The Devil's Due (16 page)

The sweeping view across the valley was broken up by strong iron bars that were bolted onto the windows like an afterthought. I swallowed, wondering what their presence meant.

A huge man stepped down the stairs, walking lightly for a man his size. I shrank behind Cade, but he was even bigger than my massive biker. When he stood in front of us, I withered further, pressing against Cade in fear. He was an absolute mountain of a man, at least seven feet tall, with a shaved bald head that accentuated the cut-from-stone set of his jaw.

“This is her,” Cade said grimly, pulling me around from my hiding place.

“Your little arm decoration?” the huge man rumbled, sneering at Cade mockingly.

“Just do what needs to be done,” Cade gritted through his teeth.

“She can go upstairs. Second room on the right. Wait ‘til it’s time.”

Cade turned to me. “Lainey, I... ”

But instead of finishing, he crushed me to him, nearly knocking the wind out of me. His lips slammed into mine, but the passion and fervor wasn’t there. It seemed more like a farewell.

He pulled away and stalked back over the threshold. His shoulders were hunched and he was deliberately not looking behind him, avoiding my stare at his retreating form. The doorway framed him as he strode down the walkway and back to his bike. It looked like a picture frame that contained my entire world.

The guard shut the door just as he started the bike and drove off, leaving me wondering if I would ever see him again.

I felt a hand on my arm and I jumped. The president was unmoved by our farewell.

“Second door on the right,” he repeated, a bored note in his voice. He pointed up the grand staircase.

I nodded, shaking like a leaf. He looked like he could use me as a toy. Of all the rough treatment I’d endured in the past two days, he was by far the roughest looking biker I had ever seen.

I slowly mounted the staircase, feeling his eyes bore into my back. When I got to the top, I looked back down at him, wondering why he wasn’t following. But he merely stood there with his arms folded, watching me, his mouth inscrutable.

I turned to the right at the landing and pushed open the second door. I had been tense, ready for something to jump out at me, but all the room contained was a huge, fluffy, white four-poster bed. It was huge and cloudlike and the most welcoming thing I could have hoped for in my state.

The room was light and airy, with sun streaming in through the blinds. I went to the window and looked out to the impressive view of the valley below. I saw the gleaming towers of Puerta de Fuego glinting in the late morning sunshine. Then I snapped the blinds shut, blocking out the light and fell headlong into the bed. I didn’t even take off my shoes.

I slept like a dead person. At one point, I felt a gentle hand propping up my head and a glass of water brought to my lips. The water tasted strange on my tongue, but I swallowed eagerly, then fell back into the pillow limply.

Whenever I tried to rouse myself, I found that my limbs wouldn’t respond to my brain. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t summon the strength to move. I felt like I was underwater, deep water, looking up through the depths at myself on the surface. The hazy, shimmery feeling of nothing really being real persisted. I hovered there, dazed and confused for what felt like days. My whole life was in that bed.

When the haze finally started to lift and I regained mastery of my limbs, I suddenly found that I could no longer move them for a different reason. As I swam up from my stupor, I tried to scratch myself, but my hand wouldn’t come all the way. I yanked again.

Flailing, I tried to sit up, but my legs were held fast too. I was tied down fast, spread-eagled across the now bare bed.

And I was completely naked.

T
he room was in shadow. The high windows glowed faintly in the twilight and all was silent in the cavernous house. The only sound was that of my heart as it pounded wildly in my chest while pain throbbed behind my eyes. I squinted, confused and disoriented.

I shook my head. The pounding headache clinched it: I had been drugged. And during my drug-induced coma, someone had come in and stripped me naked and tied me to the bed. And I had laid here, unknowing and unresisting for the whole day. Or maybe it had been two days. I had no way of knowing if the faint light at the windows was sunrise or sunset.

My breath came in gasps as my fear took over. Panic rose to my throat and I tasted bile.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Let me go!” I yanked at my bonds and felt the bite of the leather straps as they pulled tighter into my flesh. I kicked my feet, but the same straps held my ankles fast.

No one came, but I shouted on until my throat grew hoarse. The room darkened, and I realized it was nightfall. The darkness only increased my terror. I gulped and closed my eyes, mentally forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths and calm my rapid heartbeat.

I was just starting to get things under control when a light flooded the room, blinding me. I heard a soft voice come from the corner.

“Oh, no, please keep struggling. Your skin gets so nice and pink when you’re panicked.”

I twisted my head as far as it would go. I could barely see him perched in the corner like something from a nightmare.

“What are
you
doing here?” I croaked, my words catching in my throat.

His flat, doll-like eyes scanned my body and I somehow felt even more naked under his gaze. I squirmed as he slid forward and his eyes widened.

“Yes, keep doing that. Fear makes you beautiful.”

Revulsion made me shiver. “I’m not afraid,” I lied.

“Yes you are.” He slid to the edge of the bed and ran his finger along my cheek. I bit back a scream at his touch. “You should be.”

He let the finger trail down to my breast. I sucked in as hard as I could, trying to pull away from him, but he grasped my nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“You’re wondering to yourself,” he oiled on, rolling my nipple absently under his finger, “‘how can I make him like me? What does he want?’”

“Why,” I gritted, as he yanked my nipple, “would I want
you
to like me?”

He moved his face close to mine and twisted my nipple savagely. I screamed in spite of myself, and he laughed.

“Because I’m the one that decides your fate, little girl. Cade brought you here for
my
approval.”

My stomach dropped. “You’re Moloch?”

He pulled back and stood straighter. “Well, yes.”

It made a sudden, terrible sense. That’s why the bouncer hadn’t moved back at the bar. That’s why Zyz had disappeared. Because this small, slight man was feared by them all.

And Cade had left me at his doorstep and turned his back.

I screamed and pulled wildly against the straps. I pulled so hard the heavy wooden bed rocked back and forth. I thrashed like a wildcat until I was exhausted. Moloch stood and watched me the whole time.

“Do you remember our bet?” he asked softly.

“Fuck off.”

“Do you remember?”

“It was
your
bet. I never agreed.”

“Doesn’t much matter now, does it, Lainey?”

I cringed to hear my name on his lips. Somehow, it hurt me all the more that he knew my name. That meant he had talked to Cade. They had discussed me. Cade had agreed to this. The bitter taste of betrayal flooded my mouth and I blinked hard to hold back the tears brimming at the corners of my eyes.

I pressed my lips together, determined not to utter another word to this man. I wouldn’t give him any more information than my name.

But Moloch was no longer interested in conversation. I could tell by the outline of his cock as it pressed against the tight black fabric of his pants.

“I bet you,” he said gently as he turned his back to me. “That you would give in.”

––––––––

H
e turned back with a smile. In his hands lay a length of glinting silver chain. I pressed my lips tighter to hold back the scream/

The metal flowed like liquid through his fingers as he held it out for me to see. Four separate chains were linked together in the center, each end tipped with a vicious looking clamp. I bit my lip.

Moloch’s flat, dead eyes remained expressionless, but the little quiver of the corner of his mouth betrayed him. He was excited.

“So, little Lainey,” he breathed softly in that sinuous voice. “Here’s the first test.”

He opened one of the silver clamps, then let it snap shut, making sure I could see the power of its grip. Then he extended it to my foot.

I shuffled and kicked. I pulled my foot as far away from him as the leather strap would allow. “Still fighting, I see,” he whispered encouragingly. “You’re winning our bet so far.”

Then he closed the clamp around the top of my big toe.

“Ow!” I shouted. The pain shot up my leg as the cold metal bit into my flesh. I shook my foot in a frenzy, trying to shake it off. When that didn’t work, I tried to reach it with my other foot. But the leather straps held me firm. I squeezed my eyes shut against the hot pain.

And that was when the second clamp bit into the big toe of my other foot. “No! Take it off!” I shrieked. I looked down and whimpered at the sight. My toes were purple around the clamps but the flesh underneath them was white. I felt the blood pounding back through my body.

“Why?” I demanded.

“I bet you’re going to do what I say.” Moloch said flatly. He looked at my legs, watching me arch and rear in an effort to get away from the pain.

“Take them off!”

“Not yet. We’ve barely started.” He moved towards the head of the bed and I shrank away from him. I didn’t want him to touch me. But when his cool hand met my forehead, his touch was as gentle and soothing as a mother to a child.

I turned my face away from him, but there was no escaping his soft voice in my ear. The burning smell of him filled my nostrils as he exhaled.

“This is what’s going to happen, little Lainey.” He smoothed my hair back, his gentle touch at odds with the pain he was causing me. “I bet you that you would give up. I think you’re going to give in and do what I say. You’re not a fighter, little girl. You’re looking for a hero to rescue you from yourself.”

He took my face and pinched it painfully between his fingers. “You don’t need a hero; you need a master. Before today is over, you’ll be begging to do whatever I want.”

His voice in my ear drove all thoughts from my head. When I opened my eyes to protest that I would never give in to him, that I would never beg, his black eyes were there above me. They absorbed my free will just as effortlessly as they absorbed the light. My objections died on my lips, and he smiled.

“Let’s get started.” He stepped back and took hold of the chain. Clamps still dangled from the two free ends, and I could now see that the center ring had a clamp too. I whimpered as he dragged the lengths up my legs. The metal bounced along my stomach, the clamps dancing closer and closer to my face.

“Breathe out,” he ordered and, without thinking, I exhaled just as he closed the third clamp on my left nipple.

A scream tore free from my throat. I kicked and thrashed, but his aim was unerring as he clamped down on my right nipple. I struggled, but every time I kicked, the chains on my toes yanked painfully on my nipples. I froze the instant I realized that struggling was only going to cause me more pain.

Moloch chuckled. “See how much fighting hurts?”

He turned his back and I bit my lip, breathing through the fiery anguish. My nerves screamed and adrenaline flooded my veins.

Then he turned back. In his hand was a long shaft that I first mistook for a microphone. But when he flipped a switch at the bottom, it hummed to life and I realized it was a giant vibrator. My legs were splayed open in front of him, my sex completely exposed.

“What the hell are you doing?” I panted as the copper taste of fear flooded my mouth.

“It feels good to give in, little girl.” He lowered the vibrator and brushed it lightly across the lips of my vulva. I tried to squirm away, but the chains reminded me to stay completely still. I had no choice but to allow him to press the buzzing vibrator right down on to my exposed clit.