The only sound in the room is the echo of our breathing. I ease my way back, searching for a weapon with one hand while keeping the other raised.
Suddenly, a bare bulb blinks on overhead. The room looks like something out of a nightmare, not a fancy school like Willow Heights. Two leather chairs with stainless steel arms sit to my right, including the one I tripped on. There’s a door behind me, along with several more bookshelves. Across the low, poorly lit room, another cluster of leather chairs sit empty.
I scan the room, searching for a weapon.
“We warned you what happens if you disobey,” Baron says. His glasses are bent, and his sucker is gone, and his eyes sparkle with that malicious gleam I saw when we were running from the cops. “But it seems you’re just determined to keep testing us. You leave us no choice but to make good on our promises.”
“What promises?” I ask, edging toward the bookshelf. Maybe I can throw one at them, catch them off guard just enough to dash past them and up the stairs.
Duke stalks toward me. “You gotta choke on my dick for every time you’ve eaten since I told you I wanted that mouth around me before it was around anything else here. And you owe our boy here some action in that sweet pussy of yours for the stunt you pulled the other night. You tossed aside some guaranteed action, so you gotta step up and take her place.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” I say. “And yeah, you can all three rape me in here, but I will never bow to you again.Never.I’ll go to the cops, and you’ll probably get out of it, but I’ll still be standing. You can take everything from me, but you’ll never get the one thing you want so badly—my respect.”
“You think your respect is worth something to us?” Royal says, his eyes hard.
“That’s cute,” Baron says. “She’s so innocent.”
Without looking away from me, Royal gives an order to his brothers. “Put her on her knees.”
I run for the bookshelf, but I don’t make it there before they grab me, dragging me back to Royal and bearing down on my shoulders while they each hold an arm. I struggle, but Baron kicks my feet out from under me, and a second later, my knees hit the hard stone floor. I throw my hair out of my eyes, out of breath with fear and fury. “Forcing me to my knees doesn’t make me want to kneel for you willingly,” I snarl up at Royal.
He steps forward, gently stroking my hair back. “Oh, sweetheart. Do you think I care if you kneel willingly? You said you’d never kneel, and yet, here you are on your knees before me. Do your words taste good when you eat them?” He smiles down at me almost tenderly, tucking a lock behind my other ear. “And what a pretty sight it is. I don’t care how you got there. The end result is the same.”
When he strokes my face, I turn and snap my teeth at him, clamping them shut on his finger. He jerks back, wrenching his bleeding finger free. “See what happens to your cock if you put it near me,” I growl, spitting blood at his feet.
“Take her clothes,” he orders, his voice flat. “I can break her. You’ll see.”
“Now you’ve gone and pissed him off,” Duke taunts. He jerks down my skirt, and I writhe in their hold, terror sinking its teeth into me. I kick out, but Duke drags my arms behind me while Baron wrestles my skirt off, my underwear with it. I scream, but it’s choked with fear as they rip my shirt off my body.
When I’m naked, they force me back to my knees, Duke’s iron grip still around my wrists like cuffs. I’m hyperventilating so hard I can’t scream, can’t think.
Baron unbuttons his pants and slides a hand inside, stroking himself. “She’s feisty,” he says. “I bet it’ll take a train in that big juicy ass to break her.”
“No.” Royal’s voice is quiet, but it commands all attention.
His brothers both turn to him. I do, too. When I raise my face to his, I see that his eyes are as empty as his voice. There’s no hope for me there.
“This one is mine,” he says in that same quiet, hollow tone that raises goosebumps all over my body. His eyes rake over me, making me feel even more horribly, terrifyingly helpless.
“Really?” Duke asks, an edge of whining in his voice. “But the sluts are always the freakiest.”
“Shut up,” Baron says. “He never wants them for himself.”
He’s watching Royal with cautious fascination, like he’s watching a rattlesnake approach.
Royal steps forward and grabs a handful of hair at the crown of my head, pulling my face up. He reaches down and gives one of my nipples a hard pinch. I panic, thrashing and struggling to free my hands from Duke’s hold. But even if I broke away from him, there are two more guys over twice my size between me and the stairs. Panic strikes through me over and over, and it’s all I can do not to go ballistic.
“Look at you,” Royal says flatly. “On your knees, where a whore belongs. What’s the matter, Cherry Pie? You’ve been chasing us like a thirsty bitch since the day you set foot in Willow Heights. Following us to our house, sitting at our table, putting yourself in our way every chance you get. Now you have our full attention. All three of us to yourself. Tell me this isn’t what you wanted.”
“It’s not,” I grit out, pressing my trembling knees together on the cold, unforgiving stones. I wanted in, but not like this, stripped of all my clothes and dignity, completely vulnerable and powerless before these three huge, powerful savages. Not like this, forced to my knees against my will, with no choice in any of it.
“You wanted the Royal treatment the other day,” Duke says. “Now you’re going to get it. Wreck her, man. I’ll hold her still.”
“No,” I blurt out, adrenaline charging through me so hard my whole body shakes uncontrollably. “Please. You said—you said maybe you cared. Royal, you don’t have to do this. This isn’t who you are.”
“I know who I am,” Royal grinding the words out slowly, his eyes still glazed like he’s in a trance. “I’m a Dolce. And you… Are a whore. You came from a whore, and you’ll never be anything but a whore. And now, I’m going to make you pay. I’ll ruin you so deep you can’t even beg me to stop.”
He reaches for his pants, his fist tightening in my hair, holding my head in place.