The Fallen (A Sons of Wrath Prequel) (11 page)

Dammit.

“Each day, I take from you until you learn to earn it back from me.” The timbre and authority in his tone oozed seduction.

“Go to hell.”

“It must be hell for
you
. Giving up control.”

“I haven’t given you anything.”

His hand palmed between her thighs. “Not yet. You will, Pet. I accept payment in tits and clits.” Warmth engulfed her breast and she flinched against his palm. Laughter in her ear tightened her lips. “Let’s get you dressed.”

Her left wrist loosened from the binds and soft fabric slid up her arm before the burn returned. He repeated the ritual to her other arm, undeterred by her pitiful attempt to break from his grasp.

Cool, stiff fabric blanketed her chest. Literally, like a blanket.  The sleeves bunched at her wrists. She’d never heard of a rapist
dressing
the victims.

Wrenching of her hair forced her head back and pressure at her throat left her straining to swallow. The force disappeared and nudged her head forward as his fingers fumbled at her nape. “Pets wear collars.” His big hand gripped her throat, pressing the leather against her skin and sliding it back and forth until it burned. “How does that feel?”

“Perfect,” she gritted out, and his hands fell away from her.

A cold softness, like leather, covered both of her ears at the same time. Only the swishing of blood pounded through her head.

Sensory deprivation.

She’d read all about it. Never truly appreciated it until that moment, though.

Fuck.

She took long, easy breaths, calming herself, and closed her eyes behind the blindfold. At a scrape against the top of her thigh, Karinna flinched.
Deep breaths
. It disappeared, leaving an imprint in her mind, and she shivered in response.
Calm down, Karinna.

He liked games.

Another spike raked across her belly. “Again,” she called out. A long pause and nothing more. She waited.

The coverings over her ears were removed.

His woodsy-musky scent hit her nose before anything. “Listen, little girl. You may think this is a game you can control. You’ll soon learn why you shouldn’t play with something you don’t fully understand.”

***

Adrenaline coursed through his veins.

Few women had ever challenged Xander. Fewer still left him raw with excitement and need. Even the last girl, as playful as she’d been, cowered at his first command. Only Karinna made him wish, just once, he could give in to the darkness that called to him, purred in his ear, and begged him to debauch her.

Her attempt at escape told him exactly what he needed to know: he scared the shit out of her.

He almost wished she’d keep up her guard and continue to refuse him, just to see how long it’d take to break her. No doubt, she’d be his greatest challenge yet.

If only the clock didn’t hound his ass. That camera had to be found, and from what he knew of her, watching her for months—that feisty, wild and willful nature of hers—she sure as hell wouldn’t tell him where to find it. She’d trained herself to take pain, frequenting some of the raunchiest dungeons in Detroit. Most girls only needed a simple mind fuck and all their secrets spilled like a stab wound. Karinna was different. Strong. Determined.

And painfully taunting his dick with every stubborn backlash.

“How did you hear about the Sadismen?”

“I don’t remember.”

Xander ground his teeth.
Fucking pistol
. “Try.” He gripped her crown and held her head against the pillow.

“One of the girls … from Chix.” She strained against his grip.

“Would that be Shannon?”

“Why does it matter?”

“She’s dead. That’s why it matters.”

Karinna froze as though processing his words. “How?”

“She wanted in. Just like you. Now, tell me why.” Telling him her interest might get her to spill details about what
she
sought from the Sadismen. Not that Karinna was stupid, by any means. He’d have to push her into the confession.

“Did you kill her?”

“I’m capable of just about anything. I wouldn’t test my patience to find out. Answer the fucking question.”

“I’m not telling you a fucking thing.”

Xander snarled and leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “Then, your suffering will be my amusement.”

***

His boots thumped across the room and the door slammed.

Karinna released a shaky exhale. Before panic could threaten to pull her under, she escaped inside her head. The situation, though dangerous, wasn’t impossible. A puzzle, of sorts. She just needed time to formulate. To solve him.

Each day, I take from you until you learn to earn it back from me.

She clenched her fists at the flash of an image inside her head.

White masks. Hands reaching. Laughter.

Double-blinking back to her current situation pushed it down to wherever it’d risen from.

Sounds reached her ears through the darkness. A woman. She listened more intently, focusing. A male grunted and groaned between the woman’s soft moans.
Xander?
Had there been another woman in the house?

The moans escalated. She’d heard those kinds of sounds on a daily basis when in her own apartment. Without doubt, he was fucking another woman somewhere in the house.

Her stomach tightened at the noise, and she pulled on the binds.

Louder, the woman screamed. Muffled commands broke through all the whimpering and groans. “Do you!” His bellows incited the woman’s cries. The sensuality faded into hard smacks against skin. “Fucking say it!”

The woman sobbed. Then silence. A snap tensed Karinna’s muscles. She could damn near feel the whip on her ass, and opened her mouth at the same time the woman cried out again. Another crack. And another. The male’s voice mumbled again.

A series of cracks, like the finale of fireworks, had the female begging for him to stop.

Stop it.

“Oh, God, somebody help me! Oh, please!” The woman’s shrieks died to nothing.

Karinna buried her head in the pillow.
Oh, God
. The male just whipped the shit out of her and the silence that followed could only mean she’d passed out. She took deep breaths, sensing something dark rise up inside of her.

Focus
, she told herself.
Fuck him. Fuck all of them. Vengeance. Lolita. All of them will die. Stay in the game.

Long breaths calmed the frantic thrumming of her heart.

She smiled.

***

Xander flipped off the snuff video blasting through the speakers, and grinned at the thought of Karinna trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

In the comfort of his desk chair, he attached the leather contraption, with wires that he’d intentionally exposed, to various parts of his body—a contraption he’d designed himself. At the voltage he’d set it, a human would suffer incredible pain and irreparable tissue damage.

Possibly death.

Xander slipped the leather bit inside his mouth and took deep breaths.

To survive the week with Karinna, he’d need to burn his desires right the fuck out of him. Keep that face and her body from clouding his objectives and seizing control. She’d tried. That crazy little wildcat had tried to rob him of control. A small part of him wanted to hand it over to her, if only to sate the curiosity of what she’d do with it. Angels fell that way. No way in hell he’d be one of them.

Closing his eyes, he flicked on the power switch and tensed under the current heating his flesh like a blowtorch.
Motherfucker!

Burned.

Muscles stiff as planks, he managed to grab hold of his dick. With awkward strokes, like a virgin hand job, he moved up and down the shaft as images of Karinna’s lips passed through his mind. Slow and steady. Each movement required intense concentration. Within the confines of his head, he slipped inside his own carnal world. One where she welcomed his torment, begged him for it, not because of some vendetta, but because she genuinely wanted it from
him
. One where she willingly submitted to him, and he could fuck her at his command—wherever, whenever.

Arms tied behind her back, legs spread to accommodate his body, she presented to him.

“Please.”

Her imagined whisper tickled his thoughts as a jolt of electricity beat through his stomach muscles.

Xander hastened his strokes against the pulses of heat running through his body. His teeth ground against the leather.
Yeah.
Pleasure and pain, the perfect symphony to lull him straight out of his mind. Intensity climbed.
Higher. Higher
. Fuck. So close. His body sat taut, paralyzed with lust and pain, until, at last, he reached the edge.

Karinna.
Karinna! He called out her name. A spring of glistening white shot up into the air, covering his hand and making for a slippery glide as he rode out the rest of his orgasm. Shuddering, he bent forward, while the electric pulses battled the mind-blowing sensation of coming.

Xander switched off the machine, fell back into the chair. Fleeting visions of Karinna’s face passed through his mind, but he dared not dwell too much on them. The sexual appetite of a male angel, particularly one hell-bent on having the woman tied to his bed, could set records in the human realm. As easy as he could be coaxed into hardness, he fought to think of something else.

Finding that fucking camera.

CHAPTER 10

Balanced on the edge of the parapet, Xander peered down as Jimmy and two others from
Hard Limits
exited the abandoned building along the river. The place put him on edge only because the last time he’d been there, he made the mistake of saving a human female.

“I’ll rip this hellhole to shreds, if I have to.” Jimmy led the two toward his parked Mercedes.

“What about the girl? Ian says the sister might have it.” A bouncer Xander recognized from
Hard Limits
stood at the passenger door.

“Find out as much as you can about her. Where she lives. Who she fucks. Her favorite coffee creamer. I want to know everything.” Jimmy ran a hand through his hair. “And do it before that sick fuck Xander finds her.”

Trust had to be earned in the undercover world.

Somehow, Xander hadn’t quite convinced Jimmy of his.

For the time being, Karinna was safe.
Safer
, anyway, unless the bastards found out where he’d been living the last five years.

All three men piled into the silver Mercedes and drove off.

Xander leapt from the roof, landing with a thud against the pavement, and made his way to the thick steel door along the river. Locked.

Two broken windows flanked the door on either side, and Xander widened the hole in one by punching through the remains of the sash before climbing inside.

Not even the pungent scent of hotdogs permeating from two buildings downriver could overpower the rot and human waste that somehow seeped up from the basement of the building.

The place of human nightmares.

Through the surrounding darkness, Xander trampled garbage and desiccated papers plastered to the floor on his way to the basement.

No chance of running into the homeless. They knew what went down behind that steel door and didn’t dare squeal so much as a peep to the cops about it, for fear they’d end up on the chopping block themselves.

‘Sides that, they had bigger problems with the lycan wolves running through the streets of Detroit at night like rabid dogs.

Xander arrived at the door to the basement—the same basement he’d watched the Asian female he’d tracked get tortured, raped and cut into unrecognizable body parts.

He’d given the bracelet to the Asian girl as a gift, to trace her, and that’s how Xander happened to stumble upon Karinna’s sister, Lolita, that night, imprisoned at the same abandoned warehouse.

One quick sweep showed no other form of life. Leaking water and years of neglect gave the concrete walls a patchwork appearance, with splotches of black and brown. Blood stains coated the floor where bodies had been mutilated. A large wooden factory table, speckled with blood and whatever black shit coated the surface, held the appearance of a workbench, and had kept Lolita immobile as the men had their way with her. A set of four stairs led to a ledge with a series of rooms. Graffiti sprayed across the brick gave the false impression that someone, aside from the butchering Sadismen, had ventured into the basement. In an adjacent room, separated by a thick wall, a half dozen cages stood empty. Cuffs hung from walls and human suspension hooks dangled from the ceiling.

He eyed the brick wall and tugged a small blade from his pocket as he crouched in front of it. Diablis steel. Chipping away at the mortar, Xander questioned why he felt the need to leave the knife. Like leaving an answered prayer behind.

Once he’d slipped the blade inside and replaced the loose brick, he searched the shadows, the cells, boiler room, and the old office that a janitor had once occupied—all the places the bastards might’ve overlooked.

No sign of the camera.

***

Karinna lay half-conscious, her mind meandering into the space where dreams overlapped the silence. In the adjacent bathroom, the faucet leaked a steady drip that’d somehow gotten louder, pounding inside her head.
Nine hundred fifty six … fifty seven … fifty eight
, she’d mentally counted each one. Her fingers had gone cold. Numb, too, in spite of her pumping her hands to keep the blood flowing. Nausea left her with a cold, clammy sensation.

She’d spent the last hour telling herself that the woman hadn’t died, but passed out. It happened sometimes, in BDSM, when things got carried away. Even if he’d killed her, though, it didn’t matter.

Karinna had trained her mind to accept pain. She spent months tormenting her own body, testing her own limits, all in preparation for whatever hell it’d take to get close to the men who’d abducted her sister.

Almost there.
The ultimate goal would be getting inside the club. And, of course, finding the camera that Lita had rambled on about—a detail she had no intentions of divulging to the Reaper
.

She couldn’t afford to be broken by the sounds of another’s suffering. As much as it called to her instincts, beckoning her to help, she wouldn’t give in to it. Couldn’t, even if she wanted. He’d robbed her of control, the reminder heating her blood every time she yanked at her binds.

Truth be told, Karinna didn’t exactly come by the role of submissive with any sort of enthusiasm. It’d taken weeks of conditioning to accept that she’d be giving up control. Even by the end of it, she still hadn’t totally subscribed to the idea of being at someone’s mercy, which prompted her to take classes on kicking ass and getting out of sticky situations.

The woman didn’t matter. Neither did the binds, the darkness, or the lack of control. She’d learn to take the pain from him. Enjoy the shit out of it, if she had to.

Eye on the prize.

No matter what that cold-hearted bastard had in store for her, Karinna would be getting inside that club.

One way or another.

She couldn’t be certain, but the burn in her wrists told her it’d been hours since she’d arrived at the unholy house of bondage hell. Aside from the burn, though, a much greater problem loomed. Fits of movement had her shirt riding up her stomach, and the cool air across her skin stiffened her nipples and told her that she lay exposed. Not that he hadn’t seen her naked, but hell if she wanted to entice the bastard into raping her.

She squirmed, scooting her ass along the mattress, in hopes that the fabric might miraculously fall back into place. After minutes of futilely rubbing against the bed, she made a four-limbed tug against the binds and screamed in frustration. After a couple of seconds of hard breaths, Karinna began scrunching her nose, exaggerated so that her mouth was in on the action, too.

The blindfold wouldn’t budge.

Damn it.

The door clicked, and Karinna’s breath hitched.

No.

A deep exhale of laughter drifted across the room like a foreboding cloud. “Having trouble lying still, Pet?”

“Go to hell.”

“Think I’ll stay here. I like the view.”

“Stay the fuck away from me.”

A soft caress drifted across her exposed breast, and Karinna let out a hiss, hating her two-timing nipples for puckering at his touch. His rough hands bore calluses, nothing like the soft hands of businessmen who felt her up at the club.

“You tell me stay away from you and, yet, your body tells me something else.”

To hell with my body. Torture the traitorous bitch, for all I care
.

Hands fumbled at her shirt and more cool air drifted across her chest. He’d unbuttoned her entirely.

“I could sit and stare at you for hours.”

“So, that’s your plan? Sit in here all night, like some kind of pervert and watch me?”

“Yep.”

“I swear to God, if I break free of these chains …”

“You’ll what?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me?” He snickered. “In that case, I look forward to your freedom.” Scraping against the hardwood floor came to a stop somewhere at the foot of the bed. “Actually, I plan to fuck
you
. Eventually.” Fabric swishing against fabric, as if he’d sat down in a chair, turned Karinna’s stomach.

The asshole planned to sit at the foot of her bed and stare at her crotch all night?

“Do you shave or wax?” He seemed to shift in the chair, and a finger drifted across her pelvic bone.

Her thighs flinched.

“Flawless. And soft. I remember from the other night.” His calm, deep voice filled the room and tickled her mind.

“Had I known you were a sick fuck, the other night wouldn’t have happened.”

“You didn’t have a choice, Pet. I was determined to have you, one way or another.”

“That’s called rape.”

“Do I look like I’m out to provide clean water to a small village? ‘The fuck do you think you asked to join? Rape is one of the many fantasies you’ll come to know in the Sadismen.”

“Where’s the other woman?”

“Other woman?”

“I heard her. Screaming. Did you kill her?”

“’Fraid I don’t kiss and tell.” Another shift creaked what Karinna assumed was the chair he must have pulled from the corner of the room.

Crunching crackled through the air, and sounds like chewing followed.

She’d had men staring at her body. They’d seen more than the view she had on display for him right then. Something about the scene, as she imagined it from a bird’s-eye view, left her wanting to curl into a ball and hide. Way too intimate. The man sat eating,
enjoying
his food over the view of her tied damn near naked to his bed.

Anger bubbled in her gut. “You must be an ineffective kidnapper to keep a woman strapped to the bed.”

He chuckled. “How much you want to bet if I fingered you right now, you’d be soaking fucking wet.”

Don’t do it
. God, she didn’t want the added humiliation of how her body might be handling the same situation—as if it had some deviant mind of its own.

“In fact, I’ll bet you’re praying I don’t, just so you don’t have to confess how much you love the torment.”

Ten minutes
. That’s all she’d need. Ten minutes to get a good punch in and bolt for the door. “I have to use the bathroom.”

No response.

“Hello?”

Her hands loosened first, followed by her legs, and Karinna immediately threw the shirt over her body, buttoning the front of it. She lifted the blindfold.

He stood shirtless, wearing only his leathers. Black tattoos covered his right side, over his ribs and up onto his pectoral muscle. His pierced nipples caught what little light shone through the room. Karinna zeroed in on the deep grooves between his exceptionally large muscles, as if someone had taken a pick and chiseled away every ounce of fat from his body. The man was solid. Ripped.

And still chewing the apple in his hand.

“Hungry?” he asked, and something about the way he asked cast a shiver down her spine.

She nodded.

“Do what you need to do. I’ll get you something to eat.”

Really?
He planned to walk out of the room, leaving her untied?
What an ass
. Escape might be easier than she thought.

She stepped past him, toward the bathroom. Flicking on the light, she closed the door behind her and waited, listening.

The simple door click could’ve been the bang from a gun, and she took off, running across the vacant room toward the window. Barred.
Dammit
. She tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. Darkness in the hallway made for a challenging view. She squinted, ears perked, and widened the crack of the door before slipping through.

Shuffling and the
thwump
of chopping rose up from the lower level. Wherever the kitchen was in relation to her, it seemed a bit too close to venture down the staircase. Instead, she backed down the hallway, to where another door stood closed.

Thwump. Thwump.
Like he chopped with fervor. No sense moving toward the knife. Better to wait until he returned to her room.

Karinna ducked inside the dark room, beyond her own, and waited. Her own. Christ, she’d already mentally taken up residence in the place. A glance over her shoulder turned into a triple-glance. Even in darkness, the room’s features stood out. An elaborately carved wood bed, which she guessed must’ve been crafted in the days before queen- and- king-sized mattresses were invented. The bed took up damn near half the room, covered in rich gray and black velvety fabric. A chaise sat in front of a magnificent, etched glass window, where sheer white curtains danced in the wind like ghosts. Books lay piled and strewn about the floor around the bed, as if he did nothing but read every night.

At least, she assumed it was his room, since the scent of the cologne he wore permeated throughout. So different from the room where she slept—like she’d stumbled upon Doctor Jekyll’s private chamber.

Within minutes, his shadowed form appeared over the top stair, carrying a plate. He stopped at her door and glanced down the hallway, toward where she hid.

Shit.
She slid back from the crack of the door, into the shadows.

Still in view, he reached for the knob of her door and disappeared inside the room.

Heart galloping inside her chest, Karinna slithered out through the gap and padded down the hallway.

Go, go, go.

Adrenaline spiked her veins as she passed the bedroom where she’d been held captive. She’d find another way inside the Sadismen.
Not this
. Who the hell knew what the guy had in store for her.

Fuck that
.

She’d waited too long for vengeance to be kept as a deranged bastard’s precious
pet
. A short breath of victory escaped her, as she reached the staircase and skipped down, making light steps to avoid the frightening croak of wood that had alerted his approach earlier.

Seconds. Within seconds, he’d realize she wasn’t there. Her stomach tightened. Frantic, she reached the door, and fear seized her heart as she fidgeted with the lock.

“So very disappointing.” His calm voice sent spears of dread down her spine.

She twisted on the ball of her foot, pressing her back against the door, to find him standing only a few inches behind.

How had he come up on her so quickly?

For a split second, the way his eyes seemed to glow silver in the darkness, Karinna felt hunted. Hunted by something stronger, faster, and, evidently, smarter than she’d given him credit for.

Her short pants of breath hastened as he stepped closer. What happened to the girls who disappointed him? Whipped? Tortured? Killed?