41
Ty
Acid baths?
The pain radiating in my thigh let me know this guy was out of his fucking mind, and he apparently loved that about himself. I could only imagine what his mother had been like. Although, from what Liam and Himeros had discussed, it sounded heinous.
Was she really a Nazi? And what had her human experiments involved?
More importantly, how the fuck were we getting out of this?
I’d seen Liam with some sort of pin in his hand—the safety pin he’d put on his shirt earlier that night? Was he trying to pick the lock? Whatever he was doing, I couldn’t look long to see, since I didn’t want to draw the attention of Himeros—or Dr. Moore, or whoever-the-fuck-this-guy-was—to it. As far as I knew, that was the only hope we had of making it out of this alive.
How the hell was this the third time my life was at risk over the past few weeks?
“What do you mean,a game?” I asked, hoping to direct his attention away from Liam to buy him some time without Himeros watching him. “This isn’t a game.”
Himeros laughed, rubbing his hands together. “Oh, but it is. Yes, you see, I am a curious person, just like my mother was before me. We want to delve into the dark side of humanity, explore the deepest and darkest that exists within you all. And since Agent McKinney so carelessly took my own mother from me, I feel no shame in taking something dear from him.”
He stepped around me, and I felt the cool chill of the blade against my neck.
The fuck?
The blood in my face drained as I realized this could very well be the end.
“You fucking bastard!” Liam exclaimed, face red as he struggled in his cuffs.
My heart raced and my body trembled as my life seemed to flash before me.
Was this the end? Was it really over so fast?
I hadn’t done anything with my life. Not really.
And Liam— No, it wasn’t right. We hadn’t had time! There was still so much to share.
As he pressed the blade tighter against my flesh, my throat dried. “How do you feel about losing your Pretty Thing, Liam? Tell me.”
Liam struggled in his restraints. But God, I hoped he was trying to break free—that what Himeros was doing wasn’t distracting him from what was most important. I tried to convince myself he was just using his concern as a distraction, but what the hell did it matter for me if I had a knife in my throat?
“You know how that would feel!” Liam called out.
“Oh, you are so coy with your feelings, Liam. You should be more open with your boyfriend. Pretty Thing, you’ll just have to learn that these IPB agents are so hard to reach where it matters.” He pulled back, as though ensuring I could look him in the eyes. “It just takes time, my friend. Wait it out, and they always open up to you. Not to say either of my conquests shared any details about their work with the IPB, but their hearts…oh, I did have those.”
“It’s not the same,” I said, feeling the blade subtly slicing into my flesh.
What the fuck was I thinking? Why did I feel the need to call him out on it? Something about having a knife to my throat seemed to make me more obstinate, not less. Although, it seemed to work in keeping Himeros’s attention on me.
“We’ll see,” he said, withdrawing the knife and heading alongside the table. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small device, the size of a cell phone. He pulled out a remote, playing with it for a moment.
“Damn Bluetooth can be so frustrating,” he noted before the screen turned on and flashed: 00:00:00. “Ah, there we are.” He smiled my way, as though I was supposed to congratulate him.
As I tried to make sense of what he was doing with it, he set the timing device in the middle of the table.
I noticed Liam working at picking the lock on his cuff, but he stopped as soon as Himeros’s gaze shifted his way.
The thought that we might actually have a chance was…painful.
However, what would he even do when he got one hand free? And would Himeros have already slit my throat before he had the fucking chance?
