Page 88 of Vow of Vengeance
It's dark and silent, a place where nothing exists. But 'nothing' isn't happiness. Nothing isn't enough to balance the pain.
It's Declan who does that. The warmth of his touch, the glow of his praise, the stubble of his beard against my pussy, the adoration in his eyes when he looks up at me from there.
"Oh," Vin laughs somewhere outside of the protection of my mind. "You think you can escape this, huh? You know how many have tried it before you? You think I'm just going to let you?"
I can feel the tears still dripping down my jaw, but I take a measured breath through my nose, force calm.
I hear his laugh again, cruel and condescending. "It's not the act of watching someone die that does it for me. It's having so much power over them... the control. And when my viewers watch my snuff films, they get to imagine it's them who's doing these things... that it's them who gets to suffocate a girl on his dick. That it's them who gets to stab a bitch and fuck their own virgin hole. I give my viewers the chance to feel alive while you die. It's a one-of-a-kind experience, really.” His voice is breathy with the conviction of his words. “Art."
I think of Declan calling me kitten. Calling me little bird. I think of his body against mine, the static that turns our breathing electric even when we're fully clothed. I think of his relentless attempts to find my best friend, for no reason other than she's my best friend.
I'm already braced for impact, so when his hand whips across my face, I don't react beyond the involuntary movement of my head and a small grunt that gets choked back down by the gag. I hear him talking, but I don't know what he says. I just know that I feel him step away, and I'm not dumb enough to believe he's anywhere close to done with me.
He proves me correct when a sudden piercing sensation snaps against my pussy. I don’t even get a chance to open my eyes and see what it is, because everything inside of me tightens, my muscles contracting as electricity courses along my spine, which threatens to bend as I try to lift off of the bed. But there’s nowhere to go, and it ends as quickly as it began, leaving a throbbing sting in its wake.
I collapse against the mattress, my body heaving as I open my eyes to take in Vin between my legs with the stick in hand. He holds it between us for me to see and I watch electricity dancebetween the prongs as he touches a button, the zapping sound filling my ears.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Vin smirks, waiting for me to laugh at his joke. When I don’t, he sighs and touches the stick against my sensitive flesh again.
My body tenses this time in anticipation of the agony, but Vin smirks as he watches me squirm, drowning in my tears. It’s too hard to escape him when he’s keeping me hostage to the moment. Sweat glides between my breasts and tears drip from my face, drool leaks from my mouth. And as he presses the button again, stabbing me with an electrical current, my entire body contorts, trying to escape.
But there is no escape, so I jam my eyes shut and refuse to open them in between jabs of the cattle prod, letting my body tense and knot and collapse beneath the pain until he decides I’m not giving him what he wants.
“You’re supposed to be my greatest show, Soren.” Vin growls, agitation making him sound manic as he moves around me. I don’t dare look at him, taking the opportunity to breathe in the aftermath of the pain.
It’s clear when he steps away; his voice moves from one side of the room to another, and I don’t let myself think about what he’s doing. “I’ll just have to get more creative.”
Moments pass in silence, and I can feel my body sagging, finally relaxing. Every inch of me is sore from the electrical current passing through me, and now that he seems to have abandoned it, I can’t help easing, taking advantage of the moment to try and take a full breath.
I must begin to drift off to sleep, because the lash of fire against my skin is so sudden, my eyes fly open to find the source... another stick in Vin's hand, this one with a long strip of leather at the end.
There's a red welt against my flesh, already cracked with a thin trail of blood rising up on the surface.
When I find his eyes, they're dark, but not empty. No, it would be more comforting if they were. Instead, they're full of hatred, of violence, of lust and pleasure and satisfaction.
He pulls his hand back and I slam my eyes shut just before the whip connects again, this time against my breast.
I scream around the gag, but it's a useless sound. It doesn't even seem to make Vin happy, because he immediately strikes again, this time on my stomach.
As the leather crosses the spot where he stabbed me, the pain bubbles over, turning white hot and spilling into a vast static.
My brain takes me back to Declan, and then whatever Vin does to me after that, it doesn't matter, because in my mind, I'm right where I want to be.
thirty-three
Declan
"Faster!"Igrowl,jammingthe barrel of the gun against Tony's skull as I watch the speedometer climb too slowly.
"If we get pulled over, how are you gonna explain this to the police?"
"You've never worried about the police before." I challenge. "Don't start now. Go faster."
He cuts a glare at me from the corner of his eye and then presses down on the gas, accelerating to eighty-three. I give the gun a little shake, and he growls before bringing us up to eighty-eight.
"What makes you think Vin's alive, anyway?" He asks. "I saw him dead."
"Did you see his body go in the fucking ground?"
