I took one step back for each one he took forward, until I was jammed up between him and the wall.
God, he was intense. And deliberate. And he could say things with his eyes that made my knees tremble. One side of his face was bruised and distorted from where I’d hit him. He grasped both my wrists in one hand and pinned them above me. Every part of me felt flush with the heat emanating from his body, even though that was the only point of contact. He hooked a finger in the ‘V’ of my blouse, tracing the dangerously low cleavage. His touch was so soft, it was barely discernible.
“Skye?” He seemed hypnotized by the rapid rise and fall of my chest.
I swallowed.
“Don’t play with scorpions unless you intend to get stung.” He yanked the neckline apart.
Round, glass buttons popped onto the floor and rolled around like eyeballs, astounded by the sight of my bare flesh.
“We’re harsh and predatory and full of venom.” He gnashed his teeth at me and ripped my blouse in two.
He tore off a strip and bound my wrists. Then he used the hanging trail like a leash and led me to bed.
“You’ve been trying to get a rise out of me for days. Now that you have my attention, what are you going to do?” He leaned forward, so close that I fell back onto the mattress, trying to get away from him. “Or is it that you want me to do all the work so your pampered * gets a taste of the other side, but you can tell yourself you didn’t have a choice?” He crawled up over me, slowly, until we were nose to nose.
I felt like hell was about to consume me. I could hear the men outside, gearing up to fill the tanks. Would they hear the sound of my screams?
“Would you like me to invite them in?” Damian secured my wrists to the bed post. “Do you really think you’d be safer with them instead of me?” He tore off another strip, giving me the chance to scream or yell or shout for help. When I didn’t, he tied it around my mouth.
He sank back on his heels, kneeling between my legs, and ran a finger from my neck to the front clasp of my bra. I stopped breathing. He moved on, trailing over my stomach, until he got to the band of my shorts. He toyed with the tab, enjoying the start-stop effect it had on my heart.
“Such a frightened little bird,” he said. Then he yanked my legs around his hips so I was flush with his rock hard arousal. “You should know better than to provoke me.”
He rocked against me like that, fully clothed, imprinting his full weight and length on me. Then he got off the bed and spread my legs, tying them to opposite corners. I squeezed my eyes shut as he walked around, checking the knots, ensuring they would hold. Everything inside me was quaking and quivering. I was completely, completely at his mercy.
“Maybe now you’ll behave,” he said.
My heart was beating triple time.
I expected his hands on me, but he put on his baseball cap, turned off the lights and left, locking the door behind him. I heard him conversing with the men, and then the sound of a small engine, as one of the pangas took off for the shore.
I wondered if he’d taken my severed finger to mail to my father:
Warren Sedgewick: Special Delivery.
I should have felt relief for whatever task had called him away, but I felt only apprehension—not knowing when he’d return, or what awaited me. My mind spun infinite, terrifying wormholes in the dark, the worst of which was the shameful possibility that I wouldn’t fight him when he came back.
The fuel lines were still running when Damian got back. He wasn’t alone. I knew the tap-tap-tap of high-heeled shoes; he had brought a companion.
My muscles tensed as I heard footsteps outside the door. I was soaked in a pool of sweat, and my finger was starting to throb. I jumped at the loud thud on the door, expecting it to burst open, but it remained locked. There was a muffled gasp and then more thudding.
For a moment I thought he had dragged in another victim, that she was struggling to get away, but the thudding turned rhythmic and the sounds coming out of her alternated between pleasure and pain.
Damian was fucking her against the door. Hard. Fast. The sick bastard wanted to make sure I knew exactly what he was doing—he was choosing her over me, working out the sexual frustration I’d stirred up in him. He’d rather pay a local hooker than acknowledge lust, desire, or weakness for any part of me. I was a non-entity, an empty vessel for vengeance. All the time that I’d spent imagining him forcing himself on me had been cruel, deliberate punishment. He’d set it loose in my head—passed on the baton and I’d run with it. I had let him defile me and violate me in the most unspeakable ways and I had done it all by myself, in my head.