“Around.”
“If she’s in the area, we’ll find her.”
“Okay.”
The man cocked his head. “You don’t believe me.”
“Should I apologize?”
“No.” He focused on my skin again, his eyes widening along with his smile. The way he licked his lips, made me think of a man walking out of the desert and seeing a fountain of water for the first time.
A bead of sweat dripped down my hairline as the blade slid up my rib cage, catching on each rib in turn, over the delicate curve of my underarm, and along the soft skin tissue inside my bicep. Drawing the knife against the soft tissue of my arm, he increased the pressure until it drew blood.
“You’ll be begging soon enough,” he said.
Without needing to scent the air, I knew he spoke the truth. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Angie squirm, moving her weight from one foot to the other, glancing everywhere in the room but where I lay. When our eyes finally met, she froze before casting her gaze down to her feet. She swayed back and forth, the bold smell of sweat laced with her perfume drifted across the room. “You’re not going to join in?” I asked.
Angie looked up with…sympathy?
“Angelica doesn’t like this sort of play.” The man made another slow slash at my skin. “I could order her to participate, of course. I have before. But she gets the shakes and last time she threw up. It’s distracting and I don’t like the smell.”
I peered over the side of the table, eyed my spewed stomach contents and smiled. Take that, asshole. Hyena Piss Man dug his knife into the inside of my thigh, snapping my attention back to him. I clenched the straps holding down my wrists and strained not to cry out. Panting, I gawked at him down the length of my body, his nose inches from my crotch. He missed the femoral artery, but not my reaction; a nasty smile spread across his face as he made a matching incision on the other thigh. I bit my tongue to stop the squeal lodged in my throat from getting out. Blood oozed from the cut. After the stinging sensations dulled, I decided he needed to talk more and cut less. “You don’t get off on Angie’s discomfort?”
“I get off on pain.” He straightened from my thighs and waved at the puke on the floor. Angie jumped and clambered to my side. She kept her face impassive as she cleaned the area up, but I smelled the sour tang of her anxiety, and the salty, yet sickly sweet stench of her fear.
I ignored Angie and turned to the Werehyena. “Have you met Clint? The two of you have a lot in common.”
“I’m nothing like that man,” Hyena man’s face darkened. “His tastes differ from mine.”
“You’re both fucked up in my opinion.”
He snorted. “You have a narrow scope on life.”
“I happen to like it.” I fished for information. Hyena Piss Man had no intensions of killing me any time soon, but if he planned to slit my throat after all this knife play, I’d prefer to have a ball park of when so I knew how much time I had to work with. I never counted on others to save me. Although, Wick barging through the doors right now would be nice. If I had the tracker in my arm it might’ve been a possibility.
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you.”
“Let me rephrase. I happen to like my life before I met you.”
The man sighed. “Such a limited palate.”
“I think a food reference in this situation is highly inappropriate.”
“You joke at a time like this?” He ran the blade down the inside of my left calf.
“Who said I was joking?” Bantering acted as a coping mechanism. It kept my mind from sinking into the seriousness of the situation and panicking. He’d do whatever he liked to me, no matter what I said or did. Defiance would give me something to focus on, and if I didn’t give this guy the reaction he wanted, he might lose interest and leave me alone. Or kill me. Then it would be over, and nothing more to worry about. Needless hours of torture—been there, done that, thanks to Dylan.
He didn’t comment on my last statement, preferring to eye my skin like a dog salivating over its food bowl. The bite of the blade on the inside of my knee was his answer. The sting vibrated up my leg and a shriek caught in my throat.
The Werehyena leaned over me, shoving his face inches from my own. His breath smelled of chewing tobacco and ginger beef—not a good combination to his natural hyena piss and shrimp odour—and his teeth were yellow and crooked with pieces of cracked pepper wedged into the gaps. “Let me tell you how this is going to go.”
“Ok.” My face warped into an obedient one.
He didn’t miss a beat. He wasn’t looking at my face; instead he petted my skin with the flat of the blade. “I’m going to cut you. I’m going to ask you questions and then I’m going to cut you more. If I get turned on, I may fuck you. Or maybe I’ll get Angie to do it with a knife. Or maybe I’ll just keep cutting. If you answer my questions like a good little girl, maybe I’ll let you pick what I do. But I will do you one way or another.”