27
The first thing that hits me is the smell.
Blood, sweat and piss all mingle together to create a stench so heady it makes me gag. I wretch, my stomach cramping and my throat constricting.
“You don’t have to do this,” Lex calmly states again, placing his hand on my spine to soothe me.
But I did have to do this, for if I am to stand by his side I need to be just as formidable and ruthless, someone not to be fucked with no matter how delicate I may look.
I inhale through my mouth rather than my nose, pushing down the need to vomit and straighten. My chin tilts up and I steel my spine.
This is for Rory. For me. For Lex’s mother. For all the women Valentine has hurt and tortured.
I drag my eyes across the dusty floor of the barn, noticing the dark spots that are forever stained into the ground. Blood. This is what this city lives on, thrives on it. Blood and pain and corruption.
And I am now sitting beside the king of chaos himself.
The man I had hit over the head earlier dangles from a hook suspended from a beam in the ceiling of the barn, arms chained with steel above his head. He’s been stripped to his boxers and blood covers every available inch of his body, there’s barely any skin showing through the crimson paint covering him. His head hangs, chin to chest and his eyes are closed though his chest moves with each labored breath that wheezes through his lungs.
Ryker stands to the side, a hammer of some sort dangling from his hand and blood splatters over his face and arms, staining his white shirt. His eyes are dead. Void of any emotion and it’s the first time I realize he’s just as formidable as the man next to me.
He doesn’t seem as ruthless but with the almost satisfied and content look he holds on his face, he appears to be enjoying the torture.
His eyes meet mine and he nods his head.
“Well, well, well,” Lex steps away from me, “What do we have here?” The voice, the demeanor, it’s like nothing I have ever experienced with him. He holds himself differently, his voice not even slightly resembling the one I heard back in the hall as he declared his love for me. “A Valentine rat.”
The guy in chains startles, the steel links clanging together loudly, echoing through the barn and spooking a couple of rats that had been hiding behind some cabinets on the back wall. They scurry out, darting from their safe shadows for safer spots outside.
I had always wondered what this barn looked like. Worn and depleted from the outside and that was exactly how it was on the inside. Bare walls, dirty floor and a few rusty and old tables scattered around the space, holding a variety of weapons, from daggers to hacksaws. There’s a couple of chairs laying about but not enough to hold a party.
“Kill me and get it over with.” The guys spits.
“Oh no,” Lex wags his finger, “When is it ever that easy?”
The guy curls his lip, eyes bouncing between him and Ryker before his evil gaze lands on me.
His bloodshot eyes do a once over on my body and then another only slower, following each line and curve of my body until he reaches my face and curls back his lip, “such a shame Valentine wouldn’t let us have a taste of your pretty little cunt.”
I stifle the need to recoil. I am not afraid of him.
His head snaps back so suddenly and so hard I’m amazed his neck doesn’t break but he drapes forward, blood dribbling from his mouth as he laughs, “May as well let her go now, Silver, she won’t be yours forever.”
Another hit.
The guy laughs.
“I imagined what it would be like,” he heaves, “to taste that pretty little pussy.”
He was taunting Lex, forcing his hand, making him lose his cool enough for him to snap and kill the guy. It was what he wanted, and he was getting exactly that. With each word uttered against me, Lex’s patience and anger was waning thin.
“I wanted to know if she would scream or lay there silently, accepting her fate. Tell me, Silver, is her pussy tight like I imagined? Does it feel like heaven when you sink into her body? Does she scream?”
Lex tenses beside me but I quickly grasp his arm before he strikes.
“I watched her, bloody and broken and beaten,” the guy taunts, “I imagined what it would be like to sink inside that sweet body as I pressed on her windpipe. I could picture the way her eyes bulged and she fought me as I choked her to death and fucked her like the simple little fucking woman she is.”
Lex’s muscles are so rigid and coiled, it’s only a matter of time before he snaps again.