“Well. I’m sorry it’s simple but we didn’t know if you were a vegetarian or allergic to anything, so we brought this. I hope it meets your needs. I also have a television for you and I’ve brought some books, to help you fill your time.” He disappeared for a moment and came in with a flat screen television and some books. He carried the mid-sized television with one hand, the books with the other. So he was not only strong, he was agile.
Lily looked away, not wanting to be caught staring, and tried to think about other things. Liam connected a cable to the television on the top of the dresser and made to leave.
“I’ll be back later to check on you.” He didn’t say anything else and he left her to pick over the breakfast.
“Liam!” She called out to him, a sudden fear of being alone overriding her better judgment.
He stopped and turned back to her. “Yes?”
“I’m not a vegetarian and I have no food allergies.” It was all she could think of to say.
“I’ll remember that. See you later.” He closed the door quietly and Lily sighed deeply.
She was still alive, at least. Getting up, she sipped her coffee as she went for the remote he’d left on the top of the dresser. Flicking through the channels she found a local channel, hoping to see the midday news. Maybe there was a report about her kidnapping.
She ate her breakfast as she waited, her tension rising as the minutes passed and there was no report about her. A lost ring from twenty years ago had been found by a lady pulling weeds in her flower bed, a car accident had clogged up the highway, and the local government was asking for a tax increase to fund education programs, but not a single mention of her. None.
James had not reported what happened then. Nobody knew she was gone, that was all she could think about as the program ended without a single mention of her name. Sitting back against the headboard, a plush concoction of fabric and padding, Lilly decided if she got out of this she was going to punch James right in his lying mouth the moment she saw him.
In the light of day, she felt her bravery renewed, her fear of the night before, her total anguish at her own stupidity, muted. It was obvious she wouldn’t be escaping but she felt calmer. Somehow she would survive. She didn’t know what the men wanted from her and she pushed away thoughts telling her hostage situations never ended well.
They were different though, Liam and Cameron. Something about them was different from the typical murdering, kidnapping, evil kind of men that took innocent women hostage. She’d gathered that much from the few conversations she’d had with them so far. But if only one person knew she’d been taken as a hostage and they weren’t doing anything publicly…
Maybe she had it all wrong. Sitting up in the bed she looked out at the window where the sky was turning as angry and gray as she felt. Maybe James was working behind the scenes, trying to get her back? Ticking her thumbnail against her teeth, her head spun with new ideas.
“No, he ran away. He left me. Stop being such a ninny, Lily. James doesn’t care and he’s probably still hiding in his safe-room. Idiot.” Settling back into her pillows, Lilly felt depression sinking over her. She might be safe for now but as time passed and James didn’t answer their demands, would Liam and Cameron be willing to let her go? Or would they have to find a way to hide the evidence of what they’d done?
The day wore on and Liam brought her extra clothes, dinner, some snacks that she could keep in the room and extra drinks, and allowed her to go to the bathroom again. That was the part she hated most she decided, as night fell and a storm began to rage. Having to ask to be allowed to tend to her bodily needs.
Boredom had begun to take hold as the day wore on and she’d begun to read one of the classic novels Liam had brought her. As night fell and the gray skies turned black and a storm began to rage, her fears of the night before returned. What if James never contacted Liam and Cameron?
Tears began to fall as the power went out in the house, the sudden quiet unsettling. Before that, the house had been filled with the low rumble of electric appliances that went unnoticed until they were quiet.
The house was dark. Thunder crashed outside as though the storm was trying to destroy the very earth it hovered over, and Lily’s nerves began to crack once more.
Like a terrified child, Lily hid under the covers with her eyes squeezed shut. But it wasn’t the storm that made her sob so deeply her body shook. No, it was knowing that nobody cared enough to realize she was gone and that James had left her to her fate.
The man she’d loved so deeply was nothing but a selfish prick. How could she have been so blind? Had she really been that desperate? A sudden blast of peach light, seen even through the covers and the flesh of her eyelids, reminded her of the nightgown she’d bought on the company credit card.
She’d bought it in the hopes of wearing it for James. He would never see it, and had never planned to see it, unless he’d perhaps grown desperate. Women threw themselves at him. He’d never have been that hard-up that he’d have turned to Lily for sex.
A new sob broke as she once again felt shame burning through her. She’d made such a fool of herself and now she was trapped in a situation that was none of her own doing. Clenching her eyes tightly shut, she tried to stop herself from crying once more but found that only made it worse. Hopefully, the sound of her tears was hidden by the storm.
“Have you checked on her since the power went out?” Cameron turned to Liam, his eyes accusing. Liam had denied him permission to see Lily all day.
“Her television was off before the storm, so was her light. I assume she’s asleep. Leave it.” Liam went back to typing at his computer, his thoughts hidden by the stony look on his face.
“We should at least check on her! She might be terrified in there!” Cameron paced the room, his thoughts on comforting the woman they’d taken.
He wanted to touch her, to smell her once more. He’d not been able to get her out of his head all day and now he was like a caged tiger, waiting for that moment of escape.
“I know what you’re thinking and I know what you’re after. You aren’t getting it so leave her be.” Liam didn’t even look up as he spoke, he just kept typing.
“Don’t you feel it, Liam? It’s not just me, it’s her! She wants us! I know it, I can feel it in my bones!”
“I know what you feel it with and it is not your ‘bones’.” Liam looked up long enough to make air quotes with his fingers. “You feel it with your dick. I know because I feel it too. That doesn’t mean we’re going to act on it. She’s an innocent and our captive. It’s wrong.”
“But—” Cameron began but Liam interrupted, his blue eyes hard and flashing with an intensity that came from more than the candles that lit the dark room.
“Cam, she is not here as our pet captive. She is here because we fucked up. We shouldn’t have taken her but she’s here now and Kenneth wants us to keep her until James releases Mary, Winston, and Annalise.”
Cameron stilled as Liam spoke the names of their foster parents and foster sister. The foster sister they had escaped hell on earth with. His nostrils flared and Liam could see a hard edge form in Cameron’s jaw.
“You’re right.” His head bowed for a moment as he remembered exactly what was at stake.
Winston and Mary, their foster parents in the beginning, the people that adopted three lost and broken children who’d escaped from a cult twenty years ago. Mary had seen their faces on the news and had asked her husband, an affluent businessman, to help her take the children in. Arrangements had been made and the children went from poverty and fear to love and luxury.
It had taken Cam months to start speaking again, and Liam still had nightmares about the abuse they’d suffered. Annalise still didn’t speak. She barely communicated with anyone other than Liam, Cameron, and Mary. Their real parents were sent to prison, along with the cult leader, and they’d grown up refusing to see the people who’d subjected their own children to horrific acts of violence.
&nb
sp; Cameron and Liam had escaped in the dark cover of night, searching only for a place where fists didn’t hurt them and grownups didn’t do bad things to children, Annalise at their side. They had been found walking down a highway by a policeman. Alone, afraid, and scared, the children were all taken to the station where they’d revealed the horrors they’d lived through. Young and unable to voice their own wants, the children had been taken in by Mary and Winston. The couple had worked hard and nurtured the children back to some form of sanity, and all three had become as integral to the family as their natural-born son was.
Ten years older than the other children, Kenneth now led the family business but Liam and Cameron had their roles. Usually, that involved things that only the most devoted and trustworthy members of family could do. Liam and Cameron did the things required of them gladly.
They repaid the family’s kindness and love with true and total devotion. Sometimes that meant doing ugly things, but Cameron and Liam knew it was for the good of the family. Not the business, not the empire Winston had created, but for the family.
For the first time, the reality of Lily’s position, the similarity to the total lack of control and subjugation he’d felt as a child, hit home. They’d taken her from her life, put her in a box, and though she wasn’t being abused as they had been, she was still their prisoner. Cameron’s fist clenched as the understanding that he was the bad guy finally bloomed in his mind.
Cameron knew the sense in Liam’s words, he did, and he knew his role in this mess, but he’d not been able to get her out of his head all day. The memory of how she’d felt, so soft and warm in his arms, had plagued him.
She’d looked so defeated this morning when she’d come out of the bathroom that he’d planned to spend the morning trying to cheer her up somehow. He wasn’t sure how he’d control the urge to pull her into his arms but he’d find a way. Liam had squashed that idea by keeping him busy all day.
And now, alone and afraid in the dark, she was being left to allow her fears to grow. He knew that’s what she was doing because he’d been there, he knew how thoughts raced inside your mind and the smallest whisper of sound could produce raging terror that just couldn’t be contained. Cameron clenched his fist as he thought about it, wanting to take away that fear even if he was the one that caused it.
“So we’re just going to leave her in there on her own, with the power out and no explanation?” Cameron glared at Liam now.
The two were true friends, their bond formed long ago in their shared childhood, but Liam was in charge. That was just how it was, what he said went.
“Yes. It is obvious it is storming so that will explain the power, if she’s even awake. I suggest you go and take a cold shower, Cameron. You’re starting to annoy me.” Liam tempered the rebuke with a light grin, before going back to his work.
“Fuck you. Fine. I’ll go to bed. I’m not showering in this storm.” He picked up his phone from the chair and made to leave.
“You aren’t still afraid to shower in a storm? How many times do I have to tell you that’s an old wives’ tale?” Liam chuckled to himself.
“People have died, Liam! It’s not funny!” Cameron retorted, flipping Liam off as he pulled the door open.
“It is, and no they haven’t! Some sensationalist newspaper made that up!” Liam didn’t know that for sure but he wasn’t going to tell Cameron that.
“Fuck you, Liam!” Cameron repeated but he said it with a smile this time.
“Cameron?” Cameron turned slowly, something in Liam’s voice alerting him to the fact that he wasn’t going to like what Liam was about to say.
“What?” Cam waited, his dread making him impatient.
“Just remember, Annalise is again in a position where she has no control, where she cannot say no. Think about that when you’re aching to stick your dick in Lily.”
Damnit, he’d been right, those words were like ice water over the head!
“You’re right.”
He closed the door quietly and headed for his own room just down the hall from Lily’s. He’d had to fight with himself all night not to go to her. He’d heard her crying the night before and felt like such a dick for leaving her like that. He’d barely slept and felt the exhaustion now. Maybe he did need to sleep.
He reached his door but turned, hand on the doorknob. For a moment, he thought it had been nothing, and then it came again: a quiet sob from down the hall.
She was awake. And sobbing.
Cameron squeezed his eyes shut and turned the knob, intending to strip off his clothes and drop straight onto the small bed in the corner of the room he kept as bare as a prison cell. He needed release before he saw her again, even if she was crying. Then he might have a shred of self-possession so he wouldn’t make a pass at a crying woman.
But the sob came yet again, and he felt his hand come away from the doorknob and his body walk down the hallway even while he screamed at himself to turn around, to go back to his room, that she wasn’t safe with him. That those luscious, perfectly tempting curls, her heart shaped face and her brown eyes were too much for him not to beg for what he wanted.
What both he and Liam wanted.
But Annalise…Cameron’s thoughts turned to his sister. Would he want someone comforting her in this storm? He knew he would, though he wouldn’t want them to do the things he wanted to do with Lily. Not unless she wanted it, and he knew Lily wouldn’t turn him down.
He hoped Liam was just as distracted as he was, he thought as he reached the door. Smug bastard.
The lock clicked under his fingers and he opened the door carefully.
“Lily?” He spoke her name quietly, not wanting to frighten her.
A sob was his only answer. The power was still out so the room was dark, as dark as a cave except for the bright flashing of lightning outside. Shutting the door behind him—at least a tiny barrier to her escape—Cameron edged into the room and followed the sound of her crying to the bed. He sat cautiously on the edge of it and felt her shift away.
“Please don’t be scared, it’s only a storm,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to say this wasn’t what they did, and they weren’t going to kill her, and that her boss was one hell of a jerk for leaving her there while he ran for safety. He wanted to say if they weren’t trying to save another life, they never would have taken her. But all of those words seemed inadequate.
“Why shouldn’t I be scared?” She whispered, tears in her voice. “He’s…he doesn’t care for me. He doesn’t care for anyone. And he’ll just let me die here without anybody else knowing about it!” Her voice quavered on the last word, and any shred of resolve disappeared.
“You’re not going to die,” Cameron told her forcibly. “We’re not going to kill you.”
Liam was going to kill him. He’d say the fear they’d kill her might keep her from running away. He’d say if they needed her to make a call to James Dominick, the quaver of fear in her voice had to be there.
And if he was here right now, Cameron knew that Liam would break, too. They’d done things that would horrify other people, but they had a line. No pain. And no innocent people. She should know she wasn’t going to be made to suffer for this jerk, that they would never do to her what James was having done to someone else.
Her sobs paused briefly at his words.
“What?”
“We need to scare your boss. We need him to tell us where he’s hiding the people he kidnapped. But we would never, ever hurt you. You haven’t done anything. You weren’t involved.”
“But I was,” she whispered. “I’m sure I sent some of those emails. When I think about—”
“Then don’t think about it. You can’t truly think you’re to blame for that evil bastard’s doings!” He reached out tentatively, and wrapped his fingers around her hand. She stiffened but didn’t pull away, so he kept his hand there, touching her, marveling at how comfortable it seemed.
“We don’t believe that. E
ven the guy who hired us would say you aren’t. We’re just trying to get someone back. Remember how Liam said no one would bother you?”
“I do. I’ve spent the entire day in here, thinking about those words. I’ve wondered if James gave his victims the same consideration. I know him, I probably know him better than anyone else on the planet and even I didn’t suspect he could do this. I’m sorry. I can’t give you any reassurances about your own family or anyone else he may have done this to.”
Her voice trembled as she spoke, fresh sobs threatening to escape but she held it together. Looking down at her, Cameron saw the tears in her eyes and his heart wrenched in his chest. James was to blame for this, nobody else.
He wanted to reassure her again but stilled as a thought occurred to him. They hadn’t planned for this. “Your family must be worried.”
“I don’t…have any family.” She looked down. “My mother died giving birth to me. My father died five years ago. No siblings.”
“A boyfriend?” Could he be more obvious?
“No.” Her voice was bitter. “No boyfriend. No cat. No one to miss me.”
He couldn’t believe that, not for a moment. She was too delicious as a person. She’d to have someone that would miss her.
“You’ll go home soon,” Cameron said finally, at a loss. His fingers tightened over hers, and he tried not to leap away when she drew closer. He didn’t know what to say other than that he didn’t want her to go—and he couldn’t say that because he couldn’t let her go even if she asked.
“You’ll keep me safe?” she asked, not understanding the real danger she was in, too focused on the fear that someone might truly kill her. He forgot to worry about the emotional danger she might be in as he looked down, her face closer to his. If he breathed deep enough…
He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But Cameron’s rose in the darkness to the faint outline of her face. He cupped her silky, warm cheek, drew her closer until her breath feathered along his mouth, and with a capitulating groan their lips met.
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