Tormented (The Condemned Series Book 3)
TORMENTED
ALISON AIMES
CONTENTS
Tormented, Book Three, Condemned Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Trapped
Excerpt from Taken
Billionaire Blackmail Excerpt
Besting the Billionaire Excerpt
About the Author
Connect with Alison Aimes
Books by Alison Aimes
Win A Free Signed Copy
TORMENTED, BOOK THREE, CONDEMNED SERIES
She was never meant to be his…
Two ruthless enemies.
One cage.
Zero chance of escape.
An explosive lust that can’t be contained.
Council assassin Jade Lakotesh survives by trusting no one. Attachments a weakness. Sex a weapon. Her mission success rate flawless. Until she ends up naked, captured, and collared, her latest assignment in jeopardy. The blame for her predicament: the hothead, scarred man who prowls the cage beside her—his confusing appeal a danger she has no idea how to neutralize.
Ex-Resistance fighter Walsh Ryker hit rock bottom with the deaths of those he loved most. Now, he’s plummeted to a new low, trapped with a cellmate as ice cold as she is stunningly hot. She’s out for blood, lacks any ability to cooperate…and leaves him more alive than he’s been in years. For a man no longer interested in feeling anything at all, she may be the greatest hazard he’s faced to date.
As danger mounts and they must work together to defeat a shared threat, will the unwelcome passion between these two enemies entomb them in the dark forever—or be the key that sets them free?
TORMENTED, Book Three in the Condemned series, is a stand-alone, high heat, action-adventure romance that hurtles to the ends of the universe to explore redemption and forgiveness, need and love, and the power of second chances.
Like the other books in the Condemned series, TORMENTED can stand on its own.
This book does come with a trigger warning. Dragath25 is a dark, brutal prison planet.
1
Something didn’t smell right.
Eyes closed, grumbling to himself, Ryker wrinkled his nose and tried to identify what was off.
Metal, rot, dust, male stink, and death—all familiar odors after living on the prison planet where he and his soldier teammates had been marooned. But…he sniffed again…there it was. The tart rhozeberry scent of his favorite fruit. So subtle it washed through his lungs like a wave. Tantalizing. Cleansing. Beckoning.
Lips tilting upward, he followed his nose and pushed to his elbow—only to get slammed.
Vicious pain wrapped around the base of his skull and squeezed his balls in a viselike grip.
He sucked in a sharp breath. Fought the urge to vomit. Moving his head was definitely not the best of plans.
His eyes popped open. Total inky blackness.
Not even the flickering hazy lights that had lit the slave mines where he and his crew had been imprisoned—or the too bright suns of the surface that had greeted them upon their escape.
Where the fuck was he?
A memory tugged at him, told him his crewmate Grif was supposed to be by his side, that their initial air mission had been put on hold. But for what?
He shifted, his sluggish mind wading toward alertness, registering nearby howls and shrieks. He grew aware of smooth, even ground beneath his palms. Definitely not natural rock. There was also hot air against his skin—Dragath hell, the realization hit all at once—because someone had taken his clothes, favorite ax, and boots.
Leaving him bare-assed as a newborn.
Instinctively, his hand twitched, reaching for the familiar anchor around his throat. But the cord of rope—and the carved figurine that hung off it—were gone. Replaced by a thick, ugly band.
He let out a roar.
“Finally. You wake. Your head must be less dense that it looks.” A hard voice. Icy. Disdainful.
His haze evaporated.
“You!” His head snapped up. Another blast of vicious pain blared through him. But his rage and aggression proved stronger. He fumbled to his feet, leaden arms tucking into attack position.
“Stand down.” The sharp order cracked from the other side of the darkness, giving him a bead on the speaker’s location. “If killing each other was viable, you’d already be bleeding out all over the cell floor.”
Everything coalesced into crystal-sharp focus. His adrenaline spiking as the source of the rhozeberry scent became apparent and his memory returned in full.
His cellmate. Bloodthirsty. Skilled. Female.
The reason he was here in the first place.
On a howl, he charged.
2
Six planetary hours earlier…
“Freeze.” Ryker’s voice was steady, the ax in his hand even steadier.
Finding no guards posted outside, he’d resigned himself to the fact that the room would be empty. The weapon he’d come to claim, gone.
But after only recently escaping the prison mines, he should be used to surprises. And the female standing a few arm’s lengths away, her back turned as she cradled the object he sought, was a definite curveball.
“Wh-who are you?” The woman’s hands white-knuckled around the metal machine, but she didn’t turn. Instead, she shook with fear. Typical of those who ended up in the clutches of 223’s gang, the ruthless band of rapists and murderers that lived in this settlement and ran the prison planet as if it were their own personal playground.
“I’ll ask the questions.” He was gambling she’d mistake him for a gang member. Streaked with red dust and dirt and sporting the typical pack uniform of ragged loincloth, boots, and nothing else, he’d tried to look like he belonged. “No one’s supposed to be in here.”
Only a short time before, he’d watched as 223 and his followers headed out of their main territory to do what they did best: terrorize nearby neighbors, scavenge anything they could, and destroy everything in their path.
It was the opportunity for which he and his teammate Grif had been waiting. The new mission their Commander had given them a simple one: retrieve the weapon, don’t fuck up, and definitely, whatever they did, don’t let their new, feral neighbors know there was a still-vulnerable settlement of recently escaped Resistance soldiers and one female trying to carve out a new start for themselves only a few days’ hike across the highest ridge.
“The M-Master told me to wait here for his return.” Soiled, torn fabric that had once been a shirt hung off the trembling female, revealing more than
it hid. A tangle of yellow feminine curls reached almost to her lower back. Red dust, dirt, purple bruises, and flecks of crimson dotted across her flesh.
One more victim the planet Dragath25 had chewed up and would swallow whole.
He should have felt pity. Compassion. Hell, maybe even an unwelcome flash of lust after so much time imprisoned underground with only his hand for company.
But all he felt was…absolutely nothing.
And that was the way he liked it.
“If you want to see another pair of suns rise”—he sharpened his voice to ensure compliance—“you’ll put the weapon down and place your hands on your head.”
Grif, the stealthiest bastard in their unit, was patrolling the alleys between the rusting hovels that passed for buildings in 223’s settlement. He’d be checking doorways, eradicating potential ambush sites, and generally clearing the way of any surprises, but his partner couldn’t stay out of sight forever. Which meant Ryker had to move fast.
“Please. I was just curious about what it was.” The weapon shook in the female’s hold. “I—I didn’t mean any harm. I’ll do whatever you want.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Just don’t hurt me.” She started to turn.
“I said freeze.” The weapon lock appeared to be in place, but if she accidently flipped it and the damn contraption went off, they’d all be dead. It was that powerful. Or that, at least, was the rumor that had reached their camp and troubled his Commander enough that he’d pulled Ryker and Grif off their planned scouting trip and sent them to check things out.
What they’d found hadn’t been comforting.
Until recently, most of what got dumped on the prison planet was trash, throwaway scraps discarded by those back home on New Earth. But 223 and his gang had somehow gotten hold of a weapon far more lethal and advanced than anything ever seen on Dragath25.
It was not an auspicious beginning for his team’s plans to live free of tyranny.
“Put the weapon down now,” he ordered a second—and final—time. “Or you’ll be dead before you finish your next sentence.”
A shuddered gasp. Another sob.
He stifled a yawn.
If Saralynee could see him now, she’d be horrified at the man he’d become. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She wasn’t around to see.
“I’m doing it. Please. Wh-whatever you want.” The weapon dropped to the rickety table and Ryker hid a wince. The female’s hands rose upward.
He considered his next move. Death would have been the smartest choice, but even he didn’t kill women without cause.
Grif, with his white knight syndrome, would have argued for taking her with them, but she’d only slow them down and getting that weapon away from 223 took precedence. Besides, it wasn’t as if the female was chained to the wall. Nope, she was moving around freely, helping herself to whatever caught her fancy.
Ryker settled on knocking her out. He wasn’t anyone’s hero. Hadn’t been for a long time.
“Eyes forward,” he barked, advancing toward her, arm already raising.
Once the weapon was in hand, he and Grif would be hightailing it to their crew’s hidden settlement before anyone even noticed it was missing. Or before the approaching dust storms became an issue.
A perfectly executed mission.
The blur of movement at his front was so fast, silent, and unexpected, he almost didn’t absorb it in time.
The table sailed toward him, spinning like a top.
Only his honed reflexes saved him.
He launched upward, thighs bunching, the near-healed laser burn he’d gotten during his prison breakout pulling unpleasantly.
The table flew past.
He landed in a crouch. A crash sounded behind as the rickety piece of furniture slammed into the wall.
There was no time to survey the damage. Only react. His head jerking backward, his body following in a tight flip as a wild mop of blond hair loomed, a delicate, but lethal palm driving toward his throat.
The female was not playing around. Nor was she the scared victim she’d pretended to be.
He came up swinging, his ax slicing upward—before a flash of Saralynee’s face had him turning his weapon flat, shifting his strike from a fatal cleaving to a mere blow.
It didn’t matter. His attacker dodged it anyway.
He swiveled with her, reaching out with his free hand for her hair—long, flowing locks he intended to use as leverage to drag her to her knees and teach her a lesson. Because she might be fast and bold, but he was a ruthless fighter who’d cut his teeth as a soldier in the Resistance and been honed into a brutal killing machine in the hellish, unsanctioned Council labor mines. He didn’t play fair. He didn’t do mercy. And seizing her long hair was the easiest way to bring this to a close fast.
Only the heavy clump of hair slipped from her head to hang limp in his grasp.
A wig. She was wearing a wig.
He was still processing it as she glided out of reach.
His eyebrows rose despite himself. Holy Janus. “Who the hell are you?”
No response. No expression. Just a hard, cold assessing glare that suggested she was cataloguing exactly how to maximize his pain.
As contrary as the rest of him, his cock twitched.
Silky hair so black it was almost blue was braided and pinned on the female’s head like a crown, a perfect complement to the regal bearing, swan-like neck, and ice-cold disdain that emanated from every pore. Her skin was smooth, flawless alabaster. Her dark eyebrows slanted over catlike eyes of brilliant green and heavy black lashes, her cheekbones two slashes of carved rock that added to the harsh perfection of her face.
Even the rags she wore contributed to her queenly air as her shoulders drew back and her body unfolded to its full height, drawing attention to long, lean legs and a proud, tall stance. This was a woman who bowed to no one.
The only inconsistency: a lush mouth that was wide and ruby red.
She was gorgeous. A siren of unsurpassable beauty. And as austere as the marble goddess sculpture she resembled.
“I asked you a question.” He dropped the wig to the floor.
“You’d be wise not to underestimate me again.” Her voice was nothing like the high-pitched, breathless tone she’d affected before. Instead, it was low and husky and dragged across his skin like the nails of a kothi cat. “I am a trained Council operative.”
Rage tinted his vision red. Red like the rocky wall of the prison mine. Red like the wounds slashed across Saralynee’s belly and throat. Red like the ugly scar snaking down his ribs.
“Council.” Hate sizzled beneath his skin. The first crack in the numbness that had been his companion and his salvation.
There was nothing he despised more than the Council, the tyrannical body governing New Earth.
“You just signed your own death warrant with that claim.” He didn’t normally kill women, but this time he’d make an exception. “The only good Council lackey is a dead one.”
“You’re not the first to make such a declaration—and fail.” The female crouched lower. “I have been tasked by my employers with securing 223’s weapon. I have never once disappointed them. I do not intend to start now.”
“Plans change.”
“I cannot be taken down by some oversized prison planet degenerate. Believe me, others on this planet have already tried.”
That explained the blood. The bruises. And the fact that she was alone in 223’s quarters. She’d taken out the guards he’d expected to find protecting the weapon.
It also explained her overconfidence. She assumed he was just another of the feral convicts marooned here in punishment.
But those were no longer the only inhabitants calling Dragath25 home. Not since the increasingly corrupt Council began using the planet as a dumping ground for anyone who opposed them.
“I’m not one of 223’s ilk,” he corrected. “I’m Resistance.” A band of brutal, ruthless warriors who risked everything so their kind would one
day be free. “Degenerate doesn’t even begin to describe what I’ve become under your Council’s loving thumb.”
He liked the way she swallowed at his declaration. A barely perceptible reaction, but one, nonetheless.
He launched himself forward as she leapt right, her hand stretching toward 223’s work space. And the closest useful projectile.
With a curse, he swung his ax, deflecting the soaring scraps of metal headed for his forehead. Again and again. All the while, advancing closer, crunching her flimsy missiles to dust under his boots.
Until he was an arm’s length away from hard emerald eyes, the surprising scent of rhozeberry seeping into his lungs.
Hard to believe something so evil could smell so good.
Without warning, he hurled his ax.
She ducked. The blade burying into the wall with a loud thwack, missing the top of her head by a thumb’s length.
Seizing on her distraction, he closed the last of the distance, his free hand grabbing the second, smaller ax at his back. Whipping it high, he prepared for the killing blow.
A sharp point dug into his stomach.
“Drop it,” she snarled.
He looked down. A blade. Now protruding from her left hand. Out of nowhere.
Clever. She’d used the projectiles to make him believe she had no other recourse. Nudged him toward overconfidence. Lured him in.
It was almost a shame she was Council.
His ax clattered to the ground in surrender.
Just as he slammed upward with his knee, accepting the sharp, shallow slash up his stomach as the cost of continued survival.
Her knife flew skyward. He followed up with a roundhouse to the knee.
Faster than he would have thought possible, she threw herself sideways.
He lunged. Tackled her. She was fast, but he was stronger. They crashed to the floor, his heavy bulk crushing her into the ground.
With a hiss, her legs clamped around his waist, the thin, ripped rag she wore riding up, bringing her flesh directly in contact with his thigh.
The long lean lines of her flexed, and she used the momentum to flip them both, bringing her on top.
He hadn’t had a woman’s legs wrapped around his hips in a long time.