The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,76

waiting for one thing and one thing only.

His hand retreated. And then the sound of a zipper being yanked down gave her the extra incentive to let her legs fall open. She needed him to try to mount her.

And what do you know, he gave it a shot.

Shoving her thighs even wider apart, he got down on his hands and knees and began to crab-walk into position.

One shot. And she took it.

With a sudden burst of energy, she jacked up and nailed a grip on the motherfucker’s nuts like she intended to castrate him. And gee whiz, that was exactly what was on her dance card.

Wrenching as hard as she could, she ignored the screams of pain in her thigh and her head and twisted with every ounce of strength she had. The guard let out a high-pitched holler, like a lapdog that had fallen into a deep fryer, and listed to the side.

That was all she needed. Throwing him off of her, she jumped to her feet as he cupped his cock and balls and curled into a ball.

Looking around quickly, she needed …

Limping across in her socks, she unlatched one of the chains that had been intended for her and dragged it back across the floor. Coiling it up around her fist, the heavy links formed a cage around her tight hand.

She went across and straddled the man’s head and shoulders. “You want a good fucking, asshole? How ’bout this.”

Lifting her arm high above her head, she brought the weight down with as much force as she could, striking at his cranium. The man immediately let out a roar and tried to cover himself up top, his arms forming a barrier around his skull.

Fine. Lobotomy later.

She went for below his ribs, for the soft field of flesh that protected his kidneys and his spleen. Over and over again, until he attempted a new defensive crouch. Back to the head—harder this time, until she broke a sweat even though she was mostly naked and the cellar’s air temp had to be in the fifties.

Over.

And over.

Again.

Anywhere she could find a place of vulnerability.

And it was the strangest thing: She had all the strength in the world during the beating; it was as if she were possessed, her injuries fading into the background in deference to the superior need to ensure her own survival.

She had never killed anyone before. Stolen from people? Ever since she was eleven, sure. Lied when she had to? Yup. Broken into all kinds of places she hadn’t been welcome in? Nailed it.

But death had always struck her as a level she didn’t want to go to. Like heroin to a pot user, it was the granddaddy of them all—and once you’d crossed that line? Well, then you really were a criminal.

In spite of all that, however, some minutes or hours or days later … she stood over a bloodied mess of a body.

Sucking breath down into her lungs, she let her arm come to rest by her side. As her strength ebbed, her grip on the chain relented and the links uncoiled themselves from her fist, falling to the floor in a hiss.

“Move,” she panted. “You have to move.”

Jesus … when she had prayed for survival, she hadn’t considered that God might give her the power to break one of his Ten Commandments.

“Move, Sola. You must move.”

Dizzy, nauseous, with a headache that was so bad her vision fizzled in and out, she tried to think.

Boots. She was going to need boots—they were more critical than pants in the snow. Scrambling around, she picked up the first one she came to, only to have it slip right out of her hold.

Blood. There was blood all over her, her right hand especially.

Wiping her palms on her floppy parka, she went back to work. One boot. Then the other. Laces sloppy but double-knotted.

Back to her victim.

She paused for a beat to take in the mess.

Shit, she was going to be seeing this on the backs of her lids for a very, very long time.

Assuming she survived.

Making the sign of the cross over her chest, she got down next to the man and patted around. The gun she found was a godsend; so was the iPhone that was … shit, password protected. Plus it wasn’t getting a signal, although maybe that would change when she was aboveground.

All she needed was the emergency call feature and then she could toss the thing.

As she leaped out of the cell, she slid the