Page 12 of Taken By the Convicts
* * *
MELINA
Melina’s teethwouldn’t stop chattering. She’d never been so cold in her entire life. Part of her regretted telling the guards she’d killed Collins, but she didn’t regret keeping Reece safe.
Already, she felt her body going into shock. If she didn’t get warm soon, she wouldn’t survive one day, let alone five.
Sound didn’t travel down the hole well, but she definitely heard voices up there. Many. And most of them raised.
“Hey, there,” she called up as she tilted her head back. A handsome man leaned over the hole. His expression held anger. No, more than anger. Rage, but he was the only one who’d leaned over in a while. Were they afraid they’d fall in? The hole, though deep, seemed stable. The walls were perfectly formed and covered in ice. At least she could see the sky. As long as she could see the sky, she wouldn’t panic.
“P-please. It’s s-so c-cold d-down h-here.”
How did her life come to this? She’d been working in a lab testing XRGN-723 on rats. and now she was thirty feet down a hole in the ice, begging for her life from a bunch of murderers and rapists on a prison planet.
And what happened if she convinced them to pull her out? The chance of outrunning the men and making it to the safety of the med-center was slim to none. They’d catch her, rape her, maybe kill her. She had to befriend whoever pulled her out, hope she could sway him to protect her, even if it meant giving herself to him as payment.
Survival meant doing whatever it took, including giving her body over to whoever rescued her. She had to resign herself to that.
The dark-haired man with blue eyes disappeared. Gray clouds stared down at her. Raised voices wafted over the opening.
“P-please? Is a-anyone s-still up th-there?”
What felt like hours passed with no one talking to her. Melina gripped her arms.
Overhead, she heard the low rumbling of men talking and no one seemed to know she was here. Or care. Like the time Namir locked her in the dog crate for three days while her other mates walked past her. She knew they’d suffer Namir’s rage if they acknowledged her, but still the way they’d walked by as if she didn’t exist.
A rope was thrown down. Another man leaned over the edge. This one had brown hair, a scraggly beard, and putrid brown eyes that held an evil in them. They reminded her of Namir. She’d have to sleep with him. She had no choice. To stay down here ensured death. She wouldn’t survive five days until the guards returned.
“Feed your legs through the bottom loops and wrap your arms over the top. I’ll pull you up.”
With hands that could barely move in the cold, she untangled the rope and lined up the holes with her limbs. She tipped her head back, looking at the man leaning over the hole. He scared her, in a way the other one hadn’t. She shivered, but not from the cold.
“Now,” he ordered, without an ounce of kindness or empathy in his voice. Already, she was nothing to him.
One by one, Melina fed her arms and legs through the rope. Without any warning, the man hoisted her up. She pulled her limbs in to keep from scraping them against the wall. She had a nasty scrape on her left arm from when the guards had lowered her down the hole.
Several pairs of hands pulled her out of the hole and slammed her against the snow and ice, knocking the breath from her. They unwound the ropes and seconds later she felt her sweater and bra being sliced off of her.
“Please, no!” she cried as more hands groped and tore at her. Someone ripped her pants and panties off of her as her arms were pulled above her head. She could barely breathe as the bearded man stood over her as three others held her down.
“You made me wait three weeks by hiding in that damned med-center. You’ll learn your lesson here and now. No one defies me.” He unzipped his pants and pulled out his hard cock.
“I’ll cooperate. Please, not like this. Not here,” she cried.
“Scream as much as you want. Tell the others who you belong to. Spread her.”
Melina cried as two men pulled her legs open. Then the pressure in the air intensified, making it hard to breathe. One by one, the men around her swore and grabbed their ears. They released her, allowing her to crawl away from them. Four huge men writhed on the ground, clutching their ears in pain.
Naked and shaking, Melina struggled to her feet. More men collapsed around her. Except the blue-eyed man who ran toward her.
The world spun as he tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry. He gripped the back of her thighs, his warm hands searing her cold flesh. So cold. . . the wind bit her skin. All of her energy left her as he jogged away from the hole and the men.
“Got to move, Ivan. They won’t stay down long.”
“I said Glasner, not that bastard with the sonic rifle.”
“I couldn’t find Glasner,” a second man said behind her.
