Chapter 12 #2
When that happened, she wasn't sure that she wouldn't give in and take the easy way out.
And it would be easy. So very easy. All she had to do was run to that window and fling herself through it.
The three-story drop, combined with the damage the glass would do to her body, should make it a fall she wouldn't survive.
Then she could just … cease to exist.
How many times had she wished that would happen to her over the years?
In fact, she’d tried it once, in the early days after she was abducted. Left alone after the man who bought her finished playing with her, she’d snuck into the kitchen and found a knife. She’d dragged it through the veins in her wrist before she was found.
Unfortunately, it hadn't been enough, and she’d survived.
Punished for her actions, she was locked in a box for almost a week, given no food or water, then brought out only to be raped until she bled. By the time she was returned to the traffickers, infection was already running rampant throughout her body.
But she’d survived.
Survived only to endure another hellish decade before Thunder and his team found her.
Now she wished she’d cut deeper, sliced her hand clean off if that was what it took to end her life.
Being dead couldn’t be worse than being alive, trapped inside her own head, forced to relive the horror she didn't want to have survived, stuck living the rest of her life knowing that safety was nothing more than an illusion.
Tears blurred her vision, but still she couldn’t make herself stop painting.
These weren't pretty pictures. They lacked detail and precision, there was nothing realistic about them, and yet in a way, they were the most real paintings she had ever created, because she poured her soul into each one.
All of her broken and damaged parts were there for the world to see. Blacks and grays represented the pain locked inside her. Bright reds symbolized not just the blood she had already shed but her desire to shed more. To shed enough that she just drifted away into nothingness.
Her arms ached, every muscle in her body felt tight, and her eyes kept drooping closed, but she wasn't going to stop, too afraid of what would happen if she did. So Maya fought through the exhaustion, kept painting, until she couldn’t any longer.
“Let’s get the bidding started at one hundred thousand dollars. An absolute steal for this stunning virgin. Fourteen years old, blonde hair, gray eyes, any man would be lucky to walk away tonight with this beauty on his arm.”
The words were so … weird.
A stupid way to describe it, but this was surreal.
There was no way Maya could have foreseen that a simple trip to the mall with her friends would wind up with her standing on a stage in a ballroom, completely naked except for the collar around her neck, as people bid on her like she was nothing more than a piece of meat.
Only she was nothing more than a piece of meat.
That’s what she’d been told every day since she woke up in this place.
She was a body to be used, she no longer belonged to herself and wasn't a human being anymore. She’d been beaten and starved, taught how to pleasure a man with her hands and her mouth, punished any time she rebelled in even the slightest of ways, until she’d learned that fighting wasn't worth it.
If it wasn't going to save her, she may as well not bother.
And nothing was going to save her.
That much at least was clear to her, even if she still wasn't sure what to expect once she was sold off. She did understand what she was now, a sex slave that some rich monster was going to take back to his mansion and keep as his newest toy. Or maybe pet was a better word for it.
But she didn't really know what that meant .
What was going to happen to her?
Her entire body shook as the bright lights obscured her view of the men dressed in tuxedos who were placing bids on who got to own her.
She knew they were dressed in tuxedos because she’d already been forced to stand on a pedestal, allow those men to touch her, prod her, turn her around, and examine her to decide what they were willing to bid for her.
Now it was happening.
Numbers were called out.
Excitement buzzed in the air, mingling with her terror and that of the other girls up for auction tonight.
More young girls like her, their futures stripped away from them the moment they’d been snatched off the streets. There was no future here, at least none that was worth living.
Eventually, the numbers stopped, although she was too terrified to find out in the end how much she was worth.
Someone guided her off stage, and she was taken to a large room, kind of like a garage.
In it were dog crates lined up against the wall.
Some were empty, some already occupied. She was shoved into one, the sound of it being locked behind her seemed to echo through her head.
There wasn't enough space to stand up inside it, not enough to stretch out properly either. So she just huddled there, curled in on herself, clutching her naked body tightly as though physically holding herself together.
She had no idea how long she lay there, but eventually men filed into the room, grabbing the crates one by one and loading them onto trolleys, then rolling them out to the driveway. Her crate was loaded into a black van, sealing her in darkness when the doors closed.
Then they were moving.
Her fate was already sealed, even if she didn't know what that meant.
They seemed to drive for hours, but she wasn't really sure. When they finally stopped, more men were there, unloading her crate, wheeling it on a trolley through a fancy-looking mansion.
Eventually, they stopped in a pretty room, so much nicer than the basement cell she’d been expecting. This room almost looked fit for a princess, and for a second, Maya allowed herself to hope that things weren't going to be as bad as she’d feared.
One of the men transporting her unlocked her crate, then reached inside, grabbed hold of her, and hauled her out. When he stood her up and placed her in the center of the room, she knew enough to stand where she’d been put, that moving without permission would result in punishment.
Although maybe if this pretty room was going to be hers, the man who had bought her wasn't into punishments. Maybe she’d just have to pleasure him sometimes, and the rest of the time he’d spoil her.
Men.
Turned out to be men, three of them to be exact.
They prowled into the room, still in their tuxedos, even though early morning light was beginning to shine through the window. They circled her, and she shivered at the way they seemed to devour her with their gazes.
Since she was already naked, they didn't have to undress her, and she watched, her fear growing by the second as they stripped out of their clothes. They were huge walls of muscle, surrounding her, caging her in, and she knew that she had zero hope of escaping their clutches.
Already their erections were big and hard, straining toward her as though drawn to her virgin body. Since she was nothing more than a toy, none of them bothered to prepare her in any way for what was going to happen.
Hands grabbed at her.
Pain tore through her body as she was impaled on not one but two penises simultaneously.
Her cries of agony were cut short when a third penis was shoved between her lips, choking her as she sobbed, her innocence torn away from her in a single brutal act that would haunt her for the rest of her days.