Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
The turmoil inside her hardened into resolve. Ten weeks, a disciplined slave, and Mom and Mattie would be safe for another few months. It was how she measured her life, wasn’t it? In ten week increments, in the trade of slaves, one body at a time.
She checked the music player. The one-hour recording rolled through its second of twenty-four repeats. He’d only been in the box for an hour, but it would’ve felt like days to him.
Ironically, the drone of the 528 hertz was used in meditation as harmonic healing. When Van had shoved her in the box and slapped the earphones on her head, he’d said, “That’s a load of new age bullshit. After twenty-four hours of the same goddamned electrical wave passing through your skull, you won’t be healed. You’ll be fucking manic.”
He’d been right. She’d emerged wild-eyed, delusional, and willing to do anything he demanded to avoid another minute in that box.
Fuck Van and his thrills. When she’d fled from him downstairs twenty minutes earlier, the desire in his eyes had been vulgar in its blatancy. Why had he let her escape so easily? He didn’t give a shit if the boy vomited in the box, and he was too damned calculating to accept that excuse.
Always, he fucked her when he wanted her. Never did she participate with a willing heart. Yet their scrimmages didn’t involve physical force. He’d wear her down with a skilled tongue or prey on her guilt through the mistreatment of a slave. Sometimes, he’d simply threaten to alert Mr. E of her disobedience. It wasn’t until she’d met him that she’d understood the meaning of coerced consent.
She stared at the door, terrified to open it, terrified not to.
Surely he went to bed in his room downstairs instead of following her to the attic. If he’d followed her, he’d be out there with that poor girl, who had been asleep when Liv had dashed by in the race to her room.
Fucking hell. Checking on the girl was the right thing to do, no matter how badly she didn’t want to open the door. Mr. E didn’t give a shit how Van treated the captives as long as they met the requirements at the end of ten weeks.
Her stomach turned as she agonized leaving the boy alone. Goddammit, she was weakening already, and it was only his first night. Her chin trembled. He had to remain in the box. She couldn’t bend the rules and expect to mold him into an acceptable slave. But the girl was already trained and didn’t deserve Van’s needless tormenting.
She closed the lid and jogged to the keypad. If he was waiting on the other side, she could shut it quickly. If he was messing with the girl, she’d have to distract him. Deep breath. She entered the code and cracked the door.
Across the room, the incarnation of her fears sat on the cot, back slouched against the wall. The girl’s head dipped up and down between his spread legs, her face and his dick shrouded by her hair.
Memories ripped in Liv’s mind, sharp and desolate. She saw her own brown hair instead of the girl’s blond. She felt his cock punching the back of her throat and his fingers digging into her scalp. Their baby moved inside her, stretching her belly, making her bent position agonizing to endure.
Her blood pooled away from her core, leaving the frigid numbness of her year as a slave—nine of those months pregnant.
She swallowed the apparition of her past before it consumed her. The girl sucking him still retained her virginity, yet she was adept with her lips, mouth, and tongue. As one of the buyer’s requirements, Liv had spent the prior eight weeks teaching her the skill on Van. And in two weeks, Liv would deliver her to a man whose hand was as heavy as his wallet.
Van looked up and caught her eyes, flames of greed blazing in his. “Come out here and show her how it’s done, Liv.”
God, she hated him when he was like this. When he watched her with such hunger as he pumped his dick in whatever hole he could command. This wasn’t a training session for the girl. It was about Liv and him, and he was using the girl to tunnel Liv’s guilt.
She could tuck her chin, shut the door, and fall asleep in the musty familiarity of her mattress inside the safety of her room.
And let the girl stroke and suck him until he was done with her. She’d blown him a dozen times before during practice. Did one more time really matter?
Van pushed down on the back of her head, and her hands convulsed on the mattress.
Compassion was lethal to Liv’s well-being, but she couldn’t stop it as it shuddered over her skin and swallowed up her heart. She opened the door, passed the cot, another keypad, another code, and down the stairs, her insides bucking and tumbling. At the end of the hall, she stopped at the only closed door and dropped her forehead against it.