A few feet shy of the room I was expected to enter, I felt two hands slam against my backside.
“Why the hell did you come back?” Megan screamed. I turned, only to be assaulted more as she beat her hands against my chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You were free! Do you have any idea what I had to give up for you?!”
My back flat against the wall, I let her keep throwing herself at me. So did the asshole with the gun, who hung back watching us like a bad episode of Jerry Springer.
“Why the hell would I want to be free if you’re locked away the rest of your life?!” I yelled back. “Did you really think I’d just let this go and move on with a new life without you?! Who the fuck do you take me for?”
Her assault finally relented, but only so her arms could wave up and down like she was a four year old throwing a hissy fit. “When are you going to realize you CAN’T SAVE ME?!”
“When are you going to realize I CAN’T NOT TRY?!” I turned to the asshole with the gun and yelled, “Put a goddamn bullet in my head, because I will never just let you lock her away like this! I’ll never stop coming for her.”
Megan looked frantically between the two of us. Zander shrugged his face like yeah, okay, consider it done and Megan screamed, “WHAT? NO!!!”
“Enough,” he said calmly. He waved his gun again. “Megan. Go wait in our room.”
Every muscle in her body seemed to slacken. Her face fell, her shoulders slumped, her legs wobbled slightly. “Zander,” she said softly in a pleading tone, “Please, don’t.”
Annoyed with our little tirade, his eyes set hard on her. “What did I just tell you about disobeying me? I’m not in a forgiving mood right now.”
I didn’t wait to see what else passed between them. I moved through the door to my prison, needing the extra two seconds to dig out the miniaturized stun gun hidden in my pocket and activating it. I walked around the room and sat with my back against the wall, hiding the contraption just behind my right hip. I was already in the process of securing my left hand in the strap when he entered – without Megan. Once I was tied in, I left my right hand on the floor near the strap. He shook his head in disapproval, leaving the gun on the bed to come strap me in.
“Valiant, but incredibly stupid of you to come back, moron.”
Right before he reached my hand, I cupped the stun gun into my hand and slammed it against his forearm. A buzzing noise screeched the air. I grimaced from worry, because it wasn’t as strong as a normal stun gun, its size minimizing its effect. He was able to move at first, but very slowly, as he tried to pull back while the electric charges shocked their way through his systems. I smelled the hair burn on his arm, felt the vibrational kickback in my own hand, numbing myself a little in the process. I wasn’t going to be able to keep the connection between us that much longer. Luckily, I didn’t have to, as his body finally stopped fighting and collapsed beside me, his eyelids fluttering spastically before closing. I released the small contraption, but both our bodies continued to twitch.
Not that stupid, asshole.
“Megan?” My voice was weak, the right side of my body incredibly numb. I could move but everything was in slow motion. Even my brain apparently, because I couldn’t think what to do. All I could do was call out her name, each attempt getting louder and louder.
Finally, her head peeked around the corner, like she wanted to be able to hide quickly should Zander turn her way. But she couldn’t see him on the floor. Automatically, she scanned down the hallway looking for him.
“Help,” I called weakly. “He’s out.”
Confusion painted her face, but she bravely tip-toed in regardless. Inhaling a sharp breath, she took in his sleeping form on the ground. “Nick,” she whispered over a breath, not believing what I’d done. But she was more level-headed than I gave her credit for. She rushed over and began unstrapping my left bind. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I must not have held the stun gun correctly. My whole right arm is numb.”
“We have to hurry and get him strapped in before he wakes.”
Strap him in? “Fuck that,” I muttered. “Just shoot him.”
Then she said two little words that made absolutely no sense. “We can’t.”
We barely got Zander strapped against the wall before he came to. He was groggy at first, but as the blurriness faded, he began to realize the roles had been reversed. He jerked like crazy against the binds. Fearful, I snatched the gun off the bed and pointed it his way.
He paused his attack. “Natalie,” he said tiredly, blowing out a breath. “What are you doing?”
“I think I just found my third option.”
His eyes blinked a few times, then set hard on me. “You can’t do this. You have no idea what awaits you outside that door!”
Nick huffed. “What? Freedom? The joy of watching your ass rot behind bars? Though I suspect you’ll like it just fine since you like men going down on you.”
Zander completely ignored him, his steel eyes fixed permanently on mine. I shuffled back a little, as if it could lessen the intensity of emotions his hardened expression shot my way. “There is no sneaking out. No slipping away in the night. They’re watching us!”
My arm began to waver, and they both noticed. “What’s he talking about?” Nick asked.
“Put. The gun. Down,” Zander commanded. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me.”
Nick didn’t even wait for my reaction. He reached out and snatched it from me, leaving my hand feeling naked and exposed. Pointing it toward Zander himself, he spat, “Like I’d let her be the one to do it. You’re done traumatizing her.”
Now it was Zander’s turn to huff, additionally rolling his eyes. “She’s not going to let you shoot me either.”
“Why? Because she acted well enough to make you think she really cares for you?”
Zander smiled, cocking his eyebrows once my way. He knew there’d been moments of weakness on both our parts, when I forgot he was my captor and he forgot I was his slave. Intimate moments that would haunt me for the rest of my life for allowing myself to feel. He could’ve told Nick, but for whatever reason, he didn’t. And I suspected that he preferred to keep that indiscretion to himself, to savor on it for quite some time to come. “She’s not going to shoot me because there’s someone out there she fears far more than me. Someone who’ll come looking for her shortly. Even more quickly if she walks out this house.”
“What? Who? Megan?” he asked. I could feel his gaze angle my way, but I still hadn’t found the courage to look into his eyes. There were so many things to be ashamed of, and I couldn’t take the pain in his eyes when they became his burden as well.
“You didn’t tell him why you wanted him gone, did you? What his freedom meant for you?” He chuckled slightly, too amused when I finally managed to look away into the nothing. “She really does love you.”
“Megan,” Nick stressed. “What is he talking about?”
“Nothing I want to talk about right now, okay?” I evaded weakly. My fists tightened at my sides. “Right now, we need to figure out how to get the hell out of here. They’ve seen you come in, they’ll be expecting you to leave. I doubt anyone but Friggs knows what you look like. Me, he’s got a wide range of pictures to share, but you were never in his possession. You can drive back out of here and lose the tail if they follow.”
“In his possession?” he parroted, but with a hell of a lot more spite. “What the fuck does that mean?” He lifted the gun again, this time stepping up and placing it flat against Zander’s temple. “You took her to someone else?!” he shouted.
Unfazed by the gun, he dully replied, “Didn’t we just cover this? You shoot me, and in ten days, he’s coming to steal her for himself. Believe me when I tell you I am hardly worth fearing sitting side by side with Friggs.” With a smirk I wanted to truly slap off his face, he added, “You need me to turn state’s evidence. You will never find Friggs without me...but he will find you just fine.”
/>
Nick’s face pinched upon hearing that. I said his name quietly. Wearily, and clearly against his will, his arm bounced a few times before finally lowering the gun. This time, I took it from him. Because Zander was right. As much as it pained me to think it, there was someone far worse fearing.
“Nick? Where did you find your tracker?”
“In my thigh.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you’re handy with a knife then.”
Zander looked to me curiously as Nick exclaimed, “What?”
I sighed. I was too tired and stressed to explain every little thing right now. “The tracker has to stay here so Friggs won’t realize I’m gone. We can’t bring the police here either because the house is being watched. The only way Friggs can be captured is if he doesn’t realize something’s up. You’re going to cut this fucking tracker out of my body, and Zander and I are going to hide away in the trunk as you leave.”
Amused, Zander chuckled lightly. “Sounds cozy.”
“Quit looking at her asshole.”
Megan was currently passed out on the bed. I’d stuck her with one of the syringes shithead kept in the wall box. Fingerprint security my ass. A two-and-a-half quart sauce pan knocked the damn lid right off. I wasn’t able to find a lighter or anything to sterilize the knife and tweezers with, so the best I could do was stick them in boiling water for fifteen minutes. Now that she was finally asleep, I was straddling her on the bed, searching her skin for where the tracker had been inserted.
“If you didn’t want me to watch then you should’ve drugged my ass when you did hers.”
“I am two seconds away from finding that fucking collar and shocking your ass until she wakes back up.”
“You’d never crack the passcode to my phone in time,” he replied blandly.
I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore him. I needed to focus on what I was doing. I could only assume the man who inserted these damn things put them in the same place for women, but it was just a shot in the dark. Finally, I found what appeared to be the slither of a faint line high up her thigh, beneath the curve of her right cheek. I never would’ve noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it, even if we had been sexually active lately.
I closed my eyes and infinitesimally nodded. I prayed to God we could get back what we had. Megan had barely looked at me tonight, like it pained her, maybe even embarrassed her over what we’d gone through these past few weeks. And hell yes it was embarrassing the things I forced myself to do. But I’d do anything for her, even if it meant protecting her for only one night. I’d wake up the next morning and do it all over again just to keep saving her.
So it was kind of hard to be mad at her for getting me sent home the way she did.
I held my breath, terrified that I would cut her wrong or she’d jump while I was doing it. In fact…
God, I hated doing it, but I fastened her wrists to the bindings at the headboard and pulled with her feet, trying to remove any ability on her part to squirm. The damn medicine may’ve knocked her out, but it wasn’t like anesthesia. More than likely, her body was going to react once I cut into her. I was sure mine did when Carlos cut into me.
I closed my eyes and sighed again. I couldn’t let their deaths weigh me down at the moment. If I survived, I’d mourn for them later.
Jackass was being awfully quiet, so I looked his way to make sure he wasn’t trying anything funny. His eyes were set hard on what I was doing, and when his intense gaze moved to meet mine, there wasn’t the slightest bit of humor in his expression. I wasn’t even going to try to figure out what the hell was going on inside his fucked up head.
Sitting down over her knees with as much pressure as I could, I wiped her skin with an alcohol wipe and placed the tip of the knife against her skin, preparing to trace the line. I inhaled slowly and held it, punching through and slicing quickly. Her leg tried to jump but I minimized its reaction. Blood trickled out. Once her leg calmed down, I inserted the tweezers and dug around as fast as I could, waiting to feel metal on metal. Her leg continued to jump, her body squirming, making it difficult to snag the cylinder. Once I had it, I pulled it out and pressed gauze against her, slowly soaking up the blood.
I breathed a sigh of relief as her body began to relax again.
Apparently, the one thing this asshole had was a decent first aid kit, so I assumed it was routine for people to need medical care in his house. I cleaned and dried her cut as best I could, then sealed it off with a butterfly stitch. It was going to have to do until we could have a real doctor check us both out, then I covered it up with an extra-large Band-Aid.
“Just like fileting a fish.”
Unamused, all he got from me was an annoyed glare. I unfastened Megan’s bindings and laid a sheet over her while she rested – and to keep him from seeing her any further. I don’t know why I bothered gathering all the trash and supplies around her to put away; it wasn’t like I was worried about leaving a mess in his prison. As I was on my way to return the knife to the kitchen, he asked, “Can I at least get a little slack here?”
“Sure.” With a wicked smile, I said, “Just give me the passcode to your phone.” His lips went level and he turned away. “No?” I asked flatly. “Too bad then.”
Quite frankly, he deserved to have his dick sliced off and left there to either bleed or starve to death.
“What if I need to use the bathroom?” he called out.
“Go piss yourself.”
Megan had already slept a good seven hours. So many times I feared she overdosed and went to check her neck, relieved each and every time to find a healthy pulse. As I sat back down in the arm chair and kicked my feet up again, I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes.
It had to be a few hours before sunrise. Obviously, the police weren’t coming.
I had just leaned my head back to rest when he said, “You’re a cook. Would it kill you to go whip something up? I’m starving.”
I sighed heavily and kept my eyes closed. I really wanted to stab his fucking ass with a syringe, but I had yet to discover where his drug stash was and we only had the two doses left. I was determined to keep them for when we had to undo his chains and take him to the car. I could’ve taken Megan to another room and sat with her there, but I didn’t trust him enough to leave him alone either. So I was stuck listening to the bullshit every time he felt the need to hear his own damn voice again.
“You kept me chained to that fucking floor for two weeks. Either I was asleep, forced to suck your damn dick or God only knows what.”
“I didn’t force you to do shit. I offered you a deal and you accepted.”
“And then you drugged my ass. Don’t recall making that deal asshole.”
“I wasn’t the one asking to take it further than a blow job.”
I groaned inwardly. Why couldn’t he just shut the fuck up?
Ten seconds later, just when I was beginning to think he would give me a reprieve, he opened his damn mouth again. “So, would you like me to suck you off while you’re lucid now? You seemed to really enjoy it before.”
I shot up. Within four steps I cleared the distance and slammed my foot against his head. He’d turned at the last possible moment, so the sole of my sneaker nailed the side of his face and slammed his head against the wall. The shithead went limp, but for good measure, I did it three more times. And since he was still thinking with his motherfucking cock so much, I stomped on it a few times too. I sneered getting to see his body bloodied and folded up on itself like that. Bastard wouldn’t be raping anyone else anytime soon now.
I jostled awake, hearing a noise that didn’t sound familiar. I spotted Megan bent up slightly, hissing as her hand assessed the bandage on the back of her thigh. “Are you okay?”
Her head tilted my way. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Just really tender.”
Me, too. The pills I took last night had long worn off and I couldn’t find a comfortable position to sit in. “Sorry. I haven’t found his drugs so I have nothing to give y
ou.”
“That’s okay.” Seeming to remember his existence, she lifted up in bed to look down on him. He had slumped almost all the way to the floor, the left side of his face swollen and splotched by various shades of blue and purples and caked with smudges of dried blood. I was actually fucking giddy by his current appearance. I wished I had a fucking camera phone right now to blow up the Instagram world.
She turned her gaze to me, slightly lifting her brows, silently asking her question.
“You only said I couldn’t kill him.”
Her lips squished into an adorable, funky look as her head bounced in agreement. “Whatever he did, I’m sure he deserved it.”
“No Megan. That was just a fraction of what he deserves. Lucky for him, neither of us are the kind of people to deliver what I hope comes his way.”
We quietly gazed at one another then, both of us weary. Finally, she quietly asked, “Why are you way over there?”
Lightly shrugging, I replied, “I figured you wouldn’t want to be touched. You’ve hurt enough lately. I’m not going to add to your load.”
She seemed to deflate before me. Letting out a mild whine, her whole body shrank down. A moment later she rolled awkwardly out of bed. Concerned, my feet came down off the ottoman and I jerked upright in the arm chair, not caring how much pain ripped through my own thigh. One hand to her hip, she wobbled her way towards me, squeezing into the chair, her legs sandwiched between the chair and my thighs. Grabbing my face with both hands, she kissed me. It wasn’t hard and deep, but it wasn’t soft either. My hands snaked around and explored her backside.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I never should’ve let myself hide from you. It was never about you but I still took it out on you.”
“Megan,” I lamented, cutting in on her foolish apology. “I’m hardly going to be mad at you for needing to take the time to heal. I don’t care how long you need, I’ll give you every second you ask for.”
She smiled and placed her head on my shoulder, burying her forehead into my neck. I smiled and leaned my head down against hers.
NEARLY Trilogy Page 55