in your blood as I cover you in my cum.”
“No!” I screamed as he shoved the tip of the knife into my bicep. “You just stabbed me.”
As blood poured from the hole, he leaned forward and rubbed his face in it. “Mmm,” he moaned. “And I’m going to stab you again.”
The roughness of his whiskers scraped across the wound, and I shouted from all the pain. I shouted as his tongue lapped my skin. I shouted from the burning I still felt in my feet. And I shouted from the look in his eyes. It was one I’d seen only once before, but it hadn’t been this intense…this delusional.
“Blood gets me all”—he glanced down as he jerked his erection against my stomach—“hard and fucking horny.”
When he smiled again, I shivered.
“Stick out your tongue.”
I knew this was only going to cause more pain since he’d grabbed ahold of my tongue before, but I didn’t think I had another choice. There was a knife in his hand, and he got off on the sound of my cries.
I slowly parted my lips, and as my tongue came through, he clamped his fingers around it. My eyes watered, and my stomach churned from the gagging.
“I want you to ask yourself how much your tongue means to you. Because there’s a good chance you’re going to wake up, and it’s going to be gone. I’m going to rip it from your mouth and use it to paint your blood all over my body, and then I’m going to use it to jerk off.”
He finally released my tongue, and I sucked in as much air as I could.
“You must be hungry by now. I could feed it to you.” He bit into my cheek so hard that I thought he was going to take a chunk out of it. “Your cum-covered tongue, piece by piece. I’ll even cut it up for you, so you don’t have to swallow it all at once. You can take your time with it. Really chew it.”
I couldn’t hide the emotion on my face, the anxiety that caused my whole body to shake, the fear that was gnawing as deeply as the babies had chewed my feet. He was getting what he wanted, and I was sure he could see it all over me.
How long could I endure this?
Was it even worth it?
Not if I didn’t get out of here alive.
“I have work to do.” He reached behind him, his hand returning with a syringe.
“What kind of work? What are you going to do to me? Are you going to take my tongue…” My voice drifted off as he shot the liquid into my body. I no longer felt my mouth. Or my tongue.
I felt heat.
I felt each ray wrap its toasty light around me.
And then all I saw was black.
Twenty
Kyle
“Kyle.”
The sound of Garin’s voice started to break through the fog. I couldn’t decipher his words; I could just hear the different tones that came out of him. And I could feel him—the warmth of his skin on mine, the smell of his air. His presence.
Kyle.
It took several blinks until I finally heard what he was asking.
Wake up, Kyle.
He wanted me to wake up. So, I tried to liven my body, wiggling my toes, pressing my knees closer together. They hurt, much more than I was prepared for. I stretched out my fingers and my arms and my shoulders, and those were really sore, too. I opened my eyes last.
“Hi.”
I was greeted by green. Garin’s green. So deep, so perfect, so gemlike that it almost made me squint. They stared into mine and didn’t move. Neither did his face as it hovered over me. Close. So close I could smell him…so I knew. I knew it really was Garin. Not Breath. No torture chamber. Just Garin and me.
And our cell.
“Hi,” I whispered back, groaning into my palm as the hurt started to really spike. My tongue ached like it had been sucked through the hose of a vacuum for hours. But it was still attached; that was the important part. I did a quick shimmy to make sure all of me was still attached. I was naked, but I was all there.
“I’m going to lift your head, so I can stand, but I don’t want you to get up, and I don’t want you to move.”
I looked at his face again. “Where am I?”
“On my thigh. That’s where you’ve been sleeping.”
He moved gingerly, sliding out from under my head, gently resting