In the space of those two shrill words, her memories were blasted apart again.

Reality reigned once more in the form of the four black-clad gunmen Rayna had heard on approach. They were followed by the source of the greeting, their leader—a heartless greaseball who referred to himself as “King.” Sage had fast concluded nothing good was due to them because of that, and she’d been right. At first the man had referred to them both simply as “the investments,” leading to the conclusion that the men who’d recaptured them in Africa were simply middlemen, and King was the bigger player in this picture. Those were the days he’d held them in the warehouse, when somber-eyed women were brought in to wash and style their hair, paint their nails, shave their legs…and other body parts. Outfits were brought in to size on them, if the scraps of fabric could be called that. The treatment had left nothing to their imaginations about the fate for which they were being prepared.

One night, the “spa treatment” had gone differently. The women brought in for them snapped on surgical gloves as King selected body jewelry from a bed of jewels. When they pinned Rayna down, forced her legs open, and pierced her with brute force and an ugly needle, she’d screamed—and Sage had snapped. She’d managed to scatter the jewels, take down two henchmen with head butts to their balls, and get the “therapist” away from Rayna before a whack to the back of her head had turned the world dark.

She had no idea how long she’d been out but had awakened here in the cave, expecting to see diamonds taunting from between her own thighs. Instead, King himself was positioned there, pinning her legs with his knees as he wrenched at his fly. She’d taken a couple of steady breaths. On the third, she’d reared up enough to squeeze his sorry balls with all the strength in her arms.

Good news? King got nowhere near her again. Not-so-good news? Her hands didn’t feel like crushing anything after they spent three days shackled to the walls.

After that, she and Rayna were no longer the investments. They were the bitches.

King’s grin slanted higher as he approached the cell. “Have you rested well, bitches?” He cocked his head, looking from Sage to Rayna and back. “Hmm. Seems so. But do the flowers ever look soiled from the beautiful land of Seattle? I think not. This is a good thing. Tonight is going to be big for you. And me!”

A scythe of terror slashed her gut. Big could only mean one thing. They would no longer be under King’s thumb. That didn’t mean the next thumb would be any better. Sage focused on his leering yellow teeth—and the fantasy of whacking them out of his mouth—to control herself from glancing at Rayna. The effort failed. It was impossible not to catch Ray in her peripheral due to the trembles that now commanded every inch of her friend. They both knew the order King was going to issue next.

“The redhead goes first.” Two of the guards moved at once. After releasing the steel gate, they secured Rayna with beefy hands around her shoulders. One of them pulled her wrists together and then bound them with the thwick of a zip tie. When Rayna let out a pained whimper, Sage surged to her knees, a welcome rush of fury replacing her fear.

“Hurt her and you’ll answer to me, shitheads.”

King rolled his eyes and lifted his hand in a dismissive arc. The other two goons swept into the cell and then shoved her against the wall. One of them stuffed a rag into her mouth. He fastened it in place with a couple of zip ties around her head. He followed by securing her wrists in the same condition as Rayna’s. The other guard hauled her to her feet by pulling on her ass.

As all this happened, Rayna got pulled out of the cell. King stepped over to greet her by raising a hand to her quivering chin and using the other to pet her long copper hair.

“Eyes of a wildcat and hair of fire,” he murmured. “And yet, you have always been the sweeter of my two special candies.” He used his grip on her chin to lift her face, leaning close as if to kiss her, despite the grimace Rayna didn’t hide. “I wonder if your slit is as fiery as your hair, my lovely.”

He finished by licking the seam of Rayna’s mouth, making her jerk against his grip. Sage lunged against her captors, letting out a useless scream against her gag. King chuckled as the guards wrestled her into submission. Because her limbs were constrained, her lungs took over the task of hanging on to the rage. She sucked in huge breaths through her nose, since breathing through her mouth was not a viable option. As it had so many times in the last two weeks, her mind pulled from her body and hovered, watching all of this like some horrible scene in a movie that gave her an excuse to go for more popcorn. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be her life. She kept waiting for the shivers to stop, for the dread to go away. She stared at the cave’s cold black stones, yearning for the moment they peeled back to reveal stage lights and a director in those funny riding pants, laughing and telling her the scene was a wrap and she could go home now…

But that wasn’t where she was going. Nor Rayna. Within a few hours, she suspected hell would be a pleasant alternative to her fate. She finally looked over at Rayna, forcing herself to take in every strong feature of the woman who’d been her best friend, her only friend, for the last year.

After tonight, she’d never see Rayna again.

Within the next year, she’d forget who she was, as well.

“I’m too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hu-hu-hurts—”

King answered his phone before the thing could play another note of the nauseating song. Instead of a greeting, the man only grunted into the phone. “What? Already?” he finally said. “So be it, then. Make everything ready. We are bringing the additional sluts now.” He shook his head and re-pocketed the phone. “It seems our buyers are here a bit early, bitches. There will be no time to pretty you up, but I am not concerned.” He turned to Sage and ran an oily finger beneath her shirt, over her nipple. “If our guests want to see what they are paying for, we’ll just let them look.”

A snarl clawed up Sage’s throat as she charged again at the pig, hoping to get in a solid head butt. King swerved, but not fast enough to avoid a spray of her spit, courtesy of the gag. An animalistic sound surged out of the bastard as he glared at the white blobs on his hand and arm. He shook the spit off, raised his hand again, and backhanded her face. Sage heard the thud of his heavy topaz ring as it connected to her cheekbone, but the sound was eclipsed by the clanging pain throughout her head.

“Sage!” The shriek was Rayna’s, sounding weirdly muffled as she got pushed in front of her friend. The guards led them down a semi-underground passageway. Though the block rocks of the cave still surrounded them, the walls on their left gave way every five or six feet to bunches of thick tropical foliage. After they’d walked a minute or so, Sage glimpsed lights through the trees. She made out the shadows of low-lying buildings and picked up on the labored sound of clunky compact car engines. Bar glasses clinked somewhere, and an old Bon Jovi song blared from tired speakers. They were in a small village, though they weren’t exactly led into the middle of town square. Across a small clearing lay a dome-shaped Quonset hut. Dim lights burned from the high windows.

Sage and Rayna were led past more guards and then trundled inside through a back door. The room they entered was small and musty, walled off from the rest of the hut by corrugated aluminum walls. A few strings of old Christmas lights and a half-dozen kerosene lamps were the only light sources in the space, which didn’t help her disorientation as one of the guards spun her around and threw her to the hard-packed dirt floor. He grabbed Rayna and did the same to her. Without their arms to fling out for balance, they both landed in painful heaps, their knees and shoulders taking the brunt of their falls. For a few seconds, Sage even forgot the throbbing in her face from King’s blow.

“Careful, you idiots!” King cuffed both guards on the sides of their faces. Watching the guy direct his masochism on someone else was satisfying in a sick way. “We’re not renting those two tonight. Sales will be final on them. The blond is already scuffed up, so take care.”

Sage watched in grim triumph as the two men glared at King’s back. She wished one of them would point out that it was he who’d scuffed her up in the first place, but they both pulled the wuss card like the cowards they were.

A shaking cry whipped her attention back down and to the side. She joined Rayna in returning the stares of five women who were caked in gaudy cosmetics, raw fear, and little else. One of the girls, a strawberry blond in a low-cut red leather minidress and matching boots, scooted toward Sage.