the table, the kind meant for skinning animals. It could take off thin layers so as not to waste lots of meat. Grace shuddered. He really intended to just cut Asher’s mark right off her. The tears came harder.
Even if her master was coming for her, Lucas was ready to get started now. His sadism likely hadn’t been fed in months. She knew she wasn’t going to be rescued before he flayed the brand off her hip. He had a metal disk on the table with his estate symbol, as well as the tools needed to heat it.
She flinched when he brushed the hair out of her eyes, a false kindness that would evaporate as quickly as it had visited. The walls were closing in. She felt like the inmate about to be put to death, watching the red phone in the last few seconds, hoping for a reprieve. Ring. Ring. Ring. Goddammit, Ring.
But there was no phone and no reprieve coming. Instead, she cried out as the whip came down on her, tearing at her skin like a child ripping the wrapping off a gift. She felt the little drops going down her back that weren’t water. Then she was suddenly numb, and she couldn’t feel anything anymore.
***
Grace couldn’t be sure of the amount of time that had passed since he’d started, but Lucas finally grew bored with whipping her. If the hook hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen to the ground long ago.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Please ring. That bright red phone, still in her head, still standing there silent, mocking her. Refusing to give her freedom.
“Why couldn’t you give me what you gave him? You little bitch. I brought you here. I’m your true master. How could you be such an ungrateful cunt that you wouldn’t give me everything?”
She was crying too hard to answer him, and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to her anyway, so she remained silent, hoping somehow to disappear and evaporate into a mist that could slide underneath the gap in the door and up the stairs to safety.
“You will give me everything. Do you understand me? Every fucking part of your soul will be mine. You’ll belong to me so deeply you won’t even remember his name.” The whip came down across the center of her back, flaying another piece of her skin open as he unleashed his anger. The pain snapped back into sharper focus.
“Please,” she whimpered.
He hadn’t made her address him properly yet. But it was coming. She could feel it. He was waiting for the right moment to wring the word from her lips. And he would succeed, so much more easily than she’d ever wanted him to. It was already becoming clear how very little it would take to reduce her to the scared animal he’d turned her into. Asher may have dressed Grace up like a kitty, but it was Lucas who had truly made her an animal, and it was Lucas trying to return her to that state now.
He placed the whip on the table and moved in front of her, hooking his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her to him. His mouth crushed hers, his tongue sliding inside her like a serpent. She tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go.
“Well, if you don’t want to kiss me like you mean it, maybe we should go ahead and start with the fun stuff.”
Her eyes went to the knife and branding tools. “N-no. Please.”
“Please what? Say it, and I might spare you a little longer. He’s not coming for you. He’s in prison. He’s never leaving prison, and you’re never leaving this dungeon. So tell me, pet . . . who am I to you?”
The devil. But she’d already lost the courage to say it out loud, so she stayed quiet.
He grabbed her hair and pulled, wrenching her head back, and then he pressed the knife to her throat. “Or maybe I should just skin you and be done with it. What do you think? Are you worth the effort and cost to keep alive?”
Her heart was fluttering in her chest so fast she couldn’t think. Then the dog started barking. Lucas never let him see this part. She looked over at the Australian shepherd. He’d been getting more and more agitated as things went on, and now it seemed he was aware a life might be on the line, and he didn’t like