“You show some respect when you're in my house and put that little slut down,” he said. “I haven't finished with her yet.”
Strike's fist did its work with a single blow. A crunch of bones and the asshole was on the ground, out cold. Strike dragged him across the floor like a second stuffed toy, hoisted him like a showroom dummy and locked him into the cuffs he'd had around Harley.
We left him hanging there for his friends or his wife to find whenever. I hoped it wouldn't be any time soon and I pulled the door shut, locking it behind us. Maybe he'd die or at least rot in his own shit before anyone discovered him.
Chapter SEVEN
Harlow
I woke up in heaven. In that delicious space where you know you've slept deeply and had amazing dreams you can't quite remember. Then I realized the exquisite mattress, smooth silk sheets and down pillows I was lying in had a lot to do with my sense of well-being.
But oh, my arms ached and my wrists were killing me. It was an effort to even bring my hands out from under the outrageously expensive silk sheets and silk comforter and I was shocked to see the deep welts around the insides of both wrists, almost cutting right through the skin.
I looked all around, no, I wasn't in a hospital. No equipment was beeping, no drip was feeding me, but still I felt like an accident victim. And I had zero memory of how I came to be in this luxurious room, like a designer boutique hotel, totally decorated in shades of silver gray and black. Lush thick carpeting and full silk ballgown drapes.
The furniture was mirrored all over like an old Hollywood movie where the star wanders around wearing a silk nightgown trimmed with marabou feathers and high heeled satin pumps.
I dug through my empty mind, searching out an anchor, something that would tell me what I was doing here. Nothing. Only a flickering image of people, naked people, bodies slithering and sliding over one another. And hanging, of people hanging with their arms raised tight above their heads, locked and chained.
And then a tidal wave of misery enfolded me like a surfer in the eye of the perfect tube. I remembered Cole owned a club he called Illicit where people- people of the upper class, celebrities and billionaires, went to enjoy exactly that- illicit games.
I had a memory of being at the club with Cole and he was angry with me. Worse, I was in red hot rage with him. He had betrayed me. Lied? Cheated?
I couldn't get my mind to lock onto the visions. They moved in and out of my mind, flickering like that old black and white movie. I closed my eyes again. All I knew was those memories were painful and I was too exhausted to go there right now. Then I must have drifted off again, for who knew how long.
When I opened them again he was beside me.
“How are you my Sleeping Beauty?” Cole said, his face searched mine, full of the utmost concern. I had rarely felt so cared for. In fact, I had never felt that kind of nurturing as my mom had always been too busy working to make ends meet after Daddy died and then she turned her attention to the man she would eventually marry. What was his name? It was right there in my head, and then it was gone.
“Where am I?”
“You're safe in my guest room,” he said. “You've been asleep for almost two days.”
“What happened? What am I doing here?”
“Don't you remember?” Cole asked, frowning. “What's the last thing you recall?”
I again dug into the pitch tunnels in my mind, that remained firmly dark.
“I don't know. There's just a swirl of black and nothing,” I said. “Apart from- no, it doesn't matter.”
Maybe I was imagining the bizarre sexual images filling the back passages of my mind. I didn't want him to think I was some kinky sex fiend with nothing in my brain but bondage and spanking. Or for him to realize I was kind of uptight about what he did for a living. Maybe I wasn't the free-thinking modern girl I imagined myself.
“Tell me. It's important that you try to remember.” He had my hand held in his two large, comforting ones and I was happy to leave it there without remembering the past. I had an eerie feeling it would be better not to go there.
When Cole moved the hand on top to rest on my thigh and hip bone, even through the covers, I felt prickling sensations coursing through me from his touch. Even though I was depleted, there was still a rise between my legs, a tantalizing spark of awakening.
“It's a little embarrassing.”
I was sure I could trust him, even though there was a ghost of a memory of a dispute between us.
“I have a vision of people-men and women- tied up, hand-cuffed and blindfold and indulging in some rather kinky acts.” I could feel my face coloring hot as he looked into it, delving, and frowning his sexy forehead.
“People? Other people?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing. I'm sure you'll remember more as the days pass. All that matters is you're okay. Are you in any pain, anywhere?” Again his eyes burrowed into me, seeking the truth with excess apprehension.
“My arms, my wrists.” I looked down at my hand in his and saw the red welt almost cutting through the skin and it all flooded back to me. I jerked my hand out of his in horror, the pain jangling through my shoulder.
“Don't touch me,” I screamed hoarsely. My voice broke with emotion and pain in my throat. “What did you do to me in that vile place you call a night club? How did I get these wounds? Did you tie me to the chains in the ceiling?”
“Harley, please, don't get upset. You're mixing up your memories. I know they'll come back to you in right order if you give it time.”
“Tell me what you did to me?”
“It wasn't me. You know I would never hurt you.”
“Not you, I remember now,” I breathed. The night I spent waiting for Cole was emerging in my mind like a curtain being pulled back on a scene at the theater. The club where the richest, important people in the city indulged in some unusual activities, where my step-father had tried to attack me- the man Cole had called his father. “One thing I'm not getting mixed up is the fact that you're my brother,” I said.
“No. You met my father at the club. He hurt you.”
Yuk. A vision of my father, not his, with a heavy hand clasping my naked breast. Why was I having all these vile pictures throw themselves up in my head?
“You called him father,” I said quietly. I looked up at Cole and the pain in his face made me ache much worse than the agony in my arms and wrists. “That's your father?”
He nodded slowly as though he wished there was any other truth but the only one.
“And he's mine too,” I said.
“You're mixed up,” Cole whispered, taking my hand firmly back in his.
“No I'm not. That man married my mother eighteen months ago,” I said, my heart like a dead weight against my lungs.
Cole
Say it ain't fucking so. Every cell in my taut body roared.
I almost didn't believe her. Perhaps she'd hit her head, lost her memory. I reached for any excuse. I didn't want to believe her so it was easy to search for any other reason and make that the truth in my head. It was so unlikely and yet, when I put it all together it was the only possible reality.
I'd heard that my old man had married a woman a year or so back and even remember something about her having a grown up kid. But seeing as we hadn't spoken in years and I figured I was only hearing because some financial benefit might be forthcoming from me.
I ignored it. Nothing good ever came from having my father in my life. Harley had just discovered that. Harley! The only woman I'd ever really felt actual love for, was my step-sister.
I'd sat beside her bed, for three days, sleeping in the huge armchair, leaving the room only to shower or get more coffee. She had nowhere else to go, so I'd brought her back here, fuck I've got more rooms than I know how to furnish – my purple felt pool table has a room to itself and another for the eighties pinball and PAC-man machines. And another- my own personal version of Illicit.
I carried her in my arms
from the car, placed her in this silk bed and watched over her, anxious for any signs of harm. She was delirious and feverish for forty-eight hours but was mostly suffering from shock and exhaustion. Still I watched and waited. Eager for the moment she'd open her eyes and see a caring face. My only concern was that she know she's safe here with me. No one will harm her ever again.
I had my own delusions too in those wee hours, picturing Harley and me together. She was at liberty to go wherever she wanted and I had space. We could live here together and make a real home. She could work for me or go to school, or do whatever the hell she wanted. And we'd be together.
We'd go to the country, the beach and I'd make love to that delicious body every single morning and every night. The fact that our parents had hitched up was of no consequence to me. We could have met in another city and never discovered the fact. I didn't see us as related and didn't care. All that mattered was that we'd found each other again and I had no intention of letting go.
“Where are my clothes?” Harley struggled up out of the down pillows.
“In those bags over there. I had some local boutiques send up a selection for you to choose from, as your other clothes were- ruined.”
“You stripped me?” She lifted the silk sheet and gazed down at her body, naked apart from her panties which I'd decided to leave on in case she woke up, freaked out and feeling vulnerable. I saw how she winced in pain just lifting the wisp of the sheet.
“I wanted to make you comfortable.” I said, not adding that I wanted the reminder from those filthy clothes out of my house and her life.
“I'm almost naked,” she said giving me an indignant stare that would have been funny if the situation wasn't so fucked up.
“Harl, it isn't as though I haven't seen your body before.”
“That's the operative word – before,” she snapped. “Before we were family. I have to get up.”
She struggled to push herself up, pulling back from the agony. She almost faltered, but damn, she was a tough one and refused to let the pain defeat her.
“What do you need? I'll bring you whatever you want,” I meant it. I would gladly be her nursemaid and take care of her.
“I need some clothes to get dressed with, which I'll pay you back for as soon as I can.”
“No you don't. You need to stay in bed and I don't want to be paid back. Whatever you want is a gift. Keep all of them. ”
A few bags of fuckwit designer clothes were no compensation at all for what she'd been through because of me.
“Thank you but I prefer to pay for my own clothes. Thank you for looking after me but I need to leave now.”
She wasn't sounding like the Harley I knew. She was a different person, cold and snippy with clipped politeness.
“Harley, what's wrong? I know you've been through an ordeal and you have every reason to be mad at me, but please, you need to rest and let me take care of you.”
There was no way she was going out of my sight again. I was determined to find out what had occurred that night in my father's basement because I am good to my word and if he'd harmed her physically or emotionally, he was as good as dead.
“I'm fine. And now I think it's better if I leave.”
“Where do you think you'll go? You can't go back to your mother's house.”
She shuddered when I reminded her of the fact that her family home was gone. Struggling to her feet, tentative as a baby doe, she looked up at me with those wide eyes so I wanted nothing more than to hold her in my arms safe from any pain forever. And while I held her, I'd indulge the ferocious desire to mound her body under my hands and my mouth for hours.
She took a couple of steps towards the pile of shopping bags and her knees buckled under her. In an instant I was beside her so she fell into my arms and I lifted her easily back to the bed.
“Let me go. I can't stay here like this,” She wailed, pushing me off her.
“You can and will stay here until you're strong enough to get back out there,” I told her, laying her back down on the pillows with gentle force.
She was being ridiculous about the brother-sister thing. If my father had never shown up at Illicit, Harley and I could have married and had our own kids never knowing that we were related. “If you're mad at me, fine, you won't see so much as a hair on my head. But you will stay here and rest up, even if I have to get out some handcuffs.”
I slammed out of the room and went back down the curving staircase to my man den- another room without a real purpose- perfect now for me to again lick my wounds. I wasn't sure how much she was remembering now, it was pretty clear that her visit to the club was mixed up in her mind with the basement torment inflicted by the old bastard. I called Rosa, my PA at the club and told her to send over a live-in maid for a couple of days.
“Submissive or dom?” Rosa asked, with her customary efficiency.
“No, I mean an actual maid, not a role-playing slave girl,” I snarled, taking my frustration out on the woman who dedicated herself to making my life and business flow smoothly.
Chapter EIGHT
Harlow
When the memories came rushing back, the physical pain all through my joints and limbs increased as though in sympathy with the agony in my mind. My shoulders felt as though they had been ripped from their sockets and my lower back was stretched worse than any ashtanga yoga class had ever pulled me.
A personal maid had been hired for me, against my objections. Penny, was sent by Cole to supply all my needs, which was impossible for me to get used to. I'd never imagined myself as that girl with a maid in a white apron whose sole purpose was to bring me whatever I wanted.
I was suddenly like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Penny informed Cole about my sleepless nights and he ordered a massage physio practitioner to visit me in my bedroom.
Now I spent each morning being pampered and molded back to life and while I know I shouldn't be accepting all these expensive services from Cole that I will never be able to repay, it feels absolutely amazing to have so much attention paid to my brutalized body.
“I haven't seen Mr Winter in days,” I told Penny when she brought the enchiladas I'd happened to mention I was craving for dinner.
Laid out on a tray with a small jug of frozen margarita and fragrant tuberose in a black crystal vase. Cole had not come back to me since I'd tried to leave, good to his word that I wouldn't see so much as a hair on his head. “Where is he?”
“He keeps himself downstairs, shut up in his private quarters,” she said. “I never see him either, aside from when he comes to my room to inquire about your health. He has a full gymnasium and I hear him there in the middle of the night when he comes back from his work.”
I could tell Penny was keen to see more of Cole's gorgeous visage and ripped body.
“He spends hours in there, pounding his body like a man on the run,” she added wistfully.
That was my fault. That much I was sure. When we found each other again, the physical attraction ignited instantly but that was not all there was between us. We both knew that my appearance at his club had a much greater significance than the desire to feel him inside me again. The connection between us had been broken but not severed completely. Our passion in that public bathroom had been the need to express those deep emotions through our bodies, when words would never have been enough. That night seemed like a lifetime ago now.
I should never have gone to Illicit. We'd never managed to complete our re-connection thanks to that goddamn club. Now we were further apart than we'd ever been and it was all my fault. On three separate occasions in our lives, Cole had rescued me from danger and abuse and I'd shown him absolutely no gratitude.
Instead, I shut myself off from him and refused to discuss how I really felt. True, I was a little afraid of the activities at Illicit and how many of those games Cole would expect me to perform with him. That in itself was shameful for me.
How could I openly announce to a man I hungered for sexually that I w
as scared of sex and letting myself go? What if I couldn't compete with the sexually avaricious women he must be used to now?
The thought of disappointing him when I wanted him so desperately was beyond bearing. And how could I admit to humiliation at the hands of his father? He'd be sure to find me dirty and soiled if not right away, then later. A man who deserved to be impressed and in awe of his woman didn't need a frightened and victimized little girl hanging around.
“Penny, I have to get up,” I said. It was still a huge struggle to push myself into sitting position, but I was a little stronger now.
“You lie right back down.” She eased my arms out from supporting me and pressed me gently back into the soft mound of pillows.
“Am I your prisoner?” I laughed.
“Master's orders,” she said. “Mr Winter says you are not to leave this room until you're fully healed. I'm to watch over you and make sure that's all you focus on.”
I was still sore enough to allow her to restrain me. I had nowhere to go, a genuine homeless waif. But more than anything I wasn't sure I could leave Cole knowing I'd never be this close to him again. Even though we were doomed never to be together, one thing that would never heal was my yearning to hold his ripped torso in my arms and feel him plunge deep inside me.
That night I had a dream. I was shackled at the wrists in double handcuffs with my arms raised above my head and locked into a contraption that also locked my ankles spread wide. The wood and metal apparatus held me firmly bent forward with my back arched so my breasts were shoved forward and up. The tiniest movement elicited the clank of chains behind my ears.
A tight blindfold wrapped my eyes making my entire existence pitch dark. Somehow I was completely aware of every shift in the air. A man- I knew it from the masculine aroma of heavy musk and oak- moved behind me. I felt the air shiver as he flicked something above his shoulder. And it made me tremble from my chest all the way down my legs with what was about to happen and because I had never been trapped in such a vulnerable position.
CRUZ: Billionaire Bonded Romance Suspense (Illicit Book 4) Page 13