7. Dehumanizing
SEVEN
DEHUMANIZING
Seven
I wished I could sleep. Wished I was anywhere but sitting in my room, arms wrapped protectively around myself, awaiting my ‘servicing’. I hadn’t slept well since that brush of his arm against my shoulder. That had been three days ago.
What fitful sleep I’d managed had been plagued with dreams. Dreams of heat, and bare skin, and filthy words growled into my ear. Dreams of blood … dreams of mating.
Dreams populated with him . Blond hair, Golden eyes. Broad shoulders. The smell of fresh earth and salt. Him muttering, ‘Blossom’ … in that filthy, dark, rumbly voice.
Dreams that woke me, the place between my legs, the place I tried to ignore, throbbing and aching. Begging me to reach down, to touch, to relieve the tension there.
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t touch myself there. Hadn’t been able to since I’d been moved into Rape Block.
My routine had returned to the usual tedium after my ‘chat’ with Baxter. But nothing felt normal anymore. I moved through my day, assisting with meals, holding out my arm for my new, higher dosage of the suppression drugs. Awaiting my daily ‘servicing’.
I saw nothing of the blond male. And my anxiety grew like a thrum in my chest, clenching at my heart, my lungs.
I couldn’t shake it. No matter how I told myself it was silly and irrational, that there was no reason for me to feel so on edge, it lingered.
He’s too far. Too far. His scent is gone.
The incessant, insistent whispers in the back of my mind made no sense to me. But just like the anxiety, I couldn’t shake them.
“Five minutes to prepare, Seven,” a new voice crackled through the intercom. A new agent. Another person to bear witness to my violation. Now I thought about it, Dawson hadn’t been present at servicing for quite some time. I wondered if she had lost the stomach for watching me be raped.
I doubted it. She’d probably been promoted. She certainly had seemed on good terms with Baxter, throwing out her theories about us to him while I feigned unconsciousness. Maybe she was too important now to simply watch as male after male was forced upon me.
With a shaky sigh and a clenching in my stomach, I stood, unbuttoning the flap at the crotch of my jumpsuit. I tucked it away, hating the sudden cool air on skin that should have been private. Should have been just for me … and maybe a lover of my choosing, one day.
For HIM.
Not for any male, I thought forcefully at the whisper in my mind. I will never choose to let a male touch me.
The whisper’s tittered laughter echoed.
Picking up the bottle of lubricant, I squirted some inside myself. I faced my bed, went to my knees, and leaned against the mattress, sinking my head into my hands.
Wrong.
It had been wrong since the very first time it was done to me. And still I submitted. Still I counted the days.
Still I plotted a revenge that felt so far out of my reach, as the drugs numbed me enough to feel like my life would never be anything more than this.
“I’m sending him in now, Seven,” the agent said. Her voice was quiet. I wondered how she felt about having to watch this. Was this the first time she’d had to bear witness? Or was she hardened by months of it with another female?
The door buzzed. I kept my head down. I didn’t want to see who they’d sent in to me.
“No touching. No biting. Hands are only to be involved to ensure proper positioning of the phallus at the vaginal entrance.” The agent’s voice was anxious. I breathed through the tightening in my chest, pressing my face into the mattress. The stale smell of it was almost comforting, drowning out the thick, musky scent of the male approaching.
The muted rustling of him arranging his own flap. The footsteps coming closer. The heat of him as he knelt behind me. The warm, thick prod and swirl of the head of him, seeking the right spot to thrust.
Pressure. Stretching.
He was big.
I squeezed my eyes tighter, feeling his hips against my backside as he seated himself inside me. I wanted to squirm, to pull myself away from him. I forced myself to stay still.
Be still. Let him finish. Get it over and done with.
Wrong. Wrongwrongwrong. It should be HIM!
I wished the stupid whisper could say something helpful for once.
He groaned wordlessly behind me as he began to move. His hips slapped against me. The slide of him inside me … it wasn’t painful. Not even uncomfortable—now that I was used to his size. Just … unwanted. Invasive.
Dehumanizing. If ever there was anything that reminded me of my half-breed status, it was this. Not the shifting. Not the drugs. Not the imprisonment inside sterile corridors and locked rooms.
It was this. Being so desensitized to rape that I submitted to it with begrudging acceptance.
If HE was here, if HE knew this was being done to you, he would tear this male limb from limb. Blood would rain down. And no drug would prevent him from turning. He would take you, and he would tear this place apart to get you free. And he would make sure that every time from then onwards was filled with your pleasure.
I focused on the nonsense whispering inside my head; a distraction, a way to escape my body and what was being done to it. An image of the ‘him’ the whisper was referring to appeared unbidden behind my closed eyelids. A memory of the dream that had dogged me the last three nights.
Warm fingertips stroking my spine, gripping my hips as he thrust. The scent of earth and salt ensnared my senses.
“This perfect little pussy … Fuck, the way you squeeze me … so hot and tight … going to fill you so full I drip out of you for days …”
I gritted my teeth, but a moan tore from my throat into the mattress. Heat and aching erupted between my legs, reminiscent of how I felt when I woke from the dream.
Except this time, I was being touched down there. Being penetrated, just like in the dream. There was sensation, building the tension deep in my belly.
“No,” I whimpered into the mattress.
“Sorry,” the male behind me grunted, even as his hips snapped faster, slipping in even deeper as my traitorous body leaked arousal around him.
It could be enjoyable. With HIM.
I don’t want to think about him like this! I don’t want to …
But the whisper didn’t care what I wanted. It conjured more of him.
Face to face … my hands tangled in his golden hair. His eyes, glowing with arousal, caressing my breasts as he pushed into me. His lips, full, swollen as he took my mouth. His sharp teeth, grazing my bottom lip. Blood pooling.
He groaned as he sucked it into his mouth, his movements erratic, his hands pressing my thighs wider, pushing deeper into me. I bit him back, the delicious tang of his blood hitting my tongue better than anything I’d ever tasted. Our tongues tangling, sliding through our mingling blood. My body met him, thrust for thrust. The wet slap of our joining.
Our Joining …
“Please, stop,” I breathed, begging the whisper as my body coiled tighter against my will.
Join with HIM, and never again will you have to submit to this. Join with him, and it will always be perfect. It will always be pleasurable.
“No!” I moaned, heat flooding my face, my chest, a rough sob tearing from me as the hot ache deep within me burst into a pulsing throb that spasmed my stomach muscles and had me clawing at my sheets in despair.
Tears soaked into my blanket as the male behind me groaned.
“Shit, that’s …”
With an incoherent roar, he spilled into my still pulsing flesh. He slowed, then stopped.
“You enjoyed that …” he muttered, shocked, as he slipped out of me.
I shook my head, not lifting it from the blanket.
My body might have climaxed … but my mind was horrified.
“Okay, you can leave the room,” the agent’s voice shook. “No need for further discussion.”
The male didn’t move for a moment. But then I felt the heat of him disappear, the rustle of clothes being righted. His retreating footsteps and the buzz of the door. I took short, shallow breaths. It was all I could cope with.
“Seven, on your back on the bed, please. Legs up against the wall until the alarm goes off.”
With shaking hands, I reached down, tugging the flap back over me. Covering my shame. Crawling onto the bed. I couldn’t look towards the mirrored glass that I knew let the agent see inside, see everything that had just happened. Let her witness my utter humiliation.
I propped my feet against the wall, covering my face with my arm. Hiding my disgust. My horror that my stupid body had betrayed me. That the stupid whisper had forced those images into my brain and made my body react.
I tried to force the shift of one claw. Just one. A single claw to gouge a mark in the wall next to the hundreds of others. The mark of another rape.
My body betrayed me again. No tingling in my fingers. No sharpening. No darkening of a nail into a wicked, black, curved claw.
Tears blurred my vision, drenching my face. I pressed my soft, human nail to the concrete wall. I dragged it down. Nothing.
I dragged it again. And again, and again. Eventually, a fine line of blood marked the wall where there would have once been a claw mark. My hand fell to the bed beside me, the blood from my torn nail already drying. The wound already healing.
Why did you do that to me? I demanded.
To show you a tiny taste of what you could have. With HIM.
I don’t ever want a male inside me again! I thought vehemently.
The whisper chuckled.
Oh, you will.