13. Ivy
THIRTEEN
IVY
They didn’t understand the severity of the situation they found themselves in. I didn’t think they really grasped the seriousness of this whole shebang.
So I hit them a few times with the bat to wake them up.
There. Now we’re all having fun.
“Why us?” Dingo asked calmly, his voice steady and surprisingly calm for a man who was strapped down to a steel table. “What did we ever do to you?”
He hadn’t seen me yet. Not really. So I did him a favor and used the tip of the bat in my hand to angle the light to point less at him and more at me. Now, the whole room could see who was swinging this bat at them.
Like I expected, he squinted a little, trying to place me. “You’re—I saw you at the club the night I was?—”
Understanding dawned on him suddenly, and I chuckled as those big brown eyes widened into giant saucers. “That’s right, Dingo. The night you were drugged.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Such a smart dog you are,” I teased, patting his head like one would an affectionate puppy. When he jerked his head away, as far as his restraints would allow, I snarled and let my fingers tangle in his hair, yanking his gaze back to mine as I got nose-to-nose with the fucker. “Now, now, you filthy mutt, let’s not be acting up. If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll kill you first.”
My eyes slipped casually to Jackal, who was turning slightly red from his upside-down position. I’d have to drop him eventually, or he’d die before I could have any fun. I didn’t plan to let him off easily. After what he did to my father, he needed to suffer the most.
“Leave him alone,” Jackal growled, and I had to stifle a giggle at his self-sacrificing gallantry. “If you let us loose now, we won’t kill you. Maybe.”
“Kill me?” Oh, the boy was brazen, I’d give him that. “I hardly think you’re in a position to be making demands, now, are you, Jackal?”
I ditched the bat, the sound of the wood echoing on the concrete as it clattered to a stop at my feet. Smiling again, I waltzed over to the table of my tools of torture, taking a moment to select something that would hurt, but not maim. Since I was starting with Dingo, I wanted to start easy. I didn’t want to give away all my best moves before I got to the main course.
No, that I’d save for Jackal.
I opted for my little taser, the bright pink thing sitting unassumingly at the edge of the layout, almost like a tease. I turned to Dingo, bright little tool in hand. “How do you feel about tasers, Dingo?”
I watched the Adam’s apple in his throat bob as he swallowed his apprehension and fear, though you could never quite hide it completely. I was really good at reading people. And you could always see it in their eyes. It was like a silent tell. Unavoidable, obvious, and very much visible to someone who knew where to look.
He was afraid of me, but he wanted me to think he wasn’t.
The tells were in the way his hands clutched the legs of the table, though contorting his wrists that way had to hurt. In the way his whole body tensed as I approached him, my hand up where he could keep his eyes on the weapon I wielded.
The whites of his eyes flashed in my direction, and then he turned to Jackal, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.
What are you up to, Dingo?
“Leave him the fuck alone, man,” Jackal spat, but I didn’t pay him any attention as his chains rattled in a futile attempt at escape.
“Shut up, dog,” I growled back, letting electricity spark at the tip of the taser. “I’ll get to you soon enough.”
Zap! I brought the taser’s metal prongs down on Dingo’s abdomen, grinning from ear to ear as he tensed up like someone had—well, like he’d been electrocuted. Because he had. His teeth clenched, his muscles taut, his eyes wide, until I pulled the taser away and let him breathe. Before he had enough time to relax, I brought it down again, this time on his bicep, grinning wickedly at his obvious discomfort.
“How do you like it?” I whispered, bent over his body, my hair tickling the side of his face as I spoke the words in his ear. “It has a bit of a kick, doesn’t it?”
He groaned as I brought it down a third time on his thigh, dangerously close to his balls. “Fuck,” he hissed out from between gritted teeth, his eyes fluttering closed. “Fuck.”
“So eloquent,” I sang, tossing the taser back on the table as the battery flashed red. “Too bad I didn’t have time to charge that up. I could have had some real fun with your buddy here, Jackal.”
“Eat shit and die, bitch,” Jackal spat, rage growing in his voice. “Choke on fucking air.”
“Oh, if it were only that easy, Jackal,” I retorted, my blood singing with the possibilities running through my head. I had so many options, and there was all the time in the world. “Actually, go ahead and open that mouth of yours. I have something to put in it.”
All of a sudden, those jaws snapped shut, and his eyes narrowed.
That was no fun.
I wanted to hear him scream. Beg. Plead for his life, and theirs.
“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden, dog. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
I picked up the blade on the table and dragged it across his chest, tearing the fabric of his shirt, but no more, as he swore under his breath.
“No, this won’t do. I don’t think you’ve suffered enough to start on you yet. ”
I turned to Dingo again, contemplating what to do next, when the idea struck me.
He’d looked to Coyote first. Clearly, he had a soft spot for that one. So, naturally, I turned to Coyote, too, and let a slow smile spread across my lips.
“Ah, Coyote, was it? How about you and I get acquainted?”
Coyote didn’t even look at me, his eyes trained on the floor like a dog who’d been caught in the garbage can. Jackal, on the other hand, began to struggle anew in his chains, the sound scraping across my brain like nails on a chalkboard.
Bingo.
I walked over to the man with the scraggly, longer hair that acted like a curtain, shielding him from the rest of the world, and straddled his lap, our breath mingling as I leaned in and gripped his chin with my free hand.
If he wouldn’t look at me, I’d fucking force him to.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, dammit.”
His eyes slowly crawled up my throat, traveling over every inch of me so slowly, it felt like I was the one being scrutinized, inspected, measured. The knife in my hand felt worthless as he met my gaze, and I caught a glimpse of the beast lurking in the depths of his soul.
Whoever he was, there was a darkness there, and something familiar about the way he seemed to meet his fate with a kind of serene understanding. He wasn’t happy about the situation, but he didn’t let his emotions wreak havoc on his face.
Who are you? What are you?
Why do you stir things inside me?
Questions that would never be uttered from my lips, but that I wished to answer nonetheless.
I caressed the side of his face almost lovingly with the dull side of the blade, letting my eyes, and his, follow the path it took to the edge of his jaw. “You’re far too pretty to slice up. Maybe I’ll just poke a few holes in you instead. ”
For emphasis, I jammed the blade in my hand into the flesh of his shoulder, only deep enough to draw a decent amount of blood, but not so deep he would lose the ability to move it. I wanted his muscles to twitch in pain every time he took a breath, but I wasn’t ready for him to die.
I just wanted them to suffer first. Was that too much to ask?
He lashed out and fought against the rope binding him to the chair, nearly unseating me as I threw my head back and cackled in his face. The snarls and snorts that left him sounded positively feral, and I felt a strange and unfamiliar—yet not—feeling pool low in my stomach.
I had to fight the sudden urge to rub myself against him and mark my territory.
Something about his wildness sang to the wild in me.
I didn’t like it.
I didn’t want to like it.
But it had been so long since someone made me feel anything . . .
I slipped off of his lap and yanked the knife from his shoulder, eliciting a yelp of pain from the dog in the chair. An answering yelp of sympathy sounded from his friend, Jackal, and I felt their desperation and fear taint the air. It made it thick, choked me in a pleasant, reminiscent way, and I could only hope they felt the same.
I wanted them to choke on their fear. I wanted them on edge.
I lived a lifetime of pain, and so would they.
Would I actually be satisfied with killing them?
Yes. Yes, I would.
I wiped the wet blood off the blade of my knife onto the edge of my skirt and watched Jackal study the knife’s every move with dangerous intent. I decided to play with him some.
After all, what good was food if you couldn’t play with it some ?
I knelt in front of him slowly, taking me to eye level with the murderous fuck. “You want this, Jackal?” I waved the blade in front of his face, a smile on my lips, teasing, taunting him, knowing damn well he couldn’t move his arms to get to me. “What would you even do with it?”
As the tip pressed against the end of his nose, then slipped to his lips and moved down to his chin, the breath hissed out of him like a hot tea kettle on the stove as it boiled over. “Fuck you, bitch,” he muttered, his nose twitching. “I’d kill you, for starters.”
“Kill me?” I rocked back on my heels, laughing at his bravado. “You can’t even move. In another thirty or so minutes, you’ll pass out, and a few hours after that?” I drew my finger across my throat, mocking him. “Well, you’ll be dead.”
He looked into my soul as I stood, staring down at him until he tore his penetrating eyes away first.
That’s right, you bastard. I’m the top bitch in this doghouse.
The laugh that left me wasn’t very human-like. But I couldn’t stop it from spilling over. Couldn’t keep myself from laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation.
Here I was, the three men I’d been hunting for years at my mercy, a number of torture tools on my table, ready to be used. All I had to do was lift a finger, and it would all be over.
And I could go back to . . .
To what?
My smile faltered for the first time tonight, and I growled at my own stupidity.
How dare I let them get under my skin? I was not their toy; they were mine. I was getting under their skin, not the other way around.
I raised the blade again, and, just for funsies, I put it in Jackal’s hand, chuckling as he clenched it in his fist and immediately started swinging around again.
“You’re a bigger idiot than I gave you credit for. ”
I quirked a brow as he swore, realizing, I think, that even though he had that knife, he was powerless to me. His hand was pinned against his side. He was more likely to stab himself than get anywhere near stabbing me. And yet he struggled still, fighting the inevitable.
I had to hand it to him. There was a hell of a fight in this dog. Putting him down wouldn’t be easy.
Shooting me doesn’t seem to keep this dog down.
My eyelids fluttered shut as I recalled those words from the night he murdered my father, the malice and taunting danger in them sending a chill down my spine in the moment. Now, though, it warmed my blood. It was a promise that he would put up a fight.
And that meant I could have far more fun draining that fight from him.
That familiar but not-so-familiar feeling in my stomach grew, and I subconsciously tightened my thighs against each other, biting back a moan of frustration and realization.
Torturing these fucks was doing things to me.
I leaned forward to grab the knife back from Jackal, and he chose that moment to jerk around and swing wildly in my direction.
Landing his nose right against my fucking skirt.
Three things happened at once.
He inhaled, a deep, lingering sound punctuated by a low moan of approval. A slow smile spread across his face, growing with every second I stood there, paralyzed, unable to move away. And then?—
“This is turning you on, isn’t it, you sick bitch?”
Those words were like lighting an inferno and dousing it with an ocean of ice water. I felt familiar shame run through me at my uncontrollable reaction, then anger, at being made to feel ashamed of myself. I would not let this piece of dirt beneath my boot make me embarrassed to be who I was .
So what if the only time I’d gotten wet in the last six years was when I was putting a blade in a man’s shoulder and taunting another with certain death? That was my problem to deal with, and I’d do that later.
Right now, I had men to torture and kill.
Decided, I turned around to grab a new tool from the table, my hand hovering over the hammer I’d picked out to break some fingers with, then swinging over to the tire iron as I debated breaking some bones.
Then, I turned around and spotted Dingo slowly dragging his zip-tied hands up and down the legs of the table, looking for any rough patch on the surface to break his restraints.
Oh, we couldn’t have that.
“Now, now, Dingo, what are you up to over here?” I knelt beside his table and inspected his plastic ties, pleased to find them still intact and holding strong. “You didn’t think I’d make it that easy, now, did you?”
My hand trailed up his arm to his shoulder that I’d bludgeoned earlier, and I was pleased when he let out a whimper as I raked my sharp nails over the sore area.
Jackal’s chains rattled again in his agitation.
“Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?” Dingo breathed, his teeth clenched tightly against the pain. “Why play with us like this?”
“She’s fucked up, that’s why,” Jackal shouted from behind me, his rage entangled in his tone now. “Gets hot and bothered from stabbing men. Must be our lucky day.”
“You couldn’t please a woman if she gave you a map and the key to her pussy,” I retorted, not even bothering to give him the benefit of my gaze as my fingers trailed over Dingo’s defined, muscled shoulders, appreciating the hours he must have spent in a gym working out to keep them so?—
“Like what you see, bitch?” Jackal sneered, his voice like an ice cube trailing down my back. I shivered despite myself. “I bet looking at you turns men soft. No wonder you have to do this kind of shit to get your rocks off. Real men won’t have you.”
“If you’re trying to insult me, it’s not working,” I hummed pleasantly. Better men than him—or worse, depending on how you looked at it—had tried, and failed, to bring me down before, with their words. Some with their fists.
And I was still standing, and they . . . weren’t.
Take that how you will.
“How long have you been watching us?”
Dingo spoke slowly, as if he were afraid I might not answer if he was too loud or insistent. Distracted by the muscles beneath my fingertips, I traced the outline of his abs, trailing down to where his shirt ended, a sliver of that torso peeking out to taunt me.
Dingo shuddered as my fingernails raked slowly, lightly across it, my mind elsewhere as I watched myself touch him with such brazen moves.
“A long time,” I muttered, watching the way his stomach sucked in at my touch, pre-empting the next movement, anticipating the next soft caress. I turned my fingers and slipped them up under his shirt, walking them up his torso until they came to about mid-chest level. “A very, very long time.” I started to rake my nails down his skin, then applied pressure, increasing the force as I approached his waistband. “I had to know everything so I could get it perfect.”
A groan accompanied his shudder, and then?—
A twitch in his pants. Subtle, but there, and very, very telling.
“Do you like to be touched, Dingo? Or is it the pain that makes your cock hard?”
His eyes, now filled with the shame Jackal had made me feel, turned away. For a moment, I wanted to force him to look at me, to see the desire in his eyes, even though I hated him.
It was quite heady to realize that your enemies, even on their deathbed, wanted you .
“You know, some say that near-death experiences can heighten arousal.” I let my fingers trace the pattern of his zipper, then curl around the curve of his hardening cock, trailing down his leg agonizingly slow. “Is that why you’re hard as a rock while you’re being tortured?” My gaze slipped over my shoulder to Jackal, who was staring daggers at me now. “I thought men would turn soft just looking at me, Jackal? What’s your buddy’s problem, then?”
“Leave him alone, you sick bitch,” he snarled, shaking in the chains again. “You got a problem, take it out on me. Or better yet, let me loose and fight me one-on-one.”
As if.
“Dream on, dog,” I laughed, leaving Dingo wanting as I turned my attention back on Coyote, who’d gone silent. “I think I’ll play with this one, too. He’s so quiet. Does he even talk?”
I knew he talked. I’d listened to him recite Shakespeare every night for a week. Hell, I’d fallen asleep with his voice in my ear. But though he could talk, he chose not to.
Why?
Another question I’d likely never have the answer to.
“Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow,” I began, watching him for any signs of recognition. I was pleased when his head snapped back up, a look of shock in those gorgeous green orbs. “That I shall say ‘good night’ til it be morrow.”
Jackal shook again off to the side. “The fuck kind of shit is that? Are you reciting poetry to us now?” He worked up a fake laugh, wailing miserably. “Oh no, I can’t take it; please, end the torture. Or go back to stabbing us. That was, at least, more humane.”
I watched words form on Coyote’s lips, just to die as those lips parted, a sigh escaping them.
“Nothing to say, Coyote? ”
He pursed his lips tightly together and turned away from me, grunting his desire for this interaction to end.
I decided to try a new tactic.
“Coyote . . . where does a man like you get a name like that?” I frowned as he refused to respond, but I didn’t let that deter me. “Surely someone gave it to you. It matches the rest of you dogs. So who picked the names?”