Forest's Fall (Captive Hearts Book 3)

by Ellie Masters

  How could I soothe his pain if he kept it all bottled up inside?

  How could the fragile beginnings of our relationship take root if he pushed me away?

  It didn’t matter what Snowden did, or Paul for that matter. I loved Forest no matter what.

  I felt helpless.

  Paul’s penetrating gaze landed on me briefly before focusing on Snowden. A look of irritation flashed in his eyes, but he covered it quickly with a smug, victorious look.

  “Fucking amazing as always.” Snowden’s oily smile spread across his face. “I love how you always bring them to their knees. Every. Damn. Time. You have truly mastered my lessons, but are you going to fuck him?”

  His lessons?

  “I’ll fuck him when I’m ready and have the privacy I need.”

  Over the past week, I’d spent far too much time around Snowden and Paul. Snowden disgusted me on every level. Paul, I couldn’t figure out. I didn’t like him, but an odd respect flowed between us. He protected me, and I wanted to know why.

  An odd flow of power shifted between Snowden and Paul. While Snowden snapped at his men, there was a deference he extended to Paul. I paid attention to it all while I filed papers, transcribed dictation, and cleaned the corners of his office he never went near.

  Paul lowered Forest to the floor. It looked like he whispered something to Forest, but I was too far away to hear. Snowden stood, losing interest in the men and snapped his fingers at me.

  “Come along, Miss Sara. We have work to do.”

  My duties as his assistant began with a steno notebook where I scratched out lists Snowden dictated, drafted letters he sent out by hand, and crossed off his to-do list as he completed various tasks. I fetched coffee, answered his phone, and kept people waiting who were eager to speak to their boss. The structure of his empire slowly took shape and terrified me with its global scale.

  Not once did he allow me near a computer. My ultimate goal was to send a message to Xavier, but Snowden kept my outside access to the world blocked.

  My time would come.

  Forest’s words kept running through my head, begging me to trust him, but I feared we were running out of time. How much more could Forest endure?

  Our future didn’t look bright. Snowden didn’t keep much from me. I drafted all manner of letters detailing the inner workings of his operation. I knew supply routes, the flow of money, clientele lists, and so much more. An intelligent man, the message he sent was a powerful one. There was no way he would ever let me leave. I knew too much.

  But something was happening to his business.

  Just yesterday, another of his affiliates had shut down. Something happened with a bank transfer. I didn’t get all the details, but it wasn’t the first. There had been four such seizures this past week alone. Accounts closed over money-laundering concerns, or tax evasion, or something else.

  Snowden’s agitation had been palpable. He nearly lost it. I’d never been hit before, but he came close. He pulled his punch and calmed himself down when Paul leaped to his feet and shouted.

  Paul was always there, watching over me and protecting me, even when it was against Snowden. I was never without Paul.

  Except for now.

  I turned to follow Snowden while Paul stayed with Forest. I felt exposed walking the halls without Paul by my side.

  Snowden’s phone rang. He held it to his ear and listened for a time before pulling up short and cursing at whoever was on the other end. My shoulders hunched and I took a step back, trying my best to be small, unobtrusive…invisible.

  “I don’t care what the excuse is. We need that shipment delivered on time.”

  A shipment meant lives he intended to destroy.

  “What happened?”

  I followed only half the conversation but got the gist. Instead of his affiliates with banking issues, there was a problem in the supply chain. Transports had been confiscated. There’d been some kind of raid.

  A smile spread across my face. Anything which interrupted the flow of people through his operation was a win in my book. I kept my head down, hands clasped in front of me, and lengthened the distance between us. My gut said I was safe, even if the anger turning his face red told me to be cautious.

  Our days were always this way, perpetually on the cusp of a maniacal meltdown by a madman, but damn it if Snowden wasn’t one of the most talented businessmen I’d ever run across.

  As Forest’s executive secretary, I’d seen all manner of successful men. Their tempers might run hot, some might say volatile, but at the end of the day, the decisions they made brought success.

  Snowden was no different. He ran a multi-national sex-trafficking operation. The money flowing through various accounts staggered the mind.

  But some of that flow had slowed.

  Now transport routes broke down. There were raids on holding facilities.

  He yelled at whoever was on the other end of the phone, barking out orders, then shoved the phone back in his pocket. Ignoring me, he headed back down the hall and toward his office.

  I knew the way from the rooms where he kept me to his office by heart, memorizing every twist and turn, but that was it. Whatever grand plans I’d had of learning the layout of this compound had yet to come to fruition.

  I couldn’t get word out to Xavier.

  I didn’t know how many men Snowden had guarding this place.

  I didn’t even know how many floors were in the building.

  Useless information filled my head like there were precisely seventy-six steps after the next turn before we came to his office door.

  “Get me a coffee,” he barked, and I leaped to comply.

  Decidedly unoriginal, he was a predictable man. Snowden arrived at nine sharp every morning to collect Forest. He kept Forest until noon. That’s when Paul escorted me to Snowden’s office. He had lunch brought by one of the many slaves, none of whom spoke to me. While I perched on a chair in the corner of his office, Paul joined Snowden for lunch.

  After that, Snowden put me to work. I spent my afternoons doing whatever clerical work he demanded. When his dinner was served, Paul returned me to my rooms, where I either found Forest crashed out in bed, sitting silently on the couch or worse; some days, he wasn’t there at all. I hated those days the most.

  Forest never told me what happened, and I didn’t ask. After today, I had a better understanding of what he endured. That gave me even more reason to get a message out to Xavier.

  We need the cavalry to save the day.

  I deposited Snowden’s coffee on his desk.

  He snapped his fingers and pointed to his files. “Get me the Echo file.”

  I wandered over to the filing cabinets and searched. A paranoid man, Snowden straddled old and new. He didn’t trust computers, afraid a hacker might break through his security and kept most of his records in paper form. I went in search of the Echo file.

  His organizational system made no sense. Alphabetical might be one way to start, and while his frustration with my lack of speed in finding the random files he demanded could be volatile, he refused to allow me to reorganize.

  Not that my stomach could handle it. Most of what he had included portfolios of victims. He had the bios, pictures, details of sale, and the dreaded red Retired stamp over far too many names. I suspected every victim whoever passed through his operation had a file in one of these cabinets.

  It was a goldmine of information which would lock him behind bars for several lifetimes. But it wasn’t portable. It would require a truck to transport it all, and time we didn’t have.

  I found the file and pulled it without looking at the contents inside. I’d done that once.

  I didn’t know if there’d been a direct correlation, but that day had been one of the worst for Forest. After a few days, a pattern slowly emerged, and I faced a sobering truth. The days I slipped up were the ones Forest stayed away the longest and came back in the worst shape.

  I placed the file on Snowden’s desk,
then went to my chair in the corner where I waited for the next command. My entire goal was to be invisible, unobtrusive, and blend in with the decor.

  Despite my executive assistant duties or mockery thereof, Snowden handled most things himself. His paranoia was certifiable, and yet the access he granted me to the inner workings of his operation exposed him to significant risk if I ever got out of this place.

  I think that was the point. We weren’t getting out of here.

  Other than making coffee, fetching files he was too lazy to find himself, and staring out the window onto the stark white landscape, it was a struggle to pass the time.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Forest

  Watching Sara leave fired up all my protective reflexes. I couldn’t protect her when I wasn’t allowed to be with her. That left me to rely on a man I didn’t understand. Paul and I were cautious enemies.

  I trusted him, even if I didn’t understand why, but we were in the process of becoming…Fuck if I knew what the hell we were in the process of becoming.

  “I’d say you survived.” Paul’s cultured voice vibrated within my chest, lodging itself deep inside where it got far too comfortable and kicked up its feet.

  The man played me like a Master, giving indescribable pleasure. No one else had done that before. I got hard for Paul before he touched me.

  “Congratulations, you jerked me off.” I tried to sound unaffected, but that was a fucking lie. “That’s not the first time a man had his hand on my dick.”

  “I did more than put my hand on your dick, and you know it.”

  “Fucker.” I pushed away from him, only realizing we were locked in some weird embrace. My cum clung to his washboard abs and damned if I didn’t want to lick him clean.

  “Asshole. You came hard, and you’re already thinking about more.” The cocky bastard dared to speak the truth swirling between us.

  I’d done more than come. He was right about that.

  “You give a good handjob. Are you expecting a goddamn medal?” I tried to play it off like I hadn’t fallen apart in his hands.

  “That’s not why you came so hard.” He swiped at my cum and brought it to his mouth.

  While I watched, he made a show of licking his fingers clean. I suppressed a low groan. How did he make that look so fucking erotic? I wanted to leap at him and lock my lips with his just to taste myself on his lips.

  “Stop that.”

  “Make me.”

  “Fucker.”

  “We need to work on your vocabulary. There’s no shame in denying what you need, or in accepting that I can give it to you.”

  My body, such as it was, really was just a body. It responded like a well-trained dog. It never failed to get hard given a little dick love, be it by hand, mouth, or something else.

  “I happen to like sex.”

  “So do I. We’re well-matched in that regard.”

  My dick was a hungry fucker, always eager and ready.

  Well, except for Snowden. There was no eagerness for sex with Snowden, but my dick responded to the responses he’d conditioned into me when I’d been far too young.

  My dick reacted the same way to his men, but that was something I had on Snowden.

  He thought to degrade me, but the truth was I found mutually satisfying pleasure in the hands of his men. He fed directly into my voracious appetite for sex and gave me psychological relief from his torture.

  That helped in other ways.

  His men couldn’t help but like me. I might be a bit quirky, but I had my strengths. They shared things they shouldn’t and respected the one skill I had above all others. How many of Snowden’s men had handed me their phones to debug over the past few weeks? Word got around that I fixed things, and I was pretty sure they didn’t share that with the boss.

  They knew I was a tech genius but were too damn stupid to understand what that meant. And while they did their due diligence and watched what I did with their phones, they didn’t understand what it was I was doing to them.

  Paul, the fucker, helped with this. Code I placed in his phone hijacked Snowden’s Wi-Fi network, spreading like a virus as it hopped from phone to phone, collecting data, passwords, and so much more.

  Snowden had no idea how fucked he would soon be. Nearly all the pieces were in play.

  I turned my thoughts back to the man standing in front of me. “Well-matched? Is that what you think?” I gave a little laugh because I eagerly looked forward to fucking Paul, or rather getting fucked by him.

  Could he give me what I craved?

  The things he said about him, me, and Sara had my mind spinning. Not that Sara would agree to such a thing. My angel was a timid thing, soft, sensitive, and destructible. Put her in bed with the two of us and she wouldn’t come out of it unscathed.

  A tingling in my balls had me squeezing my legs together. I shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. Shit, we hadn’t even had sex yet.

  Paul and I hadn’t had sex yet.

  Not real sex.

  “You’re thinking about Sara.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I see it in your eyes—the hunger—the ache. She’s not fond of me. It’ll be hard to convince her, but it’ll be worth it to try. The thought of you with her while I fuck you is intoxicating as shit.”

  “Keep your filthy hands off Sara.”

  He lifted his hands. “I’m not interested in her, but I’m not against a little threesome.”

  “That’ll never happen.” Fuck me, but all I could think about was a Paul and Sara sandwich with me in the middle. Talk about fucked in the head.

  I needed to get Paul alone and relieve some of this sexual tension. Until then, I wouldn’t be able to figure out the shit going on in my head.

  Paul took a step toward me. “He’s gone. We can…” His hard gaze cut to my crotch, where my dick elongated with each beat of my heart. Damn, if I didn’t want to do just that. My gaze dropped to his raging erection, and I licked my lower lip. Yeah, I wanted to taste that.

  “Later.” I cringed as that word slipped from my lips. It was an admission that he had me.

  “Later, it is.” It didn’t seem possible, but his voice broke.

  He mentioned Sara, and now all I could think about was my dear sweet angelic Sara. It was like there were two people inside my head.

  One ached for Paul.

  The other ripped in half every time Sara left the room.

  My love for her deepened with each passing day, even if I didn’t express my feelings. The truth was I didn’t know how to love a woman. I was in love with Sara. She completed me, but how did I show her? How did I do that in this crazy place, this nightmare, I put her in?

  Later? Shit, I’d just crossed a line, admitting I wanted him.

  He grabbed my nape before I could react. Pulling me forward, he placed his forehead against mine.

  “I’ll protect her because she means the world to you. I do that because you mean the world to me. Think about that when you imagine what will happen later.”

  A shiver rippled down my spine, lifting the fine hairs on my arms. He pulled back and rested a hand on my shoulder. His eyes met and held mine.

  Despite the dark, lust-filled thoughts streaming through my head, I felt at peace.

  Paul could have reveled in victory, but he didn’t. He didn’t stare at my lips, demanding my surrender. His eyes didn’t dip to my groin with the desire to touch and stimulate until I fell apart again. He looked into me, confessing more than the sexual desire which sizzled on our combined breaths. He hinted at something which terrified me. It was something beyond physical intimacy.

  Paul hauled me against his chest and kissed me with his perfect mouth and bruising lips. He yanked on my nape, a merciless grip which took me by surprise, but that was nothing compared to how he devoured my mouth.

  I opened for him, letting him sweep his tongue inside where he hunted for and found my tongue. As reckless as it might be, I was desperate enough not to ca
re. Paul kissed like no man I’d ever known, putting the full weight of his being into the act. All his passion, every beat of his heart, every molecule of air in his breath was caught up in the kiss.

  I couldn’t help but wrap my hands around his neck as my hunger overtook my senses. The throbbing between my legs intensified as my heart rate skyrocketed.

  Paul pressed close, arms winding around me as he deepened the kiss. Then all of a sudden, he released me.

  “Until…later.” A smirk curled the edges of his lips upward.

  The fucker got to me. He had me right where he wanted.

  We were going to fuck.

  No way that wasn’t happening after that kiss.

  The more vicious, the better.

  The more brutal, the better.

  I wanted to rage against him and take out all my anger on him. His skillful control was something I would meet head-on.

  I liked to fuck men.

  The physicality of it spoke to me on a base level and defined part of who I was.

  Snowden thought his silly games were breaking me down, but he didn’t know a fundamental truth about me.

  He gave me to his men, thinking that would break me. It did precisely the opposite. It fortified me against the fight to come and provided a much-needed outlet to vent the anger simmering inside of me.

  Now Paul was something else.

  If this was Snowden’s plan, I had already lost.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sara

  The door to Snowden’s office banged opened, and Paul stuck his head inside.

  “How’s it going?” His gaze cut to me and stopped.

  I sucked in a breath beneath the intensity of his gaze.

  “You finished?” Snowden waved at Paul to join him.

  “For now.”

  “Did you fuck him?”

  Paul’s gaze shifted to me, then returned to Snowden. “I’m waiting until he’s stronger. I prefer a challenge.” The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  I wanted to slap that smile off his face. Instead, I kept my thoughts to myself.

  “I’m surprised, considering how you’ve been going on and on about it.”