Free The Nightlife: Paris (The Nightlife Series) by Travis Luedke Page B

spike poised atop my foot, I begged for another chance.   “ Non!
Non, non, non!   Please stop.  I will do
anything you ask!  Anything!  I won’t fight you!  I swear on my mother’s grave
I will not fight you!”
    He stared at me with cold eyes that did not know love or
mercy.  “I.”  Slam.  “Do.”  Slam.  “Not”  Slam.  “Believe.”  Slam.  “You.”
    My foot proved much tougher than my hands.  He needed four
blows to sink the spike.  Mercifully, I passed out.  Icy water on my face awoke
me to wave upon wave of pain.  He had untied my other leg.
    Shaking with cold and agony, I stammered.  “I’ll do whatever
you want!  Prendre pitié s’il
vous plait! ”  Please have pity!
    “Let’s see if you’re telling the truth.  I want you to hold
very still for me.”
    He pulled my leg over to the corner of the table and held
the spike poised for the blow, hammer cocked high.  He watched intently as my
leg quivered and shook with the force of will I exerted not to fight him.  My
every instinct screamed to kick him, to fight.  “I’m not fighting anymore!”
    “I am not convinced.”
    The fall of the hammer and the agonizing crunch of my bones
splitting to accommodate the spike, overwhelmed me. I blacked out.
    My rest was short-lived.
    He woke me thrusting between my legs, harsh and unrelenting. 
And he was right.  I begged him to kill me, repeatedly.
    He only smiled.
    Taking a few moments to clean my blood off, he lectured me. 
“This can continue as long as necessary.  Contrary to your wishes, you will not
die.”
    I drifted into a half-asleep doze as he rummaged through his
toolbox.  His threats could not penetrate my exhaustion and thirst.  My thirst,
so horrid, I could have drained the River Seine.
    I awoke to a leather whip-crack ripping across my belly and
left breast.  The noise and intense, searing agony jolted me back to life.  My
whole body reared up off the table as far as my pegged hands and feet allowed. 
He had my attention now.
    As I screamed, my terror newly revived, he continued his
lecture.  “Ah, chérie!  Now you are learning!”
    I convulsed, screamed, and sang out a symphony of pain.  I
jerked and squealed, squirming as he striped me back and forth, up and down. 
Even between my thighs.  His whip hummed through the air as I screamed hoarse
and guttural sounds.  He chanted, “ J'obéirai
à mon maître.”   I will obey my master.
    He forced me to chant along with him.
    Time became measured by the seconds between whip strikes as
he continued his regiment of searing cracks of pain and chants demanding
obedience.  It seemed to go on forever.  He baptized me in sermons of pain all
night long.  He left me a bloody wreck of raw flesh by the time he retired for
the sunrise.  I immediately drifted off into the welcome reprieve of oblivion.
    I awoke the next night as he smacked my face.  Every inch of
my body radiated with pain.  Tired.  Thirsty, so thirsty.  Need sleep. 
My throat burned with an aching need, a deep hunger.  I fell back asleep
murmuring, “A drink, just one drink.”
    He smacked me again, but I couldn’t stay awake.  He hit me a
few more times, barely waking me.  I drifted back off to sleep again.
    “ Merde!  
I did not feed her!”  I heard him cursing as I faded to black.
     
    * * * *
     

 
     
    Chapter 10
     
    Through a hazy fog of exhaustion and horrible thirst, I heard
a young man arguing with Julian in heavily-accented, broken French.
    Julian tried to coax him down the stairway into the
basement.  “She is down here, come.  I promise you will enjoy this.”  I
couldn’t see for the white sheet thrown over my body and face, but I heard
their footfalls on the creaking steps.
    “What is that smell?”  The voice was heavy with suspicion,
and then came the click sound of a gun being cocked.
    “Here, I will show you.”  Julian coaxed the man down.  “This
is why you’re here.”
    The sheet was yanked