Page 48 of Pretty Vengeful Queen

I close my mouth and shake my head as memories of my time in captivity suddenly well up and threaten to choke me. Stupid, because other than the beating Austin gave me at the end, they didn’t actually hurt me.

“They what?” Logan asks, deadly menace in his voice. “You need to tell us. The wounds I treated last night were fresh. Were they the only ones McKenna will have to answer for?”

“Yes,” I say honestly. Then I can’t help but add, “But I know how dangerous Austin can be now. He really is a sadistic psychopath. He has no conscience. Hurting me, hurtingyou, excites him.”

I shudder, and Logan’s pale gaze sharpens, burning into me as he searches my face.

I hold it, putting my heart on display for him when I realize how that may have sounded. Austin terrifies me, but it’s different. The sadistic pleasure that asshole takes in making others suffer is completely different than the darkness that binds Logan and me together.

Finally, Logan nods, his body subtly relaxing.

“You don’t need to protect me from hearing your plans,” I say, the connection I feel with him—with all of them—giving me strength. “Austin’s going to be hard to beat. Harder now with all that money to work with. But I don’t want to be on the sidelines. I’m in this with you. It’s why I stayed.”

Although I’m grateful as all hell that they got Chloe out of the line of fire.

“We are too,” Maddoc says gruffly. “But I don’t think that’s the only thing bothering you right now. Fuck’s sake, Riley,” he pauses and scrubs a hand down his face. “You looked like you were going to pass out or throw up or—or I don’t even know what. Tell me what’s going on. Now. Did he touch you? Did he—”

“No,” I stop him before he can finish asking the question that’s twisting his features into something dangerously angry. “He felt me up a couple of times, but that’s all. I swear. None of them tried anything more than that. Austin threatened to. You know he—” I swallow down bile but make myself say it, reminding myself it doesn’t matter. Not really. “He married me. It’s how he got legal access to the money. But no one raped me.”

It’s true, but my voice cracks and my skin crawls as I remember the fear that they would. And not just rape. I can survive fucking anything, and I’m no stranger to blocking off my emotions when men want to use my body for their pleasure. But the way Austin’s men talked about me—talked about sharing me and passing me around before they finally killed me, and how sure they were that Austin would “reward” them that way—gets to me on a level I’m embarrassed to have my men see.

But of course they see it.

In an instant, Maddoc crosses the kitchen and pulls me up off the stool I’m sitting on, crushing me against him in a hug so tight it feels like he might break me in half.

“What else?” he demands.

I shake my head, closing my eyes as I lean into him.

It didn’t happen, so I don’t need to dwell on it.

Maddoc feels differently. He tips my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “What happened, butterfly? We need to know.”

“Nothing,” I start.

His eyes darken so fast I shudder, a visceral memory of him belting me rising up inside me.

I almost beg him to do it again. To take me out of my head that way. To lash away these fucking fears that have burrowed into me before they can take root and turn me into someone weak.

But we don’t have time for that, and I’m stronger than that anyway.

I go up on my toes and kiss him, then straighten my shoulders. “Nothing happened, but if I’d stayed there much longer, I think—” My voice breaks as I remember how helpless I felt and how frustrating it was, but I swallow and power on, holding his gaze steadily. “I think it would have been bad. The longer I was there, the bolder Austin’s men got with me. Groping me and taunting me about what he’d do, what he’d letthemdo, once he had no more use for me.”

I don’t know which was worse, the way they threatened to use me, or the fact that Sienna implied Austin would simply kill me.

I don’t want to bring her up, though. Not with the history Maddoc has with her.

“What did they say they would do?” he asks in a hard voice, his muscles tense and his jaw going tight.

“They wanted to break me. Degrade me. Pass me around and use all my holes. Draw it out and make me hurt, make me cry.” It’s almost too much, but it pours out of me in a cathartic rush, my breath growing short and my throat closing up as the words pour out. “They said he’d toss me to them like a scrap of meat after he got the money. He didn’t let them touch me while he got all the legal shit in order, but they promised he wouldn’t care how much they tortured me afterward, and I… believed them.”

My voice fades away, my throat finally closing up completely as I let the full horror of what the Reapers saved me from wash over me. Every fucking one of Austin’s men was just like him. All of them getting off on the idea of turning me into a plaything that they’d be able to use and abuse with their leader’s blessing.

The color drains from Maddoc’s face, but his features stay hard and still as a block of granite as he searches my face. Then he leans in until his forehead is resting against mine.

“I’ll kill him for that,” he promises in a gravelly tone that’s barely above a whisper. “I should have killed him a long time ago, butterfly, but I swear I’ll make him pay this time. I’ll fucking end him.”

Then he captures my mouth in a hard, deep kiss that goes on long enough to make my head spin from lack of oxygen.

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