35. Chapter 30
Striker leads me to the dining room, each of my steps laced with a faint pain as my skin on my rear pulls and stretches. By the time we reach the bottom floor, my legs are trembling as much from exertion as from fear, my fingers curled under the leather around my neck like a collar.
“Walk,” Striker grates when I pause at the bottom step, nerves getting the best of me. He shoves me forward, forcing me toward the back of the house. My belly flutters, my breath leaving me in a rush when we reach the dining room.
He pushes me through the doorway and my stomach drops.
They’re here. All of them.
Reaper leans against the table, arms crossed, exuding arrogance like a perfume. Breaker’s in a seat at the table to his left, Viper on the other side.
Heat blooms between my legs, the memory of the woods scorching my body and my cheeks.
I’ve officially gone over the edge.
Striker tightens his grip and shoves me again. I wince, my fingers trapped between the belt and my throat.
All eyes land on me. I feel like a bad child being delivered to the principal.
Principals. Plural.
A sudden primal urge to run snakes down my legs, but I know it’s futile. I’m trapped here, completely at their mercy.
Like right now.
“Where’s Cora?” I ask them. She’d be mortified if she walked in and saw the belt around my neck.
Fuck, I should be mortified right now.
Reaper cocks his head to the side like he finds my question interesting. “She’s been instructed to stay in her room.”
What he doesn’t say is she’s locked in, because there’s no way she’d listen.
“What’s she done now?” Viper asks Striker as he leads me to the center of the room.
“Broken into my room,” Striker says, adjusting the belt at my neck, loose enough that I relax slightly, letting my hands fall to my sides.
“How did she get into the room?” Reaper asks, that dark gaze never leaving me.
Striker holds out my little knife. Breakers bark of laughter makes my eyebrows raise. Reaper’s glare makes my belly dip. His black eyes move to Viper and Reaper doesn’t even have to say anything for his turquoise eyes to drop. He reaches for the knife and pockets it.
Reaper shakes his head, focusing back on me. “I warned you, Kitten, yet here we are.” He shoots forward, stopping an inch from me, his hand clamping down around the belt at my neck, thumb digging under my jaw. The breath I was inhaling catches in my throat as he presses into my pulse. “Seems you are determined to test me.”
“I didn’t use it,” I say on a gasp, acutely aware of his heat radiating from his body. How I’m trapped between him and Striker at my back. Too aware of Reaper’s bare fingers at my throat again. His skin feels like a lit match to mine, burning me with his anger. With unleashed desire.
Reaper’s eyes narrow, and that heated look freezes, turning to black ice.
“The phone,” I whisper. “I didn’t call anyone.”
Those icy eyes dart to Striker behind me.
I feel his exhale move through my back. “She found my phone in the dresser.”
The way Reaper’s eyes ignite tells me that Striker may be in as much trouble as I am, but then his gaze falls to mine and I know I’m completely fucked.
“What did I tell you?” Reaper says, his voice deadly low. “You are ours. You do not leave here.”
I swallow. Fear tingling my hands.
“You said, little kitty, you understood you belonged here. To us. Isn’t that why you’ve been such a good girl? Performing for us? Flirting? Tempting?”
“I never promised anything,” I snap, my face flaming at the mention of Cora and me at night, feeling stupid because I got what I wanted by stripping down and finger fucking her. His attention, their attention. But not like this. Not laced with anger.
“Jesus.” Breaker huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m going to enjoy this one.”
The little I can see around Reaper’s eyes creases like he’s confused or just as dumbfounded as Breaker sounds.
No. He’s fucking smirking.
“Put her on the table.”
Striker turns me around, letting the belt slide around my neck until he’s holding it closed at my throat. Breaker and Viper move forward to grip my arms. I’m guided back to the table, my head snapping to follow Reaper’s movements as he steps aside, allowing them to place me on the table. I wince when my ass lands on the hard surface. Both men bring my arms up, forcing me to lie back, my rear right at the edge, my legs dangling over. The angle hurts my ass like all hell and I wonder if I’m going to have welts.
Reaper steps up and leans over me, taking both my wrists in his one large hand, pinning them to the surface. Striker lets the belt go, but Reaper grasps it, using it to hold me down. My heart thunders. I stare up at his masked jaw above my head, and the outline of his chin.
“Close your eyes,” Viper says. My gaze darts to him next to us. He holds up a long silky piece of fabric. Before I can protest, he places it over my eyes and lifts my head to tie it in the back.
It’s like the second my eyes are covered, every other sense heightens immediately. Over my pounding heart, I hear them moving around me, pushing chairs away. The belt’s released briefly, then Reaper’s grip returns. Someone makes a tsking sound. I swear I hear a whisper, then a light laugh.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, my voice trembling slightly. They can’t spank me like this. Not with my ass on the table. Part of me is relieved since it still hurts, but I’m not sure what they have in store for me as punishment.
A hot breath caresses my cheek. Warm flesh touches my ear. My already pounding heart skips. I feel silky hair fall across my face.
Reaper took his mask off.
“Bad Kitten,” Reaper says next to my ear. “What should we do to you?” Hot lips press to my temple. Air bursts from my lungs. “You’ve been so naughty lately.”
My chest tightens. I was expecting his anger. Reaper’s usual black rage, but he’s so calm, his tone dark yet steady. Not rippling with fury like it does when I piss him off. I’m not sure what it means, but my body ignites as his lips gently graze my cheek.
“Little temptress who can’t seem to behave.” Reaper’s voice drops, growing darker. There he is. Reaper has come out to play and I know I’m going to regret stepping foot in that room. “You know what you’ve been doing, filthy girl. Playing with each other’s pretty little pussies. Coming so sweetly on her hand, like you don’t remember how I tore you apart.”
“How you screamed, when my tongue was inside you,” Breaker says from my other side.
“How you groaned as you swallowed my cum,” Striker says.
“And how you moaned like the perfect pretty little slut around my cock as I fucked your throat,” Viper adds.
“My body doesn’t belong to you,” I snap, tasting the lie on my lips.
“Oh, but it does,” Reaper growls. The belt tightens, squeezing my throat. “Every curve. Every inch of flesh. That wet, greedy space between your thighs you let her touch, belongs to us. Every tear and every drop of blood belongs to us.”
Striker’s voice whispers in my ear, “Your mind, your body, your fucking soul belongs to us.”
I jerk against Reaper’s tight grasp, rage slashing through me. “I belong to no one,” I hiss.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Princess.” A finger brushes over my lips. I taste salt and him. Striker. “You’ve belonged to us since you stepped foot in that club.”
“Since the moment I first laid eyes on you,” Reaper grates, “You have been ours.”
“Seems we have a communication problem,” Breaker says, and I hear something sliding across the floor. “Maybe instead of telling her she belongs to us, we should show her.”
I can’t see shit. I’m held to a table by my kidnappers. I’ve been spanked, forcefully brought to orgasm, and whipped with a belt, but that sentence terrifies me more than anything.
A finger, I don’t know whose, slides up my calf to my knee, dragging my dress up. I kick out on instinct, but one of them catches me by the ankle.
“Scared kitty thinks we’re going to hurt her,” Reaper says. “Didn’t we promise we’d never hurt you?”
When I say nothing, a hand grips my jaw and Striker says, “Answer when we speak to you.”
“Yes,” I say immediately, “but Striker here just proved you’re all liars.”
“That ass beating wasn’t nearly as bad as you deserved,” Striker growls.
“I’d have loved to have seen that,” Viper says, and I feel my dress being lifted higher. “Did you leave welts?”
“More than likely,” Striker says.
Viper’s hungry groan creates a flutter low in my belly, the craving from earlier returning.
“Perverts,” I snap, aware I might as well be calling myself one too.
“Jesus,” Breaker says, “She doesn’t know when to stop.”
I clench my jaw, keeping my retort behind my teeth. Upstairs, Striker beat my ass red, but it wasn”t much worse than the spanking Reaper gave me. That night in the woods, I wasn’t hurt. Humiliated, yes, but I’ve not been hurt at all since they took me. Even then, when they took us, I could have been handled far worse and they may have left me alone and cold, confused, but my body was never harmed. I don’t think I’ve been in any real danger this entire time.
“Do you think that’s why we took you?” Reaper asks, a dark edge to his voice. “To torture you. Fuck you and abuse you?”
I shake my head, but when Reaper lightly tugs the belt I stutter out, “N-No.”
“Why didn’t you use the phone, Tiny Thing?” Breaker asks and his voice painfully gentle.
Why didn’t I call for help?I had the opportunity in my hands, and didn’t take it.
Clenching my jaw, I shake my head like this will stop the truth from coming out. I already know why I didn’t call for help, even if I don’t want to admit it.
I don’t want them hurt.
After everything, after watching them kill, after them drugging us, after being left alone, I know deep down they aren’t bad like Cora said.
And these men are right, Rune isn’t good. He’s not even a decent father. He’s a power hungry man and I’ve been trapped by him, forced to perform my tasks like a dedicated daughter. Trained on how to hide his actions. Educated by a cruel man that wants to make me like him. Cold and ruthless, and I’m so desperate for love that I did everything he told me to do. I had no choice. I was born into this life of greed and death and was never allowed the choice to fight my father’s rule.
The moment I was born, all my choices were taken. I didn’t get to pick my parents. And I didn’t get to choose whether or not I did Rune’s bidding.
I just did it and told myself I wanted to.
For weeks I’ve denied the quiet voice in my head that sang with relief. I was free for the first time in my life. Every morning I woke here was another day I wasn’t sitting in my empty kitchen, telling myself that I was going to make my father’s company even more powerful once I took it over. That when the day came, I could rule over it my way. And until then, I was okay with sitting passively while my father and Zane took over another club or chain of hotels, all while working the numbers to hide what was probably a shipment of drugs or something far worse.
Being here meant I wasn’t obligated to be my father’s protegee. Being here has meant I was unchained even if it’s been at the expense of my freedom.
“I didn’t want to,” I whisper, wanting to turn over, curl into a ball and weep for the woman whose first real choice in life was in the club that night with them. For this stupid ache inside me that’s making tears soak into the blindfold because I craved them again. For the nights that I felt Cora’s touch and wished it was his. Theirs. Even when I wouldn’t admit it to myself, I just wanted to feel that way I felt with them that night. Out of control and worshiped.
“Who do you belong to, Kitten?”
I bite my lip, fighting the sudden rush of tears. “You.” Sucking in a breath, I whisper. “All of you.”
“That’s right, Princess,” Striker says. A warm finger slides along my jawline. “Your ours. We don’t harm what’s ours.”
I nod. I think part of me has known the truth. From the moment they took us, I knew they had planned this entire plot against Rune, designing it in a way to make him suffer. I think maybe I’ve known all along they wanted my mind even more than my body.
“Do you want us, Kitten?”
Reaper’s grip tightens on my wrists, reminding me to answer. The word breaks out of me on a sob. “Yes.”
Then, there are hands everywhere.