Page 37 of Scarred Queen

He didn’t answer, instead, stopping so abruptly that she nearly ran into his back. He punched a code into the panel next to a thick, metal door, pushing it open when a little light flashed. He dragged her through the door and gave her a shove into a small, airless room; finally releasing her. Casey rubbed her arm and looked around her in utter dismay, terror swirling around the pit of her stomach and crawling up her throat. She was in some kind of prison cell. The door slammed shut, echoing ominously in the horrible room. She swung around, her arms wrapped protectively aroundherself.

Reyes stood facing her, locked in with her. She shivered, apprehension crawling up and down her spine. She almost wished he’d locked her in and left. Nothing good could come of the dead-eyed look he was giving her. She was positive it was the same look he gave the people he tortured horribly for whatever information he needed from them right before he sent them to a grisly, bloody death. The same look he’d givenIgnacio.

“Please…” she whispered, backing away fromhim.

“You had your chance,nena. I believe you told me to fuck off, that I had no say in how you dealt with your grief,” he told her coldly, stalking toward her. He tugged at the hem of his shirt and then pulled it over his head. She watched in horrified fascination as he revealed his beautiful tanned torso, littered with scars. He let his shirt drop to the floor and snaked an arm out for her. Casey threw her hand up to block him, but he grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward him, pulling her against his chest and snarling in her face, icy disdain giving way to heatedrage.

“And I’m telling you,” he growled into her face. “Every fucking thing about you is my business. Your happiness, your sadness, your grief, yourverylife. Your everything. You’re about to learn how much you belong to me,Casey.”

She whimpered, terror streaking through her veins with each word. She began fighting him as he started removing her clothes with ruthless efficiency, ignoring her cries of fright. He stripped off each article of clothing until she stood naked and shivering in front of him. She wasn’t shaking from cold, but from the humiliation of being dragged from the yard into a prison and stripped bare. She was shaking from fear of the unknown and from fear of the look in his eyes. Reyes was looking at her without pity and without mercy. She knew her pleas would fall on deaf ears. He was going to do whatever he’d planned on doing. She’d had her chance to give him what he wanted and she threw it in his face without grace or the gratefulness a man in his position expected. Now she wouldpay.

Casey frantically searched the space around her, looking for anything that might help her. A way out, a way to fight him off… anything. Then her panicked eyes landed on something that nearly sent her spiraling into the dark places in her head. Chains. He had chains in his dungeon. Because now there was nothing else she could call this place he’d dragged her into. Her frantic search also yielded a long steel bench and a floor drain. Oh god. This was some catastrophicshit.

Was he finally done with her? Was this it? Had he brought her to this awful place to killher?

Without any sort of preliminaries, Reyes flung her around so she was facing away from him and dragged her toward the metal bench. Casey fought him with everything she had, but her strength was absolutely nothing compared his, nothing! He looped an arm across her slim waist and lifted her off thefloor.

“No, no, no!” she screamed, kicking her feet into the air and trying to pry his arm from her, expecting at any moment to feel the cold caress of a blade at herthroat.

The most terrifying part was his lack of words. He said nothing to her as she screamed and cursed at him and then calmed enough to beg him to stop whatever he was doing. He simply held her off the floor, pinned against the warmth of his hard chest and waited her out until she tired and lay whimpering against him. Then he shoved her abruptly forward, facedown over the metalbench.

Casey surged up with a hoarse scream, throwing her head back, hoping to crack her skull into his nose. He was a trained combatant though and easily ducked her inexperienced hit. He held her down with a knee in the middle of her back and placed a broad palm over her head, holding her cheek against the cold metal. He reached over her and yanked one of the chains down from the wall, pulling it toward her pinnedbody.

“Oh god, please stop,” she begged. “Please don’t, Reyes! I’m sorry, I’ll come back to yourbed!”

He continued to ignore her as he clasped the metal around her wrist and adjusted the size to fit her slim wrist with such easy precision that she realized he’d had plenty of practice. A shiver of fear wracked her naked body. He reached over her head, the heat from his naked chest warming her back and pulled the chain on the other side down. Casey tried to pull her hand underneath her body in a desperate attempt to hide it from him, but he pried it out and snapped the cuff over her otherwrist.

Once she was secure, he backed away from her, trailing his fingers from her head down her back, across her spine and ending in a hard slap across her ass. Casey yelped and jerked. The chains were loose enough that she could rear back. Reyes immediately remedied that. He slid something along the wall, which adjusted the chains until she was forced to lay with her torso flat against the cold bench, her knees on the floor her arms spreadwide.

Asacrifice.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Casey shivered helplessly,whimpers of fear erupting from her throat. She managed to bring herself under control enough to ask, “A-are you going to k-kill me?” her voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched as it echoed through theroom.

She tried to crane her head back to she could see him where he stood behind her, but it put too much strain on her shoulders and she was forced to lay with her cheek against the cool metal staring at her right wrist chained above the bench. She jumped and cried out as his palm landed harshly across first one of her ass cheeks and then theother.

“Now why, after I have gone through all this trouble to acquire you and assure your health, would I simply dispose of you,nena?” he asked, his voice cool anddark.

He was right. She’d asked a stupid question. Of course, he wasn’t going to kill her. He’d waited months to get his hands on her. He’d killed and tortured for her. He’d provided for her, flown a doctor in for her and taken her to one of the best clinics in the world. But Casey had never been one to think logically when she was threatened. She still couldn’t work out what he meant to do to her, though her lack of clothing was a concerningdevelopment.

“A-are you going to hurt me?” she asked, her voicecracking.

She flinched and wiggled her ass, expecting another hit to that already tender flesh, but none came. He chuckled darkly, “Most assuredly,mi amor. If this doesn’t wake you the fuck up, then nothingwill.”

“What?” she asked sharply. “What’ll wake meup?”

Her head snapped to the side and up as he pulled her hair back and kissed her hard while running his hand roughly down the arch of her back. He sank his fingers into the flesh of her ass cheek and squeezed until it hurt. She whimpered into his mouth. He was being careful not to wrench her neck, but she was desperately frightened. She knew he intended to have sex with her, but she wasn’t wet at all. It was going to hurt if he tried to fuck her while she was on her knees and chained to a bench in his torturedungeon.

He must have realized that she was too scared to be turned on because he began alternating harsh touches with gentle sweeps of his fingers across her body, as though petting and coaxing her flesh with pleasure before punishing through with pain. The combination started to work as it distracted her terrified brain from worrying about his intentions and focused it on the magic of his flesh against hers. The heat of each strike as he hit her, the burn as it spread across her nerve endings and then the soothing, caressing stroke that wouldfollow.

Reyes shifted to the side of her, the rough fabric of his pants sliding between her legs as he forced his thigh across her labia. She cried out and started to arch into him before she caught herself. He’d spent weeks conditioning her to this kind of delicious torture. Now, he’d chained her down and was giving her a taste of how much darker he could take things if she didn’t give him what he wanted, bent to his will, became his queen ondemand.

“Reyes!” she cried out when he reached down, wrapped his hand around her leg above the knee and jerked her legs wide apart. Her knee scraped painfully across the concretefloor.

She wasn’t expecting a hit directly to her tender pussy and screamed in shock when he slapped her there, his fingers smacking against the tender lips of her labia. She jerked hard against the bench, a jolt of pleasure and pain shooting right through her pelvis and up into her torso. Heat flooded her veins and moisture gathered in her core. Before her brain had a chance to process what he’d done to her he slapped her again and again, until the sound of the strikes was undeniably the sound of a hand hitting wetflesh.

“Like that, do you,nena?” he growled, pride throbbing in his deepvoice.

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