Chapter 8 Ethan
ETHAN
I watched her on the camera feed, the fire crackling in the hearth of the big room where Anton, Nick, and I congregated when the damp of the rest of the castle became too grim.
I wasn’t surprised Dimitri had kept the crumbling ruin. Men like Dimitri Kaprolov needed places to hide from the world.
I focused on Maeve, so still with her back against the wall that I wondered if she’d fallen asleep, and watched her face for clues about her mental state.
She’d become a source of fascination in the weeks leading up to her capture outside the Butchers’ loft, but after three days of watching her on the camera — of knowing she was close enough to touch, to hurt — she’d become an obsession.
I’d expected her to beg once she regained consciousness. It was what they usually did when they realized they were helpless, hidden away so completely from the rest of the world that they’d never be found again.
But the most Maeve had done was try to persuade Nick to help her.
I could see why the Butchers wanted her. Why they’d invaded my property in the mountains outside Blackwell Falls for her.
She was pretty, yes, with glossy black hair and blue eyes as sharp and bright as a chip of ice.
But the world was full of pretty girls. Pretty alone wasn’t interesting.
It was like wandering a museum for the day and finding that after a while, none of the paintings looked like masterpieces.
They were all just paint on canvas, their sheer abundance transforming them from something special to something mundane.
Maeve Haver was more than pretty, and my dick stirred in my jeans, a feeling that had become almost unfamiliar in the months and years before she’d started stalking me.
It was true that some of the supplements and treatments I used caused ED, a side effect I’d accepted as a necessary component to my overall health and longevity. It was also true that it could be a source of frustration, especially for me.
Like being a kid in a candy store with tape over his mouth.
But I’d learned to live with it, had learned to take advantage of the times when my dick worked, which was easy enough since there was always a girl or three who didn’t dare try and deny me when the mood struck.
It was utilitarian, like eating when I was hungry or sleeping when I was tired.
But this was something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Something like longing.
The Haver girl excited me. I wanted to take a fistful of her hair in my hands, feel the silky strands in my fingers as I pulled, watch her blue eyes widen with rage when I called her a dirty whore, when I reminded her that she was nothing more than a tool to be used by those of us who really made the world go round.
I wanted to grab her tits until she yelped in pain, wanted to feel my fist connect with her silky flesh again, the way it had in the dungeon when she’d come at me for mentioning her sister.
I wanted to humiliate her, make her cry, make her beg.
My dick strained against the confines of my jeans as I imagined hitting her while I was inside her, teaching her that when push came to shove, she was just another dumb bitch put on this planet to serve men like me.
Hell, I might even give Anton and Nick a shot at her, watch them fuck her until she checked out, until she went to the faraway place women went in their minds when they realized their bodies belonged to us.
It would be good practice for what came next, when I hired her out to the rich and depraved men who would use her like a cheap rag, a final fuck you to that egotistical asshole Bram Montgomery.
I was pulled from my thoughts by movement on the camera, and I watched as Maeve crawled toward it, then moved out of range.
I leaned forward to play with the angle on the camera, but I could only move it an inch or so in every direction.
She was still out of view, although I could hear a faint scratching from somewhere beyond the camera’s line of sight.
I leaned closer to the computer, peering at the shadowed recesses of the cell.
But it didn’t help. She was definitely out of view.
I was alone in the room, but that didn’t stop me from murmuring, “What are you doing, you dumb bitch?”