I don't halt, refusing to heed his words, or focus on the hint of concern I hear distinctly in his tone. I trip over another hidden root and fall to my knees, mud splashing up my skin, and coating my breasts and neck. Fury fills me at my weakness, and failure to escape them. I scramble to stand, but my legs won't respond fast enough, and I fear my ankle won't hold my weight. A hand swipes the air behind me, and fingertips graze my arm. Dammit, he's close enough to touch me. Panic detonates in my gut. "NOOOO!" I twist, grabbing the nearest thing I can, a broken, jagged branch on the ground, and with my remaining strength, I fling it backward as hard as my shaking arms allow. It connects with a sickening crack, and Damon releases a grunt. Not loud, more shocked than injured, but enough to buy me the precious seconds I desperately need.
I dare to dart a glance over one of my shoulders, fear crawling across my limbs like insects as he drops to one knee, mask now askew, clutching his forearm where the branch scraped deep, and bright red blood oozes from the tear in his black shirt. His furious gaze meets mine, and I feel a shiver of terror run down my spine. "You little..."
I'm already scrambling away, half-running, half-crawling, my body begging me to stop, while my mind insists we keep going, and defeat pulls at me like invisible chains. "Keep... going..." I mumble out loud, trying to urge myself to go faster.
Damon's shouting now for the others, and I can hear the anger and humiliation in his malignant tone. "I found her! She's injured, but she fucking hit me... stupid, violent bitch."
A large body crashes through the trees like a violent storm, voice unhinged. "WHERE IS SHE?!" The fury in Cross's voice chills me worse than the cold air on my naked flesh. "Which way did she go, Damon?!"
"Down there," Damon snarls, "She got me with a branch!"
"You let her hit you?" Cross demands, but I'm too busy crawling on my hands and knees toward a grouping of bushes to look backward. I hear something break, wood maybe, then heavy footfalls pound closer. I force my body to duck behind a thicket, my legs and arms trembling violently, as all my aches and pains try to drag me into darkness again.Stay awake, or you'll die out here!I urge myself silently.
Cross's rage vibrates through the trees like heat, and it pulls a small, satisfied smile to my lips. Nothing about this situation is amusing in the slightest, but I fear that if I really allow myself to feel all my emotions, I'll end up sobbing, and in the fetal position. His anger is a small victory, and I hold on to it with all of the energy I have left. They thought that it would be easy to force me to succumb to them, but they were wrong.
"I swear to FUCKING GOD, when I find her..."
"Cross!" River's voice slices through the chaos, low and dangerous, and I find myself holding my breath in response. "Rein it fucking in."
"Don't fucking tell me to rein it in!" Cross screams back. "She's making fools of us!"
You are fools and monsters.I see their shadows through the brush. Cross is pacing like a caged animal, mask pulled up on his head, chest heaving, fists clenching and unclenching, like he's picturing my neck in their grasp. Damon is nursing his arm, glaring into the woods like he wants to rip them apart, and mumbling to himself, and River stands between them, the only one not panting, his body still and listening. In that moment, I realize I'm more terrified of him than the other two. He's predatory and calculating, his body and senses tuned to listen for my movements, as he controls himself and his emotions. My suspicions are confirmed, when he utters his next words that bring a cold chill down my spine.
"She's close," River murmurs, head tilting with that disturbing green mask on his face, like he can hear my heartbeat trembling in the air, and I instantly hold my breath so hard it hurts, and my ribs spasm in protest.
Cross spins around, facing the other two, his face wild and filled with venom. "I'm done playing this game, River.I'M DONE. I'll drag her out by her hair if I have to..."
River steps in fast, throwing his mask to the ground, grabbing Cross's shirt, and shoving him back into a tree. The rage across his angelic, handsome face is palpable, and his almost white blond hair shines in the diminishing moonlight. "Get. Control. Now."
The air crackles with violence and tension, and I feel my core tightening in response. The image of them coming to physical blows over me, something primal and erotic, is weaving its way around me like a depraved spell.How can I be attracted to any of this?This is not only wrong, but it's also utterly unhinged. These men are not white knights out to save me, they are the big, bad wolves that wish to eat me. They want to hurt me, not because I've done anything to them, but because they can.
Cross shoves River, his lips peeling back in a snarl that resembles the animal I just pictured him as. "Don't you fucking touch me, River."
"Get a hold of yourself and try to think clearly, you're allowing your emotions to control you, and that's not you, Cross. She's still drugged, and Damon says she's injured," River snaps, voice low but furious. "If you chase her like this, you'll kill her."
"GOOD."The word is a snarl. A dark confession. A viable threat. I swallow a cry, doing my best not to give myself away. Why does he hate me so much? Why are they doing this to me?
River's jaw tightens with visible wrath, and I don't know if he's angry on my behalf, or that he hasn't managed to find me yet. "We need her alive."
"For what?" Cross spits with vexation, as he drags his tattooed fingers through the mess of his dark blonde hair. "To run again? To continue to defy us at every turn?"
"To finish what we started," River says quietly. "Not destroy it. I want her under me, screaming my name while I fill every inch of her, and my hands wrapped tightly around her pretty throat, removing her ability to breathe. I want you and Damon to help me fill the remainder of her holes, until her defiance leaves her, and she realizes that she belongs to Mayhem now."
His words evoke a hedonistic image in my mind that I can't deter. I can almost feel his hand tightening around my neck, as his body presses into me, and his cock thrusts with violence inside of me. I picture the other two touching me, filling me up in my remaining holes until I'm so full of the three of them, that I can't tell where one of us begins and ends.
My breath is now releasing in short pants for a completely different reason, and I'm ashamed to admit my core is spasming, and my pussy is soaked. Just when I'm trying to break whatever spell River's words are weaving in my obviously injured mind, River grasps Cross by the neck and pulls him into his body violently, until they're chest to chest. His fingers tighten around Cross's tattooed neck, and his lips crash down on his mouth with a warring violence that Cross meets with his own. River's other hand grabs onto Cross's ass, pushing him tighter against his body, and even from where I'm crouched, I can see the heat coming off the two of them. My lips open and close with fascination. Never would I have guessed that these two were together like this.
Cross pulls back from the passionate kiss, his breathing fractured into sharp, jagged pieces. He stares down at River with an expression I can't read, as his fingers rise gently and cup River's jaw tenderly. "You belong to me, River Brackley, you shouldn't forget that."
River leans forward, his lips brushing Cross's, before biting down on his bottom lip and eliciting a groan from the other large man. He releases his hold on Cross's hair, and drags his hand down the front of his body, before grabbing Cross's tenting cock and squeezing. "Right back at you,brother."
I'm so entranced by the two of them that I don't realize I've lost sight of the third one, and I no longer see him in the same clearing. I'm just about to risk crawling further back in the brush when my ass slams into something hard, and all the air vacates my lungs.
"There's nowhere left to run, unhinged princess, you're ours now."
CHAPTER 33
DAMON
