Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Sixty-Six

Isabella

I look over my kingdom of a disaster, happy with my work. It took a while to get things this messy, wine broken all over the place, the smell of grapes and fermented alcohol wafting through the small space. I breathe it in and feel a little dizzy, undeniably touching on a bit of drunkenness out of just contact.

After what feels like an eternity, the door pops open up the narrow stairwell, and Jacob Lacey comes down the steps with an unmissable look of panic crossing his face. It’s too good not to enjoy—his mouth parted, and his eyes strained and bloodshot.

I tend to the longest scratch on my arm, taunting him with a widened smile on my face. I can see his frustrations and anger grow, even from across the room of cracked, shattered bottles and splintered shelves. His fists curl inward at his sides, cocked from even across the room.

“You fucking bitch,” he snaps, shaking his head. “What the hell have you done?”

I simply shrug, kicking back against the wall and trying not to appear afraid. Sharks like the Lacey family can sense fear in the air, sniffing it out from across the wine cellar even, but I won’t allow him to know what panic is setting into my gut.

He loved making me afraid in his office. I can only expect the same treatment from him now.

Stepping over glass and wood boards, he marches across the room, his hand reaching up to grab my pained, twisted wrist so he can throw me into the nearest pile of glass. I grit my teeth to keep from screaming, blood oozing out of a new cut somewhere, but I can’t feel it.

“I spare your fucking life, and this is how you repay me? You think you’re smart? You just fucked yourself, Isabella!” His leg snaps backward before his leather boot connects with my shoulder, deepening the crunch of glass under my chest. I hiss a breath, and he snickers in reply. “I know one way you can apologize to me, baby.”

He lifts me off the floor with one arm, simply scooping me up and throwing me closer to the stairs, the cuts on my skin and along my dress getting worse. It all aches, the scratches burning as they’re licked with wine that’s overflowing over the stone ground.

“Fuck you,” I pant, seeing him stop over top of me, enjoying the sight of my shivering cold frame while doused in liquor. “Carter’s going to kill you!”

He grins wider at the threat I’m not even sure if I believe. “Oh, Isabella. I’m so sorry you haven’t lost hope yet, but I can promise you, Carter Blackthorne isn’t even alive anymore.”

My breath hitches, and he drinks down the look of dread coming over me. I try to hold back my tears, but it’s an effortless failure. I need Carter to be alive, even if I live the rest of my life in Jacob’s busted wine cellar, I just want the man I love to be okay.

He has to be okay… there’s no other option in my mind.

“Let’s go,” Jacob breathes, yanking me off the floor again, my stomach bent over his shoulder with my knees pressured to his chest. I kick and scratch and fight, hoping he falls down the stairs in return, but we make it into the house, the warmth swarming me at once. “Just relax, baby, you’re so difficult.”

“Let me go, dammit,” I sneer, slamming my only good fist against his lower back, but it doesn’t slow him down at all. He stalks into a bedroom, and my stomach drops. “Jacob, stop it! Let me down!”

“Fine, fine,” he taunts, dropping me on his solid wood floor. I choke on impact, the breath snatched out of my lungs. I writhe on the floor, watching him press a key into the door and test the knob for resistance—it’s locked. “Get up, girl. It’s time for you to pay for your mistakes.”

I curl up tighter on the floor, my entire arm pulsing from just the crooked ache of my wrist. “No, you won’t touch me,” I snap, swinging my heel out when he tries to come close.

He catches my legs, ripping off my heels before he clenches the hem of my dress.

The reality of terror settles in when he rips my dress all the way up to my hips, my silk panties in plain view now, no matter how much I try to hide it. My echoing, beating pulse slaps across my posture on the floor, feeling helpless and useless when Jacob reaches for his belt.

I wince, and he catches it, a twinkle of ego in his eyes that is happy to see me cowering away from him.

“You’re so pathetic,” he sighs, shaking his head.

He flicks the buckle off his belt and undoes the strap, pulling it through his belt loops before raising it over his head. I turn over instinctively, feeling the leather strap draw up my exposed thigh, my dress nothing but tatters held together with seams not yet split.

It’s only a matter of time before he brings down the belt against my back, near the scratches his henchman made on the roof. The nulled pain always spikes in that spot, wounded prior to tonight, and having him reopen those wounds doesn’t help.

I hiss, fighting back every tear, every panting plea for mercy, and I take it in the simplest of forms so as to not feed into his enjoyment of it. I think that’s what pisses him off the most. I’m not begging for him to stop; I’m just going to fight him as much as possible.

“Come here,” he growls through his teeth, trying to tie my wrists together while he falls over me, straddling my hips. I spit and bite and wiggle until he gives in, slamming his fist into my snapped wrist bone. I scream and writhe under his pinning pelvis. “There we go, now settle down,” he pants, his hand wiping my hair back while the tears I’ve fought so hard to hold back are unleashed. “Awe, Isabella, what’s wrong? Missing your boyfriend?”

“He’s… alive…” I grumble, trying to blink back the spots over my eyes while my wrist debilitates the rest of my body. “You’re the… the dead one…”

He leans forward, licking the old wound against my ear that he made with his teeth. His hands manage to wrangle mine into his belt, tightening the strap around my arms. I want to fight him more, but my body is so taut with agony that I can’t even find the energy to push him off me anymore.

His warm palm slides against my cold, wine-soaked skin, trailing up my thigh and taunting my panties with his greedy fingers. They curl into the silk, riding them up so he can still sit on my waist and reach around to caress my ass.

I try to slam my hands into his stomach to punch him back, but with my arms trapped together, my bad wrist takes the impact the most. I hiss, biting through sobs as pain overcomes me completely.

He has finally won.

He tugs at his zipper, clutching the mound that forms behind his underwear. It’s clear he has been waiting for the moment for a while, stroking over the fabric while watching the hope drain out of my face once and for all.

“I’m really going to enjoy this, Isabella,” he pants, leaning over me so he can pin one hand over my arms, keeping them overhead, while his other hand is ready to free himself any second now. His lips brush up my neck and jaw, his hot exhale laced over my neck and ready to strangle me. “I only ask that you keep fighting when it happens. I love watching you suffer, baby.”

He kisses the hollow of my throat, leaning into my hips with his own. I shut my eyes and picture Carter overtop of me, loving me roughly and gently and every other way imaginable. He was ferocious at first, like in the Blackthorne club and at the restaurant with Donovan. But he was gentle other times, in the store and in my kitchen, tying me to the table and giving me gift after gift.

He is perfect and delicious, and I love him.

Jacob adjusts, preparing to take something from me that he can never have now. Suddenly, the door is kicked in, and my eyes fly open in pure hope.

Instead, William Lacey stalks into the room, a fat cigar hanging from his fingers while he leans in the doorway, watching his son try to disparage my body.

“You didn’t think you could have her all to yourself, did you, son?”