Sucking in a shuddering inhale, I waited for him to speak. With a slam of the metal rod against the metal bars, a jolt of electricity sang as it traveled through the metal bars. I scurried farther into the center of the small cage, only bringing me closer to my captor’s dominating presence. From what I’d seen from Zaal’s picture, this man could surely rival him in height and width.
My eyes were wide, my arms holding my coat tightly around my waist, when my captor struck the bars one again and aggressively commanded, “Davdget’!”
I flinched at the guttural, harsh sound of his voice. Then ice ran through my veins. It had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. The man had spoken to me in Georgian. He commanded me to stand. Though it was clear from his accent that he was Russian.
He knew I was Georgian.
My eyes closed while I debated the probability that he knew who I was. But I steeled my nerves and resolved to deny my true name.
I was Elene Melua, a poor farm girl from Kazreti, Georgia. And I knew nothing of the Kostava Clan. I knew nothing of Zaal.
The rod striking the bars with an incredible force caused me to jump in shock. My captor screamed, “I said stand!” in his heavily accented Georgian.
Fear alone had me lurching to my feet, the ceiling of the cage now only a few feet above my head. I suddenly felt closed in and claustrophobic. I was terrified. As weak as I know that makes me sound, when my family had been known for their strength, I was terrified of this man.
This monster.
My captor stepped closer to the cage, the metal prod slipping through the gap in between the bars until it stopped just inches from my chest. I remained absolutely still. I could hear the electricity building at the end of the metal rod. I prayed he wouldn’t push it against my chest.
My eyes remained downcast, until he ordered, “Look up!”
I flinched at the venom in his voice, his harsh and scathing voice. But too afraid to disobey, I snapped my eyes to meet his. The moment our gazes clashed, I felt seared on the spot. There was nothing but contempt and hatred in his piercing stare. His nostrils flared as he watched me, and his scarred top lip curled as if in disgust.
He rolled his neck, a gesture that looked impossible under the tightness of the metal collar and with the thickness of his muscles. Then he closed in, his heavily built chest pushing against the bars. As his skin connected with the metal, I could see the electrical current hit his scarred tattooed skin, volts of electricity shooting through his bones. But this man didn’t even flinch. His arm holding the electric rod didn’t even move. His eyes not once flickered away from mine.
If I had felt fear before, it was nothing to the pure terror I felt under this man’s hateful, penetrating stare. This man felt no pain. This man who clearly wanted to hurt me.
As my desperate situation began to hit home, he raised his chin and coldly ordered, “Strip.”
My face blanched. I didn’t move, paralyzed by fright. But he shook his head and snarled, “Strip!” He paused and leaned his head forward to hiss menacingly, “Suka.”
Bitch. He’d called me a bitch in Russian.
He pressed something on the top of the black metal rod that caused sparks to hiss from the tip. Forced into action, my trembling hands lifted to my coat. It took longer than I meant to push my heavy coat from my body. My arms were numb with cold and distress.
All the time the scarred man watched me, the terrifying buzzing from the rod mere inches away. Tears built in my eyes as my fingers next fumbled with the buttons on my blouse. The minutes that I undressed felt like hours, my clothes dropping to the floor. The slap of the harsh cold air almost brought me to my knees. But I willed myself to be strong. My tears didn’t escape even though they built like a wave. I would not fall to the floor in fear, even though my legs warred with my quest to remain standing tall.
As my pants fell to the floor, my underwear the only remaining garments, I pictured Zaal and Anri in my mind. I pictured Zaal’s suffering for years under the torture of Jakhua. And I pictured Zaal in the photograph, smiling and in love.
Zaal had survived.
I was Kostava. I had the strong soul of our family line.
I could survive this, too.
Inhaling deep, I gritted my teeth at the humiliation of being naked in front of a man. I had never been with a man. I had never been naked and exposed, and now this man was forcing me to bare all to him.
My hands shook profusely as I fought to free the clasp of my bra. I winced as the lace bra fell free, cold air biting at the flesh of my breasts.
I fought back the need to cover myself; instead I forced my hands to lower to my panties. I pushed them down my ice-burned red legs. When I was free of my clothes, I straightened, keeping my eyes downcast.
“Push them out of the cage,” the man said, withdrawing the rod from before my chest. Bending down, I gathered my clothes and pushed them out of the cage as ordered. Backing away, I took my place again in the center of the cage.
I waited.
And I waited.
It felt like at least an hour passed as I stood in the middle of the cage, my captor standing before me, glaring. The whole time glaring. I did not need to look up to see this.
Suddenly, when I feared I would fall to the floor through exhaustion and cold, my captor turned and walked away down the narrow hallway, leaving me alone.
I remained standing for a long time afterward in case this was some test I was meant to pass. But when my knees finally buckled I had no choice but to lie on the floor.
The black tiles were so cold beneath my skin that I felt like I was lying upon a block of ice. But I stayed strong. I didn’t let the fear take control. I didn’t let my despair make me cry. And even when the temperature in the room abruptly switched from Arctic cold to tropical heat, I didn’t scream out in pain. My too-cold muscles throbbed and my skin felt like it was being sliced apart with razors. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.
And I pictured Zaal. I memorized his face, because as I lay on this floor, now too hot, sweating on account of the burning air, I became sure we would never be reunited after all.
5
194
I woke, slumped in the corner of a small room. I blinked and blinked as I drank in the dark space. There was nothing in here but a screen on a desk and the picana resting against it.
My eyes narrowed as I stared at the picana; then I glanced at the screen. Distant images began playing like a reel in my head as I stared at the dark-haired female, lying unconscious in the center of the cage. I struggled to know who she was. I struggled to remember how we got here.
The serum had taken hold and brought severe memory loss. Mistress must have loaded my collar with double-dose serum pellets—she did that from time to time when the hit was of great importance. The serum didn’t work on me like they thought it did under the usual dose. I was meant to be completely under Mistress’s control, all day, every day—but I wasn’t. Instead, with this bastard collar, with this double dose the guard had put in, I had blacked out when it injected me. I didn’t even know how long I’d been out.
My lip curled. Truth was, Mistress didn’t need to drug me at all. They had all the control they needed. I would do anything they said to keep 152 alive.
Anything. Pain and killing meant nothing to me. I’d done it for so long, the screams of my victims had faded to vapor in my head. The men who had died under my hands were nothing to me but one step closer to 152’s freedom.
I squeezed my eyes shut and, as though watching from a distance, I recalled everything I’d done under the drug’s influence. I saw myself carrying a dark-haired female in the cage to this chamber. I’d turned the temperature of the room to a freezing degree. I’d made her strip. I saw myself hitting the bars of the cage, the electrical currents arcing to shock her flesh. And I saw myself returning to this room and turning the heat up to the highest point. Yet the female seemed untouched by the sudden change in temperature.
Pus
hing myself to my feet, I staggered across the room, my neck burning and raw under the collar. Reaching the desk, I stared at the screen, the single camera in the room focused on the female.
I swallowed as I watched her. She was slight in build with long black hair that ran to her lower back. Her skin was tanned, and disgust fused in my veins when I recognized her features: Georgian. I hated Georgians. Mistress’s face flashed in my mind and I snarled aloud. I especially hated Georgian females. Suka. They were all suka whores.
Then my skin pricked when the female in the cage moved. A pool of sweat lay below her and her dark hair was slick to her damp naked skin. Moaning in her sleep, she rolled onto her back, her arms stretched out at her sides. My breathing paused when her full tits came into view, her pussy only slightly showing because of a bent leg. Her stomach was flat and dripping with droplets of sweat. Her arms and legs were slight but toned. My head dropped to the side as I studied her.
Mistress didn’t look like this. Mistress was harder, more muscled. There was nothing about Mistress that I liked, but this Georgian female …
As she lay on that floor, my breathing paused. Images of 152 unconscious and broken—used and abused—on her bed flashed through my head. I shook my head trying to push them away, but a sick feeling burned in my chest seeing this dark-haired female like this. Broken. Helpless.
A sudden rage consumed me. I wouldn’t let myself do this. Couldn’t. You hate all Georgians, I reminded myself. No matter how broken and helpless they look.
The female’s face was turned away from the camera; then on another groan she turned and her face came fully into view. I stilled again. I stilled and I stared. She had smooth skin on her face. A small nose that was slightly upturned at the end. Her lips were big and pursed. Her black eyebrows were pulled down, and I knew she was in pain.
I smirked.
I smirked seeing how easily she was breaking.
“Suffer, suka,” I whispered to myself, my voice raspy from the needles in my collar. But that smirk faded when a small whimper left her lips.
Her pretty face screwed up in pain, and I felt a foreign ache in my chest. 152’s screaming face came to mind. Her screaming out in pain when she was being abused by the guards under Mistress’s orders. Ordered to keep me under her control.
This female in the cage sounded just like 152.
Chasing the ache away, I let the ice fill my veins. I had to cause her pain. I had no choice.
The beast would bring her pain like nothing before. She’d be terrified of me like they all were. I would torture her until she told me who she was to my hit, the Kostava male. Until she told me how to get past his army of protectors. Until she told me a way I could capture my prey and bring him to this chamber, to unleash on him hell in her place.
Only then Mistress would keep 152 from being sent to Master. Only then Mistress would keep 152 from being sent away from me.
Once more my eyes drifted to the Georgian female. I closed my eyes and pictured the bruises on 152’s skin. On her legs and hips. Any empathy for this dark-haired female was gone.
There was no choice. No room for weakness.
Snapping my eyes open, I walked to the thermostat and dropped the temperature back to a minus degree setting. The vents sounded beyond the door that led to the chamber. I watched as the cold air began circulating around her. My eyes flared when another moan ripped from between her full lips, and her body curled in. White puffs of mist shot out of her mouth, as her breathing increased to short pained pants.
Reaching for the picana, I had gone to leave when I heard a muffled scream. I looked back to the screen. The Georgian was on her back. Her eyes were screwed shut. Then, mouth silently dropping open, her eyes sprang open, staring straight down the lens of the camera.
A rush of breath escaped my lips. Her eyes were as dark as the paint on the chamber’s walls. They were huge. I urged my feet to move, my grip tightened on the prod in my hand, but I couldn’t fucking move.
The female rolled onto her stomach and tried to push herself up off the floor of the cage. My teeth scraped across my bottom lip as her ass slowly lifted. Like everything else about this female, it was nothing like Mistress. The little Georgian’s ass was firm and round. It was smooth and soft. It stirred life in my dick.
A growl built in my chest as my cock ached with its growing hardness. Forcing my eyes from the screen, I allowed myself one last lingering glance. The female had managed to sit, arms wrapped around her legs. Her huge eyes were darting around the chamber. Something warm built in my chest as I watched her. She looked a little older than 152, but not by much.
And with the thought of 152, any warmth building inside morphed into ice. This suka is Georgian, I told myself. It was the Georgians who took us away. And it was a Georgian bitch who had ruined my life. Fucked with my head. Hurt 152.
Georgian, I thought. I make Georgians pay. I bring them pain. I collect their screams. I bring them nothing but death.
Surging with the focus of causing pain, I opened the door to the chamber, not even flinching at the blast of freezing air smacking against my skin. Gripping the picana tighter, I walked slowly down the hallway, my feet heavy on the tiled floor. Every few steps I stopped and waited, knowing the female would hear my approach. I wanted to mess with her mind. Have her so scared of me that she’d give up anything I asked.
Casting my head down, I could hear her heavy breathing. Her breathing was shaky. She was terrified of me.
Terrified of the ugly beast.
Walking again, I slammed my eyes to hers as I rounded the corner of the cage. The female’s skin paled as she held my gaze. A stab of something strange and unknown sliced through my stomach as her lips parted and started trembling. But I sucked it up and braced myself against the front of the cage.
She didn’t say anything. For one so small, I was impressed at her silent strength. She didn’t cower or shrink away when she saw my face. Some of the biggest men I’d been forced to kill—slowly, very slowly—had cried and begged for their lives just at one glance at me. But this Georgian was silent, looking me straight in the eyes.
Twirling the metal picana in my hand, I pressed the button on the handle. The electric current sparked, the crackling sound booming in the silent room. She flinched, but she didn’t cry out.
Stepping closer to the bars, I stood erect and asked coldly in Georgian, “What’s your name?”
I studied every inch of her body, especially her face. She blinked a second too long, and swallowed deep, before whispering, “Elene.” My jaw tightened at the sound of her voice. Her accent was strong. Her repulsive Georgian accent.
But that was forgotten when I let her response sink in. She was brave to try to lie. Because she was lying. Whoever had trained her had trained her well. But she was exhausted—my doing—and she couldn’t control her body well enough to disguise the deception.
She was staring at me, masking her features, her lies. As I rolled my neck from side to side, it cracked. I pushed the button of the prod against the bar, the current sweeping through the cage. The female flinched and curled up in the center of the floor.
When the current faded, I slammed the handle of the prod against the cage and barked, “Tell me your name!”
She sucked in a sharp breath and whispered shakily, “Elene. Elene Melua.”
My body tensed. She had lied to me again. I stared at her. She stared right back. But she didn’t crack, not even under my rage-filled glare. Females especially hated my face—Mistress made sure of it. They caved as soon as they saw the scarred, ugly beast—but not this female.
It made me stop and watch her closer. Why wasn’t she disgusted? Why wasn’t she cowering back in fear?
Challenge, and a morbid hatred of my victim’s disobedience, surged through me. Flicking my chin, I ordered, “Get up!”
The female’s muscles tensed but for a second; then, pushing off the floor, she got to her feet. My nostrils flared as I drank in her naked body, her full tits a
nd her nipples rock hard due to the cold. Her cheeks flushed red as I stared. She immediately tried to cover herself with her arms.
Slamming the handle against the bars, I ordered, “Keep your arms at your sides!”
She did as instructed. Her long wet hair hung in clumps over her chest, covering all but her tits. Discreetly slipping my thumb over the off button on the prod, I slowly, painstakingly, pushed the prod through the bars toward where she stood.
She stiffened as the tip of the prod hovered just an inch from her skin. Holding it exactly where it was and trying a new tactic, I repeated less harshly, “What is your name?”
She didn’t even pause for breath. “Elene Melua.”
Her soft voice was strong and steady. But she was lying. I could sense it. The little female was hiding who she was. My head tilted to the side in reflection. Who the hell was she? Why was she protecting my hit?
Her dark eyes tracked me. Suddenly I lunged the prod forward. Her eyes snapped shut as she braced for the shock. As the tip touched her skin, the expected shock didn’t come. She gasped and opened her eyes. She was breathing hard as the tip of the prod pressed against the bottom of her throat.
She never moved, her body as still as rock as I pushed the tip harder against her skin. She began breathing slowly through her nostrils as I started to drag the prod over her skin. I kept her focus, my hard stare coldly capturing hers, as I continued my journey with the metal tip.
I moved the prod slowly down her chest until it lay over her sternum. I applied a little pressure, the tip slightly pushing into her smooth skin, until a tiny spot of blood began to sprout underneath. The female’s face contorted into a pained expression. The ache of seeing her in such agony returned to my chest, but I forced it aside.
There was no room for sympathy in this chamber.
Just as I gauged the pressure was becoming too much, I eased off and dragged the tip over to her breast. She gasped as I ran it lightly over full flesh. Her cheeks, despite the cold, flushed bright red, her lips parting in shock when I gently circled the hard red nipple.