“Don’t worry about that, sis. Those boys fight if one of ’em breathes too loud.”
She smiled at Jimbo. With his short, bowed legs, close-set eyes, and ears that stuck out a little too much, he reminded her of an elf in one of the old books her father had kept. “I’m not worried. But it does get boring down here, doesn’t it?”
“You been here since last night. I was brought here ten years ago.”
“Ten years down here!”
Jimbo scratched his chin through his scraggly beard. “I guess the big man likes having me around.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. The skin long denied the sun was nearly green in its doughy paleness.
Big man. Kai. She stepped closer to him. “Jimbo.”
“Sis?”
“Has my brother been… Has he been okay?” She strived for a casual tone needlessly.
“Sure, honey. He’s been okay.”
She sighed. “You’re a nice man, Jimbo.” A nice liar.
Time passed with excruciating slowness, but finally, Erik returned with Constantine.
“Con!” Jimbo yelled, as if he hadn’t really expected to see Constantine again.
“Hey, man. Sarah, you okay?”
“Yes. You?” She craned her neck to see if maybe Kai had followed.
Erik unlocked the restraints, his hands lingering on Con’s arms. Constantine walked into the cell and seemed to see nothing strange in Erik’s touch. She frowned.
“Erik?”
“Yeah.” The cell door made a loud, final clang as he shut it.
“Kai—how is he?”
He snorted. “You shouldn’t worry about Kai.”
She licked suddenly dry lips. “Ask him if he’ll see me. Please.”
“Kai will send for you when and if he wants to see you. I’m not a message carrier.”
“But—”
“Shut up, woman.”
Constantine wrapped his hands around the bars, eyes narrowed. “Watch how you talk to her.”
Erik slid his gaze to the smaller man, raising an eyebrow. “What in the hell, Con, are you going to do about it if I don’t?” He leaned against the bars and reached into his pocket for his tobacco. As if he had all the time in the world and liked being where he was just fine, he rolled one and lit up, inhaling deeply.
Constantine could have wrapped his hand around Erik’s throat and ripped out his esophagus had he wanted to, but Erik didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Constantine’s fingers tightened on the bars, and he shot a look at Sarah. “Just watch your fucking mouth with her.”
“Constantine, don’t. His mouth doesn’t bother me.”
“Does my mouth bother you, Constantine?” Erik blew a smoke ring and smiled.
Every ear in the place was tuned in to the conversation. A tear running down a cheek would have sounded like a bubbling stream in the sudden quiet.
Sarah clutched her stomach and stepped back. “Constantine?”
He put his forehead against the bars, blowing out a tired breath. “Go away, Erik.”
“Con—”
“Go.”
Erik straightened, opened his mouth to say something, then obviously thought better of it. He threw a regretful and rather shamed look at Con and, to Sarah’s shock, did as Constantine bid. What the hell? She shook her head, confused. “Constantine, what is happening?”
Jimbo pushed the other two cell mates into a corner, where they hunkered down with a thin, battered strip of wood and a handful of smooth stones. “I’ll bet supper that I’ll win this round,” Jimbo said, drawing his cell mates into a game Sarah didn’t recognize.
That didn’t give her and Con any real privacy, but she appreciated his trying.
Constantine took her hands through the bars, his grip warm, comforting. “Sarah, for me, just leave things alone. Don’t ask questions. Don’t worry. Just…don’t.”
He wouldn’t let her pull her hands from his grip, and finally, she stopped trying. “I just… Are you…” She swallowed hard. “Did he hurt you?”
His laugh was the most joyful thing the jail had heard in years, she was sure. Cut to the quick, she yanked her fingers away and turned her back to him. “How can you laugh?”
“Sarah.” His chiding voice did nothing to urge her to face him. His sigh was loud. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Sister. Erik is a good man, really. We’ve become…friends. He won’t hurt me. Now please. No more questions. Don’t think about anything except getting out of here, okay?”
She did face him then, a quick anger burning through her like a smoldering, ancient piece of paper. “Getting out of here? You want me to think about getting out of here? Exactly what good is thinking about it going to do either of us?”
“Sarah. I’ve never known you to give up so easily.”
“You’ve been down here for a long time, Constantine. You don’t give up either, but you’re still here.”
She sat on the filthy cot, for the first time beginning to feel the hopelessness of the situation. If Kai wanted to, he could leave her in this hole forever. She kicked at the tin dinner plate she’d been given earlier, furious with herself.
She’d completely failed. She’d failed everyone.
Curling up on her side, she slept. There was nothing else to do.
Chapter Seventeen
Kai sat on the edge of his desk and motioned the ragged prisoner into a chair. He couldn’t allow himself to think of Sarah right now. He glanced at Erik. “Took you long enough to get him in here.”
Erik flushed, and his gaze wavered. Kai sighed. From Erik’s expression, he’d taken time to kick the skinny boy around before bringing him up. Erik had been as furious as Kai when Constantine had managed his attack, but not from the small wound, which would have healed in a couple of days, had it not decided to get infected.
Erik had been enraged that Con had slipped past his defenses, had actually had a chance to get near Kai with the weapon that had nearly cost him his life.
Had Kai been a different man, he would have killed his attacker himself, but something inside him had softened the slightest bit at the desperation in the incompetent kid’s eyes.
He’d put Con in jail and figured the boy would rot there. But then Sarah had come along, and everything changed. His whole fucking world had shifted.
He crossed his arms and stared down at Constantine, who kept his unwavering stare firmly on Kai’s. They boy had courage; he’d give him that. Or maybe he was just stupid.
“Erik, wait outside,” Kai ordered.
His second in command stared at the boy and said nothing.
“Erik,” Kai said, sharply.
Erik jerked his gaze away from Con, flushing again. “What?”
Kai frowned. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Erik cleared his throat and practically fell over his own feet in his hurry to reach the door. “I think I’ll wait in the hall. If you need me, give a yell.”
Kai shook his head, then turned his attention to the boy. By the time Constantine left his office, he’d know everything there was to know about the boy and, more importantly, about Sarah. “I want to know everything, boy. Start talking.”
Con didn’t even try to look confused. Maybe he thought he could soften Kai’s heart and make him go easier on his sister. “Sampson wanted Sarah. She was just a girl, and after our father was killed and our mother died, there was no one to look after her. No one but me.”
Kai left his perch on the desk to walk around to his chair, unwilling to let the boy see that already his words had affected him. Something about Con’s hopeless, dead way of speaking tugged at him. Or maybe it was the way his eyes softened when he spoke Sarah’s name. “Continue,” he said, once he was seated.
“Sampson took her.” Con swallowed hard. “He took both of us.” He was silent for a long moment, remembering, and when he looked back up at Kai, his eyes were once again the hard, dark gaze of a man who’d given up. “Sampson is a…bad man.” His throat convulsed as, again, he s
wallowed. “I would have done anything to get her away from him. He hurt her. Every night he took her. She’d come back crying, at first. But after a while…she came back different. Quiet and bruised and destroyed.
“Sampson swore he’d release her if I’d kill you. He swore. And Sarah… Even without her pleas, I would have done it.” He glared at Kai. “I would do it again, if it would save her.”
Those hopeless fucking eyes. Haunted. Like Sarah’s.
“Anyway,” Constantine continued, “you know the rest. I tried to kill you. I failed, miserably.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought I’d succeed. I hadn’t even thought I’d get as far as I did. But I had to try.” Lifting his chin, he met Kai’s stare. “I had to try to save her.”
Kai remembered how he’d been sitting in this very room when Con had rushed in, looking like a wild, crazed kid. Kai’s second of confusion had allowed Constantine to jump across the desk and strike before Kai had shaken off the remnants of a whiskey daze and reacted to the threat, small though it was. He’d grabbed Con by the throat and held the thrashing boy off. Then Erik had come through the door like an incensed bear, a purple lump the size of an overgrown walnut on his forehead.
He frowned. He’d never gotten Erik to explain, at least not to his satisfaction, how the kid had managed to hit him over the head. “How did you get past Erik?” he asked now, curious.
Con smiled. “Erik’s mind was occupied.”
“A woman?”
Con hesitated. “Right.”
Kai let it go. Erik had probably been hiding in a corner somewhere getting his dick sucked when Con had sneaked up and knocked him unconscious. Whatever had happened, it would have been long forgotten if not for Sarah.
Erik stuck his head around the doorway, his gaze homing in on Constantine. He looked worried, and Kai grinned. “Don’t worry, Erik. I’m pretty sure I can handle the boy now.”
“You ready for me to take him back?”
“Almost. But this time, don’t bully the kid. Take him back to his cell, and that’s it. Got it?”
Erik frowned. “What?”
“Don’t hurt the boy,” Kai said, enunciating overly slowly and loudly, as if Erik had suddenly become a six-year-old.
“Oh. No. I won’t.” Erik’s look was mystified, then shocked.
And that was when it hit Kai that he was actually protecting Con. Protecting the very boy who’d tried to end his life. Defending Sarah’s brother, even though he’d punished her for doing the same thing. And the kid was her brother.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered, horrified. He’d become, as the old saying went, pussy whipped.
He stood so quickly he moved the heavy desk back a couple of inches. “Get him the fuck out of here!”
Erik rushed in. “Whoa, whoa!” Like Kai was a wild horse that needed calming. But he went straight to Con, lifted the boy from his chair, and practically threw him out the door. He shot a hasty glance at Kai over his shoulder, then slammed the door behind him.
Kai wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or break something. He was fucked. Completely, utterly fucked.
He realized what hurt him the most was Sarah choosing another man over him. Brother or not, it mattered little.
She was just like Jemma. In the end, weren’t they all just alike? Full of lies and deceit, waiting for the chance to kick a man in the balls and laugh as he writhed on the ground in agony.
He worked himself up into a great rage.
Rage was a whole hell of a lot better than pain.
He stared moodily out the window, waiting for Erik to return. He couldn’t go see Sarah himself. He was too furious. At the same time, he wanted to drag her out of her cell and throw her into his bed. He wanted to get her out of holding, away from the foulness and dirt and men.
The talk he’d had with Constantine should have made him feel better, not worse. So why didn’t it? Would he not have done the same thing were he in her position? Anything for family. It was the way he’d been raised, so he could perfectly well understand her desire to save her brother. Maybe what pissed him off the most was that Con hadn’t been able to get her out of Sampson’s clutches. All the worthless boy had done was end up in prison. He’d left Sarah on her own against the fucking commander of Springland. And had the brother and sister really thought Sampson would honor his part of the bargain?
“Still angry?”
He started at Erik’s voice, leveling the other man with a frown that should have had him scurrying for cover. Instead, Erik grinned. “You do have it bad for her, don’t you?”
“She’s a fucking witch. I should send her back to Springland. And I should have her murderous brother executed.”
Erik’s grin melted away like it’d never been. “You won’t be doing that.” At Kai’s sharp look, he hastily added, “You couldn’t live with yourself.”
Kai turned back to the window, his gaze on the rivulets of rain running down the pane. “Fuck it.”
Erik joined him at the window. “What are you going to do?”
Kai shook his head, slowly. “Don’t know.”
“You could forgive them both. I’d take Constantine and train him. He’d be a great soldier…” Erik averted his eyes.
Something was going on with Erik, something Kai couldn’t quite put his finger on. Why did he care so much about what happened to the brother and sister? “He’s our enemy, Erik, and he tried to kill me. A little fact everyone seems determined to forget.”
“Look. Con isn’t going to make another attempt on you. He was only trying to keep his sister safe. To keep her free of Sampson. Come on, Kai. Would you do anything you could to get her out of Sampson’s hands?” He nodded when Kai flinched. “I know you understand that. If the two of them were under our protection—”
“I can’t let them get away with it. We can’t trust him. And she…” He clenched his fists.
“You know why they did what they did.”
“So? Because I know, I should just forget it? Let them out like nothing ever happened? She was going to just take off. Free him and run.”
“Just like—” But Erik cut his words off at Kai’s sharp glare. “I mean, you think that means she cares nothing for you.”
“How could she?” Kai stood suddenly and swiped at the air like it had done something to displease him. “She couldn’t. She could have at least talked to me. But she goes to betray me and free the man who would have murdered me. She might as well have wielded the knife herself.”
“Your pride is hurt. But the girl was only—”
“No. There is no excuse.” He felt the familiar swell of pain in his chest and stomped to the sideboard to pour a strong drink. He didn’t offer Erik one. “She played me like an old piano.”
“She didn’t—”
He turned on Erik, needing to hurt someone. “The fuck, Erik? Whose side are you on, anyway? You’re so determined to defend them, to have me open my arms to them, I wonder if I can even trust you. Are you a traitor as well?”
Erik’s face paled. “No.”
Kai’s laugh was nasty, even though somewhere in the back of his red-hot brain was a voice cautioning him not to go too far. “No? You come from the enemy too. Why should I trust you?”
Erik’s pale face bloomed with color. “After all these years. I saved your life once, Kai.” But again, he looked away.
Kai tossed back his drink. “Yeah. And I owe you for that.” He shrugged and threw the empty glass into the fireplace. The sound of shattering glass made him feel marginally better. “Just get out of here and leave me to my thoughts.”
“Kai—”
“I’m surrounded by traitors.”
Erik closed his eyes. “One would do much for family, for love.”
“Love doesn’t exist, buddy. Not really.”
“You love her.”
“I want to fuck her.”
Erik shook his head. “I’m due on the streets. The men are waiting. You should come, work off some of that…anger.�
�
“Get out of here.”
Erik hesitated, then left without another word. He surely understood it wouldn’t take much to give Kai an excuse to lose control and beat the fuck out of him.
Kai groaned and yanked a fresh glass from the bar. “Why, why did I have to fall for her? Of all the fucking females in this house, why her?”
And why even now did the thought of her cause his dick to harden and his heart to soften? “Oh shit. Fuck her; fuck every woman on the fucking planet. Fuck.” Feeling no better for his profanity-laced words, he threw the second glass into the fireplace.
He would join Erik and the men after all. Find some heads to break. He’d feel better for it. But even as he strode for the door, he knew he wasn’t going to find Erik.
His feet led him toward the jail, his dick throbbing with every step.
He was going to get Sarah.
Chapter Eighteen
Sarah felt him coming.
She was reminiscing with Constantine when she got the oddest feeling—not quite fear and not quite joy, but somewhere in between. Her body tingled, her stomach tightened, and she lost the ability to take a single breath. Air thickened and stood in her throat like a block of ice, and no amount of swallowing could dislodge it.
Kai.
“Sarah, are you okay?”
Constantine’s voice came from far away, dim and insubstantial. But Kai’s footsteps sounded to her ears like echoing thumps from a herd of stampeding horses. Stallions. Her stallion had come for her.
And she saw him, walking down the hall as if in slow motion, his eyes searching for, and finding, hers.
She gasped, at last inhaling needed air, her hands clenching at the bars. She hadn’t realized. She hadn’t realized how much—how deep…
“Kai,” she called, his name sweet upon her lips. “Kai.”
But when she saw his eyes clearly, she realized something else. He wanted to hurt her. But only if you loved someone could they have the power to hurt you that deeply.
The place quieted as Kai came on, tense silence that hit her like nails struck by a monstrous hammer.
“Sarah,” Constantine murmured.
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