Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
She liked being between them. It felt natural and right—the only thing that made sense in this nightmare. But the drugging, heavy effect of the aphrodisiac was dragging her down, a leaden weight on her limbs and her eyelids.
Noelle tried to form the words, to beg them to stay, but her body betrayed her.
Her eyes slipped shut of their own accord, and she fell, not into dreams, but into a deep, black, dreamless sleep, utterly alone in the center of the vast, cold bed.
62
BURN
Burn woke suddenly, feeling like he’d been thrown back into his body from a great height.
One moment he was trapped in a dream—a horrible dream where his hands were hurting someone soft and precious, someone he loved more than his own life—and the next, he was jerking awake, sweating, heart pounding, his breath coming in ragged bursts.
Fuck.
He dragged both hands down his face, his palms rasping over his beard. His chest was tight, his throat felt desert-dry and his head throbbed like someone had driven a spike behind his eyes.
But none of that compared to the shame coiling in his gut like a living thing.
In the dream, he’d hurt her…hurt someone who looked up at him with big, trusting eyes. Someone whose scent he craved, whose voice soothed every part of him.
He hadn’t seen her face or heard her voice but he knew who it was he’d been hurting—taking so roughly. Even half-conscious, half-drowning in the remnants of the nightmare, he knew.
It was Noelle.
Gods, he thought, swallowing hard as he sat up on the edge of the massive bed. What I did to her last night…what the fucker, Thune made me do…
His stomach twisted, threatening to turn over entirely. He braced a forearm on his knee and bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
Thune’s “play room” kept playing over and over in his mind.
The fucking pink drink burning down his throat, flooding his veins with heat and need until it drove everything rational right out of him…the Trollox’s three heads watching from the shadows as Thune barked orders for degradation and pain…
But most of all he remembered Noelle… Noelle beneath him, soft and shaking and trying to be brave as he rutted inside her, hurting her over and over until both of them came because that fucking pink drink forced them to.
Burn wanted to be sick.
Every instinct he had as a Kindred male rebelled violently against what had happened. His entire species was built on protecting and cherishing women—on giving them pleasure, not pain.
But Thune had made them animals. He’d made Burn take her too hard, made him ignore the way she trembled, made him thrust until—
Burn squeezed his eyes shut again, fists clenching helplessly.
I hurt her. I hurt the woman I—
He couldn’t even finish the thought. Not in words.
His head throbbed harder. A sour taste coated his tongue. The aftereffects of the pink drink still crawled through his bloodstream—sticky, unwanted heat lingering like a stain he couldn’t scrub off.
He wanted to go to her room. He wanted to see her with his own eyes…wanted to drop to his knees and tell her how fucking sorry he was.
But another voice whispered in his mind, low and venomous.
You don’t deserve to talk to her. She’s probably terrified of you now and who could blame her? She should be.
Burn scrubbed his palms against his eyes again.
“Fuck,” he muttered, voice rough with self-loathing.
A knock at the door made him jerk upright.
Before he could respond, Bright stepped in.
The Light Twin’s hair was tousled, his golden skin a little too pale, and his expression tight with tension. Burn didn’t need words to tell him he wasn’t the only one haunted by last night.
“How are you this morning?” Bright asked. His voice was quiet, strained. “Don’t know about you, but that pink stuff he made us drink gave me a raging headache.”
Burn snorted, a humorless sound.
His own head pounded, pulsing like his skull was about to crack, but he just shrugged.
He deserved far worse.
Bright stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“Listen…we have to find a way out of here—tonight.”
Burn looked up sharply.
Bright’s jaw was locked. His eyes were dark with something halfway between fury and dread.
“We can’t let that bastard make us take Noelle with no Bonding Fruit to ease the way,” he murmured. “We can’t let him make us force her again.”
Burn flinched at the word force and his heart clenched painfully.
He nodded once, stiff and harsh.
“You’re fucking right—we have to get out of here. But how?”
Bright ran a hand through his hair.
“He’s got the key to the shuttle—we all saw it in his pocket last night,” he said quietly. “If we could just get it, we could make a run for the shuttle and get out.”
Burn scowled.
“How exactly are we going to get it when it’s in his pocket and he’s got the remote to our shock collars?” he demanded. “He can’t just—”