Page 435 of Coal Hearts

I heard them before I found them.

Laughter and grunts.

Glee and despair.

Stepping from the seam that’d grown so narrow I’d had to travel sideways, I blinked at the brightness of lanterns. The four Masters didn’t notice me as two of them fucked two jewels on the ground while the other two watched.

Their paintball guns were tossed in the corner, forgotten. My stolen one clung to my back, occasionally pressing against a bruise. My jeans and t-shirt hadn’t dried. My feet were blocks of ice. And I had no doubt I was now filthy as well as orange.

Five hours I’d been stuck in this hellhole.

Five hours was a long fucking time to stay sane when every bend and shadow whispered with nightmares.

A jewel screamed as a Master rutted into her like an animal.

The cries from these jewels weren’t like the ones with Stewart and Ben. They weren’t given with an edge of acceptance or trust that their Masters wouldn’t go too far.

These men weren’t here just because they had nowhere else to go.

These men were here for pain.

Seconds ticked past as I watched.

The longer I witnessed their monstrosity, the less control I had over my sanity.

Their thrusts scrambled my mind.

Their lust seeped through me like a disease.

The loneliness of my childhood twisted into a toxic thing.

I didn’t know if it was the silence down here. The burial down here. The vacuum of everything I thought I knew and all the hauntings of memories I daren’t recall, but I’d never felt so...adrift. So lost. So fucking confused.

I’d been alone for so long.

But now I’d found men who shared my sins.

My bare feet shifted to join in.

I grew hard.

My heart pumped for the first time in hours.

I wanted Ily.

I wanted her on her back.

I wanted her heat, her fight, her kiss.

Fuck, that goddamn kiss.

I wanted to lick her again, taste her again.

I needed her to yank me back from this abyss.

This timeless, endless abyss where I became nothing more than death.

My hands balled.