Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Then the real torture began.
Lucia, who was right beside him now, put all her strength and energy into rousing him. When he hardened, she lined him up. When he softened, she went at it again, stroking, squeezing, and encouraging with determined fingers.
Van must’ve already lubed himself with spit because his opening was wet. But Tate couldn’t get it done. Every time he pressed in, his semi deflated.
Minutes passed. Too many to track. The countless starts and stops and position adjustments put enormous stress on his already weak body. He’d lost so much damn blood. Eventually, his muscles tired. His arm gave out, and he collapsed on top of Van’s back.
Then he opened his eyes.
Van lay face down on the floor beneath Tate, braced on elbows with his head bent and his face pressed in the cup of his hands. Discomfort and strain flexed across his back beneath the shirt. His entire body was a concrete slab of tension.
This man wasn’t a bottom. Not even close. He’d been sexually abused as a child and probably hadn’t taken a man this way since he escaped that trauma.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” Tate rested his cheek against Van’s spine, his eyes burning with regret.
“Don’t.” Van pulled his arms beneath him and slowly lifted to hands and knees.
The position slid Tate to kneel behind Van, the weight of his upper body resting on top of Van’s back.
“Instead of apologizing,” Van said in a cruel voice, “think about all the times I pounded you into the floor. All the times I held you down while you begged me to stop until your throat was raw and your ass was bleeding. Think about that, Tate, while you fuck me.”
The first time Van forced him was forever branded in his brain.
His insides ripping and tearing around Van’s ruthless thrusts.
Arms and legs restrained.
Mouth gagged.
His body no longer his own.
He’d wanted to kill Van then, but beneath that sinister wish lurked even darker thoughts. So many times, in the isolation of that attic, he’d imagined doing to Van all the things Van had done to him. He’d imagined fucking his captor until his cock dripped with blood.
He didn’t want that now, but he harnessed those feelings—the vengeance, the violence, and the brutal urge to reclaim his dominance, to reclaim himself.
He wasn’t a pussy. He wasn’t emasculated. He controlled how this ended.
With a surge of empowerment, he balanced on his knees and grabbed Lucia’s hand, showing her the speed and pressure he needed to get hard. It took a while. Fuck, it took goddamn forever, but he stayed focused, clear-headed, and finally hard.
He sank into Van’s body in a single stroke, pushing with a grunt that made Van gasp and shudder. He found Lucia’s eyes, gripped her hand, and held onto both as he gave into the forbidden pleasure and chased his release.
It was the longest minutes of his life. The climb was a battle of concentration. The peak was short-lived and cathartic, and the downward spiral dropped him into guilt-ridden hell.
He fucked, and he came, and he despised himself for it.
Van lowered him to the floor on his side as Badell stepped toward them and examined the evidence.
Every cell and nerve in Tate’s body shivered with scorching pain. A shroud of darkness tried to pull him under, and he fought it, rapidly blinking as he sought Lucia.
When their eyes connected and locked, the spinning, wobbly world righted itself. He fucking loved her, and as long as she lived, everything would be okay.
“You did well.” Badell’s voice reached his ear, distant and muffled.
“You made a promise,” he tried to say. His lips felt numb.
“I will honor it.” Badell lifted Lucia’s lethargic body from the floor and carried her out of the room.
CHAPTER 25
Lucia lay on the mattress in Tiago’s room, feigning sleep as her mind whirled and panicked.
A few feet away, Tiago grunted through an upper-body workout. Dumbbells lifted and hit the floor. His footsteps paced. Then he started again.
She’d passed out before she received the injection, then again after. Though she’d been awake for the last hour, she’d held herself still and quiet, waiting for the medicine to saturate her system. Waiting for her strength to return and her brain to fire on all cylinders. With her eyes closed and the desperation to get to Tate gnawing at her nerves, the wait had been brutal.
But she was fully alert now. Perhaps eighty-percent back to health. Very little pain in her abdomen. No paralysis.
She was alive.
Physically.
Emotionally, she’d died a hundred times over. Died every time the blade had made a new cut in Tate’s flesh. She’d died in that torture chamber and continued to do so.
The monstrosity inflicted upon his back, the icepick in his arm, his screams, the blood, the sodomy, the heartbreak… It replayed and fermented and thrashed inside her, crushing her chest and blackening her thoughts.