Awareness oozes through my head, muddy and nauseating. Pain throbs behind my eyes and prickles down my spine. Rope shackles my hands behind my back, and scratchy cloth fills my mouth. This isn’t happening. It’s not real.
But the sucking panic in my throat already knows what my mind rejects.
I lost consciousness.
We’re in danger.
Can’t scream.
Or fight.
Or run.
This is bad.
Reality barrels into me like a bucking bull. Men in ski masks. Shotguns. Gags and rope. Conor…
I pry my face from the dirt and register the bits of gravel embedded in my chest. I’ve been moved to the other side of the ravine, dragged here on my stomach. Beside me, Jarret and Lorne are bound and gagged with their backs against trees.
The fury in Lorne’s eyes makes me cringe. I’ve never seen him look like that. Jarret wears his distress so blatantly it soaks his face in tears. My brother hasn’t cried since we were kids, and the shock of it speeds up my heart.
How long was I knocked out? Where the hell is Conor?
“Hurry up,” a gravelly voice drawls behind me. “I want another go at her ass before we do her.”
My stomach solidifies with ice-cold dread. I twist my neck and come face to face with a scene so sickening I struggle to come to terms with it.
Two joined bodies. Hers, without clothes. His, still dressed except for the swath of skin between his shirt and waistband. His pants are lowered just enough to expose the part of him that repeatedly stabs into her from behind.
Everything inside me thrashes and howls.
Blood stains her thighs. Puffy welts mark her skin. His hand clamps over the cloth in her mouth, and her hands… The knotted rope still imprisons her to the tree.
I did that. I took away her ability to escape.
Her eyes stare at nothing, rimmed red and dripping tears. Face down on the twisted blanket, her limp body jerks like dead flesh beneath the hammering thrusts.
Thrust.
Thrust.
Thrust.
No sound. No fight. She’s either too exhausted or too broken. They’ve been hurting her for a while.
Violent tremors attack my muscles. Anguish spills from open veins. I bleed helplessness and drown in horror.
Seconds pass before I come up for air, heaving rabid breaths. I push my tongue against the gag and roar, “Get off her. Don’t touch her. Leave her alone.”
They can’t hear my words, but they can fucking see me. I kick and flail, wrenching my arms and tearing my skin against the rope.
He said he’s going to do her after he rapes her again. Does he intend to kill her?
I fight harder, blood pumping, boots scraping dirt, twisting and heaving and going nowhere.
“Calm your ass down.” The voice barks from a mouthless mask. The man who wants another turn with her.
He prowls toward her with a knife in hand. Crouching beside her, he grabs the hair on the back of her head and yanks her neck at an awkward angle to hold the blade at her throat.
She closes her eyes, and the sick fuck on top of her continues to rut.
“I can kill her slow and painful like.” The man with the knife glares from the hole in the mask. “Or I can do it fast and efficient. The how is up to you.”
“Why?” My question garbles against the gag.
Why would he kill her? She’s just a girl. Never hurt anyone. She won’t even squash a spider. We haven’t seen their faces. Can’t identify them. Goddammit, I need my voice. I need them to hear me.
That’s not an option, so I force myself to settle, relaxing my muscles one by one. I need to think. I need time. How can I stop this?
The knife pulls back, and he steps away as the other man groans through his vile release.
Then they switch places.
“You should’ve tried out her tight little asshole.” The talkative one kneels behind her and grips her hips. “I broke it in real good for you.”
Bile hits my throat, and my vision blurs with fire and venom, madness and malice.
“Couldn’t pass up a virgin cunt.” The second man tucks himself into his jeans. “Make it quick. We need to wrap this up.”
A cold sweat sweeps my skin. Every molecule in my body seethes to gut them.
I turn my head toward Lorne and Jarret. All my thrashing moved me closer to the tree line, giving me a direct line of sight between their backs and the trees they’re tied to.
From the front, they appear frozen and crippled by fear. But behind them… Holy fuck, their hands are moving in tandem. Is that a knife? And blood.
Adrenaline floods my system, amping my pulse. One of them is definitely bleeding. Lorne, I think. He always carries a blade in his boot. I don’t know how Jarret scored it, but it’s in his grip. My brother blindly saws at the rope on Lorne’s wrists, slicing him up in the process.
Conor muffles a cry as that son of a bitch plunders her body. He impales her most sensitive hole, grunting sick sounds of pleasure and leaning into his depravity with vigor.
With each ram of his hips, he decimates the joy of a long-awaited night, hacking and mutilating it into a nightmare of everlasting scars.
All I can do is watch. I endure every cheated moment with her, but I can’t feel her pain. Not the physical agony. I can’t take that from her. Can’t protect her from it. And I’ll never be able to return the glow of innocence to her heart. It’s been permanently stolen from her, from all four of us.
But we’re still alive. If Jarret cuts through that damn rope, we’ll stay that way.
Both shotguns lean against the rock wall. I trust Lorne to go for them the moment he’s free. The men are too preoccupied with Conor to pay us any attention. One paces a circle around her. The other groans and bucks against her bleeding backside. But I don’t look at them.
I stare directly at her. Not at her nude body or the knot around her wrists or the gag in her mouth. I stare at her eyes. I stare so hard she finally senses me, stirring just enough to lift her lashes and find me across the ravine.
I harden my expression with the words I can’t voice.
I have you.
You’re my girl.
I’m sorry I restrained you.
I’m sorry I can’t take your pain.
You’ll survive this.
That works for a while. The furrows of agony on her face smooth beneath the sheen of love in her eyes. But eventually, the cruelty pushes its way in, suffocating the space between us with an ugly truth.
I don’t know how we’ll come back from this. It’s worse than the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Worse than the stillbirth from our prize-winning cow. Worse than the fire that destroyed our thirty-stall mare barn. Worse than the rattlesnake bite that almost killed me. Maybe worse than the car accident that took our mothers. But none of us remember that.
Each second that passes leaves an immutable, catastrophic mark. Every thrust into her precious body baptizes my soul in darkness. I feel it slithering in, the oily, toxic, oppressive tendrils of rancor. It hooks malignant roots into muscle and bone, claims blood cells, and rewires neurons.
I won’t walk away from this the same.
But I will walk away, directly onto a warpath. I’ll take whatever road that leads to vengeance and bloodshed. Fuck the law. These fucking bastards stole something from me. Something priceless and dear. They hurt my girl from the inside out, extinguished her glow, and made her bleed.
They’ll die for that.
At the edge of my vision, the pacing man veers to the creek and takes a leak. As his piss splashes water, a scuffing sound disturbs the ground behind me.
I don’t take my eyes off Conor, but I see it in her face. The spark of alarm. Tension. Hope.
My muscles stiffen, and my lungs swell with readiness as a silhouette blurs past me.
Lorne is on the move.