Make Me Yours (Top Shelf Romance Book 4)

by Devney Perry

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Four steps and he’s in front of me. I don’t want to be here. My body shakes, and my head pounds. They keep us fed and hydrated, so I know it’s from fear.

  I squeeze my eyes closed as the sound of his zipper slashes through the empty room. The smell of blood is stronger the closer he gets.

  I picture myself dancing. Happy. Pointe shoes tied around my ankles, my hands flailing above my head as I begin the steps to execute a perfectly elegant arabesque. Smooth flesh comes to my mouth, and I don’t have to open my eyes to know what it is. I bite down, not wanting to spread my lips, but his hand comes to the back of my hair, and he yanks my head back, my eyes flying open. The man picks up his knife and presses it to my throat. I can feel the blood dripping down my collarbone. Either from me or from whomever else he had just killed.

  I continue to refuse, so he presses the blade harder while his cock jerks against my soft lips.

  Tears pour down my face as my resilience kicks in. My mouth parts, and his cock slips in. I’ve never been raped before. Never felt forced. Something happens when you’ve been taken advantage of. It’s as though they take some of your humanity and replace it with their odor. His dick slides in and out fast, forcing himself down my throat. When I bite down on it roughly, he leaves it lodged down my airway, cutting off my breathing. Once he’s had enough of me fighting him, he shoves me backward and crawls up my body, his hand cupping my pussy. He shoves through two fingers then three, before tearing off my shirt with his other hand.

  With every thrust of his fingers, he takes a part of my soul, and I don’t want it back. He didn’t need to put his dick inside of me to rape me, but I’m still thankful that he didn’t. This was something else. There was a reason to why he exhorted himself into me by using his fingers only. He had a message to send, and unfortunately, I was going to be the deliverer.

  Once he leaves, I fall asleep with tears crusted over my cheeks and memories flashing through my head of my father and the Thai food that I never got to eat with him.

  Soft sobbing echoes around the room, along with snuffling and shuffling of a body.

  “Do you know why they took us?” the voice asks, but I don’t pay it any attention. She is one of many, one of twenty-one, making her twenty-two. She starts crying again, and I have to fight the urge to tell her to be quiet. The tears only enforce their sick games, I am sure. “Do you talk?”

  Actually, I do, but I don’t want to reply to your pathetic cries for help. Twenty-one girls have cried. Nothing I do or say can comfort you.

  I remain still, going over the number, until I can see the grey marble that sits beneath the old crumbs. Twenty-two. I write.

  I finally sit up, resting my back against the wall.

  The girl’s eyes come to mine. They’re brown, the same color as the floor on which we sit. Her wrists are bruised by the shackles that keep us locked to the walls. Water drips down my back from the crack in the concrete above us. She’s pretty. But they all are.

  “You’re pretty,” she whispers, swiping her long brown hair away from her face. Tears have left cleaned streaks down each of her cheeks.

  I don’t speak.

  She tilts her head. “I gather we’re probably going to die in here.” She leans her head against the wall, drawing her long legs to her chest. I want to be nice to her. Tell her that maybe they won’t kill her. Tell her that I don’t know what happens after this. But I don’t know. I never know. They come and they go, and I stay. For twenty-one girls. Some girls are in here for longer, some only a short time. Time. Something I’ve lost track of. The sun sets and the sun rises, but my world remains still, confined to these walls that keep me locked inside.

  I examine the new girl closely. I’ve noticed how all girls are similar in one way. Age. That’s as far as I have gotten.

  “I take it you don’t speak.” She exhales, her head bowing. “It’s fine. I guess it makes sense in a way. My name is Rose; I’m twenty years old, and up until yesterday, I was a dancer at—” I jerk forward, my eyes narrowing. “Wow!” she murmurs, flinching backward. I don’t blame her. I probably looked crazy. But all the girls who have been in here, none of them have spoken much to me. Mainly, they all cry. Scream. Then there was the one who tried to claw her way out of the bars on the door, her fingernails detaching from her flesh as blood seeped down her hands. None of them directly blurted their story to me. Were they all dancers? Like me? Maybe.

  Rose searches my eyes, her face morphing. “You understand me?” She must think, because I don’t speak right now, that I don’t speak English.

  I nod.

  She licks her dry, cracked lips. “Why did you jump? Are you the same age as me?”

  I shake my head.

  “No?” she mutters.

  I nod.

  “You are?”

  I roll my eyes, getting tired of this. I want to speak. I open my mouth, the words teasing the tip of my tongue gently, but like always when faced with something I don’t want to deal with, I choke, and my mouth slams closed.

  “You’re broken, Dove. You will always be broken.” I shiver, The Shadow’s voice echoing over my flesh. He followed me everywhere. I woke during the night and swore I saw him lurking in the dark corner of my room. Everywhere I went, I could sense him. Is he here, too?

  “Wait!” Rose interrupts my internal meltdown, inching forward. “Dancer? You were a dancer, too?”

  My head snaps up, my eyes eating up the distance between us. I nod, my long red hair falling over my shoulders. I lick my swollen lips, wanting to force words out, but they don’t come. They never do. But then— “Yes.”

  “Wait!” Her hand comes up to silence herself. “You do speak?”

  I chew on my lip. “Yes. I just don’t like to, and I have issues when I’m faced with unfamiliar trauma. It’s a defense mechanism that happens when I’m scared.” I shake my head, forcing myself to be quiet. I don’t want to sound weak.

  Rose seems to understand, without understanding. My chest begins to flutter. Can I like her? I don’t like anyone. “Well, I danced at a hip-hop club. For money. Having no family and being broke as shit isn’t always fun, but fun doesn’t pay the bills.” Rose is beautiful. Her skin is a few shades darker than mine, but more on the lighter scale. She’s clearly part African American. When she smiles, her straight white teeth beam. “I’ll go through the dance styles, and you tell me what yours was?”

  I nod, excited with the new lead.

  She eyes me up and down. “Hmmm, ballet?”

  I freeze.

  “Ballet?” she asks, smiling. “I was right!?”

  I shake my head. “No.” She was right, in a sense, but it has been a long time since I hung up my slippers. Now, I don’t dance for pleasure. I dance to live. Literally.

  “Damn. I was sure you looked like a ballet girl.”

  I roll my eyes at her judgment. “Okay.”

  She laughs. “All right, all right, I know, that was bad. Okay, how about hip-hop?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Jazz?”

  Shake.

  She raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “…stripper?”

  I gulp, my lips curling under my teeth. I nod.

  “Damn!” She laughs. “Little preppy princess is a stripper. I mean, I see it. You got that whole my son’s girlfriend thing going on.”

  I glare at her.

  She chuckles again. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a filter.”

  Clearly.

  “Well, how long have you been here for?”

  I bring my finger to the ground and write twenty-two. “Twenty-two girls later…”

  “And they’ve all left?” she asks, fear glassing over her eyes briefly.

  With good reason.

  I offer her a sympathetic smile. “They just disappeared. I don’t know where to. I never spoke to any of them like I am you.”

  “To where?” Ros
es whispers.

  Heavy boots slap against the ground as metal keys clink together, interrupting my answer.

  “Twenty-two!” one of them hollers, a skull bandana covering the lower half of their faces.

  Four of them. The same four who always come to collect. They’re all heavily garmented in black clothes. Black jeans, shirt, hoodie, and black beanie. It’s obvious they’re hiding their identity. Since the night that one of them took me, I’ve not seen anything of what they look like. I wince internally from the memories of the intruder, the stranger in the neon mask. Was it one of the four? But even as I think it, my eyes falling over their bodies, I know that all four of them are too tall, too large. The rapist—because that’s exactly what he is—was skinny. Too short.

  I relax. For now.

  Reaching for Rose, I catch onto her arm. I don’t want them to take her. I like Rose for some reason, and I don’t like anyone. Something inside of me has latched itself to her. My soul recognized hers like an old friend, as if they’d been friends for lifetimes before ours.

  One of the guys snorts, tilting his head back to look at the other, who is watching me carefully. His dark green eyes peer into mine. He’s death draped in sin, tormenting me to come out and meet my maker.

  I blink, breaking the eye contact. They never speak much. Silence, like the calm that washes over an angry sky just before it opens up and rains down on you.

  Two step inside of the room this time.

  Something is wrong. It’s usually only one who comes in while the others wait outside. The one with devil eyes comes closer to me. I crawl backward until my back clashes with the cold wall, drawing my knees to my chest. The glistening chandelier that hangs from the room swings like a timer, counting down the days, the hours to my death. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

  He begins to kneel in front of me, and Rose’s cries die out behind me as I get lost in the trance of his eyes. The world is sucked into a dark vortex, and I’m surrounded by just him.

  And those eyes.

  They drop to my mouth and then come back to mine. I can see up close that he’s young. The skin beneath his eyes is smooth, his eyelashes thick, fanning out every time he blinks.

  His hand comes to my arm, and he yanks me up to my feet. His eyes stay on mine as his hand curls around my upper thigh, beneath the short skirt that I’m still wearing from the night I was taken. Short skirt and fishnet tights.

  All class.

  Someone laughs behind him.

  I momentarily falter. Will he try to rape me, too?

  He sinks back down in front of me as his eyes focus on mine. My heart thunders in my chest, thrashing around like an angry ocean. His rough palm glides down the back of my thigh and then calf, setting off electricity with every touch. I don’t mind his touch; it feels familiar. My eyes flutter closed; my chest heavy as I suck in each breath. His skin against mine is surreal, like a blue flame pirouetting around a mold of snow. Everything is quiet. Why is everything quiet?

  The sound of metal falling against the ground shakes me back into real time, and I know that he has unlocked the final shackle that was around my ankle from the night they took me. I flinch, opening my eyes to find another man dressed in the same attire standing beside the one who grabbed Rose. Rose is smirking at me, one perfectly arched eyebrow cocked.

  My cheeks flare to life, embarrassed by how effortless this stranger could stimulate my emotions.

  In an instant, he’s standing back in front me, leaning forward until I smell his inimitable cologne—leather and cigarette doused in honey and then set alight to burn. “That’ll be the only time I ever get on my knees for you, Little Dove.”

  His voice is like silk, soft enough to coax, but strong enough to wrap around my throat and choke me. Before I can think of anything else, his grip around my arm tightens, and he yanks me forward, out toward the open cell door. The four men who are with him quiet, all watching carefully, while we pass them. The one who has Rose, shoulder barges the man who has me in his grip. “You spoke!”

  The one with his hand around my arm glares at him as we all start walking down the long corridor. Room after room. Opulent marble flooring against vicious combat boots. With each step we take, the smell of saltwater becomes aggressively stronger. Some rooms have people in them, not just girls, guys too, and some are empty. Before I can map any of them to memory, we’ve reached the end, and the guy with me yanks open a heavy metal door. Another long corridor, only this one is narrow and lined with multiple hanging light bulbs, all surging as we reach the end. I can smell mildew vaporizing off the walls, the dampness manifesting from the affluent rooms I came from. We push through yet another door, this corridor shorter.

  Cold.

  I’m so cold.

  I shiver. It seems to drop in temperature the deeper we go. He yanks open another door, and instantly, we’re in the middle of a large room. Engines are firing furiously, the glacial temperature now doing a complete 180, hitting scorching heights as sweat throbs from my flesh. It’s then that the smell hits me. Fish mixed with oil. Then the ground starts to swerve more.

  “I don’t remember coming onto a boat…” Rose murmurs underneath her breath. I want to agree with her. I don’t remember this either. I don’t remember getting onto the boat, only waking here.

  Rose’s question falls on deaf ears as they continue to lead us forward, up metal steps and onto the main platform. I freeze when the wind whips across my face, my teeth chattering. The vast size of the ocean stretches wide around the large yacht, rocking in the middle of the ocean.

  My eyes travel up to my captor and then to Rose.

  Just as Rose is about to open her mouth, the loud sound of helicopter blades cutting through the air interrupts her.

  “What’s going on?” Rose yells. The chopper begins to slowly lower to the helipad on the front of the yacht, the wind rushing around us in a frenzy. There’s a black seven-point star that’s on the helipad, with lights flashing on every point.

  I slowly step back, just as the doors open. I watch as all of them, one by one, remove their bandanas.

  Four guys.

  Four very young guys, probably around my age—maybe a bit older. I scan them closely.

  The edgy one who has taken it upon himself to attach himself to me has thick brown hair that looks naturally ruffled, as if he doesn’t give a shit what it looks like. His eyes are as green as tainted jade and his skin is so annoyingly flawless that it bothers me. His shoulders and arms are a vivid display of how hard he trains at the gym, and he must stand at least a foot taller than my five-foot-four inches. I’ve decided I’ll call him One until I know his name. Two, who I gather is the big mouth in the group, judging by his smirking face pointed directly at One, has dark brown messy hair and bright blue eyes that dance in mischief. His eyes remind me of Atlantic ice. I’m not sure how to take him for now, but I shall call him Two. The third, now named Three, has black hair, is brooding, and looks almost bored with everyone’s existence. Like us breathing the same air as he is, is an insult. He has a sharp jaw, a straight nose, and a little cleft that’s indented into his chin. The final boy is glaring right at me. His eyes are like whiskey, and every girl is probably parched. He has a square jaw and larger lips, with tattoos sneaking out from beneath his collar and up his neck. It’s obvious that he’s beautiful, they all are, especially One. One pushes buttons inside of me that I didn’t know I had. Without saying a word, he’s saying a lot.

  One tugs on my arm, leading me toward the helicopter and rudely interrupting me from my observations. They’re all tall, with One being the tallest. They’re all lean, with Four being the biggest.

  “Get in!” One points up the little steps to the sleek black chopper, and I abide. It’s not like I have any other choice. “If you haven’t figured out yet, this is your lifeline.” I try not to look at him for too long, because—well—because he’s pretty. If you can even call someone like him pretty. There’s a fine line between pretty and scary, and One uses tha
t line as a tightrope. It’s not just his appearance either. It’s the way he carries himself and takes charge. You just know a true alpha when you see one. They don’t need to bite because their bark is more like a roar, terrifying enough to scare away anyone who comes near.

  Rose glares at One as she takes her seat opposite me. “And if you haven’t figured out, she doesn’t speak much.”

  One kicks his foot out. “You assume I don’t already know that.” His fingers hover over his phone as his attention comes to me. As soon as the chopper begins to lift off the ground and the other three guys are seated, One opens up his phone and the rest of us fall into a long stretched silence.

  We descend onto a helipad that’s in the middle of a large field. This helipad has the same seven-point star as the one that was on the yacht. Interesting. There are large green shrubs that surround the helipad in one circle, blocking every view of the giant mansion I noticed on our way down. As soon as we land, One opens up the door, and I follow closely behind him.

  He looks between Rose and me, his face placid. “Will you follow my instructions carefully?”

  Two chuckles, licking his lips and standing beside One. “You think they’ve got it in them?”

  One glares at me. “No.”

  Rose’s hand comes to mine, and I give it a little squeeze. Doesn’t do much for reassurance, but at least I know she’s beside me. A stranger can fill the void of a gaping hole that panic punched into, so for that, I’m thankful I have her beside me.

  Three and Four remain behind Rose and me.

  “Answer me…” One demands, his eyes strong as steel. “Will you follow instructions?”

  “Yes,” Rose hisses.

  One steps forward, and it’s then that I realize he’s coming closer. His dark shadow expands like an umbrella around me. “Dovey, if you don’t abide by the rules that will be set out for you, there will consequences.”