Shadows & Silence: A Wild Bunch Novel

by London Miller

  The way his body had gone taut as she stroked him slowly, trying to get a feel for what he liked.

  The way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as if he was resisting the urge to bury his fingers in her hair.

  “I’m not a damsel, Răzvan,” she said softly, hardly recognizing her own voice. “You don’t have to be gentle with me.”

  His eyes closed for a moment as a breath left him, but when he opened them back, his pupils had slowly eaten away at the blue.

  Those words seemed to be the only permission he needed.

  Finally, he lifted a hand, trailing his fingers along her cheek until he reached her mouth where he pressed the pad of his thumb against her lips in a silent request.

  She didn’t hesitate, happily and easily sucking his thumb into her mouth.

  She wanted it—wanted him.

  Very slowly, he drew his thumb from her mouth, his hands moving as he signed.

  —Open your mouth.—

  She did as she was told, ready and eager for him to continue.

  Rapt, she watched as he fisted his cock, stroking once, twice, but before he ordered her to do it, she had the length of him in her mouth.

  A harsh breath left him, the sound sending a bolt of pleasure through her, but she was thinking less about herself and more about him.

  She wanted to see that careful control snap.

  Even the last time they were like this, she thought he was being careful with her, but now she wanted everything he had to give.

  Wrapping her fingers around the base of his cock, she squeezed just enough to elicit a reaction out of him, and then she felt his fingers knot in her hair.

  With every bob of her head, the tension in his body ratcheted up another degree.

  The throb between her legs only grew worse when she felt his hand tighten in her hair, guiding her movements and forcing her to suck him the way he liked.

  The rougher he got with her, the sloppier she got on his cock until she was too far gone to care what she must have looked like.

  And just when she was sure he would come like this, he pulled out of her mouth and yanked her from the floor, practically throwing her onto the bed.

  When his thumbs slipped beneath her panties, she lifted and helped him pull them off.

  She could only manage a startled laugh before he had her ass in the air and her front pressed to his bed with a hand at the nape of her neck.

  This was what she wanted, the way he seemed to almost have lost himself as he pressed the head of his cock against her entrance and shoved in with little restraint.

  She was too wet for there to be any pain—for her to feel anything other than thick, hard length of him filling her so completely.

  One jagged thrust turned into two, and before long, she couldn’t count how many times his pelvis slapped against her ass, and her fingers fisted the sheets.

  His name fell from her lips in a whisper. A prayer. And God, if he hadn’t covered her mouth at that exact moment, she would have screamed it.

  It was too much.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He might not have been able to warn her with words, but she knew when he’d finally given up on holding himself back—when slick hands grew even tighter on her hips, and God, he was fucking her hard now. And with each snap of his hips, he rubbed over that sensitive spot inside her that made her mind grow blissfully blank.

  She didn’t think it was possible to come like this, but as she felt it consuming her, she couldn’t even form words to explain how good he felt fucking her.

  How she’d never felt anything like this before.

  That she was definitely going to—and before the thought could even finish, her orgasm was there, sudden and all-consuming, robbing her of breath.

  And just like that, she felt him swell inside her, impossibly large before he was coming too, his thrusts almost brutal as he emptied himself into her.

  Then there was nothing but the sound of their frantic breaths until she said, “I think I’m keeping you, Răz.”

  Two weeks later …

  Something was wrong, but for the life of her, Winter couldn’t figure out what it was.

  She had only been back in the city for a few hours—after an assignment given to her by The Kingmaker called for travel—pathetically waiting for the moment when she heard from Răzvan after he arrived back from whatever mystery location Nix had sent them off to.

  The uneasy feeling just continued to swarm inside her until she pulled out her phone and realized why she was so antsy.

  Ollie had never responded to her text.

  Since he usually kept his phone glued to his hand—and when he didn’t, he had his text messages synced to his laptop—she was used to his quick responses, but it had been more than a couple of hours since she’d sent him a message.

  Yet nothing.

  When she tried Nicole and didn’t get a response either, she sat up a little straighter.

  Maybe she was overreacting after everything that had happened in Chicago with the Russians, but she wasn’t liking that neither were responding.

  This time when she called Tessa, her heart beat just a little faster.

  But the longer it rang, the more confused she felt.

  Pocketing her phone, she then pulled on her boots and grabbed her jacket before heading out the door.

  It took a few minutes to hail a cab, but once she was in the back of it and pulling out into the late day showers, she had her phone in her hand again and dialed Ollie.

  “It’s Winter, call me.”

  She couldn’t say more than that even if she wanted to.

  They had all agreed to keep their relationships as private as possible, and it had already been a stretch to even exchange phone numbers.

  Thankfully, the ride over to his apartment wasn’t a long one, fifteen minutes at most.

  She tipped the driver and hustled out, jogging up the two flights of stairs until she reached his door.

  Her gaze scanned the potted plants sitting on either side of the welcome rug, remembering him once telling her that he kept his spare key in one of them.

  Seconds later, she was strolling into his apartment, wrinkling her nose at the smell of old pizza and stale beer.

  But despite the odor, his apartment looked as it always did—four steps away from utter filth.

  The coffee table was stacked high with pizza boxes, his clothes were strewn all over the floor, so no matter where she stepped, she had yet to actually touch the floor.

  “Ollie?” she called, not expecting him to answer, though she’d tried anyway.

  Besides, he was usually wearing headphones, so he probably wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

  Winter was starting to think he was just out doing his own thing and just hadn’t gotten back to her yet when she rounded the corner and found his bedroom.

  Seeing it made her freeze where she stood.

  Ollie had his own setup with dual modems and as many screens, but where the cords wound around the floor and led up to the back of the electronics, had been severed.

  Shit.

  She had seen enough movies where the girl stuck around, tried to investigate further—as if the fucking trashed apartment was really going to provide answers—but she refused to be one of them.

  Instead, she backed out the way she came, careful not to disturb things further.

  If something was wrong with Ollie, she couldn’t do anything from here, and there was a chance whoever had done this would come back to his place, so instead of waiting for that possibility, the best course of action was to get to her own place and call Răzvan from there.

  Clutching her phone in her hand, Winter hurried out of the apartment and out of the building, starting down the street as she searched for a cab to flag down.

  She had nearly reached the end of the block when arms banded around her from behind, shocking her enough to make her drop her phone and a scream to rip free from her throat.

  But as a
prick in her neck made her breath hiccup, very soon, all the fight drained out of her as her vision went dark.

  Chapter 12

  If she made it out of this alive, Winter would kill Ollie, and not quickly either.

  She would slap him around first then kill him.

  “What do you think they want?” Tessa asked, her voice cracking around the edges.

  She’d been crying off and on for the past two hours—or however long it had been since Winter had woken up in the dark room with Tessa tied up across from her—and though she wasn’t panicking just yet, Tessa had never experienced anything like this.

  The closest she or Ollie ever got to real trouble was when they’d hacked into a drug dealer’s twitter and got the man arrested.

  They’d only been caught because Ollie had been stupid enough to throw it in the man’s face once he was released, thinking it would give him some sort of credit with them.

  It had only managed to piss the man off more.

  “I don’t know,” Winter answered honestly, but she did know they wanted something.

  If they didn’t, they would have already been dead by now.

  If they were to be tortured, that would have already started by now, and from what she had seen of the two men who had gone in and out of this room since she was awake, they were prisoners.

  But whatever their purpose, she had a feeling they were close to finding out what it was.

  Tessa fell silent for a while before she asked a question that had Winter trying to look over her shoulder at her.

  “Do you think this has anything to do with the ghost file?”

  Winter didn’t want to believe so, not when they had been more than careful covering their tracks, not even leaving behind a signature within their code in case someone thought to check it.

  Piston, despite his penchant for dramatics, never betrayed anyone he did business with. Not in the five years since she’d been attending them had she seen or heard of anyone getting banged up after the game was over.

  After all, that wasn’t good for business.

  “We were careful,” Winter reassured her.

  Worse, she didn’t want to think her best friend had been taken because of her. The mercenaries had enemies, more than she would ever be able to count, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think that one of them might come after her to get to them.

  She might have been careful with her code during the game, but she wasn’t when she worked with the Den.

  Then, she wanted the credit. She wanted people to know that it was her.

  Now, she was regretting that arrogance.

  “Winter, there’s something you should know …”

  Whatever Tessa thought to say, she swallowed the words back down as the door swung open.

  Winter flinched as bright light bathed the interior of the room, nearly blinding her as she turned away, blinking rapidly to clear her vision.

  The large man in the doorway didn’t speak as he came farther into the room, his narrowed gaze sweeping over every inch before landing on her.

  His expression never changed, not when he yanked her from the floor and marched her out of the room and down the hall, or even when they entered an office, the sound of power tools muffled once more as the door closed.

  Unlike the room she’d been thrown in the night before, this one had expensive furniture as well as a rug that occupied much of the floor.

  The guard set her on the couch and even cut her ties away, stepping back and practically becoming one with the wall, but one look at his face told her if she attempted to escape, she wouldn’t like how he answered.

  Rubbing her wrists, she didn’t panic, breathing deep and even to keep herself calm.

  Check your surroundings.

  That was one good thing about keeping company with mercenaries—she learned a thing or two even when she wasn’t trying to.

  But besides expensive fixtures and the view of the warehouse outside the window, she couldn’t make out much—other than whoever had taken her was really rich and incredibly stupid.

  She might not have found a way out of her predicament just yet, but she would, and even if she didn’t, someone would have noticed her absence by now.

  She hoped.

  Winter was contemplating picking up the heavy paperweight in front of her when the door creaked open, and a man in an expensive suit walked into the room.

  He was on the thin side, his tailored suit accentuating this fact. Wire-rimmed glasses were perched on the end of his nose, shielding brown eyes that seemed to bug out of his face.

  One look at him told her he was the boss.

  The Suit looked over at his guard. “Could you send the caterer in, please? Thank you.”

  He disappeared out the door as The Suit unbuttoned his jacket and took a seat across from her, crossing one leg over the other.

  He didn’t speak, just wore an absent sort of smile that made her wonder what he was thinking.

  The guard wasn’t gone very long before he returned, followed by a much smaller man wearing a chef’s uniform and pushing a trolley filled with food.

  Okay, now things were fucking weird.

  Usually, when you were someone’s prisoner, they didn’t feed you.

  One by one, the caterer placed dishes on the coffee table between them—a tray of decadent cheeses, another of meat and crackers, and two towers of macaroons.

  In the very center of it all, he set a teapot as well as two teacups and saucers.

  Her stomach rumbled at the sight of it all, only now remembering she hadn’t eaten since earlier the day before.

  As much time as she’d spent in London, Winter thought she would have developed a taste for tea, but it might have been who she was sitting across from that put her off.

  As the food was displayed, The Suit pulled out a slip of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolding it and setting it beside him.

  Once the caterer was gone, The Suit reclined back on the leather couch with a pleasant smile.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Miss”—he looked down at the paper next to him— “Banes. I never thought I’d be able to meet The Kingmaker’s hacker in person, not with the way he keeps you so carefully guarded.”

  Only half of that was right.

  She was, technically, The Kingmaker’s hacker, but it wasn’t because of him that she had such heavy protection.

  That was just one man—one who would quickly learn she hadn’t followed the one rule he had for her.

  Winter cleared her throat. “The pleasure is all yours. So are you going to tell me what you want, or are we going to drag this on for hours?”

  The only thing worse than annoyance was indifference.

  In her experience, she found that was always the worst kind.

  If they were annoyed, they still needed you for something, and they hated that fact.

  When they were indifferent, you might be their first pick, but if you weren’t able to provide what they wanted, they had no qualms in replacing you.

  “There have been rumors that you are a sort of gatekeeper for The Kingmaker and his digital interests.”

  That was putting it mildly.

  She wasn’t just in charge of it all—she’d created the software to protect it. Every line of code had been perfected over years of trial and error, but by the time she had finished, she’d ensured that The Kingmaker’s files were virtually untouchable.

  Even he couldn’t access them without her.

  But … she could.

  Winter was the only one in the world capable of getting to them without anyone knowing.

  The Suit was studying her, waiting for any show of the impact of his words, but she was careful to keep her expression blank.

  “You seem to know who I am,” Winter said, knowing she needed to keep him talking, “but I have no idea who you are.”

  He helped himself to the spread. “James Greystone, private consultant.”

  Private consultant could mea
n a number of things, most notably that he had deep pockets and even deeper connections if he knew her relationship to The Kingmaker.

  Yet she had never heard of him.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Please,” he said with a wave of his hand at the table between them, “help yourself.”

  Her stomach might have felt as if it was about to eat itself, but she balled her fists and stayed put.

  “It’s come to my attention that several weeks ago, you and your … associates broke into a building and stole private files belonging to the late Sylvan Richards. Do I have that right?”

  “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be asking.”

  “One of your associates, Oliver, reached out to me six days ago, promising to hand over any information pertaining to me in said file for one million dollars.”

  Fucking Oliver.

  When she made it out of this—and she was desperately hoping she did if only to get to him—she would beat him to death.

  “Then it sounds to me like your problem is with him,” Winter said carefully. “Why don’t you take this up with him, and I’ll forget this ever happened?”

  James still wore that annoying, amused smirk on his face. “As I understand it, you’re the leader of your little band of hackers. That’s what your friend, Nicole, explained to me.”

  Her gaze jerked to his face, but he simply raised the teacup to his lips.

  “Unfortunately, she passed away before I could get more out of her. It is rather hard to find good help that’s able to extract information without the subject expiring too quickly.”

  Winter bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from reacting. That was what he wanted, if only so he knew he was getting to her.

  “What do you want from me?”

  James set his cup down. “As The Kingmaker’s hacker, I understand you are privy to his more sensitive information.”

  Already, she didn’t like the sound of this.

  “If you’re as good as they say you are, I presume you will be able to get the information I seek.”

  Winter shook her head, close to burying her face in her hands at the sheer impossibility of it all. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”