I slide my palm down her stomach, beneath the waistband of her leggings, to the place that’s already wet for me. Or is it wet for Adam? That’s the most fucked part of all—that he’s the one actually orchestrating this. You can fuck a woman with your cock, or a dildo, or a goddamn beer bottle. Adam Bisset? He’s fucking her through me.
“How does she feel?” he says, his voice low, and I realize he’s turned on.
I’ve never been the kind of guy who was afraid of other men in the locker room. I grew up with brothers and then joined the military. I’m not homophobic, but it’s still disconcerting to realize there’s an aroused male in the room while I’m finger fucking a woman.
My first threesome is happening, and it’s against my will.
“She feels like fucking pussy,” I grit out.
“Tell me more,” he says, a warning in his voice.
“Hot. Wet. She’s fucking swollen. Is that what you want to hear? She feels like she’d be heaven around my cock. She feels like a goddamn dream.”
My thumb brushes her clit, and she comes on the final word, squeezing my fingers, gushing her arousal onto my fingers, crying out my name.
Elijah. Not Adam. And sick as this is, it feels like a triumph.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Holly
Footsteps coming down the stairs.
It’s the next morning, and I scramble to get up, but Elijah doesn’t move—not even when I jostle him to stand. He won’t want to be caught unawares.
He won’t want to be lying down to face Adam.
A match strikes.
Except it isn’t Adam who comes down the stairs. It’s the man from the forest, the one who held me down. Peter. His face looks less swollen now. There’s a white bandage covering one eye. Adam did that damage. He beat the man for hurting me.
From the look in one dark eye, he’s here for revenge.
Elijah doesn’t move. Not an inch. Terror jams my heart. What if his heart stopped beating during the night? Was he cold, even as I held him? Is he dead?
And then I realize—no, he’s playing dead.
This is the plan for escape, the improvisation that’s our last bid for survival. “Please,” I say, running to the gate. “You have to help him. He won’t wake up.”
A sigh. He sounds genuinely sad. “I wanted to be the one to kill him.”
“He can’t be dead.” My voice is rising, turning supersonic. “Please, you have to do something for him. Get a doctor. Help him. Something.”
Peter cracks his knuckles. He tilts his head until there’s a sound, and then tilts it the other way. It’s like he’s gearing up for a workout. “Adam doesn’t have the stomach for this work. Thinks you can sell guns without hurting anyone.”
My blood runs cold. I assumed they were trying to steal something. More diamonds, probably. Some other kinds of art, at a stretch. Selling guns? That’s something else entirely.
“And that kind of weakness, it can make you hesitate. Someone like me, I don’t hesitate. You know why that is, pretty girl?”
My stomach crawls. “No. Don’t. I want Adam. Get Adam.”
“Because I like to hurt people.”
Peter opens the gate, and I have the sick realization that Elijah wasn’t pretending to play dead. He’s actually dead on the floor a few feet behind me. He doesn’t move even as the man stalks into the cell. I back up, tripping over him by accident. I scramble up from his cooling body in horror. Everything has turned upside down. Elijah isn’t going to help. I’m all alone again, all alone with a tree through the roof and a storm raging outside. There’s no one else.
This storm has a single dark eye and hard muscles.
He holds up the match between us as it burns to his fingers. Then darkness.
He’s on me in a second, before I can suck in a breath, before I can scream. His weight buries me, and I struggle against an avalanche of dirt. I can’t move or breathe. My kicks and punches are useless, useless, useless. He grasps my breast and twists, and I cry out.
Alone. I’m alone with the dead and dying. It’s my greatest fear, my secret horror, and I lash out, a wild woman, dangerous and strengthened from pure rage.
I reach into his right eye, claw it with my fingers and feel something warm and wet.
He screams in my ear, and I kick him again.
His weight falls away from me, and there’s a sickening thud. Then another one. Another. In a sort of dazed confusion I sit up and scoot away from the terrifying sounds.
There’s a sharp crack.
“Are you okay?” Elijah’s voice comes from the dark.
“Oh God. I thought you had really died.”
“But you improvised so quickly.”
“Well, first I thought it was a ruse.” My voice is coming far too fast, my tongue tripping over the syllables. “And then you didn’t move, you felt so cold, you didn’t get up.”
Sobs wrench out of my chest, and in a second he has me trapped against him, his hand covering my mouth. “Not yet,” he says, his voice low. “Hold it in a little longer.”
My eyes wide, I nod against his hand.
He slowly releases me. “Come on. We have to go before Adam comes looking.”
Escape. It’s what I asked of him, this impossible task. And he’s done it. It feels a little bit like a dream when he leads me through the open cell door. As if I might wake up again, this time to discover that we’re both still trapped behind bars.
Or worse—wake up to find the man’s weight suffocating me.
The bright flare of the lantern. Adam.
He smiles, holding that damned pistol. “We’re ready to begin.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“I wasn’t sure whether Elijah had really bonded to you, whether you meant something or you were just another pussy. He would not usually hesitate to put a woman into the line of fire, would he?” Without waiting for an answer, he says, “But you’re different.”
“I’m not different,” I say because I’m the boring one. The plain one. The one who looks dull and flat behind my gorgeous sister. Elijah hadn’t looked at her all those years ago. He looked at me, but that was only because he needed someone convenient to steal the diamond.
“Ah, ma petite,” Adam says, shaking his head sadly. “You are more beautiful than you know. But you won’t be for very long. I’m afraid that’s the only way this works. I must hurt you to get the information I need.”
“Bastard,” Elijah mutters from behind me.
He sounds pissed but not… especially concerned. As if he knows the torture is about to happen. As if it’s unstoppable. My insides grow cold. “Please,” I whisper. “No.”
“You beg so pretty,” Adam says, looking regretful.
Something silver flashes by my eyes.
Red spills from Adam’s throat. His eyes stare at me, shocked, before turning glassy. He slumps to the floor. His pistol falls to the ground. I let out a shocked scream before Elijah covers my mouth with his hand. “Shhhh,” he says against my ear. “There are still men here.”
“What just happened?” I mouth the words, soundless against Elijah’s palm.