Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(156)

Oh God.

Something pulls at the chain binding my wrists, and the cuffs click tighter, cutting off circulation to my hands. My fingers begin to tingle as my toes come up off the floor. I hang there and she gives me a little push, amusing herself by swinging me forward and back.

Then it lifts me up. The cuffs dig into the flesh of my wrists, and I have no choice but to hang there and whimper as the pain grows, and grows, and grows. I feel the world swinging past under my feet, until I finally come to a stop, instinctively trying to put my feet down.

She’s behind me, I can feel her.

The sack comes off. She yanked it over my head. I’m hanging over a void between two ends of a retracted walkway, something beneath me. There’s a camera aimed at me, held by one of her men.

“Look down,” she says.

I glance back. Cassandra bears a faint resemblance to the blonde-haired guard. They might be kin. She’s taller and leaner, her hair knotted back severely behind her head. Her eyes are green and hard.

I swallow, hard, and tilt my head down. It’s agony with my arms forced over my head. It feels like they’re going to pull out of their sockets.

When my gaze falls to the floor beneath I see… a machine. Rows and rows of wheels, with big studs jutting out that form interlocking metal teeth.

“It’s an industrial shredder,” Cassandra says, stroking my hair. “The shape of the blades gives it an amusing nickname: They call it the muffin monster.”

“W-what—”

“I told you I was going to kill you slowly. On that count I was truthful. It will probably take at least a minute for you to die, though I doubt you will make it much past the machine shredding your feet and calves; when it grips your femurs and tears your legs off and breaks your cuffs or sucks you in, death will come mercifully quick. Or it would, should I say, except that I will slow the machine to its lowest setting so it takes minutes to devour you alive, ripping you into pieces no bigger than my finger. I want you alive long enough to feel it rip out your entrails before you finally die.”

“Why are you doing this?”

She shrugs. “You stole my place. Turn it on! Let’s see if her prince can find her in time to say good-bye before he has to pick her teeth out of the machine!”

Beneath me, the shredder churns to life. It sounds low and throaty at first but quickly picks up the pace, spinning faster and faster until the blades become a blur. My shoe slips off my foot and tumbles into space, hits the blades with a small whump, and vanishes in a puff of fabric slivers and stuffing.

God, if you’re going to lead him to me like I asked, now would be a very good time.

Cassandra descends a gantry to the factory floor, checking her watch, and with no more concern than turning on the lights, pushes the button that starts lowering me from the crane and feeding me into the machine. At the rate I’m going it’ll be about a minute before my feet touch the blades. I have to save my strength, hold them up.

I turn to my side and watch her draw a drop cloth off a crate.

Inside is one of those damned armor suits. She taps something on the side and it unfolds with a mechanical sound, and she backs up to it, stepping one foot and then the other into stirrups before pushing herself into it. The plates fold around her and close with a hiss of air and she steps forward, massive boots thudding on the ground.

Her armor is white. It would be, wouldn’t it.

She unsheathes one of those massive swords and she waits.

“He probably won’t make it in time,” her voice booms across the floor. “He’s going to find a pile of ground meat before I gut him.”

As I grow closer to the machine I can feel the air from the moving blades and start jerking my legs up. I cry out when I feel my wrist slip. Too much movement and the hook will give and I’ll just fall in and be torn apart all at once. I wonder if that’s the last thing I’ll feel, being ripped to shreds by this machine. The blades spin hungrily, almost like they’re reaching for me, eager for blood.

“You’re not the first one to experience this,” Cassandra says, “it’s quite an effective interrogation tactic. A man will tell me anything when I hang his wife above the machine. He will tell me what I want to know when he sees the first blade tear off her toes. I like to suspend them together so he can see her drop first and be splashed with her blood before he dies.”

“You’re a monster.”

“If I push this button, you drop,” she says, hefting the remote.

I press my lips shut and lift my feet higher, away from the blades. My muscles are starting to ache. Every sway jerks at the cuffs; I might just fall in no matter what I do.

I last until it catches my dress and rips off my skirt. When I see it torn up in the blades, I start to scream.

“Damn it, where is he? I really wanted him to arrive when she was about halfway in,” Cassandra says to no one in particular.

I’m curling up in a ball, the blades reaching up at me. I close my eyes and pray it will be over quick. I wonder if I should make one great twist and jerk myself free of the hook, drop in so it will end quickly, but I have a feeling as soon as I touch the metal teeth she’ll turn the speed down and watch me ripped apart slowly.

I open my eyes when something streaks past the windows.

“He’s here,” she says, her voice dripping with almost sexual excitement.