I grumble to myself and focus on the next door, hoping that the other girl is more open to talking. Of course, this door is locked too, but the keyhole is at least large enough for me to peer through. Maybe by talking, I only scare them more. If I just take a look to see what they’re doing, I could find out a way to help from the outside. It beats doing nothing, right?
So I lean over and peek through the small opening, hoping to catch a glimpse of a girl as lonely as I am in this ivory tower.
Except what I see makes my jaw drop and my heart stop.
Tobias is inside. There’s a girl with long black hair strapped on a pedestal, her legs spread. Her mouth is covered by some kind of strap-on … while he fucks her in the ass.
No tears stain her cheeks, and no pain mars her face. No, it is pure and utter lust making her eyes roll into the back of her head.
How could this be happening?
How could a girl brought to this place be so into all of it? How could she enjoy what Tobias does to her without repercussion and without remorse?
Suddenly, her copper eyes bore into mine. The same eyes I peered at through that hole in my wall. It’s her. The girl I’ve been talking to.
I gasp in shock and quickly step back from the peeping hole, completely horrified by the way my own body is turned on at seeing Tobias ravage her.
But my shock is overshadowed when I step back and bump into someone.
“Going somewhere?”
Chapter 21
Amelia
Eli’s voice makes me spin on my heels. Too late. He’s grabbed my shoulders and pinned me to the wall.
“What are you doing here?” he growls.
“I was just … I was—”
He leans in. “Sneaking around, trying to catch a glimpse of what it is that we do.”
I shake my head. “No, I was just trying to understand.”
A smirk forms on his lips as though he’s enjoying the thought of catching me in the act of sin. “Of course, you were. You weren’t at all … snooping around to try to find a way out.”
I try to move, but he’s far stronger than I am. I’m no match for his physique, and now he’s got me right where he wants me.
“Let me go,” I hiss, trying to free myself, but his grip on my arms only grows stronger.
“You cannot run from this, Amelia,” he says, leaning in to look me in the eyes. “And you cannot deny what you saw in there.”
My lips part, but I don’t know how to respond. What does he want from me?
“You want to see more? Let me help you,” he says. He pulls me off the wall, fishes a key from his pocket, and shoves it into the lock. After throwing the door open, he grabs my wrists, pins them to my back, and shoves me inside.
I stare at the scene before me, shame pooling in my stomach. Tobias looks up, but he doesn’t stop fucking her. Anna cannot even focus her eyes on mine because she’s so far gone into the scene.
Eli pushes me up against him, holding me in place. Then his breath is near my ear. “This is what you wanted, right?”
I shake my head and look away, but he grabs my cheeks and keeps my head straight in her direction. “Don’t look away. Look at her. Look at that girl so desperate for relief.”
Anna’s eyes momentarily home in on mine as a moan vibrates through the object stuffed inside her mouth. My face scrunches up as a mixture of guilt, shame, despair, and rage wash over me. But most of all, the worst kind of emotion floods my body as she is claimed right in front of me; heat.
“Do you see now the unraveling of a human being?” he murmurs into my ear, sliding my hair aside as I suck in a breath. “See what it does to her? And to you?”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head as tears well up in my eyes. But I’m only trying to deny the truth that’s right in front of me.
“You think she wants to escape?” he muses. “You think she’d accept it if you offered her a chance?”
“Yes,” I whisper. But that too is a lie. Her eyes tell me she’d never.
“Or are you just scared to admit the truth? To see with your own eyes what lust can do to a human mind? How easily it breaks?” he whispers, his hand snaking around my belly and up to my breast.
He fondles me in full view of Anna and Tobias, who give no attention to the fact that we’re even here watching them. But worse is the fact that the more Eli touches me, the more I want him to continue, to take me, to make me yield.