Broken Hearts: A Dark Captive Romance (Heartbreaker Book 2) Read online

  Broken Hearts

  Heartbreaker Book 2

  Stella Hart

  Copyright © 2018 by Stella Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Celeste

  2. Alex

  3. Celeste

  4. Agent Jason West

  5. Celeste

  6. Alex

  7. Celeste

  8. Agent Jason West

  9. Alex

  10. Celeste

  11. Celeste

  12. Celeste

  13. Celeste

  14. Alex

  15. Celeste

  16. Agent Jason West

  17. Celeste

  18. Celeste

  19. Alex

  20. Celeste

  1

  Celeste

  I knew what I had to do now. The thought was burned into my mind, searing in its intensity. I didn’t have any other choice.

  This was the only way forward for me.

  I ran toward the pipe, picked it up and dashed back over to Alex and Dan, who were still brawling on the opposite side of the underground shelter at the back of the smaller cell. Dan saw me coming and twisted his head toward me. “Do it!” he roared, jabbing Alex in the nose. Blood immediately spurted from his face. “Kill him!”

  “No. I don’t think so.” I lingered a few feet before them, tapping the pipe against my left hand.

  “What?” Dan’s eyes went wide, panicked. Alex took the second of weakness as a chance to overpower him, quickly and deftly putting him in a chokehold. “Celeste… fucking hit him….” His eyes began to bulge.

  “No. I can’t.”

  Alex looked at me, eyes burning with intensity as he waited to see what the hell I was up to. I hoped to god I was doing the right thing. Hoped to god I hadn’t just made the worst mistake of my life and signed my own death warrant.

  I looked back down at Dan. “I’m not helping you escape. You might not have personally raped or tortured any of those kids, but you helped the ones who did. You could’ve tried to stop it, reported them, done anything to try and help, like any decent human being would. But you didn’t. You chose money over humanity. Fucking money!”

  “I… I needed it,” he choked out.

  I shook my head and sneered at his pathetic joke of an excuse, unable to believe he actually thought I was that stupid that I might fall for it. Kids and teens had been abused, raped, and murdered for years under the watch of men like him. I’d seen the evidence now, and I’d even heard some of the horrendous details from his own mouth. But apparently, he expected people to understand his position, because he ‘needed money’. Everyone fucking needed money! It was the thinnest excuse I’d ever heard.

  I narrowed my eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re just as sick and guilty as the rest. Just as much of a monster. So I won’t help you. Even if it means I have to stay here and lose my chance at freedom.”

  “What the fuck?” His eyes bulged wider. “No!”

  “Yes.” I gently tapped the pipe against my hand again, my shoulders tense as I waited for the inevitable explosion.

  “No! You fucking cunt! Stupid fucking whore!” There it is. He struggled against Alex’s grip, voice high-pitched and panicked. “I’m getting out of here one way or another, and when I get back and let them know where you two are, they’ll come for you. They’ll rain hellfire on you, and I can’t wait to watch them cut your pretty little—”

  Alex’s left hand pressed down on Dan’s throat, turning his words into muffled chokes and gurgles. He pulled a big, sharp knife out of his deep right pocket and held it up, looking at me questioningly.

  “Wait,” I said, my voice coming out in a hiss between my teeth.

  My pulse throbbed in my temples and the world seemed to darken and close in around me, narrowing my vision to Dan’s pathetic form. I didn’t feel scared right now. Not even a bit. The only thing in my mind, the only thing strong enough to force out the fear for now, was fury. It wasn’t the sort of fury people talked about in books or movies where they described it as red and blazing hot. It was cold, stony, crystallizing my vision and blurring everything else except Dan.

  Until now, I’d never known what it was like to truly want revenge on someone. Not even Alex—when it came to him, all I’d ever really wanted was freedom, not vengeance.

  I raised the pipe and brought it down on Dan’s left kneecap. He howled in agony, but I barely heard it through the blood pounding in my ears. My rage would not be denied. I smashed it into his right kneecap, then stood back. “Try running back to your sick bosses now, asshole.”

  The only thing holding him up now was Alex’s arms. He glared at me from under his grip, his eyes glittering with malice. “Stupid slut,” he said before wincing and gritting his teeth. “I can’t wait to watch them fucking rape your ass until you bleed and cut you into—”

  Alex cut him off again, digging the end of the blade into the big vein on the left side of his neck. He looked right at me as he did it, and I shrank back, seeing something new in his expression. Pure, unadulterated rage. Bloodlust. Intent to kill. I’d never seen that when he looked at me before.

  I nodded at him. He smiled, then dragged the knife blade across Dan’s throat and stepped back. He never took his eyes off me.

  I stepped back too, and I watched with a stony face. Dan gasped and clutched at his neck, his dark eyes wide with horror as he tried in vain to stem the flow of blood. It didn’t just seep between his fingers like it did on all the movies. It exploded out of him in thick crimson torrents, spraying everywhere, some of it even reaching me, collecting on my shirt in droplets.

  I wasn’t horrified, like I probably should be. I didn’t scream, didn’t do anything to help. I simply watched in fascination, almost hypnotized as the man bled out in front of me. Something flashed in the back of my mind, and I finally understood after all these years why I did nothing when I witnessed my father’s murder. Why I stood there for twenty straight minutes just staring and staring.

  I remembered everything about that day now. I remembered sitting at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight of my parents. I heard my dad saying that I would be given to his friends at their ‘social club’ on my seventh birthday in a few months, and I remembered feeling a cold, creeping horror and wondering why my daddy didn’t want me. All those friends of his were nice to me, but they always wanted to tickle me and have me on their laps, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, either.

  I remembered Mom screaming and crying, and then I went upstairs, not wanting to hear anymore. All I wanted was to step out of my life, go anywhere but here, but I was too little to do that. There was no escape.

  This was my life now.

  My young brain must’ve quickly suppressed the awful memory of my father’s betrayal in an attempt to cope, but not enough to stop me from standing by and doing nothing when I saw him being butchered in the snow when I went outside a while later. I remembered standing there and wondering what was wrong with me, wondering why I couldn’t find it in myself to scream or run for help.

  For all these years, I felt guilt eating me up inside over the incident, and I didn’t even need to. My father was a pedophile. A sick torturer of children. I didn’t even know half the details of the horrendous things he’d done, but I knew enough to know he deserved every ounce of pain Alex
inflicted on him that day.

  Just like Dan. He was pure scum. He was responsible for kidnapping god knows how many kids from Pittsburgh and handing them over to his Circle employers… and he actually thought he deserved any sort of freedom? He was deluded and evil, just like anyone else who hurt kids the way these assholes did. Furthermore, he was actually fortunate he was getting such a quick, relatively easy death right now. I knew Alex’s other victims hadn’t been so lucky.

  Dan’s legs were shaking now, finally giving way a few seconds later. He plummeted to the cold hard floor, his eyes bulging with dismay as he clutched at his neck, still hopelessly trying to seal the wound and stem the bleeding.

  I didn’t look away. Instead, I crouched down and watched his face carefully. I could see the life fading from his sluggish eyes, and as it went, slowly circling the drain, so did a lot of my pain. I knew exactly why.

  Alex and my therapist both correctly thought that latent memories of some sort of traumatic event had triggered the stress deep within my mind; the same stress which caused my nerve sensitivity and pain. I knew what that stressor was now—being groomed for abuse at the hands of the Circle, and discovering that I was to be handed to them by my own father.

  I would’ve turned out just like those poor girls in the photos and videos Alex had shown me; the ones he got from one of his previous victims who liked to keep trophies, probably to jerk off over like the sick, twisted old prick he was. I would’ve been broken, beaten, branded. I would’ve been raped. And when they were sick of me, they would’ve more than likely killed me. I was twenty-one now, but if I’d been given to the Circle at seven, I probably wouldn’t have made it to this year.

  Because of all that, seeing one of the Circle members murdered in front of me like this actually made me feel better. I guess it was like seeing the major source of stress in my brain being slowly obliterated before my very eyes. It was a really fucked up form of stress relief… but it worked. My nerve pain wasn’t completely gone, but it was still the best I’d felt since before it began.

  As I watched Dan draw his last breath, I found my own again. With a final gruesome gargle, he stilled on the concrete floor in the vast, quickly-spreading pool of his own blood. Alex wiped the blade on his shirt, kicked the body as far back as possible, then turned and stared back up at me, a half-smile playing on his lips as he wiped his own blood off his face with his sleeve. I knew why he was smiling, and it wasn’t because of the man he’d just killed.

  It was because of me. I had a chance at freedom, but instead of leaving I’d willingly stepped right back into my own prison. Like a caged bird given the opportunity to fly free, I’d turned around and waltzed right back in between the bars, seemingly craving the comfort and familiarity of home, even though anyone else could see that home was a cold, cramped jail. I’d just turned my back on my dream to escape, and Alex would never let me go now.

  Ever.

  I realized now that the pipe was a test. Alex left it there on purpose, knowing Dan and I would eventually see it and realize we could get out if we worked together. He wanted to see what choice I would make, how much I trusted him and the things he’d told me, and it seemed I’d played right into his hand and made the exact choice he expected. He knew I wouldn’t have made any other choice in the end. He knew I wouldn’t leave.

  I was truly succumbing to him, unwinding more and more every day.

  He took a few slow steps toward me, heavy boots making a sickening sound as they trod through the blood still pooling on the floor. “You didn’t leave,” he said.

  “No.”

  He tilted his head to the side, a curious expression dancing in his dark blue eyes. “You could’ve tried to hurt me again. You could’ve tried to kill me and broken free.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “But you knew I wouldn’t.”

  He nodded. “You understand there’s no going back now.” He was close now, so close, breath lingering on my face. “You’re staying here.”

  I could barely breathe. “I know.”

  “Does that scare you? Are you scared of me?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No.”

  He gripped my chin and kissed me, forcing me to taste him. I could taste his blood too, that metallic, briny tang, but I barely registered it. When he pulled away, I was panting, scarcely able to breathe again.

  Alex was poison, but I was addicted.

  2

  Alex

  I stared at Celeste, a smile stretching my lips as I embraced my victory. I’d finally succeeded in my task.

  I’d broken her into a million pieces, made her question everything she thought she knew, and gone was the quivering, pain-riddled little girl she once was. Now she was strong, resilient. She didn’t question what needed to be done to these fucking Circle pieces of shit any longer. She didn’t run, even when she had the chance.

  She stayed, and in doing so, she gave herself to me irrevocably.

  I’d never hated myself more than when I watched her shattering, screaming, and sobbing yesterday, burdened with the truth of her childhood and family history. Burdened with the knowledge that out there, operating in the shadows of society’s so-called elite, there was a secret cabal of rapists and murderers—psychopathic people who existed purely to prey on the weakest and most innocent members of society, inflicting pain and suffering for their own pleasure.

  It was awful to watch her come to terms with this, writhing and crying hysterically. Vomiting, barely breathing. I wondered if I did the right thing, if perhaps I’d told her the awful truth too soon. I wondered if I was harming her more by taking her the way I did, tearing her away from everything and everyone she held dear. But she got there faster than I thought, realized why I’d done things the way I had, and now here she was, handing all control to me and refusing to leave.

  I didn’t even let myself think about what may have happened to me if she made the choice to get out of here. I knew she wouldn’t. She was truly mine.

  I grabbed her shoulders and pressed her back until she was pushed up against the bars of her cell. For a few long seconds, all I did was inhale her scent, feeling her tremble beneath me. My eyes were closed, my jaw set hard. It was always hard to control myself around this girl. This fucking angel.

  I opened my eyes and tightened my grip on her tense body. Her sweater was originally white, but now it was splashed with red from the blood which sprayed out of Dan just moments ago. She didn’t seem to mind it, but I pulled her arms up and yanked the top off her anyway, wanting the bastard’s blood off her. Then I did the same with her pants, pushing them down around her ankles as she gasped and inhaled sharply. She had no underwear on, and I forced her legs apart and probed between her legs, finding her soaked and willing.

  “You’re so fucking wet. You just watched me kill a man, and you still want me this fucking badly,” I growled.

  She let out a whimper. “Y…Yes.” Her body was still trembling, shaking with need.

  I sank to my knees, wanting to taste her pussy. Needing to taste it. I placed my mouth right on her center, parting her lips with my hands, and she gasped as I licked over every inch of her, using my tongue to tease the ultra-sensitive nub of her clit. It was already swollen with her desire.

  Like an animal devouring its prey, I feasted on her sweet pussy, sucking her wildly, making her legs quiver against the bars. “You were made for me and me alone,” I said, looking up at her, sliding two fingers into her sopping cunt. She was tight but so wet I entered easily. “So fucking greedy for me. Greedy for my cock. Dirty little slut.”

  “Yes, sir,” she gasped, writhing on the bars.

  I pulled my fingers out, making her moan with desperate need, and I sucked the fingers into my mouth, rising to my full height before her. Her juices were so sweet, so hot, and her eyes lit with arousal as she watched me take in every last drop.

  “Please.…” she murmured.

  I speared my hand behind her head, clutching the dark strands of her hair in a gri
p so tight she cried out. Then my lips crushed hers, claiming her mouth with my own, taking full possession. I owned her right now, and she was fucking begging for it.

  The hand in her hair let go and slid down, finding her wrists, and I pulled them up behind her head, securing them above her against the bars. She moaned into my mouth, and I began to grind myself against her pelvis, pulling away from the kiss and whispering in her ear about what a filthy, twisted little girl she was. A dead man lay only yards from us, and she was sopping wet and desperate for my cock.

  With one hand, I unzipped my pants and pulled my cock out. It was rock hard, the tip already wet with pre-cum. I couldn’t wait to hear Celeste scream for me again, clench her tight pussy muscles on me as she milked my cock for all I had.

  Celeste looked down at my cock, sucking her lower lip between her teeth.

  “Tell me you fucking want this,” I said, gripping her wrists tighter until her eyes narrowed with pain.

  “I want this. Now, sir,” she begged. More helpless moans and whimpers spilled from her lips, and I released her wrists and picked her up, forcing her to wrap her legs around my waist. She cried out in shock. Her bare, slick pussy lips were hot against my cock, and I shoved deep inside her, the raw, primal need to mark her from the inside pounding in my head.

  She was so tight I felt like I was splitting her in two, even though she was so slick with desire. “You like this, don’t you?” I muttered in her ear. “You love having a big fucking cock up in you, like a little whore, splitting you in half.”

  “It hurts,” she said with a gasp. “But… it feels so good.”