The knife pulls back, and he steps away as the other man groans through his vile release.
Then they switch places.
“You should’ve tried out her tight little asshole.” The talkative one kneels behind her and grips her hips. “I broke it in real good for you.”
Bile hits my throat, and my vision blurs with fire and venom, madness and malice.
“Couldn’t pass up a virgin cunt.” The second man tucks himself into his jeans. “Make it quick. We need to wrap this up.”
A cold sweat sweeps my skin. Every molecule in my body seethes to gut them.
I turn my head toward Lorne and Jarret. All my thrashing moved me closer to the tree line, giving me a direct line of sight between their backs and the trees they’re tied to.
From the front, they appear frozen and crippled by fear. But behind them… Holy fuck, their hands are moving in tandem. Is that a knife? And blood.
Adrenaline floods my system, amping my pulse. One of them is definitely bleeding. Lorne, I think. He always carries a blade in his boot. I don’t know how Jarret scored it, but it’s in his grip. My brother blindly saws at the rope on Lorne’s wrists, slicing him up in the process.
Conor muffles a cry as that son of a bitch plunders her body. He impales her most sensitive hole, grunting sick sounds of pleasure and leaning into his depravity with vigor.
With each ram of his hips, he decimates the joy of a long-awaited night, hacking and mutilating it into a nightmare of everlasting scars.
All I can do is watch. I endure every cheated moment with her, but I can’t feel her pain. Not the physical agony. I can’t take that from her. Can’t protect her from it. And I’ll never be able to return the glow of innocence to her heart. It’s been permanently stolen from her, from all four of us.
But we’re still alive. If Jarret cuts through that damn rope, we’ll stay that way.
Both shotguns lean against the rock wall. I trust Lorne to go for them the moment he’s free. The men are too preoccupied with Conor to pay us any attention. One paces a circle around her. The other groans and bucks against her bleeding backside. But I don’t look at them.
I stare directly at her. Not at her nude body or the knot around her wrists or the gag in her mouth. I stare at her eyes. I stare so hard she finally senses me, stirring just enough to lift her lashes and find me across the ravine.
I harden my expression with the words I can’t voice.
I have you.
You’re my girl.
I’m sorry I restrained you.
I’m sorry I can’t take your pain.
You’ll survive this.
That works for a while. The furrows of agony on her face smooth beneath the sheen of love in her eyes. But eventually, the cruelty pushes its way in, suffocating the space between us with an ugly truth.
I don’t know how we’ll come back from this. It’s worse than the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Worse than the stillbirth from our prize-winning cow. Worse than the fire that destroyed our thirty-stall mare barn. Worse than the rattlesnake bite that almost killed me. Maybe worse than the car accident that took our mothers. But none of us remember that.
Each second that passes leaves an immutable, catastrophic mark. Every thrust into her precious body baptizes my soul in darkness. I feel it slithering in, the oily, toxic, oppressive tendrils of rancor. It hooks malignant roots into muscle and bone, claims blood cells, and rewires neurons.
I won’t walk away from this the same.
But I will walk away, directly onto a warpath. I’ll take whatever road that leads to vengeance and bloodshed. Fuck the law. These fucking bastards stole something from me. Something priceless and dear. They hurt my girl from the inside out, extinguished her glow, and made her bleed.
They’ll die for that.
At the edge of my vision, the pacing man veers to the creek and takes a leak. As his piss splashes water, a scuffing sound disturbs the ground behind me.
I don’t take my eyes off Conor, but I see it in her face. The spark of alarm. Tension. Hope.
My muscles stiffen, and my lungs swell with readiness as a silhouette blurs past me.
Lorne is on the move.
A firestorm incinerates my guts and burns deep between my legs. Constant pain weakens me beyond exhaustion, and the inconsolable look on Jake’s face shreds my heart. There have been moments, pitch-black tunnels of time, when I was certain I would die.
But not anymore.
Lorne just escaped his restraints.
My pulse explodes as he sprints toward the shotguns with a knife in his hand and determination in his raving, bloodshot eyes.
“Shit!” The man near the creek spins around, yanks up his fly, and gives chase.
Fucking fuck! Run faster, Lorne! Faster! If he reaches those guns first, he’ll slaughter the men who hurt me.