by Jayne Rylon
It was tempting to seek relief in another hit, but that would only bring more pain tomorrow.
No thanks.
Except she didn’t have a choice.
“Fine. We’ll do it the hard way.” He was fast. Or maybe her reflexes were dulled by continual drugging.
Before she could dodge, he’d fisted his hand in her hair and yanked her head down, smacking it on the floor as he straddled her. Pinned to the floor, she bucked, trying to dislodge him with the superstrength that was one of the few benefits of Sex Offender.
It didn’t matter, though, when he pulled a giant knife from his belt.
“I don’t give a shit if you’re one of the Scientist’s pets.” The blackness in his eyes made her believe every threatening word he told her. “There are hundreds of others nearly as good as you around here. If I slip and cut your fucking head clean off, no one will care.”
Ryan will. She thought of her brother. Only that could make her quit endangering herself. For him, she would try to live another day.
When their parents died, she was the thing that had kept him going. Without her, what would happen to him?
She didn’t want that responsibility on her soul.
Ellie stilled as the freezing steel dug into her neck, scratching her. A warm trickle ran along her skin, making her squeeze her eyes closed.
“That’s better.” The guard throttled her neck with his other hand, cutting off her air until she struggled, before letting up on her windpipe. “Why defy me when you know I’m going to win? I do every day, don’t I?”
Because it was the only way she had to keep her spirit nourished.
Hope that she would someday get free still blossomed deep inside her, in a place she kept so secret they couldn’t find it and crush the dying embers of her belief.
Tired of their game, he reached in his pocket for the tiny vial that held the precious drug. After popping it open, he tipped it against her lips. She kept her mouth closed long enough that he jabbed her throat a little more. Then he mashed on her face hard enough that she feared he might break her front teeth if she didn’t open. The thought horrified her.
So she relented.
Chemicals mixed with her saliva, allowing the drug to be absorbed almost instantly into her system. If it hadn’t muddied her brain, she would have known the types of reactions occurring since she’d studied so long and hard for her job as a lab tech for pharmaceutical firms.
Now it was for nothing.
She could never go back to that career, knowing what it could be used for. How it had ruined her life. What a stupid mistake—going to work for the Scientist—though she hadn’t realized what her enigmatic company was beneath the cloaks they’d used to obscure their true purpose. When their salaries were nearly double the national average for employees without experience, it should have been a clue something wasn’t legit.
Ellie paid for that dumb mistake every single day. Every minute.
A surge of power went through her, enabling her to flip her guard onto his back.
She would have grabbed his knife, but he’d caught on to her tricks long ago and thrown the damn thing through the bars to one of the other minions outside her cell. Fuck!
“You know it’s not the weapon you wanted anyway, Pretty.”
She hated when he called her that.
But, damn him, he was right.
The ache started inside her. First as a white-hot pinprick, then growing until it was a supernova of lust in her core. Compelling her to fuck. Screaming at her to find relief for the discomfort in her pelvis and breasts. Desire taken beyond pleasure to pain. If she didn’t appease it, it would drive her mad.
Insane men and women had fled past her cell before being put down like rabid dogs by the guards many times during her stay. That wasn’t how she wanted to go out.
Ellie nearly ripped the guard’s pants in her desperation.
She didn’t remember taking his puny cock out or hovering over it, jamming it inside her. But by his grunts, she knew she had.
Before this place had become her existence, she had only ever gone to bed with a few men. And she’d never fucked like this. Foolish and naïve, she’d never really comprehended the meaning of that word. This was fucking.
All she cared about was calming the cyclone whipping her into a frenzy. The person she used to satisfy herself meant nothing. It disgusted her to treat another human being that way, even if they had forced her into it. The repulsive cycle of abuse was something she tried to untangle, but she rarely was clearheaded enough to make sense of it.
Right now, she didn’t give a shit.
Ellie flung her head back and whipped her hair from side to side as arousal coalesced into an impending orgasm. Finally, relief. At least for a moment. Coming would only sate her for a few instants at first. It would be half the night before her body settled enough to abstain even for an hour without it being pure torture.
Hate made her motions exponentially more harsh.
The guard didn’t seem to mind.
In fact, as she gave in to a great racking orgasm, it seemed like he did too.
His face scrunched, turning an unhealthy shade of purple before he cursed then twitched beneath her, as if she’d jolted him with a live wire instead of crushed his cock with her artificially enhanced arousal.
Simultaneously she felt relief and sickness.
Would she ever be able to experience one without the other?
First she had to escape.
Which didn’t seem likely, thanks to the evil bastard beneath her and the other mercenaries like him, who had taken things too far to turn back now in their scheme to create a new superdrug. When he withdrew, he grunted then watched his come spill from her body.
A glimmer of his humanity made an appearance. “It’d be better if you went the way of the others. Are you sure you don’t want me to give you more?”
Was that some sick attempt at a mercy killing? They’d already increased her dosage to try to hook her. Another portion so soon would be the end of her for sure.
“Fuck you.”
“Have it your way. See you tomorrow, Pretty.”
The guard reached the door to her cell but didn’t close it entirely. Instead, he shouted down the hall, “Send in the first client. Keep ’em lined up. Especially the sadists. Make sure she’s worth all the trouble she gives me.”
Ellie would have sobbed if she could have stopped rubbing herself long enough to think about how miserable she had become. Her night hadn’t even begun. It would be hours and hours more of this before she was left alone again—starving and freezing.
In the twenty seconds or so since she’d had that loser’s cock in her to the time her newest assailant entered and dragged her to the filthy mattress in the corner, she nearly went insane with yearning. If the guy she pounded hadn’t paid a premium to be there, she would have considered how she used him so violently a brutal rape.
What kind of sick fuck would enjoy that?
And why couldn’t she stop wanting more?
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Raw terror and outrage escaped Ellie’s throat in the form of a bloodcurdling scream mixed with a battle cry that burned every bit of her esophagus.
She flailed—kicking, punching and clawing at air in every direction.
If Lucas had been asleep, she probably would have scared him to death.
Hell, even from the boathouse, he couldn’t have helped but hear that screech.
Unfortunately for them both, he was sitting right beside her, despite her earlier decree. She wasn’t surprised to find him there. He was nearly as obstinate as she was. Frankly, she appreciated having him close, though she probably wouldn’t tell him that.
It looked—from his faintly glowing e-reader, the crumpled sheets drawn to his waist, his tablet in a docking station, which flashed a similar in
fo display as the thing in the tackle box earlier, and the squashed pillows behind his lower back—like he’d been camped out for a while, resting against the headboard. Protecting her as she slept.
Too bad he couldn’t slay nightmares.
“Oh Jesus. E!” He angled toward her and reached out, stopping with his hands hovering a few inches away from her shaking shoulders, as if afraid of touching her. Using what she thought of as his calm-and-collected voice, he soothed her. Had he perfected this tone while talking down a hijacker sometime in his spook career?
Right now, she didn’t give a shit.
She simply appreciated his talent, zeroing in on the reassurance he rained on her, instead of the fragments of vivid recall that threatened to drag her under the blackness.
“You’re here, with me. No one’s going to hurt you. At least not in that way.” His stressed displeasure was enough to seep through the shell-shocked buzz rattling her brain every time she woke from one of those dreams.
It shouldn’t have been funny that she was still frazzled over one threat when they faced an entirely new one that she hadn’t even come to grips with yet.
A mildly hysterical giggle escaped her when he shook his head. “I’m going to do my best for you, E. I just don’t know what you need. Can you tell me? How can I help? Please let me make it better. That was horrible. I couldn’t wake you. Is it always so bad?”
She blinked up at him then shifted, grasping his still-outstretched hands when words escaped her. Too many questions, not enough hugging. Besides, she didn’t want to make him think she was any more fragile than he already did.
With a yank, she toppled him onto the bed beside her. In fact, he kind of squished her.
Fresh visions of being pinned beneath men who’d opted to take Sex Offender before attacking her rioted through her mind. But only for an instant.
This was Lucas.
He would never hurt her. Shield her, yes. Harm her, no.
Relaxing, she lifted her arms to hold him tight to her when he would have retreated.
“Sorry, E. Sorry. I didn’t mean to trap you.” He rolled to his back, though her grip ensured that he didn’t separate them.
“Don’t go,” she croaked, only now realizing how much her terror had dried out her throat.
There was so much more she wanted to say. Forcing out sound seemed impossible at the moment. Unless it was another howl, which tried to escape. She swallowed then kept it bottled inside.
“Are you sure?” Tentatively, he laid his hands on her back and began to rub in gentle circles that did more to erase her panic than months of therapy had.
“Yeah.” She cuddled into him, burrowing her face into his chest, listening to the reassuring steady beat of his heart. “Hold me?”
Lucas didn’t respond verbally. His arms came around her, slowly and gently. It would have been impossible to mistake his tender cradling for the rough restraint of her captors.
Ellie’s teeth clicked together as they began to chatter. Goose bumps rose on her arms. It was like this always. A giant crash followed her night terrors. It sucked the life out of her sometimes. Having Lucas there to rock her and whisper how brave he thought she was, how precious, lifted the weight of the world off her shoulders, if only for a few minutes.
She wished she could do the same for him.
Why hadn’t he been sleeping?
It took quite a while longer before her limbs defrosted enough to curl around him more naturally in return. Her hand splayed on his rock-hard abs over the arched Don’t Laugh tattoo she planned to ask him about some other time.
After holding him in her hands earlier, she knew for certain it wasn’t a commentary on his size.
Even her feet nudged closer to him, facilitating the tangling of their limbs as well as she could. Maybe if he never let her go, she wouldn’t have her nightmares again. A girl could dream. Well, the good kind anyway.
A deep sigh raised then lowered her entire torso. She went floppy in his hold, draped over him, completely worn out by the gamut of her emotions. If only she could be sure she wouldn’t relapse into her same nocturnal horror, she could easily float away into sleep again.
“Better?” he asked, his question strained.
“Much. Thank you,” she rasped, which probably didn’t do a lot to reassure him. Would this only make him see her as more damaged? Probably. Shit.
When he rocked slightly away from her, she whimpered and clutched him with an instinctive grab that had him promising, “I’m not going far. Just getting you some more water. Okay?”
Peeking over at the nightstand, she saw the half-empty bottle there and nodded. Any farther than that and she would rather be parched than give him up. As he leaned and reached, their chests separated and the air being circulated by the gently rotating ceiling fan above them pebbled her nipples.
Holy shit. She was naked.
And he might be too.
At the very least, he hadn’t bothered to put a shirt on after he finished cleaning up.
Considering her clothes were ruined, she’d planned to bum a T-shirt off him. Except she’d fallen asleep by the time he finished what had to have been the longest shower in the history of the world. A chilly one too. The decided lack of steam had given him away.
Maybe there was hope yet.
She never stopped believing in the power of that virtue when she’d been locked up without a reason to think she was any more likely to escape than to meet the Easter Bunny down there. A relationship with Lucas didn’t seem too improbable after that.
Gladly, she accepted the bottle from him and levered herself onto one elbow before chugging the entire thing in a few unladylike gulps. Stray droplets she licked from her lips when she’d finished.
His stare never wavered from her mouth.
“What time is it?” It seemed like she’d been asleep for only a few minutes.
Sunlight streamed through the sliver of his windows left exposed on the edges of his blinds.
Disoriented, she searched for a clock.
“It’s about two thirty in the afternoon,” he confirmed. “You really zonked out.”
“But you didn’t?” She wondered, “Do you think people are going to find me here? Should we be taking turns on guard or something?”
“You watch too much TV.” He cracked a smile for the first time since she’d rocketed from her dream into reality. “Everything’s okay for now. We’re lying low, not drawing attention. The Men in Blue are on it, tracking some stuff and doing their homework. Don’t worry about that.”
“Okay.” She nodded, sitting up while pinning the sheet to her chest. “So why weren’t you sleeping with me? I mean, next to me. Or on the couch like I told you to.”
“You didn’t mean that. Did you?”
“No.”
Blushing at something that silly after what she’d done and had done to her seemed ridiculous. She did it anyway.
Lucas smiled softly as he cupped her cheek in his palm then swiped his thumb over one last, lingering drop of water she’d missed on her lower lip. “Maybe I’d rather spend my time looking at you. You’re so pretty.”
“Don’t call me that, please.” She shuddered. “It was the name the guard used for me.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” He reached for her hand. “How about beautiful? Gorgeous? Stunning? Mesmerizing? Sometimes I can’t look away from you.”
“Sure didn’t seem that way earlier.” Her annoyance was returning now that she could shove her dream into the basement of her mind and recall how irritated she’d been before she passed out. “Try again, Lucas. Don’t bullshit me either.”
He glanced away and then back, the flirting he’d been doing erased. She almost regretted that.
Until he came clean.
“I’ve been struggling with phantom pain in my foot. You know, the one that
’s not there? It hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like it’s all pins and needles or like I need to stretch it, or like it’s a winter day and I’ve forgotten to put a sock on. Sometimes, like right now, I’d swear it’s on fire. Depends on the day. Well, night, actually. I think I messed with my body’s internal clock. ’Cause it’s going nuts right now although it usually only happens when I’m trying to sleep.” He frowned.
“And there’s nothing you can do to stop it?” She hated hearing he was suffering.
“Not unless you can figure out some way to make my severed nerves settle down and get with the one-footed program.” He shrugged. “I’ve got some pills to manage it with, but they make me fuzzy-headed. I hate them.”
“More than you hate hurting?” She put her hand over his and squeezed. After spending months under the influence of a powerful drug, she could understand.
“Yes. Especially when we should be alert.”
“You just said…”
“I know. But I’m not taking any chances with your safety.” He let her gaze into his warm chocolate eyes.
“Thank you.” Nothing could mean more to her, or show her how much he cared, if it wasn’t that. So surely he’d appreciate that she felt the same way about him. “You have to rest, Lucas. Believe me, I know what lack of sleep will do to you. Especially when you’re running a deficit over a long period of time. You’re pushing yourself so hard to get better. Quickly.”
“I’m okay.”
“I don’t think you are.” Scooting her hand, she put it on the top of his thigh, watching as he squirmed slightly.
“It’s getting better.” He cleared his throat. “I tried some things, like mirror therapy. You trick yourself into thinking the limb is still there. It’s supposed to reset the map of your body in your brain or something like that. That sounded kind of like quackery to me, but seems to be helping. Just, for some reason, it’s not cooperating right now.”
