But pride filled my chest that even in my time of weakness, even in my disorientated state, I stayed true to my blood.
I was Elene Melua from Kazreti, Georgia, and I knew nothing of a Zaal Kostava.
I stayed shackled to the slab, fighting to keep my eyes open, when the man appeared once again. This time, his presence didn’t cause a reaction within me. I wouldn’t allow it. I had to be strong to endure his torture.
My eyes drunkenly traced his every step. Suddenly he stopped, and the collar around his neck seemed to tighten. I watched in rapt attention as he threw back his head. The corded muscles in his chest, torso, and arms tensed and protruded with thick veins. But his neck, the collar was doing something to his neck. I watched as his teeth gritted together and his body shook with rage. He released a deafening roar and promptly dropped to the floor.
My racing heart pumped the blood around my body so quickly that I could hear the rush of liquid flowing through my ears. But as tired as my eyes were, they never once strayed from the man on the floor, seemingly now broken. Minutes and minutes passed, yet he didn’t move. His head dropped forward and his torso was slumped over.
The collar. The collar was doing something to him.
Drugs? I thought, my heart breaking. Because if this man had been captured and hurt like my brothers … what was his life? What had he endured?
As I watched him lying still on the floor, I couldn’t help but see my brothers before me. In my exhausted, pained mind, all I could see was my childhood heroes. Like this man, only filled with the need to kill.
That thought brought a new kind of fear to my heart. Because if he was being drugged, if the man last night was drugged, I knew the monster he would be when he awoke.
I frantically pulled on the cuffs, trying to break free, but as I heard a low growl I whipped my eyes to the floor. Staring at me was the captor from last night. His eyes were dilated to black and he stared at me like he wanted to rip me apart.
I froze. Sweat broke out on the man’s body, his scarred skin glistening with damp. Then he pushed off the floor, the veins in his bulging muscles so pronounced that they appeared unnatural.
The man approached, and his darkened eyes roved over my prone body. With a fury-ridden face, he reached for the cuffs at my wrists and snapped them undone. He then moved to my feet, repeating the action, all the time panting in harsh heavy breaths—as if something inside was burning him alive.
As the shackle was ripped from my ankle, I moved my numb limbs. I cried out at the molten pain coursing through my tired muscles. I gritted my teeth through the pain, praying to find some relief as I dropped to the floor, the man releasing me from his hold.
A noise from in front of me caught my attention. When I followed the direction of the sound, it was to see my captor pacing the tiled floor. His hands were balled, and his face was severe in expression. Every inch of his sweating ripped body broadcast the purest and most terrifying level of ferociousness. His entire soul seemed ravaged; by what, I did not know.
His gaze flicked to me, and without pausing his frantic movements he snarled, “Name. I need your fucking name!” His deep voice was urgent and dripping with venom.
I opened my mouth and rasped, “Elene—,” but before I had chance to finish my rehearsed response the man swung my way and he hammered his fist on the metal slab above me.
Glaring down, he roared, “You lying Georgian suka! Tell me your fucking name!” The pupils of his eyes were so large his eyes were two blazing coals.
Lips trembling, I replied, “That is my name.”
His neck tensed, and he hissed, “Lies. Georgians lie. Georgians only ever lie!”
Jerking himself away from me, he took himself to a lever on the wall and pulled it down. The sound of metal against metal echoed from the ceiling. As I lifted my head, a large hook was lowering down toward me held by a thick chain.
Suddenly he was at my side, holding yards and yards of thick rope. I swallowed on seeing the rope, my stomach coiled with apprehension. As he approached, loosening the rope in his hand, he murmured, “Pain to the Georgian whore. Nothing but pain to the one that took her away from me.”
At that point I knew this man was not seeing me. Whatever was being pumped into his veins by his collar caused him to be somewhere else in his head.
To his eyes there was someone else sitting here on this floor.
Someone he wanted to see hurt.
Someone else’s torture was about to be delivered to me.
7
194
I woke in the back room of the chamber.
A blinding pain shot through my head, and my muscles ached. As always, I felt the burning sensation in my neck first, then I tried to crack open my eyes. The dim light hanging from the ceiling felt like a flame scalding my eyes. Lifting my hands, I ran them over my eyelids, where I felt rough and broken skin. Pushing myself to sit up, I squinted and focused on the palms of my hands. Red rope burns were sliced across the skin, my fingers split and covered in dried blood.
My mouth was dry. I crawled forward and took a bottle of water from the desk. I emptied it in one gulp. The screen on the desk was black. When I focused on the picture, I realized the lights in the chamber were out. The whole place was in darkness.
Leaning on the desk, I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and tried to remember what I’d done last night. My mind was like a fog. Rage swept over me when I remembered that the pellets in my collar were stronger than normal. Mistress must have known my tolerance to the serum was strengthening. And she’d known these new pellets would black me the hell out. They’d ensure I got her her kill.
She wanted Zaal Kostava to be punished by me in the worst possible manner. She wanted the Georgian male to suffer.
At last the fog on my mind cleared. I watched the images when I was under the serum play out in my mind’s eye. I’d taken a thick rope and tied the little Georgian up until she couldn’t even move. Lifting her limp body in my arms, I attached the back of the rope to the butcher’s hook hanging from the ceiling. She had moaned at the rope cutting into her skin. I’d asked her question after question: What was her name? Who was she to Zaal Kostava? What were his weaknesses? But she didn’t answer. I tightened the rope, her limbs reddening at the pressure, but she still didn’t talk.
I’d forced water down her throat, food into her mouth, and let her use the bathroom, but soon after, she’d slipped into unconsciousness. I’d walked back to this room and plunged the chamber into darkness. Light deprivation had a way of breaking my subjects down.
Staring at the screen, I flicked on the switch to the chamber; the little female’s body hung limply from the ceiling. Her head snapped up when the light came on. I watched her eyes flinch at the flaring light. I watched as she winced in pain at being held suspended midair and wrapped up tightly by the rope. But she remained still. A warm feeling spread through my chest as I watched her very obvious show of strength.
She was resilient. Resilient and determined.
But if I was to save 152 this female had to crack.
Taking a protein bar from the desk, I forced myself to eat the damn thing. What would break her? Days had drifted by. Even with all the pain, and the fear, she hadn’t cracked.
I paused eating when I recalled the only time she’d reacted. It was when I pushed against her naked body. It was when my nose ran along her neck. It was when my cock pushed against her side.
I froze when I realized what would work. I had to change tactics with her. My stomach clenched at the thought of having to get that close to a Georgian, to another female. But as my eyes strayed to the screen, to the female tied up, my tension drained away. She was nothing like Mistress. She was soft. She was young and, even if I hated the Georgian for being Georgian, she was beautiful.
My skin bumped as I remembered smelling the sweetness of her skin, feeling her silky long neck under my nose. My muscles tensed at the thought of her brown eyes looking into mine. That one time she had
looked at me not in hate. Like she was seeing something different in me from a fucked-up ugly beast. That she was seeing who I used to be underneath.
Just more than what I was now.
I quickly chased that image away.
Straightening my body, I cracked my neck and opened the door to the chamber. Just before I left I turned the temperature of the chamber to sixty-eight degrees. The first part of this plan was to take away her fear. Food, drink, and warmth. Then spend hours and hours with her under the ministrations of my hands.
She would be repulsed by the ugliness of my face, but there was no way, with my training, she could resist the pleasure of my hands. Even if she was previously untouched.
Walking into the bright room, I kept my eyes forward. My teeth were gritting and my hands fisting at what I would have to do. Mistress had trained me to be an expert in sexual torture, but never before had I the opportunity to practice it. Most of my hits were males. There were only ever two females I was sent to torture—they buckled as soon as they woke up in a chamber. Their deaths were quick, as a reward for their useful information. Nothing like this little Georgian female.
As I entered the main room of the chamber, her eyes lifted to greet me. They widened, and her lips parted. It was in fear. She watched me close in, her chest rising and falling, her full tits pushing through gaps in the rope.
Standing before her, I stared straight into her eyes. Her face subtly relaxed when she studied my eyes—I had no idea why.
As her body jerked from being tied too long, I walked to the lever on the wall and pulled it down. The sound of the mechanism grinding into action rattled up above. After a few seconds the butcher’s hook began to lower her to the bed in the center of the room. She landed on the surface, the rope unrelenting.
Moving to the bed, I slid the hook from its rope catch then and flicked the lever to withdraw it to the ceiling. Not once did the female flinch as I moved around her. Returning to the bed, I lifted my hands and began to slowly untie the rope. A rush of breath came from her mouth. Her freezing body remained motionless as yard by yard I unwrapped the thick rope.
Minutes later when she had been freed, I dropped the rope to the floor. As I turned my attention to the female, I noted the rope burns on her skin, her limbs marked with delves and indents from the tightness of the rope.
Unconsciously, my hands moved. I snapped to attention as I saw them hovering above her back. Clenching my jaw, I ripped them back.
Pulling my shit together, I ordered, “Stretch!”
Her back tensed at the command. Due to the cold, the Georgian’s body was curled in and distorted. To make my new plan work, she had to get back to how she looked before. Felt before I had hurt her.
I hurt her…, the errant thought circled in my head, pulling the ache back to my chest. For a brief second I allowed myself to dislike that I had hurt her, before I pushed it back away.
I hovered behind, but she didn’t move. Leaning forward, I brushed back the long hair from her face, placing my mouth at her ear. Bumps broke out over her rope-burned skin. I felt a flood of warmth inside, knowing my closeness affected her. I knew it wasn’t in attraction, but she didn’t need to find me attractive to come. “Stretch!” I commanded once more.
A low moan sounded from the female’s mouth. Her body shook, but she forced her legs currently curled into her chest to straighten out. Her arms, wrapped awkwardly around her chest, slipped to her sides, her head flopped back on the bed, and her back flattened out on the surface. Eyes closed, she panted through the pain. Though the room remained cold, sweat beaded on her forehead. I knew what her pain felt like.
When Mistress trained me to be her most effective assassin, she made sure that I also experienced suffering through torture. She told me that I needed to know how this felt: the pain, the suffering, and the complete fucking with the subject’s mind. She got off on seeing me in pain. Got off the same way she did when she slashed and tore up my face.
The little Georgian’s rough breathing slowed down. My eyes traveled the length of her beautiful body. Rope burns tracked over the skin, showing exactly where I had caused her the most pain. Leaning over the bed, I noticed that her hands were bent on the surface, fingernails trying to dig into the bed below. But all I could see was soft skin underneath the marks, her full tits, and, of course, her pussy.
Reaching out, I pressed my fingertips lightly on her calf. She jumped under my touch. Her breathing quickened as I swirled my fingertips up over her knee and along the outside of her thigh.
The female, completely still before my exploration, began moving slightly. Her knee bent as I ran my fingertips along her inner thigh and around the side of her cunt. A breathy moan slipped from her mouth and her stomach tensed at the feeling.
I knew it wasn’t pleasure … yet; I knew it was from the unfamiliar touch of a male. I continued my journey over her stomach until I reached the bottom of her tits. I paused, and flicked my gaze to her face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her previously dull eyes were bright with fear.
Poking out my tongue, I ran the tip along the seam of my lips, slow and wet, watching as she watched me with those wide, virgin eyes. The female’s breathing hitched. Resisting the victorious pleasure I was feeling at how quickly she was reacting to my touch, I ghosted my fingertips over the plump flesh of her left breast. Her red nipple hardened into a small firm point. I circled my finger around and around the nipple, watching as pink skin produced bumps and shivered in my wake.
And I couldn’t look away. Her body was tight and lean. Her tits were full and firm. Her skin was so soft. But it was the look on her face that had my balls aching and my cock rock hard. There was no doubt this female was terrified, but there was something else in her eyes, too. Something yet to be named, as I explored her body with an eager hand. It confused me, because whatever it was, it wasn’t disgust. She wasn’t looking at my messed-up face and over-scarred inked body and hiding away—it was fucking with my mind. It was tightening my damn chest.
My fingers reluctantly abandoned her tit to run up her neck. She froze, her limbs straightening, breathing paused. Suddenly she swallowed as my fingertips walked onto her cheek. Then my fingers stopped. Huge dark eyes were staring at me, long black eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. My stomach tensed. The female’s full lips parted and her warm breath drifted over my hand. Something within me held me captive, as her dark eyes bored into mine.
We stayed that way for a few minutes. Then Mistress’s face flashed in my mind. She was the only female I’d ever touched. And I’d relished every minute of causing the sadistic bitch pain. But not once had I touched her face. Her ugly, poisonous face.
As I ripped back my hand, my eyebrows pulled down in anger. I backed up three steps. I backed up farther, then turned and walked to the room at the back. The minute I was through the door, I growled low in my chest and hit at my head. Reaching into my sweatpants, I gripped my balls tightly, my cock instantly softening with the pain.
Five minutes later, I’d placed food and water on a tray and headed back into the chamber. The Georgian was still on the bed, but her head tipped up and her eyes found me as I walked toward where she lay.
“Sit up!” I ordered. She pressed her palms against the bed and sat up. My nostrils flared as her legs swung over the side, and her thighs fell slightly apart. I forced my eyes up. They narrowed when I saw her body. She’d lost weight.
The female eventually lifted her head. Stepping forward, I placed the tray on the bed. “Eat. Drink!” I ordered.
The female’s eyes flicked down to the tray. I folded my arms across my chest. “Eat. Now!” I ordered loudly. She reached out a shaky hand and picked up the sandwich. She slowly brought the sandwich to her mouth, and all the time I watched her. I never moved. I stayed right in front of her until the sandwich had disappeared and the bottle of water had been drunk.
The female wiped her mouth as I stepped forward and removed the tray. I placed the tray on the floor, then stretched out m
y arms. The female never took her attention off me.
Inhaling deeply, ready to begin, I edged forward until I was standing in front of her legs. A long strand of her dark hair had fallen over her shoulder. With controlled gentleness, I brushed it back, drifting my finger over her cheek as I did so.
The female stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. Very slowly, I put a hand on the table at each side of her body. My face invaded her personal space. This close, I could detect the stuttered breathing struggling to pass her pursed lips. I placed my nose against the length of her neck and ran it upward until my mouth was at her ear. “Tell me your name, kotyonok.” My voice was graveled and low and I ran my nose back down her neck, only after I’d called her kitten in my native Russian tongue.
The female whipped her face toward mine, her full lips brushing across my cheek. As soon as her lips pressed against my stubbled skin, she dropped her head and whispered, “Elene.”
Rage burned inside as she continued to lie, but I didn’t allow my face to change. “Elene,” I murmured, my hand lifted to wrap into her hair. She jumped, and I added, “Elene. Elene Melua from Kazrati, Georgia.”
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly. Moving back an inch, I could see the pulse in her neck pounding hard. A bead of sweat dropped from behind her ear as the room temperature began to rise to a bearable heat. Seeing it run over her beating pulse, I flicked out my tongue and lapped it into my mouth.
Her shocked reaction emerged as a confused whimper. And I smirked into her hair, moving my chest closer to hers.
“Elene Melua,” I murmured again into her ear. “So beautiful. Too beautiful for me to hurt anymore. Too beautiful for me to make scream”—I paused, then added, “in pain.” My fingers pressed against the front of her throat as she sucked in a gasp at my words; then they drifted down to her chest.