He came in close, sloppily so, but he still had the sense to keep his gun hand away from her. She tasted his fetid breath in the back of her throat as she inhaled it. It stank of stale cigarettes. He let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck then caressed all the way down the ladder of her spine bone by bone to the soft swell of her buttocks. He hooked a foot around her ankle and forced her legs apart. There was nothing sexual about it. Sokol was showing her he had all of the power now.
Unbalanced, Orla stumbled slightly to the left, allowing his cold fingers to touch her. She winced despite herself.
“Did you miss me?”
She didn’t say a word.
He stepped back and slapped her hard across the face.
“I asked you a question, woman. Didn’t your mother teach you anything? When I ask you a question, you answer me. It isn’t difficult. Let’s try again. Did you miss me?”
She said nothing.
He backhanded her again, straight across the face. She turned her cheek with the blow. It made her eyes water.
“One more time. Did you miss me?”
Her mouth was painfully dry, but she managed to work up enough saliva to spit in Sokol’s face. The wad of phlegm hit the black hood. He didn’t wipe it away.
“You disappoint me, Orla. Such a pointless thing to do.” He leaned in again, close enough that the saliva smeared across her cheek. He was anything but gentle as he reached back between her legs. “Why should I care about a little bodily fluid when I can do this? It doesn’t make any sense, Orla. I thought you were a smart girl.”
It was a brutal invasion.
She arched her back and twisted her head, but there was nowhere she could go, nowhere she could hide from his vile touch. But she had no intention of hiding. She wanted him to come in closer. She needed his lust to rise. She needed him to forget about power. Her mind went cold, as though part of her soul detached elf and another creature, a harder one, took over to save her from the horror of what was happening. This other her waited for the single moment of sloppiness when his lust outweighed his sense.
It would come.
It had to.
Her life depended upon it.
She twisted around on the chains so she could look into his hooded face. His eyes were the only part of him she could see through the hood. They were wide. His breathing was shallow. She tried to hold his gaze, to draw him into hers, but couldn’t bear the intensity of his eyes as they stared into her. She moved her lips as though to say something. He wanted to hear. She knew he would. That was why there were no words. She wanted him in closer.
He turned his back on her and walked away, taunting her. She counted his footsteps. Six. Eight was the magic number. Eight would take him to the brace on the wall where her chain was tied off. Eight would mean he thought he was in control.
He came back to her and slapped her hard across the face.
Her pain brought a smile from him.
“You don’t want to make me angry, Orla,” Sokol said. She hated the sound of his voice. She finished the line in her head: You wouldn’t like me when I am angry. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him. Sokol needed to think she was broken. She focused on that instead. She had survived before. She had survived worse. She would live through this.
Uzzi Sokol wouldn’t.
She promised herself that much.
He turned his back on her. He walked away. Seven steps. She counted each of them, willing him to take the eighth, willing him to release the chain so it played out another four feet. Four feet meant she would live.
He didn’t. He walked slowly back to her, tracing the muzzle of the Jericho from her cheek, slowly down her neck, following the artery that pulsed beneath the skin, over her collarbone and down around the swell of her breast. The metal was cold.
“Why are you doing this?” she said, barely a whisper.
Sokol’s hand stopped moving. He looked at her as though he had forgotten she could speak. “Because I can,” he said, and it was as simple as that. “Because in a few minutes the others are going to join us. They’re going to drag you into the center of the room, and they are going to cut your head off with a sword while the world watches on the internet. Until then you are still beautiful. And if I can make your last few minutes pleasurable, then what is the crime in that?”
She wanted to claw his eyes out. Instead she said, “Thank you.”
He hadn’t expected that. He thought it was the ultimate act of submission. She was giving herself to him. He kissed her then, in the soft hollow at the nape where her throat met her body, and it was almost tender. She closed her eyes. She let herself seem to sag against the chains. He felt her move and touched her again, like lovers do. It was all she could do not to lunge forward and bite his throat out with her teeth. She couldn’t do that. Not while her hands were still trussed above her head. She needed to be able to move her arms.
Uzzi Sokol touched her belly, pressing his palm flat against the taut muscle. It was a hideously intimate gesture, worse in some ways than all of the other invasions, because of the tenderness in it. She wanted the brutality because it made it easier to hate him. She waited out his touch. He had said the others were coming soon; that meant it was now or never, and never wasn’t an option.
She arched her back, then came forward, pressing herself up against him. She leaned in, her lips tasting the salt of passion in his skin.
He backed away into the darkness of the cell.
He didn’t like losing control. He didn’t want her dictating their dance, even in chains. He wanted to orchestrate every twist and shudder. He was sick. He walked away from her, five, six, seven, eight steps. She felt the chain go slack. Her arms fell to her sides. Almost immediately she felt the rush of her blood beginning to circulate properly. It was like a drug. She closed her eyes. She had one chance. She needed to stay calm. If this went wrong-if he balked or she sent the gun spinning out of reach-she was dead.
He walked toward her, pulling the black hood off so she could see his face. He dropped it on the ground. His face was a mockery of handsome, twisted by lust. Whatever shred of decency had lived inside Uzzi Sokol was gone. All that remained was this creature driven by primal instincts.
Orla tensed every muscle in her lower body, ready to explode into motion.
She surrendered to her other senses, listening as he neared, listening as his breath sounded ragged and aroused in her ear, and as he came forward, losing control, Orla arched her back and drove her head forward into the middle of his face. She felt his nose explode in a spray of blood and blinding pain. Sokol staggered away from her, stunned. She heard the clatter as he dropped the Jericho and brought his hands up to his face. He screamed over and over, “You bitch! You miserable bitch!” as he stumbled backward, looking for the safety of the darkness. Orla dropped down into a crouch, praying the gun had fallen within reach. For one heart-stopping moment she couldn’t see where it had fallen. She looked about frantically. Then she saw it. It had fallen right on the edge of the darkness, out of reach. She stretched out a foot, trying to hook it with her toes.
The barrel spun away from her.
Orla stretched, the steel cuffs cutting deep into her wrists. The blinding agony gave her another inch. She dragged the Jericho toward her.
Sokol came lurching out of the darkness, his ruined face like something out of a nightmare. He could barely stand. He staggered two steps sideways for every two forward. Orla reached down for the gun, the chain grating as it slid through the coupling. She gripped it with both hands and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot was deafening in the close confines of the cell. The bullet took Sokol in the shoulder, jerking him back a zombie-step. She fired again. The second shot took him in the other shoulder. He roared in agony. Blind rage drove him forward two more steps until he was close enough she could feel his erection die as the third slug pierced his skull. He collapsed at her feet.