Captive

by Trevion Burns

  Malik entered her violently, causing her ample breasts, her cheekbone, and the tips of her fingers to slam into the glass. She jammed her eyes closed as he fucked her. A single tear racing down her cheek. It got smashed between her skin and the window, leaving a streak of moisture across the glass. She clenched her teeth as if she were in pain.

  Was she even wet?

  Linc lowered the binoculars, frowning, and then he rebounded, placing them back over his eyes, reclaiming the sight once more.

  It was wrong to watch, but a man still haunted by the memory of the last wisps of life shuddering out of his wife’s body, still haunted by the flash of curly blonde hair in the top story window, and still blackened by just as many foreboding clouds as the ones staining Mia’s eyes at that moment… he hoped she was hurting. He hoped she hurt the same way his wife had hurt for the five long years she’d been trafficked against her will. He hoped she hurt the same way his daughter had surely been hurt.

  Did she know his daughter was in that house?

  His stomach tightened into a million knots.

  Malik’s thrusts grew more savage as the minutes drew on, and Mia’s tears continued falling, but Linc felt no pity. The anger pumping through his veins wouldn’t allow it. All he could feel was what any man who hadn’t fucked a woman in six years would feel. All he could feel was the warmth of Mia’s skin against his as if it were his hands on her body and not Malik’s. All he could feel was the warmth of her wet pussy tugging at the erection aching against the zipper of his jeans. All he could hear were her breathy moans, rising in volume and ferocity with every thrust she took, charred with the tiniest hint of pain at its core. All he could smell was the fresh scent of her hair as if it were his own nose buried inside it, along with the carnal scent surely wafting from between her thighs as the velvety flesh of her pussy grew slick with her own unexpected desire.

  His raging dick swelled larger, leaving a sizable dent in his jeans, which had grown so taut he worried it might rip right through the denim.

  The rustle that sounded behind him, however, made him go flaccid in an instant. In an instant, the pistol he’d lodged in the waistband of his jeans was in his hand, and he’d swiveled in his chair, aiming the barrel of the gun in the direction of the unexpected noise, nostrils flared like a feral animal.

  Jason O’Malley, a six-foot tall Anglo in his early thirties but already balding prematurely, froze mid-step and held his hands up the moment Linc primed the gun in his direction. He wobbled atop in the uneven rubble he’d been trudging through a moment earlier—rubble that had left his shiny Italian shoes but a shell of their former selves, saturated with the dirt and dust that dominated that entire house. His black suit hadn’t survived the gritty perils of the long abandoned house either, a layer of dust clinging to the fine fabric, making his stark white pocket square look almost cream-colored.

  “Easy,” Jason breathed, low and scratchy.

  Exhaling, Linc lowered the gun and turned back toward the window. “You almost lost your life. Woulda hated to see you dirty up your precious Armani suit.”

  “Little late for that,” Jason grumbled, swiping away the stubborn dust speckles that still clung to his jacket. His shoes crunched on the gravelly floor as he came up next to the chair, adjusting his tie before bending down to seize the binoculars still clutched in Linc’s hand. Facing the window, Jason pressed the lenses to his hazel eyes to look across the street. “So hypnotized by whatever the hell you were watching you didn’t even hear me coming. This I gotta—”

  Linc saw the exact moment Jason hit the bull’s-eye.

  “—see.” A knowingly smirk spread across Jason’s slim lips, making his long dimples poke out through the low-cut beard that shadowed his jaw. “Quite the view you’ve got there.” He tossed the binoculars into Linc’s lap. “Bloody pervert.”

  Linc caught the binoculars, cringing up at him. “Being a duel-citizen doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say ‘bloody’, a’ight? Don’t forget I grew up down the street from you in Shadow Rock.”

  “How could I forget? Left that godforsaken island nearly a decade ago and still have nightmares about it.” Jason moved to the window, swiped away more dust and debris that had collected on the ledge before leaning against it, crossing his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles. He took a deep breath before nodding to Linc. “Still going through with it?”

  “Yes, and if you’re here to give me another lecture, I’m good on that.”

  “No lectures.” Jason held his hands in the air before crossing his arms once more. “Just because I sit behind a desk now doesn’t mean a world teeming with shades of gray has suddenly become black-and-white. At least not to me.”

  Linc snuck a look up at him, raising his left eyebrow, which had a deep scar in the middle that sliced it right in half.

  Jason stared at that marred eyebrow, as many often did. “I know this is what you feel you have to do to get her back—to finally be free from the hell of worrying about her twenty-four-seven. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to sit here, knowing she’s just down the street. Having no way to get to her without getting yourself killed or arrested. I understand. I didn’t come here to talk you out of anything.”

  “Then why’d you come?”

  Jason let a long silence fall, giving him a look that ensured he really hadn’t forgotten that they’d grown up together on a poverty-stricken hillside in California. Nor had he forgotten the years they’d spent working side by side in that city’s only police precinct. “I’ve done everything I could to help you get Emma back. But this…” He shook his head softly. “If you go through with this… I can’t help you anymore.”

  A muscle under Linc’s jaw rolled, staring out of the window, the Ali estate but a spec in the distance without his binoculars. “I know.”

  “At most, I can buy you a round once it’s all over.”

  Linc breathed out a laugh that flared his nostrils. “Last round was the reason I fucked up my chance to save her the first time. I’ll never take another swallow. No matter how bad I want it.”

  Jason gave a sideways grin at the memory of Linc’s disastrous ‘last round’. “The fucked up part about a drunk hitting rock bottom is he doesn’t see the ground coming before he plows into it headfirst. It’s also the reason he usually survives the fall. Too buzzed to go rigid in fear of the hit. Part of me worries you might go rigid tonight… and it’ll backfire.”

  “This your idea of not lecturing?”

  Jason lifted his chin, chest rising. “There’ll be roadblocks set up on the south side of the pavilion from east to west. The mayor’s security will be swarming every door. Back alley’s your only shot, and even then you might run into trouble. Once you’re out—if you get out—be sure to take the northern or southern route once you come off the A100. Northern, preferably. It’s your only prayer.”

  Linc smirked, somewhat offended that Jason assumed he didn’t already know all of this.

  Jason pushed off the wall and began moving away, patting Linc’s shoulder as he passed. “Try not to set all of England on fire, huh?”

  Linc licked his top teeth, his heated green eyes trained forward.

  Rubbish crunched under Jason’s shoes as he continued making his way out of the room.

  Linc craned his neck, looking over his shoulder at Jason’s retreating figure. “You really think clapping like a seal for NCA Intelligence is gonna get you to your kid faster than setting England on fire will get me to mine?”

  Jason stilled in the middle of the room, lingering with his back to Linc, his shiny shoes still teetering atop the debris. For a long moment, he kept his back turned, his shoulders rising as he drew in a breath so deep the sound penetrated the walls.

  Then, Jason looked over his shoulder, his eyes searing to their corners and meeting Linc’s. “Some men go over the wall; some men go under it…” He leered as if he couldn’t decide whether Linc was insane, brilliant, or both. “And some just smash right through
it. Which man is right and which man is wrong? Which man is virtuous and which one wicked? Which man lives to hug his child again… and which one dies before he gets the chance?”

  Linc’s jaw clenched.

  Jason turned and began out of the living room once more.

  Linc watched him go, his heart in his throat.

  The raining shower head in the ceiling was larger than Mia’s entire body, encasing her in a waterfall of scalding water. Growing hotter by the moment, the water seemed powerful enough to melt skin from bone, but Mia still reached out, head thrown back, eyes fluttered closed, and turned the handle against the wall, taking the water from scorching to sizzling.

  She opened her eyes and let it singe her irises, blurring her vision as she faced the shower’s north wall, which had been built all in glass, leaving it open to the opulent master bedroom that sat on the other side. Some nights Malik would lay atop the gold duvet of the king sized bed with his head propped up on the pillow and just stare at her as she showered. One of the many reasons she’d become accustomed to piping hot showers. It created steam strong enough to fog up the entire window. That evening, however, the master bedroom went empty, leaving her to cleanse in solitude.

  Pumping a handful of soap from the stainless steel dispenser riveted to the white marble walls, she closed her eyes once more, praying the drain swirling below her feet—inhaling every drop of water that dripping from her sopping hair and moist brown skin—would suck her in too.

  Malik’s bulging orbs fell down her body, watching his hands in the mirror as he stroked her waist up and down.

  Mia rubbed her soapy hands vigorously along her waist as she thought of Malik caressing it just minutes earlier in her closet, waiting until she’d built up a good lather before she dug her nails in, making sink holes in her skin, and scratching as hard as she could, as if trying to dig caverns that would allow the soap to enter her body.

  His roaming hands lingered on the gold mesh cutouts at the ribcage of her dress.

  A scowl curled her face as she rubbed more soap into the valley beneath her breasts, scrubbing as hard as she could, digging her nails in, deeper. Harder.

  Malik cupped Mia’s breasts in his hands and buried his lips in the crook of her neck.

  Her nails scraped at her breasts, leaving claw marks in the thick sudsy soap, and then her neck as well, nostrils flaring as she worked. Every second the steam multiplied and rose up to greet her, making it harder to breathe, leaving her gasping in each strangled breath as she extracted more cleanser from the dispenser.

  His fingers, slim as a skeleton, tickled down her shoulders.

  Her soapy nails gouged at her shoulders, full lips curled down as her breaths moved to gasps, unable to tell if the droplets gathering all over her skin was water or sweat.

  He gripped her thigh where her scar lived. His tongue darted out, and he gave it a long, languid lick, leaving a sheen of his saliva over the raised lesion.

  She heaved softly, her heartbeat picking up as she scratched the soap into her scar, so heartily she felt moments from unearthing it straight from her body. She rid the toxins from the rest of her body with just as much vigor, her hair, her pussy, even the valleys in the middle of her toes, and she didn’t stop until every inch of her wasn’t just covered with soap, but with streaks of red in the wake of her fervent scrapes.

  And even then, she didn’t feel clean.

  5

  After her shower, with only a few hours left to get ready for the gala, on a rare occasion Malik left her there alone, Mia tiptoed through the top level of the house. He’d informed her that he had some business to take care of before the gala, but that she should be dressed and ready by the time he returned.

  After informing her glam squad—the hair, makeup, and clothing team awaiting her in the beauty room on the second floor—that she’d be ready for them in half an hour, Mia pattered barefoot up the white staircase and then across the black limestone floors of the home’s top level. The estate hadn’t always been her and Malik’s but had spanned several decades, giving shelter to nobility, admirals, and several other people of distinction. So even the home’s top level, which went largely abandoned, was perfectly maintained. Not a single creak emitted when any of the black wood doors were opened. Not a single scratch on their sterling silver handles. Not a single lick of paint uneven on the walls as she journeyed through the narrow hallway.

  A cold breeze raced down the hall, and Mia tightened her white cotton robe around her body, huffing softly as she came upon a lone back door. The only door on the top level of the house. A door that was usually manned by a seven-foot tall, three-hundred-pound beast of a man with no sense of humor. A door that now went empty since that beast was in the midst of a shift change downstairs. A shift change that happened at the same time every night, leaving the door clear for five to ten minutes.

  It was a rare instance when that door went unmanned, and Mia never let those occasions go by, which was why her glam squad sat abandoned two levels down, awaiting her arrival.

  Swallowing thickly, a small smile on her lips, Mia hid the book in her hand behind her back while unlocking the black door.

  Pushing the door open, she peeked into the small room that had once served as an attic. The deeply slanted roof always made Mia feel constricted and claustrophobic. The fact that every wall was comprised of exposed brick, making it feel like an underground cave, didn’t help. A twin bed decorated with purple bedding took up most of the space, with a desk alongside it and a tall chest of drawers in the far corner. Unlike the rest of the house, the attic had been allowed to deteriorate with worn beige carpet that had seen better days and wood paneling on the ceilings long invaded by termites. Even the bars built into the arched window— the only window in the room—had seen better days, their dark paint peeling away and dancing with the breeze outside.

  Mia peeked inside the room just in time to see a head full of curly blonde hair flying, along with the flailing limbs of the tiny body it grew out of, as that tiny body shuffled atop a twin sized bed.

  Mia’s glowing eyes fell to the pillow on the bed as the young blonde girl shoved something underneath it, moving far too frantically to achieve the discretion she was clearly attempting.

  “Emma, it’s okay. It’s just me,” Mia whispered, laughter lacing her tone.

  Emma snapped her head in the direction of Mia’s voice with a gasp, hair flying, her green eyes shiny and big with an innocence only a child could manage. Their gazes locked and Emma’s eyes expanded to twice their size, her blonde brows shot up high, and a glorious smile spread across her pert pink lips, showcasing a mouth full of snaggleteeth.

  “Mia!” she cried, though still in a whisper, yanking her hands from under her pillow in her excitement, revealing the massive blue book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she’d been trying to hide away. She abandoned the book and leaped off the bed, her bare feet pattering against the wood floors. Her white floral dress dancing around her knees before she launched her body at Mia, clapping her arms around her waist as tightly as they would go while pressing her cheek into the tie in her robe.

  “Shhh…” Mia whispered through her laughter, embracing Emma in return and cupping her cheek with her free hand once she’d pulled back. “We have to be quiet, remember?”

  Emma pressed her lips together with a nod, trying to wipe the smile from her face, but it only re-manifested in her eyes.

  Mia stroked Emma’s curls, pushing some pieces away from her heart-shaped face and tucking them behind her ears.

  Emma played her fingers together, allowing Mia to groom her with a patient smile, even though her shining eyes were rife with excitement.

  “We don’t have much time,” Mia whispered, taking a deep breath through the pain that shot across her heart. “But I know someone’s got a sixth birthday coming up.”

  Emma gnawed her bottom lip and did a little hop, already knowing what was coming.

  Still, when Mia revealed the book
she’d had hidden behind her back, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Emma jumped nearly a foot in the air. She didn’t scream because she knew better, but instead, continued jumping up and down for nearly a minute, pumping her fists into the air, whispering, “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Mia’s gleaming smile spread wide as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, following Emma, who had eventually bounced her way right back to the bed and flown into the blankets like a soaring bird, landing head first before freezing completely, as if the excitement of it all had caused her to drop dead, her blond hair fanned all around her.

  Mia sat at the edge of the bed. “I’m guessing by your excitement you’ve already finished the fifth book?”

  Emma shot up from her comatose state and crawled across the bed, her tiny limbs moving her faster than they seemed capable. She snatched up the book and showed it to Mia as if Mia wasn’t the person who’d given it to her in the first place.

  “I’ve read it seven times already,” Emma beamed.

  “Seven times? How is that possible? It’s nearly eight hundred pages!”

  “It’s massive,” Emma agreed, a soft British accent lacing her words, flittering through the gaps in her smiling teeth. “But I love it. I cried.” Her cheeks heated up in slight embarrassment at her admission.

  Mia’s chest swelled in a deep breath when Emma’s words caused hot tears to burn her eyes. She sniffled to fight then back. What right did she have to cry? Especially when the angel before her, regardless of her circumstance, still had the strength to smile?

  “I did, too—” The lump in Mia’s throat broke her words. “What was your favorite part?”

  “When Voldemort and Dumbledore battled!”