On Her Knees

The back of his hand hit my face for the third time but this slap really stung. The force of it rocked my head back but it wasn't enough to knock me off my feet. "Kneel," he commanded again, his voice thick with fury. I brought the back of one of my hands, that were bound in front of my body by rope, to wipe away the trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth. "I do not kneel," I whispered. I know what kind of things they made girls do on their knees. He would have to beat me senseless, kill me even to get me to do those things. The man's green eyes, the only thing I was able to clearly see in the darkness of this windowless room, glinted. He nodded, an unsettling evil grin stretching across his pale face. "Then you will stand." His fist hit me in the center of my chest and I hunched over, trying to breathe past the pain. Then he bent to whisper in my ear, grabbing a fistful of my dark curls, "But I promise you will wish you had gotten down on your knees." For Teryn Gardener, the truth behind human trafficking and the sex trade was far darker than she could have imagined; as if the institution wasn't terrible in and of itself. Behind the prostitutes are their pimps and behind it all are monsters beyond her wildest imaginations: bloodthirsty vampires who kidnap and enslave human girls in cheap brothels. They plan to use Teryn; to break her will but she refuses to cry. She refuses to bend the knee. She refuses to submit. She is intent on staying alive and getting out of there without having anything to do with the monsters she has come to despise. But what is she to do when her resistance leads her into the arms of one of the monsters? Will their senses of will clash or will Giovanni be the one to bring her to heel?