In a moment, he was gone.
What?!
He wasn’t even going to be there to watch? To have his heart torn out witnessing the awfulness he’d befallen?
My tears dried up in complete shock.
I shut down.
Everything inside turned to ruins.
Kestrel sighed heavily. Silently, he retrieved the bottle Jethro had slammed on the table and poured three fingers into fresh glasses.
Daniel and Cut drifted forward as Kes held out each goblet. The men ignored me—knowing I would wait. That I couldn’t run. That I had nothing left.
With a grim smile, Kes held up a toast. “To paying debts and being worthy.”
“To debts,” Cut muttered.
“To fucking,” Daniel cackled.
All three clinked and slammed the liquor down. However, Kes was the last to drink. It was only a fraction of a second, but he watched Cut and Daniel finish first before tipping the amber liquid down his throat.
Tossing their empties on the poker table, the men once again pinned their attention on me.
I stiffened, fighting uselessly in my binds.
Kes was the first to move.
He came forward. I moved backward. We danced slowly around the large room.
He didn’t say a thing.
He didn’t have to.
Jethro wasn’t in control of this debt. He wasn’t even here.
This was Kestrel’s time to shine.
“Before you came here tonight, Nila, we had a bet. The opening round of poker was to secure the right for first choice.”
I bumped into a padded chair, changing directory to inch around the pool table.
Kes murmured, “Any idea who won that round?”
My heart thundered. I shook my head.
Something flashed in Kes’s eyes—too fast and swift to be understood. “It was me. I won. I get to choose.”
Charging forward, he caught me effortlessly and wrapped his bulky arms around me. In his embrace, I didn’t find friendship or liberation. I found a prison cell where the man who’d laughed and chased me over the paddocks on horseback became my rapist.
Breathing into my ear, he whispered, “I get to choose. And I want to go first.”
I COULDN’T FUCKING do it.
I couldn’t watch.
I couldn’t hear.
I fucking refused.
The entire time we’d played poker, Cut had watched me. He knew what this would do to me. He knew how I would struggle and cripple and potentially unmask myself completely.
He’d come to the game with the same gun he’d threatened me with two months ago—hooked into his waistband, glinting off the chandeliers—nonchalantly promising death if I disobeyed.
It’d been fucking torture waiting for the time to creep closer, but it’d been nothing compared to leaving Nila with my family.
I hated leaving. But I had no choice.
Discussing what would happen was one thing.
Watching it come to pass was entirely fucking another.
My skin itched. My heart burst. My thoughts were a turbid wreck.
I need help.
I couldn’t live with myself knowing what would happen to Nila.
You could overdose.
Take a handful of pills and slide into a coma, so I would never have to face the consequences of what this debt would do.
I fisted my hair and kicked the wall.
The small act of violence simmered some of my rage.
I kicked it again.
The pain I used to seek before swallowing tablets flared into being.
I kicked for the third time.
Throbbing agony graced my toes. It calmed me. Helped me focus on the bigger picture, rather than the next few hours.
Finding a certain peace in my fury, I went rogue.
I let down my walls and turned into a beast.
Whirling around, I embraced every inch of my anger—the parts I’d always suffered, the parts I’d barely acknowledged—all of it.
I showed my true insanity.
Nila was right.
I suffered a madness.
And she’d doomed me forever with no cure.
She fucking hates me.
“Shit!” I stalked down the hall and plucked a music box that’d been my great-great aunt’s from a side table. Hurling it onto the floor, I felt a sick satisfaction as springs bounced free and twangs of music serenaded with broken notes.
“Shit!” I speared gold-gilded candlesticks at the tapestry-draped walls.
“Shit!” I kicked over a priceless French caquetorie.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Throughout my tirade, all I could think about was what Kes would do.
And how Nila would react. Through trying to save her, I’d lost her forever.
She hates me.
She despises me.
She loathes everything about me.
And I didn’t fucking blame her.
MY WORLD WENT dark.
The blindfold secured around my head.
Kestrel’s fingers were soft and firm as he tied a knot, careful not to catch my hair. Once fastened, he ran his fingers over my diamond collar. “Relax, little Weaver. It will all be over soon.”
Cut chuckled. “Yes, soon you can go to sleep and pretend none of this happened.”
My ears strained for one other voice. The voice of the man who controlled my heart even if he’d thrown it back in my face. Please, come back, Jethro.
But only silence greeted me.
Daniel snickered, licking my cheek. “Time to pay, Weaver.” A moment later, he undid the gag from between my lips and massaged my cheeks to encourage the numbness to recede.
Cut clapped. “It’s time for the Third Debt. Take her, Kes.”
I prepared to spit and bite, but Kestrel suddenly picked me up, scooping my legs out from beneath me and toppling me into his arms as if I were a bride on her wedding night.
I might not be gagged by material anymore, but my terror kept me muted as Kes carried me a short distance and closed a door behind us. Another few strides and he placed me on my feet.
He didn’t speak and didn’t attempt to remove my blindfold.
The awful anticipation stung my very being. My ears ached for the barest of sounds. My wrists throbbed from the tight sash binding me.
Large hands landed on my shoulders.
I tore away from his touch. “Don’t!”
He sucked in a breath, letting me put distance between us. However, he stalked me, stepping in sync, chasing me through the darkness.
Something pressed against the back of my knees.
A bed.
I whimpered, hanging my head.
Kes came closer, his body heat so much warmer than Jethro’s. “Don’t fight me, Nila. Okay? Let me do this. Then it will be over and life can go on.”
Life can go on?
“For you, perhaps. Don’t you see this is the worst punishment for a woman? You’re not just taking what you want from my body. You’re invading my very soul.” Injecting a plea, even though I wanted to spit in his face, I murmured, “Please, Kes. Don’t do this to me. I know you’re a better man than they are. Please, prove me right.” A sob strangled my voice. “Please, don’t do this.”
His hands fumbled with the front of my cheesecloth blouse, swiftly undoing the eyelets and tearing the fabric down the front.
“Wait!” I bowed my head, trying to ward him off like a bull with no horns. He kept me trapped by the bed with no vision to run.
“It’s because I’m a better man that I’m doing this.” He dropped before me to yank the coarse wool from around my hips.
I cried out as cool air licked my itchy skin.
I’m naked.
Naked and shaved and bound for the wrong man.
If I didn’t hate Jethro enough, it was ten times worse now.
I sniffed back tears as Kes stood up and wrapped his arms around me. My breasts pressed against his chest.
His naked chest.
Goosebumps broke out all over.
My nipples are against his skin.
I moaned in despair as he cuddled me like any normal lover. “Don’t worry, Nila.”
I gasped, drowning all over again. “Please, Kestrel…please, don’t do this.”
Kes ran his hands through my hair, tugging on the elastic holding my bun in place. His touch was gentle but persistent. He managed to free the rope of hair, and, with tender fingers, fluffed out the thickness so it blanketed my shoulders and back.
I shivered, comforted somehow.
Ever since he’d secured the blindfold around my eyes, I’d been borderline catatonic. Every few seconds my heart threw in an extra beat, turning my internal balance into a gyroscope with no direction. But somehow, not seeing him kept my mind distanced.
I was free to float away—to leave my body and slip into the darkness of anonymity.
“Do everything I say and you’ll get through this.” His lips skated over my jaw. His touch was so different to Jethro’s—dominating and soft—but lacking sparkle, connection…love.
I arched my chin away from his mouth. “You’re asking me to obey you while you rape me?” A morbid laugh escaped.
Kes’s breath whispered over my exposed breasts. “Yes. It’s the only way.”
“Only way for what?”
My heartbeat boomed in my ears as he took my hand, guiding me from the pool of woollen trousers around the edge of the bed.
“Only way to make this work.”
I scowled behind my blindfold. Make what work?
The debts?
His twisted fantasy?
I hated moving around naked. I hated him seeing me.
My skin pinpricked with nervous sweat; I was lightheaded with panic. And that was just with Kestrel. He didn’t scare me nearly as much as Daniel or Cut.