Chapter 1 #3
This feeling—absolute, ringing safety—is something my family could never give me.
Not my powerful father with his billions and his army of highly trained security guards.
Not my quarterback brother, our “golden boy” and future king of the Vance empire.
All their resources turned out to be dust. None of them could protect me from the filth of this world.
But this monster with his chain and his gun did.
He leans forward in the chair. The smooth surface of the mask cools my burning cheek. Tiny flecks of blood stain the white enamel, and the sight soothes me better than any medicine. My dead captor’s blood. Proof that the old nightmare is truly dead and I won’t go back to that basement.
“Do you want to be under protection?” His metallic, distorted voice burns against my ear.
I swallow the lump in my throat. My thighs press together as his gloved hand slips beneath my dress and slides up toward my collarbone, toward the pulse thrumming in my throat.
“Will you let me protect you?” he asks, his voice a low purr through the modulator.
“Yes,” I breathe out.
Who else? I’m terrified even to think about what lies beyond that door. What if other monsters are already emerging from the forest, drawn by the gunshot? The dark woods are teeming with evil, and only he—the most fearsome beast in this wilderness—can drive them away.
“Yes,” I repeat, louder, panicked that he might not have heard. “Yes!”
He runs his leather glove across my face, down my neck, stopping over my carotid artery. My pulse flutters like a trapped bird beneath his fingers. My breath hitches, black spots swimming before my eyes. I’m on the verge of fainting from the sheer intensity of his proximity.
“Stay still,” he growls.
He draws away, and the emptiness is sudden. I’ll agree to anything. Any price. So this murderer doesn’t leave me here alone. The drop of blood on his mask hypnotizes me, as does the pressure of the chain against my throat.
“Did that bastard touch you?”
“No,” I force out.
“And no one’s ever fucked you?”
The question hits like a slap. For a moment, I see some predatory glint in the narrow slits of the mask.
“No,” I whisper, and a wave of heat floods through me. The logic of my fear has become twisted beyond reason: if he’s asking, he’s considering me. He wants me. And if he wants me, he won’t leave. I hate myself for the wild relief this thought brings me.
His gloved fingers toy with the hem of my dress—white satin, stiff and heavy from the dried blood of the dead maniac.
“For now,” he says, abruptly releasing the fabric.
Cold sweat breaks out across my skin. My heart skips a beat—what if he finds me too filthy? What if he’s rejecting me because of the blood?
Keeping the chain taut in one hand, holding my head back, he unzips his pants with the other. That sharp zzzip in the silence of the room seems louder and more terrifying than the gunshot that killed my captor.
When he frees his dick, I look at it then at the dark forest beyond the window. A choice with no choice. Either the handsome monster’s cock or death at other monsters’ hands.
The dick looks threatening—large, heavy, frighteningly hard. I push away the possibilities of what got him this aroused. Killing my captor? Or the sight of the chain around my neck?
The dick looms over the key on the chair. The hot flesh presses against my lips. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Open your mouth,” he orders, winding my hair around his fist.
I don’t enjoy this—I’m not completely crazy yet, but I’m terrified that if I refuse, he’ll change his mind.
What if he decides I’m not worth his protection?
There’s a heavy, crushing aura about him—a true predator, not like the sadist who held me here, but something far more dangerous.
He’s the one who eats other monsters for breakfast. And he clearly enjoys it.
If I don’t do what he wants, he’ll become my last nightmare.
The head of his cock slides against my dry lips. My stomach clenches with a painful spasm, nausea rising in my throat. I swallow hard, trying to push down the gag reflex.
Despite the fear that paralyzes my limbs, I open my eyes. My gaze meets the black slits of his mask.
“Suck it now, princess.” He yanks the chain, and my vision goes dark.
The truth is, I’m completely inexperienced.
I’ve never done this before. I’m a stranger here—I don’t know the rules of this game, but I try with everything I have.
I graze the dick with my tongue and clumsily take it into my mouth, trying to find the rhythm.
Judging by the low, guttural groan, my frightened awkwardness arouses him. He likes breaking my innocence.
I don’t dare stop. First, I’m at his mercy. And second …, I believe. I believe this is how our contract is sealed. I’m paying for my life with my humiliation.
So I keep sucking. Choking, but trying hard.
“Shit,” he growls, his mechanical voice vibrating with impatience and resonating in my chest. “You’re trying, princess. But it isn’t enough to survive.”
I choke, tears spilling down my cheeks, and my throat tightens with a spasm. He tugs the chain slightly, bringing me closer, and hammers the words into the top of my head. “Deeper. Not with your teeth! Deep throat. Take all of me if you want to breathe. More.”
I obey, losing all connection with reality as the world shrinks to this impossible pressure. Suddenly, his force subsides, and his leather-gloved fingers sink into my hair, stroking the back of my head almost gently, soothing. This gesture frightens me more than his anger ever could.
“Now breathe. Don’t tense up,” he murmurs, and in the mechanical grating of his voice, I hear a terrible satisfaction. “Just feel me. I’ll move the way I need to.”
The hand that was so gentle a moment ago clamps down on the back of my head like a vise. A thrust—and he forces me down on him, burying his dick deep into the soft wall of my throat. I choke on saliva and spasm, suffocating on his unnatural thickness and length.
He takes control. The heavy chain bites into my windpipe from the outside while he drives into me from the inside—deep, rhythmic, relentless—until my vision blurs and darkens.
My throat convulses, my lungs burn. I genuinely think I’ll die right here with his cock in my throat and the chain around my neck.
Tears stream down my cheeks, mixing with saliva. I’m dizzy from the lack of air, my jaw locked in a vicious cramp, my knees scraping raw against the hard floor. But I forbid myself from thinking. From feeling.
I force myself to look at him. His powerful body is tense, and judging by the low, guttural sounds he’s making, he’s clearly pleased. The moment I realize this, my thighs press together and a heavy, pulsing heat spreads low in my belly. If he’s satisfied, I’ll be protected.
I tug at the chain, listening to the clinking of the links. The harsh rattle convinces me I’m still alive.
Just when I think my heart might stop, he jerks back. Almost all the way out. My mouth fills with something hot and salty.
I splutter around him, realizing that if he hadn’t pulled out, if he’d come deep in my throat, I would have suffocated. His cum would have been the bullet. He would have killed me with a single shot, just like he killed my captor.
My first instinct is to spit it out, to cough. I jolt back, trying to pull away.
“Not a single drop” the steely command comes. The hand in my hair tightens.
I do as I’m told. I swallow the thick, burning bitterness. Every last drop.
For the first time this endless evening, in the black slits of his mask, a spark of life ignites. Not just light—a predatory, satisfied gleam. I thought this mask couldn’t be any more beautiful, but now it seems perfect to me. My Prince Harming is pleased.
He finally releases his grip on my hair and takes the hem of my white dress—the one soaked with my captor’s blood—and cleans my face as I cough.
The fabric touches my lips. The mixture of someone else’s blood on the cloth, his cum, and his deceptively tender, almost loving touch finally undoes me.
So gentle. The way a master tends to a beloved hound.
“You did well.” His voice is hoarse, the electronic distortion almost gone beneath something raw and human. “You don’t have to be afraid of anyone anymore, princess. Except me.”
He rises from the chair but doesn’t take the collar off. While I’m curled up on the floor, coughing and gasping for air, he picks up the free end of the chain and bends down. Metal clanks against metal—and the heavy padlock snaps shut around the cast-iron radiator pipe beneath the window.
Click.
I’m on a leash again.
With a trembling hand, I wipe my wet mouth. His gloved fingers touch my temple. With a terrifying tenderness, he brushes the tangled strands away from my tear-streaked face.
“Such beautiful hair shouldn’t get dirty.”
His touch is gentle, and that only terrifies me more.
I fear him so deeply I tremble—far more than I ever feared the sadist who kept me in the basement.
But the worst part is, I can’t make myself pull away.
I’m frozen, as if hypnotized by his dark overwhelming power.
I’m afraid of him, but I don’t hate him.
Without another word, he straightens, turns, and disappears into the black void of the hallway as silently as he arrived.
I’m left alone. Chained to the radiator, the salty, metallic taste of his cum still on my tongue. I sit on the floor, staring at the wall, unable to move. Inside me, there’s a ringing, deafening emptiness, and before my eyes, the most beautiful mask lingers.
The silence of the forest outside is shattered by a piercing, rising wail—police sirens. Blue and red lights dance across the walls.
A flash of understanding cuts through me sharper than a knife: my Prince Harming called them. He didn’t lie. He won’t abandon me now.
And I’m afraid because I couldn’t refuse him anything. He didn’t take off my collar …, and I didn’t ask him to.