Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
“You’ve got quite the mouth on you, haven’t you?” the man with the black eyes said as he stood and looked at her.
Makayla couldn’t see what he had in his hands from here, but he’d picked up something and told the other two men to put her in this chair thing, bind her legs and wrists to the arms and legs of the chair to hold her in place, so it was obvious he had a plan.
It was also more than obvious that she didn't want to know what it was.
“I don’t believe I've said anything disrespectful,” she said calmly.
If there was one thing she’d learned after living for eighteen years in one abusive situation after another, it was that emotions fed off one another.
The more emotional she got, the more emotional he’d get, and that meant only bad things for her.
To that end, she reined in her fear, controlled it rather than let it control her, and maintained his gaze, making sure to keep her expression neutral.
“You don’t?” black eyes asked.
“You do? I mean, you had me kidnapped and brought here against my will. You cut my clothes off me, cutting my skin in the process, and then caned me until I bled. I don’t think I've said anything remotely disrespectful despite all of that.”
“I'm pretty sure I gave you fair warning of what would happen if you didn't remove your clothing, did I not?” black eyes asked as he strolled toward her.
He was either intentionally or unintentionally hiding from her what he was holding in his hand, and that was making her nerves worse. She wanted to know what she was facing.
“You did,” she acknowledged.
“That was more than fair, don’t you think?
After all, I own you now, and yet I still gave you a choice in how to act and only responded to your choices.
” The smile he gave her may as well be painted on for how lacking in anything genuine it was.
It was like the man was empty inside. He didn't seem to care in the least about what he was doing to her and the other women.
At least the other two men seemed to be enjoying this, while black eyes acted like he was completely devoid of everything that made a person human.
“That’s a twisted way of looking at it, I suppose, although one I'm familiar with.” Black eyes wasn't the first person to expect her to be grateful for the tiniest of things. Her mother always told her how ungrateful she was for having a place to live, clothes to wear, and food to eat. It didn’t matter that the clothes Makayla had worn back then were either too big or too small and always stained, or that she was often denied food for some imaginary infraction.
Many of her foster parents had held the same opinion.
They housed, fed, and clothed her so she should be down on her knees thanking them, even if they withheld love, affection, and most of the time, basic human decency.
A flash of something crossed his face, but it was gone so quickly she didn't get a read on it. She knew she hadn't imagined it, though, and she wondered if it might be something she could use in the future. If she could figure out what the emotion had been and what it meant.
“Would it really have been so bad to get down on your knees for some food?” black eyes asked. The way he cocked his head slightly to the side made it seem as though he actually thought it wasn't, and had no idea just how demeaning it would be.
“Never begged for food before in my life, and I won't start now. I know what it’s like to go hungry. Lasted a whole week when I was eight. My parents wanted to go on vacation without me, but didn't want to pay for a sitter, so they locked me in my bedroom.” That led to her being removed from her home for the second time, because by the time they returned, she’d been barely conscious.
They hadn't cared and had ordered her off to school, but she’d collapsed on the way there and was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital.
“You’ll beg,” black eyes said simply. “They always do.”
“Don’t think you’ve had someone here like me before.”
“Think you're special, do you? Think we haven’t had someone here before who’s fought? Who thought they could beat us? Who was all arrogant and cocky?”
“No,” she said softly. “I know I'm not special, and I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women here who cursed you, who thought they had what it took to survive hell. I'm probably just the first one who grew up in hell. Trust me, there’s nothing you can do to me that someone else hasn’t already done.”
Sad as that was to say out loud, it was the absolute truth.
Possibly, these people could cook up some variation on the same horrors she’d already lived through, and given they were professionals, that was a genuine possibility.
But in the end, it would be the same thing.
People hurting her, taunting her, using and abusing her body for their own amusement, because they were bigger and stronger than her, and they had all the power while she had none.
“Let’s see about that, shall we?” black eyes asked, although she was sure there was a small tremor in his hands that hadn't been there before as he held up what he’d been clutching. It was a small silicon-looking circle, and it didn't immediately click what he was going to do with it.
Until he reached out and grabbed her face, planting his thumb in one of her cheeks and his fingers in the other.
Then she got it. He’d been talking about her mouth from the beginning of this interaction.
She’d assumed he meant she had been mouthy, but given the circumstances she didn’t think she had.
Now she knew he was just playing with her.
Really, he didn't care what she said, in fact, he probably enjoyed it if she was mouthy because it gave him something to break. Only she’d been telling the truth earlier, if she was going to break at the hands of abuse, she would have done so by now.
She’d spent eighteen very long years being abused by different people.
Why would black eyes and his friends think they were any different?
They could hurt her, absolutely. They could even make her wish that she was dead when she was in the middle of the worst of it.
But they couldn’t break her. History had already proven that.
If she couldn’t be broken at three, or ten, or seventeen, then she couldn’t be broken at twenty-nine.
She’d been surviving since she was born, before she even knew what that meant or that other families didn't torture their children like hers did.
Although she tried to keep her lips clamped together, it didn't do any good.
The pressure in her cheeks had her wincing, then opening her mouth.
With practiced fingers that had clearly done this same sort of thing dozens, or maybe hundreds of times before, black eyes slipped the silicon ring into her mouth.
With it in place, her mouth was forced to remain wide open.
It was thin and fitted in behind her teeth.
She didn't need a vivid imagination at all to figure out why they’d put this in her.
It was so they could use her mouth for their own pleasure.
They probably thought she would have bitten them if they’d tried to get blow jobs without it, and they were right.
“Quiet now, I like it,” black eyes said with one of what appeared to be his trademark grins. It was empty, sure, and he felt empty, too, but there was something almost forced about it. He hadn't been born empty inside. He’d been made that way.
“I want to go first,” one of the other idiots who’d brought the sandwiches said, and the man was practically bouncing about on his feet with excitement.
Pathetic. Was he really that excited about forcing her into giving him a blowjob, even though he’d clearly been at this for a while and had likely gotten thousands before this?
“Actually, I think I'm going to go first,” black eyes said.
His gaze felt locked onto hers as he shifted slightly so he was directly in front of her, taking his time to unzip himself.
When he pulled it out, she had to acknowledge that it was a fairly impressive-sized penis, long and thick, and she’d seen lots of penises in her twenty-nine years, so she considered herself quite the expert.
If you were a willing partner, she was sure it felt good stretching you open and filling you up.
There was nothing she could do to stop it from nudging between her lips, so instead of trying to fight, Makayla just did what she’d long since trained herself to do, block out everything that was happening around her, and sink into a peaceful place inside her mind until it was safe to come back.
August 26th
4:14 P.M.
Although it was definitely grudging, Van couldn’t deny he respected the hell out of Makayla Adair.
It wasn't often that he was impressed by anyone.
Most people didn't live up to expectations, which were pretty high, but still, you’d think given the vastness of the population, more would meet them.
Some of that was that he spent most of his time around the absolute dregs of society, but even when he was dealing with other people, he was more often than not disappointed.
That was actually one of the reasons that he’d taken the job with Prey Security when he got out of the military.
They were the best of the best, and they only hired intelligent and capable people.
While he usually worked undercover jobs alone, this was only the second one he’d worked where there had been another Prey operative in the same place at the same time, he had still met several of Prey’s other employees, and he was impressed by all of them.
But this small woman, who had been sitting bound to a chair for the last several hours, with a silicon ring holding her mouth wide open, was impressing him.
She hadn't shed a tear, hadn't tried to fight against what was happening, had just accepted it with a stoicism that matched what she’d told him.