Beneath the Burn Page 5

  The Craig leaned outside the door-less shower stall with the end of the chain handcuffed to his wrist. She turned her back to him under the spray of water and rubbed in shampoo. Even the follicles of her hair hurt.

  Footfalls approached behind her. The steady, confident pace sent a shiver down her spine.

  “Drop your hands.”

  Dread surged in her chest and ruptured into a struggle for breath. She lowered her hands, and her neck sank into her shoulders, unable to force her legs to turn. She didn’t want to look in his eyes and see what was coming.

  Water pelted her head, and the air thickened and charged around her. His chest slid over her back and his hands cupped her breasts, shifting lower and slipping through her slit. She held her breath. Maybe if she held it long enough, she would pass out.

  He bit her shoulder, his teeth digging into bone, and a cry fled her mouth.

  “Oh Charlee.” He stroked his fingers between her legs, entering her. “I give you exactly what you need.”

  He didn’t give her anything. He took. She shuffled toward the tile wall, wishing she could crawl inside it.

  A smack scorched her ass, and his body wrapped around her, crushing her against the cold tile. “You like the pain. You need it, and I want to give it. See how perfectly matched we are?”

  Hot acid hit the back of her throat. Fuck him. She twisted and swung her fist at his face.

  He caught it and slammed her arm against the wall. “Salvador,” he said softly, his tone at odds with the hard glass of his amethyst eyes.

  The chain tugged at her ankle as the Craig gathered it and prowled to the shower stall. “Yes, Mr. Oxford?” His eyes wandered over her body.

  “Hold her,” Roy said, his voice relaxed, chilling. His stuffy suits tended to camouflage his physique, but it was in moments like this, when his naked body bore down on hers, that she was reminded just how strong and muscular he was.

  And now it was two against one. She closed her eyes. Their weight alone quadrupled hers. But she had strength. Jay’s strength. She gathered it from within and took refuge in the company of his scars, his pain. He would guide her, show her how to survive.

  The Craig pinned her arms above her head and steam from the spray saturated his black pants and shirt, the chain swaying from one hand.

  Roy lowered to a crouch, shoved her legs apart and traced her folds. His exploration followed the sensitive skin past her vaginal opening.

  She clenched her butt. Oh, please, no. Not there. The ripped tissues in her rectum flared, throbbing. As if reading her mind, he shoved two fingers in the sore hole. The sting fired spasms through her insides, lifting her on tiptoes.

  “No, please. It’s too much. Please, stop.” Her eyes burned, and she writhed against the hands trapping her arms against the wall.

  Roy gripped her thigh, worked more fingers in her ass, and clamped his teeth around her clit. She gasped, shuddered.

  The invasion pushed deeper and she cried out, tears mixing with water. “Please, no more. No more.” She sobbed and bucked uselessly.

  “Your sweet pleading makes me so fucking hard. Ask for an orgasm. Beg me.” He licked her clit and stretched her ass.

  The agony of his pumping fingers eddied with a despicable surge of arousal. Her body remembered his ruthless touches, the way he could force her to orgasm. How could she come for Roy and not for Noah? She got off on brutality and not on tenderness? She was damaged. So fucking broken.

  She pinned her lips and bottled the scream in her throat. She didn’t want this. She didn’t…Oh God, the sensations built in her groin and the stimulation from his tongue rushed the terrible desire higher and higher. Her body trembled, betraying her, and her eyes caught fire with the outpouring of her weak fucking tears.

  Twisting her hands in the grip of the Craig’s, she bowed her hips back, tried to escape Roy’s mouth. All of it ineffectual. Her orgasm broke free, flooded every nerve in her body, ripping away her will and buckling her knees.

  He removed the pressure of his fingers from her backside and cradled her pathetic body along the length of his. “That’s a good girl. Your boyfriend couldn’t give you that.” He shoved her chin upward, his gaze boring into hers. “No, he couldn’t make you come, but I can. You’re fortunate I took you back. Don’t worry, beautiful girl. I’ll give you want you need.”

  Grief squeezed her throat with invisible straps. His mouth covered hers, and she yanked her head back, smashing it against the tile. The grip around her hands vanished, and the Craig slinked out of the shower. She flattened her palms against the clammy flesh of Roy’s chest and pushed with no success.

  He circled his fingers around her throat and pressed his weight into her hands. “I’ve tried with others. Four years of fucking trying. They’re weak. All of them blubber and pass out from the lightest strikes. Their minds shatter within hours, and they never come.” He stroked her face, and a sob dammed her throat. “I control you, dominate you, and your eyes spark for more as your juices run down your legs. You fight me because you know I love it.”

  She would not accept that, refused to consider his delusional psychobabble. Gathering the saliva pooling in her mouth, she spit it in his face and raised her chin above the collar of his hand.

  A laugh burst from him. “Point made.” His tongue darted out and caught the spittle sliding down his cheek.

  Defeated, she slumped against the wall as he conditioned her hair and soaped her body. That done, he held his hand outside the stall. “Razor, Salvador.”

  Her spine stiffened. Could she wrestle it away and flay his pretty face?

  He returned with a feminine razor, the blades shielded by pink plastic and moisturizing strips. Fuck. Impossible to do any damage with that wimpy thing, let alone gather enough courage to overpower him long enough to use it.

  The Craig once again held her hands above her head as Roy shaved her underarms, pussy, and legs. Her skin crawled everywhere the razor touched. She fixated on a tile square, no longer able to watch.

  She retreated into her head, marveling at how much she’d changed between captivities. She’d become Wendy, Tess, Sarah, always someone else and always acting. Her act had been a sticking point in her relationship with Noah. He never knew her.

  But she hadn’t acted with Jay, had she? How would she know? Held captive from sixteen to eighteen, on the run until twenty-two, she’d changed identities the way normal girls her age changed fashion styles.

  Before Roy, she’d been a free-spirited liberal who hungered to help people, burned to take risks, and found pleasure in pushing buttons. How many times had she been issued a detention for sketching images of her high school math teacher’s genitals? Yeah, Jay had unearthed the real her. How had he done that?

  Finished with the shaving, Roy rose to his feet and pressed cold lips to hers. “Got to go, beautiful girl. Come to my office when you’ve finished priming yourself for me.” He stepped out of the shower, taking the razor with him. A moment later, the whir of a hairdryer hummed through the room.

  She twisted the tap to increase the temperature. The scalding water did nothing to burn away the previous minutes, but she lingered under the spray until his presence disappeared from the room.

  When she finished drying off, the Craig stripped the towel from her grasp and tossed it on the floor. “Mr. Oxford requires your teeth brushed, hair dried, and every inch of your body lathered in lotion. Shall I assist you?” His leer sent her teeth crashing together.

  He knew as well as she did he wasn’t allowed to touch her intimately. As nonexistent as Roy’s compassion was with regard to her, it was something.

  She went about the tasks, taking her time. What did Roy have planned next in her never-ending nightmare of horrors? More caning in the stockroom? More forced orgasms? Maybe he would take her out of those rooms and into another part of the penthouse. Hope surged. Another room might present an opportunity for escape. The kitchen alone would be a warehouse of potential weapons.

  At
the office door, the Craig snapped the leash, and she skidded off balance, naked and irritated. “He’s hosting a live teleconference. I don’t need to remind you not to fucking breathe.”

  Her tongue darted to the porcelain crowns fused to her front teeth. No, the punishment from her last conference call misstep left a permanent reminder.

  The door opened. With the Craig’s shove at her back, she moved over the plush carpet in a soundless stagger. She understood then why the chain was wrapped in silk.

  Surrounded by monitors on the walls and desks, Roy smiled at one of the screens. “You call it freedom, Nancy, but arming our civilians…our youth? That isn’t life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not when they’re turning those guns on each other.”

  The leather-etched wallpaper created an ostentatious backdrop for his pinstriped Amosu suit and ebony hair groomed in thick waves off his face. His shoulders were loose, his smile charming, and his timbre was as smooth as his bullshit.

  His billions per annum didn’t come from his legit conglomerate of aerospace, defense, and software companies. She’d overheard enough of his conversations to deduce that arms-trafficking was the real money maker.

  Not that he needed the money. She suspected his control of the underground firearms trade helped him strengthen his international connections and broaden his power in the defense business. Maybe his anti-gun falsehoods kept his political adversaries at bay. He seemed to thrive in deception and immorality.

  The widescreen on the wall facing him broadcasted a CNN interview on mute. The separate locations of the people on camera were displayed side-by-side. A blonde woman, Nancy Davis, smiled in one of the picture-in-picture views. In the other view, Roy Oxford, Chairman of Oxford Industries, straightened his red tie…three seconds after he straightened it real-time.

  The temperature in the room soared, and perspiration surfaced on her skin. This wasn’t the first time he’d requested her presence during a live interview on CNN. She could yell, jump in front of the webcam, and announce her captivity, nudity be damned.

  But the three second delay afforded him time. He could hit the safety switch and cut the transmission. Then he’d cut her.

  “…it’s a security, Mr. Oxford.”

  He smirked. “The Second Amendment doesn’t make us safe from outsiders. It makes us dangerous to each other.”

  “Then what makes our neighborhoods safe?”

  “Home Owner Associations should spend less time and money on their pools and landscaping and focus their resources on perimeter security. Digiford Solutions has a new line of digital neighborhood watch guards. They offer surveillance technologies…”

  His voice droned on, but the words were absorbed by the roar in her ears. He smiled into the webcam, lips moving as his index finger stretched along his pant leg. It pointed at her then to the floor beside his leather loafers. Damn him. It was a test. A test she so often failed.

  The same finger lowered his zipper and crooked between his thighs. Come here.

  Inhale. Exhale. She dropped to her knees and crawled, her pulse cresting. Chills raced through her limbs. Silent and mouselike, she moved across the carpet on hands and knees like she’d done so many times before.

  “Since Digiford is your latest acquisition, your argument sounds more like a marketing plug.”

  He tsked. “Nancy, I hardly need shameless advertising. Digiford stock tripled when we acquired it, and it continues to pressure the competition.” Beneath the desk, he gripped the base of his length and wiggled it, bare and erect.

  She swallowed back rising bile and knelt between his legs. Get it over with. Don’t fuck up.

  The chain at her ankle jerked, snapping her leg straight behind her. At the other end, the Craig fixed her with a warning in his eyes, prepared to extract her at the first sign of infraction.

  Roy clenched a hand in her hair and guided her mouth.

  Don’t gag. Keep quiet. Oh please, don’t gag. She inhaled without sound, and he shoved her face to his pubis. She stretched out her tongue to accommodate him, breathing shallowly and silently through her nose.

  The grip on her head controlled the up and down motion, and the muscles in his thighs trembled and flexed beneath her clammy hands. He sped up his movements without faltering in his discourse on babies dying in drive-by shootings and marital arguments ending in gun-fire.

  Could she yank open the desk drawer inches from her hand, the one housing a revolver, before the chain ripped her back?

  At the edge of her periphery, the Craig waited a desk length away, feet braced apart and a double-fisted hold on the chain. His eyes were alert and locked on her hands, ever-loyal to Roy and the wealth she knew Roy shared with his guards to ensure that loyalty.

  Her options were nonexistent, and the instinct to survive prevailed. She sheathed her teeth with her lips and sucked in her cheeks.

  Without warning, he came. Stream after stream of ejaculate pumped against the back of her throat, and through it, not a hitch in his voice. “I’m not pro-gun control, Nancy. I’m anti-bloodshed.”

  “That’s all the time we have today. Thank you for joining us. Roy Oxford, Chairman and CEO of Oxford Industries.”

  “Thank you, Nancy.”

  “Up next, we—”

  The monitors blinked off, and his arm swung. The back of his hand hit her face so violently her body slammed against the desk cabinet. Fire shot through her nose, and the coppery taste of blood washed her tongue.

  His lips twisted in a snarl, and his eyes promised more.

  She curled into herself, protecting her core. What had she done wrong? “Sir?”

  He jerked open the drawer she’d glanced at during the interview. Envelopes and stationary filled the space his gun once occupied.

  Aw God, he missed nothing. She scrambled back, cowering.

  He followed her, leapt on her, and squeezed her throat. “I meant what I said. I do not trust you, Charlee. You’re as slippery as Craig Grosky and ten times as smart.”

  White bursts dotted her vision. She opened her mouth in a useless gasp and clawed at his hand, begging with her eyes.

  “You will not share your father’s end.” He released her and wrenched her thighs apart, renewing the pain in her ass. “I very much want you alive.” Then he was in her, forcing himself into her dry opening, pounding her into the carpet, his tongue lapping at the blood on her lips.

  Her father had been dead to her since the day he delivered her to Roy. The reality of his death meant nothing. The cause, however, was as jarring as the weight hammering her into the floor. “You killed him,” she choked out.

  He slapped her and resumed his thrusting. He of anti-bloodshed accepted a sixteen-year-old girl as a collection of debt. Then he destroyed all traces of the transaction, Craig Grosky included.

  Something tore inside her, something beyond her vaginal tissues. It was the sensation of an emotion separating from the whole. To fear a man was to give him power. He had enough of that. So she let it go, and the chronic impulse to lock her joints and hold her breath ripped away.

  When he climaxed, she felt limp, hollow. She knew, in that moment, the absence of fear was not synonymous with courage. She wasn’t brave. She was numb. Was that how Jay felt when his scars were inflicted? Or had he always been courageous?

  He stripped the chain from the Craig’s hands and hauled her to her feet. “Don’t misunderstand why I killed him, Charlee.” He stepped close, and his rasp scraped against her lips. “I was furious. The fucker bet his daughter in a card game. He didn’t deserve to live.” His expression was as warped as his words, twisted way beyond normal. He seemed to catch himself and reached up to pet her hair. “Don’t force me to get that angry with you. I would not live without you again.”

  Her head swam. He murdered because of the degeneracy of a father? The notion that he had some kind of paternal moral fiber stirred up all sorts of unsettling reflections, but one thought pushed away all the others. “Roy?”

  His face
slacked, his hand in her hair stopped mid-stroke, and she realized her mistake.

  “Say it again.”

  Lack of fear was apparently equated to stupidity. To hell with it. She steeled her backbone, determined to challenge him, and looked him in the eyes. “Roy.”

  His mouth collided with hers, his tongue swiping in long strokes. “I love my name on your lips.”

  That would be the last time he heard it there. “My birth control shot will expire soon.”

  His eyes moved slowly, down, down, to her belly and his palm followed.

  God, no. No, he wouldn’t want that.

  He yanked his hand away, and the skin around his mouth tightened. “I’ll call the doctor.” He glared at her midriff and walked backward, hand curling around the leash. “I won’t share you with…a fucking kid.”

  He turned toward the door and dragged her down the corridor. “You didn’t eat the oatmeal squares. There was a time when you never turned those down.”

  “People change.” She plodded slowly behind him, spinning from his change of topics and navigating the untrodden territory of casual conversation with Roy Oxford.

  “A challenge.” He winked over his shoulder. “You’ll teach me what you like now. You’ll show me every new and fascinating fiber you possess.”

  “I’d rather not.” Her pulse accelerated. Had she stepped too far?

  He paused, waited for her to catch up. “I’ll take that under consideration. You see? I’m not the tyrant you think I am.” He yanked the chain and made her stumble. “But I do hold the reins.”

  Fucking dickhead. If he didn’t want to be a tyrant, he could show her a little tenderness once in a while. She hungered for a connection to someone and if her only hope of ever receiving affection came from Roy, maybe it would’ve been better than none at all.

  As they entered the last door on the left and walked to the center of the stockroom, she came to a realization. No matter what happened in the next few hours, her scars wouldn’t be a fraction as gruesome as Jay’s. If he were in her position, what would he have done to survive it emotionally?