He didn’t burst through the door like the stories of the Militsiya my mother used to tell me about. He didn’t splinter the frame with a well-placed kick that made the door fly open. He didn’t even make a sound. He was just… suddenly there.
Viktor’s arm swung back. Another blow from his paddle about to make contact with my bruised body, he smiled. “Look, petal, we have company.” He eyed Dane then brought the paddle down.
Wood hitting flesh echoed in the eerie silence.
I jerked against the restraints and tears welled.
No.
NO.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes. Four whips, three vibrators, nipple clamps, his acrid sweat dripping onto my body and that goddamn paddle, and I didn’t shed a single tear. I didn’t so much as let him get a grunt out of me. I took every minute of Viktor’s assault, but the second Dane’s eyes found mine, tears showed up.
I didn’t fucking cry in front of Viktor. Not ever.
The ball gag choking me, I didn’t just cry either. A monumental wail of defeat reared up and choked my lungs as I fought not to panic. I no longer cared about Viktor. I hated him. I hated every single perverse thing I’d ever let him do to me. I hated his fucking limp-dick, cologne-smelling disgustingness. I hated everything. Including how he made me come four times. But I never hated him more than in that very second when Dane saw what I really was.
I wasn’t a woman.
I wasn’t strong.
I wasn’t a fighter.
Bought and paid for, I was a weak and pathetic slave, and Dane would never unsee that.
It didn’t matter that I’d tried to save my mother and André by going with Viktor. It didn’t matter that Viktor threatened to kill Dane if I didn’t do as he said. It didn’t matter that Viktor said he would give the cops those computer files tracking Peter’s whereabouts to Dane’s house if I didn’t come. It didn’t matter, period. I was never going to win against Viktor because I was weak. I was weak when he took me on a date five years ago, and I was even weaker now because I let him do this to me knowing what he was.
And that made me pathetic.
Rage and humiliation gurgled up my sobbing throat, and I kicked at my ankle restraints.
The bed posts shook and Viktor chuckled. “Oh look, soldier, you’ve upset her.” He moved to the side of the bed and gripped a handful of my hair, pulling the strands harder than he ever had. “What’s wrong, petal?” He lowered his rancid breath to my ear. “You don’t want to come in front of him?” He turned up the speed on the vibrator lodged deep in my pussy then grabbed the wand vibrator. Cranking it, he shoved it against my clit.
My back arched off the bed and my legs shook like a train coming into station.
A rush of wind, and the vibrator hit my thigh before falling to the floor. My startled breath wheezed past the gag, and I was staring at Viktor as his eyes popped out of his head. Dane’s huge arm across his throat was choking out all of Viktor’s air as Dane pressed his gun into Viktor’s temple.
“I’m not a soldier. I’m a marine.” Dane snapped Viktor’s neck.
Like a rag doll, Viktor crumpled to the ground.
I squeezed my eyes shut and fought to keep from hyperventilating.
So gentle that I would never mistake his touch for Viktor’s, Dane undid one nipple clamp, then the other. My humiliation ramping up to a level I never knew existed, I fought against the restraints.
“Sh, hold still,” his deep voice soothed.
The vibrating anal plug in my ass stopped, and my mortification leapt so far past intolerable, I wanted to die.
The lubed device was pulled out of me.
But that wasn’t even the beginning of my horror.
Huge, gentle hands that had caressed every inch of my body last night held my trembling thighs and turned off the vibrator. As he began to ease the device out of my soaking wet, pulsing pussy, his breath hit my clit.
My traitorous, conditioned body reacted.
Wretched, aching need that I had zero control over reared up and stole the very last ounce of my dignity. Head to toe, cunt to nipples, an unprecedented, life-shattering orgasm ripped from my used-up body.
Dane’s sharp intake of breath was a knife to my chest.
Disgraced beyond words, I yanked against my wrist restraints, hoping to break my bones.
“Hold on.” No force in his tone, it wasn’t a command.
I roared with mortification.
His hands fumbled on the ball gag, and I kicked out as he got the buckle undone. Unlike the giant dildo in my pussy, he left the ball in my mouth and quickly moved to one of my wrists.
I spit the ball out. Streams of saliva dripped down my chin, and I kicked against the ankle restraints in humiliated rage. A keening sob worked my sore jaw as I used my newly freed hand to shoved Dane away from my other wrist restraint.
I felt him move to my ankles as the restraints loosened, and I fought from opening my eyes. I fought with everything I had. But when my second ankle was released, it was as if I had to make my destruction complete.
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
His storm-colored gaze unerringly fixed on me, Dane stared at me with the one thing I feared most.
Irony hit me full force.
In death, Viktor had broken me worse than he ever had while he was breathing.
My life shattered, my horror bleeding into rage, I did the only thing I could.
I kicked Dane in the chest.
He stumbled back, and he looked at me like I never wanted him to look at me.
Gone was the locked-down, war-hardened expression of a warrior. Impotence and pity and distress swirled into a hot mess of everything that he wasn’t and he looked at me not like a marine, but like a man who didn’t know what to do.
I hated it more than I ever hated Viktor.
Venomous words crawled up my ragged throat and spewed past my aching jaw. “Get away from me!”
His eyes widened, his hands went up, and his expression soaked up a thick layer of worry. “Irina.”
“Don’t.” One hand still cuffed, I scrambled back on the bed. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking touch me!”
“Marek,” André Luna quietly interjected.
In my utter desolation, I hadn’t noticed the other ex-marine enter the room.
As if to shield me from André, Dane moved his impossibly huge body closer to me.
I lost it. “Get away from me! Get out, get out, GET OUT.”
“Stand down,” André barked. Grabbing a blanket off the floor, he shoved past Dane and put a knee on the bed. His voice dropped and his eyes cut to mine. “It’s okay, chica. I got you. No one’s gonna hurt you.” He wrapped the blanket around my beaten and bruised body and placed a hand over the one I had clawing at my restrained wrist. “I got this,” he softly cooed. “Let me get you free, baby girl. You’re okay.”
I yanked at my wrist. “Get this off me!”
“Almost there, almost there.” André unclasped the restraint. “You’re free now, chica. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He touched a device in his ear and his voice turned commanding. “Collins, I need an extraction. Garages on the west side. Four minutes.”
“Luna,” Dane bit out.
Scooping me up, blanket and all, André ignored Dane. “Almost out, hang tight, baby girl.”
“Stop,” Dane warned.
André spared him a glance. “Talerco found seven women hostages. Handle it.”
“Where are you taking her?” Dane demanded.
I buried my head in the blanket.
“If she doesn’t need medical attention, the apartments above my office.” André’s voice rumbled from his chest.
“Take her to my penthouse. She can stay there.”
I didn’t hear a response, and I didn’t see either of their faces. All I knew was that André started moving again.
I wanted to disappear forever.