Page 19 of Descent
The fact remained there was nothing he could do to make my heart accept the joining of our bodies.
Hissing a breath between clenched teeth, Zach gripped my hips and pushed inside me. I gasped as his massive girth stretched me wide. Pummeling deeper, he wound a hand in my hair and pulled me forward until our lips came near enough to touch.
“Kiss me.”
I couldn’t stomach the idea. His mouth on mine, intimate and personal. Romantic.
Like everything else, he didn’t give me a choice. His lips claimed what didn’t belong to him, same as his cock, and his tongue darted along the seam of my mouth before plunging inside. And for those few seconds, when I let my lids drift shut and imagined it was Rafe sitting between my thighs, that it was Rafe’s tongue tangling with my own, I found a glimmer of freedom.
Until Zach broke it by groaning against my mouth. “Your cunt is beautiful.” He stilled, dick pulsing inside me. “You will never feel him like this again. Only me.” The vow was a dark caress on my lips, spiraling its poison and tainting the air I breathed. “Only me, Lex. Say it.”
“Only you.” The promise was complete horse shit. The mothership of all lies.
Because this couldn’t be the end. I wouldn’t allow it to end like this, even if I had to claw my way out of here. Even if sitting on his lap and fucking him with as much willful intent as I could muster gave me the smallest of advantages, a sense of cooperation on my part, another lie in the script of Zach’s fantasy.
“I’m going to make you come so fucking hard,” he said, setting a rhythm that felt too damn good.
Don’t let him take more pieces of you. Fake it, Alex.
The thought had barely formed in my mind when liquid heat flared between my legs, and a needy moan departed my lips. His gaze bored into me, growing darker as the physical connection between us intensified. He hit my G-spot just right, with enough skill and willpower that it wasn’t long before I lost sight of what was fake and what was real.
This felt real, too fucking real, and when he pulled me into another kiss, I gladly welcomed the distraction—the opportunity to lose myself in the only thing that didn’t feel sick and dirty and wrong.
The thought of Rafe.
I wrapped myself in the memory of my husband’s heat, the solid security of his muscles, the certainty of his punishing hand. A vision flickered through my mind, unbidden, and I saw Rafe’s palm come down on my backside, again and again until my skin reddened with pain.
“Fuck…” I groaned through gritted teeth, duplicity unnecessary as I came in a horrendous rush, like a tsunami nobody saw rushing toward the shoreline. All the while, I pretended a pair of green eyes watched me shatter.
10. The Pit
Rafe
Twenty-four hours had passed since Zach left with the key. In my waking hours, I’d done little else but pace the dinky room, fighting to keep it together. Horror tainted each breath. Frustration at my forced inactivity weighed down my feet.
This cell reeked of desolation.
For the tenth time in the last hour or so, I eyed the door, imagining the narrow hall behind it. Imagining it empty. It fucking sounded unoccupied. My son was alone, just down the hallway, waiting for someone to rescue him from this hell.
As his father, that someone should be me.
I pounded my fist against my palm in furious succession, and those harsh smacks tore through the silence, matching time to the pad of bare feet.
Impatient feet.
I wanted to do something, needed to do something.
Pulse throbbing at my temples, I closed my eyes, thoughts returning to Zach and the key he’d stolen from me. The waves of what-ifs crashed over me. What if Alex couldn’t withstand what Zach wanted from her? What if he broke her beyond repair?
What if he took her to a place buried so deep that no amount of searching the globe would help me find her? I might never see her again, and that thought alone had me breathing hard in the corner, one hand bracing my shaking body against the wall. Urgency flooded my system, and I gulped in breath after laborious breath in mounting panic.
But when I opened my eyes, the worn wall in front of me crystallized, snapping me back to the ground. Going into a fucking panic attack wouldn’t solve shit. Only one thing stood in the way, and that was two inches of wood and the balls to take a risk. As I studied the door, noting the height of the lock panel, I peeled my ears for sounds of life outside the chaos in my head.
The apparent vacancy of this place settled around me in disquiet temptation, tainting the air with the kind of dangerous hope that would make any desperate plan seem infallible. Before I could overthink it, I sent a swift kick to the door. That first strike merely strained the wood. The second got me a satisfying dent. The third broke through the final barrier, allowing me entrance into the hall.
