Hunted by the Feral Alpha Page 4

  “No...please.” Sophia hated herself for begging. She hated the way that her voice went high-pitched and reedy with panic.

  “Do you want it fast or slow?”

  “You don’t have to do this.” She was crying, blubbering even, as the desperate words spilled from her lips. She would say anything to avoid the pain that seemed to be just on the horizon. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to suffer. “I can get you money. My dad will give you anything you want. Just please don’t hurt me.”

  Her legs were wrenched cruelly apart as far as the shackles would allow. Freddy Krueger, or at least a man wearing the same face, leered up from between her thighs. He slithered up her body until his entire weight rested atop of her, contorting her already-strained muscles until a sharp burning racked her entire body.

  “Who says we want money?”

  Freddy’s voice was somehow even deeper and darker than Jason’s, even though they seemed to be using the same sort of synthesizer. Another frisson of fear sent uncontrollable shakes through her body.

  His hands gripped tightly on her thighs, nails digging into the bare skin until she cried out. “Maybe we just want to play with you for a while.”

  God, please no.

  It was inexplicable, but the thought of being brutally raped was somehow so much worse than just being murdered. Maybe it was her father’s conservative sensibilities rubbing off on her, but everyone died eventually. But rape was a violation of the natural order. It was grotesque and terrifying.

  If she died, at least the pain would end for her. But this would destroy her, and then leave her alive to try to pick up the pieces and resurrect who she was.

  “No...no...no...please.” Sophia was crying so hard that tears had completely obscured her vision. The words spilled out of her like gibberish because she had no idea what she was even saying. She couldn’t think past the terror. “Stop, please.”

  “I like the way that you beg.” Jason’s chest pressed hard against hers as he leaned over her. Each word he spoke struck her cheek with a hot rush of air. “Let me hear some more.”

  She stared up into the plastic mask, not wanting to think of it as a face. His eyes were sunk into the shadows cast by the molded plastic, but she could feel the intensity in them like a physical presence. He wanted her to beg before he killed her.

  Freddy’s hands tightened on her thighs, just under the line of her sleep shorts. If she did manage to survive this, Sophia promised herself that she would never go to bed with so little clothing on again. She felt practically naked under their roving hands. Freddy’s felt impossibly large as they gripped her, each finger digging hard enough to leave an individual indent in her skin.

  “You want to hear her beg?” Freddy asked with a laugh that chilled her to the very marrow of her bones. “Give me five minutes and all she’ll know how to do is beg.”

  “No!” She twisted uselessly under the weight of their bodies as she wondered distantly why they hadn’t just killed her. That would be better than this game of cat and mouse that they seemed to want to play. “Why are you doing this? Please—”

  “Oh, you can do better than that.” Jason pulled the knife up so that it again pressed against her cheek. His thumb stroked along her chin, the gentleness of the movement more of a shock than the violence. She just didn’t understand what they wanted. “Give me something good or I’ll let my friend here have his turn.”

  Sophia didn’t have to try to cry harder. The fear and confusion was too much for her to hold anything back.

  “I’m begging you, please. Don’t hurt me.” Tears and snot mixed together until her face was a complete mess. Wetness pooled underneath the side of her face that they had pressed against the rough floor. A fine layer of grit and dust abraded her cheek. “I’ll do anything you want. Please!”

  His eyes floated inches above hers, an inscrutable gaze shrouded in the shadows of the mask. The knife pressed closer to her cheek. She tensed in anticipation of the inevitable pain of it slicing through her skin. The moment felt frozen in time as she waited for him to do whatever it was that he planned to do.

  Their gazes never broke as the edge of the blade slowly pressed deeper into her flesh. She stared silently up at him, eyes wide and full of unshed tears, trying to convey as much of her fear as she could and hoping against hope that it would lead to mercy. Her fear had to be what they wanted.

  A sort of energy passed between them that she couldn’t describe. It was as if something inside of her recognized a small piece of him.

  To her surprise, Jason pulled the knife back. She tensed as his body shifted but he was moving off of her and away.

  A third man wearing a mask to make him look like Michael Myers stepped into the small circle of light. He held a video camera in his hands, the little red light on top a steady glow in the shadows.

  “Did we get enough?” Jason asked as he rose.

  The other man held the camera out for Jason to take. His fingers moved over the keypad and the light blinked off as the camera stopped recording. The small viewscreen cast a moving pattern of light to shine on his face as he rewound the footage. Then she heard her own voice, plaintive and reedy with fear.

  Please don’t hurt me!

  What the hell was going on?

  Freddy still hovered over her legs as if he was reluctant to let the fun end. His fingers cruelly tightened and released on her thighs as he painfully massaged the skin. The movement wouldn’t look so frightening if it weren’t for the malevolence rolling off of him in waves. When she dared to look up at the mask, cold eyes were fixed on her face with a gaze full of anger and something even darker.

  “Get off of her.” Jason’s voice was calmer and less menacing than the man who still had her trapped on the floor. “We’ve got what we need.”

  But Freddy’s fingers still tightened again on her flesh until Sophia let out an involuntary gasp of pain. For one terrifying moment, she wondered if he was going to listen or do something terrible to her. Then he finally began to back away, taking significantly more time than he needed to roll off of her.

  His face was completely covered by the mask, but she swore that she could tell there was a threatening smile on his face, just from the set of his eyes. “Maybe next time.”

  Jason handed the camera back to Michael. “Anyone ever tell you not play with your food?”

  “Anyone ever tell you not to get friendly with a pig that’s about to go to slaughter?”

  “Go get back on the police scanner. I’ll let you know if we need anything here.”

  Freddy jerked his head at Michael. “Why can’t he listen to the police scanner?”

  “Because he’s going to upload the video. And I’m telling you to do it.”

  The tense set of Freddy’s shoulders made it clear that he wanted to say something else. Sophia had never realized until that moment how much harder it was to understand a conversation without facial expressions.

  Her fear had faded into confusion with the slightest hope that she wasn’t about to die. And she was happy that they were wearing the masks. If they were planning to kill her then they wouldn’t have bothered with hiding their faces.

  It was easier to think of them in terms of the masks they wore, as opposed to real people. Horror movie villains made perfect sense in this terrible situation.

  Freddy stood, every line of his body tense with threat. For a terrifying moment, she thought he was going to refuse. All she wanted was for him to leave and never come back. He terrified her far more than any of the others. But he turned without a word and stomped out of the room.

  Sophia had no idea what was going on. But she didn’t want to ask any questions and draw even more of their attention to herself.

  Michael moved back to the shadows, the camera in his hands as he disappeared from view.

  There was an obvious hierarchy among them. She was just glad that the one who appeared to be in charge, the one wearing the Jason mask, didn’t seem inclined to rape her to d
eath. Freddy was another story. She had never felt such deliberate malevolence from someone that she didn’t know. What could she possibly have done to make him hate her so much?

  Sophia flinched when Jason bent over her, but he was only unlocking the handcuffs at her wrists. The metal shackles clattered to the floor, but she stayed frozen in place until he moved back to squat a few feet away.

  She carefully shifted into a sitting position as her sore muscles screamed in protest. Her body felt like it had been hit by a freight train. Her legs were still shackled to one of the steel beams and it took several minutes for her to struggle around it until she was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Jason watched her, eyes inscrutable through the mask, but didn’t make any move to help her. She was grateful for that because she didn’t want any of them touching her.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, voice still distorted by the synthesizer.

  Sophia just stared at him, unsure of how to respond. She didn’t understand what sort of game he was playing. Twenty minutes ago he was threatening to kill her and now he was playing host like she was an invited guest.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Even to her ears, it sounded like an empty promise. Or at least that he spoke only of this particular moment and not any that might come after. Maybe she would be able to hear something reassuring in his voice if it weren’t for the mask and voice synthesizer, but as it stood she didn’t trust a word he said.

  This whole thing was just too confusing, almost as much as it was terrifying.

  “I don’t understand what you want from me,” she said finally. “Why am I here?”

  He reached to the side for something that sat just outside the circle of light. Then he leaned back with a greasy bag from some fast-food joint held in his hand.

  “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” he asked complacently.

  “No.”

  “Good. We mostly eat meat around here.”

  He tossed a cold hamburger wrapped in paper onto her lap, aim unerring. She looked down at it without moving to pick it up. Somehow the way he was acting now bothered her more than the terrifying threats from before. What was this?

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “That’s not the plan, not at the moment at least.” He watched her steadily before his gaze finally slid away as he looked off into empty space. “Not if you cooperate.”

  She swallowed hard past the hard knot in her throat. “Cooperate with what?”

  “That depends on your father.”

  “If it’s money you want, my dad will pay it.” Although she couldn’t help but think that he would have been better off picking someone else to hold for ransom. Her father’s cattle ranch was successful, but they weren’t rich enough for her to be the ideal candidate.

  “I don’t want money.”

  Her heart beat harder inside of her chest. “Then what do you want?”

  His voice was soft, even with the synthesizer. “You should eat.”

  Sophia unwrapped the burger with trembling fingers. When she took a bite, the food tasted like dust in her mouth. The man in the Jason mask watched her eat for several minutes in total silence. His scrutiny was intense but almost impersonal, like she was an interesting laboratory specimen under a microscope.

  The fear she felt before had been replaced by a pervasive sort of numbness. It was as if her emotional center had been so overwhelmed by the constantly shifting fear and relief that she was no longer capable of feeling anything at all. It made her bold enough to ask the questions she knew she shouldn’t.

  “What are you going to do with that video you made?”

  He held his hand out for the wrapper that she had balled in her fist. “Are you finished?”

  “You have to tell me something.”

  He was on her so fast that she only had time to throw her hands up to protect her place from a potential blow. But he didn’t hit her. Instead, he grabbed both of her wrists in one large hand and forced them behind her back in a hard movement. He used the other hand to scoop up the fallen handcuffs from the ground. The cuffs were secured around her wrists with the efficiency of long practice and the catch tripped into place before she had a chance to react. Her hands were caught behind her and attached to the girder at her back.

  But then he didn’t move away from her, even once she was fully trapped again. He pressed against her hard enough that each breath he took forced the muscled wall of his chest against her ribcage. The mask he wore was inches from her face, close enough that she could smell the acrid chemical odor of the latex it was made from.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.” His hands were still wrapped around her wrists, placing them in a harsh parody of an embrace.

  “Ss...Stop.” Sophia knew that there was no camera this time. Her heartrate increased so frantically that she was sure he could feel it as he forced himself against her. “Please.”

  “You’ve seen me be mean and you’ve seen me be nice.” The synthesizer made him sound almost alien, like something inhuman. “You should think about which one you like better before you start talking.”

  Sophia recognized that she should be frightened. But that didn’t stop her from noticing the heat emanating off of him like there was a furnace burning inside of him instead of blood and bone. The muscles of his chest were hard and tight against her. She couldn’t help but wonder what he looked like under his shirt.

  The thought sickened her as soon as it fully formed in her head and she shoved it aside. This was her kidnapper, she reminded herself. She wanted to see under the mask so she could identify the asshole in a police lineup when the time came, not because she was wondering if he was hot.

  “Why are you doing this?” She was ashamed at how soft and breathy her voice sounded. “What do you want from me?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.” He tipped his head to the side and leaned in close that the mask lightly kissed her skin in mockery of real contact. “But you smell nice.”

  Sophia didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish. He was terrifying and somehow also strangely compelling, as if he could hypnotize her with his very presence. Because now she was thinking that he smelled good, too. Not fake and oppressive like a designer cologne or grocery store deodorant named after a mythical creature. He smelled like a mix of sweat and sawdust, with a hint of something darker that she couldn’t identify. She shouldn’t like it, but she did.

  Maybe this is what the beginning stages of Stockholm syndrome felt like.

  One of his hands slid up her arm, the tips of his fingers tracing gentle patterns on the skin. A curl of desire grew in the pit of her stomach and she hated herself for her body’s uncontrollable reactions. What was wrong with her? She had no idea what he looked like under the mask or even how old he was. Maybe it was the fact that she was tied up and he could do whatever he wanted with her. Some sick part of her brain had imagined a situation just like this one as some sort of fantasy.

  But there was a huge difference between fantasy and reality.

  He was just trying to scare her into complying, at least that was what she told herself. He wanted to keep her off-balance and she refused to let him do it without a fight.

  The hair that sprang up from the edge of his mask was cut slightly longer on top, but shaved short on the sides. It reminded her of the way a policeman would wear it, or someone in the military.

  “Were you a soldier?”

  He jerked back like he’d been shocked with a bolt of electricity. His dark eyes glared down at her from behind the mask and she felt a small jolt of pleasure at knocking him off guard, even it was only for a moment. She had always been good at reading people. It was just what happened when you spent more time observing your environment than interacting with it.

  “You keep flapping your tongue like that and I’m going to have to cut it out.”

  She didn’t flinch, even as a shiver of fear worked its way down her spine. It was obvious that he
needed her alive, at least for the time being. The room they were keeping her in had no windows, so it was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed since she was taken. But it was clear that they could have killed her a dozen times already if they’d wanted to. That realization made her bolder than it probably should have.

  “Just do whatever you’re going to do and then leave me alone.”

  He made a sound that almost sounded like a snort of amusement. “I can’t tell if you’re brave or just stupid. Maybe a little of both.”

  She didn’t feel brave, just pushed too far past the limits of what she could bear. Maybe that was the same as stupidity, not that it mattered one way or the other.

  Jason reached behind his back and pulled a gun from his waistband. He didn’t aim it at her but held it up so the barrel was centered in her line of vision.

  “You’re going to be a good girl now and shut the fuck up while we do what we have to do.” There was no mistaking the threat in his voice, even as the synthesizer altered the timbre and pitch. “Otherwise, a bullet between the eyes will be the least of your worries. Understood?”

  Sophia bowed her head in response, too terrified to respond with words. But she heard him rise and retreat beyond the halo of brightness from the work light on the floor. A door slammed somewhere off in the distance.

  If they were playing a game, she was the only who didn’t know the rules.

  Chapter Five

  “So you get to fuck with the little bitch and I don’t. Where’s the fairness in that?”

  Savage leapt on Hunt the moment that he walked back into the operations room, expression murderous. Savage’s Halloween mask hung around his neck by a loop of string, making him look ridiculous and taking most of the threat out of his posturing.

  “I thought I told you to go listen to the police band,” Hunt growled in response, hoping to distract the other man from thoughts of the girl they had locked up in the other room. “You better be on top of that shit.”