“Perrone is Jax’s father,” Rafe said, the words hoarse and barely audible. “What did he want with you?”

I squirmed on his lap, hesitant to go into Lucas touching me or nearly forcing his cock into my mouth. “He wanted something I wasn’t willing to give, not unless he agreed to let you go.”

“Alex…” he warned. “Don’t you dare try to bargain for my life.”

“It didn’t work anyway. He sent me into that room and…”

“And they beat you,” he finished, his voice cracking. He burrowed his face into the crook of my shoulder and crushed me in his embrace, holding on as if letting go meant he’d splinter apart. “I’ll kill them all,” he whispered.

My ass was burning something fierce, but I clenched my teeth until the pain dulled. I was just starting to relax, calmed by the shelter of his embrace, when another screech bled through the wall. We both froze, suspended in quiet horror.

Her screams reached every part of me, and my skin erupted with goose bumps. I’d been through a lot. Some would say I’d been to hell and back. But they were baptizing that poor girl by fire, taking her from everything she knew and loved just so they could torture her into becoming nothing.

A thing with holes to fuck, like Zach had treated me in that cabin. I shuddered at the thought.

“I won’t let them hurt you again,” Rafe said.

I knew he meant every word, but he was only one man. “I know,” I whispered. I wouldn’t upset him by telling him that I had little faith left. We were trapped in a dark room underground somewhere, and no one would find us.

“I won’t let them,” he repeated. We settled into each other, bodies pressed together, mouths parting over warm skin, and breathed the other in as the monster next door elicited more screams from his victim.

8. Pandora's Box - Rafe

8. PANDORA'S BOX - RAFE

This confined, dark pit of hell was fucking with my head. Or maybe Alex’s naked body sent me spiraling through the deviant holes of my mind. She lay next to me on her stomach, her warm thigh pressed over my dick, and I couldn’t stop touching her. The cot was barely big enough for the two of us, which was fine by me because I wanted to keep her close anyway. But being so close tested my limits, and being trapped in this never-ending blindness had awakened a certain part of me. The part that enjoyed tracing a finger over the welts on her ass, following the angry lines branded in her flesh.

I’d traced her skin for hours, finding the act somehow soothing.