Release In The Dark (DARK erotic romance series) (14 page)

“
Please, please don't,
Owen,” I whimper.

He drags me to him and in one
vicious stroke, penetrates me deeply. He starts to pound in a mad
rage, hurting me, ignoring my pleas and cries. Wordless sounds erupt
from his throat as he thrusts violently, scraping against my raw,
clenching walls. Tears sting my eyes at the pain he is causing me,
at my own shame and helpless rage. My body is no longer my own. He
is fucking me like an animal, intent of ravishing and ravaging my
body. Bending down, he clamps his teeth around my nipple and swirls
his tongue round the tip. I try to shove him away, but he bites down
harder. A strangled sob escapes, and I punch and scratch his
shoulders viciously, wanting to inflict the same amount of pain on
him. He licks and sucks my nipple in response, his green eyes locked
on my tear-streaked face.

“
Harder,” he grits
out. “Hit me harder, Zoey. Mark me. Make me yours.”

I cry out in anguish, and drop
my hands from his body. This seems to infuriate him, and he bites
down on my breast, drawing blood as he pounds ever more violently
into me, as if he is trying to rip me bodily apart. His face twists
as he pistons in and out of me, and I suddenly try to jerk away at a
stark realization.

“
Owen,” I say, my
voice rising in panic. “Y-you...you're not using...a condom.”

His eyes flare. “No.”

“
I...”
God, no.
“I...could get pregnant.”

At this, he stills. His
breathing slows down rapidly into shallow, even breaths. “You
don't know,” he mutters half to himself.

“
What?”

“
You can't get pregnant.
And I can't get you pregnant,” he says at last in a dead voice.

I shake my head, my eyes
blazing.
You're lying.

“
I'm not lying to you,”
he says quietly, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time
since he began his frenzied fucking of me. “The serum that Dr.
Rolin injected us with—that made us both...” He swallows
and exhales with a short, bitter laugh. “I can't be allowed to
impregnate the Empress, can I? I'm just a dirty Slave. Our bodies
are just used to pleasure the Emperor and the Empress. The serum
gives me more stamina, more strength, but my seed is dead.”

I gape at him, the image of Dr.
Rolin injecting us in the Empress's chambers flashing before my eyes.
After satisfying herself endlessly on Owen, the Empress had summoned
the doctor to her chambers and he had promptly arrived with a silver
briefcase. After he slid the needle into my arm, I had lost
consciousness and I had awoken utterly alone in my cell in the
dungeon. The serum wasn't just to knock me out.

It did something to my body.

I stare into Owen's eyes. I see
the bitterness, the resignation, the simmering hatred, and I know
that he is telling the truth.

We are both—damaged.

No one enters the Palace and
leaves with his body and mind intact. You are broken, partly or
wholly it doesn't matter. You are no longer the same.

I turn my head to the side as
Owen continues thrusting forcefully into me, pushing himself to the
brink and then yanking himself back with an anguished bellow. He is
forcing himself to go on endlessly. He is intent on fucking me raw,
wanting our bodies to be joined forever. He sucks and bites me hard,
tasting my blood and tears, and demanding that I cleave to him. But
I don't. I can't. He can use my body for his own pleasure and
vengeance, but I will never be his.

He goes on and on and on,
pounding himself to exhaustion between my legs. But I don't feel
anything anymore. I stare up at him with dry eyes, and watch his
straining muscles throb and contract, his tanned skin glistening with
sweat as he finally finishes with a hoarse yell. His body heaves and
spasms violently and I feel his cock pulsing and jerking inside me,
but nothing shoots into me. He continues moving, dragging out his
orgasm, trying to last inside me.

Sweating and shaking, he
collapses on top of me, his cock still embedded deep within me.

Breathing against my neck, he
runs his tongue up and down the side of my neck. My face is turned
away from him, and I don't respond to his caresses and kisses.

He holds my face in both his
large hand, and kisses me hard on the mouth. His eyes are open and
angry, glaring at me as he forces his tongue past my lips. He bites
down on my lower lip, and sucks noisily. I taste my own blood, but I
don't even blink as I stare up at him vacantly.

He begins to bite his way down
my throat, shoulder, chest and finally clamps his teeth violently
around my sore nipple. His eyes are on my face, as he licks, suckles
and bites my breasts and nipples viciously, leaving teeth marks and
bruises on my skin.

Grabbing my breasts, he pushes
himself up, panting and swallowing. I meet his eyes unflinchingly,
and I see his gaze harden as he looks down my stiff, bruised body.
He has grabbed me, scratched me, pinched me, bitten me, taken me with
so much force and violence that there are marks all over my body.
His marks.

He must be very pleased with
himself.

But there is no joy on his face.

“
You didn't...come. You
didn't feel any pleasure...with me,” he says at last in a
hollow voice.

I swallow, but I don't confirm
or deny his statement.

“
You are mine now, Zoey,”
he breathes angrily. “You are mine now. And you will be mine
tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow! Mine forever!” With
that, he grabs my neck and crushes his mouth against mine, kissing me
and demanding that I kiss him back. “Love me, Zoey!
Love...me!” Squeezing my wrists in his fists, he kisses me
desperately, painfully. I part my lips, but my eyes remain open and
staring.

With a sudden, sharp movement,
he pushes himself off me and snatches a pair of handcuffs off the
floor. He snaps one cuff round my right wrist and looks me defiantly
in the eye as he cuffs me to him. Raising both our bound wrists in
triumph, he smirks, “See this? We belong together. We will be
together, forever! I am never letting you go. Never! You are mine,
Zoey. Say it! Tell me that you are mine!”

I open my mouth but the words
are lodged in my throat. I try again, but still the words refuse to
come.

All I manage is a small, choking
sound.

This seems to infuriate Owen.
He takes my unwillingness or inability to articulate those three
words as a sign of my defiance or evidence of my betrayal. He
smashes his fist into the mattress inches from my head. His point
has been made. He could easily, without breaking into a sweat, have
smashed my face in.

“
I. Will. Kill. Him,”
he vows.

He turns to me with a savage
glint in his eye. “You will never be mine as long as he is
alive. Isn't that true, Zoey?”

I shake my head mutely.
No.
I will never be yours. Dead or alive. Even without Jaxon, I will
never be yours!

“
You are not leaving me.
You will not leave me ever again, Zoey,” he swears. “If
anyone touches you...” His scars ripple into a dark, murderous
mask.
I will kill him! And I will kill you!

I shudder under that cold, hard
gaze and the deadly promise it holds. I have seen Owen slit a fellow
Slave's throat with a shard of glass, in the middle of the Great Hall
in the Palace. He has killed others with his bare hands, for the
enjoyment and entertainment of the Emperor and Empress. I know what
he can, and will do. I have no doubt.

He will kill me.

Sooner or later.

But he will kill Jaxon first.
Brutally, recklessly, in a blind, jealous rage.

Careful to keep the horror from
my face, I blink up at him and say, “I...I am yours, Owen.”

He blinks and jerks at my words,
like he is just waking from a nightmare. Staring down at me in
disbelief, he swallows repeatedly before asking, “What did you
say?”

“
I...am...yours.”

He smiles tightly. His words
chill me to the bone. “Yes, Zoey,” he says in a voice
which sounds too calm, too distant, too menacing.

“
You will be mine—soon.”

His green eyes glitter with
savage purpose as he takes me again, forcefully and roughly.

I can't help my whimpers of pain
as he bruises and tears me violently. He seems intent on making me
hurt, deepening my wounds, ensuring that the marks and bruises on my
body will stay for a long, long time.

He comes again and again, dry
heaving his way through his countless orgasms. And even though he
cannot ejaculate into my body, I can feel the warm, sticky moisture
between my legs.

He is made me bleed.

I see my blood staining the
covers under me. Owen's crotch is smeared with my blood, but he
seems to relish the sight. The sight of my blood coating his cock
drives him even wilder.

He is relentless, remorseless in
his lust.

He takes me like an animal, in
his bed, on the floor, in the dark, in the dirt. He pounds me over
and over, forcing my body to accept him, to take him, to want him.

Hauling me up from the floor, he
throws me onto his bed. With one hand under my knee, he pushes my
leg up against my chest, forcing me to open wider for him. He licks
the blood from the inside of my thighs and then presses his
blood-smeared mouth to mine.

The wild, crazed look in his
eyes becomes even more intense as he tastes and swallows my blood.
His eyes remain stark and open even as he kisses me and fucks me
furiously. Never once does he close his eyes. His features don't
soften with tenderness and love and pleasure. In fact, they grow
increasingly harder and angrier with each grating orgasm that he
forces upon himself.

He is punishing, not pleasuring,
himself.

His harrowing experience as a
Slave in the Palace as taught him that pain and pleasure are
inextricably linked. There is no escape. He may be out of the
Palace, but he can never escape its horrors.

Owen can never be free from his
hell.

And he will do everything he can
to keep me in hell with him.

I open my eyes slowly, feeling
the aches and pains seep back to my consciousness. For a few hours,
I had managed to slip into oblivion, sinking into a cold, numbing
darkness. Sleep had been all too brief. Few hours feel like just a
few minutes. Blinking up at the dark, shadowy ceiling, it takes me a
full minute to remember where I am. I am in the Commander's tent,
lying beside Commander Owen Vesparr.

I try to raise my hand to my
head, and feel the cut of cold steel into the bruised skin around my
wrist. My head turns to the side, knowing and dreading what I will
see. Owen is lying naked beside me. His presence, the sight of his
naked, scarred body brings the memory of what he has just done to me
crashing into my mind like a wrecking ball, shattering my tentative,
tenuous numbness. For a while, I had be able to simply float in a
vacuum of forgetfulness, where I can forget my own wretched existence
and just disappear.

But I have not disappeared. I
am here, in Owen's bed, my right wrist in a handcuff, inescapably
cuffed to him.

I sit up quietly, and look
around the large tent. There is a long desk and a few stools at the
other end. There are some papers and daggers lying on the desk. A
stack of crates and sand bags sit in a corner, and his uniforms lie
haphazardly on the ground, on the stools, at the edge of the bed.

I look at the crumpled bunch of
thin blankets at our feet. Owen didn't bother pulling the blankets
up over me or over himself, even though the temperature has plummeted
during the night. I suppress a shiver, clenching my teeth to stop
them from chattering too noisily and glance over at him. Owen is
lying on his back, his naked body uncovered, yet he doesn't seem to
feel the cold. One arm is thrown over his eyes, while the one with
the handcuff is straight at his side.

Carefully, I lean down and pick
my clothes off the floor. Clutching my dirty, torn clothes in my
fist, I try to order my thoughts. How am I going to escape? It is
impossible to hide any weapons under this thin, tattered tank top and
shorts. How far and how fast can I run without shoes?

Irin had told us during the
trainings that should we be captured by the enemy, there is pretty
little the resistance can do to get us out. Mounting a rescue
attempt would take too much effort and time. The logistics and
manpower needed to retrieve just one resistance fighter could be much
better employed elsewhere. They couldn't afford to risk so much and
sacrifice so many for just one fighter. They had to choose their
battles wisely and carefully.

In other words, no one would be
coming for me.

They would go for Jaxon, because
he is a resistance leader, an ex-Commander of the Imperial Army. He
has valuable inside information, and he is a brilliant strategist and
a fearless fighter. The resistance needs him. Not me.