Shit. And what about my mom? Probably, I shouldn't tell her at all. If I were to tell then she would only worry even more than she did now. She was always telling me not to go on dates with strangers and this really seemed like proof of everything she'd been telling me for the last ten years. I didn't need to hear the “I told you so's”. What was happening to me was more or less exactly what she had forewarned me of all this time, which was really irritating.
Of course, all this assumed that I would have the option of not telling her. It assumed that I would see my mom again and speak to her again and be told off for not calling often enough, or wearing clothes that made my bottom look fat, or dating inappropriate men. All my life I had hated having to listen to it, but right at that moment I would have given anything to hear one of my mom's lectures.
And Christmas was just around the corner. It was a big deal in my family, we all looked forward to that big festive get together. Was last year the last I would ever know? Would my family be spending this Christmas crying over me? Would my disappearance taint the holiday for them forever?
My brain's valiant attempts to keep me thinking about other stuff —silly stuff—to take my mind off my situation had failed and led back inevitably to where they had started.
I was a captive, a prisoner, with no idea how long I might be here, or if I was ever getting out. This wasn't a bad dream or an acid trip—I tried it once in college, Mom was right about that, too—I hadn't drunk too much or had my drink spiked. This was real, it was happening. I might never go home.
The thought that I might never see my mom or my sister again was made worse by the more piercing thought that they might never see me again. They would be heartbroken, and the idea of causing that sort of inconsolable grief to my loved ones cut at me like nothing else that had happened so far.
I nearly jumped out of my skin as a sharp knock at the door broke into my grief-stricken thoughts. Fear shot through me.
This was it. The final reckoning. He had come for me.
But fear was quickly joined by confusion. What the hell sort of kidnapper knocked first?
The knock was repeated, echoing around my prison. Was he really waiting for me to say something? I didn't want to see him but getting the door open was a step in the right direction. I picked up my fur blanket and wrapped it around my body like a makeshift toga—if he had undressed me then he had already seen me naked, but I still didn't want to be naked in his presence. I selected the heaviest looking of the candlesticks—a cast iron one with a weighted base. Certainly it was a better weapon than a worn-out vibrator. Should I hide by the door like they did in all the movies? No. He would be expecting that because they did it in all the movies. Better to lull him into a false sense of security and then make my move. And not look in his eyes. Whatever else I did, I had to remember not to fall under his spell again.
The knock sounded for a third time.
"Come in?” I called, unsure of what else to say.
I heard the sound of a key being turned in the lock, and then the door swung open and MacKenzie entered. He was carrying a tray of food, on one side of which was a mug bearing the slogan “World's Best Brother”. I almost laughed.
"Morning."
He placed the tray on the table by the wall and then closed the door behind him.
“Sorry, but I don't feel like I can really trust you not to try to sneak away again like last night. Not until we've had a chat. How are you this morning? Are you okay?"
I hadn't exactly had a plan for how to get out but I had had a vague idea about keeping calm, playing the dutiful captive and then, when the moment was right, bashing him over his beautiful head with a weighted candlestick. I imagined the only problem with this plan would be controlling my fear. But somewhere between the ridiculousness of him not being able to trust me and the ridiculousness of him asking me if I was okay, the plan to stay calm evaporated along with whatever fear I should legitimately have been feeling.
I snapped.
“Okay?” I demanded, incredulous. “Am I okay? What the hell kind of a question is that? You kidnapped me. You stripped me. You locked me up in a—I don't know; is this a castle? No, I'm not okay! I've been kidnapped by a crazy person who's taken me to fucking Hogwarts, except, of course, I don't have Harry and Hermione here to help me, all I've got is some moron asking me if I'm okay.”
MacKenzie listened to me rant quite calmly. Towards the end, he cocked his head to one side, a puzzled expression on his handsome face. "What's a Hogwarts?"
"That's your take away, here?” I said with a snort. “Way to focus on the important stuff.”
He shrugged. "Just a word I haven't heard before. And who are Harry and Hermione?"
"Doesn't matter." It probably didn't. Although, somewhere at the back of my mind I still had the self-possession to wonder what sort of a person could live in the world and not have heard of Harry Potter.
"Maybe not, but I like to learn new things."
I dared to look him in the face, carefully avoiding his bright, green eyes. "Why have you brought me here? What are you planning to do to me, you fucking psycho!"
The question had started quite calmly but deteriorated quickly as I moved ever closer to losing it completely.
MacKenzie offered me the incongruously labeled mug. "Drink. Eat. Then we'll talk."
I didn't move, still staring at him.
Very deliberately, MacKenzie took a swallow of coffee from the mug, then offered it to me again. This time, I took it and drank gratefully. Until the smell of food and fresh coffee had entered the room, I hadn't been aware just how hungry I was. MacKenzie took a bite from a croissant on the tray and then offered it to me. There was something about the gesture I didn't like—as if he was feeding a pet.
"I don't want it."
"Yes, you do. You had a rough night and you didn't have dinner."
"Whose fault is that?"
"Mine. Which is why I'm trying to make up for it now."
"Make up for it? In what universe does one make up for a kidnapping with a fucking croissant?"
His lips twitched in something akin to a smile and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Look, Ella, you’re hungry. Some food and drink will clear away the cobwebs. Being in a trance is a strangely exhausting experience."
“No."
Starving as I was, I didn't want his food or drink and I didn't want him to be nice or understanding. Strangely, I would have been almost happier if he had come in like a bastard, rubbing his hands with glee, threatening or shouting at me, because at least then I would know where I stood. As things were, I still felt sure that all that stuff and worse was coming, but I didn't know when or what. It made me feel like a turtle on its back. Wide open and vulnerable.
My fear coalesced and the words came rushing from my mouth, unchecked. “Please. Just tell me why you brought me here. If you're going to make a suit out of my skin then I'd rather know now.”
"You don't think that would spoil breakfast?" He strolled back across the room to the table. “You do have lovely skin, but, for the record, Armani is more to my taste." He drew back a chair and indicated it. "Sit, eat, and I'll explain everything. And I promise not to hurt you."
"How much do you think your promise is worth to me?" I shot back at him. “I don’t even know you and what I do know ain’t exactly stellar.”
MacKenzie shrugged. "It's all I have to offer. But I do also have breakfast bagels, an assortment of pastries, bacon—that’s rapidly becoming cold—and more coffee."
My mind vacillated. Going over there and eating with him seemed like capitulation, and I didn't want to make this easy for him. On the other hand, I also didn't want to make him angry. There would presumably come a point when resisting him would be life or death, this did not feel like that point. Resisting him over breakfast seemed self-defeating. I would fight better in the future on a full stomach, and besides, breakfast might buy me more time and I could go back to my “lull him into a false sense o
f security” plan.
Better yet, maybe I could appeal to his basic decency. I didn't have a lot of experience of serial killers outside of TV and film but I understand that they have a deficiency of empathy—their ability to treat others the way they do stems from an inability to see others as human. Try as I might, I could not see MacKenzie that way, so perhaps I could still reach him, let him know that I was a girl with a family and a life. Maybe it was a long shot, but I was willing to take any course open to me.
I walked over to the table and sat down, placing my weighted candlestick beside me, in easy reach. Trying not to look too desperate, I took some food and began to eat. It tasted incredible, but probably just because I was so hungry.
"Thank you," MacKenzie said, and he sounded genuinely relieved to see me eating.
"You said you would explain." I wasn't letting him renege on his part of the bargain.
"Of course." MacKenzie seated himself opposite me. "I'll give you the short version, then you can ask any questions you may have—and I suspect you will have—and I'll do my best to answer them. So, I am what your ancestors used to call a Dragon Shifter, which is exactly what it sounds like. I am, in fact, one of the last—our race is almost extinct and my own clan, of which I am leader, is now all males. We have been looking for a woman—and it cannot be just any woman—to bear our children and save our kind. I found you." He looked across the table at me with an amiable expression on his face. "Now, did you have any questions? Or is all that relatively clear?"
I managed to gulp down my mouthful of bagel before I burst out laughing. When I was going through all the options of what was happening to me, I had wondered if I was cracking up.
It seemed like I was.
I kept laughing, hysterically, uncontrollably, so long that I began to wonder if I would ever stop.
Chapter 5
MacKenzie stared at me, his face becoming increasingly nonplussed as I continued to laugh. When I could finally laugh no more, my sides aching, he shook his head a little and sighed.
"I sense that I haven't completely convinced you. But I still don't understand why you're laughing. It's a very serious situation. The extinction of my species is no laughing matter. I hope that if the situation was reversed and it was humanity relying on me to save it, I wouldn't be so rude as to laugh in your face."
He was so earnest that I actually started to feel guilty. There was, as ever, something about MacKenzie that made me putty in his strong hands. Even in these circumstances, I felt sympathy for him as I watched his achingly handsome features shaped into real sadness. Against my own better judgment, I reached across the table and laid my hand on top of his.
"Look, I don't believe what you're telling me—I can't. But I believe that you believe it. You need to talk to someone – like, a professional. You need help and I can help you get it, if you just let me out of here. I won't call the police, I won't tell anyone what you did—I can get you into a hospital where you'll get the help you need."
MacKenzie sighed and drew his hand out from under mine. Without a word, he stood and walked across the room to the door.
Was he going to let me out?
That seemed too much to hope for. But this may be my best chance to make a move.
My hand closed on my candlestick weapon; it would be the work of a moment to race up behind MacKenzie and whack him over the head with it. There were a few problems with that plan, of course; firstly, that I would need to stand on a chair to be able to whack MacKenzie over the head with any real force; secondly, that my speed across the room was somewhat limited by my heavy, fur toga, and I was not prepared to let go of that. But most importantly, no matter how quickly and stealthily I moved, I still felt that MacKenzie would sense me coming.
Again, I was aware of that jungle cat quality he had about him—a predator in his natural habitat, hyper-aware of his surroundings. He moved casually now but I felt that he could spring into action on the instant. It was ridiculous but I felt that, even with his back turned, he could, if not see me, then sense my presence, hear my breathing and my heartbeat, even hear the blood rush through my veins. They say animals can smell fear; I was sure MacKenzie could smell it on me.
I did nothing as he reached the door, unlocked it and threw it open. "She's not convinced. You'd better come in."
I well remembered the first time I saw MacKenzie, when he came into Sunshine Daycare, his charisma seeming to precede him. He had a visceral presence that was instantly enticing; seductive, sexual and deeply masculine, so that I had almost felt weak in his company. Now I caught my breath as the sensation took me again. As MacKenzie stood back from the open door, three more men entered, all built along similarly impressive lines to MacKenzie himself, and all carrying with them that casual charisma and aura of masculine energy that swept before them like a wave, having an effect on me that was entirely inappropriate to the situation.
"These are my brothers," said MacKenzie. "Not blood brothers—or at least not in the way that you would think of it—but clan brothers, which is a bond that goes far deeper than any fragile familial one. This is Duncan, Alistair and Callum. Don't worry about getting their names right, I know what it's like when you meet a lot of new people all at once."
He needn't have worried. Their names, along with everything else about them, were seared into my mind for all eternity. You know how you can forget the names of people you see every day, but the name of that guy in the bar, who you only met once but had really blue eyes and a nice laugh and who you thought that maybe you had a shot with, you recall without any effort at all?
It was like that, times three. Part of some evolutionary imperative to remember the names of people you were attracted to. And, despite the situation, despite the fear that still crouched in me, and despite the fact that there were now four of them, I was more powerfully attracted to these men than I had been to any other man I had ever met. It was not just a simple case of looking at them and finding them handsome, it was something I felt in my body, an attraction that had an instant physical effect on me.
The sensation was almost as terrifying as being kidnapped in the first place.
"They're all keen to meet you," said MacKenzie, and I thought perhaps he said it with a syrupy warmth in his voice that hadn’t been there before. I had already wondered if MacKenzie was in some way sensitive to what I was feeling, and I was sure he could sense my arousal now.
But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t have stopped myself from looking if I tried. They were all tall and well built, they were all handsome, they all looked as if they must have been carved from rock rather than born. As if primitive cultures would have worshipped them. And yet, despite these similarities, they were all different. Duncan was perhaps the tallest after MacKenzie—or was he taller?
Duncan seemed taller somehow, his hair was sandy brown, his skin smooth. He wore a T-shirt just a hair too small to contain the bulging muscles of his chest, which stretched the material, revealing the epic contours of his torso to my staring eyes. When he folded his arms, his biceps swelled so much that I wondered if his sleeves might rip.
He smiled at me with an easy charm, revealing bright, white teeth. Beside Duncan, Alistair should have looked small, being a couple inches shorter than the others but still over six feet. Except, as I took in his countenance, I realized that a man like Alistair could never look small. He was the best dressed of the group —again, after MacKenzie—wearing a smart white shirt, pressed pants and expensive-looking shoes. But if his clothes spoke of a more cultured man, then his physique spoke of a wilder one.
Duncan looked as if he worked hard on his muscles, hitting the weights on the regular but Alistair looked as if he never set foot in a gym. His was a body honed by activity. Running, climbing and swimming. His designer shirt did nothing to hide the ripped torso beneath, and corded muscles like ropes twisted about his forearms, which also bore a Celtic knot tattoo. His hair was dark auburn, and a five o'clock shadow added to the rough-hewn look. He was
a man who liked to sweat and I couldn’t suppress a shiver as I imagined him sweating all over me.
I shifted my gaze to take in the chestnut-haired Callum, who completed the line-up, casually attired in jeans and a plaid shirt—torn here, paint-spattered there—a working man's shirt. His dark eyes had a hint of mischief to them, and he was the only one who met my gaze directly, as if he was giving me the same stark appraisal as I was giving him and his “brothers”. If he liked what he saw even half as much as I did, then he would be a very happy man, indeed. Callum's body was that of a lumberjack, or a man who had worked at the docks every day of his life. It was the body of a man who drove spikes for the new railroad or split rocks. It was the body of a man who had neither the time nor desire for “exercise” as such, a body acquired by hard graft. He would not win any Mr. Universe competitions, had not the triangular configuration of a body builder, but he was rough and tumble, like a brawler instead of a boxer. He probably could have kicked all their asses, wreathed in hard-earned muscle. His jeans—tight in all the right places—suggested there was quite a man beneath the workaday clothes.
Though I had been admiring MacKenzie ever since I first saw him—and each time I looked I seemed to see something more to marvel at—seeing him now alongside these other three impressive specimens made me see him again and afresh. The comparison let me look at him as if for the first time. He wasn’t the tallest or the most well-built of the lot. And yet he seemed both. The others had confidence, but MacKenzie had certainty. He was the first among equals—and when the equals were Duncan, Alistair and Callum, that was really saying something.
Kidnapped by the Dragon Harem Page 3