Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
CLOVER
A s they carried me through the hallways, back out the way we’d come, I tried to tell myself that it was just like the long walk home after checking the traps. I knew I was going to be punished for something, but I never knew why or how badly until I got there. It didn’t matter how many lobsters I’d caught. If I came home with an empty sack, Oliver would lay into me for being a lazy failure. If I came home with a full one, I’d get it for being late or tracking dirt in the house or some other thinly veiled excuse for his anger over my success. Walking straight into certain doom was something I should have been used to. I’d done it more times than I could count. I could do it again.
At least these men were strangers.
At least when they hurt me, it wouldn’t break my fucking heart.
But all my logic and bravery disappeared the moment they set my stool down in the center of the fish market and a rumble of jeers and whistles echoed through the warehouse-sized room. This wasn’t one man or two. This was an entire lion’s den.
And I was a wet, naked lamb on a plate.
I was suddenly grateful for the dripping ropes of hair that stuck to my face and blanketed my hunched shoulders. It prevented me from seeing their predatory stares. But I could still hear them, circling, laughing. I could still feel my captors’ hands groping and kneading my body as they presented me like prize livestock. But it was one particular set of footsteps, approaching at a slow, deliberate pace, that really caused my adrenaline to spike.
These steps didn’t have the same shuffling, aimless quality as the others. These were steady and heavy, and the louder they got, the quieter everyone else became until the only thing I could hear between the footfalls was my own thrashing heart, pointlessly pumping blood through my veins, screaming at my muscles to fight or flee when all they could do was tremble in their bindings.
A pair of black combat boots stopped directly in front of me, and I shrank away from them instinctively, curling in on myself as another sound replaced the footsteps—the sound of my wobbly wooden stool shaking against the concrete floor, broadcasting my fear for all to hear.
The man turned to face the crowd. Through my downturned gaze, I saw him pull a piece of paper out of his back pocket, and when he held it up, they all cheered.
Then, he turned back around and jerked my head up by my hair.
My eyes flew open in shock, landing squarely on the face of the man who’d been flying the drone—the balding one, who I assumed was my captors’ superior. He sneered at me with a mouth full of tobacco-brown teeth before pursing his lips and making a kissing sound. Everyone laughed as he held up the paper again, this time showing it to me. It was a photo of Alexi Abramov, Russia’s president, and no sooner had I recognized who it was than it was being smashed against my mouth. The men erupted with cheers and more kissing sounds as their boss dragged the photo over my breasts and shoved it between my legs. The edges of the paper sliced my inner thighs as he rubbed it up and down, grinning as he watched himself touching me.
I slammed my eyes shut and strained every muscle in my body as I tried to squeeze my legs closed, curl into a ball, elbow him away, but I was completely immobilized.
A scream built in the center of my chest, but I didn’t dare let it out. Every time I screamed, things only got worse. But also, what would be the point?
There was no one left to save me.
My eyes, blurry with fresh tears, flew open again when I felt the stool lift off the ground. The two men who’d brought me in carried me over to the long counter. The laptops had been pushed off to the sides, and in their place lay an assortment of what I assumed were torture devices—an electric rod, a stun gun, a knife, a pair of pliers. There were more tools, some I didn’t recognize, but I couldn’t take them all in. The moment they set me down, the two men held my arms still as their boss used the knife to cut through my wrist restraints. Two more men stepped up to secure my lower legs, and my ankles were freed as well.
Liv’s words from earlier echoed in my mind.
“Fight back.”
“The longer you stay alive, the worse it gets.”
I considered her advice. My muscles ached with unspent adrenaline. My helpless, violated body shook with rage, begging for an outlet, dying to explode. The urge to thrash and bite and kick and scream possessed me like a virus, clouding my thoughts and seizing my muscles. But when I closed my eyes and prepared to let it take over, I found myself right back in that cave, paralyzed at the sight of him—clutching his side, covered in blood, holding me hostage with those pleading platinum eyes.
These men weren’t my only captors. They might have been in possession of my body, but my life was tethered to a man whose name I didn’t even know. If I died, he died, too, only much more slowly and painfully. Thirst. Hunger. Infection. He would be in agony for days before his heart finally gave out.
So, when the men placed my feet on the ground and held them there, I didn’t kick.
When they shoved my chest down on the stainless steel counter and bound my wrists to a metal shelf below it, I didn’t thrash or claw or hit.
And when the first two fingers shoved inside of me—rough and hateful, a gleeful public stabbing—I damn sure didn’t scream. I swallowed all the rage, all the pain, all the humiliation, just like I’d been doing since I had been seven years old.
People hurt me. That was what they did.
The only power I had was denying them the satisfaction of knowing they’d done it.
I closed my eyes and let my head hang off the end of the counter, going to that forest in my mind where the moss grew like carpet and the sun-speckled bluebells swayed in the breeze. The edges of a misty lake had just started to take shape when my head was jerked up by my hair.
This time, when my eyes flew open, the boss was in front of me again, only instead of holding a picture of his president, he was holding his own hard cock, pumping it in his fist as he tightened his grip on my hair and steered my head toward the leaking tip.
No.
I could take them violating me from behind, where I couldn’t see, where I didn’t have to participate. But this?
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself fucking do it.
Acid erupted from my empty stomach, coating the inside of my mouth with my own searing bile as my body recoiled against my will. I couldn’t fight the fear any longer. I’d tried rationalizing it away, compartmentalizing it away, dissociating it away, but they’d stripped me of my final coping mechanism—my happy place—and reduced me to a panicked, caged beast.
My wet feet slid across the floor, and my delicate wrists sliced open from the cable ties as I thrashed and bucked and yanked at my bindings. Angry Russian shouts filled the room as men struggled to hold my kicking legs. Others reached for the weapons on the counter to my left and right. The clicking of a stun gun being turned on—the same sound I’d heard before Mr. McCormick was shocked—buzzed in my ear as something cold and hard prodded against my exposed arse.
Gripping my hair even harder, the man in front of me pulled a gun out of his holster and pressed it to the side of my head. He barked a command, his fully erect cock pressing against my tightly sealed lips as a chunk of my hair tore out at the root. Everything was happening all at once, and I couldn’t escape any of it. I needed to scream, to release some of the terror boiling over inside of me. So, with my jaw clamped shut and tears streaming down my face, I gave them the one thing I’d sworn I wouldn’t. Without opening my mouth, I sucked in a deep breath and released a high-pitched squeal so loud and so raw that everything around me just stopped .
It sounded like the bats of hell were pouring out of me—a furious, inhuman, deafening shrieking—and when it was over, I realized that, aside from the hand gripping my hair, no one was touching me anymore.
Hesitantly, I glanced up at the man standing in front of me, but instead of finding his hateful, soulless blue eyes staring back, I discovered that he wasn’t looking at me at all. His narrowed gaze was fixed solely on something across the room.
My head fell suddenly as he released my hair and lifted his hand in a salute. The rustling sound that spread throughout the room suggested that everyone else was doing the same. Holstering his weapon, the boss greeted their visitor with surprise in his voice and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a tinge of fear.
Turning my head as slowly as possible, I glanced over my shoulder and felt my heart plummet into the acidic wasteland of my stomach.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
It was him . He was standing in the open doorway, a silhouette backlit by the summer sun, but I would know the shape of him anywhere. The width of his shoulders, the hard line of his jaw, the soft flips of his hair—a little too long to be a military cut—the slight stoop of his posture. To anyone else, his stance might look casual, relaxed even, but I knew that he was favoring his left side.
Because beneath that shirt and jacket, there was a gaping bullet wound.
And as soon as these people discovered that he spoke English instead of Russian, they were going to put a few more in him.
As relieved as I was to see him, as devastating grateful as I was to him for coming to find me, all I wanted to do was scream at him to run. He was outnumbered twelve to one, injured, hungry, and impersonating a Naval officer. There was no sense in both of us dying. But all I could do was watch in absolute horror as the door closed behind him, caging him in.
As he stalked into the room, the fluorescent lights sharpened his cheekbones, hollowed out his eyes, and accentuated the wrath beneath their smoky surface. That gray gaze connected with mine for no more than a heartbeat before darting to the face of the man standing with his cock out before me.
Then, he opened his mouth, and my heart stopped beating completely.
Perfect Russian poured from his sculpted lips, as brash and eloquent as that of a seasoned leader. He spoke with his chin high, eyes narrowed, hands gesturing in slices and thrusts—violent motions that punctuated the simmering anger in his velvety voice. And with every step he took forward, I felt the men in the room shrink back.
The day before, when he’d spoken to me in English, each word and sentence had seemed so effortful, but here he was, commanding a room full of Russian militants like it was second nature.
Because it is, I realized .
His gaze met mine again, but this time, it felt as if I were looking into the eyes of a stranger. An imposter. A heartless, murderous liar who would do or say anything to save his own neck.
He’d earned my trust. He let me believe that he was Irish. He held me while I cried about the family he’d killed. And the second he felt strong enough, the second I left him unattended, what did he do? He’d abandoned me and marched straight back to them .
My instincts had been right all along. He was just a figment of my imagination. A hologram of comfort projected onto the source of all my pain. And from the way he was looking at me, I knew he was about to prove just how delusional I’d been.
Those silvery eyes slid down the length of my naked body as he unfastened his leather belt in the span of one smooth, confident stride. I held his cold stare as he unzipped his trousers, wanting him to see the betrayal on my face. The hatred in my eyes and the hardening of my soul. But my body betrayed me, too, spilling a single tear down my freshly bruised cheek before I jerked my head away in shame.
I’d been wrong about these men.
They could break my heart.
A hush fell over the room as his warmth drew closer. I remembered the way it had felt just that morning, the heat of his body lulling me into a sleepy stupor of imaginary safety. But now that heat felt more like the roar of an approaching wildfire.
And I was tied to a tree.
Shoving my heel out backward with a grunt, I managed to kick his shin, but he easily sidestepped my next attempt and stood with his feet spread, bracketing my tightly closed legs. The most I could have done from that position was try to step on his boot-covered feet.
He’d won. He’d taken advantage of me in every way a man could. The actual act was just a formality.
I could feel my heartbeat in my face as I stared down at the blood dripping from my bound wrists onto the floor.
“I should have let you die,” I sneered, pushing the words out through clenched teeth as I pictured his blood, pooling on the cave floor just a few days ago.
Tears blurred my vision as I realized how true that statement was. How pathetic. He’d been wearing a Russian officer’s uniform, for Christ’s sake. How could I have been so blind?
But deeper than my shame, than my anger and self-blame, was a place that whispered what hurt the most. What I’d always known but had been too afraid to admit.
That I was completely and utterly unlovable.
If saving a person’s life wasn’t enough to make them care about me or at least see me as a human being, then maybe this was all that I was.
A sex object. A servant girl. A dog to kick at the end of a hard day.
Lacing my fingers together, I closed my eyes and whispered, “I hate you.”
But I didn’t know if I was saying it to him or myself.
The man standing in front of me, who’d backed up one or two steps, asked something in Russian as the liar behind me gripped my hips with large, commanding hands. He answered with a short quip, and as the entire room burst into laughter, he pulled my head back by my hair and thrust himself between my legs.
My eyes shot open, but not in pain. In shock. He hadn’t entered me. In fact, he wasn’t even fully hard.
Leaning forward until his lips grazed the shell of my ear, he whispered, just loud enough for me to hear, “Scream.”
Then, he thrust his hips against me again. My pelvis slammed against the counter, and I did as he’d said. I funneled all my rage, terror, and grief into a single bloodcurdling wail.
It felt good, that release. That unapologetic explosion of emotion. How many times had I wanted to cry out at home but had been too afraid? Or in the cave, where a drone might hear me? I didn’t have to stay quiet anymore. I could let them know exactly how I felt.
I could let him know too.
“I hate you,” I snarled again, this time at full volume as I stared at the place where the wall met the ceiling—the only thing I could see with my head pulled back. “I hate you!”
He said something in Russian that made the crowd chuckle—mocking my pain, no doubt—but if I wasn’t mistaken, he was also stroking the back of my head with a single finger, covertly, beneath the mass of wet hair he was gripping. It felt like an apology, a tiny token of comfort, but I knew that was just my desperate, pathetic mind grasping for something that wasn’t there.
He wasn’t offering me solace; he was patronizing me. Praising me like a good little girl for putting on a good little show. By saving me from being gang-raped, he could absolve himself of any guilt he felt over using and betraying me. He could walk away, feeling like we were even when, really, he’d hurt me more than the rest of them combined.
“Get off of me!” I shouted, suddenly wanting to get as far away from him as possible. I would have rather been touched by strangers than feel his body on mine for another second, knowing that it was all for show. That he was using me again, this time to make himself feel better about everything he’d done before that. “Get off!”
I thrashed and jerked as if I could free myself from my own skin if I just fought hard enough. “I hate you!” I screamed, lifting both feet off the ground as I tried to kick him again.
Releasing my hair, he gripped my hips with both hands, holding me still as he trapped my lower legs between his knees.
Excited shouts burst from the crewmen as he fucked my thighs faster, never pulling out far enough for them to see that he wasn’t inside of me.
But he was. As soon as I dropped my head, letting it hang off the end of the counter, it became flooded with images of him. His perfect body, shivering shirtless against the cave wall after he’d given me the clothes off his back. The lines of my crying face, drawn in his own blood as a token of his sympathy. The despondent shake of his head when I’d offered him food, indicating that he was willing to starve to make sure I didn’t go hungry. The taste of my tears on his lips as he’d shoved me against the wall and chased away my pain.
I was doing it again. I was slipping back into the illusion—my need for love and comfort always stronger than my ability to handle the truth. I knew what was happening, but I was powerless to stop it.
I was too busy picturing the curl of his dark eyelashes against his cheekbones that morning and the way his muscular, corded arms had looked wrapped around my body. I imagined that, instead of letting me go when I’d wriggled out of his embrace, he’d pulled me closer. Touched me. Made love to me.
Promised to stay with me forever.
No longer fighting, I tilted my arse up, allowing his cock to slide across the most sensitive parts of me. He felt thick and powerful between my thighs, fully hard now, and slick with the proof of my delusion. His swollen crown grazed my entrance with every thrust, and I found myself wishing he would breach that final boundary. It was desperate and depraved, but for just a few seconds, I wanted to experience pleasure instead of pain. I wanted to disappear into my fantasy.
But mostly, I wanted to believe that he wanted me too.
His pace quickened, and his viselike hands kneaded my arse as the wet slap of our bodies announced to the room that not only was it almost their turn, but that I was a ready and willing participant. The shuffling of their impatient feet, the shoving, the shouting—it all brought the world crashing back into focus.
He hadn’t saved me from them.
He’d only delayed the inevitable.
Fear rushed down my spine like poison, tensing my muscles and locking my knees as he said something in Russian to the man in front of me.
I stared at the floor as his boots stepped toward me, landing mere centimeters from the blood that had dripped from my wrists.
Again, the balding man jerked my head up, forcing me to look at him, and the grin on his pasty face was only slightly less nauseating than the noisy wad of spit he hocked into his hand before fisting his cock with it.
Wait. What?
The world tilted on its axis as I realized that the man whose warm body was now draped over mine as he rutted against me had just invited his sadistic friend to join in.
I recoiled from his cold blue gaze as he pulled his gun back out and pressed the barrel against my temple.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t believe this was happening. All I could do was blink through my tears as he jerked my head and pressed his cock against my seething, bared teeth.
Then, with a flash of movement and a blast so loud that it sounded as if it had come from inside my own head, one of the blue eyes I’d been glaring up at exploded.