Depraved by Trent Evans

Chapter 4

The moment he clapped her chained wrists behind her back, she realized she was in much, much deeper trouble than anything that had happened to her in the clutches of Harling back at the base.

“What are you doing? I… you don’t need to do this, you know?”

His smile as he walked from behind her held a knowing slyness that both infuriated and frightened her. “Oh, I don’t need to do anything at all. I do this because you look better in my chains.”

Shit.

Up close, he was absolutely huge, rivaling even the biggest rebel infantrymen in size.

And far, far faster than any men she’d ever seen.

Now, he towered over her, seeming to stand closer to her than necessary, which told her he was trying to intimidate.

It was working.

“How… how did you move that fast? That… that can’t be real.”

His head tilted slightly. “Do you really believe none of this is real?”

His finger reached out to toy with one of her exposed nipples, flicking it back and forth.

She tried to twist away, but be took firm hold of her breast, stilling her movement.

“You don’t want to do that. You want to do as you’re told, don’t you?”

“I want you to fucking let me go!”

She didn’t know why she spat the words with such venom, when she knew they would do her absolutely no good.

Stars burst in her vision as his palm cracked across her left cheek, then the right, making her cry out with the stinging pain, and the even worse humiliating confirmation of her utter helplessness.

“I don’t like having to keep showing you the consequences of being uncooperative.” He said it as if he were instructing a recalcitrant child, demonstrating his beneficent—but limited—patience for its foolishly defiant behavior.

“Stop! Stop! I-I’m… okay, okay!” Her right cheekbone throbbed now.

“That’s better.”

The bright flash as the gray light caught the broad, flat plane of the blade made her breath catch in her throat.

Oh fuck, please no!

But rather than cut into her flesh, he proceeded to slice away the tattered remnants of her clothing. With her arms pinioned behind her, he couldn’t yank it the rest of the way down, so instead, he slit it at her sides, the cold, sharp steel tickling her under the arms as he did it, then pulled the fabric completely free of her body.

The forest air, still and cool, was a shock against her total exposure, both physically and psychologically.

Her nipples drew taut and hard as his gaze coursed unhurriedly over her form. She bowed her head, her hair hanging before her, a futile and instinctive gesture at self-protection.

Was he intending rape? Worse?

It would be the height of brutal irony for her to escape Harling’s lascivious intentions only to find herself captured and brutalized just as she was on the cusp of freedom.

Think, Yulia, think!

He slowly walked around her, and she tried not to imagine what he saw as he drank in her humiliated, helpless naked form.

His speed, the swiftness with which he accelerated, the way he’d seemed to be almost unfazed from a knee to the balls that she knew would have left any other man writhing on the ground for several minutes, if not longer.

He either had testicles of steel… or this wasn’t any normal man.

To combine his strength, agility, and speed—and enormous size—led her to suspect he could be only one thing.

And even that was something she’d never actually seen before.

An HKU.

A Ravager.

Yes, Yulia, you are in very deep shit indeed.

He touched her upper back, a light caress, really, but she flinched as if he’d kissed her flesh with flame.

“Settle… settle,” he rumbled from behind. “Be still and let me look at you.”

Her heart pounded, her mouth dry as she kept quiet, letting him look, knowing it was futile to continue resisting when she was so clearly outmatched.

Maybe if she complied, she could lull him into a sense of complacency. It was the only shot she had. Disarmed, in chains, and barefoot—and likely lost—in the forest, she was out of options, but not out of hope.

Not yet.

Then he was standing before her again, his hands on his hips… and she couldn’t help but notice the prodigious bulge at the front of his dark trousers.

Oh dear Gods.

She’d heard the stories, of course. Her father had told her they were probably a mix of truth and propaganda.

It was, after all, in the interests of the TSS to instill a sense of deep fear when it came to the Ravagers, modern day Boogie Men.

But this was no myth, no childhood scare story.

This was over six and a half feet of fearsome male standing two paces away, his cock hard and huge as he looked over her naked, chained, completely helpless body.

“One thing we need to discuss before we go further,” he said, his voice a deep timbre that seemed to vibrate within her as he spoke.

“Further?” Tearing her gaze away from his blatant arousal, she looked up at him. “Only thing I want to discuss is you taking these chains off. I won’t run. I know you’ll just catch me again.”

“You’re right, I will—but the chains stay on anyway.” His finger stroked under her chin. “You look far too good with them just the way they are.”

Bastard.

“What do you want?”

She didn’t want to know, and yet she had to. Even if she was to be raped, she needed to know it was coming, It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did, as if that knowledge was a lifeline, a tiny illusion of control she could cling to, like a survivor of a shipwreck clinging to the flotsam left from a vessel headed to its watery grave deep below.

“What do I want? Hmm,” he stroked his own chin, the jaw broad and square, the stubble along it black and thick. “We’ll start with you being silent, until given leave to speak. Understand me?”

“I…” She snapped her mouth shut, the effort it took to do so surprisingly hard.

She wasn’t at all used to keeping her opinions to herself, something her dad had inculcated in her.

“Someday, the fate of world might hinge on what you have to say,” her father was fond of telling her.

It was ridiculous, of course. She was just a woman. But she loved it when he said it.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t smart, that she didn’t pay attention, and that she hadn’t surprised more than a few people over the years with what she really was capable of. But she’d never allowed herself to harbor illusions that she was much more than a loving daughter, and someone her father could count on to tell him the truth.

He’d taught her more than even her father had realized, though it seemed all for naught at the moment.

But she’d be damned if that meant giving up. She hadn’t gone through all she had for nothing, to simply meet her ignominious end at the hands of some brute kidnapper.

“What do you think you’re doing here, stumbling through the Fen in nothing but rags?” He began to circle her again, as he spoke. “What are you running from. Or are you trying to kill yourself?”

She said nothing.

“One thing you need to remember, girl. You can’t win, against me. Nothing you do will be enough. So resign yourself to that right now. Before we go.”

“Go?”

He chuckled softly. “You didn’t think I was going to keep you here, did you?”

“W-where are you taking me?”

He stood before her once more. “What I decide to do with you depends on you—and whether or not I believe what you tell me when you answer my question.”

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She tried to keep her voice strong, ignoring her fear as best she could.

“I’m lost.”

“That’s true in ways you don’t even understand yet, girl.”

She bit down a reply, knowing she needed to project cooperation. Docility. “I… like to come here, to think, to just… be alone. But I got lost this time. The trail was the only familiar part…”

“You mean the trail you didn’t want to be seen following?”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He dropped to one knee, his gaze lingering between her legs longer than she wanted to think about. Then he met her eyes. “Do you want me to believe you were lost, or that you were trying not to be found? Because both cannot be true here, we both know that.”

“Well… why can’t they both be true? Couldn’t I be trying to hide, and get lost in the process?”

He smiled. “So, you were trying not to be found, then?”

She couldn’t help the blush, the heat of it at her cheeks threatening to betray her. “I… I didn’t say that!”

“And it’s back to…lost.” He touched her abdomen, the fingertip playing in the well of her belly button.

She shivered at the gentleness of his touch… and that it caused an odd stirring deep within her. “What are you… doing?”

“Exploring.” He looked at her again, his lips quirking. “Getting lost.”

“I am—I have no reason to lie.”

“You have every reason to lie, and we both know it.” He stood once more, giving her a tiny little frown. “But I’m growing tired of your circle talk. I have better ways of getting the truth out of you.”

Surprising her, he pushed his shoulder into her torso, and wrapped an arm about her hips, his palm firmly grasping her right buttock.

Lifting her, she cried out, losing her balance with her hands chained behind her. She toppled over his huge, muscled shoulder.

“What are you doing!” she squeaked, the world upside down as she hung draped behind his back.

He laughed this time, loud and deep. His hand patted her bottom as he set off back toward the trail, his pace somewhere between a fast walk and a jog, the gray sun filtering through the canopy dazzling her when shafts of it passed over her face now and then. Branches and twigs brushed and scratched against her upturned bottom and thighs as he pushed through the bushes clustered along the edge of the trail, both of them emerging out into the light. “Taking you back to a place where I can figure out what’s to be done with you.”

“W-why!”

“Because you’re lying. And the forest doesn’t have all the tools I prefer to have when it comes to teaching girls what happens when they lie to me.”

The sharp pain at her hip made her jerk reflexively, the soft hiss accompanying it filling her with dread.

Injecting me?

“What was that!”

“An insurance policy.” He smacked her bottom firmly as he started down the trail, in the same direction she’d been heading when he’d accosted her.

The light at the edges of her vision began to blur, a heaviness sinking into her limbs,

“What…rrr…ooh…”

“Can’t have you taking notes on where I take you, can I? Sleep well, stubborn girl.”

And she fell into deep, black oblivion.