Chapter Twenty-One
Ree
Starn grabbed the shaft of his cock and shoved it in my face.
Seeing Kaal’s expression—a mixture of jealousy, rage, and revulsion—tore me to pieces. I couldn’t bear it.
My first impulse was to swear to Kaal that it wasn’t true. But guilt stopped me. There was a grain of truth in what Starn said. I never came but I did get aroused by the things Rigo did to my body that night.
I wanted to clamp my jaws around the bastard’s dick and bite it off. But I knew if I hurt the warden in any way, he’d take it out on my lover. Starn was cruel enough to sever his spinal cord where he lay and leave him paralyzed instead of killing him outright. The monster might keep us both alive for days, just to torment Kaal, making him watch me forced to do all manner of unspeakable acts while he was powerless to stop it.
Maybe I should go ahead and do it. Our plan is in place. In a few hours the other rebels can escape. Starn is going to kill Kaal and me anyway. Better sooner than later. At least my last act in this world will be to make him suffer.
I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and steeled myself for what I had to do.
Starn made a muffled sound, more of a squeak than the low groan I expected to hear. He didn’t ram his engorged member down my throat. The sharp pain of the knife tip piercing my skin eased, then disappeared. I heard the clatter as it fell to the floor.
I opened my eyes.
Starn’s erection was shriveling. His fist was no longer wrapped around it, shoving it in my face. Instead, both his hands were tearing at the huge fingers clamped around his neck.
Behind him, Rigo tightened his hold. Starn’s eyes were wild. He flailed desperately, his heels drumming on the floor. Rigo dragged him backwards, so he couldn’t grab me or kick out and hurt me. Shaking, I got to my feet and took a few steps back, unable to tear my eyes away.
The giant’s face was placid, eerily calm, as he slowly, relentlessly squeezed the life out of the man who’d ordered him to be tormented so many times. Starn’s face turned red, then an appalling shade of purple-blue that looked so much like the color of the penis he tried to make me suck that I had to turn away.
I crouched by the side of the table with my back to them, my fingers touching Kaal’s. He moved his hand enough to encircle mine. We stayed that way until the last echoes of the hideous rasping sounds faded away.
I heard a thud and then Rigo appeared on the other side of the table. “He won’t hurt you anymore, Mama.” His voice was high-pitched, that of a child.
Shakily I got to my feet, careful not to look at the other side of the room. “Thank you, Rigo.” Somehow I managed to keep the horror out of my voice.
“I did good?”
I tried to envision a little child instead of the homicidal giant in front of me. “Yes, my sweet boy, you did very good.”
He beamed at me, the smile all the more disturbing coming from a face topped by a head covered with hideous scars, then patted Kaal on the shoulder. “We’re almost done. You did good too. You never moved.” Rigo glanced around the room, his eyes skipping over the body on the floor. “Doctor Rigas,” he called out. “It’s time for you to come back.”
I watched the giant change. His face lost its childlike expression. Throwing his shoulders back, he flexed and stretched the arms that had hung limp at his sides. Then the thick fingers he’d just used to squeeze the life out of a man delicately picked up a surgical instrument lying on the table.
“All I need to do is make one more incision... right here...” His voice had changed too, becoming crisp and confident. “Aaah. Got it!” He held up a bloody, wafer-thin square with a pair of forceps, so small it was hard to believe it capable of inflicting so much agony. “Now I’ll sew you back up. As soon as you’re feeling strong enough, you can get up off the table. You’re going to be hurting for a while. Probably have a helluva headache too. Are you sure you don’t want an injection for the pain?”
Kaal’s teeth were clenched, his face drawn and pale. I responded for him. “Thank you, Doctor Rigas,” I replied formally. “But Kaal was very firm in his decision not to take any medication that might affect his thought processes or his reflexes.”
Stunned, I watched Rigo’s thick fingers close the slit in Kaal’s neck with stitches so tiny I didn’t think I could have duplicated them. He laid down his instruments and stretched, relieving the tension in his shoulders.
Once he put them down, his arms sagged. His head drooped and his eyes drifted shut, as though keeping them open was too great an effort. He swayed unsteadily on his feet.
“Doctor Rigas, are you all right?”
His eyes opened. Looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. Then he shook his head at me. “The doctor is gone,” he said sadly. “It’s too bad. I liked him. He was nice to me.”