From waking to take off, all in a window of twenty minutes.
And a rude awakening it had been. Georges tossing in the sweaty, broken-sleep withdrawal had blessed him with. Followers urgently telling him that he had to move now. No need to dress. No food, no water, no chance to do more than throw on his glasses and follow in his pajamas.
They had given him good boots.
And then he’d been introduced to his new Overseer, Maryanne Cauley. A tall, striking woman who’d eyed him like she knew what he’d done. Like she could see right through his nervous fidgeting with his frames.
She had been curt, yet touched him a great deal. Literally handling him onto the ship as she spoke in piecemeal French orders he half understood—fly the plane as fast as possible to Bernard Dome. There would be no return flight. No extra fuel.
To fail would be to die.
But if he might impress her with the skill she had heard so much about, Maryanne tempted him with the one thing he wanted most. The opportunity to protect Brenya.
Who would be violated and possibly murdered if Georges failed.
He did not know the details or why he’d been summoned. But… that word. That one ugly word. Maryanne had pronounced it flawlessly. His guilt all over his face.
Violer.
Rape.
Because she knew what he’d done to another blonde female. How he had not been able to stop himself. How the shame was eating him up from the inside.
He’d only even flown a ship once before… a different, much smaller vessel than this. He was no expert, might intuit the controls, but did not understand the ship’s nuances or fail-safes. And when he’d tried to take the time to learn, Maryanne had barked at him to take off.
He’d obeyed, strapped into the captain’s chair, and maneuvered the ship out of the Dome well enough that she had been overly confident in his abilities to pilot such a massive cargo vessel.
The vessel plummeting toward the sea as every gauge before him jittered, needles dancing. Metal groaning, the cockpit rattling like it might pop apart and suck them into the atmosphere.
A ship that might be centuries old, maybe even older than the Domes… and packed to the gills with more sweet-smelling pretty blondes.
Who werescreaming…
His hands began to shake, the shrieks of another woman’s frantic begging invading his ears, his thoughts, his body.
He got hard.
Felt hiccupping sobs. Tears running down his face.
That one, the one he’d raped, she had not spoken much French either, but Spanish. High and breaking. The words similar enough to equate to meaning, different enough to be alien and awful.
She’d begged him to help her, and he’d fucked her, forced her legs apart, and was inside her before he understood what he was doing.
He was a monster.
His grip faltered as the wailing in the hull blurred into his worst memory. That smell—female, sweet. Heat crept up his neck. Shame. Cock throbbing, leaking, pointing at the sky in his loose pajama bottoms as the nose of the plane pointed toward the sea.
His stomach clenched, he climaxed, shivered in revulsion as he felt female sexual fluids on his skin that were not there… as if that crying, begging woman was with him and he was inside her again. Drowning him in soft, squeezing heat, scratching at his back in desperation.
How hard she had cried.
“I’m trying!” Said just as he had spoken it all those weeks ago. Hehadtried to get off of her. He had tried to get out of that room. But instead, he had raped her. Over and over and over.
For days…
The cockpit tilted to the left, alarms howling, the Overseer, the angry woman, slapping his face, shaking him, fitting a breathing apparatus over his mouth.
Clean air forced its way into his chest. A deep, sucking breath that reoriented his twitching brain.
