tropical heat, I didn’t scream out in pain. My too-cold muscles throbbed and my skin felt like it was being sliced apart with razors. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.
And I pictured Zaal. I memorized his face, because as I lay on this floor, now too hot, sweating on account of the burning air, I became sure we would never be reunited after all.
5
194
I woke, slumped in the corner of a small room. I blinked and blinked as I drank in the dark space. There was nothing in here but a screen on a desk and the picana resting against it.
My eyes narrowed as I stared at the picana; then I glanced at the screen. Distant images began playing like a reel in my head as I stared at the dark-haired female, lying unconscious in the center of the cage. I struggled to know who she was. I struggled to remember how we got here.
The serum had taken hold and brought severe memory loss. Mistress must have loaded my collar with double-dose serum pellets—she did that from time to time when the hit was of great importance. The serum didn’t work on me like they thought it did under the usual dose. I was meant to be completely under Mistress’s control, all day, every day—but I wasn’t. Instead, with this bastard collar, with this double dose the guard had put in, I had blacked out when it injected me. I didn’t even know how long I’d been out.
My lip curled. Truth was, Mistress didn’t need to drug me at all. They had all the control they needed. I would do anything they said to keep 152 alive.
Anything. Pain and killing meant nothing to me. I’d done it for so long, the screams of my victims had faded to vapor in my head. The men who had died under my hands were nothing to me but one step closer to 152’s freedom.
I squeezed my eyes shut and, as though watching from a distance, I recalled everything I’d done under the drug’s influence. I saw myself carrying a dark-haired female in the cage to this chamber. I’d turned the temperature of the room to a freezing degree. I’d made her strip. I saw myself hitting the bars of the cage, the electrical currents arcing to shock her flesh. And I saw myself returning to this room and turning the heat up to the highest point. Yet the female seemed untouched by the sudden change in temperature.
Pushing myself to my feet, I staggered across the room, my neck burning and raw under the collar. Reaching the desk, I stared at the screen, the single camera in the room focused on the female.
I swallowed as I watched her. She was slight in build with long black hair that ran to her lower back. Her skin was tanned, and disgust fused in my veins when I recognized her features: Georgian. I hated Georgians. Mistress’s face flashed in my mind and I snarled aloud. I especially hated Georgian females. Suka. They were all suka whores.
Then my skin pricked when the female in the cage moved. A pool of sweat lay below her and her dark hair was slick to her damp naked skin. Moaning in her sleep, she rolled onto her back, her arms stretched out at her sides. My breathing paused when her full tits came into view, her pussy only slightly showing because of a bent leg. Her stomach was flat and dripping with droplets of sweat. Her arms and legs were slight but toned. My head dropped to the side as I studied her.
Mistress didn’t look like this. Mistress was harder, more muscled. There was nothing about Mistress that I liked, but this Georgian female …
As she lay on that floor, my breathing paused. Images of 152 unconscious and broken—used and abused—on her bed flashed through my head. I shook my head trying to push them away, but a sick feeling burned in my chest seeing this dark-haired female like this. Broken. Helpless.
A sudden rage consumed me. I wouldn’t let myself do this. Couldn’t. You hate all Georgians, I reminded myself. No matter how broken and helpless they look.
The female’s face was turned away from the camera; then on another groan she turned and her face came fully into view. I stilled again. I stilled and I stared. She had smooth skin on her face. A small nose that was slightly upturned at the end. Her lips were big and