Free Tangled Fates by Carly Fall, Allison Itterly Page A

a low chuckle, and a male voice said, “If that’s the way you want it to be.”
    Then a palm connected with her face, jerking her head to the side.
    Her Warrior instincts took over, and she jumped to her feet as best she could manage
    with her injury. She landed two solid punches, then heard an alarm. Within seconds, the sounds
    of the door opening rang through the room and suddenly she was pushed on the bed with very
    strong arms holding her down. Whether they were male or female, she didn’t know. How strong
    were humans anyway?
    Shadows began to shimmer before her eyes, and a moment later she was able to see. Two
    large men held her down. The stark, white room with the harsh lighting came into focus.
    Straining her neck, she tried to see around one of the men. A man with brown hair and an
    unremarkable face came into her line of vision. He held a cloth to his bleeding nose, and she felt
    satisfaction roll through her.
    He smiled grimly. “I’m Dr. Davis,” he said in a flat voice. “We’ll be meeting again
    later.”
    He turned on his heel and left, and she had been given another shot.
    And that’s where the nightmare, or the reliving of events, began.
    It was always the same. She was strapped to a cold, steel table, naked and shackled at her
    hands and her feet. A strap over her forehead held her head down. She stared at the fluorescent
    lights above her, knowing what was coming, but hoping this time would be different.
    The click of the door opening and closing signaled the arrival of the doctor.
    He never met her eyes, but looked over her body with intensity. His hand would caress
    her neck, then her breast, moving down to her stomach, to her hip, and down her leg to her foot.
    To her surprise, her feet were clasped in some sort of stirrup, and with a click and a push, her
    knees were up in the air, exposing her most intimate flesh.
    Without a word the doctor ran his finger down her center, and she heard another click.
    The table beneath her bottom disappeared, her legs suspended in the stirrups.
    She strained to see what was happening, but she couldn’t move her head due to the
    constraints. She heard something that sounded like a zipper and froze. Was the doctor taking out
    his sexual organ?
    Then she heard something that sounded . . . wet. The doctor hovered over her and said,
    “This is for science. So we understand you better.”
    Searing pain ripped through her as he pushed his hips toward her again and again. She
    refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream, clamping her jaw tight at the brutal
    invasion.
    That had been the first time.
    It didn’t get any better the many times afterward.
    It had taken only one session with the male who called himself a doctor, or a healer, for
    her to realize that he had no intentions of healing anything. In fact, he’d seemed hell-bent on
    destroying anything good within her.
    Annis looked around the Great Room and got her bearings. She ran her hand over the
    lovely leather dark-brown couch, and looked up into the glow of the lamp that had a copper base
    of a cactus. The room was done in desert reds, greens, and browns, and she pulled a cream throw
    pillow on her lap, loving the feeling of the soft satin beneath her fingers.
    The present was so much more pleasant than the past. In her ten months with the Saviors,
    she had been provided her own quarters, a luxurious bed to sleep in, adequate clothing for both
    training and everyday living, good meals . . . yet the nightmare haunted her almost every night. If
    she were to be honest with herself, she would admit her exhaustion was from lack of sleep.
    However, she had a spirit of a true Warrior. That was her past, and she wouldn’t allow it
    to dictate her future. She looked forward to the day when she hopefully would be properly mated
    to someone worthy of her strong spirit and body. Someone who could make her body sing, as
    Liberty described it, someone who wanted to cherish her, not hurt her. She