The man approached, and his darkened eyes roved over my prone body. With a fury-ridden face, he reached for the cuffs at my wrists and snapped them undone. He then moved to my feet, repeating the action, all the time panting in harsh heavy breaths—as if something inside was burning him alive.

As the shackle was ripped from my ankle, I moved my numb limbs. I cried out at the molten pain coursing through my tired muscles. I gritted my teeth through the pain, praying to find some relief as I dropped to the floor, the man releasing me from his hold.

A noise from in front of me caught my attention. When I followed the direction of the sound, it was to see my captor pacing the tiled floor. His hands were balled, and his face was severe in expression. Every inch of his sweating ripped body broadcast the purest and most terrifying level of ferociousness. His entire soul seemed ravaged; by what, I did not know.

His gaze flicked to me, and without pausing his frantic movements he snarled, “Name. I need your fucking name!” His deep voice was urgent and dripping with venom.

I opened my mouth and rasped, “Elene—,” but before I had chance to finish my rehearsed response the man swung my way and he hammered his fist on the metal slab above me.

Glaring down, he roared, “You lying Georgian suka! Tell me your fucking name!” The pupils of his eyes were so large his eyes were two blazing coals.

Lips trembling, I replied, “That is my name.”

His neck tensed, and he hissed, “Lies. Georgians lie. Georgians only ever lie!”

Jerking himself away from me, he took himself to a lever on the wall and pulled it down. The sound of metal against metal echoed from the ceiling. As I lifted my head, a large hook was lowering down toward me held by a thick chain.

Suddenly he was at my side, holding yards and yards of thick rope. I swallowed on seeing the rope, my stomach coiled with apprehension. As he approached, loosening the rope in his hand, he murmured, “Pain to the Georgian whore. Nothing but pain to the one that took her away from me.”

At that point I knew this man was not seeing me. Whatever was being pumped into his veins by his collar caused him to be somewhere else in his head.

To his eyes there was someone else sitting here on this floor.

Someone he wanted to see hurt.

Someone else’s torture was about to be delivered to me.

7

194

I woke in the back room of the chamber.

A blinding pain shot through my head, and my muscles ached. As always, I felt the burning sensation in my neck first, then I tried to crack open my eyes. The dim light hanging from the ceiling felt like a flame scalding my eyes. Lifting my hands, I ran them over my eyelids, where I felt rough and broken skin. Pushing myself to sit up, I squinted and focused on the palms of my hands. Red rope burns were sliced across the skin, my fingers split and covered in dried blood.

My mouth was dry. I crawled forward and took a bottle of water from the desk. I emptied it in one gulp. The screen on the desk was black. When I focused on the picture, I realized the lights in the chamber were out. The whole place was in darkness.

Leaning on the desk, I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and tried to remember what I’d done last night. My mind was like a fog. Rage swept over me when I remembered that the pellets in my collar were stronger than normal. Mistress must have known my tolerance to the serum was strengthening. And she’d known these new pellets would black me the hell out. They’d ensure I got her her kill.

She wanted Zaal Kostava to be punished by me in the worst possible manner. She wanted the Georgian male to suffer.

At last the fog on my mind cleared. I watched the images when I was under the serum play out in my mind’s eye. I’d taken a thick rope and tied the little Georgian up until she couldn’t even move. Lifting her limp body in my arms, I attached the back of the rope to the butcher’s hook hanging from the ceiling. She had moaned at the rope cutting into her skin. I’d asked her question after question: What was her name? Who was she to Zaal Kostava? What were his weaknesses? But she didn’t answer. I tightened the rope, her limbs reddening at the pressure, but she still didn’t talk.

I’d forced water down her throat, food into her mouth, and let her use the bathroom, but soon after, she’d slipped into unconsciousness. I’d walked back to this room and plunged the chamber into darkness. Light deprivation had a way of breaking my subjects down.

Staring at the screen, I flicked on the switch to the chamber; the little female’s body hung limply from the ceiling. Her head snapped up when the light came on. I watched her eyes flinch at the flaring light. I watched as she winced in pain at being held suspended midair and wrapped up tightly by the rope. But she remained still. A warm feeling spread through my chest as I watched her very obvious show of strength.

She was resilient. Resilient and determined.

But if I was to save 152 this female had to crack.

Taking a protein bar from the desk, I forced myself to eat the damn thing. What would break her? Days had drifted by. Even with all the pain, and the fear, she hadn’t cracked.

I paused eating when I recalled the only time she’d reacted. It was when I pushed against her naked body. It was when my nose ran along her neck. It was when my cock pushed against her side.

I froze when I realized what would work. I had to change tactics with her. My stomach clenched at the thought of having to get that close to a Georgian, to another female. But as my eyes strayed to the screen, to the female tied up, my tension drained away. She was nothing like Mistress. She was soft. She was young and, even if I hated the Georgian for being Georgian, she was beautiful.

My skin bumped as I remembered smelling the sweetness of her skin, feeling her silky long neck under my nose. My muscles tensed at the thought of her brown eyes looking into mine. That one time she had looked at me not in hate. Like she was seeing something different in me from a fucked-up ugly beast. That she was seeing who I used to be underneath.

Just more than what I was now.

I quickly chased that image away.

Straightening my body, I cracked my neck and opened the door to the chamber. Just before I left I turned the temperature of the chamber to sixty-eight degrees. The first part of this plan was to take away her fear. Food, drink, and warmth. Then spend hours and hours with her under the ministrations of my hands.

She would be repulsed by the ugliness of my face, but there was no way, with my training, she could resist the pleasure of my hands. Even if she was previously untouched.

Walking into the bright room, I kept my eyes forward. My teeth were gritting and my hands fisting at what I would have to do. Mistress had trained me to be an expert in sexual torture, but never before had I the opportunity to practice it. Most of my hits were males. There were only ever two females I was sent to torture—they buckled as soon as they woke up in a chamber. Their deaths were quick, as a reward for their useful information. Nothing like this little Georgian female.

As I entered the main room of the chamber, her eyes lifted to greet me. They widened, and her lips parted. It was in fear. She watched me close in, her chest rising and falling, her full tits pushing through gaps in the rope.

Standing before her, I stared straight into her eyes. Her face subtly relaxed when she studied my eyes—I had no idea why.

As her body jerked from being tied too long, I walked to the lever on the wall and pulled it down. The sound of the mechanism grinding into action rattled up above. After a few seconds the butcher’s hook began to lower her to the bed in the center of the room. She landed on the surface, the rope unrelenting.

Moving to the bed, I slid the hook from its rope catch then and flicked the lever to withdraw it to the ceiling. Not once did the female flinch as I moved around her. Returning to the bed, I lifted my hands and began to slowly untie the rope. A rush of breath came from her mouth. Her freezing body remained motionless as yard by yard I unwrapped the thick rope.

Minutes later when she had been freed, I dropped the rope to the floor. As I turned my attention to the female, I noted the rope burns on her skin, her limbs marked with delves and indents from the tightness of the rope.

Unconsciously, my hands moved. I snapped to attention as I saw them hovering above her back. Clenching my jaw, I ripped them back.

Pulling my shit together, I ordered, “Stretch!”