Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

January 24 th

8:04 A.M.

Who would ever have guessed this could be such horrific torture?

Usually, in the bedroom, all you could think about was orgasms, of the excitement of being worked up until you tumbled over that edge. It was fun and intoxicating and was what made sex so wonderful.

But when there was no falling over the edge, just hour upon hour of standing with your toes dangling over that edge, but that was it, you never got to actually fall, then it was absolute torture.

Lucy wasn't super experienced in the bedroom, she'd always been too busy pursuing other goals to date a whole lot. Casual sex with men she didn't know well wasn't really her thing, so the only time she got sex was when she was in a relationship, and she could quite literally count on one hand the number of relationships that had lasted long enough to get to the sex stage.

It wasn't that she didn't like sex or dating, it was just that sooner or later her epilepsy seemed to become an issue.

Or maybe it was all in her head and her issue.

The second they treated her like she was incapable of doing something on her own, coddling her as her family did, then she always ended things.

While it made for a lonely life in some areas, the rest of her life was so full of work, family, friends, and finding adrenalin highs to chase to prove to herself that she was indeed capable. Usually, she didn't dwell on the things missing in her life, she was grateful for everything that she had, and worrying over what she didn't never seemed like a good use of her time.

Right now, though, she was wishing there was a man around who wasn't so utterly repulsive to her that she could beg him to relieve her suffering without feeling like she was disrespecting herself.

So far, she had been good to her promise to herself. There had been no begging or pleading, but she was pragmatic enough to have already come to the conclusion that it couldn't last.

Sooner or later, she would beg.

And plead.

And all but throw herself down on the floor with her legs open and let the closest man bring her body some measure of relief. Her body only because when that day came it would break her mind.

Hearing Scarlett describe what the drug had felt like as it had flooded her system was nothing compared to living it herself. The clawing need low in her belly that felt like a physical being trying to tear its way through her flesh was impossible to explain to someone else. While in theory, it might sound fun to be so turned on that you could have sex for hours without needing a break, in reality, it was pure hell.

Because there was no sex.

There was no relief.

There was just burning in your veins, begging you to set it free.

If her hands weren't bound behind her back, she absolutely would have thrown caution to the wind, put her hands between her legs, and taken care of herself.

True to his word, Raul hadn't allowed her a moment to recover from the drug before one of his men was injecting her with another dose. There had been no reprieve, just hours of writhing and chewing on her bottom lip to keep from begging for someone to bring her a release.

What Raul hadn't mentioned, though, was that he intended to parade her around the house so she was constantly on display for him and his men to enjoy her suffering. She'd been put in a corner of the dining room while the men ate lunch, then outside by the pool while Raul enjoyed some sexy times with some woman Lucy was pretty sure was not here by choice. Again, at dinner time, she'd been ogled and laughed at in the dining room, then several of the men had gotten off in the living room in the evening while they watched porn and played cards.

It was disgusting watching them get off, her body craving the feel of them inside her while her brain was sickened by the whole thing.

At one point, tears had trickled down her cheeks, and a sob had built inside her, but when she'd seen how gleeful her tears made the men she quickly summoned the strength to get them under control.

Worst, though, was being made to spend the night in Raul's room in his bed. He hadn't touched her, well, not sexually, but he'd made her sleep beside him with a fresh dose of the drug in her system, and she knew he'd loved the way her body writhed as need consumed her.

Now she was back in the dining room, men were filing in, filling their plates with food from the buffet, while her empty stomach growled in protest. Another shot had more of the arousal drug in her veins, and with little sleep in days, plus her injuries, she was teetering on the edge of exhaustion.

Which meant she was also teetering on the edge of breaking.

It was close.

Much too close.

Any second now she feared it was going to happen.

Once she took that first step and begged for someone to touch her, then it was only a matter of time until everything else came crumbling down. Less than twenty-four hours on the arousal drug, and she was coming precariously close to giving up the formula for the Reactivator just to get an orgasm.

The knowledge filled her with shame, but the problem was the shame was no match for the raging need that demanded it be quenched.

Tears blurred her vision as the door to the dining room opened, and two more men stepped through. Normally, she wouldn't have paid all that much attention to whoever it was. The men were all the same in her mind and blended into one, but something about this man caught her attention.

There was no way …

But as she looked closer, she saw that it was.

It was … Zander.

Here.

In Raul Castillo's house.

Not drugged and cuffed like she was but walking free.

Walking free and clean. His hair was damp, and he was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that stretched across his muscular frame. There were no dirty smudges on his face like she knew there were on her own, and she could see a bandage on his bicep, peeking out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt, and butterfly bandages on his forehead closing the wound there from the crash.

As her mouth dropped open in shock, she watched as he laughed with one of Raul's men and piled food high on his plate before taking a seat at the table.

He didn't even spare a glance her way.

Just sat there eating and talking like he didn't have a care in the world.

Rage unlike anything else Lucy had ever felt before built inside her. Boiling hot lava like the arousal burning her from the inside out had turned her into a volcano mere seconds away from erupting.

Zander was working for Raul Castillo.

All those doubts she'd had about whether or not he could be trusted, those flickers in his eyes that she had interpreted as pain, loss, and guilt, the guilt she herself had felt when she thought he was dead because of her, it all added to her rage and fueled it.

Traitor.

He was a traitor.

He'd turned against his country, but worse than that, he'd turned against his own twin sister by working for the man who had kidnapped and tortured her.

How could he?

What could make a man who had made it into the elite Delta Force turn on his country and go to work with a notorious weapons trafficker?

Right now, the whys didn't matter, they weren't going to help her. They wouldn't ease the need drumming through her body, and they wouldn't help her escape. There was no way Prey would find her there and she couldn't expect any help from Zander.

Scarlett had told them how her plan had been to take her own life so she couldn't be forced to give up the formula for their drug. At the time, Lucy had been aghast to know her friend had felt like that was her only option.

Now she got it.

It was her only option, too.

Only she wasn't going to go down alone.

Everyone thought she was too caught up in the haze of need the drug induced to do anything else.

But she wasn't.

If she was going to die, there were two men she wanted to take out with her. Of course, one of them was Raul Castillo, and he would be her priority, but she also wanted to take Zander Madden down with her.

As though sensing her fury, his head suddenly turned in her direction, and their eyes met. A myriad of emotions spun through the blue eyes that looked back at her and she briefly wondered why he'd bothered putting the contacts back in again.

Lucy didn't bother to hide anything she was feeling, letting it all bleed into her gaze. Her arousal, her hatred that her body sang at the thought of Zander's large hands easing her suffering, her anger at him for betraying all of them.

And her promise.

Her promise to take him down with her.

January 24 th

9:55 A.M.

She was going to do something crazy.

It had been written all over Lucy's face in the dining room at breakfast.

The worst part was, Zander wasn't sure how to stop her from doing whatever it was she was plotting.

Seeing her in danger was so much worse than anything he'd ever experienced.

This wasn't the first time he'd witnessed an innocent person being tortured. It was always hell not being able to immediately intervene, and he had thanked his near photographic memory more times than he could count for the details he'd been able to relay after an op was successfully completed and victims had been recovered because of it.

There had been no doubt in his mind that being chained to a wall in the relentless heat of the desert, and listening to the screams of his teammates as they were dismembered alive while he was forced to watch was the worst thing he could ever experience.

It had changed him on a fundamental level.

How could it not?

It was his fault.

His refusal to give up the intel the terrorists wanted and to not so much as flinch with each strike given to a man he would gladly suffer and die for, was what had angered them and egged them on.

So much blood shed over those seven hellish days.

So many screams, so many tears, so much anger had taken root inside him.

He'd never expected to survive. Hadn't been counting on the rescue that had come too late for the seven other men on his team and too early for him.

Zander hadn't wanted to live with the guilt of knowing he was responsible for their deaths. Their painful, horrific deaths.

It didn't matter how many times they reassured him that they understood, that he was doing exactly what they wanted him to do, those screams, the stench of blood and decaying flesh, were forever etched into his mind.

Nothing should be able to top that ordeal.

Yet watching Lucy, still in her tattered clothes from the crash, dirt streaking her face, her blonde locks a matted tangle around her head, with her arms tied behind her back and her cheeks flushed with arousal somehow managed to be worse.

Maybe it was because he knew she hadn't signed up for this and had no idea what she was getting herself into.

The way her hips rocked subconsciously, seeking friction that would bring her release, friction that wasn't there and wouldn't be there until she coughed up the intel Raul wanted, was pure torture.

His fault.

He'd gotten her into this.

And he had to figure out a way to get her out.

Because he knew why it was that this was worse than being taken captive with his team and watching their executions. They hadn't hated him. They'd offered him forgiveness, accepted their fates, and understood his decisions.

Lucy did not.

She had no idea what was going on, and mingled with the blood-searing lust in her gaze in the dining room at breakfast was pure, unadulterated hatred.

Aimed directly at him.

And it had met its mark. Spearing like an arrow straight through his heart.

"Let me take a shot at her," he said as he strolled into Raul's personal office.

Although the other man's eyes narrowed in disapproval, there wasn't a lot he could do about it. Zander wasn't one of his men and couldn't be ordered around. As far as Raul was aware—as far as anyone outside a select few who knew the truth were aware—he was a former Delta Force operator who had been warped by war and turned. Blamed his country for the death of his team and wanted revenge on the men who had killed them.

Partially true.

He did want revenge.

Lived for it.

Or at least he had until Lucy came along.

"Why do you think she'll give it up for you when she has yet to beg for pleasure from anyone else?" Raul asked. Despite his annoyance at not being able to be completely in control of Zander, he recognized that they could be mutually beneficial to one another. He got Zander access to the terrorist group responsible for his teammates' deaths so he could destroy them, and Zander would give him the benefit of the connections he had made in his years in Delta.

Win-win.

Only Zander had plans the man knew nothing about.

Plans he had no intention of sharing.

"Because we built a … how shall we say … rapport … while we were in the jungle," he answered vaguely.

"Do you mean there was sexual chemistry between you two?" Raul asked.

"You want the details?" he snapped. It was always a fine line he was balancing. Push Raul too hard, and the man would react in anger, he liked to be in control, and he liked to have his way. But if he didn't push hard enough, then no way would the weapons dealer believe he was warped enough from his ordeal to turn on his country.

The man actually considered his answer and Zander feared that if Raul said he did want details of sex between him and Lucy—even if those details would be fictitious—he would have no choice but to beat the man to a pulp for invading Lucy's privacy like that.

"No, not particularly. But have at it. She's in the third room to the right on the second floor. Remind her that she's due another dose in less than an hour, and my men are chomping at the bit to have a touch of her."

Reining in his anger was not an easy thing to do, but somehow Zander managed it. "I'll get her to talk."

"Promise her a quick death if she tells you. She doesn't have to know that I've already promised her to my men when I have what I need from her," Raul said before dismissing him by returning his attention to his laptop.

Zander was seething and terrified as he headed out of the office. Being raped to death was a horrific way to die. While he'd never witnessed it—he wasn't sure he'd be able to stand by and let it happen no matter the consequences of whatever mission he was on—he and his team had arrived too late to save three young girls from their fate on the final mission they'd performed before being captured.

The small, broken bodies, bruises littering their skin, and blood pooling between their legs from the internal injuries that had caused their deaths was another dark memory he carried with him.

One of many that prevented him from ever being a man worthy of a woman like Lucy.

It didn't matter that she currently hated him, that she might never forgive him for getting her dragged into this, he needed her to be safe and he would get her out of there.

Consequences be damned.

Even before he opened the door to the room she was being held in, he could hear her breathy moans of frustration as she was helpless to do anything about the arousal throbbing through her body. She needed release, and while he had been dreaming about her naked body spread out beneath him, his to enjoy as he wished, bringing them both unlimited pleasure, he couldn't touch her like this. Not when it was impossible for her to give consent.

The room was locked, and there were enough men in the building that Raul hadn't posted a guard outside her room. Should Lucy be able to get out of the cuffs and out of her room, there was no way she would make it out of the house undetected.

Grabbing the key from where it was hanging on a hook beside the door, he unlocked it and walked through, bringing the key with him so no one else could get in. After locking the door behind him, he drew in a deep breath before he could turn and face the woman he owed the world's biggest apology to.

Before he even got that chance, she was flying at him, her small body colliding with his.

Unprepared for her attack as he was, he lost his balance, and both of them crashed to the floor. Somehow, he managed to angle them so he took the brunt of the impact. Pain flared inside him from his injuries, but better him than her.

Even with her injuries, her hands bound behind her back, and her much smaller size, Lucy put up a good fight.

Too bad for her it was a fight she could never win.

Careful to hurt her as little as possible, but aware that there could be cameras in there which meant he had to put on a show, Zander wrapped a hand around her neck and lifted her up off the floor. Bound as she was, she couldn't claw at the hand on her neck as he pushed her up against the nearest wall.

Fear filled her blue eyes, but there was anger there, too.

That was good.

Anger meant survival.

Sometimes, it was the difference between life and death, and he prayed she was going to hold onto it.

With her face level with his, he leaned in and asked for forgiveness as he pressed his lips to hers in a bruising kiss. Then with his mouth millimeters from hers, he whispered the word that would change everything.