I shudder, then jerk in shock, my eyes popping back open. Lazarus is palming my breasts, his fingers twisting cruelly against my nipples. I try to edge back, but he merely slides his hands down to cup my ass, his arousal pressed against my stomach.
“Last chance,” breathes Gabriel in a threatening grin, his breath sickly sweet against my skin.
I shake my head furiously, unable to give him what he wants.
And the worst part is he knows it.
He’s already aware that all of this is useless. He’s aware that I won’t talk. Ican’ttalk. I don’t have the nanochip. I never did.
“Well?” he eggs me on, his voice thick with laughter at the private joke he shares with his brother at my expense.
I take steadying breaths, trying, and utterly failing, to accept my fate.
Gabriel takes a step back as Lazarus trails his fingers around my sides. He nods at him, and his little brother unzips his fly.
“I’ll go first,” says Lazarus.
His pants part to reveal a thick, veiny cock, already dripping at the tip with gobs of sticky pre-cum.
I turn away, sickened, when he draws even closer to me, his rancid breath practically making me hurl.
He grabs my ass again, his dirty fingernails clawing at myflesh, and pulls me toward him, pressing the tip of his cock first on my thigh, then against my folds.
I try to jerk back, but he sinks his fingers more deeply into the flesh of my bottom, keeping me in place as he searches for my opening, stabbing futilely with the head of his cock, before removing one of his hands from my ass to guide it into me.
It’s less than an inch away and I brace myself, my eyes squeezed shut, tears inundating my cheeks.
Then I hear a voice.
“Stop.”
Damien.
I open my eyes again, the tiniest glimmer of hope forming in my chest, even as I remember Gabriel’s cruel words.
He’ll be the one plunging the knife into her heart.
Lazarus pauses uncertainly, his cock still an inch away from me. Gabriel looks mildly annoyed, and I wonder if Damien has found me earlier than expected.
The next second, however, his face is once more an impenetrable mask, and he smiles smoothly.
“Damien,” he welcomes him. “We were expecting you.”
“Step away from the girl,” thunders the voice.
“She has the nanochip, Damien.”
“Step away from the girl,” threatens the voice again.
“Damien,” repeats Gabriel with the air of someone who has to explain basic math to a slow fifth-grader. “She betrayed us all. We’re doing you a favor by killing her. She would have sent you straight to the electric chair. Why don’t you come out from the shadows and…”
A single shot rings out, cleaving through the stillness of the early morning. Lazarus stares at me, then brings his eyes downto his chest. A few drops of blood trickle out from the side of his mouth, blending with the pink-tinged foam that forms when he tries to speak. And then he crumples, his dick still out, his eyes unseeing.
Everything seems to happen then in slow-motion. Gabriel’s gaze follows the fall of his brother’s body, the smugness wiped clean from his face, replaced by utter shock. The others stare, blinking dumbly. Then, they all come to their senses at once and duck just as a volley of shots ring out. Some of them must have been directed at the pipe above me, because it crashes down and I fall with it. At once, a hand closes around my ankle, dragging me backward just as the Angels get out their own guns and begin to shoot.
I feel myself being yanked against someone’s chest while two warm arms enfold me, and I don’t need to look to know who it is. I’d recognize his hands and that cedar-scented perfume anywhere.
Even though I still believe Gabriel’s words, Damien’s touch is more soothing than I can put into words.
