“What are you doing?” She wiggled to free herself.

“Tasting you.” That earned me another shiver.

“Why?” she yelled. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know why. I heard her long exhale and pulled the necklace tighter until her air supply was cut off. She began to struggle in earnest. All her struggling did was to make my dick even harder, and that’s when the lightbulb lit.

I knew exactly how to be the monster Mian Ross could fear.

I handed the gun to Z and grabbed her wrists. Stretching them in front of her, I put all of my weight on her back and ground my hips against her bare ass.

“Let me go,” she gasped when she finished sucking in air.

“Why would I do that?” I whispered in her ear. “You’ve been begging for my dick inside you since you were fifteen…” I transferred her wrists into one hand and used my right to trail down her side. “…you’re legal now.”

“I don’t want this,” she cried.

I kicked her legs apart. “Then tell me what I want to know.”

“I can’t!”

“Sure you can.” Kissing her shoulder, I freed one hand to unzip my pants and free my dick.

“Angel, please.” She was trembling uncontrollably now, and her fierceness had been replaced my timidity. “I really don’t know anything.”

“Sure you do.” I pressed against her and felt the tight entrance to her sex part. I could feel my restraint slipping. I only wanted to scare her into talking, but now that I felt her, I wasn’t sure how I could stop. “After I’m done with you, Lucas and Z will have a turn.” I pushed my hips against her to taunt her when a sorrow-filled cry shook me to my core.

I tore away from her.

Lucas, who had been lazily watching us, sat up.

I heard Z curse behind me.

We each have tortured many men for information in painful, unimaginable ways. We were immune to begging, cries, and screams.

Butneverhave we ever heard anything like this.* * *I’d gone toofar.

Shame, disgust, and anger all took turns fucking me up. I never wanted to rape her. A part of me hoped she’d see past my game and challenge me as she always had. I felt sick to my stomach for the first time since I took over after my father had died. I made her think I would rape her before killing her and when I’d gone too far, snapping my control, and turning the game into reality, I released a demon inside her, and she passed out to escape it.

I had Z carry her unconscious body back to her room while I locked myself in my office to think. Something had happened to her. I was more sure of it than I was of my next breath.

“She’s tougher than you thought,” Z laughed and bit into a roll from dinner. His stomach was a bottomless pit. He never stopped eating. “You underestimated her.”

“We can break her,” I said unconvincingly.

“It sounds as if we already did,” Lucas pointed out. His eyes were closed as he rested his head against the back of the couch. “She sounded pretty broken to me.”

I could still hear her broken cry an hour later.

“What were you thinking?” Lucas questioned. “Fucking her isn’t part of the plan, remember?”

“Not if she wants it,” I reminded and felt my stomach turn. Taking pussy that hadn’t been offered to me wasn’t my cup of tea.

“That much was clear,” he remarked. I detected the jealousy in his tone. I didn’t miss the heated glances throughout dinner. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her body either, and even now, I was still seeing her. I remembered the ramrod position of her spine, her hardened nipples, and the distrustful glances she kept gifting me as she picked over her food. She’d barely eaten a quarter of her food, and I too exhausted, decided if she chose to starve herself, I wouldn’t care. I’d never get my book, but she’d never save her son either.

From the state we found them in, it might have been safer for them both to be with us. They were barely surviving with no money, no food, and no security. The report my team gave told me she’d just left a pawnshop when I gave the command to take her. It must have been where she’d gotten money to get here, and now I knew what she’d sold to get it.

Mian was a smart girl. If she stole the book, then she knew its value, which meant she was either more desperate for money than we’d thought or… she was telling the truth and sold a fucking watch instead of my family’s legacy.

“We’re in this together,” Lucas growled. I looked away from nothing in particular and found them watching me with hard gazes. “Whatever you’re thinking, we need to know.”