He already has enough.

“Close the doors.” Drake snapped his fingers as he opened another box that his goons brought in, rifling through the contents to fist sensors for Euphoria.

So he’d been coherent enough to take Sully’s virtual reality equipment too.

Shit.

The sounds of three sets of doors closing sent my heart skyrocketing. I looked over my shoulder as locks were turned and any concept of escape was barred.

Drake scowled at the five men in the room. “Three of you get out. Two can stay.” Arching his chin at the mercenary who’d been in the helicopter and Monyet with us and an older guy with a salt and pepper beard, he ordered, “You two, you stay. The rest leave. Stand guard outside.” He chuckled, almost as an afterthought. “There are staff in this house, by the way. Don’t shoot them. I need them to be at my beck and call.”

The three unselected men nodded and slipped through the double doors back into the first living room we’d passed. The buzz-cut guy marched over and locked them, trapping me in hell with three men.

It wasn’t the men who scared me.

It was a tiny mundane vial that held nightmares.

The same vial that Drake plucked from its four hundred bedfellows and stalked toward me. “You hungry, sexy goddess?”

I pursed my lips and didn’t reply.

“I can have my chef cook you anything you want. I saw you snag a few of my grapes, so I know you are.”

It’s a trap. A trick.

And if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t allow him to take any other liberties with me. Raping me? Drugging me? That was one thing. Feeding me? Pretending to care if I stayed alive?

No. No way.

That was the worst kind of blasphemy.

He ran his hand through my hair, making hate flow in my blood.

“We have swans on the property. Rodents too if they haven’t scurried away for winter. Or I can have the butcher cut up a lamb, a cow, a chicken...how about a turkey? Do you like turkey?” He cupped my chin, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “Ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you. I’ll feed you before I fuck you...on one condition.” He leaned forward, pressing a dry, rancid kiss to my mouth.

I ripped my face away, glowering at him.

“Whatever you request, it has to have a heartbeat. No vegetables or vegan shit. Meat and only meat.” He laughed as he deposited the sensors on the same couch I was tied to, opening each and pulling out their contents. “You’ll be staying with me for a few weeks until I tire of you. You’ll be using up a lot of energy in our...sexual perversions. You’ll need to eat eventually.” He grinned, eyeing me up and down. “Don’t worry, you’ll eat flesh to stay alive. Even Sully used to eat meat in his youth.”

I didn’t speak.

I balled my hands and stared past him to the drawn sapphire curtains. The older mercenary had pulled them over the watery sunlight, embalming us completely in the sarcophagus this house had become.

“Has he told you when his last bite of meat was?” Drake continued to arrange the sensors. “I was there, you know. I was the reason it was his last.” His sickly smirk promised I wouldn’t like this trip down memory lane.

“He somehow rescued a sheep. Don’t ask me how. He was always bringing home beasts he wasn’t supposed to. He thought he kept them hidden from me...silly brother. I watched him for a while with that sheep. I spied while he bottle-fed it. I rolled my eyes as he sourced hay in the city for a countryside creature. He was so fucking proud of that mangy woolly thing. So...it was only fitting I used it to teach him another lesson.”

He straightened with importance. “After all, that’s what big brothers do, don’t they? We guide and teach our younger siblings. Our parents were too busy with the company to bother us most days. Who else would Sullivan have learned from?”

His hands landed on my yellow shirt.

The only thing covering me. The only protection I had.

I braced myself for him to pop the buttons and tear it off me. Instead, he slowly unbuttoned me, his knuckles grazing my nipples, his proximity making me sick.

The velvet rope around my ankle made me prickle with hate and horror. If I wasn’t tied, I could try to run, but I wouldn’t get far. Either Drake would catch me or a gun would kill me.

Just breathe.

It will be over soon...

Just...breathe.

Sucking in a harsh breath, I swallowed back my despair and glowered with every loathing as Drake continued to unbutton me. “I killed that sheep personally. Unlike Sullivan, I’ve never been squeamish about animal blood.” He licked his lips as he finished with the buttons and spread open my shirt.

The lemon material gaped and clung to my shoulders, then skated traitorously down my arms and dangled off my elbows, unable to fall to the floor from my bound hands.

Drake didn’t seem to care, gawking at my nakedness.

I hated him.

Fuck, I hated him.

The natural reaction to gag gave away just how repulsive I found him.

My nostrils flared.

Fear prickled.

My nipples peaked.

Panic built.

“You find my brother attractive...yet you act as if I’m an ogre.” He licked his lips with undisguised lust, reaching out to fist my breast. “Don’t worry, pretty Eleanor. You’ll be begging me soon enough. Just like Sullivan learned to beg.”

Pinching my nipple with cruel fingernails, he bared his teeth. “Back to my story. Where was I? Oh, yes. The lamb.” He grinned. “I killed that lamb and dumped the carcass in the kitchen. I helped the family chef prepare it—said it was a special dinner for my baby brother. He came home from wherever the fuck he spent his days and tried to ignore me like he always did. However, both parents were at home that night, and they insisted on a family dinner.”

He twisted my nipple, making me flinch, his touch as grotesque as his tale.

“Sullivan picked at his meal—he was always a fussy eater, even when he was fourteen. But our parents devoured that lamb. They sang its praises. Boasted how juicy and tender it was. And I had the perfect stage to clap my brother on the back and thank him for raising the best tasting lamb in our county.”

He laughed blackly. “Should’ve seen him, Eleanor. He bolted from that table and ran all the way to the bottom of the garden where he thought he’d hidden his woolly friend. I’d left the carcass there for him. Rather nice of me, don’t you think? Allowing him to say his goodbyes.”

Letting my breast go, he ran his finger along his cheek where a silver scar of his own glittered in the lowlights of this crypt. “Can you believe, he grabbed a leg bone and struck me with it, the bastard. He attacked me quicker than I could defend myself. Drew blood and everything.”

He smirked as he reached for the earbud box and pulled out both sensors. “That was the first time our parents blew up at Sullivan instead of me for violence. They grounded him. Took me to the hospital—I had to have ten stitches—and then they sat us down and made us promise we’d be better siblings. That we would stop our war over things they couldn’t understand.”

Drake’s voice faded somewhat as he shoved the earbuds inside my ears. He’d learned how the sensors worked. He didn’t ask permission to tether me to a virtual reality that would undoubtedly ruin me. He didn’t stop talking about the past as he smeared the scent deceptor under my nose and rubbed oil into my nakedness. “You know...you’re the first girlfriend he’s ever had.”