Dukes of Ruin: Prologue

“Remember,” Anthony says, sweeping his thumb across my cheek, “as long as we’re together we can do anything.”

I absorb the final words and then toss the paperback on the bed, pushing my fingers into my eyes. I’ve been following the sexy exploits of Anthony and Beth, former enemies, eventual lovers, stuck in Victorian England. The books, much like these walls, are fucking killing me, but I’m not in the position to be picky.

I’ve lost count of how many days I’ve been here. A few weeks? A month? Two months? One minute bleeds into the next in an unstoppable march, a marriage of days, and a chain of monotony that makes my muscles tense in anticipation of…

Nothing.

Absolutely fucking nothing.

It’s been more than enough time to read the stack of trashy romance novels Auggy brought me—I’d never admit this, but some more than once. I probably should have left scratch marks on the wall, noting the passing days the way they do in prison. I guess when they first brought me here; I didn’t realize I’d need to keep track. Now I’m just floating along like a restless, electric ghost, desperate for somewhere to put all this static that’s been building in my veins.

I take a few moments to indulge in the phosphenes exploding behind my eyelids. The flash of stars helps me imagine being in space, a phantom among the cosmos, tracking an orbit around the sun. That’s all time is, anyway: an involuntary trip around a dying star.

God, I’d give my left tit for a soda.

Sighing, I ease the pressure on my eyes, letting them open. It’s evening, that much I know from the muted light beyond my sole window, and the build of the bustle outside the door of my living suite. The room was nicer when I first arrived, with plenty of room for a sofa and armchair, a large bathroom, and a walk-in closet that’s lost on someone with nothing but a few pairs of shorts and shirts. That, plus the artwork and mirrors on the walls, the lush furniture, and clean carpet, are nice upgrades from the shitty hotel they had me in last year. Daniel Payne, the previous King of South Side and owner of this fine establishment, definitely knew how to treat his girls. I guess that’s what happens when you marry a former prostitute. You take her advice.

And then you take her bullet.

Yeah, it used to be fancy. A real fucking retreat. A prison with gold-colored frippery. They should have known better than to leave me here. My second night, I smashed one of the glass frames and hid a shard beneath my pillow. The waiting was the easy part—time, time, time—and the first time they sent in one of those whores to dress me up, I slashed her goddamn throat.

That was the hard part.

I sorely underestimated how hard it is to cut a throat. There are a lot of tendons and muscles up in there, and it didn’t even matter that I failed to hit anything vital enough to kill her. It was messy and excessively gross, and I probably wouldn’t try it again.

But it was enough to get the room cleared of anything that could be considered a weapon. Smart move on their part. If I had it my way, I’d carve a bloody goddamn swath through this place, gross or not.

The Velvet Hideaway. Real subtle branding there. I shouldn’t be surprised. Daniel Payne might have run South Side, but he never struck me as the creative type. Why play coy with the name of your brothel when you own this whole fucking town? Might as well have named it Whores R’ Us. Where a perv can be a perv!

Now, only Auggy will deal with me, always bitchy and cutting when she does. In another lifetime, maybe we would have even been friends, but since she’s the twat who locks my door, Augustine can go fuck herself. The looks she gives me are always a mixture of irritated and sympathetic. She may not have dreamed of being a Madam when she was a kid, but it’s sure as fuck a better position than slave.

Because that’s what I am.

I’m a slave.

There’s no dressing it up. I can’t leave. No access to a phone or computer. There are no visitors, no weapons, and no hopes of getting out. My room is in the basement, and as if the pathetic, squat little egress window above my dresser isn’t sad enough, it’s also barred, caging me in.

Unbidden, a menacing voice floats through my mind.

“Little Bird.”

Shuddering, I spring from the bed and begin pacing, wall-to-wall, my four-hundred square feet of prison. If he were here—if Nick could see me—he’d make a joke out of it. Something real obnoxious about a panicked bird flinging herself against the bars of her cage. That’s what he calls me. His Little Bird. Wings clipped, thrown in a cage, trapped as I hurl myself around the confines of my prison…

But I can’t help it. Baring my teeth, I pound my fist against the walls, wishing I could bore straight through. I’ve tried begging before—“I won’t go anywhere, just let me out.”—but it never works. No one’s listening, and even if they were, they wouldn’t care. No one here ever does. So I rattle the bars of my cage by pounding my fists into the walls, and then I race around the room to convince myself it hasn’t gotten smaller between one panicked heartbeat and the next.

I’m not stupid.

I know it’s hopeless.

No one’s coming to save me. There was a time, in the beginning, when I used to imagine my father sweeping in to say I’ve learned my lesson. He’d give me that long, haughty, disappointed look, as if I’ve failed him in every conceivable way—fact—but he’d still let me go. It was a nice dream, for a hot minute.

Desperate for a distraction, I sort the books on the bed, searching for one I haven’t read. There’s one with a shirtless pirate that I’ve been avoiding. The man on the cover has a broad chest and piercingly blue eyes, and whenever I look at it, I think of storm clouds and thorns.

Little Bird…

My muscles tighten at the memory of Nick’s voice. It’s been a long while since he came here, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s never good when he shows up, but the longer he doesn’t, the more the dread about his impending arrival builds. It’s better to just get it over with, to bear his intense, creepy stare and filthy words for an hour, and then be free of it for a week or two.

I’ve just picked the book up again when I hear a noise outside my barred window.

There are a lot of sounds at the Hideaway. Music. Raised voices. Laughter. Moans. Grunts. Shrieks of faked pleasure. They’re not always fun sounds. There’s also the occasional bar fight. At least once a week, the police show up, lights flashing outside my window, carrying out a John who took a few too many liberties with one of the girls. Twice an ambulance has come.

I’m attuned to each sound by now, constantly awaiting the turn of that knob.

I wait a beat, but hear nothing else, so I settle back in against the pillows. I open the pirate book in an attempt to calm the disquiet writhing beneath my flesh. It’s a dumb reason to avoid it, thinking the man on the cover looks like Nick. The most odious thing about him is how deceptively he’s been nicknamed around these parts. Pretty. What a shit word to describe such a beautifully rotten person.

The pages have that musty scent of an old bookstore, and inside is the penciled in price of twenty-five cents. I find that I can’t be bothered with it, though. My eyes grow heavy, attention waning, and it’s a comfort to close the book and set it aside. To turn off the light. To grasp clumsily for the truest sense of freedom I’m afforded in this fucked up place.

Sleep.

Shattering glass wakes me, kicking my heart into gear, until I remember where I am. What I am. I refuse to fully rouse and deal with the midnight drama of the brothel. I roll onto my stomach, cheek against my pillow, and will myself to slip back under. It’s warm here, in this place where time is without substance or form. So I’m not exactly sure what makes my eyelids rise. Maybe it’s the strange breeze against my back, or the sudden loss of static in the air, like something is blocking it out.

The column of shadow in front of my dresser is so still that it doesn’t even look like anything at first. It looks like furniture. A statue. A stone pillar that’s been a part of this place’s foundation long before I closed my eyes, even though I intrinsically know it doesn’t belong. The sheer curtain covering the egress window above billows around it, caressing the silhouette’s shoulder. I can almost believe it’s part of a slow, prophetic dream.

Then, it moves closer.

A gasp catches in my throat.

Before I can even make head or tails out of the figure across the room, a heavy weight lands on my back, smashing me into the mattress. It knocks the air from my lungs, which escapes in a rattle as I thrash, heartbeat kicking into gear.

The weight gets heavier right before a hand covers my mouth, fingertips digging painfully into the soft give of my cheeks.

The person leans over me to speak into my ear. “Settle down,” says the deranged voice, “or I’ll gut you like a fucking fish.” I pant through my nose, wide eyes pinging around the scant parts of the room I can see. The only thing I can make out is the harsh, excited breaths of the maniac pinning me down. The low timbre of his voice. The scent of him, spice and musk, as he breathes into my ear. “Nod if you understand,” the maniac demands, his weight too constricting, too confining.

I give a rapid, stilted nod, blinking into the dark to get my bearings. I’d probably agree to anything if it meant getting the weight off me—if it meant being able to move and breathe and be.

But he doesn’t leave. His thumb pinches into my cheek and he says, “If you scream, that’s going to make us mad. You don’t want to make us mad, do you?”

I try to shake my head, but the twist of my neck and the pillow against my cheeks restricts me from managing much more than a twitch.

The maniac’s other hand runs down my bare arm, rough skin skating down to my hip. My muscles seize when his palm finds the curve of my ass, fingers digging into the flesh. “That’s a good girl. He wasn’t lying, was he? You’re a sweet little thing. Ultramarine? No—cyanine blue.” He seems to be muttering more to himself than me. “Blonde hair, nice skin, aluminum eyes. Yeah, we’ve got this.”

I suck air in through my nose and try to move my hand, but he reacts swiftly, yanking my arm behind me. He captures the wrist that’s not trapped beneath me already in a steel grip, letting out a gritty laugh. “Heard you were a fighter. Normally, that would be a fun time, but cyanine blue…that can get out of hand. If you want to get out of this, do what you’re told.”

“Fuck’s sake,” a cold, lurking voice from the end of the bed mutters. “Stop your batshit color babbling and fuck her already. I’ve got shit to do.”

“It’s important!” Maniac snaps. “I’d never stick my dick in primary magenta.”

I really do thrash then, an angry, distressed noise clawing from my throat as I try to break free. There’s a reason I’ve been holed away inside a whorehouse. I found it a bit funny at first that my father handed me over to the Kings because of it. Would I be the Baron’s new virgin sacrifice, or the Princes’ new virgin mother? Oh, but neither of those was quite severe enough, so it had to be the Lords. Daniel’s shiny new virgin moneymaker.

Point is, I’ve always known what I’m here to do: Spread my legs and grimace in pain as some nameless piece of shit forces his way inside. And then, maybe afterward, they’d let me go.

But this isn’t the way it was meant to happen.

My struggle is an almost comical attempt. The maniac has a knee or something planted into the small of my back, and he laughs as I buck, trying desperately to gain a foothold. “Classic cyanine.”

“Hey, now,” a third voice, softer this time, appears in front of me. The shadowy figure crouches beside the head of my bed, face obscured by black. My eyes widen as I take him in, featureless and looming, but his only reaction to my wild, useless jerks is to reach out and stroke a knuckle down the curve of my jaw, nudging his partner’s hand away from my mouth. His voice is a coarse, bleak whisper. “It’ll be okay. This is for your own good.”

My brain slowly kicks into gear. Three guys.

Maniac, holding me down.

Lurker, at the foot of the bed.

Creep, brushing the pad of his thumb over my lip.

What the hell do they want?

You already know, Lav, a tiny voice tells me. When your father is Lionel Lucia, King of the Counts, it’s a safe bet that it’s always about him. Even locked away like a disorderly puppy, I’m still nothing more than a pawn in his game.

My eyes finally acclimate to the dark. The faint light coming in from the open window illuminates enough to make my heartbeat lurch. Creep is dressed in black, a mask pulled down over his head. There are two holes for each of his unsettling blue eyes, but nothing more.

“Listen,” I rush out, breathless from the struggle. “If this is about my dad, then you’re shit out of luck. He doesn’t give a fuck about me. He’s the reason I’m in this pussy trap in the first place. Hurting me means nothing to him.”

The man holding me down—Maniac—lets out this low, ominous scoff. “You’re thinking way too small, Miss Lucia.” I hear in his voice that he turns his head, speaking to Lurker, the man at the foot of my bed. “Get her ankles.”

In a flurry of movement that’s too quick to counter, they flip me to my back. Lurker’s hands capture my ankles before I can lash out—not that I don’t still try. The muscles in my thigh burn with the force of my kick, which catches him right in the stomach. He releases a punch of surprised breath, but his reaction is lightning-quick.

Lurker hisses, “You fucking bitch!” and then wrenches me by the ankles with a powerful yank, making me slide to the end of the bed. I’m so caught up in the sharpness of the gesture—the pain of something in my ankle tearing—that I don’t even realize he’s pulling his hand back.

His open palm meets my face with a loud, jarring crack that sends me flopping sideways to the mattress. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a fist. My ears still ring with the force of it, the left side of my face a sweltering mess of sting and ache. From the sudden sluggishness of my brain, I’m guessing he didn’t even bother holding back.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been slapped like that. Not just out of anger, but out of a burning, white-hot hatred. I used to know how to brace myself for it, but it’s been years since my father’s looked down at me with that glint of violence in his eyes.

Now, I blink against the stars, only idly registering the scuffle happening nearby. There’s a grunt, and then the sound of bone on bone. Punching.

“You motherfucker!” Creep is snarling. “What did I fucking tell you the plan was? No one touches her!”

Lurker bites back, “She had it coming!”

Beyond the sounds of their quiet brawl, Maniac, still on the bed, is already wrestling me back down into the mattress. “Enough of this bullshit,” he huffs, reaching for my shirt. He yanks it over my breasts before tearing it over my head. And now that I can see him, I realize he’s dressed just like the others. Masked. Obscured. But his two narrowed eyes are visible, and they’re feral, bloodshot, and piercingly green. He’s not as physically imposing as Creep, but the energy rolling off of him is electric, accentuating the compact muscles I see shifting beneath his long-sleeved black Henley.

He pants out, “Let’s get this over with, huh?” and pulls at my shorts.

I’m still reeling from the slap, and it sounds like the other intruders are still fighting about it. That makes it easy to slide my hand beneath my pillow as I squirm ineffectually away. “Wait,” I slur out, tasting blood in my mouth as I attempt to buy some time. I feel their rage building around me like a toxic cloud. The anger. They could be drunk or even high. There’s a frenetic buzz in the room that’s never good.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Maniac breathes, manic eyes fixed to my breasts. “You’ve got some nice tits here, cyanine. You and I can make this quick. We’d move good together, I bet. You shouldn’t worry so much.” I can practically hear the demented grin he’s wearing under that mask, so it’s no surprise when he reaches for his fly, popping the button.

My eyes slowly come into focus, seeing the other two grappling further into the room. They’re so distracted that I doubt they even realize this one’s shoving his black jeans down his hips.

They’re also too distracted to see me take my chance—maybe my only chance. Pulling my hand from beneath the pillow, I strike out fast, slashing the shard of glass I have clutched in my hand across his lower belly.

They didn’t get everything when they cleared out the room.

He makes a startled noise and hurls himself away, yelping, “Son of a fucking cunt! She cut me!” Even though there’s outrage in the words, he sounds strangely delighted about it. “Holy shit, cadmium red like a motherfucker. Nice work, Lucia.”

This gets the others’ attention. They turn just in time to see the blood bubbling out from between Maniac’s fingers.

“Shit,” Lurker mutters, but Creep is suddenly storming toward us.

“What the fuck?” he spits, bearing down on Maniac as I scramble up the bed. “I told you before! She’s mine!”

Lurker gestures to the gash. “Are you happy now? This is going to need stitches.”

The slice I cut into him stretches from his navel to his hip. Blood oozes from it, but unfortunately it’s not deep. When he looks up, he just lets out a quiet, sinister laugh. “Oh, I’ve had worse. But tit for tat, girl. You leave a mark on me, and I’m going to leave one back. Look! You bisected one of my favorite pieces.” He must be talking about the tattoo spanning his lower belly. I can’t make out much more than the dark edges of it.

“No,” Creep says, shoving him away. “I found her. I came up with the plan, and I got you in here. She’s mine.”

Lurker growls, “We’re running out of time.”

Creep mutters, “Fuck this.” He fishes a phone from his pocket, thrusting it at Lurker. Then he turns his blue eyes to me. “I’m not here to hurt you. You can make this difficult, or you can make it easy, but it’s not going to change a goddamn thing.”

I’m still clutching the bloody shard in my fist, the throb in my cheek igniting fury in my veins. “If you want your dick cut off,” I say, giving him a bloody smile, “then go ahead and try me.”

His chest expands and contracts with hard, angry breaths. “You want it rough? Fine.” He claws at his belt, the sounds of the buckle clinking metal on metal, making my muscles tense. “But one way or another, this is your last night as a virgin. Start the recording.” He growls the last part to Lurker as his fingers pop his fly.

Unthinkingly, I drop my fist and the shard of glass with it, incredulous laughter bubbling up my throat. “You’re here for my virginity?” I don’t try to hold in my peal of laughter, even when it makes the three of them go rigid with the sheer volume of it. “Oh my god, are you people really this predictable?” That’s some premium goddamn Royal speak—just like the Kings and Counts I’ve spent my life around. But these men aren’t wearing rings, and real Royals don’t sneak around. They walk through the front door and take what they want. These men are renegades—assholes who know just enough to understand what’s valuable, but not wise enough to understand what a façade it all is.

Virginity.

What a crock of shit.

“You realize virginity’s just an artificial construct, right?” I ask, feeling sore and belligerent. “It doesn’t mean anything! Pussies don’t have a fucking safety seal!”

Maniac just shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. It means something to them, so we’re going to take it.”

This makes me pause, chest heaving from adrenaline. “Them?” I take a guess. “The Kings?”

Maniac looks up from his sluggishly bleeding wound to say, “Of course, the Kings. We’re here to ruin their new toy.”

He probably means it to sound menacing. It’s not that it doesn’t. These three aren’t Royalty, but they know the inner workings of it. If anything, that makes them more dangerous. It means they aren’t following a clearly defined protocol. It means they could kill me. It means I can’t anticipate their next move. But it also means a way out.

I toss the shard of glass on the floor. “Fine.”

Creep freezes halfway through lowering his zipper. “Fine?”

Stiffly, I lay back on the bed, trying to will myself into accepting this. “Go ahead and fuck me. I’ll let you.”

There’s a long beat of silence, nothing but the distant sounds of Hideaway life penetrating the tension. Lurker breaks it by releasing a sharp scoff. “I fucking told you all these bitches were whores.”

“Nah, no.” Maniac is smarter, shaking his head. “It’s a trap. This is vintage cyanine tactics, you guys.”

Lurker hisses, “Would you shut the fuck up about the paint colors! I’m cramming your meds down your throat the second we get home, I swear to fucking god…”

“No trap,” I insist, letting my thighs fall apart. “If you plan on sending that video to the Kings, then go ahead. Show them how worthless I am.”

That may be the only thing that gets me out of this hellhole.

They glance at one another, two sets of matching blue eyes against a third pair of green. The guy with the phone holds it up and nods. “Do it.”

Still, Creep seems to take Maniac’s advice. He jerks his chin and says, “Does he need to hold you down?”

I swallow the lump in my throat, resenting the tremble in my thighs. “I won’t fight you.”

He stares at me like he’s waiting for a sign that I’m lying, and he’s smart too. But when I do nothing but lie there, resigned to my fate, he lowers his zipper the rest of the way.

And then he takes his cock out of his pants.

It’s too dark to make out more than the intimidating jut of it, thick and long, but I catch the cut of his hip bones too as he plants a knee on the foot of the bed. I wish I could say I felt nothing but utter revulsion. Oh, it’s there, but the sight of his cock, the adrenaline, the toned cut of his hips… it penetrates the fog of disgust in the fashion of a woman seeing an attractive man.

As promised, I don’t fight as he muscles his way up the bed to me, hands gripping my knees and pushing them apart to make space for his thighs. The denim of his jeans is scratchy against my bare skin, and it doesn’t matter that some deep, fundamental part of my libido is stretching itself awake. I’m so rigid that my bones ache.

Sitting back on his heels, his eyes ascend my naked body, climbing my legs, traveling over my thighs, pausing at the apex, locked on my pussy, and then rising to my stomach and breasts. It makes me stiffer, muscles aching with the tension of moving away from him without actually moving.

“Fuck,” he sighs, reaching out to cup my breast in a large, hot palm. “Look at you.”

I wrench my head to the side, averting my eyes. “Just do it,” I grind out, flinching when he flicks my nipple.

I feel more than see him lean over me, a fist pressed into the mattress as he hovers, watching. “Look at me.” I squeeze my eyes closed, face turned away. Even so, I know he sees my angry grimace, can feel my flinch at the brush of his knuckles over my sore jaw. “That’s going to leave a mark.” He doesn’t sound happy about it.

The tip of his cock drags against my inner thigh, causing me to shudder. “Get on with it!”

Still, he takes his time, sliding his hand down my body, as if he’s mapping every single one of my curves. “Need to make you wet,” Creep says, voice husky and rough as his hand ascends, dipping between my thighs.

I didn’t think I could get any more tense, but the first touch of his fingers down the slit of my folds makes me lock up in revulsion. Part of it is because of the touch—invasive, wrong, forceful—but a bigger part—the much, much worse part…

He freezes, fingers poised just outside my entrance. Quietly, arrogantly, he whispers, “Or maybe I don’t.”

I bite down on a sound when he replaces his fingers with the head of his dick, running it through the slickness that’s gathered in my folds. His breaths are hot and loud, so close to my ear as he hovers above me.

“Look at me,” he says again, but this time, he doesn’t take no for an answer. He grabs my chin, yanking my head toward him. His stare through the mask is just as hard and unforgiving as the press of his dick against my entrance. “Watch me make this pussy mine.”

I gasp at the invasion.

That’s exactly what it is—unwelcome, violating, aggressive. He enters me without any fanfare at all, filling me with one powerful, violent shove of his hips. His hand flies up to the top of my head, fisting in my hair as he pushes me in counterpoint to it, eyes flashing in anger when my heels slide against the sheets in an attempt to scurry away.

“Stop!” he growls, pinning me with his hips.

I think I mean to tell him to go fuck himself, but what comes out is a plaintive gasp. “It hurts.” I don’t mean to say it. The last thing I want to give these assholes is the satisfaction.

From the edge of the bed, Maniac hums. “I bet it does, little girl. Hung, isn’t he?” From my periphery, I can see him squeezing his crotch.

But Creep isn’t swayed into gentleness at my declaration. He tightens his fist in my hair and surges into me, punching his dick against my cervix. The second my mouth opens in a sharp cry, Maniac is there to clamp his hand over it.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut,” he snaps, tone switching from malicious delight to stony anger so fast that I can’t even keep up. His hand is slippery, and it isn’t until the metallic tang fills my mouth that I realize it’s covered in blood.

“So fucking tight,” Creep mutters through his clenched teeth. He fucks into me with slow but brutal thrusts, those blue eyes never leaving mine. “How does it feel?” he asks, ignoring the swell of my throat—my shout trapped by the other man’s palm—as he digs into me. “Tell me how it feels to know this pussy belongs to me now.”

All I feel is trapped. Trapped beneath his body, beneath the palm clamped over my face, beneath the lens of the phone, Lurker is pointing at us. His hips are crushing me, unyielding as he hammers me with tight, back-curling thrusts. I fix my gaze to the flexing point of his shoulder, unwilling to see the sweat darkening the fabric of his mask.

I still feel it, though.

When he leans down to press his face against my cheek, it’s damp with it. Sweat. Breath. Saliva. It makes my stomach flip and churn, and when I whip my head to the side to avoid it, Lurker lets me, finally freeing my mouth from his grip.

“Goddamn,” he says, hovering somewhere close. Vaguely, it registers that he sounds impressed. “You’re really giving it to her.”

Creep… it’s like he doesn’t even hear him. It’s like the other two aren’t even in the room. He wedges a hand under my cheek and forces me to turn to him.

And then he kisses me.

It’s not really a kiss, impeded by the fabric of the mask, but I can tell that’s what he wants. I can feel the hard jabs of breath through it, and even when I try to turn away, he won’t let me, covering my mouth with something I might call passion on someone less unhinged.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he’s saying, voice full of harsh sandpaper grit. “Always knew I’d make you mine. Been watching you for so long, baby.”

I make a tight, disgusted sound against his mouth, and I can’t even help it then. I push at his shoulders, desperate to get him off. I’ve spent the last year surrounded by creeps, maniacs, and lurkers. Who even knows which one this guy is? None of them are good.

He responds by grabbing my wrists, which settles all of his weight on my chest, stealing the last of my breath. He pins them high above my head, but it works.

He lets me turn away, jaw flying open as I gasp in wild gulps of blood-scented air.

It’s easier then. When he accepts it. When he lets me lie here, limp and breathless as he uses me. When he holds my wrists down and rests his mouth against my jaw, panting as the bed creaks with the force of his hips. He never really pulls out. He keeps his dick so far inside that he has to drive me into the mattress for any sense of friction. Each excruciating thrust makes my chest swell, like something is growing inside of me and I don’t have room for it.

And then he’s the one who starts swelling.

If I didn’t feel it—his dick getting harder, bigger—then I’d be able to hear it in the short, ragged grunts that tear from his chest.

Suddenly, it occurs to me what’s going to happen.

“No,” I gasp, planting my heels against the bed. I push and buck, trying to free my wrists with useless tugs. “Don’t! Please don’t!”

His response is immediate. “Hold her,” he grunts.

Maniac rushes over, knees pressing into the mattress on either side of my head as he wrenches my arms up.

“I’ll scream!” I warn, heart hammering just as hard as his dick. “I’ll scream, I’ll cut your goddamn throat, you motherfucking—!” My words get caught in my throat when my neck snaps up, and I actually see it. His body moving between my legs. His black jeans have worked their way down his hips, giving me a clear view of the upper muscles in his ass, working, flexing, to force his body into mine. The sight of it is briefly mesmerizing, as if I’ve just fallen headfirst into an experience I’m somehow shocked by.

When he slams into me with a deep, agonized rumble, I know I’m too late.

He wraps his fingers around my throat, slamming me back to the bed as he comes with a gnarled growl. I can feel it inside, a pulsating rush of warmth that makes every cell of my being recoil. The thought of him leaving a piece of himself inside me is so repulsive that a wave of nausea rushes through me.

“You son of a bitch,” I croak, his fingers still pressing against my throat. I try to get my feet under him for a kick, but all I can manage are weak, useless thuds against his legs.

He hovers above me, panting like a dog as he rears up, head tipped back. “Fuck, I needed that.”

“Get off!” I thrash and buck, but even though he looks boneless from the orgasm, he easily wrestles my legs down, sliding back to let his dick slip free.

“You ready?” He glances over his shoulder at Lurker, who’s still holding the phone. “Come closer.”

Lurker gets on the bed, edging close as Creep yanks my thighs wide, a palm shoving each side open. Lurker’s eyes pinch with whatever expression he’s making under that mask. “Fucking disgusting,” he says.

My veins erupt with wildfire as I watch them inspect my pussy, Creep shoving my knees up for a better angle. There’s a long silence, and then Lurker’s muttered curse. “Isn’t there supposed to be blood?”

Creep digs a finger into my hole, his voice a mixture of incredulous and annoyed. “You saw how hard I fucked her. She should be fucking gushing! Goddamn it.”

They’re so caught up in their own disappointment that they don’t even realize my legs are free. It gives me the opportunity to slam my foot right into Creep’s collarbone, sending him snapping back.

Before the pained sound can even escape his throat, I yell, “Because I’m not a virgin, you fucking morons!”

Lurker drops his phone to wrestle my legs down, a snarl ripping from his chest. “Getting real sick of your shit.” His grip is savage, bruising, and forces a whimper from me.

“What the fuck,” Creep growls, holding his shoulder, “are you talking about?”

“My virginity,” I answer, glaring daggers into his blue eyes. “I haven’t been a virgin since junior year of high school.”

“Bullshit,” Maniac says, tightening his grip on my wrists. “The Kings were keeping you here because—”

“Because they think I’m lying!” I spit, wishing I could close my legs. “I tried telling them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Turns out, they believe my goddamn father over me.” Breathless, I collapse into the bed, the corner of my mouth lifting. “But now, they will.”

It’s a relief.

Even with the cost, the pain, the disgust I feel at letting this masked intruder violate me, it’s still a relief to know I’ve won. Surely, they won’t want me now.

“Shit,” Maniac hisses, tossing my wrists away. “This bitch fucking played us. What did I tell you?” He jabs a forefinger into his temple. “Cyanine tactics!”

Creep’s surly voice rings out. “Who cares? We have the video. It’s proof she’s not a virgin. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Lurker pushes his fist into Creep’s shoulder, right where I kicked him. “That wasn’t the objective! We had to take her virginity to secure our place—”

“All three of us,” Maniac clarifies, pacing beside the bed.

“You fucked this up!” Lurker goes to hit him again, but Creep dodges it, shoving him back. It doesn’t matter. He’s focused on me again. “You’re a dirty slut, just like every whore in this place.”

“We can still fix this.” Creep takes a deep breath. “We can still win. Not all virgins bleed.”

“Oh, fuck this.” Maniac stops pacing and gets back on the bed, shoving them out of the way. When he lifts his shirt, I don’t even know what I’m expecting. Definitely not for him to swipe two fingers over the gash on his stomach, and then bury them—dripping with his blood—right inside me.

“What the—!” I scramble away, but he follows me up the bed, thrusting his bloody fingers in and out of me.

“Stay fucking still!” he orders. The others are there by then, anyway. Creep holds me down by a shoulder as Lurker presses a knee into my thigh. When he pulls his fingers out, he and Lurker inspect me again, spreading me open. “We need more cum,” Maniac decides. His pants are already unfastened, so it feels like he pulls his dick out faster than I can process.

Creep bolts upright. “Don’t you fucking dare put your dick in her,” he says, voice threatening.

“I won’t! Chill the fuck out.” Maniac starts stroking himself, eyes darting from my face to my pussy. My own eyes are fixed on the movement of his hand—the way his own blood is slicking the way.

In a moment of stunned disbelief, I realize, “You’re demented.”

He just jerks off faster. “Don’t worry, little girl. This won’t take long. Your pussy’s really hot like this, you know. All swollen and used up. So many pretty colors…” It sounds like he licks his lips, eyes flashing at whatever he sees on my face. “If my buddy here wouldn’t get so bent out of shape about it, I’d fuck you just like this. Give you some more of my red. I’d make you like it.”

True to his word, it only takes a couple dozen of those short, pointed strokes before he pitches forward, hand holding my hip. He presses the head of his bloody cock into my folds, shoulders curling as he erupts. The slick sensation of him coming mingles with the punch of breath he releases, his fingers digging painfully into my hipbone.

When he pulls away, my inner thighs are stained with his blood.

“You next,” he tells Lurker, stuffing his cock back into his boxers.

“Hold this,” he bites out, thrusting the phone at him. He shoves his sleeves up, revealing brown, muscular forearms, before unbuttoning his own pants. This one hesitates before whipping it out, though I’m not sure why. From the bulge of his crotch, he’s clearly hard. Sick fucks. He says his next words to Creep, low and dangerous. “If she says anything, I’m going to shove that fucking pillow over her face.”

“Just do it!” he replies, pushing down on my shoulders.

Lurker obeys, but he’s all slow and hesitant about it, reaching into his pants and giving his dick a few strokes within the confines. When he finally does pull it out, it’s like all the air gets knocked from my lungs.

“Oh, fuck no.” I fight against their hold, but it’s like knocking up against steel.

“It’s not going in,” Creep assures, watching as the man between my legs starts jerking his freak of a cock.

“Shame,” Maniac says, pressing a palm to his bloody wound. “I bet she would have bled if it were him.”

It’s the only comment tonight I find myself agreeing with. Lurker’s cock is grotesquely gargantuan—like something out of a freak show. He hunches inward as he pleasures himself, almost like he’s trying to hide it away, but it’s the equivalent of putting a throw blanket over a bus. It’s long and veiny and thick enough that it’d almost certainly tear me open.

I cower away from it.

He surges with anger, yanking me back. “Stop being a bitch and take it!” He leaves his hand clamped around my thigh, fingers digging into the soft flesh. He squeezes so hard that I can see the corded muscles in his forearms strain with the force.

“Ah!” I cry out, back arching in my attempt to break free, but it just makes him squeeze harder, a soft noise emerging from his throat.

Maniac helps by holding my other leg open, spurring his friend on. “Yeah, man, come on. Squirt all over this pretty pussy. Little slut like this? She deserves it, doesn’t she?”

He makes a short gasp, nudging nearer. “Close…”

“When was the last time you got some, anyway?” Maniac asks, looking every bit the devil on his shoulder. “I’ve never seen you with a chick. Imagine what it’d be like to cram your dick into that hole. Imagine how tight it’d be.” Lower, he urges, “Imagine how loud she’d scream.”

Lurker lurches up, cock in his fist, and shoves it right up against me before he comes. His shoulders heave as he empties himself into my folds, a growl ripping from his chest. “Get the phone, get the phone.” Apparently not one for the afterglow, he pulls back, allowing the other two to spread me wide, phone pointed right between my legs.

A block of dread drops in my stomach at the realization that nothing the Kings had in mind for me could possibly be as humiliating, as dehumanizing, as fucking undignified as this: The three of them huddled around my vagina, recording the image of their spunk and blood dripping to the mattress.

“Got it,” Lurker says, still a touch breathless as he springs from the bed. He marches to the dresser and picks something up—a black leather bag—and throws it to Maniac, adding, “Do your thing and let’s roll.”

“Careful,” Maniac snipes, setting the bag on the bed. “I need a sterile environment, you fucker. Sterile. Titanium fucking white.” He mutters nonsensically as he rifles through the bag.

I look between them, feeling sick with embarrassment and useless anger. “What now?”

Creep just flips me over and every nerve in my body tenses when he says, “Don’t move.”

Maniac straddles my backside, sweeping my hair away from the skin of my back. But it’s a long moment before anything happens. The other two move around, acting when he demands something. “Wet cloth.” And then, “Find an outlet. Plug this in.” And then, “Hold this still.”

There’s a click, and then the sharp, acrid smell of alcohol, a shock of cold against my shoulder blade.

And then, there’s the sudden buzz I’d know anywhere.

Tattoo gun.

“It’s loud!” Lurker hisses, standing close.

But Maniac doesn’t care. I can feel him hunching over me, and suddenly all that frantic energy that’s been radiating off his body disappears. He goes so still, so focused, that it lulls me into the coming numbness.

The first touch of the needle against my skin doesn’t even make me flinch. I think somewhere, buried deep in my brain, is the urge to resist. To fight. To throw him off and run away. But he and Creep are holding me down, and anyway, there’s nowhere to go. I lose the motivation to do much more than stare unseeingly at the soiled bed sheets.

I can’t make out what he draws, too numb to follow the sharp, hot sensation of the needle piercing my skin, but I know that he’s methodical, taking his time as he leans over me, putting his mark into me. I know that it’s small, maybe two or three inches in diameter.

It could be ten minutes later that the buzzing stops or it could be hours.

“See? I said I’d leave a mark,” Maniac says, lips brushing the shell of my ear.

His weight leaves. I hear him and the others packing the supplies back into that bag, ignoring me like discarded trash. I sense them walking toward the dresser and using it to lever themselves out the narrow egress window. I watch them, that broken window being the only part of the room in my line of sight, and I don’t bother rolling over or getting up. Some part of me is firm in the belief that if I stay here—if I stay as still as possible—that none of this will have happened. Moving will mean that I’ll feel it. Between my legs. In my jaw. Around my ankle. In the permanence of the ink on my shoulder blade.

Creep is the last to climb the dresser to the window. He lingers beside my bed, and it’s just like when I first woke up. A pillar of shadow. A part of the foundation. He stares at my used body, defeated and defaced, and then pulls something from his pocket, setting it carefully onto the nightstand.

A can of soda.

He waits, like he’s hoping I’ll react. Perhaps he expects gratitude. A smile and a thanks. I suppose all whores deserve a payment.

When I do nothing but stare expressionlessly at it, he puffs out this hard, annoyed breath, and then pulls something else from his pocket. “You’re welcome.” He tosses it onto the bed right beside my shoulder. It’s a small box, white and purple, with text on the front.

Plan B.

“I told you that you’d be mine someday,” he says, walking backward, “Little Bird.”

And then he’s gone, climbing out of the window in one lithe move.

But I’m left staring unblinkingly in his wake, finally putting the voice to the unsettling blue eyes. Pretty Nick, my handler for the Kings.

I stay like that for some stretch.

Time.

It’s never meant less to me than it does right now.

My body sleeps, but my mind never does. I stare at the window—the flutter of the curtain—and let my flesh drink its fill of rest. I lock my thoughts into safe things. The way those books smelled before. The texture of the pages beneath my fingers. The weight and shape of them. Carding through their thickness. I think of the sky, and how long it’s been since I’ve seen it. The stars. The moon. The sunrise.

I think of birds and the flutter of wings, and then I cry.

I’m not proud of it.

In fact, I spend the whole time resenting the shit out of each tear that tracks its way to the mattress. I can hear my father’s voice in my mind, telling me that it’s weak. Lucias don’t cry—we strike with venom and the points of our fangs. That’s probably what burns me most. The blows were bad, and the sex was worse, but the fact that it’s driven me to tears?

That’s what makes me want to kill Nick.

The sun has long ago come up by the time I twitch my fingers, allowing my muscles and bones to slowly awaken, coming back to life. I know my body isn’t ready to face it. The ache between my legs. The sting in my cheek. The pang in my ankle. It’s just that I need to know.

Hobbling to the bathroom is a series of challenges involving excessive wincing and the avoidance of the blood and semen that’s dried on my thighs. But the moment I do, I turn my back to the mirror, finally seeing the message Maniac had inked into my skin.

A bear.

Not just any bear.

Everyone in Forsyth has seen the Brass Bruin, in one form or another. This wasn’t some mere attack in the dead of night. The Maniac, the Lurker, Nick…

They’ve declared war.

With any luck, I’ll soon be in the position to give them one.