Page 103 of Sacred Vow
Panic surges through her stare, and she starts to claw at my hand. “Caes . . . Caesar. I—”
“You have roughly nine seconds before you run out of oxygen and your body starts to give in, so I suggest you hurry up and tell me where she is before I send you to the grave alongside your son.”
She clenches her jaw, and even still on the brink of death, I see that need to put up a fight, but as the seconds start to tick by and her body screams for oxygen, realization finally dawns, and her gaze flicks across the VIP floor toward the private rooms. “Third . . . door,” she croaks out, her eyes growing heavy.
I pull her off the wall and throw her to the ground, not waiting to see if she is even capable of taking a breath beneath her crushed windpipe. I race across the floor, sprinting toward the third private room with a fierce desperation.
I hear Izaac heavy on my heels, calling out to his security behind him. “Detain her,” he demands, racing after me.
We reach the third door within seconds, and I don’t stop to try the handle. I simply barge straight through it, a wildness pulsing through my veins. My feet pound against the floor, breaking deep into the room as my gaze shoots around the room, taking in the three men assaulting my girl as she’s cuffed to the X frame.
One of them—a younger guy who I’ve seen hanging around—holds a whip, brutally cracking it against her waist, and judging by the raw marking across her soft skin, it’s not the first hit she’s received.
The second guy standing behind her at the X frame isn’t someone I know, but he’s someone who’s actively known for playing out rape fetishes. He has one arm locked around her chest, keeping her still as his fingers dive into the cup of her bra, roughly pinching her nipple. His other hand is at her hip, trying to tear her thong as she wildly bucks to get him away.
The third guy—Liam—is a friend I’ve known for a few years, and just seeing him in this room tells me that he has no idea that this isn’t a consensual act. He stands across the room, looking uncomfortable as he searches the wall of BDSM toys, but he’s a pleaser, and if this is what he thinks she wants, then he’s going to try and give it to her.
“GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF MY WIFE,” I roar, racing toward Tilly as tears stream down her cheeks, soaking into the fabric that’s been tied over her mouth, taking away any hope for giving or denying consent.
All eyes snap toward me, and I see the relief in Tilly’s expression. The man holding the whip looks pissed to be interrupted. Rape fetish dude immediately steps back, not wanting the drama, while Liam’s hands instantly fly into the air. “What the fuck is going on?”
Izaac barges in behind me with a few of his security guards, and as I dive for the man with the whip, he races toward Tilly. “What’s going on,” I roar, taking the fucker to the ground andslamming my fist into his jaw, “is that she didn’t consent to this bullshit.”
I’m distantly aware of Izaac tearing the shirt off his own fucking back and covering Tilly as his guards detain the other men in the room. Others begin to free her from the cuffs around her wrists, all while my fists pummel into this asshole’s face.
“Whoa. No. No, no, no,” Liam says from across the room, his tone frantic. “You’ve got it wrong. This is what she asked for. No safeword. Rape fetish. She wanted to be degraded.”
My head snaps up just in time for two of Izaac’s men to grab the backs of my arms and pull me away from the unconscious asshole on the ground. “You really think that is what she wanted?” I demand, shrugging the guards off as I race to Tilly, just in time to catch her as the cuffs are freed from around her wrists. “Baby, are you okay?” I rush out, checking over her body, panic tearing at my chest.
She clutches me as if trying to tell me something, and I frantically try to unknot the strip of fabric around her mouth as I look back at Liam. “Look at her. She’s fucking terrified. She’s crying. How the hell could you think this is what she wants?”
“I . . . I didn’t know. Lots of women react differently to this kind of stuff. I just assumed . . . Annie said—”
Getting frustrated with the fabric, I grab the ends and tear it down the center, watching as she claws at it to get it off her face. “Annie,” she rushes the second her mouth is freed. “She’s here. That’s who—”
“I know, hellcat. We got her. You don’t have to worry about her again. She’s detained and will spend the rest of her life behind bars for what she did to you. I promise you that. I won’t let her get away with this.”
Tilly collapses in my arms, and I hold her tight as Liam continues to shake his head. “But—”
“Annie is a fucking psychopath who tried to kill her two weeks ago,” I say, barely able to look up at him as I focus solely on my girl, desperately needing to get her home as guilt slams down on my shoulders for even asking her to come here. “Annie just used you to have her raped.”
Liam shakes his head as I cradle Tilly in my arms, holding her tighter than ever before, my hand clutching the back of her head against my chest.
“No. That can’t. But . . . fuck,” Liam grunts, his face turning white as he drops to his knees, his gaze locked on Tilly as her soft cries echo through the room. “Is . . . Is that true?” he asks her.
Tilly clutches onto me as though terrified of letting go, her chest heaving with heavy sobs, and when she lifts her head, I let her have the room, knowing she’s about to deliver the final blow. “Not one of you even attempted to get my consent,” she growls, a ferociousness in her tone that demands every fucking ear in the room pay attention. “You didn’t bother to ask if what she had said was true. You didn’t ask me if it was okay to whip me. You didn’t ask if I was comfortable. If I wanted any of this. You just put your hands all over me and took while tears streamed down my face. How could you think that was okay?”
“I’m sorry, I . . . I didn’t know. I—”
“She might have lured you all into this room under false pretenses, but as far as I’m concerned, each one of you had a responsibility to check with me if any of this was okay, and it wasn’t. Not even a little bit. As far as I’m concerned, had Caesar not come bursting in here when he did, every one of you would have been guilty of rape by the end of the night.”
Tilly scoffs with disgust, her gaze sailing over the unconscious man on the floor before focusing on the third guy who was trying to tear her thong off her body. “You better put in a call to your lawyer. You should be expecting sexual assault charges by morning.”
The guy just clenches his jaw, shaking his head with regret heavy in his eyes. He knows he fucked up. “Shit.”
Izaac orders his team to start dragging the men out of the room, but Liam simply drops to his knees, unable to come to terms with what he’s done. “I’m so sorry,” he says, his whole world crumbling to ashes. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Tilly shakes her head and holds his haunted stare. “Do you have a daughter?”
