Chapter 8

Ophelia

Sam and I slept, woke, and slept again. There wasn't much else to do in the basement. Time didn't exist. There were no windows to let in sunlight or give us a glimpse of a starry sky. The best gauge seemed to be mealtimes, but my stomach said we were often forgotten. We didn't talk much. I think we were too afraid our voices would carry up the stairs and draw unwanted attention.

As we sat in silence, we heard the men yelling about something upstairs. We couldn't make out the words, but the tone of the discussion was undeniable. Whatever they were talking about had pissed them off.

When Gunnir's steps thundered down the stairs, Sam sat up on her knees. I shrank as much as I could and scooted into the shadows. I didn't want him to notice me. I prayed he wouldn't.

"Alex is such a little bitch!" Gunnir yelled, and his voice crawled toward me until there was no way to avoid it. Sam and I kept quiet as he stampeded around the room. My heart raced, thundering louder than his footsteps. "He's being shellfish!"

Selfish?I thought, but I didn't dare correct him.

"Selfish?" Sam said, interrupting his pacing.

Fuck.

"Yeah, that's what I fucking said," he snarled. "He doesn't want to share. But that's what we do. We share."

"She's his new toy, Gunnir. Just leave him be. He'll get bored once she's not so shiny and new."

My eyes leapt to Sam. I wasn't sure if she realized the idea she was passing to someone like him.

"You're right, whore. She's too new." He ran his massive hand through his hair, his fingers entangling in the mess of knots. He stepped toward me, and I smelled him before he got to me. His hand found my hair and pulled me to my knees by my scalp. "You need to be less shiny, don't you?"

I shook my head, whimpering in his grasp. Before I could release a scream and call for Alex, Gunnir's dirty hand flew over my mouth. It wasn't that I wanted Alex, but he would at least save me from his disgusting brother. Gunnir was a fate worse than death.

"Shhh, sweet thing," he cooed in my ear.

His body pressed against me, and my stomach clenched and twisted in my belly. He laughed low in his chest as he unbuckled one of the straps of his overalls. I shook my head beneath his hand, trying to pull away enough to scream, but his hold refused to weaken. Gunnir's overalls fell to the floor, and his free hand raced toward my ass and pushed me against the wall. He prodded between my legs with his stubby dick then spit into his hand.

I had to stop him. Even if I managed to scream, Alex wouldn't make it down the stairs before Gunnir forced himself inside me. Pulling my tongue back as far as I could to avoid tasting his skin, I opened my mouth. His flesh pressed between my teeth, and I bit down until I tasted blood. He yelled out and took a step back.

"Fucking bitch!" he screamed. He gripped my shoulder and whipped me around. In one swift motion, he brought back his arm and sent his fist into my face. I screamed out and fell to the ground in a panting mess of tears.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs once more, and I looked up to see Alex. He took in the scene. Gunnir's pants were still down. My skirt was still lifted. His brother cupped his hand against his chest, and my nose poured blood onto my outfit.

"What the fuck, Gunnir?"

"I just wanted to make her less fucking new," he said as he shook out his hand.

"What does that even mean?"

"I thought if I broke her in a little, you'd be more willing to share."

Alex turned toward me, walked over, and lifted my chin. "You might have broken her nose, you fucking brute."

"She deserved it." Gunnir spit at the ground in front of me and tried to tug up his overalls without using his injured hand. "I'm not done with you, shiny little thing," he said toward me. He went upstairs, clutching his wounded hand to his chest as if it were a baby bird.

Alex lifted me to my feet and lowered the hem of my skirt. Blood stained my chin, my chest, and the entire front of my dress. "Let's clean you up," he said as he dragged me to the spigot.

We kneeled beside it, and Alex ripped a piece of his shirt and held it under the cold water. When it was saturated, he began to clean my face with gentle swipes. I found it hard to believe that the feathery touch came from a monster's movements.

"I used to do this for my mother," he said as he wiped the cloth beneath my nose. Metallic water dripped into my mouth.

"What happened to her?" I asked.

His hand stopped its gentle downward motion. He seemed to consider saying more, but he changed his mind before the words could form. "We aren't pals, O. We don't need to talk about our pasts like we're building some kind of friendship here. Get that out of your head."

I looked away from him as he went back to cleaning my face in silence. When he'd washed away the blood, his fingers prodded at my sore nose. He ran his finger down the length of it, hovering over the bridge. When he put pressure on it, a deep ache rushed through my face, and I flinched.

"It's not broken. But that's going to hurt like a son of a bitch tomorrow."

"It hurts like a son of a bitch now," I muttered.

Alex stared at me as if he needed to say something but couldn't bring himself to do it. His lips twitched. "How far did he get?" he finally asked. "Did he fuck you?"

I shook my head. "I bit him before he could."

His jaw relaxed. "Good girl," Alex said as he pushed back wet strands of my hair. I waited for him to say more, but he didn't. He looked lost in his mind.

* * *

Alexzander

My entire beingshook with anger. What I walked into was exactly what I had worried would happen. Gunnir's pants had been down, his cock out, and Ophelia's skirt had been lifted around her waist. I saw red when I witnessed it. What he'd done to Ophelia's face only added to my rage. Fucking barbarian. I needed to get her out of the basement. I hadn't heard anything about what I'd told her, which meant she'd kept it to herself. I wasn't in the mood to fuck her at that moment, but I needed to speak with her without drawing suspicion. The spigot was too close to the whore, but if I pulled Ophelia away to fuck her, we'd have more privacy. I couldn't exactly sit beside her and carry on a conversation.

My face hardened as I stood and dragged her to her feet. Water drenched the front of her outfit, allowing me to see the faint shadow of her nipples beneath the thin material. I turned her over and pushed her against the wall, eerily like my brother had. I pressed my hips into hers and lifted her skirt. Her panties were long gone, and I had no doubt who took them. Fucking Gunnir. When my zipper fell, she turned to argue.

"Alex, no," she whispered.

I ignored her pleas. I needed to. In some warped and twisted way, this was for her.

She hardly flailed against me. She'd become so accustomed to being my toy. I knew she hated it, but she wasn't fighting as much, which was almost disappointing. I spit in my hand, but I didn't rub it on my cock like I usually did. Instead, I reached between her legs and rubbed the warm saliva against her pussy. Her thighs tensed against my touch. I pulled her hips toward me and pushed inside her, groaning as her heat embraced me. It was hard to focus on anything aside from how good she felt once I was inside her, but I had to.

Focus,I told myself. I dropped my head to the curve of her neck. She smelled like captivity, and I found myself wanting to give her a bath. I liked how she'd smelled when we first brought her here. When she smelled like sweet innocence.

"Remember what I said to you?" I whispered as I curled my hips and thrust into her. She nodded. "Did you say anything?" I asked. She shook her head. "Good girl, O."

My hips slammed against her, and unintentional whimpers left her mouth. "Can you explain more now?" she whispered, and I answered with a hard thrust.

"Don't say a thing," I said.

She went silent, dropping her head to the basement wall.

"I want you in my room. I want to keep you safe from everyone except me." I reached down and gripped her hip. "I'm going to leave a nail by the spigot, right by the drain trench. I need you to try to kill me again."

She shook her head.

"If you don't, you'll be left down here at Gunnir's disposal. He's going to get inside you. I know it, and so do you."

A tear rolled down her cheek and hit the hand I'd laced across her chest.

"You aren't going to kill me, no matter how much you want to," I said, certain of the words coming out of my mouth. Killing me meant belonging to Gunnir. "Can you do that for me?"

She remained motionless while I thrust into her, my head still buried in her neck so my breath rolled over her ear. Then I felt her nod.

"Good girl," I whispered, dropping my hands to either side of her head and fucking her with slow, deep thrusts that pushed her against the rough wall in front of her. "I'm going to come," I growled, loud enough for the whore to hear.

Ophelia dropped her head forward and let me fill her with a rough stutter of my hips. I turned her around. She looked so confused, as if I was putting her in a trap, but I genuinely needed her to try to kill me if I wanted my idea to have a chance of working.

I pushed my fingers inside her, coating them with my come. Her lip curled at my touch, and she dropped back her head and squeezed her eyes closed. I lifted my hand to her mouth, and she shook her head as I touched my fingers to her lips. "Open up," I commanded. She tightened her lips, but I held her nose. She struggled against me until her lungs forced her mouth to open, and I shoved my fingers inside. She lowered her teeth on my fingers. I thought she'd bite me, and I was ready to punch her myself if she did. Instead, she loosened her grasp and let me pull my fingers out of her mouth.

I shook my hand like I needed to wash the come from my skin. My come didn't bother me, but it gave me a reason to approach the spigot. I washed my hands with the soap hovering on the lip of the wall. With my body turned to block the whore's view, I reached into my pocket and tossed down a long, rusty nail. My eyes met Ophelia's once more before I dried my hands on my pants and zipped them up.

I didn't have the time to give her a rundown of any type of plan, so I'd need to keep my eyes open for whatever she conjured up in that pretty head. I'd be back for her later that night.

* * *

I putour dinner plates in the sink, and Gunnir sat back with a satiated groan. He patted his belly, wiped at a stain on the front of his overalls, and licked his fingers.

"Guess you're too comfortable to bring them their dinner?" I said with an annoyed huff.

Gunnir laughed. "I couldn't walk down the stairs if I tried right now."

The first part of my plan went off without a hitch: feed Gunnir until he was nearly in one of his food comas. That was easy enough to accomplish; if I kept feeding him, he'd keep eating.

I separated some beef stew into two bowls and carried them downstairs. The basement door creaked as I closed it behind me. The girls were huddled in their spots, tense with fear, but they both relaxed a little when they saw it was me.

I handed a bowl of stew to the whore first. Her eyes blazed with hunger the minute she smelled the food. We fed them, but dinner was their only hearty meal of the day. Gunnir worried they'd get fat on their chains if we offered more than that, which was ironic. There was certainly no chain keeping Gunnir from expanding his waistline, one meal at a time.

When I brought the bowl to Ophelia and held it out, her eyes rolled up my body. She had a look I'd never seen from her, not even the night she wrapped the chain around my throat. Granted, I only saw her eyes for a moment before she attacked me, but this time she was staring into my fucking soul. She rose to her knees and lifted a hand to grab the bowl I held toward her. I raised my eyebrow at her as she dropped her gaze and took her dinner from me. I saw the flash of movement a second before she came at my thigh with the nail. The bowl fell from her hand and shattered against the concrete. I caught her wrist as the nail's pointed tip tore through my jeans and narrowly missed puncturing my skin. I leapt onto her. With the force she was putting behind each stab, I realized how wrong I'd been. She meant it.

"Fucking bitch!" I yelled as I fought her flailing legs and arms. Anger darkened her eyes, and she'd have gone for my throat if given the chance. I grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the ground. "I should break your arm for that."

The struggle caused me to harden. Focus evaporated as she writhed beneath me and sent blood straight to my dick. I glanced at the whore, whose eyes were wide with surprise. I had to do something to punish Ophelia to make this look real.

I ripped the nail from her hand and threw it across the basement. It pinged against the wall and rolled along the floor. I kept her pinned on her back and put my weight into my hand as I wrapped it around her throat. My other hand worked off my jeans.

"Big mistake," I said.

Before she could protest, I pushed my cock past her lips. Even though she felt so fucking good, I couldn't take a moment to enjoy her mouth around me. This was a punishment. I thrust my hips forward until snot spewed from her nose. She made an ungodly sound beneath me, and I felt the lurch of her throat as she gagged. I kept my dick there until her chest heaved. I pulled out just in time, and she turned her head to vomit. Her eyes watered, and fat tears dripped down her face as she coughed. I let her catch her breath for a moment before I forced her down and did it again, making her take every inch of me until her stomach heaved and she brought up bile.

"Fuck you," I snarled as I forced myself into her mouth once more. Her teeth scraped my dick as she choked on me. She was covered in sweat and tears when I pulled out of her mouth a final time. I tucked myself away and went to the plate on the wall. I dug in my pocket, pulled out the key, and unfastened the lock from the anchor. Next I removed her ankle shackle. Panting and breathless, she remained still as I wrapped the chain around her neck and locked it on itself.

"Please," she pleaded.

"Too late for begging." I took the tail of the chain and dragged her toward the stairs. She gripped the metal links to keep them from sawing into her neck as she tried to keep up with me, and I slammed the basement door after I yanked her onto the main floor.

Gunnir's eyes snapped to me. "What the hell happened?" he asked.

I led Ophelia to his feet and pushed her to the ground. "She tried to kill me again," I said as I pointed toward the rip in my pants. "Tried to stab me with a goddamn nail." In the light, I saw the bruise that spread like a butterfly along her cheeks. The anger in her face had melted away, and her body trembled with fear.

Gunnir's eyes jumped to mine.

"I told you," I said with a sharp rise in my voice. "They aren't good down there together. I can't keep worrying about being killed in my own goddamn house."

"What do you want us to do, then?" Gunnir asked. "I know I said we shouldn't separate them, but I don't think there's any other way."

I stopped and thought for a moment, even though I already knew what I needed to say. It had to be Gunnir's idea, and it was, but I had to pretend to consider it. "I can put her on the hook in my room for now. The bitches can't talk if they're on separate floors."

"You ruin everything!" Gunnir screamed at Ophelia, slamming his fist on the table. She flinched at his words. "Fucking whores."

I dragged Ophelia toward my room and closed the door behind us. I moved the bedside table and chained her to the plate on the floor. She slunk against the wall like a scared animal, her lips still red and puffy from my assault. I sat on my bed and wiped the sweat from my forehead.

"That was fucking excessive," I whispered toward her as I rubbed the gaping rip in my pants.

Her eyes rose to meet mine. "It wasn't excessive enough."

I shook my head. "You meant that, didn't you?"

"Every stab."

"Well, you're out of the fucking basement."

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and she wrapped her arms around her knees.

My plan worked, but for how long? What would I even do with her in my bedroom? I knew what I wanted to do. She was still a captive, after all, and she'd be treated as one.