Mated to the Moon (Portal City Protectors Book 6), Georgette Clair [best classic books to read .TXT] 📗

His body reverted to its original size, but he still roughened his voice. “Any of them ever touch you?”

She swallowed, moments in the dark rushing in. Her father’s laughter. “Y-yes.”

“Still alive?”

“Yes.”

“They won’t be much longer, pequeña. That is my promise to you. How many?”

Remembering who had been in those cells, she shook her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them after a breath, Adonis was closer to the camera, his face morphing once more.

“Two cells nearest the back wall and the one in the center on your left. Cole, Vince, and Herald.”

He put his hand to his ear. “Raph, find Cole, Vince, and Herald. Ask the Bianchi wolves and I will alert their Alpha. They will come back with us.”

She didn’t hear the response, but it didn’t matter. He moved again, his hands running over the wall to the back.

“There’s no other way to get up to the next level, so it must be here. Will you make me take this house apart at its seams?”

How horrible was Fabiana that she wanted to see just that?

Wanted violence to destroy this place as it had destroyed her?

She didn’t give and answer, didn’t voice the dark thoughts swirling through her head. He heard her, though, this wolf who’d claimed her as his.

“As you wish.”

His claws grew from his fingertips and he slashed at the wall, growling with each strike. In moments, but maybe minutes, the back wall was stripped to the concrete and opening to the secret stairwell closer to her.

“I will slay them all, pequeña. All your demons and all your fears. One by one.”

Fabiana swallowed past the dryness in her throat. She couldn’t watch anymore, but she couldn’t look away. He was magnificent, traveling up the stairs with an almost blasé air, his hands in his pockets now. He wore a pair of black slacks and a matching black button-up shirt. He’d worn a suit coat at their home in the Lombardi lands. He must have lost it in the scuffle, but he was composed now. Neat and perfect as if he’d done nothing more than come for a visit.

“Who are you?”

He couldn’t answer her, of course, but she asked anyway as he lifted his nose and followed it to …

“No!”

He was already there, pushing open the gold-and-white door, the only light color in the whole house, and stalked inside. She switched the cameras so she could see him.

“Not there.”

“Pequeña.”

Yes, the room had been hers. The large, four-poster canopy bed was still covered with a pastel-purple cover and white pillows piled high at the headboard. The white-and-gold dressers still held the perfumes and makeup she’d been forced to wear.

“Become the woman of their fantasies. They want something to fuck, Fabiana. Make sure that something is you.”

Adonis touched everything, running his fingers delicately over the containers before he smashed them all to the floor.

“You hated them. Every single one. I can smell the pain here. The rage.”

Yes.

His destructive hands froze near a small, haphazardly stitched, stuffed bird. The yellow had long ago faded to a ghastly, dingy white. But still Fabiana knew it. Every wrong thread line, the way its head hung a little off kilter.

And she’d left it because it hurt too much to hold it.

“This … is important.”

He tucked the bird into his pocket and continued his exploration, moving closer to her closet. She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t see it but knowing this man would anyway. He missed nothing. He recognized what she hated and what she didn’t.

One step.

Don’t look.

Another step.

Please don’t.

He opened the door.

A multitude of glittering dresses and risqué attire hung proudly in the space. She’d never been allowed to wear jeans or lounge in yoga pants and a tank top like Giuliana had gotten for her. Fabiana’s job was to whet the appetite, at all times.

It never mattered what she wanted.

One clawed hand tore the fabric to bits, and she thought he was finished, that he’d turn around and leave.

Of course, he didn’t.

He pushed deeper inside, his claws clicking against the back of the closet until a hollow sound met her ears.

“What is this?”

Please.

He pressed on the space, swinging it outward until it revealed another steel door with a bar across it. As metal slid against metal, she took a shaky breath. Heart pounding, she didn’t look away. Not until he opened it and growled.

Not until his fingers traced along the claw marks dug into the sheet metal on the back of the door.

And not until she saw the dark stains on the floor, remnants of the urine and blood she’d left behind.

“You sick, fucking bastard. You fucking jue puta.”

Yes, now you’ve found where I was kept.

The long nights he’d forgotten her or punished her for not showing enough, being good enough. All the times she’d told him how his men had hurt her.

Sometimes, you get burned when you’re fire. But they’re men; they can’t control their desire for you. Next time, hide better like I taught you.

“Pequeña.”

Adonis’s voice forced her to open her eyes. He was sitting in the outside room, looking where the saferoom was hidden to the back of her father’s old room.

“I am not a good man; I have never tried to be. What I’ve done with these hands,” he added, lifting them, “would make you scream. But they will never be used against you. No man, or woman, will ever hurt you again as long as I breathe. Come to me, pequeña. Let me show you what it means to belong to a man like me.”

She couldn’t. Men like him just wanted to control.

“I won’t take one step toward you. Even though I know you must be somewhere in this room.