Break Me (Enslaved #2)

3 EMMA

Exhaustion knocks me out almost immediately, and I don’t wake again until the lights come back on and the metal door clanks. My entire body aches, my throat is dry and hoarse, and the cold lingers within my bones.

Brown oxfords with intricate ornaments are the first thing I see as someone enters. I scan my eyes up over black slacks, a black silk shirt, and a straight-lined face with hazel eyes that induce a slew of terrifying memories despite the warm color.

“Eat,” Mikhail says as he sets a bowl down beside the mattress. “If you throw the bowl in a tantrum, you’ll get to lick it up.” His face remains impassive. All traces of humor, flirtation, and tenderness are gone; left is only strict authority.

I don’t dare to test him, so I sit up and grab the bowl when he leaves. As I scoop up the sticky porridge, I take the time to get a better sense of my surroundings. There’s not much to study. All six surfaces are hard stone. Besides that, there’s a toilet, a sink, and a green metal door. There’s not even a window with bars.

I swallow to repress the despair wanting to rip through me, knowing it won’t let up anytime soon if I let it loose. And I know I’ll need whatever strength the night has granted me later. So I shut down my brain as much as possible, eat the porridge, and hurry to use the toilet before someone comes in here. Then I lie under the blanket and stare at the ceiling until the door opens again.

“Time to go.” Mikhail claps his hands. “Chop, chop. Dax is waiting.”

Pressing my hands into the thin mattress, I push up on my feet. Every movement hurts, and my legs tremble as I take a few staggered steps to cross the room. I’m almost grateful for the firm hand he wraps around my arm as he leads me down a long, wide hallway lined with green metal doors on both sides.

He leads me down two more halls that look the exact same, and I get a sense of a labyrinth-like basement that one could easily get lost in. We end up in a room that would look like a doctor’s office if it weren’t for the naked stone walls. It has all the same equipment: a regular exam table, a gynecologist’s chair—although scarier—drawers and cupboards, a rolling chair, and a rolling table full of equipment I have no idea what is and don’t dare to linger on.

The least doctor-like thing in the room, though, is the man standing in the middle of it all. If anything, he looks like a hardened biker with his long blond hair, beefy muscles, and a snake tattoo that winds its way all along his left arm. Or maybe a Viking. Faint lines around his eyes and on his forehead reveal that he must be somewhere around forty, and the cold, indifferent look in his eyes seems to bear witness to a rough life that has hardened him and chipped away at his humanity.

“I have something for you, Dax,” Mikhail says, shoving me a step forward.

“This?” the man before me says, looking me over with a bored and impatient gaze. When his blue eyes reach my face, I shuffle back a step. He’s not looking at me, but through me. It’s like ice through my veins as he watches me like the piece of meat I was reduced to last night, and I hug myself as my shoulders draw in.

“A natural submissive,” Mikhail says with enthusiasm.

I want to say I’m not submissive—an ingrained habit—but I don’t dare to protest.

“Submissive?” the rough man named Dax says in an American accent, the slight lines in his forehead deepening with skepticism. “She looks more broken than obedient.”

“Well, it’s in there. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how to draw it out.” Mikhail moves one of the rolling chairs to the side and takes a seat, crossing his arms like he’s getting comfortable. “Hope you don’t mind if I stay and watch.”

“Just don’t interfere,” Dax says, then points to the gynecologist’s chair—a table half as long as a regular doctor’s table, the upper half tilted up to keep the patient half sitting, and stirrups for the legs. But unlike a doctor’s exam table, this one has leather straps all over, making it look more like a torture table.

I hesitate but move forward when Mikhail gives me a shove at the back.

Gingerly, I scoot onto the chair and lean back against the smooth surface, and all my muscles go rigid as I stare off to the side, trying not to imagine what horrors are coming.