Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,104
begging, either, because it wouldn’t matter.
“You chose the wrong side, foxy,” Deimos told me in a singsong voice, his words followed by a harsh pounding on my rib cage. Something splintered, and I sucked in a ragged breath, pain exploding through my torso. “I could have put in a good word for you—kept this from happening.”
Finally, the kicks and stomps stopped, and a hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and rolled me onto my back. Deimos loomed over me, grinning, pupils so dilated that his eyes were completely black, full demon mode engaged. Still curled up, locked in this position, I wheezed through the agony of a broken rib, tears falling hot and heavy down my face and into my hair. Everything hurt. Everything. Something equally warm dribbled from my nose, and a bit of blood teased the corner of my trembling lips.
“You fucked up, witch,” he whispered, sweeping his greasy black hair back with a sneer. Constance crouched beside him, then dipped her finger into the blood oozing from my nose and smeared it over my lips.
“Red’s your color,” she sneered, and before I could swipe at her, some of the fight weaseling back into my limbs, Deimos grabbed me again and flipped me onto my stomach. This time I screamed, my rib taking a hard hit, snot and blood spattering the stones below, tears making the darkness swim.
Razor-tipped nails grazed my neck again as Constance gathered my hair with a gentleness that felt almost mocking. As I struggled through every sob, sharpness stabbing outward from my busted rib, she swept it all into one hand, then shoved my face into the stone, cheek-down, and wrapped my hair around her fist.
Holding it like a dog leash.
Riiiiip. With Avery and Blake loitering overhead, Deimos must have been the one to tear my jumpsuit clean in two, shredding the back, exposing me.
“Maybe you should just take his offer, eh?” the demon whispered in my ear, and my eyes widened. Fuck Lloyd Guthrie. Was this what he meant by applying pressure? Fire blasted through me like a nuclear bomb, and I swung back, gritting through the agony to slash at him, at Constance, at anyone within reach. Ineffectual, but as Deimos snapped my underwear’s waistband, then hiked the cotton up between my cheeks, it felt good to fight.
His knee found my back and drove in hard, forcing another scream from my ragged throat as bone crunched in my chest. He then tore my panties off, elastic groaning, cotton ripping, all my bits squished and twisted in the process.
Just as his hand smoothed over my ass, as someone stomped on my flailing legs and bruised my calves even more, there was a crash against the door. A snarl that I felt in my bones. The room stilled, Deimos’s fingers ghosting over my slit. Another crash. Male voices escalating outside.
The third crash sent chunks of wood and dust raining down on us, and Constance shrieked as footsteps thundered into the tiny space. Deimos’s filthy fingers were wrenched from my body, the knee on my back vanished, and a red jumpsuit flashed overhead as Rafe—my Rafe—tackled Deimos to the ground. Shivering with shock, panic, I dragged my body away from the scuffle as best I could, barely taking in the fact that Rafe had started slamming Deimos’s head into the ground and showed no signs of stopping. Fangs bared, the vampire smashed him into the stone over and over again, a plastic bag from the prison shop abandoned at the open doorway.
“Cooper… What the fuck is this?”
A black figure descended on me, but gentle hands found my body this time. Thompson? I blinked up at a familiar and very welcome face, at the one warlock who had always been decent to me.
“Can you stand, Fox?” he murmured as more uniformed warlocks streamed into the room, several dogpiling on Rafe and Deimos while two others dragged the rest of them out. I gargled some nonsense up at him, throat screamed to ribbons, blood dribbling down and soaking into my jumpsuit, then shook my head. Exhaling softly, he helped me up, then stilled when I wailed, his hand veering too close to my rib cage.
“Katja!” Rafe thundered my name, features contorted and savage, the bloodthirsty beast lurking beneath a calm veneer suddenly out for all to see. Deimos was gone, but they needed four guards to haul the raging vampire out of the storage closet, and a flash of bright blue beyond the doorway ended it