Page 138 of Unorthodox
I don’t think.
He shakes my face. “I think you should thank me while I play with your cunt, don’t you?”
The man by the door laughs again.
Mamie whimpers again.
I ignore it. I’m staring at his face, but I’m not really seeing him.
He lets go of my chin, then he backhands me, and my face burns as it jerks to the side, the rope biting into my mouth, but I don’t say a word.
Even as Mamie screams.
I keep quiet, even as my pulse pounds in the ache of my jaw.
The man grabs my face again, leans down close, his fingers still violating me.
Then he spits on me.
It’s warm and wet, and revulsion rolls through me, my stomach churning.
I can’t block him out anymore, and he knows it.
His mouth turns up into a wicked smile beneath his mask, his eyes locked on mine. “You liked that?” he taunts me. “You want me to spit on your pussy too?”
My chest heaves, bile burning in the back of my throat, and just when I think I’m going to scream, just when I think I can’t hide inside myself, those double doors behind my captor, the ones I tried to lose myself in by staring at them…they burst open.
Suddenly, I’m completely back in my body.
I hear gunfire, and the man toying with me stands behind me, the cold steel of a knife to my throat.
I watch the glass panes of the doors shatter from an explosion of bullets. I watch the guard that was waiting for Max go down to one knee, then, as Max himself steps inside, a gun in each hand, I watch that guard die, a bullet to his head as he crumples down into the glass wreckage in the foyer.
When the ringing in my ears begins to die, and silence descends in the dark house, the only sound that of Mamie’s muffled cries across from me, her back to what’s happening in the foyer, I meet Max’s gaze.
But he isn’t looking at me.
He’s staring past me.
The man in front of Mamie is facing him, aiming a gun at his head.
And the man behind me runs the flat side of the blade against my throat.
“Where’s Luca?” the man asks, yanking back on my hair with one hand, forcing my throat up, neck arched. The man sounds nervous. “What did you do to him?”
Max drops one of his guns, keeps the other by his side as he steps over the glass in the foyer. Over the body of one of his own men.
“Why?” Max asks quietly, the hint of a smile on his face in the dim lights overhead. “Was he supposed to meet you here?” He keeps walking forward, right into the barrel of the gun Mamie’s guard is holding.
Mamie can’t see it, but her eyes are on me, waiting to see how I react to what’s happening behind her as tears stream down her face.
So, I don’t react.
I keep my face carefully blank as I watch Max. As I watch the steel end of the gun dig into his black dress shirt, right at his shoulder.
“I’ll kill her, do you understand?” the man behind me threatens, turning the knife so the blade is against my throat.
I keep my eyes on Max, and I don’t so much as breathe. He seems to notice me for the first time. His eyes rake over my nearly naked body, but he doesn’t react.
