him since he wants me to scream so badly. Only now am I realizing my determination may be the very thing causing me additional torment. He now knows I’m not shy, and that I’ve been fighting him with silence, so he’ll work even harder to make me crack. It’s how he gets off. He doesn’t want the purity he stole from me my first week here. He wants to suffocate my soul one painful minute at a time, and I’m on the verge of letting him do it.
The concrete my feet are dangling mere inches above digs into my knees when Vladimir’s goon releases the chains holding me hostage. This time, when he tosses me over his shoulder, I don’t put up any fight. There’s an unusual sensation bristling in the air. It feels like I am dreaming even though I’m trapped in the sickening throes of a recurring nightmare.
I’m probably on the cusp of dying.
It could be worse. I anticipated the knowledge to bombard me with horror, whereas all I’m feeling is peace.
Once I am returned to the room across from Vladimir’s private abode, a thin nightie is shoved into my chest. “Put this on. Vladimir will happily tear it off you later. He likes unwrapping his favorite whores.”
The idea of giving Vladimir any pleasure repulses me, but I slip the thin material over my head, nonetheless. It barely covers my nipples and the faint hairs between my legs Vladimir refuses for his captives to remove, but it’s better than remaining naked. A thin barrier of protection will forever exceed nothing.
The goon has only just stepped out of my room when the lady I saw earlier sprints past him. Although her clothes are torn open, her body isn’t harnessing any of the marks I anticipated her to have after her visit with the devil.
Is that because she’s already marked? If so, I wish even more now that I didn’t attempt to take out one of Vladimir’s guests with the blade of a razor my first week here.
If scars will save me from Vladimir, I’ll wear them with honor.
“I’ll come back. I promise I will be back,” the redhead shouts in multiple languages as she darts down the corridor.
When my door slams shut at the same time she comes to a grinding halt, I race for the keylock. I can’t see the person responsible for her frozen stance partway down the corridor, but I don’t need to see him to know who he is. The redhead’s face is holding the same sickened expression mine did when Vladimir forced his cock between my teeth my first week here.
I press my ear against the door when accented voices boom through it. Although I can’t speak a word of English, I do understand it. My father loved English-speaking television shows. My mother and I regularly watched them with him, so we caught onto the lingo.
“Is she as you remember?” asks a familiar, arrogant tone. Vladimir sounds like he’s still hard from watching me being punished. I’m not surprised. He’s a sick fuck who would have enjoyed watching the welts in my back bleed more than my pathetic attempt to give him head.
“Yes,” answers a male voice I don’t recognize. “You can starve off your hunger for years, but it doesn’t make your desire to eat any less rampant.”
If I were half the woman I once was, I would have agreed with him.
Now I doubt I’ll ever be desired again, much less feel desire.
It dawns on me that my earlier assumptions about the redhead’s scars saving her from Vladimir were true when he spits out, “Even knowing she’s marked?” He sounds as disgusted as his abhorrent face makes me feel.
After a few seconds of painstaking silence, the second man replies, “Scars don’t bother me. It’s the marks you can’t see that are the hardest to heal.”
His words hit me harder than I care to admit. I’m damaged both inside and out, so if what he’s saying is true, it’ll take more than a hearty meal and a long shower to fix me, and unfortunately, not all the damage occurred here.
My focus returns to the confrontation occurring outside of my room when Vladimir grunts out, “To each his own. Just don’t mark her any more than you already have. There are a long list of men waiting their turn.”
I want to scream for the redhead to run again, but she has more gall than all the women in this compound combined. “He will kill you