreptitious, sneaking out at night and stumbling home in the early hours of dawn, refusing to tell her where he went. Maybe he was searching for something, too.
“You care about me.” She looked for a flicker of affirmation, any indication of soften
ing in his stony expression, and found none. Her stomach sank. “At least, I thought you did. I mean, I’m grateful you’re not fighting me on this plan, but why aren’t you?”
“Let’s not do this, Camila.” His gaze ping-ponged between her and the floor.
“Which part?”
“All of it.” He rose, stepped away, then hesitated, changing direction mid-stride to stand over her, hands on his hips. “I won’t ruin our friendship by muddling it with sex. Nor will I let you walk into”—he waved an arm, seemingly wrestling for words—“into a place resembling Satan’s fiery asshole thinking you don’t have my support. I’m here for you, and I’ll be here when you return.”
But what if she never came back? What if she died, forgotten and alone, having never experienced the kind of love that connected two people in the most intimate way?
He crouched before her and gripped the backs of her calves, his hands warm and welcoming on her skin. “Is there a chance in hell I could talk you out of this suicide mission?”
“No.” Definitely not.
“So what’s the point in trying? It’s not like you need my approval.”
His push back would’ve shown she mattered. Maybe she wasn’t the center of his universe, but it would’ve been nice to feel…what? Commanded? Forced? Reined in by someone who loved her enough to care about her wellbeing? Maybe she just wanted to be fucked so hard she felt it emotionally, spiritually, instead of just physically.
A lump knotted in her throat, and she swallowed it down. She was letting her emotions run rampant, twisting her into a jumble of contradiction. Had he opposed her mission, it would’ve pissed her off.
She’d been chained up, beat up, kicked down, and held in the dregs of her weakest point. But she never stopped fighting, never gave up. She’d mustered what little courage remained and chose to live, to learn, to hate and kill, to do whatever it took to not just overcome, but to evolve.
He knew all that, and the intense gleam in his eyes said he was confident she’d do it again.
“I would’ve showered,” she said with a soft smile, “if you wanted to tie me up and fuck me.”
