by Skye Jones
Somewhere, in a short space of time, my feelings for these men had deepened and if I were honest it terrified me. I kept arguing against it because who in their rational mind fell in love in a week? With four men? Four men who had kidnapped her? I should be in a padded cell.
“You need to rest,” I told him.
Doc yawned too. “We all do.”
Ben stood and came over to me. He kissed the top of my head. “I’m gonna go chill in the study and play computer games. Need to decompress.”
I didn’t know what to do with his affectionate gesture, so I simply nodded and shot him a smile.
Jackson looked at Doc. “You going for a nap?”
Doc took a sip of his water and nodded.
“Want to join us?” He indicated himself and then me with his pointer finger.
I’d never said I’d be sleeping with him, although I did a lot of the time, or at least I curled up in his bed and tried to sleep while he searched for my parents. God knew why I wanted to sleep in the bed of my captor, but his scent soothed me on a physical level.
Doc grinned. “What? For fun and games?”
Jackson yawned again. “No, to actually sleep. After the Foamer attack I figured you might like to join us; bed’s big enough.”
A faint blush colored Doc’s cheeks, and as I watched my world jolted.
The whole room shunted sideways.
The only way to describe it was like when you saw an earthquake on the TV and a room jerked to one side. It was if my whole existence did the same. I blinked and tried to breathe and orientate myself, but I couldn’t do either.
Then I was in Doc’s head.
I knew instantly where I was. Understood it was Doc immediately.
Shit.
I tried to get out of there because I didn’t want to do to him what Jackson had to me, but I couldn’t seem to escape. Finally, my lungs seemed to go back to doing what they did every day of their own accord and I sucked in a breath, but still I remained firmly implanted in Doc’s mind.
He was picturing cuddling up with me and Jackson, but he ached for something. I realized with shock that his feelings for me were strong, but so were his feelings for Jackson. They were complicated, almost a brotherly love in one way, strong friendship, but something more. A tiny, but insistent sense of deeply hidden attraction.
Good lord, Doc had a bit of a crush on Jackson.
Blue eyes found mine, and Doc held me in his gaze with a frown.
I tried to get out of his mind but couldn’t. I saw more. I saw him and Jackson in the facility where they were held, experimented on. They were younger, and Jackson was curled double in pain as Doc held him from behind telling him it would be okay.
Then Doc’s feelings for me took the fore again. He was sat on a grassy knoll eating a tasty snack, and he was watching a blonde girl dance as Jackson laid beside him watching through binoculars.
No…not a blonde girl, or rather not any old blonde girl, but me. And I wasn’t dancing but skipping through the field with Tils. They were watching me, and Doc felt something new, a need to protect and cherish as he observed me.
With a wrench that made me cry out, I jolted out of his mind.
“Milly?” Jackson stood so fast his chair tipped over and stormed to my side. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, normality surging back in. “A sharp headache.” I glanced at Doc to find he still looked at me but didn’t say anything. I wanted to know if he’d felt me there the way I had with Jackson, but I didn’t dare ask. The whole thing terrified me.
“I think it’s the stress of everything. I need to go lie down.” I hoped they wouldn’t push it, and Jackson seemed to accept my answer because he pulled my chair back and helped me out of it.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s go to bed and get some sleep. You’re with me until the windows are sorted.”
Doc stopped off at his room as we headed for bed and grabbed a bunch of clothes.
When we got into Jackson’s room, he pulled a pair of sweatpants out of a drawer for himself, and passed me one of his oversized t-shirts. Doc pulled on his own pants and t-shirt too.
We all got changed and then Jackson climbed under the covers, pulling me to him, and placing me in the middle of the bed. Doc got in the other side of me.
Not sure what to do, I faced Doc and looked at him again, trying to figure out if he had felt me before. He didn’t act any differently, or even look at me differently. Instead, he pulled me into him, settling my head against his lean, smooth chest.
Jackson snuggled into me from behind, wrapping one arm around me. Doc’s chest was hard, all lean, solid muscle and it took me awhile to get comfortable, but he was warm and his breathing was regular and slow, and soon it soothed me enough for my eyes to flutter closed.
**
I was in a bare room, and I was tied to something. I hurt too. My bottom and the backs of my thighs burned.
“She’s still not broken in,” a male voice to the right of me spoke with utter contempt. I turned to see Slim holding a crop as he spoke to someone else. Someone I couldn’t make out.
“She will. Keep at her. Fucking stuck up piece of shit.”
It was a female voice, one I didn’t know.
Slim gave a sharp exhalation of breath. “Fine.”
“Don’t mess this up, Slim.” The woman’s voice was strange, weak, and wavering. I couldn’t quite get an angle on it, the pitch or tone. It sounded wrong somehow.
Slim turned his cold gaze on me. “Now, where were we, precious one?”
Then he brought the flogger down across my outer thigh and hip, and I screamed.
**
“Jesus fuck!”
I awoke to Jackson bolting upright in bed, cursing and staring around the room. His wild gaze landed on me, and his breathing slowed.
“He whipped you.”
I nodded because I remembered the dream clearly this time, and it was awful. I began to cry, unable to stop myself. “They are going to get me. They must be because otherwise we wouldn’t dream it. You said you saw them take me the first time and that’s how you knew where to come for me. Now we’re seeing them take me again. They are going to take me, and Slim is going to torture me.”
“Over my dead body,” Jackson ground out. “That’s fucking it. You’re sleeping with us every night. I’m going to get the biggest fucking bed ever made tomorrow and if I can’t find one, we’ll build one. Then we’re all sleeping in here.”
“What about Alex?” I asked.
Jackson shook his head. “He can’t, he has to sleep downstairs…” He trailed off, and I watched as he ran through the permutations in his head.
He turned to Doc, who was awake now also. “Why don’t we turn Alex’s quarters into sleeping arrangements for all of us?” he asked. “It’s way more defensible than up here.”
Doc scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Think about it,” Jackson continued. “It’s safe. There’s a ton of space down there and no windows. It would be depressing if we were down there all the time, but if we only go down there to sleep it won’t be too bad. At least not for a while. We could get a huge bed made to fit all of us. And have a fuck ton of big, comfy sofas dotted around in case anyone felt the need for space. Go on a raid, get some good shit, and deck it out. It means he won’t be alone night after night, and we’re all together. Only one way in, from the door at the back of the kitchen. Makes it hard for anyone to enter if we board that door up. Or we can fit sturdy locks to our side of that door, make it pretty damn difficult to break through.”
“It could work. The idea makes me a bit claustrophobic,” Doc said. “But it would be safer. For now, at least. Then maybe, long term, we can get proper blackout blinds put in up here for Alex. I don’t mean those material ones, but steel fucking shutters that come down and don’t let any light in. That way, once the immediate danger is over, we can have Alex sleep upstairs.”
“What about my parents?” I asked. I
f we were to find them, they’d be alone up here in this part of the house and unsafe.
“They can have a room down there too. It’s a big enough area. Occupies the floor space of the whole house. It needs work where the owner didn’t renovate, but we can do it in a day or two if we focus. Could barricade a few rooms in the east wing so we have access to the library, study, and then the servant’s quarters and the kitchen, but shut off the rest of the house for now. Even if the Foamers get in, they wouldn’t be able to get to us. Means we won’t have to bother repairing all those windows because we’ll be living in a few closed off rooms.”
“Fuck. It makes sense.” Doc nodded.
“Come on. Let’s get up and go look for your parents again. I don’t like them being out there as possible fodder for Feral gangs who might do anything to them. We’ll get them and bring them back here.”
“Don’t you need more sleep?” I worried he’d drive himself to exhaustion.
Jackson shook his head. “I can’t sleep after that dream.”
I gave a jerk of my chin toward Tils who had followed us to the bedroom and now lay on the floor. “She’ll need to come too, unless someone is staying here to look after her.”
“Doc will stay. He needs to be here to protect Alex while he sleeps, and he can look after Tils. Come on. Let’s grab Ben and try to find your parents.”
I followed him out of the bed, giddy at the thought of seeing Mum and Dad again.
Chapter Four
Jackson: The world versus Milly.
Jackson watched Milly as she said goodbye to her dog. The girl tugged on his heart like no one before. He’d not had a mother or father growing up. He’d come to Britain as a young adult trying to find his remaining family; an aunt and two cousins. His timing couldn’t have been more atrocious as things went to utter shit during his prolonged visit, and he found himself a permanent British citizen when the borders were closed.
Then he’d been taken. The men he lived with now were his family and he loved them as brothers, but they didn’t make him feel what this slip of a girl did.
She ruled him, but thankfully, she didn’t know it yet. The day she figured it out, he was done for. He wanted to make a better world for her, but wouldn’t sacrifice her to do it. They’d have to find another way to get the information they needed than originally planned. Even if those plans changed to something much less nasty, he wouldn’t let her within twenty feet of Sienna. She’d have Milly on her back with a sleazy government official in no time.
Sienna’s cold drive and commitment hadn’t changed one bit, but now he’d found something bigger than his political beliefs. Bigger possibly than the future of mankind.
He’d found love.
He’d been lying to himself all along, he realized. If he’d tuned in to his feelings each time he’d dreamed about her, he’d have known there would be no way he could give Milly up to be pimped out to a bunch of corrupt and evil politicians. If he couldn’t admit it to himself after his first few dreams of the gorgeous blonde, he should have done so the first time he saw her for real.
His regular spying trips on her compound gave him a fair few sightings of the pretty young woman, and each one had speared him right in the heart. She made him hope, but he didn’t know what for. In a world of ugliness, she represented beauty, and not only for her outward appearance but what he’d learned of her soul during their shared dreams. She loved fiercely, even when those on the receiving end of it didn’t deserve it; like her mother, who he knew treated Milly like a nobody most of the time.
She was naïve, he couldn’t deny that, but it charmed him. The way she still snuggled cherished dreams close, and yearned for a better world, not only for herself but for everyone. She loved her damned dog like it was her child, with all she had. They’d fucked without protection, but he wasn’t worried because he couldn’t get or give her any disease, and Doc’s latest tests on her had come back, not that she knew yet, didn’t even know we’d sent them off.
Milly probably couldn’t have kids. Not biologically anyway.
Or… not without intervention of the medical kind that simply didn’t exist anymore; what, with there being few doctors and a shortage of drugs. Operations were few and far between because of the risk of post-operation infections, the lack of reliable electricity, and a host of other problems. Some people were lucky, and if they had enough money, they could find surgeons willing to operate, but it was only a risk you’d take for life or death situations.
He was glad she loved her damned dog because at some point in the coming days he was going to have to sit her down and break her heart when he told her it looked likely the first bloods were correct and she couldn’t have kids. Although, without more in-depth scans they only had bloods to go on; meaning it wasn’t absolutely definitive. He pushed the painful thought away and focused on a memory of her stroking Tils as she stared at her with utter adoration.
He’d wanted to be on the receiving end of such devotion. Wanted someone pure and unsullied to look at him in such a way. To see the worth in him, the aching void within that needed love and affection too.
When they’d taken her, she’d been scared of him, he could tell, but not the same way most people were. Women would come back to their home and play with them, but they’d always be wary of him. Fucking hell, Ben turned into a genetically altered proto-werewolf, and Alex was a vamp, but it was Jackson they feared.
It wasn’t merely his size; they sensed the violence and anger simmering beneath the paper-thin veneer of civilization he held onto.
Milly, though, she might find him intimidating and unpredictable, but his darker side seemed to turn her on. The other day in the shower, she’d wanted to do what he said for one crazy moment. To run through the house dripping wet as they all chased her down.
Each time he thought about it, he got hard.
He sensed in her a wildness matched in him. An untamed spirit she kept locked down that he wanted to unearth. It was a good job the other guys were around. If it were just the two of them they’d burn the whole damned world down instead of building a better one.
Doc, though, and Alex, they’d keep things grounded. Keep them all on the right side of history. Make sure they focused on finding a way to bring down the government and get the cure somehow without Milly putting herself in harms way to do it.
Thank God for his brothers.
Because Jackson had gone off the reservation, and none of them could guess at how far off center he’d wandered. When he’d first met Milly, he’d realized quickly he wouldn’t be able to pimp her out. Then he’d thought of different ways he could still bring the government down and work with the Resistance.
Now? Now, he didn’t give a fuck. Not truly.
He didn’t care if the whole world turned into Foamers so long as him, his guys, and most important of all, Milly, were okay.
He’d leave the fucking country tomorrow if he could, charter a plane and fly to New Zealand; find a plot of land, build a shack and live out the rest of his days doing nothing more than making love to Milly.
Shit, if his guys knew where his head was at, there’d be trouble. The only thing that stopped him carrying out his crazy fantasy was the fact he couldn’t get into that country and the deep-down knowledge it would disappoint Milly. She’d want to do what she could to try to find the cure as long as it didn’t involve her having to sleep with half the government to find it. If they worked together, they still had a chance.
For now, he’d carry on trying to find a way to fix this, a win-win for them all.
But if it came down to saving the world or saving Milly, he knew exactly where his loyalties lay.
Chapter Five
Milly: Family Reunion
We drove along empty roads with burned out cars and hollowed out houses as our scenery. Silence filled the car, the grim outside a horrible counterpoint to the tense atmosphere inside.
At one point we encountered a group of Foamers, but they were too busy tearin
g apart a poor fox to pay us or our vehicle much attention. Ben drove, and he slowed down to take a better look. I wished he hadn’t. My stomach churned at the sight.
“Do you want music?” Jackson asked from the front, surprising me. Did the car have a CD player? It didn’t seem old enough.
“Erm, yeah, sure. Is there a CD player in here?”
“Nope. Got an old iPod; still works, and it plays through the stereo. Or we could listen to the radio.”
We all laughed, but it was tinged with a hard edge.
Yeah, the radio.
One government station telling the population to sit tight in their compounds, keep trying to make their lives work because one day soon things would get better, help would be coming, blah, blah, blah. Words I now knew were total lies!
The second station was a local government run music station, and it tended to play stuff I hated. Bad tunes from the 1950’s and 60’s. Nothing good like Simon and Garfunkel, but old-fashioned songs, sweet enough to make my teeth itch. Then there were the pirate radio stations you might pick up, but they only played hardcore metal or some other endless noise. Finally, you had the delights of the emergency announcement, which played over and over again and had done ever since the day the nuke had hit California and the British government had instigated Martial law.
“What music have you got?” I asked.
“Mostly metal,” he replied.
I swallowed down a sigh. Figured. He glanced around to look at me. “You don’t like?”
I shook my head. “Nah, but it’s cool; put on what you want.”
He considered me for a moment. “There are a few things on here that my aunt chose. Not sure what, I can try those?”
“Like what? Have a look.”
He used his thumb to scroll through the music listed and grimaced. “Okay, a lot of eighties and nineties rubbish. Jesus.” He wrinkled his nose as if in outright disgust, and I laughed at his expression.