The scent of vinegar burned my nose. My skin caught fire beneath the harsh solution, my eyes watering as the fumes stole beneath the blindfold.

There was only one reason they would take the time to wash my body.

Blind and shaking, I tracked their footsteps up the ladder behind me. The door to the hatchway creaked open, sounding their departure. Then another pair of footfalls entered the hold.

These were different. New. The tread sounded softer, the steps lighter. My pulse raged, thrashing hollowly in my ears, as the stranger grew closer, breathing heavily. Sucking the air with excitement.

My fear was so sharp and cold I didn’t think my bladder would hold. I didn’t care. Panic was a separate entity inside me, skittish and slippery, jumping at every sound.

Where was he? Behind me? In front of me? Was he holding a dagger? I blinked rapidly, straining to see through the blindfold.

“Let me see, you coward!” My scream garbled, my voice indiscernible behind the gag.

The vulnerability of my bent position, with my bare bottom in the air and my body stretched over the barrel, sent me into a fit of convulsive thrashing. But the shackles did what they were meant to do. I went nowhere, and the violent jerking and bucking soon exhausted my already weak muscles.

Male hands gripped tightly to my hips.

For a moment, I imagined they belonged to Ashley or Priest. One of them had come for me, and the worst of this nightmare was over.

But the fingers were too thin, the skin too soft and cold. I didn’t know these hands or this man. As if to confirm my thoughts, he forced my thighs apart and groaned in an unfamiliar voice.

A sob broke behind my gag, and my legs quivered brutally beneath his heavy weight.

There would be no courage here. No strength or inspiration. I couldn’t fight in shackles. Couldn’t voice my adamant objections. I couldn’t even see the face of my tormentor. But I could smell the stink of onion on his breath.

And I felt him.

Deeply, traumatically, he used his body as a weapon, one violating stab after another.

Parts of me broke away. I tried to cast aside the physical pain, but the agony punctured through, reaching me where I hid inside my mind.

I felt myself crying as he took what wasn’t given. Bent over that barrel, my insides splintered as he forced his corruption everywhere he wasn’t permitted.

He stole from me. Plundered. Thieved in the most barbaric way a man could hurt a woman.

Burning and ripping, the cruelty pierced deep, beyond the limits of my physical self, all the way to my soul. There was no moment in time, no piece of me, that didn’t know pain.