by Warren, Skye
Like a missile encased in bespoke wool.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper.
“Because you left.” He looks away and then back at me, his eyes dark and tragic. “I saw you. I wanted you. And I take what I want. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, Holly.”
“Have you heard of dating?”
He gives me a small, private smile. “This is better. I don’t want to ask you out. I don’t want to give you the illusion that you can say no, Holly. You’re mine.”
“As romantic as this reunion is,” Adam says, “might I ask for some water. Food. Bandage. I would even accept medicine.”
I glance at him, and my eyes widen. “Is that blood?”
“A bullet wound, I’m afraid,” he says, his expression rueful and tight with pain.
“Oh my God,” I say, turning back to Elijah. “You shot him.”
“It was the only way to compel him into his current state of capture.”
“What about your brothers?”
“My brothers.” A shadow crosses his eyes. “I love them, but I’m more fully my father than they will ever be. That line they were worried about? I crossed it. It’s far behind me now.”
The match burns to his fingertips and goes out.
We’re cast into darkness. I suck in a breath and step backward, bumping into the warm wall. There must be heaters beneath this building to keep it this way underground. It’s a far more comfortable prison than the French church.
What a strange comparison to make. What an ironic turn in my life. I thought I was returning to my ordinary life with ordinary things. High heels and mocha frappes. Lunch meetings with my agent and editor. What must they be thinking right now? That I’m running late. That I somehow forgot. That I got caught in a subway malfunction, maybe.
They would never imagine that plain Holland Frank would be kidnapped.
They would never imagine this wasn’t the first time.
“I’ll give you the night to think over your situation,” Elijah’s voice says through the darkness. “In the morning we’ll talk. You’ll be more amenable to my demands by then.”
“What demands?” I say, panic rising in my throat, my voice squeaking.
His only answer is the click of his dress shoes on stone as he leaves. Hinges make a high-pitched sound. A door closes and locks. We’re alone.
I close my eyes, unable to face the reality. Unwilling to face it.
“I’m sorry, ma petite,” Adam says.
“For what?”
“For not being able to solve this predicament.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
“For hitting you when you’re already shot.”
He gives a small, musical laugh. “That didn’t feel amazing, to be sure. But I probably deserved it. And the bullet as well. He was only returning the favor. After all, I shot him first.”
I nestle down into the corner, feeling a strange kind of comfort. When you’ve lived long enough in the dark, it begins to feel like home. “Why did you shoot him?”
“I was his mentor, once. His friend. Then I became indebted to dangerous men. Powerful men. And he became a pawn to his lieutenant colonel. We were soldiers, each of us, on opposite sides of a secret war being waged.”
“In other words, he got in your way.”
That musical laugh again. “Yes, he got in my way. In my own manner I was trying to help him. Put him out of commission, out of the game. It wasn’t a lethal wound.”
“Neither was yours, it seems.”
“No, apparently our friend has a strong sense of symmetry.”
My chest constricts. He said he’ll make demands of us tomorrow. “How far do you think he’ll go to maintain that symmetry? Do you think he would make us… kiss?”
“I have come to regret those games,” he says. “They weren’t respectful.”
Anger wells in my heart. “You play the games. He plays the games. And always, I’m in the middle of them. Why? I’m just a regular girl.”
“I chose you before because you were the one thing he wanted but couldn’t have.”
“But I’m nothing to you.”
“Nothing? No. I’ve come to care about what happens to you, but you aren’t my lost love. That’s where he broke the symmetry. If he’d wanted to pick the one thing I wanted but couldn’t have, there would be someone else sitting in this cell with me.”
Because we’re whispering confidences, I ask, “Who?”
“Someone you know,” he surprises me by saying. “Someone you love.”
My forehead knits. “But who—”
“It does not matter. What matters is that clearly he plans to exact his revenge tomorrow. We had better rest and get some sleep.”
“I’m not going to sleep,” I say. “Now tell me who this person is. We barely know the same people. I can’t think of anyone who—No. Not London.”
“Is it so hard to believe? I imagine many men fall in love with her every day. The irony is that I have Elijah to thank for meeting her. If he hadn’t slipped her the diamonds, I would never have met her.”
“You’re the one who helped her,” I realize. “The one who helped me escape Paris.”
“Yes.”
“Because you wanted her to love you back?”
“God, no. She has no business being with someone like me. In the same way you have no business being with someone like Elijah North. When men like us sell our souls to the devil, there’s nothing left to give to a woman.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Elijah
Of course I don’t go to sleep.
There are infrared cameras set up in the basement, and I seat myself on one of the pews. The pulpit is quiet and dark. Even this many years later there’s the faint scent of incense. It’s embedded in the wood and thin wool carpet.
The church has been abandoned for a few years now. I bought the property under a shell company for twenty thousand dollars at a public auction.
It makes a good safe house.
Even my brothers don’t know about it.
Thinking of them makes my jaw clench. There’s no going back now. They would never accept me again after what I’ve done, but this is who I am. It was always a false front that they welcomed into their fold. They thought I was like them. I’m not.
I’m like our father.
I pull up the camera, and of course, of course, they’re talking.
Adam is always fucking talking, and Holly is too curious for her own good. It pisses me off, even as I acknowledge that I created this situation. Maybe I even created it to force them to talk, because I’m a perverse son of a bitch.
“When men like us sell our souls to the devil, there’s nothing left to give to a woman.” Damn the man for telling the truth. There’s nothing left in my soul but darkness and violence. That’s what I’m showing her by taking her captive. She left because I couldn’t give her empty promises—now I’m showing her exactly why they would have been empty.
“Bullshit,” she says, her voice calm and clear over the speaker. “That’s an excuse men like you use to keep from feeling anything, because emotions are more scary than bullets.”
Soft laughter. “I see why Elijah likes you so much.”
“Yes,” she says, her voice dry. “He likes me so much he kidnapped me.”
“He’s trying to prove a point.”
“What point?”
“That he doesn’t deserve you.”
That’s the problem with making an enemy of a man you once called a friend. He knows me too well. Of course I don’t deserve Holly. Now she’ll finally see that.
They grow quiet after that.
Holly wanders the edges of her prison in much the same way she wandered the edges of the crypt under the French church. She’s a woman who always needs to test her boundaries. That’s one of the things I admire. And it’s one of the reasons we can never be together.
I’m a man who will always put cage
s around her.
In the back there are two cots with thin pallets on top. Ironically it’s more comfortable than the hard wooden pew that will be my mattress tonight.
She curls up on her side facing the wall, as if she knows I have a camera, as if she doesn’t want me to know she’s crying. I hear her sniffles anyway. Each one is a stake to the heart.
I leave the laptop running on the ground as I recline on the pew. Rafters weave an intricate pattern beneath the roof of the church. Evening light passes through dirt-smudged stained glass windows. Smudges of green and purple and pink wander across the plaster walls.
Dreams lap at my feet, a respite I haven’t had since I returned to the villa and discovered Holly missing. I haven’t been able to sleep. I’ve barely been able to eat.
Now she’s under my control again, and I can finally breathe.
When I open my eyes, night has fallen.
It looked almost pretty in the twilight, even derelict and abandoned. Now darkness encroaches on every surface. Now the church looks as vacant as the open eyes of a corpse.
A plastic bag waits for me at the end of the pew. I pick it up. There’s a few bottles of water inside. Some alcohol swabs and bandages.
I carry it downstairs.
Adam is already waiting by the bars, standing between me and Holly as if he can protect her from me. The idea makes me laugh; the sound echoes in the basement. I’m the one with the gun. He’s the one with a bullet in his chest.
“Are you going to be her knight in shining armor?” I ask, my voice casual.
He curls each fist around a bar. “Will you make me?”
I hold up the bag. “Supplies. Water. I even threw in a few candy bars.”
Holly appears behind Adam, her face drawn and pale. She puts her hands around her arms, but it doesn’t completely hide her shiver. Even with the heaters I had installed, it would be cold down here. “What do we have to do to get them?”
My voice becomes sardonic. “This is too easy. Aren’t you going to argue with me first? Aren’t you going to beg like you did in France? You beg so pretty, Holly.”
The taunts have the desired effect. She firms her lips. Anger flashes across her dark eyes. She even looks taller as her spine straightens. “You’re a bastard.”
“Is that any way to speak to your captor?”
“Go to hell.”
I make a tsk sound. “Your cellmate needs the bandages in this bag. So even if you aren’t thirsty, and I’m sure by now that you are, you might do it for him.”
“And what exactly do I have to do?”
“Kiss him, of course. My little brown-haired Barbie and Interpol Ken. What else will I do with you while I have you here in my pretend mansion?”
Hurt flashes over her face before she hides it behind anger. “You want to see me kiss him? You arranged this whole thing so you could get a little soft-core porn? Fine.”
That’s my only warning before she turns Adam around and lifts up on her toes. She presses her lips to his in a clumsy kiss, and jealousy surges inside my chest. She fought my kiss. She recoiled from it, but she’s kissing this man—and he’s kissing her back.
He may have a thing for London, but he has no problem kissing her sister. He cups the back of her head and leans over her. His lips tease hers, the motion at once sweet and explicit.
My stomach turns over. I hate the sight of them together. It feels wrong and dangerous, but I’m free-falling from a high altitude. The only way to go is down.
“Make her come.” My voice comes out hoarse.
Adam doesn’t even stop kissing her. He moans his assent. I watch Holly stiffen. She’s alarmed, but it will only make her hotter. She likes it when she fights.
I do, too. My mind may know this is wrong, but my body has no problem with the picture playing out in front of me. My hard cock presses against my suit.
He flips her around, and she grasps the bars to remain upright.
His hands roam her body, pinching her breasts, smoothing over her stomach. He cups her pussy over the cute little black skirt she wears.
Her eyes are wide as she watches me, and nothing, absolutely nothing can hide the lust that lurks in their depths. She likes this. She hates it. It fucking turns her on.
Adam murmurs in her ear. “See the way he watches you? He can’t look away. He wants his hands to be on your sweet body. He wants to feel how wet you are.”
Some small part of me recognizes that I’m losing my control of the situation, but most of me doesn’t care. She looks so fucking hot, her hips rocking forward, seeking more pressure from Adam, her head tilting back onto his shoulder.
I love watching this woman’s pleasure, even if another man gives it to her.
“No,” she moans.
“Yes,” I say, stepping forward, shoving my hand through the bars, gripping her chin so she’s forced to face me. “You came so hard this way. I think you like it rough, sweetheart.”
She shakes her head, but it’s useless, useless when she’s making those breathy little whimpers. Adam rubs her clit with the heel of his hand. It’s a crude way to make her come. Nothing like a good finger fuck. Nothing like licking her until she creams.
She’s not even undressed, but she humps his hand, desperate, hungry.
“Stop,” I say, my voice hard as steel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Holly
The pressure disappears, and I want to cry. It felt so good, as if I were floating on a cloud. There were no bars, no cots. No bags of water bottles. Only pleasure.
Now it’s gone.
I whimper my dismay. “Please,” I beg, beyond caring.
My hips rock forward against the bars, and I can’t imagine how I look right now. Elijah stands there like a fortress in a suit—impenetrable. Adam’s hand may have played with me, but Elijah is the one who controlled the strings. “Please,” I say again.
His green eyes look past me. “You. Back the fuck off.”
The heat from Adam melts away. Then it’s only the two of us standing a foot apart, cold metal bars between us, an entire world between us.
We’ll never be on the same side again.
I know this is wrong and perverse, but somehow that only makes me hotter. There are two men watching me, two men burning for me. I don’t need to look down at the erections between their legs to know this. It’s clear in their eyes.
I glance back at Adam, and he’s lounging on the cot, a pair of slitted eyes.
Elijah taps my clit through the fabric. “Look at me.”
And so I look into his green, green eyes. They look like the glittering surface of the sea, and I feel a pang of regret for ever leaving that paradise. If I had never run from him, I would never know the depths he would go to catch me.
He pushes the heel of his hand against my clit. “Go on. Make yourself feel good, sweetheart.”
My cheeks burn, but I obey him. I rock my hips against his hand using the bars for leverage. His gaze never leaves mine, not even when I climb onto the precipice, not even when I fall. The orgasm clenches every muscle in my body, and I keen my perverse pleasure.
There is no time to relax after the climax. I wrench myself away from the bars.
“I hate you,” I say between gritted teeth. Tears of humiliation dampen my cheeks.
“That’s fine, sweetheart.” Elijah doesn’t sound bothered in the least. He scrubs his hand over his face, the same hand he used to make me come. He breathes deep as if enjoying the scent of me. It feels primal, having my scent on him, and I fight the satisfaction it gives me.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can.”
“Adam thinks you’re trying to prove a point. That you don’t deserve me.”
An eyebrow rises. “Do you think I deserve you?”
“At this point you only deserve a hard kick between the legs.”
He laughs, revealing white teeth. Why does he have to look so handsome? As good as he looks in a T-shirt and tactical p
ants, he somehow looks even better in a suit. His green eyes sparkle. “I’ve always liked that violent edge you hide from the world.”
“You bring it out in me.”
He crouches in front of the bars. “Fine. Here’s a real answer. Because this is who I really am. You met me in captivity last year. I was injured and beaten. Tortured. Hungry. So you assumed I was tame. That wasn’t true then, and it definitely isn’t true now.”
Tame? No, he’s definitely a wild animal. Feral. “You’re angry at Adam. You should be. He shot you and imprisoned you, but I didn’t do any of that. So why am I here?”
“For the same reason a lion drags a lioness into his den.”
I shiver, and though I hide my response, my body heats. This particular lioness likes to be dragged around by her lion. “I will fight you.”
“Good.” He pushes the bag through the bars. “You earned this.”
Humiliation threatens to drive me to my knees. My stomach turns over, but I force myself to face him with my head held high. He created this situation. He’s responsible for every ounce of shame it causes me.
Not that it bothers him much.
He gives me a small smile, not abashed in the least. He turns and walks away, sure of my response. Sure that my desperation will make me comply.
It’s with shaking hands that I sort through the offering he brought. I need the water, and I know that in a few hours, I’ll be grateful for a Snickers bar. Except that’s what he wants from me. That will only give me enough strength to play more of his sick games.
He wants to prove that he’s evil? Let him.
I shove the bag back to him. It slides through the bars, beyond my reach.
He stops and turns back around. “What are you doing?”
“Fighting you.”
He looks pitying. “That’s only going to make you weaker.”
“Yes. It will kill me if you wait too long.”
“So you think I’m going to release you if you don’t eat.”
“Or drink. Yes. I don’t think you’re as terrible as you want me to believe. I don’t believe you’d let an innocent woman starve to death. That’s something your father might have done, but you’re not like him. No matter what you say.”