Sweat coated every inch of me as he thrust in and out, and my eyes rolled back in my head. What if it killed me? Whatever drugs were filling my veins, pumping through my heart... what if they killed me? It felt possible. I thought I was okay with it, too. I'd lost everything. Why would I want to continue? Not now. Everyone hated me. The look on Lucas's face as they'd cuffed me had been pure torture. Cass would be better off if I weren't around. Even Seph... I did nothing but make her life hard.
A hard and fast orgasm hit me, and I shrieked, writhing and bucking under Zed. But he didn't slow. He just fucked me harder and faster, grunting and sweating as he bit his bruised lower lip.
When had that happened? It looked like teeth marks in his lip. Like someone had bitten him.
"Come for me again, Darling," he snarled, reaching a hand down between us and violently pinching my clit. My body responded, though, crashing me headlong into another orgasm that left me seeing stars and hoarse from screaming.
Still, he kept going, fucking me so hard the bed rocked and smacked the concrete wall behind us.
So much sweat poured from my body, and my heart thumped so hard I was sure I must only be a second away from cardiac arrest. Fuck. Why couldn't I focus my eyes?
Reaching up with a heavy hand, I swiped the sweat from my eyes and blinked a couple of times to clear them. Then screamed when I refocused on Zed.
Except it wasn't Zed at all.
A wide grin of triumph curved Chase's lips as he pumped harder. His hands pinned my wrists against the bed, holding me with all his strength as I thrashed and fought, desperately trying to push him away.
It was no use, though. A moment later he grunted his climax with a handful of slamming thrusts. The second he finished, he climbed off and stepped back from the bed with a delirious grin on his face.
"Oh, sweet Darling," he purred, "that cocktail worked like a treat. You really believed I was him, didn't you?"
He just stood there, pants around his thighs and his dick out, slick with my own arousal. How could I have done that? How could I have seriously believed...
Unable to stop myself, I rolled to the side and vomited straight onto the floor. He'd released my bonds. I wasn't trapped. I could make a run for it.
Gathering every inch of my strength, I coiled my weak muscles and lurched forward. I had no plan, just desperation. It was all for nothing, though. I barely got within a foot of Chase before something jerked me back by the neck.
Chase cackled with glee, shaking his head at me as I collapsed at his feet. "You didn't really think I'd let you go, did you?" He clicked his tongue. "Silly girl. This was fun. Let's do it again. Soon."
This time when the cell door closed and the bolt shot home, I gave in to hopelessness. To despair. I huddled there on the floor, shaking and crying, wishing I was dead.
4
Unknowingly, Chase had given me some small mercy in the cocktail of drugs he'd shot me up with. The one he'd used to erase my inhibitions had also wiped a good chunk of my memory. When I woke, naked and aching on the floor of my cell, I had only the faintest memory of how I’d gotten there. Echoes. Like it'd happened in a movie I'd watched or that I'd dreamed it all.
Only the collar around my neck—chained to the wall—and the raw ache between my legs confirmed that it'd been real.
Vague or not, the knowledge of what he'd done... of what I'd done... cracked something deep inside me. Something, I suspected, that could never be repaired.
I lost track of days as Chase escalated his torture. Half the time he seemed content to just shoot me up and let my mind deteriorate into psychosis. The other half, he preferred to be hands on. He grew relentless in his obsession with my fear, each encounter subtly pushing me closer to death.
But to my disappointment, he always seemed to know when to stop. When to pull my head up from the trough of water he'd been drowning me in. Or when to turn the voltage down on his cattle prod.
I also lost track of how many times he mixed those three fucking drugs in my veins, then reaped the benefits of my mindless, drugged state. PCP for delusions, of course. GHB for erasing inhibitions—and memory. Lastly, a modified version of bremelanotide, which increased arousal and sexual desire.
Any idiot with half a brain could say that mixing drugs like that could result in death, but Chase didn't seem to care. Neither did I. Every time my heart beat so hard it hurt, I prayed for it to just... stop.
But then later, when Chase was gone and the drugs faded, I revived myself with the burning fire of anger and determination. Thoughts and dreams of what I'd do to Chase if I ever got free were the only things that kept me going.
Yet every time I started to fall asleep, I was plagued by one gut-churning, heartbreaking thought.
Why had no one come for me?
Surely, even as mad as Lucas had to be, he'd have called Cass. Or Demi. Or hell, even Gen. Was anyone looking for me? Did anyone care?
It was so damn easy to sink into depression and despair.
Time was passing—it had to be—because every time I woke up, I was weaker. Chase barely fed me, just enough to keep me alive but not enough to give me strength. Water was the only thing maintaining me, and half of that came from his torture. There was something particularly terrifying about having a wet towel wrapped over your face for extended periods of assault.
He didn't bother to treat the wound in my shoulder, and it soon grew red and puffy around the crusty edges. When I woke up trembling uncontrollably, coated in cool sweat, I knew infection had set in, either there or in one of the many other injuries—flesh wounds and burns only—that Chase had inflicted on me.
I said nothing about it when he entered the room, but I should have known he wouldn't let me out so easily.
"Good thing I have antibiotics here, hmm?" he commented, pressing his thumb into the edge of my infected wound. Putrid, yellow-green pus seeped out. "Don't go anywhere, Darling. I'll have you back to fighting fun in no time." Whistling a tune, he left my cell and left the door open as he went to fetch the medication.
It was another damn mind game. I couldn't run. Not with my collar tethered to the wall and fever raging through my body. He was just mocking me.
When he returned, he made quick work of locking my wrists back into the leather restraints on the bed. I said nothing about it, too sick and too weak to give a fuck how he was getting his rocks off today, but he seemed to feel the need to explain.
"I'll need to leave the IV hooked up for a bit," he told me, squeezing my breasts as he spoke. "Can't risk you trying to kill yourself with the needle, now, can I?"
I managed a weak scoff. "I'd rather kill you with it," I mumbled.
He grinned. "That too." He made quick work of hooking up an IV of antibiotics, well-practiced at finding my veins already, then checked the time on his watch. "As much as I'd dearly love to stay and play, I have a call to make.”
He left my cell door open again, laughing to himself as his footsteps faded away. It was just more bullshit power games. He knew full fucking well I was too weak to free myself now. Too sick and frail. Broken.
But he'd underestimated me. My body might be his to play with, damage, starve, and weaken... but he didn't have my mind. Not yet. Damn it, he was close though. If I wanted any hope of getting away with even a shred of sanity, I needed to act soon. Act fast. And if I died in the process, then so fucking be it.