“Well that’s a shame,” Muscle Guy said as he pulled me toward the door by the chain. “I like blondes.”

“You like ‘em all, as long as they scream for you.”

A shudder tore through me, and I vowed that I would never scream or cry for him again.

“On your hands and knees.”

“What?” I blinked at him.

“Don’t make me tell you twice,” he said with a hard shove until I dropped to my knees. “Crawl like the slut you are.” He herded me back into the tunnel, naked, wet, and shaking from the chilly air.

The door to Lucas’ office was closed, and silence blasted from the other side. He yanked me in the opposite direction and paraded me down the passage like a dog, my knees scraping the dirt ground. After passing several doors, he stopped and pulled a ring of keys from his pocket before jamming one into a lock. “Be a good girl and wait on the bed.”

He pointed toward the claustrophobic darkness, and my hesitation cost me a kick in the ass. Pain scorched my backside, eliciting a wounded cry as I crawled inside. He latched the other end of the chain to an anchor in the ground before slamming the door shut. My breath came in panicked gasps as I pushed to my feet and searched for the handle. There wasn’t one. My trembling hands smoothed over a panel where a doorknob should have been.

Hysteria flooded me, vibrating through my legs until they buckled. I fell to the ground and slinked across the dark space, chain clanking through the rocky dirt. My head hit the metal frame of the bed, and I planted a fist on the thin mattress to hoist myself onto it. Finding a blanket bunched in the corner near the wall, I wrapped myself in the scratchy material, curling in a tight ball on the cot, and wished I could wither away to nothing. If I could only erase the last hour as easily as the blood had vanished from my skin, then maybe I could fucking breathe. But that blood lingered, if not physically, then mentally.

So did the image of Rafe. He’d cried, actually shed drops of horror from his beautiful eyes. The man who’d at one time left me naked and cold in a cage, who’d fucked me after paddling my ass, had cried at witnessing my pain.

Palpitations seized my heart. Were they beating him? Killing him?

I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t. If I started, I wouldn’t stop. I bit into my lip, hard enough to puncture, and licked away the metallic taste. I should have done what Lucas demanded. If Rafe died because I’d refused to suck a dick…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

I wouldn’t be able to live at all.