Page 12 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HER

“ G et it anywhere near me and I’ll bite it off!”

Yeah, I’d rehearsed that line, but how the fuck else was I supposed to have occupied myself for the past hour?

My arms were numb and stiff, almost frozen, and I was certain my wrists were rubbed raw by now, probably bleeding.

I’d adjusted them hundreds of times until every possible position stung more than the last. Still, I strained against them, gritting my teeth and praying, somehow, for the sheer force of will to get myself out of this. There had to be a way out of this.

My heart picked up again as, in the gloom, the form neared. Tall, broad-shouldered. Well, shit. Whoever this perv was, he wasn’t, as I’d hoped, some scrawny weakling.

“I’m here to?—”

I screamed, loud enough to drown him out.

At once, a hand clapped over my mouth. A rough palm and metal that clanked on my teeth. Rings. Thick, ornate ones. Oh, a fancy boy, was it?

“Would you stop?—”

I started thrashing and screaming. It shot shafts of agony through my poor arms, but thank God my legs still worked and he hadn’t tied them down. I kicked wildly, aiming for the money spot.

“What the hell? Would you please stop ? I told you, I’m not going to—ow, fuck .” My kick must have landed somewhere good because his hand fell away from my mouth as he hissed in pain.

“Oh, you don’t like that?” I taunted. “Well, that’s too bad, you sick fuck. You’ll have to gag me, or this is what you’re going to get, all the way through. Is that what you want?”

When I’d had my wisdom teeth removed last year, I’d come out of anesthesia in tears, not knowing why I was crying, just knowing I had to cry.

But no. No. I wouldn’t open my eyes, crying or any other way.

Because not this man. This man wore a suit more expensive than anything my father owned.

This man had a gold watch on his wrist in place of?—

With nothing but the weak shaft of moonlight cutting through the high window, I saw his beautiful face, blinking at me, every bit as shocked as I was.

And before I could even take in that , my senses were already full: full of that familiar calloused thumb wiping away the tears now flowing from my cheeks; the incredulous sun-chapped lips landing lightly on my mouth as if testing to see that I wouldn’t melt away.

And then, to my surprise, he just collapsed there. His moonlit hair spilled across my breast, the tension in his impossibly strong shoulders slowly crumbling as if he’d been bearing the weight of something far too heavy for far too long.

My only regret was that I couldn’t hold him. Not the way I was.

Instead, all I finally whispered was, “I got your message.”

“I’m so sorry, Lou,” he said, raising his head as if he’d just remembered where we were.

“Shh. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“No, you don’t understand, m?i léift .”

“ M?i léift ,” I whispered. “What does it mean? You wouldn’t tell me before. What does it?—”

His hand clamped down on my mouth again before I could get the rest out.

He paused as he ran his good hand through his hair, then glanced at the door, then moved away from the bed, still keeping one hand pressed over my mouth, and my heart seized.

In the moonlight, his tailored silk-lined jacket slid off his shoulders and onto the floor.

One hand moved to the front of his shirt—expensive and perfectly fitted to his body but printed in some bizarre pattern; where had that come from?

—undoing the buttons. Then he stopped. Again.

In the darkness and the silence, I only heard him breathing, and when I dared to open my eyes again, saw only the outline of his broad, bare shoulders moving up and down minutely.

He leaned in closer, and his breath, both hot and somehow icy, made my skin quiver like a struck musical note.

“Remember how you told me you were in that school musical, and you used improv to warm up before rehearsal?” he whispered.

“Yeah, and I hated it,” I tried to tell him, though his hand was still muffling my words.

And I was starting to get scared.

“ Remember what they told you? To keep the scene moving, you never say no . You always say yes, and .”

“But why?—”

“Because you’re to wrap those perfect, pink princess lips around my cock. The ones I knew the second I saw them that they’d never sucked off anyone, ever.”

He closed his eyes briefly and settled himself on his knees on either side of my torso, straddling my waist. I was lying flat, back pressed into the mattress, arms stretched up and cuffed to the headboard, the chain taut enough that I couldn’t shift much.

Suddenly, his body jerked upward, his breaths coming out in sharp gasps, biting down on his lip, gritting his teeth.

With one hand, he crudely fisted a hunk of my curls and jerked my head forward, forcing my chin up off the pillows, and pushed his cock past my lips and farther in.

I couldn’t see much in the dim moonlight, but I could feel every bit of the swelled, solid mass of him filling every cavern of my mouth, forcing me to loosen my jaw as I bit back a scream.

He fucked it in and out as slowly and precisely and perfectly as he’d moved it once before, in a room full of breathing plants.

But there was nothing alive in this room, this mausoleum of white marble, except for us.

And the classical Greek pillars on either side of me may as well have crumbled, the menacing carved griffins cowered and retreated, at the sight of that magnificent sculpted body, towering powerfully over me, his head bent, forelock of golden hair tumbling loosely over half his face.

His chest, the scars etched into his skin like blood scrawled onto parchment and dried, spilling out a history of anguish and bravery alike—was bare, except for the glint of a thin gold necklace with a blue pendant, where on earth —and the watch—and the thick gold rings on his two middle fingers that curled tightly around mine.

Accouterments for an aristocrat; a prince.

And I was his slave.

Twisting forward, I widened my eyes in the dim moonlight just enough to see the veins in his beautiful, scar-covered, muscled arms swell tautly as he launched into a new, violent pace. If only I could meet his eyes in the darkness. If only I could look.

There must be a reason. He never does anything without a reason.

But he wasn’t telling, and he wasn’t stopping.

His hands weren’t his hands. The dark, unknowable pits of his eyes were strange.

And despite myself, despite the shame of being tethered there like an animal, I could already feel the sopping sheets beneath me, a sick heat curling low in my stomach as my body responded to what I feared, to what I wanted, to what I deserved.

Because I was terrified. Terrified that he wouldn’t stop. And terrified that he would .

I stiffened and gurgled, squeezing my hands where they were trapped and pushing helplessly against the metal as he took no quarter, merciless in his expertise: his speed, his roughness, his control.

And I couldn’t catch my breath.

Stop.

Keep going.

He shifted slightly, one arm slipping down, fingers brushing against my wrist, probing, lingering on the cuffs as my skin raked against them.

I squirmed and shook, rattling against the cuffs and as he groaned, coming undone around my slick, helpless tongue, foam and saliva and hot tears flowing over my chin and cheeks, my pussy practically gushed over the sheets and down my legs, ready to come from the wanting alone.

“No,” he growled, plunging even deeper into me with a hiss as I took him down to the root and held him there. Suddenly, he pulled up sharply as if to tear himself away. As if he wanted to tear himself away, but didn’t.

Why?

It didn’t matter. I was screaming now.

Stop. I can’t breathe.

But he didn’t stop.

He didn’t stop.

And I didn’t want him to.

“I’ve been taking orders my whole life, princess. From now on, we’ll only stop when I say.”

What? Could he really mean?—

But before I could decide, before I could think , he dove in again, his teeth and jaw clenched, jerking my head forward by one curl.

Please. I can’t breathe. Please.

But he was right not to listen, after all I’d done. And just as his hips had begun to snap with each thrust, he slowed them down, forcing himself back into the confines of my mouth, watching me gag.

His rough hand was still at my wrist.

Not moving. No, not quite.

A flicker of something deliberate, something pressing, something moving— just barely .

“You deserve this, you know,” he whispered. “To choke on my cum. To gag on my cock. To just once feel like I feel. To scream and have no one hear you. To be voiceless. To be helpless. To submit to your master. So,” he added, “do you? Submit?”

My tongue lolled uselessly as I stared up at him, managing a helpless, shaky nod, agreeing to whatever he said.

Yes. Yes.

Because he was right. I deserved it.

He laughed softly and plunged deeper still, swelling and throbbing as he braced himself over me, his chest heaving with violent effort, one large hand curled painfully in my hair at the nape, even while the fingertips of his other hand still grazed the binding edge of metal.

His teeth clenched so hard I expected to hear them shatter any moment.

And then he came, and I shuddered at the eruption of all, that I’d become a vessel for the guilt and humiliation and shame, the chains and the muzzles and the whips and locks and the oppressed desire, all those untouchable basement nights, all of it spilling into me.

The object of his hate. Because what else could I be?

I’d realized it hours earlier, lying there chained to the bed.

I was the monster. Not him.

And I couldn’t look. So I looked up, at the mirror in the ceiling, at the infinite reflections and refractions of us, all the twisted-up faces of his power and my lack, as I tasted every drop of his climax, salty and sweet and exquisite and awful as my tears, raining down my throat and over my lips and down my chin.

And then he shifted again—just barely—but it was enough.

The rough drag of his body against mine, the rhythmic snap of his hips, the sharpness of his breath above me.

No hands, no mercy, just his presence, overwhelming and undeniable, pressing me down into the heat I couldn’t escape.

My back arched as much as the cuffs would allow, the pressure cresting with nowhere to go, and when he growled low in his throat— mine —it broke something open inside me.

I came with a silent, shuddering cry, everything tightening and splintering as the release tore through me, wave after wave, brutal and bright and unstoppable.

And I didn’t fight because I was giving him this. Doing penance. As if it could ever be enough for what I’d done. For what I hadn’t done. For having been weighed in the balance and found?—

Wait.

Yes, and.

He caressed my throat as the warm cum kept cascading down my esophagus with a finality that was chilling despite its heat.

He pulled out of my mouth, marking me with a single, delicate rope across my face, one that fell hotly across my cheeks where the tears had been.

With horrific fascination, I watched him, his flanks aglow with slickness, shoulders moving up and down as he gazed down at me as we both heaved. For a moment, we were silent.

His other hand, still lingering by my wrist, made one final movement. The softest, lightest click .

“Good girl,” he whispered, a phrase that, when I’d heard it mere hours ago, had filled me with unfathomable disgust.

Now?

“Now—”

But before he could get out another word, someone else’s clammy, meaty paw clamped over my mouth before I could respond or even think. I screamed and sank my teeth into the palm, but I doubted the bastard could even feel it through the doughy, leathered skin.

Next to the bed, another, even bigger man had ripped my boy off me before he had time to react, flattening him loudly and violently against the wall, pulling his hands behind his back, no doubt destined for the same cold metal as my own.

Rendered helpless, I rattled my restraints against the bedpost, determined to give a struggle. But the palm only pressed harder into my face, shoving the remaining fluid into my nose and mouth, cutting off my breath, and I was already exhausted.

“Oh my God. You’re good, Rocket Boy. You’re really good.”

Over the hand crushing my face, I could barely see the female form silhouetted in the weak moonlight, her hands clasped together near her mouth like a rhapsodic schoolgirl.

But the woman came closer, and then all of her came into focus: the blond hair floating in a wispy halo around her face, the body-skimming white crop top and leggings she wore and the stylish matching ivory-handled knife sheathed at her waist; the little bounce she did on the balls of her feet as she giggled with glee.

“But you’re gonna have to do a little bit more to make me believe you hate her as much as all that. ”