Vanquished Page 16

  The woman on the left giggled. “Oh yes, please, my Lord. I think she’s heavenly. So ripe and succulent, ready enough to eat.”

  Baruch moved his hand down to Kat’s groin and pressed the palm against the crotch of her pants. Kat jerked from the shooting pangs of pleasure between her legs. Each time he pushed into her, the seam of the leather rubbed against her clit. Her nerve endings were so sensitive she was in danger of orgasming right there and then.

  But before she could make the descent, Baruch removed his hand and the sensations vanished.

  Kat gasped at the loss of pleasure. She was at his mercy. He could give or take whatever he wanted from her. She knew he would not send her into a climax too soon. He would first have his fun torturing her to the point of madness. Something needed to give, or she would not survive this with her mind or body intact.

  Perhaps, she had overestimated her power to resist Baruch.

  He had somehow coaxed buried lusts in her to the surface. Erogenous zones she didn’t realize existed popped up all over her body. Just the softest brush of his fingers on her belly, or his breath across her wrist sent her blood boiling.

  The virus racing inside was quickly taking over. Kat estimated that she had maybe ten more minutes before she gave in to the vicious battering of her senses. Her insides felt like a ticking time bomb set to explode on Baruch’s demand.

  Baruch must have sensed her crumbling resolve as he slowly lifted her shirt up to expose her breasts. Blowing a soft breath across her nipples and flicking them with his tongue, he watched her face.

  “Mm, so close. So very close to giving in.” He covered her nipple with his lips and sucked it into his mouth, rolling it back and forth between his teeth.

  A sizzling whip of electricity shot through her body, starting at her breast, zinging over and through her belly, to end in a scorching ball of heat between her thighs.

  “Ah! Fuck!” Kat cried out.

  “Hmm, it seems you like that, don’t you my love?” Baruch chided, as he switched nipples and started feasting on her left one, leaving her right in aching need.

  “I want to play,” Haziel, the woman on the right, whined. “It’s not fair, that we can’t fuck her.”

  The moment she spoke, Kat could feel a lessening of pressure on her right arm. As Haziel bent forward to take part in the torture of Kat’s breasts, Kat knew she had finally received her opportunity.

  Battling back the constant throb between her legs, and the glorious hot flow of pleasure surging over her, Kat pushed all of her strength and energy into her arms. It was now or never.

  With lightening quick speed she didn’t realize she possessed, Kat swung her right arm over her body and unsheathed the blade on Char’s thigh. The unexpected movement startled the woman, and she released her tight hold on Kat’s left arm. Without pause, Kat wrapped her left hand in Baruch’s hair, tilted his head up, and pressed her knife to his throat. A trickle of blood ran down his neck where she had pushed the sharp blade into his flesh.

  The two women started to shriek in protest.

  “You bitches get off the bed, or I will stick this blade through him and rip out his throat.”

  Before either one of the women could speak, Baruch assured them. “It’s all right. Do as she says.”

  Char and Haziel reluctantly slid off the bed, but stood nearby, both of them looking edgy and primed to jump at any moment. Kat knew that they would do whatever Baruch demanded of them. She needed to be careful if this was going to work in her favor.

  “You can’t kill me, Katarina,” Baruch purred as he raised his head up even farther and pushed up with his elbows on the mattress. The slight movements made Kat sit up with him, trying to keep her grip on his hair and the knife to his neck.

  “The hell I can’t. Keep moving and you’ll see how fast I slit your throat.”

  “Do it then. I won’t stop you,” he challenged as he kept moving up until he was on his knees.

  Kat moved with him, until she, too, was kneeling. They were only an inch apart, and she could feel his hot breath on her face as he grinned.

  She knew the second she drew the blade across Baruch’s throat, his bitches would be on her with talons and teeth. But maybe in their blind rage, she could fight them off. She’d rather go down scrapping anyway. Living a long life was too overrated.

  “See you in hell, asshole.”

  The next few minutes felt like an eternity to Kat.

  Before she could swipe her blade, she felt a pressure between her legs. Baruch had cupped her through her pants. Bolts of pleasure zinged up her body, giving pause to her hand.

  Her hesitation cost her everything.

  Quicker than she could think, Baruch punched her in the sternum sending her flying backwards to smash into the concrete wall behind the bed. Before she fell, she managed to cut his chin open, but it wasn’t enough. Baruch was still alive, and now he was pissed.

  When she landed on the mattress face down, she couldn’t get her breath. The force of the blow had knocked all the wind out of her. Scrambling for air, she turned over onto her back, and sucked in a breath. It burned all the way down her trachea and into her lungs like acid.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Baruch shook his head. Blood ran in rivulets down his chin to pool onto the sheets. “I expected more from you, Katarina. I never thought you’d be so foolish. If you were going to kill me, you should’ve done it the second you grabbed the knife.” He grinned, and the wound opened up like a sliced piece of beef. “Hesitation is weakness. Now, you will pay for being so weak.”

  He nodded to Char and Hazriel. With banshee shrieks, they launched themselves at Kat.

  Kat felt the first few scratches and bites. She was past the point of numb when one of the dweller women ripped open Kat’s wrist and feasted on her blood.

  Eventually, everything went blissfully black. Thank the gods for small favors.

  Chapter Twenty

  Pain shot through her head like thunderbolts, as Kat blinked open her lids. Bright light shone harshly from above. She shut her eyes and groaned. Expecting them to be tied, Kat wriggled her arms. They were surprisingly unbound. She brought up a hand to her head and touched her skull gingerly. Her fingers came away sticky with blood. She didn’t think her head could take much more. It had been beaten upon like a drum this time around. The pounding still reverberated inside.

  She opened her eyes again and glanced around her surroundings. It didn’t surprise her to see dank gray walls, and smell the damp stifling air. She had been seeing those walls and smelling that odor for a while now.

  A wide slab of concrete lay like an altar in the middle of the room. She could just imagine what that was used for. She glanced up and noticed long metal pipes lining the roof. The outsides were moist with condensation. She was deep underground in some kind of building, probably in the epicenter of the Vanquished City.

  Kat shuffled her body and arranged her limbs that twisted painfully under her. She was slumped against the wet wall of the empty room. Felt like she had been just tossed into the corner. From the aches and pains that screamed at her when she moved, it wouldn’t surprise her if that was exactly what happened.

  She moved and shuffled until she was leaning against the cement with her legs stretched out in front of her and her arms comfortably at her sides. Glancing down at her wrist, she remembered too well someone biting into her. The flesh still throbbed but, thankfully, the wound was scabbed over and healing rapidly.

  One good thing about the dark dweller virus running rampant through the veins.

  Tilting her head back, she moaned in agony. Sweat had popped out on her brow and lips from the exertion of moving. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this beat up. She was surprised she was still alive. And her stomach was rumbling. Loudly. Funny time to be thinking about food. But she was.

  The thick metal door on the adjoining wall opened with a loud creak. Kat turned her head slightly but didn’t move. She couldn’t muster enough energy to do anything b
ut blink. Even that sent jolts of pain to her skull.

  A small, thin rat-like man shuffled into the room carrying a tray of food. The warm smell triggered contractions to her stomach. She cringed as her hunger gnawed at her insides.

  He sneered as he neared her. Sharp, little, kitten like teeth peeked out between his pale thin lips.

  “You look hungry.” He set the metal tray down on the cement floor an arm’s length away. “Here’s something to whet your appetite.”

  She glanced down at the food. It appeared to be a bowl of meaty stew, a piece of dry bread and a cup of something dark. Tears sprung to her eyes as need encompassed her body. She reached out and dragged the tray closer.

  The little man giggled as he shuffled out the door and pushed it shut.

  Kat took the bread dipped it into the stew and took a healthy bite. She chewed and nearly choked. The bread was so dry the juice from the stew couldn’t make it soft. She picked up the cup and peered into it. It was dark red. She sniffed it. The tart aroma of wine wafted to her nose. She put it to her mouth, but hesitated.

  She could smell something else under the cloying pungency. Something very familiar. She took another deep whiff and closed her eyes savoring the scent.

  Hades. She could smell him mixed in with the mulled wine.

  Kat threw the cup across the room and screamed. “You fuckers! I’m going to rip every single one of you apart!” Angry tears welled in her eyes.

  She picked up the bowl of stew and tossed it toward the door. It missed by miles, landing in an upturned mess on the floor. She kept the metal tray thinking she could use it somehow. She hugged it to her chest just as the door creaked open again.

  Little rat-man shuffled in again. This time Baruch followed him, wearing a red robe. She must have gotten his black one dirty. He smiled as he entered, appearing to be enjoying a private joke. Another dweller brought up the rear. A tall muscular woman with a shaved head.

  “I see you’ve made a little mess,” drawled Baruch.

  “Yes, could you get the maid in here to clean it up?”

  Baruch chuckled. The sound vibrated off the walls and wrapped itself around Kat. She winced while her heart skipped a beat. She refused to be attracted to him. But her body’s betrayal was evident as her nipples tightened and her cunt began to tick just like a clock.

  He moved across the floor as if floating to stand in front of her. She tilted her head up to meet his gaze.

  “You amuse me still, Katarina.”

  “And you make me fucking mad.” She wanted to sit up, grab his leg and bite into his thigh. The thought of his blood and flesh in her mouth sent shivers of delight over her body. Her gaze moved up his body and settled on the healing scar on his chin. She hurt him, and now she had a feeling she was going to pay some more for that misdeed.

  Baruch smiled and nodded at the rat man.

  Both he and the bald woman moved to either side of Kat. They bent down and hooked her under the arms, yanking her to her feet. Pain exploded throughout her body as they dragged her to the cement block. Where one pain ended another enthusiastically picked up. Dizziness overcame her senses and she wanted to throw up.

  They picked her up and tossed her down on her back onto the cement slab. Landing with a grunt onto the hard cold surface, new pains erupted in her spine. She had trouble forming any thoughts as her head swam in dark agony.

  Baruch stood alongside watching her with affection in his eyes. More like love of a pet then a person. He stoked a hand over her cheek and down to her mouth. He rubbed his fingers over her lips and pushed one in between.

  Kat gagged as his finger probed her mouth. With her teeth, she clamped down around him.

  Baruch flinched but grinned. “Yes. That’s it. Bite into me. Make your transformation complete. Feed on my blood. Become one of us.”

  Kat relaxed her jaw. She would not give in, even if it meant letting him invade her.

  Baruch withdrew his finger and wiped the spit on her torn dirty shirt. “I thought the lesson you learned earlier would have been enough. You have amazing will, even now. I shall enjoy breaking it.” He nodded to his companions. “I would have spared you this, Katarina if you had accepted my offer. So in light of your refusal, I have no choice but to take what I want from you.”

  They left without a word, shutting the door behind them with a resounding thud. Kat was alone with him. In other circumstances, she would’ve been glad to be one-on-one with her captor, but in this case, she knew it was the worst thing that could happen. If he were the only thing she had to concentrate on, then her resolve wouldn’t last long. Already, her stomach lurched over in anticipation. Her thighs tingled and tightened at the thought of his exquisitely painful ways to make her succumb.

  * * *

  The jiggling of chains finally broke Hades out of his induced slumber. He blinked at his surroundings, although he knew exactly where he was. The dull throb in his arms solidified his answer as his body twisted slightly from the momentum of the dangling restraints. He was in the room from his dreams. Except he was the one hanging naked from the ceiling in chains. His dream-seer abilities had failed this time, thankfully. He didn’t think he could handle seeing Kat hanging from the same fate.

  He twisted his body so he could turn. He needed to see the others, which he knew just by the smell alone that they were there. Four other bodies hung suspended from the roof. Not as many as he feared. Two were definitely dead. Eyes open, but no one looking through. The other two, one male and one female, appeared beaten and bloodied, but he could still see the shallow rise and fall of their chests.

  Out of them both, he studied the woman. He viewed her up and down and spied something familiar on her feet. There was thin webbing between her toes. Nemo’s wife, Kele. It was definitely her. Damn it! To his shame, he was hoping he and Kat wouldn’t see her. Because now he couldn’t leave without her. Not after all Nemo had done for them.

  Hades swung back around. He had better start formulating a plan. If he hung there for very much longer, his arms would go numb and he would be useless to them all.

  As he studied the machinations of his bindings, a tall muscular woman with a shaved head stepped out of the shadows and into the sickly yellow light emanating from the fluorescents above. He nearly laughed. She looked exactly like him but as a woman.

  She grinned as she neared his swaying body. “Hello handsome. I’m Urzla. I get to keep you company while Baruch is busy doing your woman.”

  Hades cringed inside, but he kept his outer appearance calm. He knew they wouldn’t kill Kat. No, they wanted more from her than that. He just hoped he was strong and clever enough to get to her before she changed into something like the woman standing in front of him. Urzla was damn ugly with bulging biceps, pale translucent eyes, and long fangs poking out from between her pale lips. Hades hoped he never got that repulsive.

  “Lucky me,” he said rolling his eyes.

  She stood just out of reach of his legs and openly leered at his naked body. It didn’t bother him in the least. He knew he was built well. She could stare at him all she wanted.

  “Have you ever had blood drained out of your cock before?”

  Hades flinched. Okay, now he was nervous.

  “I can see by your face that you haven’t had that experience yet.” She grinned. “First, I stroke you until you are nice and hard, then once you are thickly engorged with blood, I take just the tiniest of bites into the head and suck. Hard.”

  Hades could feel all the blood leave his head, and it wasn’t going to his cock. He felt very faint.

  She chuckled. “Trust me. You’ll love it. That way you’ll be primed and ready to go for when your woman comes to see you.” She stepped toward him, a malicious grin on her angular face.

  Lifting his legs, barely, Hades tried to pull back from her. The motion only caused him to start spinning. Within moments, he felt a pair of warm, rough hands grabbing his legs and turning him around again. He tried to kick her, but she held him still.
She was incredibly strong, and because he had been hanging here for however long, his strength was draining from him.

  “Fighting me will only make it more painful,” she said as she eyed his cock and licked her lips.

  “I’m impervious to pain, bitch. Give it your best shot.”

  With a low rumbling growl, Urzla gripped his ass cheek, wrapped a hand around the shaft of his cock, and guided him into her gaping mouth.

  When he slid past her plump lips, he could feel the scrape of her fangs on his sensitive flesh. Unfortunately, the feeling wasn’t as unpleasant as he initially thought it would be. A man couldn’t fight some things. A rumbling stomach and a woman sucking on his cock were on the top of the list.

  Regardless of the woman, his cock quickly engorged with blood and became rock hard. With the way she was sucking him in to the base of his shaft, Hades didn’t think it would take much for him to come. If he didn’t do something quick, he would lose all his senses in his orgasm.

  He wouldn’t fail Kat that way.

  Gritting his teeth against the onslaught of pleasure spearing him with each stroke of Urzla’s mouth, Hades tried to lift his legs. He hoped that she would be too enthralled with sucking his cock that she wouldn’t notice the movement.

  She didn’t, not until his thighs were around her head.

  Eyes wide, she tried to protest. His cock, thankfully, slid from her open mouth, and he was able to turn her around with a jerk of his legs. When she was nestled tightly at his crotch, Hades squeezed her as hard as he could.

  She screamed and raged, clawing at his legs. But it was too late. He had her. With one powerful twist of his pelvis, he broke her neck. He opened his legs and she slumped to the cement floor dead.