Depredation

by Natalie Bennett

  Copyright

  DEPREDATION by Natalie Bennett

  © 2018 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where the publisher or author specifically grant permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: RDADESIGNS

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

  Blurb

  Kidnapped. Tortured. Corrupted.

  He stole me away in the middle of the night.

  A windowless cell with a floor of stone became my new home.

  He took and he took, until I had nothing left to entertain him with.

  And then I was abandoned and left to die, just like all the other girls.

  He has no idea I’m alive.

  He doesn’t know he woke the devil inside me.

  When I find him, nothing in the world will be strong enough to save his tar black soul.

  18+ Reader discretion is highly advised.

  Complete standalone novella. No cliffhanger. Loosely connected to DEVILS WITH HALOS.

  Quick note

  I’m not going to add a long, drawn-out warning for this book. Sticking with the minimal basics, DEPREDATION is not a romance. Don’t search for redeeming qualities in these characters because you won’t find any.

  This is not a fucked up love story with an anti-hero who changes his ways. Harper and J will not in any way give you feels. (Unless they're the rage-y, murderous kind)

  DEPREDATION contains various dark themes some readers may find offensive, including extreme violence.

  This book is a work of fiction and meant only for entertainment purposes.

  Thank you for reading.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Playlist

  Prelude

  –Chapter One–

  –PART ONE–

  –Chapter Two–

  –Chapter Three–

  –Chapter Four–

  –Chapter Five–

  –Chapter Six–

  –Chapter Seven–

  –Chapter Eight–

  –Chapter Nine–

  –Chapter Ten–

  –Chapter Eleven–

  –Chapter Twelve–

  –Chapter Thirteen–

  –Chapter Fourteen–

  –Chapter Fifteen–

  –Chapter Sixteen–

  –Chapter Seventeen–

  –Chapter Eighteen–

  –Chapter Nineteen–

  –Chapter Twenty–

  –Chapter Twenty-One–

  –Chapter Twenty-Two–

  –Chapter Twenty-Three–

  DEVILS WITH HALOS

  Savages Excerpt

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  About Natalie

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  Upcoming Releases 2018

  Heathens (Badlands Book Four)

  Devils With Halos (Standalone)

  Depravity (Love Depraved/ standalone/ mmf/ mfm/mm)

  Other books by Natalie Bennett

  UltraViolence Duet

  UltraViolence

  Blue Velvet

  Obscene Trilogy

  Love Obscene

  Love Corrupted

  Badlands Series

  Savages

  Deviants

  Outcasts

  Heathens

  Standalones

  Mercy: A Dark Erotica

  Rose De Muerte

  Pernicious Red

  Old Money Roulette Trilogy

  Queen Of Diamonds

  King Of Hearts

  Ace Of Spades

  Playlist

  Trivium—The Heart from your Hate

  Melanie Martinez—Milk and Cookies

  Halestrom—Black Vultures

  Meg Myers—Feather

  Lacey Strum—Rot

  NF—Mansion

  Rains—Heartless

  Halsey—Walls Could Talk

  Drowning Pool—Life of Misery

  Danger Kids—Nothing Worth Saving

  Dorothy—Raise Hell

  Prelude

  My legs were splayed wide open, strapped down to steel-plated stirrups, and slightly lifted in the air.

  Tremors wracked my body for fear of what came next. My arms were painfully stretched on either side of my tear-stained face, each tightly secured in their own restraint.

  I shook my head rapidly back and forth, begging and pleading around the gag he’d angrily shoved in my mouth.

  He was unmoved, enjoying every minute of my terror and discomfort.

  I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. I needed to bear witness to everything he did, no matter how fucked up it was.

  I tried to brace myself for the pain I knew was coming, inhaling deep breaths of air through my bloody nose.

  He looked at me with a sinister smile on his angelic face, inserting the dildo fully into my ass, the nails melted into the top of it piercing my flesh.

  –Chapter One–

  Harper

  Twenty minutes into our second session, my therapist looked me straight in the eye and told me I had a delicate mind.

  This was our sixth session.

  I wasn’t sure why I’d bothered coming after the first.

  Catching the end of Dr. Powell’s sentence, I shifted my doe brown eyes back to her from the distracting mural of hideous sunflowers.

  “Are you saying that what I know happened didn’t really happen?”

  She flashed me a smile of large white teeth.

  “What I’m saying, Harper, is that perception and reality are often two different things.”

  Bringing my hands together on my lap, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The worn leather chair crackled loudly beneath my sore, denim-clad ass.

  Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I blinked and studied her perfect cherub face. I’d hated her on sight the first time we met nearly seven months ago. Her blonde hair was so ridiculously shiny it looked synthetic. Her fingernails were short and neatly manicured, and her porcelain skin was relatively flawless.

  I was the complete opposite, lying partially doped up on Dilaudid in a hospital bed.

  My dark brown hair was matted to the point I eventually shaved it all off, and some of my nails were completely gone.

  “Are you ready to tell me about J?” she prodded, not allowing me to blissfully ignore her presence.

  Withholding an exasperated sigh, I swept my gaze over the flat surface of her cherry desk. I noticed she never wrote anything down. Wasn’t that something she was supposed to do?

  I couldn’t believe my parents, who rarely got along for five minutes these days, had mutually agreed to pay for this. Correction: I hated that my parents were paying for this.

  “Why do you talk in circles every time I come in here?” I asked, thinking better of telling her where she could shove the bullshit degree she had hanging on the wall, and exposing her ignorance.

  “Harper, I’m here to help you move forward and heal. To do that, we have to—.”

  “I’m never going to discuss him with you, so stop asking.”

  I glanced down, absentmindedly running my pointer
finger over the ugly jagged scar on my wrist.

  “I’m not sure what talking about the events that got me to this point is supposed to do for me. I don’t want to talk about what happened. I relive it every time...”

  I shook my head and trailed off before I could give away too much. She’d begun to give me a pulsing headache.

  She was so certain that if I divulged all that had happened, I’d feel better. It was pure bullshit.

  If she knew I’d let a stranger shove his dick in and out of my ass last night until it bled, and I came so hard I saw stars, she’d probably want to talk about that, too.

  Some things just weren’t meant to be spoken aloud.

  It took minimal effort on my end to pretend I was an average, everyday functioning member of society.

  If I told this stranger what was bouncing around inside my head, she would more than likely recommend I be taken away to a safe place with a padded room.

  I pretended to check the time before looking right into her milky blue eyes and feigning a sense of urgency.

  “I’m going to have to cut this session short. I forgot I have somewhere to be.”

  “We still have twenty minutes left,” she objected, glancing down at her wrist. By the time she looked at me again, I was already standing up and preparing to leave.

  “You won’t believe what I’ve done…What I’ve seen.”

  She opened her gob to spew more medicinal words, but I hastily cut her off.

  “I don’t have a skewed perception of reality, Dr. Powell, and I don’t need a fake diagnosis or a little orange pill bottle to hide behind. I’m a fucked up bitch, period. It’s something the world is just going to have to deal with.”

  Whatever she said after that fell on deaf ears. I grabbed my things and walked out without a backward glance, the buckles jingling on my combat boots alerting the receptionist of my rapid approach.

  “I won’t be attending any more sessions,” I chirped, zooming past her surprised face.

  Stepping outside, I expelled a long stream of air and glanced upward.

  A light drizzle had started up, causing the blue sky to turn a murky gray.

  I took my time cutting through the parking lot, allowing soft drops of rainwater to run down my face. I would never take fresh air and something other than debilitating darkness for granted.

  Just as I reached my ruby red Wrangler, my cell started to vibrate. I climbed inside and dug it out of my purse with one hand, starting the Jeep with the other.

  “Lovely timing,” I grumbled.

  It was my mother, of course, no doubt having received a text from her fluke of a therapist the second I walked out.

  I thought there was supposed to be some confidentiality with these people.

  I silenced the call before tossing the phone back inside my bag. I loved my mom to death, but I couldn’t deal with her right then.

  She would moan and whine, and lecture me on what she thought I needed to do, demanding I go back inside when all I wanted to do was go home.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, releasing a heavy sigh. Some days were so much harder than others.

  Everyone thought they knew the secret method to make me better. J used to say that, too…that he’d make me ‘better.’ Sometimes he did, but more often than not it was said before he caused me pain.

  I spent two years of my life as a fuck toy to a sadistic psychopath who had just as much fun torturing me psychologically as he did physically.

  Do you know how long two years is?

  Its seven hundred and thirty days.

  Seven thousand five hundred and twenty hours.

  Therapy wasn’t going to erase a single one of those seconds.

  My friends and family needed to understand that the girl who was taken is not the same girl who came back.

  That didn’t make me crazy, and it shouldn’t automatically define me as broken. I was just different.

  If they’d spent two years enduring what I did, they’d all be just as fucked up.

  Or worse, they would be dead.

  Just like he thought I was.

  –PART ONE–

  –Chapter Two–

  J

  I knew four months ago that she was the one.

  It took me another three and a half to decide to make my move.

  Happening upon her was fate, God’s way of giving me another blessing. I’d just come from ridding myself of the last girl, dumping her body a few miles off the coast.

  Metric gas station was my next stop. I’d driven past the tiny white building at least a dozen times on my commute to and from my cabin, but I’d never seen her until the day I finally stopped.

  Going inside wasn’t wise. I didn’t make a habit of shitting near where I played. I had one of those faces that wasn’t easy to forget, so I paid with my credit card.

  It was her laugh that caught my attention, called to me like a siren’s lure.

  The second I laid eyes on her, I felt lightness in my chest, and a wide grin spreading across my face. She was perfect, checking every box on my wish list.

  And so it began.

  She had no idea who I was, but I took the time to learn all about her.

  I never chose a girl spontaneously. I was very selective, always going for a specific type. Brunettes. Brown eyes. Young, too—I preferred early to mid-twenties.

  They reminded me of my late mother.

  Occasionally, if her body was worth it, I’d take some sweet little thing that didn’t fit the usual mold. I wasn’t referring to big titties or asses, but all around well-built and healthy.

  Harper wasn’t anything like my other girls, though. Not Gail, Lilly, Tracy. Or Evelyn, Marcy, Whitney.

  No, Harper Roseanne Lane was special.

  I could feel it in my bones. She was my lucky number seven this year.

  I called her that because I’d never gone beyond girl number six. If you’re wondering why, well, that’s simple. I liked my house, excelled in my career, and enjoyed my friends.

  It was easy to dispose of the girls once I was done with them—that was something I never worried about. But I didn’t want greed to be what got me caught, or why I’d have to give everything up.

  So I’d been extra patient, even more so than usual, waiting until the time was right.

  And after tonight, she’d finally be mine.

  –Chapter Three–

  Harper

  It was nearly over, thank god.

  My feet ached, and the thermostat was faulty again.

  Staring out the storefront window, I watched tiny flakes of snow join the fluffy mounds already blanketing the parking lot.

  “It’s really coming down, huh?” Bill, my co-worker, asked from behind the front counter.

  “Mhmm,” I hummed, “I think it’s getting worse.”

  “Let’s close up a little early then. Your Corolla wasn’t meant for these back roads in this kind of weather. I’d hate for you to wind up in a ditch, and Isa needs me to grab some diapers yet.”

  Nodding my agreement, I stepped back and began making my way up and down the few aisles inside the gas station, checking the freezers as I went.

  “Damn,” Bill cursed.

  Seeing him stop half-way to the door, I shuffled back up the snack aisle.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Pump five,” he sighed, running a hand through his thinning red hair. The poor man was going to be bald far before forty.

  I looked at the large black truck that had just pulled up, unable to see how many people were inside due to the window tint.

  “Bill, it’s not that serious. Just lock the door and turn the sign to closed.”

  “I can’t. They know we’re open till eleven.”

  He actually sounded upset by my idea.

  It was a waste of breath to point out they more than likely didn’t know the exact time we closed. Bill was, if nothing else, diplomatic to a fault when it came to pleasing his customers.

  “Okay, then yo
u go on ahead so you can get the baby what she needs. I’ll close up.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You’re not asking, and it’s not that big a deal; I’ll be fine.”

  He remained silent for all of five seconds before surprisingly agreeing. “If you’re sure…”

  “Go. I’ve closed plenty of times.”

  “I appreciate you, Harper.” He gave me a grateful smile, and then shuffled off to the back to gather his things from our break room.

  I wasn’t crazy about staying any longer than I had to, but I was scheduled to close regardless. Plus, I didn’t have a newborn at home in need of diapers—just a lazy, slightly obese tomcat that probably couldn’t care less if I showed back up or not.

  The door opened just as I rounded the register, and the driver of the black truck stepped inside. He brought with him a gust of cold air and snowshoes packed with snow.

  “Hello,” I greeted, shivering slightly.

  A silent nod of acknowledgment was his only response as he made his way to one of the back aisles.

  “Alright, Harper, I’m taking off,” Bill said, sweeping past, nicely bundled up in his winter garments.

  “Drive safe.”

  “You too,” he called over his shoulder, disappearing out into the chilled night.

  I checked on the patron, who was now in the snack aisle, before lifting our nightly task list from beneath the counter.

  “Take out trash, sweep floors, refill toilet paper/ paper-towels,” I mumbled to myself, mentally adding that I’d have to clean up the snow now forming a small puddle on the linoleum.

  “He left you to handle all that alone?” the man asked, approaching the counter. He had a cultured voice with an accent I couldn’t immediately place.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad.” I smiled at him and set the list aside, giving him my full attention. He wasn’t a giant or anything, but he was tall enough that I had to lift my chin to look up at him.

  Leather gloves concealed his hands. His head and mouth were covered with a black hood and scarf, making it difficult to tell what he looked like.