Creed (The Dark Sins Duet #1)

Prologue

COLLINS (AGE 20)

I force my lips to remain shut to fight a scream that claws its way up my throat as my legs are wrenched wider apart, the spreader bar latched between my ankles clicked open another notch wider.

His favorite tool.

I hear the sound of the metal chain at my feet jangling for a moment before it’s pulled taut once more and latched onto the end of the bed. I can’t see anything past the cloth that’s been tied over my eyes for God-knows-how long, but I know he’s nearby.

He never goes far.

The touch of a large hand starts at my ankle and trails all the way up my leg and stops when it reaches the apex of my thighs. The hand squeezes my sex in such a bruising grip that it nearly makes me whimper in pain, but I bite it back. Barely. I will never give him the satisfaction. Though it’s hard to fight the nausea and the bile that rises in the back of my throat when he starts to rub me over the dirty t-shirt that barely covers my body with the way my limbs are stretched so far that my fingertips are now numb.

An unexpected slap lands on my cheek and it causes me to cry out. Two sounds ring out in the cold room as a result.

One groan of pleasure, and one of pain.

My heart squeezes at the latter.

“Ah,” my sick, sadistic captor whispers in the quiet of the room and moves his hand from my center and grips my thigh right over the fresh cut wounds so hard that I know it’ll bruise around the angry flesh and my traitorous voice whimpers at the pain as I feel the cuts reopen and the warmth of blood trails down my thigh. “There are those beautiful sounds I’ve been missing for so long.” He chuckles darkly. “Took you long enough.”

I have no idea how long we’ve been here, but it feels like an eternity.

“Don’t you fucking touch her you piece of shit!” A rough, tortured voice screams out from the other side of the room and a little more of my soul dies with his words.

I hate him.

I love him.

I fucking hate that I love him.

If I’d just stayed away, kept my distance, and stayed friends— family —then he would never be here, suffering right alongside me. I hate him because he pushed his way into my life when I wanted to stay invisible. I hate him because he showed me what it was like to have a family. I hate him because he’s shown me unconditional love.

I hate him because I love him. So. Fucking. Much.

Tears well in my eyes and seep into the cloth covering them as he yells and pleads and begs for our captor to spare me, to turn his anger onto him.

But it won’t work.

It never does.

He isn’t who my captor wants. It’s not his pain that he craves .

It’s mine.

I want to tell him to save his breath, but I remain silent. After the pain that’s been inflicted on me for who knows how many days, I don’t trust my body to not betray me and give this man what he wants if I open my mouth.

A dark chuckle fills the space and the hand gripping my thigh leaves momentarily before it returns, this time gripping my throat in another bruising hold. His hand is slick with my blood, and the metallic tang sends a wave of nausea through my body. I fight the urge to retch. His grip on my throat is not enough to take my breath, but he’s pressing on my pressure points that have stars dotting my vision. Panic grips me because I can’t fight him off.

My body freezes at the distinct click of a gun being cocked.

“I’m getting really fucking tired of hearing your boy-toy here screaming and crying, so I’m giving you an incentive, little girl. ” The nickname he gave me so long ago threatens to drag up haunting memories that now seem like a dream compared to the nightmare I’m currently trapped in. “You’re going to give me what I want.”

I try to shake my head, breathing heavily through my nose and fighting the loss of consciousness that’s threatening to consume me, but he squeezes a little tighter and continues. “You’re going to give me what I want—” he repeats, “Or I’ll shoot your fucking boyfriend in his chest and fuck you in his blood and make you watch as the life drains from his eyes.”

He's a fucking psychopath.

I do know what he wants, and up until now I’ve never given it to him. He’s always been obsessed with my pain. He gets off on it. But the thing that makes him come when he touches himself?

My screams.

I refused to give them to him.

He could cause me pain. He could make me cry and beg for mercy. But I will never give him my screams. I will never give him the satisfaction or knowledge that he’s breaking me from the inside out.

Besides the fact that I physically can’t scream—my throat never allowing it since I was a child—I would never scream for this man. This fucking monster.

Until now.

Would he really shoot him?

It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

My captor’s hand slides from my neck to my left breast and he pinches and twists my nipple so hard I swear I feel the fragile skin tear there. I open my mouth on a silent scream as white dots my vision and the feel of a warm wetness begins soaking through the shirt. The sickening, pleasured groan that he releases, accompanied by the blinding pain in my chest, tells me that he’s caused serious damage to my breast. My shoulders shake with quiet sobs at the searing pain that’s starting to consume me, but I remain silent as I cry.

“Nothing?” He has the fucking nerve to sound exasperated. My body jumps as a loud bang sounds in the room followed by a pained, “ Fuck ”.

“Oops, I missed.” He snorts, but then he begins to laugh. The shaking of his arm as it jostles my injured breast threatens to make me vomit from the pain. “But he fucking pissed himself like a child. Oh, fuck, this is too good.”

My heart squeezes painfully that the thought of the man I love being so helpless and scared to death by having a fucking bullet whiz by his head.

He shouldn’t even be here.

I hate him.

I love him.

I fucking hate that I fell in love with him.

“Let’s try this again, little girl. ” He drags his hand down my chest, spreading the blood from my nipple across the tainted fabric. When his hand reaches my sex, he delivers a slap so hard that a quiet, broken cry escapes my throat, the hit nearly numbing the tender flesh there. He shifts, bending closer to me, given the proximity of his voice to my ear. “Give. Me. What. I. Want. ”

I’m about to tell him to go fuck himself, but then he does the one thing he’d never dared to do before. The one thing that finally breaks me, that has my fellow captive and love of my life— one of them —screaming and cursing. Begging.

The excruciating pain is unbearable as too many fingers invade my unwilling body. It’s unforgiving and rough and for the second time in as many minutes, I feel something tear within me. But this time, it’s too much. I’d been assaulted before, the trauma of the events still haunt me in my dreams, but this? This has shattered the remnants of my soul. He had never touched me like this before.

Before, it was only about the pain and the pleasure he found in hurting me.

I cry, my hips bucking as much as the chains will allow, trying to dislodge his fingers from my body but it only serves to fuel his fire and he pulls them out almost all the way, only to force them back in, his nails scraping my inner walls and his knuckles bruising.

Over the roaring whoosh of my pulse, over the laughter and groans of pleasure coming from my captor, he is still crying my name, for mercy, for him to take the fucking bullet.

But he. Shouldn’t. Be. Here.

“Let him go.” My voice cracks as I sob around the pain of each invasive thrust.

“You want me to free him?” His voice sounds almost reverent, but I know better.

“Please,” the singular word comes out in a whisper so quiet, I almost don’t hear it myself.

“Give me what I want, and I’ll set him free.” The bite of metal hits my cheek as he shoves the blindfold from my eyes with the barrel. I struggle to blink my eyes open, having not been able to see anything for too long. Or maybe not long enough. I refuse to look at the man who has only ever craved my pain, but my heart stops dead in its tracks when my eyes immediately find the watery, red-rimmed eyes of the boy I love, bruised, beaten, and chained to a chair across the room .

“P-rom— ah—” I cry when he thrusts again and groans at the way my body clenches. It’s not to keep him in, though. It’s trying to force him out, which only makes his efforts more painful, fueling his attack on my body.

“I promise. Just give me what I want, little girl. Just once. That’s all I need and he’s free.” I’m surprised I can hear him over the pleas falling from the lips of the man whom I would give anything to set free, to somehow make him forget about me so he can live his life at peace.

I look into his beautiful watery eyes, hoping he can read the words I won’t say out loud. One of them is bloodshot with dried, crusted blood that trails down his cheek, and the other is nearly swollen shut. There’s also a dark stain surrounding a hole in his shirt that also looks like dried blood.

I remember the sound of a gun firing as I was hauled away from him. My heart shatters as I realize he was shot because of me. He was kidnapped and tortured because of me. He shouldn’t be here and yet he is, because of me. I’m so delirious and desperate that I’ll do anything to give him his freedom.

He shakes his head vehemently, his own silent plea to not give in, but another thrust of unwanted fingers inside of me feels more like a punch to my most sensitive area and it’s more than I can bear.

I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out.

My captor tuts. “You can do better than that.” He aims the gun at the head of the man tied up across from me and cocks the gun again.

I open my mouth to scream again, but it’s nothing more than a whisper. FUCK. I slowly drop my voice lower and lower until sound begins to register and the silence is filled with the one sound I swore I’d never make again.

I scream.

But it’s not for him.

I scream for me.

I scream for every motherfucker who ever put their hands on me .

I scream for the men I’ll leave behind, for the man I love, and the freedom I’ve just given him.

A sick sense of victory washes over me because I fucking did it.

“Oh, fuck yes, there’s that beautiful sound,” My captor groans and all at once his hand leaves me and I whimper, and with that same hand he unbuckles his pants and pulls his dick from the waistband of his underwear and in two hard jerks, he comes with a harsh growl. Hot, sticky ropes of cum land all over me, from my face to my thighs. Marking me. Tainting me.

His face looks more relaxed by the time he tucks himself away and it fuels my desire to end his fucking life if I ever escape from these shackles.

My temporary relief from the end of his assault is replaced with panic when I notice the gun is still aimed at him .

“Wait,” I panic, yanking hard on my restraints, but not feeling the pain of it in my numb extremities. “Y-you said you’d f-f-free h-him.” My words are broken as they leave my lips, but my body is losing its fight and trying to shut down to dissociate from reality, to try to heal itself.

“Hm,” He hums, looking at his spend and rubs it into my skin, making me dry heave at the acrid smell of his release clinging to my body. He ignores my struggles and tuts, “I did say that, didn’t I?”

He steps away from me and toward him.

Relief from his assault ending never has a chance to take hold because in an instant, my captor raises the gun and aims it back at the man I’ve come to love more than life itself. His beautiful face is blocked from my view by the monster of my nightmares. Harsh, short breaths saw in and out of my lungs as black creeps into my vision and I fight to stay awake, to stay in reality. I try to beg him to let him go, but nothing comes out when I open my mouth. My throat, now raw and abused from being able to scream for the first time since I was a child.

His sobs and mine mix together and echo throughout this small prison cell of a room, meanwhile the captor laughs in the face of his betrayal.

“Collins listen to me baby,” He whimpers and hiccups through his tears, his voice carrying over the psycho’s laughter as he taunts my reason for breathing with his gun. “I love you?—”

“I hate you,” I croak quietly.

“I know. But I’ll love you enough for the both of us.”

The familiar words nearly stop my heart altogether, knowing their true meaning. Then, even in the face of death, my man starts to sing. It’s haunted and broken, but the words of the song that he and his best friend wrote for me settle over my heart like a balm for my shattered soul.

“This is just fucking sad.” Our captor’s taunting voice cuts through the sorrow that has flooded the room. He looks at him, and laughs, the sound so chilling it wraps around my body like ice. “I did promise my little girl that I’d free you. So I will.” He presses the gun to my fellow captive’s temple and a sob escapes his lips. His eyes are trained on mine, trying to tell me everything and nothing all at once. “Collins, say goodbye.” He says coldly as presses the gun harder into his forehead.

No, no, no! Please, God, don’t take him away from me. From us.

Please, please, please, let him live.

He deserves to live.

I try again and again to plead for his life, until my voice finally cracks through.

“ No, please—” But my second scream is cut off when the room explodes with a loud BANG!

Blood sprays the wall and I cry out, his name the last thing on my lips before my world erupts then fades to black.