Chapter 25
SCOTTIE
Coughing, the cotton remained lodged in my throat as he pulled the taser baton away for a fourth time. “I’m surprised…your dick still works,” I hissed through gritted teeth. He hadn’t successfully shoved it back into my mouth yet, as the blood flowing from his wounds seemed to hinder him.
“Why this man thinks you’re worth it, beats me,” he snarled. I glanced at him as he deeply inhaled and then looked at the ceiling. Calm fell over him like a blanket fresh from the dryer.
And then he casually placed the baton against the metal table again.
Clouded within the merciless tendrils of fire and ice that ripped through my veins, a cascading numbness slipped onto my nerves. And somehow I was floating above my body, watching as my muscles contracted, contorting my own figure as if possessed. But for whatever reason, I no longer felt it.
Maybe a few sharp pricks of that ethereal power caressed my cells, but the moment the agony split through the surge, I was once again disconnected from reality.
My thoughts drifted. Caging the pain into a small box in the corner of my mind, I slipped away. Back to the simple moments that I once shared with Mikey. I was getting rather annoyed with my own mind, constantly swimming my ponderings back to him. But there he was, with that stupid, cocky smile watching me. Protecting me. Pulling me away from agony.
As piercing as the jolts of lightning crackling through my veins, his eyes studied me. They were endless. All consuming. Full of life that I wanted to drown in. Hidden deep within the pain and rage that fueled him, lay a gentle soul begging for love.
Closing my eyes, exhaustion crept into my bones as the flooding electricity dimmed. I clung to the brief break that I was afforded, letting it fuel me with adrenaline and dissociation from the absolute torture my body was enduring. I had to make it through. I had to survive.
Mikey was coming. I just knew it.
A sudden jolt of adrenaline coursed through me. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t fighting alone. I wasn’t fighting for just me. I was fighting for me, but also for him. And I was also fighting for my team. They were coming too.
Whatever excruciating torment was dealt to me, I could weather the storm. I needed to return.
Because Mikey needed me.
Someone else needed me.
Wantedme.
A fracturing current tore through my body. And my lungs ruptured, releasing a scream so powerful, I watched my captor take a startling step backward. The electricity immediately fizzled out, leaving me once again panting on the table.
And everything turned black.
Vibrant colors swirled in my vision, everything around me colliding into one blob. Crippling fatigue burrowed into my bones, weighing me a thousand pounds heavier. I couldn’t move my fingertips. I couldn’t wiggle my toes. How much time came and went I wasn’t sure. It could’ve been a few seconds or several hours, but the world swirled into nothing around me.
Out of instinct, my muscles contracted, bracing for the next wave of electricity to ripple through my skin.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, sweat beaded on my forehead and oxygen slowly spilled into my lungs. My heart regained a slowly steadier rhythm.
My muddied senses faded in and out. Once in a while, footsteps sounded around me and garbled voices whispered. Other times, there was nothing but the fuzzy remains of white noise. He had done exactly what he’d promised. I felt ripped apart to pieces.
But he had failed on another point. I hadn’t watched. I wasn’t able to watch.
Inhaling deeply, I pried my eyes open to slits. My captor leaned against the wall to my left, dabbing a cloth at the last bit of blood dried to his penis. Nausea rippled through me once more, and I flopped my head to the right, but I had no energy to even attempt to dry heave.
“Someone looks tired,” a muted voice sounded to my left.
He was right. I wasn’t able to open my mouth to say something in response.
“Good, then let’s try this again; though, I think I’m going to mix it up a little,” he hissed like a snake. His words tasted foul.
And through the haze, I watched his blurry figure climb back up onto the table. It shifted beneath his weight, lulling me into deeper exhaustion. I called to every last reserve in my body, searching for a single store of adrenaline that might be left. Something to help me fight.
Anything to keep this prick from doing what I knew he was about to as his fingers gripped the waistband to my pants.
Shaking my head fervently, my disheveled hair slapped my cheeks. I was partially grateful I didn’t have the energy to beg him to stop because I knew that would only fuel his ego. Every bone in my body desperately hoped that he was too injured to get hard and would by all means, technically fail. Of all the things to happen because this fucker was bored…
With the last surge of energy, I slammed my hips against the table. But it took almost no effort from him to raise my ass and slip my pants and underwear off of my legs in one fell swoop. Greed and hunger, absolutely disgusting hunger, bled from his eyes as he crawled between my thighs.
There was nothing I could do.
No other way I could fight him. He’d won.
Leaning my head back, I stared at the ceiling. Simply waiting.
A grunt drew my attention back to the asshole. But just as my eyes slid across the frustration that tightened his features, a crack of gunfire drew my gaze away from his limp and bleeding dick.
Even he stopped. “The hell was that?” Merlin barked at one of the four men standing guard at the doorway.
Macavoy shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it’s the guy that hired us.”
“Except he promised he wouldn’t use a gun or actually kill someone,” my captor hissed.
Another couple pops reverberated around the room. Whoever was here had a silencer on their weapon; otherwise, the gunshot would’ve been louder. Maybe they were closer than I previously thought.
A single wail rent through air.
Scuffling and grunts echoed the still thundering shriek.
Something sharp sliced with a hiss outside the room.
Straining against my cuffs, I attempted to peer around the four bulky men standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on?” my captor asked, still crouched between my legs.
“We don’t know,” Macavoy replied, shouldering a rifle.
A blanket of utter silence cocooned us.
Not even the insects that lived within these walls dared to scuttle about. There was nothing. My heart hammered against my ribs. Anxiously awaiting with a drawn breath whatever death stalked my way. My nerves awakened.
As if the darkness itself became a tangible liquid, shadows emerged from the corners of the room. But no one was there. Not yet anyway. Or at least not that I could see.
And then metal clanked. Links hissed through the air. My eyes widened as a chain wrapped around the throat of one of the few men outside of the room that I could see. His hands flew to the iron and then he was jerked off his feet and disappeared into the black mist.
Within the charged suspension, not a soul stirred.
I dared not breathe for fear of what might happen next. And then a soft click broke the stillness. Rolling out of the darkness was a single, decapitated bloodied head. Footsteps stumbled, backing away from the gore plunking across the floor of the hallway.
The shadows swirled and before anyone had a chance to fire, five shots cracked through the air. Though I couldn’t see it, there were several wet thuds of bodies slumping to the ground. The four men standing guard in the doorway raced out into the hallway and then froze.
Morphing from the darkness was a towering figure. Stalking forward with steady threatening steps, he wrapped an arm around one thick man’s neck. Bloodied fingers gripped the assailant’s chin and jerked, hard. The crunch of bones seared into my ears as the figure pointed his handgun at a second combatant and fired. The enemy dropped to the ground just as a third man engaged this strange, rage-filled creature.
No, not a creature.
Mikey.
In a fluid movement, Mikey hurled the dead man still clutched in his hand across the room. It rammed into Macavoy, knocking him down. Mikey ducked, the third enemy’s shots skimming over his head.
Rolling onto his feet, Mikey sprinted the last couple feet and jumped, slamming a knee into a new assailant’s chin. Swiftly, Mikey stomped on the now prone combatant’s face with a squelch and threw a knife at Macavoy just as Macavoy shoved the dead man off him.
Blood pooled from the eight bodies strewn on the floor just outside my cell. My heart raced, watching a man who encapsulated the grim reaper himself leave nothing to mercy, all to rescue me.
Covered in dark stains, rage twisting the visible features on Mikey’s face, he rushed toward Macavoy, who ripped the knife from his arm.
Mikey’s fist crunched into Macavoy’s jaw, sending teeth flying from his mouth. Quickly parrying the incoming jab away, Mikey snatched another knife from his belt and jabbed it into the side of Macavoy’s throat.
With a gurgle of blood, Macavoy dropped the other blade and clutched the protruding hilt. Mikey raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger. Point blank through his forehead. Blood splattered back on Mikey’s face, mixing with the droplets already coating his skin. He’d been carelessly exposing his identity this entire time.
Wait, Mikey was a lot of things, but not careless.
My eyes widened as he snatched up the blade from the ground and slowly turned.
He wanted them to know who he was.
The moment that Mikey’s eyes connected with my captor’s, all fear that had held Merlin frozen between my legs zapped him into gear. He scrambled down from the table as Mikey stalked into the room.
Like thunder that roared through a black sky, at this moment, Mikey commanded even the fabric of time.
“Please,” my captor begged, raising his palms in submission to Mikey as he stopped in the doorframe.
Mikey tipped his head. “Why are you begging? I haven’t done anything to you,” he growled, his voice sending a lurch of excitement through me. “Yet.”
“L-L-Look, I was just doing my job,” Merlin stammered, plastering himself as tightly to the wall as he could.
A wicked smile slid across Mikey’s face. It sent a chill down my spine. “And I’m about to do mine.” Mikey barreled across the room, hurdling over the table in one easy motion. Without hesitation, he grabbed Merlin’s collar, hoisted him off of his feet, and jabbed the knife into his junk.
Releasing him, Merlin let out a high squeal as all of his weight came crashing down onto the knife impaled into the wall. With one more shift in his stance, Mikey withdrew a second knife and sliced Merlin’s skewered nuts and dick clean off of his body.
Heaving once, his shoulders sagged, and Mikey turned away with a sigh, the red blaze in his eyes slowly fading.
“Don’t walk away from me!” Merlin shrieked, his voice high pitched. Suddenly, vomit expelled from his mouth as he collapsed forward. His junk remained on the wall as he crashed to the ground, writhing in pain.
“Mikey,” I whispered, realizing I just wanted all of this over.
Revenge had felt good for a moment, but now, I simply wanted Mikey to hold me without the sounds of a man convulsing in agony to ruin things.
Mikey studied me for a moment and then he nodded, his eyes still blazing with a fire of rage. Stooping to the floor, he grabbed the man by his jaw and jerked.
Dead.
Merlin’s lifeless body twitched a couple more times and then fell still in a pool of his own blood and vomit.
“Mikey,” I cried out quietly again.
His entire rage-filled frame softened and he rushed toward me. Tears filled my eyes, blurring him from sight as he quickly removed my shackles and dressed me back into my underwear and pants without a single accidental brush against my skin.
The moment I could, I rolled free from the table and crashed into his chest. Balling my arms up in front of me, I pressed tightly into him.
“Hey, Scotch,” he tenderly said. His entire body shook, his steel frame trembling as he wrapped his arms around me, cocooning me back into a world that held no pain or turmoil.
“I was so scared,” I whispered. I didn’t even know why I told him, that only made me look weak. But I couldn’t help it.
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he simply tightened his hold on me and threaded his fingers through my hair. Familiar warmth flooded my senses. My heart knew that for this moment, there was no chaos, no more fear.
There was simply Mikey.
“I bit his dick,” I muttered.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” he gently replied.
“He wasn’t able to do anything,” I explained. Knowing Mikey, he wouldn’t ask. But he would listen. And it felt so nice to be able to tell someone else that nothing actually happened. That I fought like hell and won.
“This is Scottie Aleck we are talking about. Unless she wants something to happen, it never will.” His chin pressed against the top of my head and silent tears flooded my cheeks again. I buried my face tighter into his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his steady breaths.
“You came and found me.”
“I’d burn the world to find you, Scotch,” he replied. My skin tingled. Comfort and strength ripped hot through my veins. Tipping my head back, I gazed up at him. Eyes that still held so much pain, yet a hint of serenity, sparkled down at me.
“I’m so sorry about Thompson,” I muttered, a wave of reality hitting me.
His brows creased, strain pulling his face tight. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but…”
“But no, Scottie. We’re not doing that.” His hands slid to cup my cheeks, calloused thumbs swept the tear stain away from my skin.
“Okay,” I whispered, sinking into his touch.
“Okay,” he muttered back. I closed my eyes.
“Kiss me,” I quietly urged.
And satin pressed gently against my forehead.
Breathing in deeply, my soul finally rested. How he knew that was what I needed more than his lips against mine, I didn’t know. And I wasn’t going to ask.
“Where’s the rest of the team?” I asked as he gently pulled away. Short, sweet, and exactly what I needed.
“A couple minutes behind. They made sure I didn’t get my ass killed on the way here and are clearing the rest of the house.”
“You should probably let go of me before they get here.” I blew my lips up and exhaled slowly.
“Probably,” he mumbled.
And the moment that his palms fell away from my cheeks, a chill split the air.