by Loki Renard
With that, he left her alone and she took a little time to assess her new prison. It wasn't as nice as his old cells; clearly the organization had been under some fiscal stress in the interim.
She was not worried. Savage would come for her. When he found out she'd gotten herself kidnapped, he'd be mad as hell. And he was already mad as hell. Which meant he'd probably be a supernova of mad. He could probably break her out just by tunneling through the wall with white-hot rage.
She sat back on the thin rubber mattress, feeling oddly happy. It made no sense at all to feel happy. After all, she was incarcerated by a villain who cared nothing for her and would probably be quite amused if she were to be the recipient of a small lead present. And yet, the feeling remained.
Zora thought back to a comment Martin Holt had once made about her being addicted to adrenaline. Maybe she was. Maybe the worst thing about being at Fort Thistle was just being expected to sit around and stare at screens all day.
The mesh covered speaker in the wall crackled into life. Tex's smooth tones floated through it.
“What are you looking so contented about? Has it been that long since someone played into your prisoner fantasies?”
She flipped the camera off and heard him chuckle.
“I'll admit, I'm a little disappointed,” he said. “I had always imagined you'd panic and throw one of your infamous tantrums. Instead you're curling up like a kitten by the fire. It's almost as if you belong here.”
She reminded herself that Tex had always been excellent in the arena of mind games. He made Martin Holt look like a rank amateur. In response to his taunts she curled up on her side and used her hands as a pillow. It was not at all comfortable, but she made it work. Before long, she was drifting off to a surprisingly peaceful sleep.
“I'm glad you're here, Matthews,” Tex said, taunting her over breakfast. “It's been too long since I had anyone to really gloat at.”
She was still incarcerated in her cell. Tex had brought breakfast in a tray on his lap. From anyone else it might have been a gesture of kindness. From Tex it was just another way of messing with her.
“That's a nice suit,” Zora said, glancing up at him with a scowl. “It would be a pity if someone dumped cornflakes and milk all over it.”
“Oh good, yes, one of your bratty little hijinks,” Tex said. “It would be amusing to beat you again too. Perhaps when I get this cast off. We will have such fun together. I've already sent Savage a ransom note.”
“What are you trying to get for me?”
“Nothing really,” Tex said. “It's not a terribly good ransom note. I suppose it’s more of a taunt than a ransom.”
“Taunts work too,” she said. “I'm not sure he wants me back, to be honest.”
“You really should be more worried,” Tex said conversationally. “You do realize that I'm hell bent on revenge, don't you?”
“True, but I'm just the tool of your revenge,” she said. “You've never seriously hurt me, and I don't think you will. It's your gentleman's code.”
Tex's features formed a vaguely threatening aspect. “I suspend the gentleman's code if someone shoots me, that's the rule.”
“I didn't shoot you,” Zora reminded him.
“No, but you did set me up and save that madwoman so she could shoot me.”
“True,” Zora admitted. “But this is about Savage really, not me. You're mad at him. And he's mad at me, so maybe he'll just leave me here.”
“I don't think so. You've probably soaked up a whole lot of military intelligence,” Tex said. “You were at Fort Thistle, the worst place in the world for someone like you. I bet I could squeeze all sorts of interesting information out of you if necessary.”
Zora took a few bites of her cornflakes, but it was hard to eat with Tex watching her and gloating over every spoonful. She dropped the spoon and gave him a dour look. “Don't you have anything better to do with your life than torture us?”
“Captain Savage has been a thorn in my side for much longer than you can imagine,” Tex said. “I'm looking forward to shooting him. Unlike that mad dog blondie, I won't miss every major organ. Maybe you'll get to watch.”
It was meant to be an incendiary comment and it got a result. Zora threw her cornflakes at him. It was a direct hit to the facial region. Milk and flakes went everywhere, one managed to lodge itself in Tex's nose, much to Zora's amusement.
“That was a mistake,” he said, brushing the crumbling soggy mess into his shirt. “You'll regret that. I think I'll shoot him twice.”
Zora screwed up her face in disdain. “Shooting a man 'cause someone threw cornflakes at you. You never used to be petty, Tex. You used to have goals.”
“I'll get back to my goals once I've ended your Savage. I would have done it earlier, but I knew you would come sooner or later. You can't help it, Matthews. You're predictable.”
So was he. That was why Zora wasn't worried. She'd been taken by the big bad Tex before and no ill had ever become of her. He wasn't a brute and though he might have been a killer, he was the sort of killer who kept his hands clean. A coward, really, content to do the dirty deed when one was sleeping or otherwise safely out of sight and mind. As long as she was looking him in the eye, she was safe.
“You don't believe me, do you?” He smirked. “You have such faith in that behemoth.”
“He's never failed me yet.”
“So you think,” Tex replied. “He knows just how to play you, doesn't he? He lies to your face, he puts you in danger and he strips you of every semblance of freedom and you adore him for it. I've rarely come across such a skilled manipulator.”
Zora rolled her eyes. “You don't get it, do you?”
“I don't,” Tex agreed. “Explain it to me. What is the attraction? Is it simple animal instinct to submit to a lumbering alpha male?”
Leaning back against her cell wall, Zora stretched her legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “I know he lies,” she said. “And I know I'm supposed to spin out about that, but dammit Tex, everyone lies. The only question I ever have is why is someone lying? He's lying because he's trying to do the impossible. He's trying to be my lover and my keeper and he's trying to serve his country. You're lying because all you do is hate. And maybe because you're terminally bored.”
Tex chuckled. “You think me bored?”
“Of course,” Zora said. “You could be doing all sorts of evil villain things with all this power and money at your disposal. But you're chasing around after Savage because he's your nemesis. You know what the really sad thing is?”
“What is that?”
She looked at him pityingly. “You're not his nemesis. He couldn't care less about you. You're a job to him. That's it. You have yourself a case of unrequited nemesisisity, Tex.”
Tex's expression grew frighteningly dark. “And you have a suicide tongue,” he said, rage leaking into his gravelly voice. He put his hands to his wheels and began to withdraw from the cell. Only he barely had room to maneuver and it was an awkward process for him to open the cell door, and then try to stick a bit of his body or chair in it before it closed on him again.
“It's hard to make a dramatic exit when you're in a wheelchair,” Zora sympathized, beaming as she found herself unexpectedly having the upper hand. “Want me to hold the door for you? I could slam it after you leave if you like.”
“I have a little piece of news for you, Zora,” Tex said. “Perhaps I am just a job to Savage, but so are you. I know why you're so comfortable here, with me. It's a change of prison. In fact, you're more free with me than you ever will be with him. One day you might even thank me for killing him.”
With that, he shunted himself through the door. It clanged shut behind him and Zora was left alone with her thoughts. She should have been terrified and angry, but she wasn't. A curious calm had settled over her. An epiphany of sorts. She suddenly saw that she'd been chasing the wrong thing. For months she'd been obsessed with the notion of freedom at all costs, so much so that
even the laws of physics sometimes seemed oppressive.
There were so many ways in which she would never be truly free. She would always be a woman. She would always be limited by her essential humanity. She would always be forced to live inside her own brain, experiencing everything through the filter of mush inside her skull. In that dark cell, she finally realized that freedom wasn't about being able to be anything and do anything. Freedom was a state of mind.
Even in that tight, cramped space, she could be free. She was free to love Savage. And that love wasn't shackles or chains. It was the spaces in between. It was her salvation. It was hope and it was joy and it was all the things she'd once imagined would come to her if only she could carve out a limitless world.
“Wow,” she murmured to herself. “I've made a huge mistake. I've been a massive fucking idiot.”
The intercom clicked on.
“I agree.”
“Oh fuck off, Tex.”
The intercom went dead. She spent the rest of the day in silence and solitude, contemplating her life. For the first time in a very long time she felt optimistic. When she escaped the cell – and it was certain that she would at some point – she knew precisely what she was going to do. She was going to stop fucking up her life, she was going to stop fucking up Savage's life and she was going to be good. Or as good as she could manage to be.
At some point she must have fallen asleep, because she woke up in pitch blackness with the sounds of gunfire and shouting outside her cell. She was instantly afraid. Curling up in the corner of the room, she drew her legs up to her chest and stared into the darkness with wide, frightened eyes as outside what sounded like a full blown battle raged.
All her previous bravado about being certain Savage would save her faded as shot after shot rang out. What if those shots were hitting him? What if Tex had managed to ambush him? What if? What if?
The door to her cell slammed open and she braced herself for something terrible as a tall, powerful silhouette entered the room. The brightness of the light outside made it difficult for her to see anything besides shadows, but she knew the voice when she heard it.
“Zora.”
“Savage?”
She held out her arms to him, but there was no tender embrace for her. Without skipping a beat, Savage sat down, hauled her over his lap and began whacking her backside with hearty swats of his palm that cracked not only against her ass, but also around the walls of the concrete room. She opened her mouth to shout, but no sound came out.
He was giving her a whupping like no other, without so much as a 'hello', or a 'how are you?' Not a word of greeting or love. Just smacking. So much smacking. Zora was left tipped high over his knee, her ass the highest point of her body as she scrabbled at the floor, her hair getting into her eyes and mouth as she screeched and squealed and begged him to stop.
“I told you to stay put in Fort Thistle,” he said, slapping her backside with every word. “Then I told you to go back there. You did neither. You are, without a doubt, the most disobedient, troublesome, outrageous little brat I've ever met in my entire life.”
“Sorrryyyy!”
“Don't you dare apologize,” he growled, turning his attention to her upper thighs. “You don't know the meaning of ‘sorry’. You're only ever sorry that your ass is being tanned. The moment you can sit comfortably again you go back off to do whatever you feel like doing. You're incapable of behaving yourself, Zora Matthews, completely and utterly.”
By that stage her pants had melted under the fury of his ire and were sagging around her knees, her panties askew mid-thigh as her lava cheeks bubbled with the heat of his disciplinary fury. She began to sob, long past the point of speech as he drew her up and gave her that which she least expected – a hug.
She was drawn against his chest, her tears running down his tactical vest as he held her close and swore softly under his breath.
“Dammit, Matthews, what am I going to do with you?”
“Hate me,” she sobbed.
“I don't hate you. I could never hate you, but dammit, Zora. If you don't push me to the very limit of patience,” he said, rubbing his large, hot hand down the center of her back. “You're always in trouble. Always. Why can't you just do as you're told? Why?”
“I don't know,” she said, blinking through tears. “I tried.”
“Did you?” He looked down at her. “Did you actually try at all?”
“I tried a little.”
“You tried for about two seconds then realized that you like to have things your own way no matter what,” he said, shaking his head at her. “I don't know what the heck they're going to do with you when I take you back.”
Zora didn't know what they were going to do either. She was starting to feel as if she might have made a terrible mistake in leaving Fort Thistle in the first place. Uncomfortable tendrils of guilt and regret were beginning to sprout in her belly.
“Well,” she said softly. “I guess I'll just have to deal with it, whatever it is.”
Savage nodded. “Let's see if you still mean that when your butt isn't bright red.”
He reached down and pulled her pants up for her, ignoring her yelp of discomfort as she was re-clothed.
“Let's get out of here, Matthews.”
Zora sat next to a silent Savage on the way back to Fort Thistle. He was not happy with her and she knew he wasn't happy with her, but she was so damn happy to be by his side that she found herself completely able to ignore his ire.
“When we get back, you are going to do exactly as I say. Exactly,” Savage informed her. “You're probably going straight into a cell, and if that's the case I don't want to hear so much as a whine out of you. You brought this on yourself, Matthews.”
His words were hard. His demeanor was cold. She wondered if she'd finally gone too far. She wondered if he was truly done with her this time. She was too afraid to ask if that was the case, so she kept her mouth shut and just enjoyed being near him. In spite of her earlier bravado, she was feeling quite shaky and very relieved to have been sprung from Tex's lair.
***
Sure enough when Zora returned to Fort Thistle, she was not returned to the house she and Savage had shared. She was put in a cell and left to stew. It was a painful punishment, because she knew Savage was just outside somewhere but she could not see him. He did not come to see her. She spent most of her hours wondering if he would ever want to see her again.
One day in the cell drew on to another day, and then another. For three days the only people she saw were the MPs who brought her food and checked on her to make sure she wasn't doing anything not allowed.
On the morning of the fourth day, she was released to Savage. She practically skipped into the sunshine, she was so happy to be free. Her happiness only grew when she laid eyes on her captain. He was standing outside the cellblock, his arms folded across his chest as he gave her a look that made her stomach flip and turn with excitement.
“Don't celebrate too soon, Matthews,” he warned her in a low rumble. “You're still in trouble.”
“Of course, but I'm in trouble out here. With you.” She gave him a hopeful smile, but was not rewarded with one in return.
“Come,” he said. “You have some serious apologizing to do.”
“Apologizing?”
“It's what you do when you've hurt people,” he said curtly. “It's a common courtesy. One of many you don't seem to be familiar with.”
He certainly wasn't happy. Zora decided to go along with whatever he wanted in the hopes that he'd lose the stone face and maybe crack a smile at her. She felt as though he wasn't even happy to see her again. She felt as though she were nothing but a burden and a pain. And maybe she was. Not that it made apologizing any easier.
Their first stop was Martin Holt's office.
“Apologize to Mr Holt for what you did to him,” Savage said. “Not that there is any mere apology that can begin to make up for drugging a man.”
“Sorry,” Zo
ra said, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand to hide some of her shame. “Sorry about the whole kidnapping thing.”
“That's not an apology,” Savage growled into her ear, leaning down as he held her in place, one hand on each of her shoulders. “Try again.”
“I'm sorry,” she said again. “I'm sorry I kidnapped you and I'm sorry I've been so much trouble for you. I hope I haven't caused any long term harm.”
“Better,” Savage said, straightening. “Marginally.”
“Thank you, Ms Matthews,” Martin Holt said. “I appreciate the apology.”
She didn't know if he really did, but she was glad he said he did. Maybe it would placate Savage's ire.
“You owe him much more than an apology,” Savage said. “This man singlehandedly got you out of 90% of the trouble you're in. He filed a report saying that you and he went out on a training exercise. The kidnapping and escape is our little secret. If it wasn't for Holt, you'd still be in jail.”
Zora brightened immediately. “Really? Thanks!”
“You're welcome,” Martin Holt said. “I hope you make the most of your second chance.”
“I will,” Zora promised without thinking.
That was it for Martin Holt. He didn't seem to be terribly concerned by what had happened, if anything, he had a certain spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. He'd always seemed mildly content with life, but now he looked outright happy.
Zora mused on that as Savage marched her out of the main building and back to their house, where Ms Wright still seemed to be in residence, judging by her staid, solid presence in their lounge.
Chapter Thirteen
“What is she doing here?” Zora turned to Savage. “She better not be living with us full time.”
The question was answered with a sharp smack to Zora's bottom. “Apologize to Ms Wright.”
“But I didn't do anything to her!”
Another hard smack landed on Zora's other cheek. “Apologize.”
“I'm sorry,” Zora said, her voice all strained and polite like a telephone answering service. “For any inconvenience I might have caused you.”