Page 10 of Beneath the Burn
Cross-legged and naked on the cold hardwoods, Charlee leaned her forehead against the floor-to-ceiling window and waited for the sunrise to cast its glow on the Golden Gate Bridge. But it was the sensual voice humming through her ear buds that held her frozen to the glass, as though under a spell.
The music player was the first thing she’d earned in her two months of perfect obedience. Roy allowed her one song. When she requested anything by The Burn, he gave her their only hit single. Huntress.
She closed her eyes and let the deep, velvety voice she remembered from that night in her tattoo shop wrap around her. “Huntress of the room in my head. Fearless and knowing.” The melodic voice hit the high notes and sent a shiver through her. “Your blue eyes plunder the depths of my song. Tonight is only the beginning.”
A flutter unfurled in her chest. Then his voice dove so low she felt it in her belly. “Nothing can stop me. To be who you saw. To be the steel. To be yours.”
His words…God, his words stole her breath.
The instrumental change in rhythm seemed to lead to a close, but it didn’t. His whispered baritone sent a chill down her spine. “You showed me beauty in survival. I’ll show you strength in healing.”
She sucked in a breath. Blue eyes . Steel . Survival and healing . He was singing to her, about her, about his tattoo. She looked down at the leather bound sketchbook in her lap, the only other thing she’d earned during her captivity. Flames leapt around the sketched scars and bled off the page beneath her pencil.
Jay was the only memory she allowed herself to linger on. He was alive, and Huntress confirmed he hadn’t forgotten her. The power in that was fortifying. She could suffer another two months, hell, she could endure years beneath Roy’s whip knowing someone out there thought of her and maybe even missed her.
“Come back to bed!” Roy’s shout bellowed over the music.
The lead tip of her pencil snapped and rolled off the paper. She lifted her head from the window, yanked out her ear buds, and blew the graphite dust from her drawing. The graphite that had enabled her to hold onto the vividness of her memories. “What time is it, Sir?”
“Five in the fucking morning. Bring the book.”
She hugged it to her chest. Not the book. Please, not that . She ate with it, slept with it, staved off insanity with it. She’d drawn the same flames over and over again, perfecting the illustration. Someday she would finish Jay’s tattoo, and her conviction in that was often the only thing that got her through another day.
“Now.”
If she disobeyed him, he would destroy her music player. She set the device aside and rose from the floor, an effort that sent her molars crashing together. The hours spent hanging from the ceiling the prior night had torn something in her shoulder. Just thinking about it sprung tears in her eyes. She swiped them away, kicked the chain from her path, and trudged to the bed.
The pencil was plucked from her hand and flung outside the reach of the tether. Didn’t matter. A few practices on her wrist confirmed it wasn’t strong enough to pierce his trachea.
He gripped her hips and pulled her over to straddle him. Then he opened the book to the last drawing. His customary callousness blanked his expression as he studied the page. “Always fire. Why?”
“A couple months without clothes.” She shrugged. “I’m drawn to warmth, Sir.”
He set the book aside, stared at it, then swung his hand and struck her face. The force of it whipped her head back. “That was your only warning.”
Perfect obedience hadn’t warded off daily beatings. His strikes still hurt like hell, but her body had grown pliable. When the hand reared, she didn’t stiffen. She bent with it. “It was the last tattoo I did when I was free.” Truth, yet it meant so much more.
“Whose?” His voice was calm, eyelids half-mast.
Lying wasn’t an option. Perhaps because it took a liar to know a liar. “A walk-in. Some musician.” With a beautiful voice, a steel determination, and a body rendered for art.
“What do you know of your mother?”
Her shoulders drooped even as her brain scrambled to keep up. Her mother? All she knew was the woman died of health-related issues a few months after giving birth to her. “I don’t have a mother.” Had Roy tried to find her?
He watched her in his calculating, unblinking style that made her want to look away. “I searched for her when I lost you four years ago. I thought maybe you’d seek her help.”
She’d had no one until Noah. If she had a mother, Roy would’ve killed her, too. A lonely ache swelled in her chest, and more damn tears burned down her cheeks. Would she ever run dry?
“You had no money. No family. No skills. And no education beyond tenth grade.”
She didn’t like the direction the conversation was headed, and she wanted to flail on him for the last part. Not worth another strike to the face.
“Rather than succumbing to drugs or prostitution, you leveraged an impractical talent in the most efficient way.” He wrapped his hands around her waist and ground her groin against his. “I made you who you are. I gave you the strength to survive.”
Even as he boasted his perverse pride, he was trying to unbalance her, weaken her emotionally. He could try all he wanted. Her tears were involuntary, but she was not broken and her strength was her own. She gave him her weight and her eyes.
There was a self-interested air about the way he regarded her. “You tattooed to earn money. Yet you have none yourself.” He smirked. “Money, nor tattoos.”
Another one of his games. Whenever his dick wouldn’t harden from his physical lashings, he turned to humiliation and verbal fighting. Fuck him for being such a cruel, sadistic bastard. “No, Sir. I was the payment for a gambling debt, remember? Not the heir of a billion-dollar monopoly.”
His fingers dug into her waist, and his eyes narrowed. “Tell me why you aren’t covered in skulls and flames.” He smacked the sketchbook, sent it flying off the bed. “I want to hear you say it.”
His dick swelled beneath her, and the need to draw into herself strained her voice. Fuck that. “A girl on the run needs plain looks to go unnoticed. No identifiable marks.” Someday, she would have a tattoo.
The room held still and his eyes didn’t stray from hers.
“Tell me, girl-on-the-run, what are you planning now?”
She could lie and get the truth beat out of her. Or she could tell the truth and maybe learn something from his reaction.
“You should remove the chain.” She rotated her ankle. “Because I intend to strangle you with it while you sleep.” She kept her muscles relaxed, prepared to absorb the next strike.
If he were another man, the stiff prod of his groin would’ve been at odds with his words. “I would kill you if you tried.”
Knowing he fed on her rebellion, her question rolled out anyway. “Would you survive my death?” He would either hit her or fuck her, but maybe, just maybe, he’d give her an answer.
The torso between her thighs rose and fell with his breathing. A cyclone of emotions stormed over his expression. Eventually, his cheeks smoothed and his eyes cleared. “You belong to me, beautiful girl. I retain what is mine, even if I have to retrieve it from hell myself.”
As he flipped her to her back, she wasn’t sure if his response reassured her or terrified her. Knowing her death might bring about his was an option to consider, but if one were to believe in afterlife, would she never escape him?
He moved over her and entered her in one urgent stroke, hammering his hips and slamming her head into the headboard. “Not even death will separate us.” He reached beneath her ass and shoved a dry finger into her rectum.
The pressure was horrible and wonderful. She bit her tongue and bottled the cry bubbling in her chest, her hands wringing the bed sheets.
“I own you.” His hot breath curled around her ear. “Now come for me.”
Two months of training pushed her over. He’d mastered his strokes, knew how to balance the pleasure and pain to perfection. As with all the orgasms before it, her body shook and her tears flowed.
His attempts at humiliation had bounced right off her, but the manner in which he’d degraded her sexually might’ve been beyond repair. What kind of person climaxed while being raped? She wept, limp beneath the weight of his body, as he grunted and thrust his way to his own finish.
When he caught his breath, his tongue roved over her cheeks, collecting her tears. “I’m meeting with my security staff in the dining room tonight. You’ll be joining us for dinner.”
A dinner party. Her stomach bottomed.