I watched them elevate her feet. I watched them assess her feeling helpless until Jace turned on me.
“Was she raped?”
Sophia’s hissed inhale accompanied his question, and I raged, thinking about the answer. Sick to my stomach about the possibilities. To know that he touched her, may have violated her in a way that no woman should ever experience, was enough to make me want to rip him to shreds.
“Stone?” He looked at me, and I growled, not being able to answer him.
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”
I walked away from them, the rage, the accusation in his eyes, and the devastation in Sophia’s eyes were the last thing I saw. I climbed into the van next to Onyx, with the body of my enemy loaded up in the back.
My response to Onyx’s question comes back to me now.
“Where are they taking her?”
“Where she needs to be. Away from me.”
The fury simmers, and I walk to the table with all my tools. My branding iron, ropes, needles, and zip ties are all neatly organized. My barbed wire and knives glint in the light. All devices used to inflict my favorite kinds of torture. Touching each knife, I think about how I’m going to use them. The cold metal is familiar, giving a sense of control that seeing Camryn near death took from me. I pick up my Dexter Russell 6-inch Skinner. Lightweight and sharp, it feels comfortable in my hand. Ready to remove his skin for my trophy, but I pause when I spot another knife. The newest one I have. One that I made. It’s Camryn’s artist palette knife. The one I stole all those months ago. The night I stalked her. The night I watched her through the glass. I pick it up instead. I am going to cut him with the knife I made from her art tools. It will be my tool to divest him of his organs, his skin. It feels divine. I test the edge, and when the sharp steel nicks my skin, creating a shallow wound, I enjoy the pain.
A groan makes me turn around and my prisoner. The mild sedative Onyx was administered while he was being loaded, and now it’s wearing off. I walk back to my table and pick up the hypodermic needle filled with Morphine. I will let myself enjoy it more. My boots sink into the wetness pooling below his naked feet, his urine and life’s blood making the ground muddy. As always, the sight of someone like him in pain, hurting, adds to my bloodlust. The tingling in my cock. I inject it right into his skin. Just enough to take off the edge. And watch as he settles, the pain fades. It will wear off just in time for my favorite part. I want him awake for this, not so incapacitated with pain that I can’t enjoy.
Moving around the back, I take in where the meat hooks are lodged in his back, the skin around each hook stretched from the weight of his hanging body. Blood trails down each wound, overhis bound hands, into the dark crack of his ass. The push at his body with my foot, the momentum spins his body like a carcass ready for the butcher to slaughter flesh from bone. He grunts, but doesn’t react otherwise, his pain receptors somewhat dulled by the narcotic deep into his bloodstream. I encircle his body until I face him. His naked body is covered in the dried blood from Camryn’s stab wounds. I run my knife along the puncture wounds, hating that he has even one drop of her blood on him. He doesn’t deserve any of her DNA; every molecule belongs to me.
When he first arrived, I sealed each of his injuries with liquid bandage, not wanting him to bleed out before I got my turn. The three stab wounds in his abdomen give some satisfaction. I’m fucking proud of the damage Camryn caused. My fierce countess got her licks in before she passed out, but I want more. I’m nowhere near appeased. I want, no, I need to annihilate him. For every wound on his body, hers are tripled. I close my eyes again. Sophia’s whispered phone call still buzzes in my brain.
“Listen Jace would kill me if he knew I was calling you, but I thought you should know she’s out of surgery, and?—”
Surgery. I didn’t let Sophia finish. “Is she okay?”
“She’s alive. Thirty stab wounds,” she continued. “Hyphema. They surgically repaired a few blood vessels that he nicked.She also has some micro-fractures in her neck bones from where he tried to?—”
Strangle her. I know precisely the bones El Jefe could have destroyed had he succeeded. Hyoid bone. Larynx. Thyroid cartilage. Cricoid cartilage. Her beautiful, sassy voice was possibly destroyed by his fingers.
“She’s in recovery. She woke up a few minutes ago. She’s still coming down from anesthesia, but she’s?—”
“Thank you for calling me.”
“Wait! She’s as?—”
I disconnected the call, unable to listen to it anymore. Icy hot hatred clouded all my rational thought. I shake away the horrors of Cam’s injuries. This fucker inserted her knife into her body 30 times, and not for pleasure. He didn’t use shallow, safe, controlled cuts. He didn’t intend to play and test her limits. He didn’t do it to let her enjoy the heightened sense of danger, the pleasure-pain that can come with knife play. He didn’t do it because he wanted her to orgasm. He had no plans to take care of her wounds and make sure she was okay after her climax ended. He did it to brutalize her, to kill her.
I slap his face, liking the way his head snaps to the left. “Wake the fuck up,” I growl, waiting for him to open his eyes fully. When he starts to blink, I press harder, and his eyes pop open. His pupils are dilated. His body is reacting to the pain, and I want even more. I want his tears. His penance for hurting what’s mine.
He’s aware now. He stares at me, hatred in his eyes. That’s fine. Hating me is the last thing he’ll do. I trail my knife from his temple over his eyes. He closes them and presses inward, feeling the bulbous shape of his eyeball, testing the orb’s bounciness. I move past his nose to his ear, watching my knife, while I feel his intense focus on me. Down I go, over his chest to the softness of his belly. He sucks in a breath, and I finally look at him. He’s scared, but pretending, fighting the natural inclination to fear a predator that is in complete control. I press my knife into his genitals right on the sensitive skin of his scrotum, wanting to destroy them, especially if they were inside my woman.
“Did you rape her?”He must see something on my face because his swollen lips curve up, but he doesn’t reply. I push the tip of my knife deeper until I puncture him. He flinches, but doesn’t say a word. Perspiration covers his skin, and his breathing quickens. “Answer me.”
The hoarse voice that finally responds makes my hand shake. “Her screams were gorgeous. So much pain. I didn’t even mind that she begged for you to save her while I bred her.”
Guilt lacerates me, burning deep in my gut. Camryn needed me to be there before he could hurt her, and it takes everything in me not to react to his taunts. I breathe in slowly. He wants me to kill him faster; be done with it, but I refuse to let him have the satisfaction.
Slicing neatly through his scrotum, his balls, while shiny, filled with blood vessels, drop, hanging by thick arteries. “You won’t need these anymore.” I slice through the connective tissue and hold the orbs in my hand. He continues to watch me as I toss them into the bucket that will hold his organs once I’m finished.
My hand shakes at the thought of her calling for me. That she needed me to be there before that bastard could hurt her. Guilt lacerates me, burning deep in my gut. It takes everything in me not to react to his taunts. I breathe in slowly. He wants me to kill him faster; be done with it, but I can’t.
“You stabbed her twenty times.”
“I enjoyed it. Each time I stuck my knife into her I thought of you. Thought of how you would find her body. Bled out, filled with my cum. I planned to fuck her while she screamed your name, begging for you to save her. Too bad I didn’t get my chance. It would have been nice to destroy what you love.”
