Broken Submission

Rage

So guys... Classes are starting. I'm going to try and keep my updates on their usual schedule, but please be patient with me. I promise to do my damnedest to update at least once a week.

"It's been ten hours," Derek growled, pacing next to the car. Matthew watched him. "Ten hours of driving around, and she isn't here."

Without waiting for a response, Derek spun on his heel. "Goddammit!" He shouted and punched the car.

Matthew had had enough. "Fucking hell, Jensen. You need to get your shit together." He strode around the car, getting in Derek's face. "You. Need to get your fucking. Shit. Together." He shoved Derek's chest with each word.

"Now we are doing everything we can. We will find her—do you hear me?" Matthew said, grabbing his friend's shoulders. "We will find her. It's only a matter of time."

The fear lurking behind the anger in Derek's eyes made Matthew's heart ache. This was a man hanging on by a thread. Matthew couldn't even focus on what Amelia was possibly going through. If he started thinking of that, he would be losing his shit too, and Derek couldn't handle that.

Not waiting for his response, Matthew pulled Derek into a tight embrace. "We'll find her." Shoving him back, he continued, "Now get your fucking ass back in my car and try not to put any more dents in it."

                                • • •

Amelia woke. Her body hurt. Moving revealed to her that she was still strapped to the table. She blinked through swollen eyeslids, the only light in the room coming through a closed door. Garret must've been in there.

Mouth clamped against her moans of pain, she shifted, trying to bring her bonds in sight. She had to take this chance to try and free herself. Trails of liquid had dried on the backs of her thighs, and she tried not to think about the fact that it was almost certainly blood.

She shuddered when memories of her skin breaking under the glassy, unforgiving surface of that paddle floated across her mind. Garret had given no quarter, laughing and talking through her screams, although she rarely understood his words through the haze of agony.

A deep ache had settled over the lower half of her body, deep, stabbing pains when she moved, coupled with the small tearing sensations and stinging of broken skin. Amelia tried to bring her hands together, flinching at the small noises caused by her movement.

But the bastard had been thorough. Her hands halted with a full foot of space between them. Maybe... she shimmied forward, hoping to catch the simple Velcro cuff in her teeth. But the table creaked, the sound cutting through the air.

What sounded like bed springs came from the room behind the closed door, then footsteps.

"No," she breathed. Discretion abandoned, she bucked, trying to rip herself out of the restraints with brute forces. Her teeth grazed the cuff just as the door was flung open.

"You're awake," he said, grabbing her hair and yanking her head back. Amelia choked as the position cut off her airflow.

He released her.

"You—" she gasped, "you fucking asshole." The fear she had always hidden behind was still there, but a violent rage the likes of which she had never known spilled out of some dark recess of her soul. It filled her.

Shock flashed across his face. His mouth opened, then closed. Under any other circumstances, it would have been funny. At last, his jaw tightened and his nostrils flared. "You will not speak to me that way. I demand your respect."