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I’m sorry, Kyrie.

  “Why are you fighting this, you silly man? Don’t you remember all the good times we had together?” She was sitting beside me again, acting calm and cool as if she wasn’t forcing this on me.

  “I remember never being able to satisfy you, that’s what I remember. I remember nothing I did was ever good enough. I remember you screaming at me when I came too soon. I remember you convincing me to let you tie me up, and then you didn’t let me go. Just like this. You had me tied up for hours that night in Cyprus. That’s what I remember. ” I spoke through gritted teeth, tasting the revulsion on my tongue, at the back of my throat like bitter bile. “You’ve always been a goddamn psychopath. I realized that the first time we fucked. You always wanted more. Something else. Something even more fucked up. ”

  I was slipping. Regressing. My speech was reverting to the way I’d spoken back then, vulgar language with the English accent. I’d worked hard to distance myself from who I’d been, worked hard to clean up my speech. I’d stopped cursing, straightened my accent as much as possible, spoke properly, formally. I forced myself to speak, look, and act like the man I wanted to be: a respectable, legitimate businessman. Fifteen minutes with Gina, and I was regressing.

  She just grinned. “Oh, Valentine. You have no idea. ” She was stroking my length, almost idly. Petting. “I’ve been practicing for this. I know you, Val. I knew you’d fight me. But you can’t. You can’t fight me. You’re trying right now. You’re trying to think of something else so you won’t react. Aren’t you? But just—just stop fighting for a moment and feel. It feels good, doesn’t it? It hurts, just a little. I’m just getting started, Valentine. Fight all you want, but you’ll give in to me. You’ll give me what I want. ”

  I fought it. Fought hard. Kept my eyes closed and denied her, denied myself sensation. “Never. ”

  “Maybe you need some…inspiration. ” She let me go and slid off the bed. “Watch. ”

  I kept my eyes shut. I knew what her game was. I wanted to think of Kyrie, but refused. I wouldn’t think of her in this situation. I wouldn’t betray her. Not willingly.

  “WATCH. ” She spat the word out, furious. Something cold and sharp touched my Adam’s apple. “Don’t toy with me, Valentine. ”

  I opened my eyes. Gina was standing near my head, a short, wicked-looking black folding knife held to my throat. Her face was expressionless, a blank mask. She kept the razor-sharp point to my throat for a few beats, then pulled it away and folded the blade into the handle. As soon as the knife was closed, the mask fell away. I recognized the look on her face as what she thought of as “seductive. ” Pouting, slightly smirking lips, puppy-dog eyes. She wouldn’t kill me yet, I knew that much, but if I didn’t cooperate to some degree, she’d find some awful and inventive way to punish me. So I watched.

  I watched, and for the first time in my life, watching as a beautiful woman stripped down to nothing in front of me failed to incite any kind of reaction in me. She wasn’t Kyrie. Until Kyrie, I’d never loved a woman. Girls were girls, and they’d never meant anything to me beyond a few hours of fun and pleasure. They were all largely interchangeable. A naked woman was something to be appreciated and, if circumstances permitted, thoroughly enjoyed. And then Kyrie happened, and love happened, and everything changed.

  Gina was a beautiful woman. A work of art, really. But she was just that: art, sculpture. Her makeup was perfect. Her hair was perfect. And even as she reached behind her back and unzipped the dress and let it fall to pool around her ankles, she was careful to make sure nothing was out of order. She paused after the dress was off, making sure I appreciated the hours spent in the gym, the diets, the expensive lingerie.

  On any other woman, those would be positive qualities. But with Gina, that’s all there was. It was window dressing, disguising the cruel, empty soul beneath. Her eyes never left mine as she reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, then held an arm barred across her chest, keeping the bra in place as she withdrew first one arm and then the other. When the straps were off her shoulders, she let the undergarment drop with a flourish, setting her massive tits bouncing. Ugh. She’d had implants. An additional twenty pounds, even on her svelte frame, couldn’t explain the jump from small C-cup to large DD-cup. She’d also pierced her nipples; a thick silver bar was positioned horizontally between each nipple.

  Piercings and implants were fine. If that’s what a woman was into, if that made her feel good about herself, great, fine. It simply wasn’t to my taste. My personal preference was for natural bodies, no implants, and no piercings. I liked a woman as she was. That, at least partially, was why I’d been so attracted to Kyrie. She was the epitome of feminine beauty to me. She needed no makeup, no expensive clothing or lingerie or implants to be lush and gorgeous. Her breasts were naturally big, firm, high, and taut, with large areolae and thick pink nipples, unadorned and begging to be tasted. The curves of her body were…perfect. Wide, swaying hips, strong, thick thighs, long legs. She wasn’t stick-thin. That look had never appealed to me. I’d dallied with a few model-thin women before Kyrie came along, and they were beautiful women in their own way, and certainly other men found them desirable. But to me, Kyrie was what I wanted. She was perfection to me. Curves. Flesh to hold and feel and clutch and kiss.

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  A slap across my face brought me back to the present. “Look at me, Val. ”

  “My name isn’t Val, Gina. My name is Valentine. ”

  “But I’ve always called you Val. ”

  “You don’t get to do that anymore. ” I lifted my chin and let her see the depth of my revulsion and derision. “You can keep me tied up here as long as you want. You can drug me and cut me and threaten me all you wish. You can take whatever you want from me. None of that will change a thing. Not a thing. I won’t love you. I won’t be attracted to you. I won’t want you. I won’t even like you. ”

  She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Whether she’d shed them while I was spaced out thinking of Kyrie or whether she’d never been wearing them, I couldn’t remember. She was shaved bare—there was not a single hair anywhere on her body below her neck.

  “You’re lying. You want this. You’re trying not to want it, but you do. ”

  I didn’t bother arguing with her. I just kept my eyes focused on hers, refusing to give her the satisfaction of my gaze on her body. She sashayed closer to me, putting a sway in her hips, a bounce to her cleavage. Her black eyes watched mine, and I saw them narrow at my lack of reaction. She didn’t falter in her runway walk, though it was obvious she was aware of the sun shining through the window behind her, outlining her, the wind skirling through the room, tossing her hair.

  Finally, she was at the bed. Leaning over me, staring down at me. Climbing onto the bed. Straddling me. She put her hands on my chest, curled her long red fingernails into my skin and muscle, gouging deep. That had always been her thing, digging in with her nails. Establishing dominance, maybe? Or maybe it was supposed to be erotic? I never liked it, and had told her so on more than one occasion. If she got lost in the heat and throes of ecstasy, Kyrie would occasionally scratch me or grab my shoulders hard enough to leave indents. With Gina…it was intentional. It was meant to cause pain and to remind me that she could draw blood if she wanted.

  There was nothing I could do to stop her. Try to buck her off, maybe. That’d work once maybe, if that. Eventually she’d just tie me down and do what she wanted anyway. And, aside from that, the struggle was half the fun for her, I think. Seeing me fight it, seeing me reduced to this, tied up and at her mercy? That was the fun for her. Or at least part of it.

  She slid her body along mine, writhing her core against my pained, imprisoned member. Shudders of revulsion shook through me.

  “Don’t do this, Gina. ” I couldn’t help it—I had to try. “Please. This isn’t how you want this. ”

  “Oh, no?” She ground herself against me, teasing. I slid through the creases of her flesh. She was wet with desire. “Feel that? That says otherwise. This is exactly how I want it. You are mine, my dearest Valentine. I want you at my mercy. I want you squirming and begging. So beg, Valentine. Beg me to stop. It’ll only make my cunt that much wetter for you. ”

  Such a vulgar woman. Putrid. “This is rape, you know. ” I sounded cool and calm, as if rage and horror weren’t rifling through me.

  She smiled, a wicked curve of her lips, her tongue dragging along her upper lip, slowly, deliberately, cloyingly. “Exactly. That’s exactly what this is. ”

  She arched her spine out, fingernails gouging into my skin, drawing blood. She tilted her head back on her shoulders, hair hanging and waving and tickling and draping over one shoulder in a blue-black cascade, sliding her core against me, pressing the tip of me to her entrance. I gripped the cool brass of the headboard, shook it, strained against it, felt my stomach revolting, my mind whirling and my soul protesting. I thrashed until my wrists bled, and Gina held on and let me buck as if she was riding a wild bronco. Shame seared me. I was helpless. For all my money, all my power, all my physical strength, I was totally helpless. Emotional agony blazed within me. I was betraying Kyrie by allowing this to happen. Helpless or not, there had to be some way for me to stop what Gina was doing to me.

  “Last time I’ll say this, Gina. Stop now. Let me go. I’ll forget this happened, and we can go our separate ways. ”

  “Or?”

  “You’ll have to kill me when you’re finished with me. If I get free, I will stop at nothing to destroy you, your father, and everything you hold dear. ”

  “Here’s an interesting fact, Valentine. ” She braced herself with one hand on my chest, reached down between us, and gripped me in her fist. “I don’t hold anything dear. Do what you wish to my father. I’d thank you for doing it, and I’d even help you do it. You know nothing of me. Nothing of what I’ve endured since you escaped me the last time. ”

  I’m sorry, Kyrie. I love you. The thoughts blew through me, attached to my mind, and hung there like burrs, repeating and repeating and repeating as Gina lowered her hips with agonizing slowness, penetrating herself with me. I focused on the ceiling, and then tried closing my eyes. I focused on anything, everything, except her. Except what was happening to me. Stroke after stroke, her body arching and writhing and rising and falling above me, Gina brought herself to climax, screaming like a banshee in my ear. I felt nothing. The burn of the need to release was nothing but pain, nothing but a raw physical reaction to stimulus, as natural and unstoppable as breathing or eating or excreting.

  She came—or pretended to—twice more, and then slid off me, leaving me aching and painfully hardened. “Mmmmm. That was good. Thank you, Val. ”

  “Fuck you. ”

  “No, fuck you. Fuck you very much. I just did, and I’m going to again. ” She licked her lips and caressed my length, arranging herself on a chair in the corner. “I just needed a quick break before we continue. ”

  I closed my eyes and focused on each breath in, each breath out. I counted my breaths…. one, two, three…forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight…one hundred and two, one hundred and three, one hundred and four….

  I’d reached three hundred and nineteen when I felt the bed dip and her cool hands on my thighs, then the wet warmth of her mouth on my cock. “Mmmm. Yum. You taste like me. ”

  I remained motionless, ignoring the pain, the feel of her mouth, and the weight of her body as she straddled me once more. I ignored the burn, the agonizing pressure welling up inside me. Ignored the hate, the shame, the fury. Ignored it all. Pushed it all down.

  Feel nothing. Feel nothing. Feel nothing.

  Gina brought herself to thrashing, ululating orgasm three times, and there was nothing I could do, no way to stop it, no way to do anything but endure it.

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  I felt, vaguely, distantly, the throbbing aching pulse of my own release nearing. Never in my life had I wanted anything less than to give her the satisfaction of my body, of my release. It was inevitable, however.

  I clenched my teeth together so hard my molars creaked and my jaw ached. I held back. Held back.

  “GIVE IT TO ME!” Gina shrieked, writhing on me, slamming down and up and down and up and down.

  Flesh on flesh. Her nails dragging down my chest. Heat, pressure. Pain.

  I tightened every muscle in my body, curled my toes in, and pulled on the handcuffs binding me to the bed and rendering me helpless, drawing on the pain of my bloody wrists and turning it to rage and strength. My biceps and triceps tightened, pulsed, my thighs turned to rock and my calves to stone, my lungs ceased to draw breath and my heart pounded like tympanic thunder in my chest, and still Gina attempted to elicit my release from me, and still I refused her.

  Strength ebbed, ebbed. Gina was panting and sweating above me, at last showing the strain of exertion, her hair wisping and pasted to her forehead. She flung herself off me with a feral groan of frustration.

  “You’ll regret this, Valentine,” she hissed, her face inches from mine. I kept my eyes shut and my body tensed, shaking, my energy and the ability to hold back waning. She licked my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “Oh, yes. You’ll regret this. ”

  She sucked my lower lip into her mouth and tugged, nibbled, and I could feel her grin, feeling the delight in my pain.

  She bit, hard enough to draw a grunt from me, breaking skin and drawing blood once more.

  Abruptly, she was gone. I was left aching, the cock ring still on. I let my muscles relax, let my breath go, dizziness washing through me.

  I remained painfully engorged for an hour before it began to subside.

  And that was when she returned, showered and in a blue dress this time, hair coiffured perfectly once more. She had a small pill bottle, which she set on the table beside the bed, then perched a buttock on the bed beside me.

  “If you won’t cooperate willingly…. ” She blinked slowly, a small smile on her lips, then twisted the top off the bottle and shook a small white pill into her hand. “This is an experimental drug I procured from a lab in Prague. It’s not licensed anywhere in the world, and is banned in several countries throughout the EU. I couldn’t even begin to pronounce the name of it. Something scientific and complicated and stupid. But those I’ve…spoken to…who have used it claim it works wonders. Magical, some said. Hours and hours and hours of uncontrollable arousal. What was the phrase the one man used? Oh, yes. He claimed it turned him into a rutting beast. This should be fun. ”

  I pressed my lips together, clenched my jaw, and stared her down.

  She only laughed. “You think you can resist? You can’t. You can’t stop me. ”

  She reached down between my legs and slipped the cock ring off, then covered me up to the waist with the flat sheet. After a glance and a grin at me, she put two fingers to her lips and gave a short, sharp whistle. The door opened, and two short, squat, powerfully built men dressed in black business suits with white shirts and slim black ties came into the room. Bulges at their chests indicated that they were armed. The two men were nearly identical, possibly twins, brothers at the very least, each of them having slicked-back black hair, similar dark eyes, the same swarthy complexion and cruel, cold gazes.

  Gina said something in Greek, and the two men moved to stand on either side of the bed. One of them took my jaw in his hand, squeezing and pinching, shoving his index finger and thumb into my cheek, between my teeth, forcibly separating my jaw. I twisted and bucked, wrenched my head from side to side, but I couldn’t dislodge his grip on my jaw.

  “You’d better quit struggling, Val,” Gina said. “I really don’t mind a bit of blood on my lovers, you know. I’m perfectly willing to let Stefanos and Tobias soften you up a bit. So really, dear, it’s best to just go along. ”

  I couldn’t speak to tell her to fuck off, or I would have. My mouth was pried open, and Gina placed the pill on my tongue with absurd delicacy. Immediately, my saliva began to dissolve the chemical compound, bitterness leaking onto my tongue, into my mouth. The cruel, painful grip on my jaw, the thick finger and thumb between my teeth, kept me from spitting it out. Working my tongue only moved it farther back in my mouth so the quickly dissolving mixture sluiced down my throat, choking me. Acidic gall burned my taste buds, scorched down my esophagus. I choked, coughed, my own spit gagging me, but the pincers between my mandibles remained in place, keeping my head tipped back, my jaw pried apart.

  I fought, jerking on the cuffs, each tug of my wrists sending pain shooting through me. I felt blood trickling down my forearms.

  Reflex took over, and I swallowed, the need to breathe dominating my will to resist.

  “Good. ” Gina patted my chest. “Good boy. That should take effect within a few hours. I’ll be back. Until then…don’t go anywhere!” She laughed at her own joke, leading the two thugs out of the room.

  I could still taste the bitter grit of the pill on my tongue. Summoning as much saliva as I could, I spat to the side, watching the gobbet land on the floor. It was too late, though. The chemical was already inside me; the question was whether it would work, and how, and if I could find a way to resist the effects.

  An unknowable amount of time later, hours, perhaps, or even longer, I felt the stirrings deep within me of the experimental drug taking hold. It felt like need. Not just need, no, nothing that easy or simple. Oh, no. This was frantic, primal, manic, blood- and bone- and soul-deep animalistic desperation. It began in my gut, a roiling, a tightening. My fists curled around the chain of the handcuffs, the pain of my raw wrists fading. Thoughts were impossible. Logic was erased. Memory was nothing.

  I was need. I was the embodiment of insatiable, rapacious sexual hunger.

  Need curled inside me, pounded through me, wrenched my muscles into spasming throbbing pulsation, my hips grinding at the air. I needed. This was about release, this was about…about quenching the fire inside me, and in that moment, with the drug coursing through me, I would take anything at all, anything that would slake my thirst, anything that would fill the raging void within me.

  Someone was growling, a feral snarl. Me? Was that me? Yes, it was. Sweat coated my skin. My cock was a white-hot iron rod.

  The door opened, and Gina entered, hips sashaying in a sultry sway, a satisfied smile on her painted ruby-red lips.

  Within the space of a breath, I was a starving lion chained in the corner of a cage, a bloody hunk of fresh meat just out of reach.

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  My entire body writhed on the bed, seeking flesh, seeking heat, seeking release. Gina halted just out of reach, her tongue sliding along her lips, eyeing me. My thrashing had dislodged the sheet long ago, leaving me bared to her gaze. Her hand drifted out, clasped around my cock, and slid down.

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