Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
With shaking hands, Trees opened Ramos’s photos—and immediately hit pay dirt. The last thing saved was the video Laila had sent to convince him that she was Ramos’s willing whore.
He pressed the button to launch it. Instantly, the screen filled with a familiar scene—the cheap motel room, the slightly yellowing sheets, the ugly brown and blue bedspread, not to mention a naked Laila. But the footage he was seeing? She hadn’t sent this to him when she’d emailed and told him to kiss off.
In this version, Ramos wore his boxers and stumbled onto the bed drunkenly, holding a nearly empty bottle of tequila in one hand. Some sloshed on her neck and shoulder. He laughed, pouncing toward her, the view wobbling as he flattened her against the mattress. “What’s with the camera, chiquita?”
As he leered toward her neck, Laila called to him, her voice sultry. “I am going to film us, like you used to.”
Ramos lifted his head with a loopy, smug leer. “I recorded hours and hours of you screaming for me. I watched them often for my pleasure.” He sucked in a hissing breath. “Your fear makes me hard.”
“I know,” she breathed like she was entranced, like she wanted his degradation and pain.
Trees wanted to hurl.
“Hold the phone out. Make sure you capture all the ways I’m going to fuck you.”
Instantly, she complied, positioning the camera arm’s length from them, pulling the sheet up to their waists, covering the fact that Ramos was dry humping her thigh.
Then she suddenly smiled for the camera, looking heavy lidded and aroused. Her expression sent an electric ping of recognition through Trees. It was the same come-hither glance he’d seen in the first frame of the video she’d sent.
Screw upchucking the contents of his stomach. He wanted to hurl this phone across the room, beat the ever-loving fuck out of Ramos, then lay into Laila for lying to him yet again. Then he apparently needed to beat his own ass for believing her.
“Chiquita,” he growled. “I want that pussy.”
“It is here for you. Like I am.” She rolled her head to one side, eyes closed in ecstasy, offering Ramos her neck.
“Hmm…yes.” He bounced on top of her like they were fucking. “Good little puta.”
Trees froze the video, took it back a few seconds, and replayed the frames. But he hadn’t missed anything. The first time he’d watched this footage, he’d been convinced Ramos and Laila were having dirty, raunchy, very consensual sex. But clearly Ramos was still wearing his boxers and treating her thigh like his bitch.
“Damn it,” Trees muttered.
Laila had intentionally led him to believe she and Ramos were fucking.
Because she was trying to convince you not to come to her rescue? Because she wanted to protect you?
He wasn’t sure, so he continued the torment of watching.
On the video, Laila moaned in answer. “For you? Always.”
Victor gave her hair a vicious tug and sank his teeth into her shoulder hard like she was a piece of prime meat he intended to chew up and swallow down.
Laila cried out. “Yes!”
“Mine.”
Laila gave another heavy-lidded glance toward the camera. “Yours.”
That’s where the video she’d sent him ended. But it wasn’t ending now. There was almost a minute more.
Starting with Laila groping around on the mattress for Ramos’s empty tequila bottle. She lifted it and bonked him over the head.
Trees reared back. He hadn’t seen that coming. Why would Laila try to knock him out if she wanted him to fuck her?
In response, Ramos stiffened, lifted his head, and glared at her, his narrowed stare suddenly vowing retribution.
With a gasp, Laila dropped the phone. All Trees could see was the peeling, water-stained ceiling, but he could hear plenty, starting with the sound of her choking.
“You want to play rough, bitch?” Ramos growled.
The sounds of Laila fighting him, grunting and struggling, her screams suppressed by what Trees suspected were the asshole’s hands around her throat made him beyond furious. She didn’t actually enjoy scum like Ramos damn near choking the life out of her, right?
Seconds later, he heard what sounded like the bottle against someone’s skull again. Then Laila coughed and gasped, audibly dragging air into her starved lungs.
“Cabrón.” Had that noise been her spitting on Ramos? “I hate you. You will never touch me again. Never!”
Her words rang like a solemn promise.
Suddenly, Laila grabbed the phone, looking shaken and angry. The device wobbled in her hands before he got a flash of Ramos unmoving, face down across the mattress, with his pale backside in the air and his boxers haphazardly halfway to his knees.
The video ended there.
Holy. Motherfucking. Shit.
Trees sat back, his thoughts racing. But they all circled back to one conclusion: Laila had been telling the truth in the dungeon. She had altered the clip she’d emailed him to convince him she was Ramos’s willing lover. So he wouldn’t try to save her while he was injured.