Page 8 of Kings of Violence

“P-please,” I manage to get out, shaking my head. “Please. I’m not going to… I don’t… I can’t…”

“I still like the charm of branding the ass,” Nikolai says with an exaggerated sigh, ignoring me completely. “But you’re the boss.”

“It’s too easy to ignore a brand on her ass,” Kotya says. He places his large hand on my chest, just above one breast.

The branding iron hovers far too close to my skin now, and I can feel the heat radiating from it.

Kotya looks me in the eyes and smiles. “Take a breath and relax. The pain will be easier to handle that way.”

Incredulous at his so-called advice, I start to say, “Take a?—”

Kotya pushes the iron against my chest, and the pain makes me scream. The nausea I’d felt rises up again, and the second he pulls it back, I’m turning my head, vomiting all over the floor from the pain and humiliation and fear and everything else I can’t even put a name to.

The smell of burning flesh doesn’t help.

Nikolai groans. “Why do they throw up half the time?” he complains. “It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

I’m trembling all over, and I raise my hand to wipe my mouth off. The taste still lingers on my tongue.

“Not everybody has your pain tolerance,” Kotya answers. He sets the branding iron aside and wraps a hand around my throat to force me to lie back down, making me shudder all over again. “Nikolai, bandage her up. We don’t want it to get infected.”

“Yeah, got it,” Nikolai says. “Thencan we fuck her?” He walks away to one of the cabinets that isn’t locked, pulling out bandages and some sort of bottle.

“Please, not… not right now. I might get sick again,” I whisper, trying to hold still but finding it impossible not to shift beneath Kotya’s hand.

“You can fuck her,” Kotya answers coolly.

“You can choke her while I do,” Nikolai says as he comes back to me with that self-satisfied smirk.

I can’t say anything. The idea of Kotya choking me is horrifying, especially since Nikolai seems to like it.

“Give her the full experience. Well.” Nikolai shrugs. “Not the full experience, not until Yura gets out of jail…” He starts to slather cream on the brand. “Yura is there because of your family, by the way.”

Yura.

I’d known someone namedYuri, once — a Russian, too. But he’s gone now. Gone, but not forgotten, no matter how much my father had wanted me to forget about his existence.

That doesn’t matter right now, though. What does matter is that there will be one more person to hate me.

One more person to torture me.

This is just looking better and better.

Kotya gives my neck a light squeeze. Even as terrified as I am, I can see the interest in his eyes.

Yeah, he’s going to enjoy choking me. His hand is so large that he can wrap it almost all the way around my neck. If he decides to choke me for real, I’ll have no way to stop him.

But he did just brand me. Surely he isn’t going to want to kill me immediately.

“Yura will like her,” Kotya answers. Then he laughs. “He will like hurting her.”

It definitely can’t be the same person. Yuri had made it clear he didn’t hurt women. “You don’t have to hurt me,” I try to say, but my voice is raspy.

“Of course we do,” Nikolai says, applying the bandage to the brand. “There we go. Now we can have some fun.” He sets the bottle aside, looking down at me. “We’ll buy you better clothes than… this. Pretty clothes.”

Kotya snorts. “Let her hack computers in panties. Or in the nude.”

“As long as they aren’t those… granny panties,” Nikolai says, making a face. He slides his fingers under the waistband of my sweatpants, teasing me for a moment before finally pulling them down. “But I like lingerie. It’s like having a pretty package to unwrap.” He snickers, glancing at Kotya. “You would look good in lingerie.”

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