I took one last lingering look around my small room, I'd made it my own again in the short time I'd been back from school, staying with Mom. We both knew it was the last chance to be a daughter living as her mom's little girl before everything changed. The time had come and next time we saw each other I would truly be an adult. But who knew when that would be?
“Okay, cat's dinner then we're outta here.”
I steeled myself for the road, shaking off the past and was halfway down the stairs when the front door flew open and I was face to face with Michael.
“The slut returns,” he said, slamming the door shut behind him with a self-satisfied smirk. “And looks like she's been cat-burgling while the mice are away. What's in the case?”
“Nothing, just a few of my own things,” I said, trying to stay calm and stop my hackles rising.
Better not to give Michael any excuse to lose his temper. He was coming toward me up the stairs with a hateful grin across his face and I couldn't stop myself from backing up towards the landing, my eyes transfixed in his. Images of him pulling my lovely top up and squeezing my bare breast in his sweaty hand pushed themselves unwanted into my mind.
“Where's Mom?” I stuttered. I was fighting to remain calm and alert as my body went into adrenalin overdrive, blood pounding through every tiny vein.
“She went to her bitch sister's place. But you knew that, didn't you? And you came out here to see your dear Daddy?”
“I thought you were both going to see Aunt Julia.” My mind was roiling around seeking a way to get out of this. I was trapped on the stairs and there was no way past the man looking at me with a disgusting leer.
“You've always been such a little slut liar,” he growled. “I guess I'm going to have to teach you a lesson. And it's gonna be hard 'cos I know how much you like to be punished.”
“No please, Michael, let me go, you're hurting me.” He had my upper arm in his pincer grasp and was dragging me back down the stairs. I held tight to my bag in the other hand, figuring he was going to toss me out on the street.
“I got the strong impression last night that you enjoy a little pain,” he said. “Or a lot. Don't you get off on being with a real man showing you what's what?”
At the bottom of the stairs, we dragged me away from the front door and back toward the kitchen. My heart pounded insanely in my chest and my breath was stuck in my throat. Where? What? My mind jumped about like a crazy person.
Before we reached the kitchen, Michael yanked the door under the stairs back and pulled me down into the basement where no one ever came except him, to work out on his old gym equipment. It was dark and the bare stone floor made the air cold. The place stank of damp and sweat and something else. Something repulsive that made my skin creep cold.
He pulled the drawer of an old bureau open and rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. My eyes gaped wide as he opened the handcuffs and with a quick flick had them locked tight around my wrists.
He shoved my arms up above my head and tied an old coil of thin blue rope around the chain between the cuffs, then attached it to the cross bar of his training machine.
“Are you insane?” I screamed. “Let me go. You can't do this. What are you going to tell my mother when she comes back?”
“Anything can happen between now and tomorrow night,” he sneered, his hot breath close in my face. “You just wait and see what I've got planned for you, baby girl.”
“Michael, please, don't do this. Just let me go, I'll get out of here and I won't bother you again. I guess it's been hard, me staying here, disrupting your life with Mom but I'm leaving now and you can get back to normal. We don't want to do something we might regret in the future. Ouuggh.”
“Would. You. Shut. Your. Fat. Mouth.” With each word he tugged tighter on the rough old fabric he'd wrapped around my open mouth. A foul taste of oil, sweat and old beer stuck to the back of my tongue.
I recoiled as his brute fingers tweaked the points of my breasts through the fabric, his breath raspy and vile. He mashed the entire weight of each one in turn with a satisfied grunt.
“Okay sweetie, you wait here. As if you're going anywhere,” he chuckled to himself as he went back up the stairs. “Pappy's going to charge the video camera.”
The door between the basement and house slammed shut and I was left alone with the terrorizing prospect of what he was going to film us doing. Or rather, record him doing to me.
What the hell had come over Michael? No one would ever have mistaken us for buddies and definitely not step-father and daughter. He had always eyed me with a deep suspicion, as though I might steal something from him.
Maybe he was worried about losing mom or sharing her attention. I had no idea, but he had never been like this. Ever since last night when he caught me at Illicit, he'd been a different person, a Frankenstein's monster gone wrong. I refused to believe he was going to do something to me. Last night he'd been drunk, I could smell the sour beer on his breath. But today, in my own mother's house, there was no way he was going to hurt me.
Was there?
The ugly images from last night inserted themselves again. I was in the perfect vulnerable position for him to strip me and do whatever he wanted with my body. And this time there'd be no Cole and his handlers coming to the rescue.
Maybe it ran in the family, like father, like son with the kinky sexual needs. Which of the many contortions and excesses my shocked eyes had witnessed last night did Michael have in mind?
The hairs rose along my forearms with the fear of being beaten with a leather strap. I was virginal when it came to bondage and couldn't imagine what else he might do. Images from Illicit crowded my mind, pushing out the planning of how I might talk him out of it.
There had to be something that would jolt him back to the reality that he could not abuse his wife's daughter. Like father, like son- I still could not fathom that Cole was the child of this monster.
Heavy footfall made the floorboards above my head creak and heave. There was no chance of screaming out for help with the gag tight in my mouth. And then there came the sound of coarse male laughter. The dank air in the basement made me shiver deep within and unpleasant prickles ran along my arms. The lusty anticipation was loud and clear in their jocular tomes.
Surely he wouldn't.
No, he would not bring his buddies over to watch. I thought of the glamorous voyeur couples lounging on silk cushioned beds at Illicit, watching the goings on all around with relaxed interest.
Hell, I had zero desire to be one of those bodies tied up and hanging from the chains in the ceiling. Exposing themselves and waiting purely for the pleasuring fingers of every passing man-or woman.
Oh fuck, there had been a woman taking on three sturdy men at the same time. One in her pussy and one in her ass as she eagerly deep-throated the third. A fourth man stood to the side, naked and hugely erect, blithely stroking his cock. He watched and waited, ready to move into one of her eager holes as soon as a vacancy arose.
No, no, this wasn't happening. My mind flew around like a manic bird in a tiny cage, refusing to accept its reality. Could Michael have gotten the idea last night of starting his own personal Club Illicit? Had he decided to invite all his friends to join, with me as the only slave?
“Grab a beer. She's down here, waiting on our pleasure.” Michael's vile thick voice shouted to the others at the top of the stairs.
Chapter SIX
Cole
I should just let Harley and the past go. Except I can't get her out of my head and it's driving me fucking insane. Every time her gorgeous sweet face floats up behind my eyes my dick starts raging in my pants.
Last night was even worse than the one before when she ran out on me. I tried to distract myself, get back to my normal hard man. I had Tad bring me one of the willing slave girls, blindfolded, bound and gagged so she had no idea it was me. The boss.
She very willingly bent across my huge desk of dark black wenge wood and waited
. Her spread pussy glistened with the anticipation of the crop landing across her smooth buttocks. She was breathing so heavily her gorgeous round breasts swayed in front of her.
I sat and observed her for quite a while. The human body was fascinating and seeing the excitement welling up deep inside her like a geyser would normally have given me great satisfaction. But I felt somehow removed from the situation and when I finally smacked her my stroke was pathetic. I brought the cane down on her with no sensation at all. I had no desire in me.
All I could think of was Harley, her soft hair in my face and the scent on her neck as I buried my fingers into her lush wet folds. How she drew a sharp little breath against my ear and clutched me tighter to her as I pushed inside and found the special spot instantly.
Nothing could take my mind off her huge round eyes, a dark blue that was actually violet, looking at me with the pain and confusion of betrayal. As though I knew we shared a fucking asshole father. The way her huge limpid eyes blinked and the eyelashes flittered, fuck. She reminded me of that character in the movie where everyone's blue and gets screwed over by humans.
I had the submissive girl removed from my office, still completely blindfolded, and got back to work.
No dice.
My head was all over the place. And when I got home, to the penthouse I keep in Manhattan for the nights I have to get away from Illicit, there was still no rest for my ravaging mind. I don't do pharmaceuticals so at dawn I went back to the club to finish up with work.
But then, I couldn't focus as much as thirty seconds without Harley seeping back into my thoughts. I've got a mountain of work in front of me and suddenly I realized my mind has been gone for fuck knows how long, meandering around her soft lips, like down pillows in a heavenly hotel, her sinuous tongue that came back at mine hard and her sweet wet center.
It's driving me freaking insane that we left it like that and it's not happening. I'm not that same stupid youth now and I won't allow my connection to her to fall apart again. I had to get control of the situation and make her tell me face to face that she doesn't want to see me again and I'll know the reason why.
I slipped out through my private entrance, not wanting raised eyebrows from Strike or that one of the guys should come as back up. The paper was still scrunched in my pocket, not that I needed it. The address was committed to memory as soon as Strike had pushed it across my desk. I got the Audi R8 V10 from the lot and drove straight there. The roommate looked confused and concerned when she buzzed me in.
“Harley's not here,” she said looking at me with deep distrust. “She promised me we'd talk this morning but I just got back and- oh, Ram this is Harley's friend, er-” she interrupted herself to explain to the good-looking Indian coming out of the bedroom, or bathroom.
It was hard to tell the exact layout of the apartment in the cramped space, piled high with stuff on every surface.
“You're Cole Winter,” Ram said, coming toward me and extending a hand. “I read the article in the Journal last month.”
“Oh, yeah.”
That fucking reporter had delved a little too close, almost letting more than was safe out of the bag. I'd refused all requests for interviews since.
“That's some great work you do for women in prostitution trafficking,” the guy continued, when I was more concerned with getting back to Harley's whereabouts. “Good for you, man and here, let me write you a contribution.”
At least the roommate was looking at me with slightly less suspicion now as her guy pulled out his checkbook.
“When will she be back,” I asked.
“She doesn't live here, she only hangs out on weekends and stuff, when my roommate's out of town. Otherwise she's been staying with her mother until she gets a place.”
Harley didn't have her own apartment, she had to stay with her mom, beg a bed with a friend in a bunny hole? I wish I'd known.
“Where does her Mom live?”
“I don't know exactly, somewhere out in Queens. I texted Harl a while back when we got in, but she hasn't replied, which isn't like her. Would you happen to have anything to do with her being so devastated yesterday morning?”
“Devastated how?” I asked, my heart racing. Harley felt the same. I hadn't imagined it.
“She was more upset than I've ever seen her. I know she'd been crying all night but she said she wanted some solo time to straighten her head out.”
“So you left her all alone,” I growled, more fiercely than I'd intended, making the boyfriend frown. “You have to tell me anything you know about where she might be. I need to find her.”
“Honestly I don't know. You have her number, right?”
I told the roommate, Lily her name was, to give me the number and I left the two lovers. It was obvious they were in full blossom of new lust and it made my heart sore to think I could have been in the same state with Harley right now.
I dialed her number every ten minutes or less, with the obsession of a stalker. Every time it went to Vmail meaning either she suspected it was me and was ignoring me, or something was preventing her from answering. I had no real reason for the chill in my gut telling me something was wrong, other than the fact that it had never once let me down in the last six years.
“Strike, get a trace on this number right away.” I called the club where Strike lived in a suite above my office.
Thanks to the high profile members of Illicit, I had better connections than the CIA, NSA and FBI rolled into one. Strike came back to me almost immediately.
“I got a bad feeling about this one,” he told me.
“Spill it,” I snapped.
“Got the trace down to within a block radius and it's on the same one out in Queens as the surveillance we've got on your old man,” Strike replied. “I'm on my way.”
That was how Strike rolled. No words required to know what I wanted, needed or thought, after the time we spent alone in the desert. We were as finely tuned as a marksman and his eyes become after months out there staring at mirages in the shifting sand.
He had recognized the only girl capable of attracting me as soon as she approached him on the stairs to the club, he knew she was messing with my mind, and now he knew that something was up with her, something that we had to fix immediately.
The guy we had watching my father's ugly house lit up when Strike and I appeared on the scene. He hadn't expected to see any action go down on this job.
“One female, blond, dyed, forties and one male, dark, fifties, exited Saturday oh-nine hundred,” he reeled off from his notes when Strike demanded to know who'd come and gone from the house. “Second female, twenties, brunette, entered, Saturday eighteen forty-seven.”
“Wait, what did she look like, this female?” I interrupted him. He looked up, disconcerted at being halted in his report.
“Uh, hard to say, she made a surreptitious entrance at the side door. Tight jeans, smoking body.”
He quaked at the furious glare I gave him and returned to his notepad.
“Male entered Saturday twenty oh-five, second male twenty-one, nineteen, third male, twenty-”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The guy trailed off as I took off across the street with Strike at my heels. We hopped the fence and came around to the back of the house, checking the windows. The surveillance guy caught up with us, backs pressed on either side of the rear door like SWAT.
He drew his gun and Strike jacked the lock. It took him mere seconds and we were inside the dark house.
“Clear.”
Strike had swarmed the upstairs and was already on his way back down while I checked the main floor. My old man and his two cronies were passed out drunk and who knew what else on the sofas. She wasn't there after all.
Disappointment gushed through my veins like a jolt of triple espresso. I'd been so sure I'd find her here, although there was also a twinge of relief that my father didn't have her after all. Who knew what he would have done to her, the sick fuck.
I pull
ed out my phone and dialed Harlow's number for about the hundredth time. And immediately, ringing began outside in the hall. Her phone was in a purse sitting on top of a suitcase. Strike was already busting open the door to the basement but I shoved him aside and powered down the stairs.
“Judas Fucking Priest, Harley.”
I raced to the angelic girl trussed up like a hunted animal with a filthy rag in her beautiful mouth. Her head was tipped forward, hanging from her neck muscles and she was passed out, or worse.
White hot rage mixed with intense terror is never a good cocktail and if my father had been down there in that dingy pigsty I know I would have killed him right there and fuck the consequences.
“It's okay, she's breathing but her pulse is very faint,” Strike said, checking her over.
He began working at unlocking the cuffs around her wrists, something he was highly trained at. I I held her small waist in my arm ready to catch her while I stroked her cheek with the backs of my fingers, trying to bring her around. “She's been drugged.”
“Bring the car to the front.” I tossed the keys for my Audi to the surveillance guy, standing guard on the stairs with his gun drawn.
The bracelets popped open under Strike's expert force and Harley plopped into my arms like a rag doll, all life gone from her limp frame. My heart thounded in my chest and I knew I would never be able to forgive myself in anything had happened to harm this woman.
If she didn't come out of this as perfect as she went in, someone was going to pay and pay hard. As it was, my father was still going to suffer.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
The bastard was on the stairs, rubbing his eyes. He hadn't realized it was me, his estranged son, wrecking his party.
“You, you little shit. I thought I told you never to enter my home while I drew breath.”
“That can be arranged,” I growled as I lifted Harley easily in my arms and carried her to the stairs. “Out of my way you filthy old bastard.”
CRUZ: Billionaire Bonded Romance Suspense (Illicit Book 4) Page 12