Mackenzie's Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

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Chapter 2
    Barrie lay in almost total darkness, heavy curtains at the single window blocking out
    most of whatever light would have entered. She could tell that it was night; the level of street
    noise outside had slowly diminished, until now there was mostly silence. The men who had
    kidnapped her had finally gone away, probably to sleep. They had no worries about her being
    able to escape; she was naked, and tied tightly to the cot on which she lay. Her wrists were
    bound together, her arms drawn over her head and tied to the frame of the cot. Her ankles were
    also tied together, then secured to the frame. She could barely move; every muscle in her
    body ached, but those in her shoulders burned with agony. She would have screamed, she would
    have begged for someone to come and release the ropes that held her arms over her head, but
    she knew that the only people who would come would be the very ones who had tied her in this
    position, and she would do anything, give anything, to keep from ever seeing them again.
    She was cold. They hadn't even bothered to throw a blanket over her naked body, and
    long, convulsive shivers kept shaking her, though she couldn't tell if she was chilled from
    the night air or from shock. She didn't suppose it mattered. Cold was cold.
    She tried to think, tried to ignore the pain, tried not to give in to shock and terror. She
    didn't know where she was, didn't know how she could escape, but if the slightest opportunity
    presented itself, she would have to be ready to take it. She wouldn't be able to escape tonight;
    her bonds were too tight, her movements too restricted. But tomorrow—oh, God, tomorrow.
    Terror tightened her throat, almost choking off her breath. Tomorrow they would be
    back, and there would be another one with them, the one for whom they waited. A violent
    shiver racked her as she thought of their rough bands on her bare body, the pinches and
    slaps and crude probings, and her stomach heaved. She would have vomited, if there had been
    anything to vomit, but they hadn't bothered to feed her.
    She couldn't go through that again.
    Somehow, she had to get away.
    Desperately she fought down her panic. Her thoughts darted around like crazed squirrels
    as she tried to plan, to think of something, anything, that she could do to protect herself. But
    what could she do, lying there like a turkey all trussed up for Thanksgiving dinner?
    Humiliation burned through her. They hadn't raped her, but they had done other things
    to her, things to shame and terrorize her and break her spirit. Tomorrow, when the leader
    arrived, she was sure her reprieve would be over. The threat of rape, and then the act of it,
    would shatter her and leave her malleable in their hands, desperate to do anything to avoid
    being violated again. At least that was what they planned, she thought. But she would be
    damned if she would go along with their plan. She had been in a fog of terror and shock since
    they had grabbed her and thrown her into a car, but as she lay there in the darkness, cold and
    miserable and achingly vulnerable in her nakedness, she felt as if the fog was lifting, or
    maybe it was being burned away. No one who knew Barrie would ever have described her as
    hot-tempered, but then, what she felt building in her now wasn't as volatile and fleeting as
    mere temper. It was rage, as pure and forceful as lava forcing its way upward from the bowels of
    the earth until it exploded outward and swept away everything in its path.
    Nothing in her life had prepared her for these past hours. After her mother and brother
    had died, she had been pampered and protected as few children ever were. She had seen
    some—most, actually—of her schoolmates as they struggled with the misery of broken parental
    promises, of rare, stressful visits, of being ignored and shunted out of the way, but she hadn't
    been like them. Her father adored her, and she knew it. He was intensely interested in her
    safety, her