Impossible. Besides, his daughter was the only person he would allow himself to nurture a soft spot for. Anyone else would jump on his weakness and twist it into something they could use against him.
He shook off the unnerving feeling and quickened his pace to the garage. He was a cold-hearted fuck with an appetite for blood, come, and tears. And he had the perfect girl to feed it.
A dreamlike blur of sensations sloshed over Amber. Thick darkness. The sluggish thump of her heart. A draft on her skin. The familiar scent of aftershave.
She blinked, tried to clear the haze, and her eyes met a veil of black. Why was her lamp off? She slept with it on. The mattress felt too firm against her back and head. And no pillow? That wasn't right.
Cool air whispered over her body. Her very naked body. Blood rushed past her ears as she tried to sit up, going nowhere.
Nude, dark, cold, she had to be stuck in a dream, tangled in the sheets. She always slept without clothes when no one was looking. No one would be there. Not in her room at night, in her safe place of flawless lines. If only she could see the order to ground herself in her symmetrical world. Wake up.
She lifted her head and tried to get her bearings. Fabric rubbed her forehead, cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. Pinpricks bit at her hands. She couldn't move them, so she scrunched her face, wiggling the obstruction, and her eyelashes dragged against whatever held tightly over her eyes. A blindfold.
She jerked, and nausea surged through her gut. Her arms and legs wouldn't bend. She yanked and kicked, caught in a web of restraints that dug into her wrists and ankles, pinning her in a spread-eagle position on her back.
A tremor awoke in her chest and exploded outward, shaking every muscle in her body until her limbs numbed and her jaw ached from clenching. Her mind spun through fuzz. She couldn't remember falling asleep, couldn't remember the last thing she did. The nausea, the disorientation, the pounding headache... Had she drank too much again?
Memories swirled in a mist of dizzy fragments. The fading rumble of Zach's truck. A water glass. The drape wrenched from the back door. A fist slamming into her stomach.
Van.
Her heart rate spiked, and pain pounded behind her eyes. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. She let out an ear-piercing shriek that echoed around her, and she immediately regretted the outburst. She did not want to draw attention, couldn't bear for anyone to see her naked.
Her pulse redoubled. Where was Van? Was he watching her with sick amusement? She stifled her breath and listened. No reassuring hum of the A/C unit outside her window. No dripping from the leaking shower down the hall. Oh wait, her water had been shut off. But the mattress... It was too hard, too bare.
She wasn't in her bed. Her heart stuttered and stopped. OhmyGodOhmyGod. She wasn't in her house!
“No, no, no.” She jerked her head side to side, writhed against the restraints, and choked through panting breaths. “Where am I?”
The mattress shifted between her legs, and a tickle of wiry hair brushed her inner thighs. Then the press of hard muscle. Someone's legs. “You're home.”
She froze. His voice, oh God, it came from above her. He was kneeling between her thighs, where he could look at her stretched, godawful shame. She tried to close her legs and failed. The mattress was indented on either side of her shoulders, and she knew his hands were propped there. How long had he been bent over her, watching her, waiting? Or doing whatever he wanted to her while she was unconscious?
Her lungs slammed together, starving for air. Were the lights on? Jesus, fuck, they couldn't be on. He wouldn't want to look between her legs.
Something hard and slick nudged her opening, and his heavy body flattened her against the bed. Her mouth dried. No, this couldn’t be happening. She thrashed, pinned by his weight, unable to escape as objections gathered in her constricted throat.
In the next heartbeat, he shoved himself inside her, his girth stretching her hideous flesh with the brutality of the dry thrust. She bit down her tongue, tasting blood, as the invasion tore her open, plowing ruthlessly and igniting a scorching friction along her inner walls.
Her eyes watered behind the blindfold, the agony and humiliation of what he was doing seizing her heart. Her screech escaped without sound, and her body locked in paralyzing shock. Numb, breathless, her fear was stunned into silence, cringing in the corner of her mind.
“Scream,” he breathed, his thick exhale searing her ear.
A wail built in her throat, but he slammed into her, giving her no time to free it. No pause to catch her breath. No gentle coaxing to prepare her for his size. He fucked her harder, forcing her body to accommodate him, taking her beyond the point of pain and hurtling her into muscle-locking terror.
The straps chewed into her skin, grinding her bones. His fingers pinched and pulled her nipples, and the spread of her hips extended painfully beneath the unrelenting strength of his driving thrusts.