This Is War, Baby - K Webster Page 0,5

in my legs to a minimum. Each step is slow and painful but I’ll be free soon. Just a few more. My fingers clutch the cold metal and I twist.

Free.

At last.

I smile for the first time in days.

Until the fire licks at my ass.

One. Two. Three. Four.

I’ve barely made sense of the pain when the strong arm is back around my waist pinning me against him. Searing hot pain brands my butt cheeks, and my moment of hope is replaced with fear. What is happening?

“I told you. For every step you tried to escape, I’d whip you. And you made it four steps before I caught you. Does it hurt, Baylee?” His masculine scent which used to warm and comfort me—even turned me on, later—infiltrates my pores. Now it only turns my stomach sour.

“Fuck you, Gabe,” I snarl.

His hand slides up over my breast and pinches my nipple brutally. “I most certainly intend on fucking you, my brave, sweet girl,” he says with a gravelly rumble. “But first, we’re going to punish you for that naughty mouth.”

I can’t do this.

I should have died down there in that hole.

It seems preferable than to be in the steely clutches of this nightmare.

“Time to learn this new world of yours, sweetheart.”

A shudder wracks through me as his thumb runs over my nipple, this time almost reverently. My flesh raises at his gentle touch and I nearly vomit.

“I like ‘em dirty. And you’re as dirty as they come. Soon, you’ll be just as dirty on the inside,” he murmurs against the shell of my ear, sending goosebumps over my flesh. “You’ll like it too. In fact, you’ll love it. One day you will thank me.”

I will never thank him.

Ever.

SWEET BAYLEE.

So innocent and pure.

It was almost too late. That fucker had nearly ruined her.

But she’s mine to ruin. Every inch of her pale, dirty flesh. All mine. I’ve waited for so long. So fucking long. And now I have an excuse.

This past summer was the worst. Fucking agony.

Watching her bounce around in her tiny shorts and tight tank tops was painful. So goddamned torturous that I’d nearly yanked her out of that public pool one day and taken her long ago.

But the timing wasn’t right.

Things weren’t yet in place.

In my world, timing is everything. The early bird may catch the worm. But it’s the patient bird who wins the dirt and all the worms in it.

Baylee is the most coveted worm of all.

So alive and free. Sexy yet unknowing of her allure to every man on this earth, aside from her father.

She was meant to be mine.

And she will be.

The girl isn’t ready yet, but I will teach her.

Drag her through hell and then hold her on the other side. Nurse her soul back to health and heal all the broken parts of her. I’ll be the sun and moon in her world. All thoughts will revert back to me. Always.

The training will be brutal. For her.

For me, it will be decadent perfection.

I will own every inch of her inside and out. I’ll fuck her into oblivion. I will be the very thing she craves.

My plan will mean that I will lose her for a bit but when it all settles, I’ll claim her again. She’ll belong to me and nobody will say a fucking word. Her father will thank me. Her mother will hug me. Her boyfriend will hate me.

And she will love me.

I KICK MY legs out in an attempt to make a connection with anything that will keep me from going back down into that hole. The house is so sparse though, definitely not the house he owns next door to my own. There’s no furniture in the kitchen. Only wood planks stand between me and that black hell.

Gabe is a thousand times stronger than me, especially in my weakened state, and I’m nothing against his grip around me.

“Save your energy, sweetheart. You’ll need it.”

His warning chills my bones and I fall limp in his arms. At this point, the darkness is preferable to having him touch me and threaten me.

“Good girl.”

This is the point where I give up. Whatever will be will be. I’m no match against a forty-one-year-old man. My father was someone I had always counted on to protect me because he was big and strong and fearless. Gabe kind of fell into the same category.

Until he stole me.

Then he became the villain in this story.

If Dad only knew his best friend betrayed him in the worst possible way,