Bleep.
The man finally came up for air and seemed to curse to himself as he grabbed his radio and silenced the sound before talking into it too rapidly for her to try to comprehend. Following this, he was up and dragging her to her feet in a matter of moments. Ashley felt dazed, and fairly disgusted with herself for showing a reaction to her attacker. She scowled at him as he looked down at her. He had tied her wrists together behind her back and was about to lead her off to god knows where. He noticed the scowl and grabbed her by the chin.
The sniper held Ashley's eyes level with his as he pulled her against him. With her arms behind her back she had no way of holding herself away from him. As her body slid against his again a confusing wave of primitive emotion rushed through her; fear and anger and a small amount of arousal that scared her more than any threat of physical pain. He started to talk and the wave of emotion became a storm, threatening to overwhelm her.
"You're very lucky that my commanding officer wants to speak with you," he growled softly. "Otherwise I would have had so much fun with you, little girl."
Ashley didn't understand everything he was saying, but she definitely got the gist.
"For your own sake," he went on," I hope you can tell him what he wants to know. Otherwise, you're going to suffer. He has people who are trained to cause pain without damaging your body, so that they can make you scream for days. They'll hit you and fuck you until you can't move anymore, until you stop screaming and you wish they would kill you. And if you still won't tell him what he wants to know, he'll throw you to the grunts and let them fuck you until you do."
This was not Ashley's first field mission, and her training had taught her better than to show fear in a situation like this. So when the sniper's words dragged a whimper out of her chilled and tired body, she told herself she had done so on purpose so that he might underestimate her in the future. But she wasn't entirely sure that this was true, and that uncertainty shocked her back to her senses.
It wasn't so much his words that scared her, but the burning arousal that was apparent in his eyes, his voice and his body. He wanted to hurt her, he wanted to hear her scream for him. Her eyes hardened in defiance; they could do whatever they wanted to her, she wasn't going to beg. He smiled down at her nastily; as if he knew exactly how to wipe that look off her face. He inched his face downwards, allowing his mouth to caress hers once again. Electricity and warmth started to flow through her again, and she tried to twist her face away but his grip was like iron. He deepened the kiss and continued his torture until Ashley couldn't hold back a tiny moan of arousal.
With the look of defiance erased from Ashley face, the sniper released her from his grip and then grabbed her by the arm, shoving her ahead of him. He had his pistol in his hand, a gentle reminder that trying to run away would be a bad idea. It took only a few minutes to reach their base camp, and then he was disappointed to be parted from his prize.
Ashley was relieved to find that she was being taken away from the sniper and would be brought for an audience with the man in charge, who thankfully spoke English. Her mission so far had not gone to plan, and she needed to find a way back on target as quickly as possible. She wasn't sure exactly how she was going to manage that, until she was dragged in front of an older man who took far more care over his uniform than the rest of his soldiers. A Serbian officer whose face she recognised in a heartbeat.
"Why were you flying over this area?" the man asked.
Careful to try to mask the fact that she recognised the man, Ashley feigned stupidity, and replied "I was just sightseeing the area".
The man snorted, then said " You would suffer greatly if you don't cooperate."
Ashley smiled sweetly and replied "I'm looking forward to it".
He also smiled at that, then motioned for the guards who had marched her in to pick her up. She was placed at the front of a small platform and tied to a beam in the ceiling so that her arms were above her head, and her toes only just touched the floor.
"I will ask you one more time," the man in charge said. "What were you doing in my country?"
Ashley remained silent. He snorted again, then motioned to someone standing in the shadows to one side. Ashley heard someone walk towards her. "I believe you have already met Luka?" he asked, and the man came in to view. The man from the woods.
The man in charge motioned to Luka, and Luka stopped in front of Ashley, a rather mean-looking knife in hand. He was tall, she realised as his eyes met hers. The platform that she'd been standing on had raised her at least eight inches, but she was still no higher than him. He stared into her eyes, smiling cruelly. He let the knife play across her cheek as he gauged her reactions.
She didn't recognise the name for a moment; it had not been in the mission files. But as Ashley's brain sifted through the hours of intel that her handler had provider to her, it suddenly made a connection. Luka was a pet name, short for Aleksandar. And that name she definitely did recognise. As her brain helpfully recalled the gory details of this man's past deeds, Ashley had to suppress a tremble of fear that was trying to flee down her spine. She had originally worried that she was being taken away from her mission when Luka had caught her, but nothing could be further from the truth.
"Luka is very talented in the ways of causing physical pain," the man in charge continued, and Ashley wished that she could have suspected him of bluffing. "I strongly suggest that you cooperate with me, so that you can leave here with your body intact."
Luka turned to the other man and spoke softly in a dialect that she couldn't understand. The other man laughed and turned back towards Ashley. "He wants me to stop asking you to cooperate," he said. "He will be very disappointed to not have the opportunity to hear you scream for him."
"Well I would hate to disappoint him," Ashley replied, intending it to sound sarcastic. To her own disgust, her voice was shaking. Her retort came out as more of a plea than an insult and Luka smiled at that, stroking his free hand into the hair at the nape of Ashley's neck so that he could hold her still. He slid his mouth to her ear and licked over her earlobe, then gently started to suck until Ashley gasped in response and had to bite her lip to stop a moan from escaping her mouth.
☆