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I glanced up and nodded but couldn’t squeeze any words out. He left us in tense silence, the way we stayed for hours after until a high Rex slammed back into the room, a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.
“Bou-dic-ca,” he sang. “Wanna tell me where to find the man Paola’s looking for?”
I bit down on my lip.
“No? Okay. What about Luke?”
I held his glassy, wide-pupiled stare but said nothing. Given that Rex’s protégé had turned to rape, I should have put two and two together. Should’ve known Rex had been grooming the kid.
“All righty then.” He held the bottle to my lips. “Wanna sip?”
Without waiting for an answer, he forced the bottle into my mouth. Jack Daniels filled my mouth. I turned my head and spat. When I turned back to him, his eyes were on fucking fire.
“You fucking dare spit out my hospitality?” He backhanded me again with the bottle in hand.
I grunted as a flash of pain seared through my face. Slowly, I swiveled my head around and gave him an icy stare.
“Ya know what? I’m feelin’ like I need a little pussy.” He stood and staggered around the room. “Fucking your brother with that baton just didn’t do it for me. Thinking I should get a taste of your pretty little cunt.” He stopped and turned to Celt to make sure he was listening and looked back at me. “Again.”
I dropped my head, uttering, “Shit.” My eyes swung over to the bed. I’d put the pieces together back in the kitchen. As far as I knew, Celt wasn’t privileged to that little fact.
Celt roared and came out of the bed, only held in place by where his hands were bound to one post. Doc had been sloppy with his rope work. Whether intentionally or accidentally I didn’t know. Not that it mattered because the one place that Celt was still tied held firm. The bed had to be made with a stone core because it wouldn’t give.
Rex lifted a gun and pointed it at my brother. “Get the fuck back into bed.”
Celt eyed him coldly, his one eye swollen, but he sank to the bed.
Rex tied his feet to the bed post. “So there won’t be a fucking repeat of that shit,” he slurred. “Gotta remind you who’s in charge again, obviously.”
“You fucking. Sack. Of. Shit.” Celt’s voice rumbled as if came from the depths of hell where his soul burned. “Thought you were Pops’ best fucking friend.”
Rex roared with laughter. “Friends are for the weak. Just needed the virtuous fucker out of my way so I could run this town as it was meant to be run.”
Celt thrashed, pulling and pushing against his bonds. The bed groaned, but apparently, fucking Amish furniture and cockroaches were the only things that would survive a goddamn nuclear explosion.
Rex staggered over to me, grabbed my jaw, and forced the nastiest, most slobbery kiss on me, his rough lips scratching my own. My breath clogged in my throat. He violently thrust his tongue between my resistant lips. He tasted of whiskey and stale cigarettes. I gagged into his mouth, but he didn’t relent. I pushed with my mouth and tongue and bit at him. He growled as if it were foreplay. To him, it was. I twisted my head, desperately trying to get away, but his fingers dug into my face. The bruise on my jaw sent shock waves through my skull with the pressure.
I couldn’t see Celt in the bed, but I heard him bucking against his bonds with a stream of shit spewing from his mouth at Rex. Through my haze of trying to get that fucker’s nasty tongue out of my mouth and the music blaring in the background, I didn’t make any sense out of what my brother said. Yet, somewhere deep in my brain, it registered that this—Rex getting his rocks off, forcibly on me, in front of him—would fuck Celt up just as much as or more than Rex raping him with that goddamn baton.
I fought harder.
Rex pushed harder against my mouth.
I tasted copper. My blood? His? I didn’t fucking know.
After a minute, his phone went off at top volume—that stupid xylophone ring that everyone used. I sucked in a huge breath, relief filling my lungs as he reached into his pocket and looked at the screen. Sickly blue in the night color highlighted his face making it look ghostly and cold as fuck. Calculating malevolence washed over his features. His jaw clenched and half-chapped lips pressed tightly together inside his salt and pepper goatee.
“Ya know what? You’re not doing it for me tonight, anyway.”
Spittle landed on my face as he said the words. The bulge in his jeans said otherwise, but I was happy to escape his torture.
He stood. “I gotta take a little road trip. I’ll leave you in some... ” Rex cleared his throat. “. . . tender, but highly capable hands until I get back. Then maybe we can pick up where we left off.”
His words, like snakes, slithered over my skin. I wondered who the hell he meant by the capable hands. But for the moment, my body sagged on the heels of a repulsed shiver, and I thanked the fates that I wasn’t in for what Celt had gone through earlier today—or was it yesterday? Time blurred, with nothing but the same tied-up-in-the-dark-and-in-pain shit for hours and hours on end.
With a wink, Rex wobbled and swerved his way out the door and closed it behind him. A new lock on the outside of the door snicked into place.
38
