Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Nothing about this was right.
It wasn’t at all what she expected when Van got control of her and threw her up against the wall.
“You're really just going to forget about this?” Makayla asked.
That was stupid. These men were here because they enjoyed tormenting women.
Why else would you work for a sex trafficking ring where you were allowed to torture women if you didn't enjoy it?
Sure, maybe you liked the money more, but still, you had to enjoy it a bit because there were plenty of other ways to make money.
So it made no sense for Van to pass up this opportunity.
Okay, she could understand why he wouldn't kill her. He probably wasn't allowed to since she was considered Azure’s property. Besides, if he did, he’d have to explain why he’d done it, they’d know he had almost let her escape, and then he’d get in trouble.
But if he just enacted some sort of punishment, no one would ever know about her failed escape attempt, because he could punish her whenever he wanted for any reason, and given she’d been disobedient as they put it, no one would think twice about it.
“You got a problem with that, Makayla?” he asked in that drawling voice of his. Under any other circumstances, she’d probably find it sexy.
Here? She did not.
At all.
Well, a teeny bit, but it was overridden by the fact that he was an evil monster.
Only … when she looked at the emptiness in his eyes, in his smile, she didn't sense evil beneath the veneer, and she was good at sensing evil in others.
It had helped her survive as a child, and it helped her with her job now, because she usually knew which foster homes were safe and which parents should never get their kids back.
Like little Doyle Smith. She had no idea if that boy was even still alive, but she did know that his parents had something to do with her ending up here.
“Hmm, Makayla?” Van asked, the fingers on her wrist beginning to stroke across her skin, and she hated that the sensation was nice, soothing even.
“I don’t have a problem with you not killing me, obviously.
So far, your punishments have been exactly as unpleasant as you intended for them to be, so, no, I don’t have a problem with you putting me back in that room, but it still makes no sense to me.
Something is off with you. I just don’t know what. ”
And really it didn't matter. Because she still had options.
No one else had showed up, so Van really could be the only one here, so they still outnumbered him, and even if he pulled out the knife and killed her the others stood a chance at escaping.
Once again, she opened her mouth to scream to the others to get out and run, but this man must have ESP or something, because right as she drew air into her lungs, he chuckled and whipped her body around so she was pressed with her back to his front, his hand over her mouth, silencing her.
“I don’t think so, little Makayla,” he purred in her ear as he picked her up so her feet were off the floor, and walked the rest of the way down to the room where the others were.
Keeping her pinned to his chest, he fiddled with the keypad outside the door for a moment.
“Code is changed, your friends aren't escaping, and I'm sorry to say neither are you.”
The thing was, he actually did sound disappointed in that, which was so confusing.
What was with this guy?
“You’ll remember this lesson more than my last one I think, won't you, Makayla?” he asked, his voice all velvety and soft, washing over her like a gentle caress.
It reminded her of the way his fingers had stroked her jaw when he’d removed that silicone ring.
He’d massaged her jaw, the same way he’d massaged her hands and feet after undoing the leather straps from the chair.
Those strokes of his long fingers against her skin made her system go haywire, because parts of her liked his touch, that appreciated it as a woman, but it scared her, too, because he wasn't an ally, he was the enemy, and it was dangerous to forget that.
Because it seemed like he really did have ESP, Van began to stroke her cheek, his palm still pressed to her mouth.
He wasn't hurting her, and just like when he’d had his hand around her neck, she knew he wouldn't. Why did she know that, when everything she knew about him said he should kill her in a heartbeat?
The only answer was that she didn't know everything about him. Didn't know any of the important parts.
“You didn't put me in there,” she whispered when he lowered his hand. “Did you change your mind? Are you going to punish me?”
“Some sort of masochist, little Makayla? You seem very fixated on me punishing you, yet you said you don’t want me to.”
“Not fixated on you not punishing me, I'm fixated on the fact that you're lying to me.” Maybe pushing this man was a bad idea. Even though she felt something was off with him, it didn't change the fact that he’d caned her until she bled, then bound her to a chair and forced her to allow the men here to stick themselves inside her mouth against her will. Hell, he’d done it himself, too, although at the time she hadn't been sure he was enjoying it, and now she was sure that he hadn't.
“Lying?” he asked, shooting her one of those smiles as he whipped her back around so she faced him.
He backed her up to the door, where the door handle dug into the small of her back, but she didn't break eye contact with him, she wasn't going to back down.
“Make no mistake about it, little Makayla, I am not a man to be messed with.”
“You didn't kill me. You haven’t punished me,” she reminded him.
“You mean nothing to me,” he said, but the veneer was slipping. Those words sounded far too much like he was trying to convince himself of that than convince her.
“You're not the same as them.” The more she spoke, the more confident she became.
“I’m here, aren't I?”
The question was to taunt her, she got that, but he was trying too hard.
Her instincts were good, and they’d kept her alive for almost thirty years.
She wasn't about to back down from them.
There was a reason she could think of as to why he was here, part of a sex trafficking ring, when he felt like he was different.
“Are you … an undercover cop?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper just in case anyone else happened to be around and she just hadn't seen them.
Shock flared in his pitch-black eyes before he could mask it, and then that obnoxious smile of his was back. He was right when he told her he wasn't a man to be messed with. She sensed the danger swirling around him, the darkness that had claimed his soul, but she sensed other things, too.
“You know that smile of yours is really obnoxious,” she muttered, not afraid to taunt him because …
well, she was still breathing and she’d threatened to kill him.
If ever there was anything she was going to do to earn retaliation, that was it, but he had chosen not to retaliate, and that meant she was safe with him.
Or at least as safe as you could get in a place like this.
For a long moment, he just stared at her, and then he threw back his head and laughed.
Full on laughed.
Until tears streamed down his cheeks and he clutched his stomach.
Since she didn't really get what was so funny, Makayla just stood there and watched him, wondering if perhaps her question had somehow fractured his mind.
“You're something else, Makayla,” he finally said. “If anyone else held a knife to my throat, they’d either be dead or screaming in agony with a broken arm and whatever other injuries I chose to inflict.”
“Right,” she agreed. “And if it had been anyone else out here, they would have done the same thing. Deacon, Adrian, Henry, William, Hank, Marvin, Josh, they’d all either have killed me or taken great pleasure in making me suffer, but you didn't do anything.”
“Time for you to go back in the room with the others.” Van’s large hand clamped around her shoulder, and he tried to maneuver her backward so he could get to the door, but she struggled against him.
“No. I'm not going back in there. Not until you tell me the truth.”
“The truth is I want to be here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I'm every bit as filled with darkness as they are.”
“Tell me the truth,” she insisted. Maybe she couldn’t really stop him from picking her up and putting her back in that room, but she would fight him every step of the way.
“I've told you the truth.”
“Not all of it.”
“All that you need to know.”
“That’s where you're wrong. I need to know if you're really here as a cop trying to bring them down.” It seemed like the most vital thing in the world right now. Like her entire future depended on him either confirming or denying her assertion.
August 27th
6:45 A.M.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Should have either just given Makayla some sort of halfhearted punishment to keep her off his scent or dragged her straight down the hall and tossed her back in the room with the others.
Van had known those probing eyes of hers were going to be a problem from the moment they first met his.
Causing her physical pain hadn't changed anything, having her sexually assaulted, her body used against her will, hadn't changed anything.
Nothing was going to change this woman, he accepted it now, but that didn't mean he was going to play this game with her.
He couldn’t even if he wanted to.
Because this woman confused the hell out of him and unsettled his world in ways he hated, he fell back on what he knew and gave her one of his mocking smiles.
“Quite the imagination you’ve got there,” he taunted, his fingers tightening around her bicep to the point where he saw her flinch slightly, but she didn't pull away, didn't look away.
Instead, she did the opposite.
Lifting her free hand, Makayla pressed her palm to his cheek. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide.”