The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (11 page)

Pain erupted as his knuckles spilt my lip, the blood spraying across his stomach from the force of his hit. My tears stung the wound, the salt biting and stinging.

I was sure I felt my cheekbone fracture when he punched me again, the throb unbelievably hot. My hand fell, the can clanking and rolling out of my reach straight into his.

My back slid across the floor when he thrust the object inside me. I was so dry, the fill of the intrusion ripped me apart, fire igniting and tearing through me. I screamed, causing him to clamp his hand over my mouth, cutting off my nose at the same time. “Like to play with toys, Star? How does that fucking feel?”

Everything became blurry as he suffocated me, his hand pushing harder into my face the more frantic his thrusting became. My hands flapped as I became despondent and weak. I didn’t want to die with him violating me. It hurt so much. How cruel must I have been in my past life to deserve this punishment? Vomit curled and I panicked. I would choke to death on my own sick.

Time stilled as everything became surreal. I seemed to float above myself, the world below me, and the air too thin to ground me. My eyes rolled into the back of my head as a smile touched my lips when my life flashed before me in snaps of images so quick I struggled to keep up with them. Momma swung her hand in mine. Daddy taking pictures at my graduation. Jennifer, my best friend, winking as she passed me the bottle of tequila we’d sneaked from her parent’s liquor cabinet. A party somewhere unknown, revelers singing Auld Lang Syne. A beach, the sun burning my naked body, someone’s lips gently idolizing my bareness. A ring sliding onto my finger via a thread wrapped around my finger and…
HIS.

I gasped, air filling my lungs too quickly when Theo disappeared from me, the sudden weight loss causing my lungs to inflate rapidly, claiming their fill as swiftly as they could. I rolled over, coughing and spluttering.

“GET OUT OF HERE! HE WILL KILL YOU FOR THIS!” Malik roared.

Nothing felt real. Everything was blurred and dreamlike. I was moving, my body floating through the air. My heart rate had slowed down to a random thump inside my chest as blood roared around my body causing dizziness and light-headedness.

“Ssh,” his voice soothed as my sobs wrenched my chest when a current of water covered me. Its torrent slammed against my face, smarting the throb in my cheek and biting the cut to my lip.

I couldn’t control the raging weep that tore my chest in two. I couldn’t control anything; my breathing, my thoughts, the vomit that surged from me.

“Okay,” his soft voice echoed in my head. “I’ve got you now. I’m so sorry, Star. I just went to the bathroom.”

I screamed, punching out at him. “This is your fault! This is all your fault. You did this. You let this happen. You let him do that. No…”

“I’m sorry, Star! Dante will kill him for this.”

I continued to abuse him, my fists pounding on his chest, the sopping material of his t-shirt tearing beneath my fingers as I clawed at him. I had finally lost it. Gone mad with it all.

“He’s a bastard. You’re all fucking evil. Let me go! Please! No more.” I scratched at him, my nails digging into his flesh as I tried to tear him to pieces. “I hate you, I hate him. I HATE THIS! SAVE ME PLEASE. SOMEONE SAVE ME!”

Unconsciousness finally won when my mind shut down from the horror of what my life had become.

MY PHONE CONSTANTLY VIBRATING AGAINST my thigh distracted me from the business meeting I was in. These new drug test studies were intriguing a lot of medical boards and all the corrupt players of the black market.

The man sat across from me in his black Armani suit, no tie, slicked back black hair and predatory eyes was just one of the many human traffickers interested in the qualities this new drug possessed. I wasn’t in his trade; I made my fortunes the legit way but with fortune, success and science mixed with my own flavor of depravities came the underworld of the black market. Drug trafficking. Human trafficking and all the trash in between. It was inevitable for someone like me to become part of this world and when I did it gave me a power I craved.

The woman he brought with him to the dinner was clearly there to satisfy any desires I may have. A pawn to sweeten the business bond. She was far from my taste. It wasn’t the blonde of her hair, I usually favored brunette, it wasn’t even the thin frame and ridiculous fake tits cemented to her chest. It was the fact Star had fucked with my hard on; it didn’t want to play with any toy but her.

I needed to rectify this. I couldn’t have her holding any power over me and I had come too far in this game to break now before the time was right.

“You see, some slaves are easier to break than others.” His hand gripped the female’s hair and coaxed her to drop beneath the table. “When they start off as trash they welcome a new life, but the expensive top quality pussy tend to be tougher. They like their lives.”

His pitch was void in my mind anyway. I had made my deal; it was all set in motion.

Small hands delicately undid my slacks with ease. Her palm reached in to stroke at my flaccid cock. She was working me with experienced hands, trained to only please her Masters. I needed to see Star, watching her locked in her room while someone else got me off would help with the hard on issue.

Slipping my phone free, I typed in the security codes to access the cameras. Her room was empty. It was then I noticed the amount of missed calls and texts.

“Where is she?” My voice bellowed through the corridor to Malik who rushed towards me. “I moved her to your quarters. He messed her up bad. I can’t believe I let this happen”

“I’ll deal with you later. Where is he?” Not much scared Malik; he was a tank, ex-military. He knew what my wrath was capable of, his wary eyes and posture were one of instinct when sensing a threat much more dangerous.

“He’s in his room. Maria is with him.” Maria was his woman, only brought in to play a role but she was a parasite; her goal was to be a pillow whisperer to someone like me.

My strides ate up the space to his room. He rose from his sitting position, flanked by Maria. I slipped out my 9mm, swiftly aiming and firing. She dropped like an anchor being dropped in the ocean. Theo’s wild eyes scanned my face.

“You had the audacity to touch a woman who belongs to ME!”

He was shaking, the little weasel.

It took me two seconds to locate a can of deodorant. He cried, begging, which I muffled by ramming the entire thing in his mouth, dislocating his jaw with sheer strength as I leaned back and stamped down with my foot, pushing the can down his throat. I watched fear rape him before his lungs failed him - then his heart.

“She is mine!”

“You killed them both.” I turned my cold gaze on Malik. “Revenge doesn’t like company. Three was a fucking crowd. Let this be a lesson to you.”

I WANTED TO SHOWER FROM the inside out. I felt so dirty and broken. My face throbbed in a matching thump to the burning pulse between my thighs. I was completely done, I couldn’t take it. I came to the conclusion that although I had proven to adjust to circumstance, cold ruthless violence was not something I could handle.

My internal war still raged with my feelings towards the man I knew as Mr. Troy, who they called Dante. I felt betrayed by him. He let this happen after I willingly gave myself to him. I obeyed his rules and he left me to be violated. God, did he even care? I highly doubted it.

The soft fabric beneath me both soothed and irritated the scratches I knew painted my back. The room was luxury at its finest; silk bedding ornamenting a thick hand-carved four poster solid wood bed. The wood of the furniture, including the floor, was dark in contrast to the white walls and drapes.

A moan escaped me when I tried to sit up, the pressure in my jaw from using the muscles to tilt my head exploded, leaving a wake of pins and needle down the entire side of my face and neck.

“Don’t try to move, Belle.” His voice was thick and deep, startling me. I hadn’t realized he was in the room.

A shadow moved across the room, alerting me to him before his powerful frame filled my sight. He was wearing a white shirt and slacks, a tie undone and hanging in two strips down either side of his chest. I wanted to open my mouth to talk to him but couldn’t from the sheer pain.

“You need to not talk or move, Belle. You’re extremely bruised and need time to heal. I won’t apologize for his actions, those were all his, but I will tell you he paid for them with his life. I don’t tolerate disobedience and disrespect from anyone, and you belong to me therefore touching you was directly insulting me.”

I wanted to let the bile scorching my throat ignite and decimate me into ash. He didn’t give a shit that I was raped with a fucking object or that I couldn’t speak through the injuries of callous violence from a man he left me with. I didn’t know why I was surprised and hurt by it but I felt it so deeply, the betrayal, and he wouldn’t even say he felt bad that it took place.

Closing my eyes, I tried to ward off the coming tears. They were an all too familiar sensation for me, welling and slipping free down my face, collecting in tiny pools at my hair.

I felt his shadow fall over me before his breath warmed my face. My eyes dragged slowly open, his intense features masked by the distortion of my tears. “Everything is not always what it seems, Belle, but you are too weak to learn truths. Sleep now.” Pressure pushed down on my lip making me wince, the warm damp swipe of his tongue over the cut soothed the sting.