Her Savior_A Dark Romance Read online

  He stood up and shoved his fingers in front of my face—fingers that glistened with the proof that he was right.

  “Rule number four: A slave will come when she’s told,” he said as he shoved his wet fingers into my mouth.

  I’d tasted myself before—on Derek’s fingers and on his tongue—but the salty sweetness was vile now, it made my stomach roil with nausea.

  “Unfortunately, you forgot about the other rules, didn’t you?”

  What? No. What was he talking about?

  I realized what he was talking about the moment he bent down and reached for the shackles that imprisoned my ankles. I’d cried out, I’d begged him to stop when he’d turned my body against me. My whole body tensed now against the lashes that were about to set a fresh fire blazing across my back.

  He stood up and unfastened my wrists. I pressed back hard against the wall, stalling his access to my wounded back. When he made no move to reach for me, my gaze darted up before I could catch myself. I looked away, back down to the ground fast, but not fast enough.

  “I don’t think you understand your place here, slave. You are a thing, to use as I see fit, and you’re going to learn that right now. Get down on your knees, face against the floor.”

  No, I couldn’t do it. By the way, his erection was pressed against his pants and the way he made no move for the whip he’d tossed on the floor at some point, it was clear what he intended. He was going to use me. He was going to force himself into my body—a place where Derek had been the only one to enter. And he’d never taken me by force that way. He’d given in when I’d been the one to push for it. I’d felt complete with him inside me. Only him. Not this monster.

  It was foolish. It might have been the most witless thing I’d ever done because I knew from my first step away from him, I would fail. He’d catch me and he’d punish me. But I did it anyway. I ran.

  Back down the hall, he’d made me crawl along. I passed my cell and still, he hadn’t caught up. He was walking toward me with a slow, easy gait. I ran into the only door I could find and yanked on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. Like a complete idiot, I kept tugging. Eventually, I gave up and darted back to my cell, slamming the bars shut and praying the lock would miraculously engage.

  It didn’t.

  I backed up into the corner and slid down to the floor as he pushed it open. When he closed it behind him, there was a tiny click. I almost didn’t hear it over the sound of my heartbeat thudding in my ears. Someone was watching. It was the only explanation. Someone was watching and controlling the locks on the door. The eyes watching me on a camera somewhere though seemed inconsequential in comparison to the stormy clouds looming over me now.

  I wanted to feel the sting of his hand or the cut of his whip. Something predictable. Something I knew I could handle. But he used neither. Instead, he held out his hand to me and nodded at it encouragingly.

  It was a trap. Of course, it was a trap, but what choice did I have? So, I took it, my ice cold hand latching onto his much warmer one. I waited for him to yank me to my feet, but he didn’t. He pulled me gently, slipping a hand beneath my other arm to balance my weight.

  He didn’t let go when I was all the way up. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me gently against his chest. His free hand moved to stroke my hair while the one that still clasped mine drew tiny circles across my wrist. It wasn’t like when Derek had shown me kindness though. There was no confusion in my head, no softening toward this man. My senses were on high alert and they were telling me this was just another ploy. I was the mouse, and the cat was toying with me.

  This was the calm before the storm let loose its fury.

  As if on cue, he spun me around and grasped both my wrists in one big hand, pressing hard against my lower back. I cried out as he reawakened the lashes once again. He pressed harder, and my knees wobbled precariously.

  With a twist of his wrist, he bent my elbows and pinned my hands between my shoulder blades. Burning pressure on my shoulder joints. My elbows. One wrong move and every joint was poised to snap. Even my trembling tugged at them. He had me trapped. He leaned in. I could feel the whisper of his lips against my ear.

  “You’re going to pay for that, slave. I was going to fuck your pretty cunt, but now…”

  He tugged on my wrists and my knees buckled. I fell hard on them with a thud that resounded all the way up my spine. I cried. I was so fucking sick of crying, but I couldn’t stop.

  More pressure. He bent me over until my cheek scraped against the stone floor—just like he’d wanted me. The whip. He was going to whip me, and probably ten times worse than he had before. But the sound wasn’t right. There wasn’t a whiz, it was a zip and…

  “No!” I screamed. It wasn’t his whip. God, it wasn’t his whip. His penis pressed against my rectum for a split second before he rammed forward. Pain. He was inside me. Burning. Too big. Too much. Agony.

  His hips slammed against my cheeks. He didn’t stop. He drove in over and over again. The pain didn’t relent. It grew, like an oxygen-rich fire, it blazed. And my world shrunk. Nothing existed but his invading erection and the pain that shot out and engulfed every fiber of my being. I couldn’t think beyond it. I reached for what I needed—an image of Derek to grab onto with all my might—but there was only pain.

  Time passed, or it didn’t. I really couldn’t tell. The pain began to ebb, just a little as if the edges of it had grown fuzzy. The excruciating dry rub gave way to the liquid fire. Blood. My own blood was lubricating his thrusts.

  I wanted to die. I couldn’t hold on, waiting for Derek. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t strong. I was torn and used, bloody and broken. And it hadn’t even been hours since the monster inside me had appeared outside my cell. A few more hours…a few days…how much would there be left for Derek to save?

  I became aware of a new pain. Beneath his merciless thrusts, my cheek had been thumped and grated against the stone floor. It rivaled but didn’t top, the pain of his thrusts. It was just more fuel for the unbearable fire consuming me.

  Eventually, it was over. He rammed in deeper, so deep I felt him in every part of me, but then he stilled. His disgusting grunts reached me above my own hoarse screams and then he withdrew. He was done.

  With a shove, he knocked me to the floor. I didn’t curl up. I didn’t try to get up. I laid there. Ruined. Used. I didn’t even bother to try to cover myself when another figure appeared outside the cell. It wasn’t Derek, though I wasn’t sure it would matter if it was. Was there anything left to save?

  It was another unfamiliar face, but it looked no more capable of human emotion than the other one. He shoved two towels at my tormentor—a wet one and a dry one—while he leered at my abused body with a sickening heat in his eyes.

  Two towels landed on the floor in front of me. Three more things plunked down next to the towels—a tube of something, a bottle of water and a foil-wrapped package that looked like a protein or energy bar.

  “Clean yourself up and eat, slave. You have one hour.”

  The two men left together, and I recognized the click of the lock when they’d shut the prison bars. I laid there watching their feet until they stepped out of sight. Then I listened. Ten more steps to the door, which sounded like it opened without difficulty for them. The door closed with another quiet click. And then there was silence.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t muster the strength to pick myself up off the floor. I’d once thought the room Derek had held me captive in had been hell…I’d been wrong. So pathetically naïve to think his brand of torture had been brutal, sadistic.

  I looked at the things the man had left, searching for something that could help me. Not to heal, not to defend myself, and not to scale the wall and slip through the window. There was only one escape from this hell, and I needed to do it now before they returned. But there was clearly no way to turn the things on the floor into merciful bringers of death.

  One hour and he’d be back. One hour to do what he’d said, or
else god only knew what punishments he would heap onto whatever he had planned.

  With shaking limbs, I forced myself to hands and feet. I slipped the dry towel beneath my bloody knees and knelt, but I couldn’t sit back on my heels and had to hold onto the wall to stay upright. I decided to work from the top down, my face first, unsuccessfully stifling a cry as I pressed the lukewarm towel to my shredded cheek.

  Inspecting the tube of cream, it turned out to be a healing serum, and I patted it on liberally. Five percent lidocaine. It wasn’t nearly as good as the cream Derek had rubbed into my flesh with tender hands after Marcos had marred it, but it did take some of the stings out, so I rubbed a small bit into the other side of my face where the monster had no doubt left his handprint.

  My arms and chest were easier—nothing but red marks from his rough handling. I tried to reach my back with the towel, but was only partially successful, though my stomach turned seeing the lines of blood soaking into the cloth from the lash wounds.

  Then lower. I dabbed at the place where he’d been, and when I pulled the towel away and found it saturated with blood and semen, I doubled over, my stomach once again trying to bring up food that wasn’t there.

  The serum helped. I rubbed in a liberal amount, trying to ignore the way the opening he’d abused felt stretched and swollen.

  That was it. There was no more relief to be had. Except…the serum contained lidocaine—a numbing agent. Thinking about the despicable way my body had responded to his fingers made me choke on another sob. But the cream could help make sure my body couldn’t betray me like that again. Without any more thought, I squeezed the serum onto my fingers and rubbed it into my clit.

  I turned my attention to the water and energy bar, eyeing them like mortal enemies. My throat was raw from screaming and my lips were parched from thirst, but eating and drinking would only prolong this. It might be a slow escape, but it would come eventually if I could just resist the urge to give into the burning thirst that scorched my throat.

  He’d told me to eat. Fine, I’d eat, but he hadn’t said a word about drinking. And just to make sure I didn’t change my mind, I opened the bottle and dumped the contents on the bloody towels. Then I reached for the energy bar. Still shaking, it took me four attempts to open it.

  Each swallow felt like broken glass but I got it down. Then I laid down and rested the less-injured side of my face against the ground. And I waited. I could mark the day and night by the light from the window, but not the passing of a single hour.

  Sixty minutes. How many minutes did I have left? I counted the seconds, counting slowly as if that could slow time’s passage. When my eyes drifted closed at five-hundred and thirty-two seconds, I lost count. Sleep. A temporary escape. I welcomed it as it reached for me. And finally, as it pulled me under, Derek’s face was there. His too handsome face and vivid, blue eyes. Yes, this was my heaven.

  6

  Scarlett

  “You think you can fool me, slave?” Derek’s full lips formed the words but his voice wasn’t right. It was cold, and it filled every fiber of my body with dread. “Get up,” he barked and dragged me upright, but with the jerk of my arm, my eyes flew open.

  It wasn’t Derek. He wasn’t here. The monster was back and he was angry. From my knees, he pulled me up onto my feet and backed me up until my back thumped against the stone. I stifled a cry and stared at my feet. Every muscle was taut, trying to prepare for his next strike.

  His hand dropped to my sex and he slapped my clit. I felt it sharply on the surrounding flesh, but not my clit. Not the place that was numbed with the lidocaine cream. I held back the sigh of relief that threatened to slip out. I was numb. That part of me was safe from him.

  At least, that’s what I thought until he forced my chin up.

  “Your innocence should please me, but coupled with a flagrant defiance…”

  When he stroked his fingers gently along my jaw, I knew something bad was coming. He’d caught me. He knew exactly what I’d done. Of course, he did. I’d completely forgotten about the cameras. I couldn’t see any, but they must be here somewhere. How else would the doors know when to lock and unlock? Someone had watched me—probably him among them—while I attempted to clean my body and soothe it with the damn cream. He’d watched as I massaged it into my traitorous clit.

  Just like before, he moved swiftly. He’d grabbed my wrists and yanked them over my head before I could jerk away. One big hand held me there. I wanted to kick him, to bite him, to inflict whatever damage I could, but I didn’t. I stood there like a deer caught in headlights, too afraid to move.

  He slid a finger on his free hand into his mouth. Was this some reference to the way he’d forced his wet finger into my mouth earlier? His hand then slid between my thighs, but he didn’t stop at my clit. His saliva-moistened finger glided between my dry labia, and I understood what he was doing when he pushed it inside me.

  I’d been stupid. Naïve. Not innocent, but foolish.

  He stroked along the front wall of my sex, and I gritted my teeth. It wouldn’t work this time. I wasn’t going to allow it.

  His strokes grew firmer and he increased his pace. I thought about every vile thing he’d done to me and how much I loathed him. I could kill him. If ever given the chance, I could do it. I wouldn’t hesitate. And it wasn’t just for me I’d be doing it. I couldn’t possibly be the first girl he’d taken, and I likely wouldn’t be the last. Unless I snuffed out his evil existence.

  A spark sizzled through my core as his fingers found the sensitive place inside me. He’d been skirting it, but I realized it had been deliberate because he stroked there now with an expert touch.

  The spark ignited, feeding a pressure deep inside me.

  No. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t want this. I still couldn’t believe my body could be such a wretched traitor. But the proof of it was right there in the drop of wetness that leaked onto my inner thigh.

  The pressure built. My cheeks flamed in humiliation behind the cascade of tears.

  “Moan. Now,” he whispered roughly.

  I opened my mouth to fake the sound, but his fingers moved faster suddenly, and the sound that slipped out wasn’t fake.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair. I didn’t want my body to respond. The monster was sadistic and cruel. How could his touch do anything but repulse me?

  “Again,” he demanded.

  I didn’t have to fake it. All I had to do was unclench my jaw that was keeping my sounds trapped in my throat.

  And then I couldn’t stop them. The pressure mounted. It was almost unbearable. Breathless cries slipped out. Dirty, disgusting moans fell from my own lips. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even slow it down.

  I slammed my head back against the stone wall as the pressure he’d created exploded. It shot ripples of pleasure surging through me and released a rush of liquid from my sex.

  My misery was like a crushing weight, threatening to drive me to the ground despite his hand that held me trapped. It shrouded every inch of my soul in black. Dark. Dirty. I was a slut, just like he’d said. There was no other way to explain it.

  When he spun me around and his whip came down across the backs of my thighs, I welcomed it. I deserved it. Maybe he could beat the dirty slut out of me.

  It turned out though, he couldn’t. Over the next five days, he reinforced the rules and introduced a handful of new ones, punishing me every time I disobeyed and sometimes, I think, just because he could. But in between it all, he’d put his fingers or his tongue on me, or inside me, and turn my body against me all over again. Sometimes he’d fuck me to split me open and hurt me as much as he could, other times he’d hover over top of my body, grinding his pelvis against my clit while he impaled me on his erection over and over again until my whore cunt convulsed around him.

  My life became a constant flow of pain and unwanted pleasure. If I disobeyed him, he punished me. If I obeyed him, he introduced more rules that were impossible to keep straight in my h
ead. I was bound to mess up, and he knew it. He looked forward to it. And no matter whether I followed the rules or not, he dragged orgasm after orgasm from my body until I was so abhorred, so disgusted with myself that I couldn’t stand to be inside my own body. Loathing welled up, for him, for me. Surely, neither of us deserved to exist in this world.

  Five days. Five days and there had been so sign of Derek. I tried to shove away the ever-increasing certainty that he was dead. Not because it meant there was no hope of being rescued. I didn’t want to be rescued. I didn’t deserve to be rescued. I wanted to die, and I wanted to take the evil monster with me. The hope of rescue was no longer what kept me staving off the images in my head of Derek lying lifeless in the Cartago motel room.

  I needed Derek to be alive because he deserved to live and find love, and because I was going to die here. I needed someone to remember me as something other than the beaten and broken whore I’d become.

  I grasped onto an image of his sexy as hell smile as another orgasm rocketed through my body. Blood from the last whipping still dripped down the backs of my thighs, but it didn’t matter. I’d let my mind wander to where it wanted to be. Not here in hell, but in Derek’s arms, or beneath his thrusting hips, or on my knees with his cock in my mouth, or bent over the motel room bed, watching our reflection in the headboard mirror.

  The monster shoved me to the floor and laughed.

  Five days. Five days since I’d woken up in hell. God, I hoped it would be over soon. But like I told you, hope could be a very dangerous thing.

  7

  Derek

  I’d never known hours could crawl by so slowly. So fucking slow. Three-hundred and ninety-one hours and sixteen minutes since I’d walked out of the motel room bathroom to find Scar missing. Three-hundred and ninety-one hours and sixteen minutes of the worst torture I’d ever known. I’d gladly go back to that dark, dingy basement my foster parents had shoved me in. I’d welcome every blow of his fist, every lash of his whip, and every sickening touch of their hands. I’d climb on top of that bitch while her mother-fucking husband used me like a whore. It would be sweet relief from the kind of hell I’d lived the past sixteen days.