Annihilation Road (Torpedo Ink 6)

He knew what he was capable of. He could give her the world. He could and would make her scream with pleasure over and over, a thousand different ways. He could love her with everything in him, even the monster—especially the monster—and it would never add up to what he was asking her to give to him. Every single day he would see to it that she was happy and well loved, so when those dark days came, she would have something to hang on to.

He closed his eyes for a moment and then rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. Not accelerating, just hitting so hard he felt the blows like punches.

“I’m from Russia,” he said unnecessarily, certain she already knew that. “I told you that my parents opposed a man who wanted to be president. His second-in-command, a man by the name of Sorbacov, quietly began to purge those who were against his candidate. Our family was wealthy and had influence, so they had to go. Sorbacov came in the dead of night with his soldiers, murdered my parents and took my two older sisters, Reaper and me to one of his ‘schools,’ supposedly to make us into assets for our country. I’ve told you this before, but I didn’t tell you the rest. The truth about those schools.”

He put his head in his hands, breathing deep, trying to still the screams, trying to drive out the voices of the monsters running through his head. He pressed his thumbs against his temples, the pressure on his chest increasing.

“There were four schools, each progressively harsher. The fourth school, the one he took us to, was a special school. Very special. Sorbacov looked normal to the outside world. He was married with children of his own and always acted the perfect husband and father, but he was a pedophile. He liked little boys. He liked to see children tortured and raped. It aroused him, and he had many like-minded friends. Criminals and pedophiles ran the school and were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. He laughingly referred to it as his great experiment.”

He reached back and circled her ankle with his hand because he needed their very strong connection in order to get through the memories, the ones he tried so hard never to think about. That door he locked and barricaded in his mind, but no matter what he did, it always cracked open and he went a little berserk.

“I was very young, and I really thought I shouldn’t remember the things that happened. The first time they took me, kicking and screaming from Reaper and my sisters. That first time when they hurt me so bad, I didn’t think I could survive. My sisters tried to stop them from taking us, and they beat them in front of us. Then they took them and did horrible things to them and threw them down into the freezing-cold basement, where we had to watch them die.”

Little beads of sweat trickled down his face. He tightened his fingers around her ankle as the doors in his mind widened, spilling those memories out along with blood and death. So many. He pressed his fingers deeper into his eyes, deeper into her ankle.

“I had no real idea of sex. What it should or shouldn’t be. I was too young. I just knew I didn’t want to hurt like that, and I fought them every chance I could get. Apparently, there was a group that really enjoyed hurting their partners, and they thought it would be great fun to teach me that was how to get aroused.”

He shook his head. “I’m not telling you this very well, but it’s the best I can do, Seychelle. I watched them whipping girls and boys. The first time it was done to me, I went after them, ripping the whip out of their hands and trying to flog them. I was just a little kid, and they found it amusing. I was considered really good-looking, and they liked to take turns whipping me. By that, I mean forcing me to go down on one of them while another whipped me. The more I fought, the more they kept at me. This went on for years. The rapes, the whips, the floggings. It was brutal.”

He couldn’t look at her, his past merging with his present so that he could smell the sex, the blood. Feel the combination surrounding him. “They were training some boy, about fifteen, and I was probably eight when I took the whip from the fifteen-year-old and turned it on him. After that, I was the one learning to wield that whip. There was no way I was going to let them tear me up like that if I could help it.”