Page 16 of Fervent
“Perrone is Jax’s father,” Rafe said, the words hoarse and barely audible. “What did he want with you?”
I squirmed on his lap, hesitant to go into Lucas touching me or nearly forcing his cock into my mouth. “He wanted something I wasn’t willing to give, not unless he agreed to let you go.”
“Alex…” he warned. “Don’t you dare try to bargain for my life.”
“It didn’t work anyway. He sent me into that room and…”
“And they beat you,” he finished, his voice cracking. He burrowed his face into the crook of my shoulder and crushed me in his embrace, holding on as if letting go meant he’d splinter apart. “I’ll kill them all,” he whispered.
My ass was burning something fierce, but I clenched my teeth until the pain dulled. I was just starting to relax, calmed by the shelter of his embrace, when another screech bled through the wall. We both froze, suspended in quiet horror.
Her screams reached every part of me, and my skin erupted with goose bumps. I’d been through a lot. Some would say I’d been to hell and back. But they were baptizing that poor girl by fire, taking her from everything she knew and loved just so they could torture her into becoming nothing.
A thing with holes to fuck, like Zach had treated me in that cabin. I shuddered at the thought.
“I won’t let them hurt you again,” Rafe said.
I knew he meant every word, but he was only one man. “I know,” I whispered. I wouldn’t upset him by telling him that I had little faith left. We were trapped in a dark room underground somewhere, and no one would find us.
“I won’t let them,” he repeated. We settled into each other, bodies pressed together, mouths parting over warm skin, and breathed the other in as the monster next door elicited more screams from his victim.
This confined, dark pit of hell was fucking with my head. Or maybe Alex’s naked body sent me spiraling through the deviant holes of my mind. She lay next to me on her stomach, her warm thigh pressed over my dick, and I couldn’t stop touching her. The cot was barely big enough for the two of us, which was fine by me because I wanted to keep her close anyway. But being so close tested my limits, and being trapped in this never-ending blindness had awakened a certain part of me. The part that enjoyed tracing a finger over the welts on her ass, following the angry lines branded in her flesh.
I’d traced her skin for hours, finding the act somehow soothing.
Blind captivity skewed reality to the point where time was meaningless, and it had a way of driving a person mad. It seemed like weeks had passed since Jax slammed the door, though it couldn’t have been more than a few days. Sandwiches and bottles of water arrived every so often through a slot in the door, apparently on some schedule I couldn’t track due to the pitch-blackness that made it impossible to measure time.
The longer we remained trapped in this dark cell, the closer I came to fissuring, and that pissed me off. I couldn’t let whatever issues lurked in my screwed up head pull me under now.
Thank fuck the screams next door had silenced on the first day. I kept torturing myself with what that girl might be enduring, and I felt like a bastard because I was grateful Alex was in here with me, safe from the monsters outside this room.
But that only left me to question the nature of the monster inside this room with her. Her vulnerability sparked something ugly in me. Something shameful. Something that threatened to unlock what I’d forgotten.
I didn’t want to remember what I’d done to her¸ but I was obsessed with finding out.
She whimpered in her sleep, indicating another nightmare was on the rise, and I gently shook her shoulder to wake her before the horrors of her mind trapped her in the past.
“Wake up, baby.”
She awoke with a sharp intake of breath and pushed to all fours, barely missing my balls with her knee. The bastards had leashed her, and the chain slid along the ground anytime she moved. I brushed my fingers over the cool metal running down her back.
“They were…they…” She sucked in another quick breath.
“It was just a dream.”
Letting out a shaky sigh, she settled against me again. “I’d rather have nightmares of the cabin. At least Zach was…someone I cared about. How messed up is that?”
“Everything about this is fucked up. I’m not surprised you’re having nightmares. I’ve been having them for a while too.”
“I remember,” she said quietly.
Of course she did. I’d practically attacked her in my sleep our last night on the island. Figuring we could both use a distraction, I patted the mattress above my head and searched for the tube of cream someone had slipped through the slot in the door. If I had to guess at who had been feeding us and slipping first aid items inside, I’d put my money on Jax.
Still didn’t make a shred of sense though. I kept replaying his words, trying to find the angle that clicked into something recognizable, but I only went in circles. Jax was the son of Perrone, who’d proposed to Alex. Perrone was behind all of this, but he also had ties to Abbott De Luca, who could easily be involved too.
How the fuck did Jax fit into the equation?
Maybe I couldn’t figure it out because I couldn’t fucking see beyond the darkness trying to choke the monster in me.
