Chapter 4

Torture

Echo returned to consciousness painfully and reluctantly. He ached all over. Leather cuffs bound his wrists and held them over his head, stretching his body taut and vulnerable. So he wasn’t dead, and that was no good thing.

Echo opened his eyes to a brightly lit space, no windows and bare except for a metal cart covered with a sheet. The white tile floor beneath his bare feet sloped to a drain, confirming what lay beneath that sheet: tools of torture and bloodshed.

His legs began to quiver, putting more pressure on his sore wrists. No matter his resolve, Echo was still very much afraid. But more than the pain and inevitable death, he feared he’d break and betray the rebels. They should already be in the process of moving base, so Echo needed to hold out long enough for that. He had no other useful information, thankfully.

Behind him, a door opened, and the ominous click of it shutting filled the room—along with a new presence. Echo couldn’t see who was now behind his back, but he had a guess.

Heavy steps thundered over the floor, and he came into view.

This time, the bright lighting invited a clear image of all that was Dante Vittori, lord of the vampire underworld.

He stood before Echo, arms crossed and muscles rippling under golden tan skin. Intimidation packed into every solid ounce of him. His lips were set in a firm line as his dark eyes skimmed over Echo in searing assessment. Where to begin?—the vampire was likely thinking, and Echo shivered, imagining the places on his body where Dante would hurt first.

“You meant to kill me,” Dante said, voice low and chilled like the whisper of death.

It wasn’t a question, but Echo answered anyway. “Yes,” he said, as firmly as he could to mask the fakeness of his bravado. He held his head high and stared straight into Dante’s brown-black eyes.

Dante’s lips, too soft and shapely for a killer such as him, tilted into a smile, one that was devoid of any good intent and sent chills down Echo’s spine.

“With this?” Dante reached into his pocket and revealed Echo’s dagger. His favorite one, a gift from Axel, given after he began training Echo—and fucking him.

Dante held it up by the smooth cherry wood handle, and the desire to see the sharp end embedded deep within his heart roiled inside Echo. He clenched his hands in the cuffs above him and glared as if his steely eyes could do the job for him.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Dante said. Then he circled Echo, stopping at his back where Echo couldn’t see.

He felt it—his hair, still secured in its ponytail, moved over his shoulder against his neck, his shirt pulled away from his skin just slightly, and the cool silver barely ghosted over the base of his spine. Then he heard fabric ripping as the air touched his bare back. Echo held statue-still, not even breathing as he waited for Dante to start slicing into him with his own treasured knife.

But Dante didn’t. Instead, heated fingertips met the raised scars crossed over the entirety of Echo’s back. And Echo’s mind must have been breaking because the touch seemed almost… gentle, tender even.

“Damn you!” Echo shouted, squeezing his thighs together in an effort to stop his traitorous cock from responding. “Just hurt me already.”

“Is that what you want?” Dante whispered in his ear, too close, too much.

Fuck, that is not what Echo had meant to say. He’d rather die here and now than have the bloodsucker see what hurting him would do.

“No,” Echo bit out. “Kill me instead. I have no useful information to torture out of me.”

Dante slowly walked around, Echo’s dagger disappearing into his pocket as he went to the sheet-covered cart.

“But your death wouldn’t benefit me at all.”

The white sheet wooshed off the cart, revealing a set of grisly tools and one whip. Echo desperately hoped for Dante to choose one of the torture devices. But he picked up the whip, and Echo’s heart sank.

It was a cat o’ nine tails, but with six braided leather tails rather than nine. And the leather looked soft as a caress in Dante’s hands, not remotely like Axel’s preferred snake whip. Perhaps it would be different enough for his body not to react.

“Your life is in my hands now, and I want you to serve me. You’ll need to be alive for that. But punishment must be dealt first. Although”—Dante’s eyes landed on the ill-hidden bulge in Echo’s pants—“it might not be much of a punishment.”

Echo’s face flamed, hating this humiliation and the bloodsucker before him. Hating himself.

Dante took languorous steps, sweeping the whip tails through his palm as he walked behind Echo again. The supple leather brushed softly over Echo’s back, coaxing another shiver.

“Whoever made these scars was clumsy and unskilled.”

“Shut up.” Echo wouldn’t let this monster insult Axel.

“—Sir. Always address me as sir.”

“No,” Echo snarled. That title belonged to Axel. No one else, especially not him.

The bright crack of the whip against his back brought out a harsh gasp. Echo sucked in air before a moan could escape. The little whip hurt more than he thought it would, and his pain-pleasure receptors responded just as Axel had trained them to.

“Then master. Shall I be your master, little rebel?”

Echo clenched his jaw shut, and the whip met his back again. He arched upward. His wrists strained against the cuffs. And his nipples and cock were hard, rubbing against his clothes.

“Say it, and the punishment will be over.”

Echo stayed silent. One, two, three more strikes with the cat’s six tails. Sweat coated Echo’s brow, and he panted heavy breaths. He was wet with pre-cum.

He couldn’t endure. The pain was too good. Dante Vittori could not have devised a worse torture than this for him. He’d failed so absolutely—his mission, his death, his resolve. His pain had always belonged to Axel, and Echo failed in this too.

“Master,” Echo let out, breathy and defeated.

The whip dropped to the floor. The cuffs snapped open, freeing Echo’s wrists and body, and he fell into Dante’s waiting arms. He was too weak to struggle, overpowered instantly by the vampire. Dante’s nose pressed against his neck, inhaling deeply before kissing him there, where blood pulsed hotly under his skin. And the realization of what Dante was going to do hit Echo just as pointed fangs punctured his flesh.

A thrall—this is what Dante meant by what he’d said before. Echo would serve him as his bound thrall.

Echo thrashed once before Dante too easily stilled him. Exquisite pain danced along the pulses of pleasure with each swallow of his blood. There was no holding back. Echo came, untouched and undone. His head slumped back against Dante, who lapped his tongue over the bite mark.

Then Echo became vaguely aware of his body being carried, pressed against a hard chest and held by strong arms.

“Now you’re mine, little rebel.”

Echo closed his eyes and embraced sleep’s oblivion.