THE FIRST SIN (27 page)

Being auctioned to the highest bidder.

He was going to auction me like he had sold Donovan’s sister.

Your new reality, Steele.

Bullshit.

Pull yourself together. Analyze the situation.

Escape.

Not a single person could control my future. No one controlled Lexi Steele.

I’d been through worse.

Yet the pounding of my heart made my chest ache. How could I feel more pain?

But the pain was less than it had been when Cabot had beaten me. SOB

hadn’t been able to fight me without having two men hold me. Coward.

Time to assess. A cry and a gasp almost tore through me as I tried to push myself up to a sitting position and pain shot through my right arm.

Something heavy encased it from my wrist to my upper arm.

A cast. Cabot had broken my arm. The pain in my lower chest and sides was thanks to the ribs he’d cracked when he kicked me. The tightness that made it even harder to breathe came from bandages wrapped around my chest. My left shoulder hurt like hell, and I winced at the memory of it being dislocated and put back into place. One thing after another flashed through my mind, and my heart felt like someone was twisting a stake in it. I wanted to scream as my chest rose and fell, harsh and fast, with my breathing. I was hyperventilating.

“Calm down, Steele,” I growled at myself, and concentrated on slowing my breathing. Deep inhale. Slow exhale. I swore in six different languages.

My breathing quickened again.

Okay, the freaking out and releasing every swearword I could think of didn’t help.

It took all the strength I had in my left arm to push myself up, my right arm cradled against me. My left arm shook so bad from the pain in my shoulder.

Hallelujah. I managed to sit.

The light blanket fell to my waist and my stomach curdled. I was naked. It seemed like every bit of my fair skin had pale, yellowing bruises. Shadows of them, really. How long had I been here? Wherever here was. With the sick feeling my constant friend, I looked at the cast.

The curdling from my stomach jumped into my throat.

Cabot had signed it.

To the newest treasure of my collection.

Benjamin.

Sick bastard.

Sick, sick, sick bastard.

I’d put away a serial killer, the Harvester, who liked to eat his victims in small pieces. I’d be happy to do the honors as I indulged in my fantasy of chopping Cabot into tiny chunks myself. I’d be pleased to feed them to the man waiting on death row. Harvey might want a farewell snack. No way was Cabot getting away with this. There would be a way to escape. I’d find it.

Then I’d bring him down. RED allowed us to use any force necessary.

Any force.

This would be necessary.

I’d do it even if it wasn’t necessary.

Voices. Creaking door hinges followed. I had to figure things out. Couldn’t let them know I’d woken. The lumpy mattress became my friend, along with the threadbare blanket, as I pretended to sleep.

“Bitch is still out of it,” a now-familiar voice said as the door to the room squeaked open. Danny. I’d kill him after Cabot.

A girl cried out and her body hit mine as she was flung into the room. Oh crap. My left arm. I gritted my teeth, clenching them hard enough to send a shooting pain through my head. I couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound, or they’d know I was awake.

I wasn’t ready for that, yet.

The doors slammed shut.

The girl crawled onto the mattress beside me and sobbed, her whole body shaking.

Flashes of memories came to me—a girl had taken care of me. Fed me.

Bathed me. Helped me on the toilet. “Alyona?” I kept my voice low as I opened my eyes and looked at the girl who had her back to me. A loud sniffle.

Her shoulders shook. “You are awake.” Another sob. A moment passed before she spoke again in her strong Russian accent, and rolled to face me. “I—I worried for you.”

She looked . . . familiar.

I caught my breath. She was the same dark-haired girl I’d seen abducted and thrown into a van on one of Donovan’s monitors.

“Thank you for taking care of me.” I reached up and brushed her cheek with my fingertips. She was model beautiful. “How long have I been here?”

Alyona scrunched her eyebrows. “It is Sunday, yes?” she seemed to ask herself, then nodded. “Yes. A week yesterday it has been since you were brought to this”—her voice caught—“this prison.”

“A week?” My voice rose before I could keep it down. I let my hand fall away from her face and forced my voice to go lower. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “They put a needle in your arm every day after I cared for you, to make you sleep. They said”—her voice shook—“they said you needed to heal before . . . before they turned you into . . . “ Her voice quavered again and I heard the tears. “Merchandise. Like me.”

She continued. “I am not supposed to be touched until I—I am delivered to my new owner. But—it just now was not so.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” The kind of feeling that rushed through me now was hot and fluid. I’d never felt anything like this. Not even when I faced pain beyond pain. Not even when the crap was beaten out of me the two times I’d screwed up after assassinations.

One man in Mexico.

Another man in Cuba.

My “employers” never telling me why I had to kill these men.

Both men were history, but I’d been tortured to hell and back by their men.

Still, I escaped.

Now, here in the good ol’ US of A, Cabot considered me merchandise to auction off.

No fucking way.

What I’d said about hopelessness? No such thing. Unless you’re dead, there’s hope.

The pain in my ribs wasn’t easy to ignore when I sucked in my breath. “They didn’t drug me today?” Alyona looked cute and young despite the tears and weariness on her features, and the fact that she’d just been raped. She looked eighteen at most.

We would have time for questions later, when I could do something about the mess I was in. The mess all of the girls were in.

I would make sure any women who might be here with us got out of here soon. That they were taken away from this place. And that the men who had done this to them paid. Paid big-time. There were so many ways to kill a man so that he felt excruciating pain in the moments before his death. She hesitated. “I do not remember the men coming to the room before I was taken to—to the man named Cabot. For—for assessment. From the time you have been here they have always drugged you.”

“Cabot raped you?” I was even more furious than before, if that was possible.

No matter who had raped her, it was a horrible violation. Cabot doing it seemed even worse. “That man is so dead.”

“I have never wished death upon anyone,” Alyona said.

“Until now.”

The fact that they hadn’t shot me up meant they knew I’d be awake anytime now. That didn’t give me much time to get the lay of things.

“Sometimes I think there is no hope,” she said, a sob in her voice. “No way to go back home and see my family. No hope at all.”

My own thought came back to me.

Hopelessness was something I would never accept into my life.

I wouldn’t. I would not accept it.

‘Trust me.” I stroked her hair away from her face. “Don’t ever give up hope, Alyona. Ever. Things will get better. Everything will turn out all right I promise you,” I said just as the door hinges squeaked.

A familiar chuckle crawled down my spine and I went completely still.

Benjamin Cabot stood in the doorway.

April 21

Sunday, present day

Tears burned the back of Kristin’s eyes and she bit her lip to keep from crying. The drug was wearing off again. God, how she didn’t want it to.

Staying drugged was the only way she could mentally survive, because it kept her from thinking. Feeling.

The professor liked it when the drug wasn’t in her system anymore. He liked to hear her scream. Watch her cry. Hurt her. Listen to her beg for him to stop and to let her go. If she tried to hold it in. he just hurt her more. She tested the cuffs and the heavy chains—just in case—like she did every time the drug wore off. She wasn’t a quitter; she never had been. But this . . .

Kristin swallowed hard and barely kept from letting a sob out. After all this time, what good were tears? The only time the professor let her off the bed was to use the adjoining bathroom. She had stopped being embarrassed when he watched her relieve herself on the toilet. What did it matter?

He chained her to the showerhead and washed her body himself. Usually he would get so turned on he’d take her in the shower while the water washed away her tears. He’d slap her backside especially hard because he liked the sound of his hand hitting her wet flesh.

The professor made her take the pill every day. He told her that by skipping the pseudo tablets for the week she was supposed to have her period, he would make her jump straight to next month’s pill. Then she would never have her period. She would never get pregnant.

And he could do whatever he wanted to with her. Anytime he wanted to. Day or night.

He didn’t even use a condom.

She suspected he took something like Viagra. An older man like him wasn’t likely to last several times a day, every day, was he?

Other than letting her use the bathroom and giving her a shower, he never let her far from the bed, much less out of the room. He kept her naked and cuffed. Always. Both wrists.

The links between the cuffs were so short that she couldn’t reach for anything. All she could do was ease off the bed sometimes and kneel on the soft carpet to change positions, or curl up in a ball on the mattress and hug a thick wooden bedpost. Unless her ankles were cuffed, too. He wouldn’t even let her feed herself. He insisted on making her eat from his hands like a dog.

If she refused, he slapped her so hard her ears would ring and she would cry out for him to stop.

The two-inch-wide cuffs were lined with sheepskin, which kept the metal from biting into her wrists. Still, they made her skin sore and red. In his more “kindly” moments the professor put balm on her irritated skin. That was the only time she would have a free wrist. But he always made sure her ankles were cuffed along with her other wrist before switching.

Kristin sighed. It wasn’t like she had a black belt or something. Although she could scratch the professor’s eyeballs out and kick him in his groin.

If only she’d taken those self-defense classes like her brother, Nick, had tried to get her to go to. Or listened to him when he wanted to teach her moves that would help her if she was ever in a dangerous situation. She pictured the last time he’d talked about her learning how to defend herself.

“Damnit, Kristin,” Nick had said, his blue eyes serious and concerned.

“You’re on a college campus. Some guy could rape you.”

She’d flinched at the word “rape,” but still she said, “I always stay in public places with someone with me.” She’d kissed him on his cheek. “I’ll be okay, Nick. Don’t worry so much.”

Her brother hugged her tight. “I love you, kiddo. I couldn’t bear anything happening to you.”

She’d hugged him back. “I love you, too.”

She was such an idiot.

Oh, yeah, she’d been in a public place with friends. Didn’t end up mattering, did it?

Her heart ached when she thought of Nick. Would she ever see him again?

She squeezed her eyes tight.

Mother. Father.

If they were still alive they would have paid for not just one PI but a hundred to search for her. They could have afforded it.

But Nick would still have been the one to find her. He would find her. She knew it with all her heart, and that was what kept her going. Day to day.

Nick would find her.

Had it already been four weeks since she’d found herself strapped to Professor Michaels’s bed?

The days ticked off in Kristin’s head automatically. Having a photographic memory and a calculator in her head made forgetting so difficult. Even after being drugged her mind would come fully awake once the drug wore completely off.

Tick. Another day. Tick. Another day.

But she wanted to forget. Everything.

The doorknob squeaked and Kristin’s body went rigid.

Professor Michaels smiled as he let the door swing open.

This time he didn’t close it behind him.

She couldn’t stop the trembling in her body as he came toward the bed. His bald head gleamed in the low lighting from the stained-glass lamp on the nightstand. It was too far to reach or she would have kicked it over just so she didn’t have to look at his pale, round face or his excited blue eyes.

Eyes that showed his eagerness to take her and abuse her. “Did you rest well, slut?” he asked when he reached the side of her bed.

Referring to her only as slut was just one more degrading thing on a list of things that he did to her that her mind continued to check off.

The tears were already starting to come as she forced herself to nod and say.

“Y-yes, Professor.”

She barely kept from crying out as he pinched, then twisted her nipple with his thick fingers. “I have something very special for you, slut.”

Again she had to speak or he would slap her. “W—what do you have for me, Professor?’

“I’m going to have extremely important company shortly.” He leaned close and she shuddered as he licked the inside of her ear. “Company that enjoys certain kinds of entertainment. Company that likes to share.”

Kristin’s heart pounded as horror rushed through her like needles pricking her entire body. “No.” She shook her head. “Please, no.”

He rose and held his hand high, his palm facing her. “You keep forgetting your place, slut.”

“Professor Michaels.” She found herself already wincing as she called him by the only thing he would accept. Fear continued to stab at every organ in her body. He was serious. Oh, God. It was in his eyes. The way he looked at her.

The sound of his voice. “Please, Professor. No.” Images rushed through her mind of one man after another taking her. using her.