Page 53 of Bought to Break
He tried to make light of what he’d said by feigning ignorance. ‘What is it?’
‘You called me “love”. You’ve said it before, too.’ She hesitated, looking suddenly shy. ‘Do you?’
He should have known she wouldn’t leave it. She was the type to unravel an entire horse blanket from one loose thread on a journey just because she was bored. ‘Yes,’ he said simply, shrugging unapologetically.
She grinned at him, shaking her head. ‘I am a freewoman – I’m going to take it out.’
‘As you will.’ He looked at her deviously. ‘But it does give you pleasure.’
Lana closed the book she’d been reading with a snap. ‘You try going about your everyday business with a thing like this up your arse.’
‘I did.’ He flinched. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, either.
‘What do you mean?’ Her gaze bore into him.
Too late to take it back.Lana was exceedingly tenacious when it came to information. He’d found that out after he’d had the books brought. Expecting her to be a reluctant pupil, or at the very least to have to help her to relearn to read after years of not practising, he was astounded when her eyes had lit with excitement and she’d fallen on them like a starving beast on a piece of meat. Not only did she remember how to read and write, but she was faster at it than he was.
‘I … before I was a Dark Brother, I was a pleasure slave.’
Her mouth opened and closed several times before she spoke. ‘You. A pleasure slave? I don’t –’
‘I was young,’ he cut in. ‘A boy. I was born a slave into a wealthy house. I worked in the stables. They fell on hard times, so I was sold. I became a body slave. My master taught me pleasure when it suited him. He also taught me fear and pain and hate.’ Even now, to think of those years made his fists clench so hard that his nails dug into his palms, making them bleed. Why had he told her these things? Viktor and Kane knew, but they had had to. If not for them, he would not one day have revenge.
‘So you wore one of these as a slave?’
‘Yes.’ Sorin looked up, daring her to pity him, and swore to himself that if he saw it in her eyes, he would thrust his cock into her arse right now on this table and make sure he hurt her. But when he looked at her face, he found only an innocent curiosity. Sometimes he forgot how little she’d seen of the world.
‘What was the worst thing he ever did to you?’
The question caught him unawares, but he knew the answer instantly, though he made a show of thinking. He tried to ease his uneven breathing as the old uncontrollable panic threatened to return. This was what happened when he talked about those dark days, the same surge of fear Lana had endured some days before, but Lana had asked and she was one of them. She had a right to know, even though Kane had cautioned them not to tell her too much.
He was hot, his palms sweating, but he continued. ‘When I was sold, my mother wasn’t. She stayed with the family. She was … I loved her and she me. My master decided that though he had put many, many hours into breaking my body, my will was not tamed enough for his liking.’ Sorin swallowed hard, not looking at Lana at all. ‘The bastard bought her and he and some of his friends raped her in front of me. They spent hours at it, hurting her over and over. I couldn’t help her. When they were bored with her and she’d long since stopped screaming, he told me to slit her throat or they’d do all of what they’d done to her, to me.’
He realised that she had come to him and knelt in front of him. She took his hands in hers and squeezed them gently. A part of him wanted to push her away and leave, but, for some reason, he didn’t.
‘How did you become a Dark Brother?’ she asked quietly.
‘One night someone came to kill my master. He almost succeeded, but my master was too slippery and escaped. He found me instead. I was a shadow; a pathetic little sex slave that he used and passed around to anyone he owed anything to – but my will was not entirely extinguished. Loathing still burned through my veins. The assassin saw that my hatred was as deep as his own, so he freed me and brought me to the Dark Brothers so that we could have our revenge together.’
‘We?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Who was the Brother who found you?’
‘Kane.’
Chapter 26
Lana
Kane.That surprised her. She hadn’t really thought about how the Brothers had come to be in the same unit. She’d assumed almost abstractly that there was some sort of system to choose – straws, perhaps. She’d also got the impression that Kane had been a Brother for longer than Viktor and Sorin, as he was second in command only to Greygor.
Lana kept Sorin’s hands clasped in her own. She didn’t feel pity, never that, but she wished she could take the pain she saw in his eyes away and replace it with something better. ‘But didn’t Kane already have a unit?’
Moments ago, she had been afraid she’d pried too much. His countenance had taken on a darkness that she had been sure meant he was going to hurt her, but he hadn’t. Instead he had answered her questions as if confessing his past to her would lighten his burdens. Perhaps they would.
‘He had the beginnings of one. He and Viktor were waiting for their third.’
Sorin’s hands began to caress hers, fingers sliding to her wrists and dancing over the sensitive skin of her palms. Lana felt her body responding to his touch almost immediately. Her clothes felt too heavy against her and she could feel her nipples hardening through her tunic.
‘Who was first? Who found the second?’ She asked the questions quickly, as he had a tendency to rob her of her faculties. She already sounded breathless even to her own ears, and focusing on his words was becoming difficult.
