Page 4 of Liberated By Sin
Ronan crept closer, but I was frozen in place from shock and mortification, my eyes still fixed on Ezra’s lifeless ones.
“W-why?” I managed to choke out.
His lips ghosted over my bare shoulder, and another bout of nausea rolled through me.
“Because you’re mine.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. His claim on me wasn’t that of an overprotective father. My intuition all these years had been right.
“You’re sick.”
“I’m glad we cleared that up.” When he leaned in for another kiss, it was the spark I needed to make a move. Dropping to the floor, I reached for the Sig under my bed, but my blood ran cold when I came up empty.
Ronan’s cruel laughter echoed from above me.
“Looking for something, darling?” In a flash, his hand tangled in my hair, and he yanked me to my knees. “I can give you the world, Athena. All you have to do is let me.”
“Fuck you!” I cried, thrashing against the pain of his grip. “I’ll never be yours. You’re going to have to kill me…or I’ll kill you first.”
His eyes widened when I ran a blade into his side, but before I could plunge it a second time, he lifted me by the throat and tossed me over the bed with so much force that I crashed to the floor on the other side. Pain rippled through me, and my mouth gaped open as I struggled to breathe.
“F-fuck,” I whimpered, slightly dazed as I pushed my chest off the hardwood and watched as blood pooled below me from a gash on my head.
“So you want to do this the hard way.” Ronan rounded the bed and pulled the knife from his body with a grunt. “Let’s dance.”
“When Derek and Kai find out, they’re going to kill you.”
“Who’s going to tell them? For all they know, you ran away with that headless bastard over there. Left this life behind without saying a goddamn word. Isn’t that what you wrote in your little messages?”
Ronan’s hand was around my throat again. Maybe if I hadn’t had so much to drink, I’d have more of a fight in me. I’d taken on men his size in the past and won.
“You can lock me up…torture me, but I’ll never be yours. And I’llneverstop fighting you.”
“I know you won’t.” He swept his tongue up the side of my face, where blood still flowed in a steady drip. “That’s why, as much as it pains me, I will have to break you.”
2
Wasit possible for the room to spin while my eyes were closed? Not that I had a choice because it was like my lids were glued together or made of lead. The heaviness also radiated to my limbs, reminding me of when I convinced the boys to ride the Graviton at the state fair. A decision we’d all paid for dearly when we found ourselves dizzy and bent over shrubs, puking out our lunch.
The boys…
Visions of their faces floated in my thoughts like a hazy memory I couldn’t quite reach.
Where was I? What happened?
The rushing sound of a highway registered first and then came the feeling of movement beneath me. I was in a car, traveling fast. And I didn’t need my sight to know I was shrouded in darkness.
Realization hit me with the force of a bomb.
Ronan.
Every sensation rushed forward at once. My arms and legs werebound tightly together, though despite the restraints, my limbs were far too weak to attempt an escape. And to my horror, the partial numbness seemed to overtake every part of my body as well. The scream blazing up my throat became nothing but a muffled whimper, and no matter how much I thrashed and clawed in my mind’s eye, my body refused to cooperate.
There was no telling how long I’d been out, how far I was from home, or where the fuck I was heading.
No, no, no…
A stream of tears flowed from my eyes as it sunk in how truly fucked I was. Drugged, beaten, and tied up like an animal heading to slaughter.