it registers what he’s going to do. I’m far from an expert in sex, but aren’t things going to be a little tricky with me in this position?
I swallow hard, my heartbeat kicking up a notch. “Wait. How are you going to do... how are you going to…?”
His eyes dance. “I’m not going to fuck you. Not yet.”
Instead of undoing his pants, he pulls his belt slowly out of the waist of them.
My eyes go huge as he winds the buckle end of his belt around his fist.
The memory tears at my mind, slicing, knife sharp.
Sarah, being dragged through the field I and dozens of Colony members were working in. Sarah, disappearing around the corner of the House of Elders, two guards leading her kicking and screaming toward the infamous Circle of Retribution.
Dozens of us led out to stand in the square and watch as she’s tied to a post in the ground. Jacob, pulling his belt from his pants and winding it around his fist.
Sarah’s horrible, terrified, pain-riddled screams, and the sharp snap and slash of the belt across her bared back—
Spider snaps the belt in his hands, flinging me back into the present. Back into the room with him, where I’m still bound, back exposed, waiting for the same fate.
I whip my head around, following his movements as he stalks in behind me. Struck with wild panic, I jerk, twisting so violently that the bed shifts several inches.
“No! Spider, no, no!”
Spider’s hand clamps my shoulder. “Stop.” His voice is cold and hard, unyielding.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart slams against my ribs.
Sarah had cried for hours after Jacob finished with her. I’d seen the angry red welts that covered her back. She’d had to sleep on her stomach for weeks. Imagining the pain, the sheer anguish of Spider’s belt cutting across my back, my knees threaten to fold right there.
“Spider, please don’t, pleasepleasepleasedon’t…” I’m a gibbering, crazed mess, writhing in his grip.
He presses against me, cupping my hips, holding them still. “Have you ever been whipped before?”
I’m not sure what I hear in his voice, but there’s a genuine need to know there.
“No, but…”
“Breathe, Wildcat. All you have to do is tell me what I want to know. This only has to last as long as you make it last.”
Oh, he just doesn’t understand. He can’t know. He can’t possibly get it.
“Please, you don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just—”
“Enough.” He grips my jaw. “You’re not getting out of this. Mouth closed. Listen to me.”
I fall into a terrible silence, panting, hanging there uselessly between the bedposts, panic shredding my thoughts to tatters. Tears leak out of my eyes and I sniffle.
“So, here’s how it’s going to go,” he says, gathering my hair in his fist, yanking my head back. “You’ll get six lashes for the wallet. That part’s a done deal.”
He releases his grip.
I can hear the betrayal in his voice; it turns his tone to ice.
“When I am finished, you will tell me the truth about you and Adamson.”
I snap my head up, my heart stopping cold. This is going to be a problem.
“I told you,” I say in a frantic, high voice, “I have no idea who that is! Before you said it, I’d never heard the name before in my—”
“Don’t lie.”
I put my head back, my eyes swimming. “I’m not lying!” My voice breaks.
“Yes you are.”
I’m not sure what it is—maybe it’s something in the conviction of his voice, or in the cold determination of it—but it hits me that something’s off. Something has happened since those hours in the cell that’s made him think I was lying the last time he interrogated me about this. Something that’s confirmed all his suspicions. Whatever it is, it’s set his belief in stone that I’m hiding some connection to Adamson beyond the picture he apparently had of me in his house—a fact that still makes zero sense to me.
Before I can ask, Spider moves to my side, putting himself in view again. He’s holding the belt in his fists.
“It’s simple,” he informs me. “You will tell me everything you know about him—”
“But I—”
“You’ll tell me who he is, where you know him from, where you met him, right now. If you don’t, you’ll get this.” He holds up the belt.
“But—”
“Every time you don’t tell me, you’ll get it again. You talk, it stops. You don’t, it doesn’t stop. The six lashes you get for your betrayal today… Let’s