Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
AVA
My head throbbed, and a heavy sense of grogginess sat over me.
Groaning, I opened my eyes, squinting at how blurry they were.
I tried to move my hands, but someone had tied them behind me.
The rope dug painfully into my skin. My ankles were also bound.
The room came into focus, but it was too dark to make much out.
A single dull yellow light hung from the ceiling.
I was on a cot in an empty room the size of a cell. And I was still naked.
Fear trampled any fight that might have been in me.
My bindings were too tight to even offer wiggle room, and my captives had no qualms about leaving me naked and alone in a grungy cell.
Had they touched me? Raped me? All kinds of thoughts raced through my head and panic eked its way in.
The numbness started, and I knew a panic attack was coming, but this wasn’t the place for it.
My heart raced, so I forced myself to take slow and steady breaths, counting to five with each before releasing them.
Remembering all the meditation sessions I’d had with my therapist. The wave of panic subsided, the tingling fading as my heartbeat slowed.
Swallowing down the fear, I took a mental check of my body.
Nothing hurt but the few bruises I knew were from Emerson, distinctly around my hips and on the insides of my thighs.
But there was no pain or sense that someone had touched me, not that I had any idea if I would know since they’d knocked me out.
I pushed the thought aside and tried sitting up.
It took a few tries, but I managed just in time for a figure to enter the room.
“Look who’s awake.” The creepy man with the snake tattoo came closer. His grin caused the hair on my arms to rise, and I backed away as his hand reached for my breast.
“Get away from me,” I said, hitting the wall behind me.
His hand met the skin of my cheek in a flash that sent me falling onto the thin, dingy mattress and my jaw aching. He climbed over me and held my chin, squeezing it so hard tears sprung in my eyes.
“You better be glad the buyers don’t want us sampling the goods or I’d fuck you so hard you’d be pleading for me to stop.” His tongue ran over my cheek and licked away the tears. “Fucking Cade Slaughter’s woman would be something to brag about.”
He rose and adjusted himself, cupping the small bulge in his pants like he was proud of it.
“Too bad you have to hold your dick to make it look big,” I said, because I never knew when to keep my mouth shut.
With a handful of hair, he tugged me up and hit me again. This time my ears rang, and I tasted the tang of blood in my mouth.
“Get your hands off her,” another voice came from the doorway. “You bruise her too much and we’ll lose money.”
“She’s got a smart mouth on her. I might need to use it to show her some respect.”
“And I might have to bite to teach you respect,” I retorted.
A hand caught his before he brought it down on me again. “Get out. If I catch you in here with her again, I’ll take your fingers and send them as an apology to the buyer for touching his property.”
“We have a buyer?” The excitement in his voice had me cringing just as much as the fact that someone had paid money for me.
“They liked the pictures we sent, and the bids are high.” Oh shit, pictures?
They had taken pictures of my naked body and sent it to their list of buyers?
Pervs who bought women and girls to use for their pleasure.
I was going to be sick. “There’s a bidding war going on.
Everyone wants the honor of owning Cade Slaughter’s woman.
A piece of the mighty and a fuck you to his power. ”
“We struck gold.”
“Damn right we did. Now get out of here. There’s another hour of bidding, then we’ll get her ready for transport. She’ll ship out tonight.”
The snake guy left, his steps too bouncy, his hands rubbing together like some maniacal cartoon character. The new guy stooped down and pushed the hair back from my face.
“So, you’re the one in charge?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and my mind clear. Get them talking. That’s what they always told us. If we couldn’t fight back, then get them to talk.
But he didn’t fall for it. He picked up my hair and pulled it for me to see.
Gone was the blonde and pink replaced by a dark brown so close to my natural color it was shocking.
“We had to pretty you up a bit. Our high rollers are particular and if you look like you might bite, then the lower bids come in. Those are the men who want to break you and not play with you. Any other time, I would have left you as is and sent you out for breaking. But since you belong to Cade, I want him to know how much I sold you for. To know that some other man will be fucking his girl and enjoying every second of being balls deep in her wet cunt.”
I spat at him, and he pulled my hair harder. Wiping his face, he said, “Your new owner may not like a woman with spirit, but I can guarantee if he needs to break it from you, he will. Even if it means he sends you back to us so we can pass you around until you’re begging for just his cock.”
Standing, he wiped his hands on his pants, ignoring my glare.
“Don’t tempt me, sweetheart.” My stomach turned at the word.
“I had fun pulling that piercing from your pussy.” This time my stomach lurched, and bile filled my throat.
“I was tempted to shove my cock in there, but I have my rules.” He yanked me up by my hair and slammed me against the wall, pulling my hair so hard my neck craned.
“I might have to break that rule and give you a good fucking if you continue to be a nuisance.”
“Nuisance is my middle name. You might want to warn your buyer that I don’t play nice.”
His lips curled into a snarl. “I have one buyer who pulls the teeth from his girls so they can’t bite him when he shoves his cock down their throat. I blocked him from this bid, but I think I’ll add him back. He’s a high bidder and likes the feisty ones.”
Terror held me prisoner, the vileness of what he’d told me leaving me stunned.
This was why men like Greyson Tides detested men like this.
Why Emerson had tried taking these men down.
If I made it out of this, I would ensure he struck down the rumors that he was responsible for the trafficking.
Struck it down and cleared his name, because any association with this was horrid.
I’d lived in a bubble, never really understanding what these men were doing to women, but here I was in the middle of it, and it was even more grotesque than I’d thought.
“Now be a good girl and shut up, or I’ll knock you out again.”
Hearing good girl from him made the vomit want to spill from where it perched in my throat.
He stomped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I heard a lock and thought about how different this prison was from the one Emerson had put me in.
Did he know I was gone? He had to have realized it by now, but did he know who had taken me? Or where I was?
The panic rose when I realized he’d been hunting these men and hadn’t found them.
He might never find me. I might never see him again, experience his touches again, touches that horrid unwanted ones would soon replace.
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to fight the panic and desperation, calling on the strength I’d prided myself on for years.
Strength these asses had stripped from me so easily it terrified me.
Keeping my eyes closed, I prayed Emerson would find me, keeping that thought in my mind and curling into a ball to shove away the knowledge that countless men had seen me naked and at least one had touched me as he’d removed my piercings.
I let the thought of what Emerson would do to them when he rescued me, of what I would do to them when I was finally free, take over the all-consuming hopelessness that threatened to drown me.