‘You want me to...’ Flick let him pace, in hope he’d come around to her logic.
‘There’s no way that I can do it myself in here.’
‘No,’ he said, and stopped to stomp over and bear down upon her. ‘You are not talking that way. You are not going to let them—‘
‘What?’ she asked, getting onto her knees and hooking her hands into his jeans pockets. ‘Rushe, you know what will happen to me when they take me from here!’
‘No. I’ll stop them. I’ll find a way.’
‘You can’t,’ she said, knowing just how torn apart he was, because she felt it too. ‘You can’t stop them, and when I’m out there in the world I’ll never be free. How long do I have? A week? A month? What if I get a guy who likes to beat, and torture, and...? Rushe, I don’t even want to imagine what could happen.’
‘No,’ he asserted, and swiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘Stop crying. I can’t think when you cry like that. Since that damn first night... stop it!’
‘You wanted me to keep my guard up, here it is,’ she said. ‘Think this forward, use that forethought of yours, what else is there?’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ he asked. ‘There are no weapons in this room.’
Flick took her grip to his wrists and brought his hands up to her throat. The flash of repulsion pulsed through his body. Rushe tried to withdraw from her grasp, but she kept hold and brought his fingers as close as she could.
‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I know you can do this for me... please.’
She could feel the vibration in his fingers, and see the adrenaline that pumped behind his mask. Time crackled, he set his jaw, and his dark bullet eyes detached in determination.
His fingers tightened, and her throat constricted immediately. No air, no oxygen for her body, and nothing she could do about it. If the drowning had been bad, this was worse. The panic was primal, it consumed her with the automatic urge to kick, to get away, to beg his release. Her grip on his wrists increased, her fingernails digging deep into his flesh. But her instinct to tug his hands away was useless in the face of his superior strength. The energy in her was waning and when her palms leapt to his chest they didn’t push, they slid away.
In the hopeless desperation, her head got heavy, and seemed to swell. Terror at being deprived her basic human need sent adrenaline coursing through her, speeding her starving organs. Dread was cold, and it glided through her from skin to bone, until the spasm of frost spiked. Without the ability to move, to breathe, her body gave up, and the fight left her.
Then with an unexpected gasp, oxygen flooded through her again. But she was on the bed, on her face, free from his grip. Her throat scratched with the need to restore blood flow. He’d released her, he’d dropped her, and pushing onto her hands Flick coughed, but her voice wasn’t available.
‘Fuck!’ Rushe shouted, and punched a dent into the brick of the wall.
‘Rushe,’ she wheezed, and flipped to her back because it wasn’t in her to sit up again.
‘Don’t ask me again,’ he said over his shoulder, giving her only his back to address.
‘What’s wrong?’ she rasped.
Her distressed systems prickled to every nerve ending, but her sense was waylaid by the disorientation. Actions were clumsy, so Flick gave up trying to move.
‘What’s wrong?’ he shouted, and spun to loom over her again. ‘You just asked me to kill you, Kitten! I almost did it! What the fuck...? How the hell did...? What the fuck am I gonna do?’
‘I asked you to, Rushe,’ she said, lifting her hand to hook into his pocket, though there was no strength in it. ‘I asked you to do it because I don’t want any man to touch me... I only want you, Rushe, and no one touches your stuff.’
‘If I could do anything about it,’ he said, dropping to a crouch. He ran his hands through his hair, and for the first time she saw him lost and dishevelled.
‘Did you really want me from when you first saw me on the street?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, but was still distracted.
‘I didn’t think that I would ever be able to...’ Rocking to her side Flick took her hand to his face. Her other hand remained in his pocket, but was now sandwiched in his thigh from his crouched position.
‘Able to what?’
Rushe took her hand off his face, and Flick worried it might be a defence. If he was turning away from her affection, it was because he blamed himself, just like she’d thought he would.
‘Pleasure you,’ she said, trying to make as many happy memories in this dire situation as she could.
With this new revelation Flick had so much she wanted to share, so much she wanted to say. But time would be stolen away from them very soon, and they would never be together again. She knew that finality was the only reason he’d made his declaration to her. This was the end, and they’d lost the game.
Flick spoke to him again, trying to convey her own depth of emotion in the hope it might ease his burden. ‘Until you, I didn’t... you’ve given me so much, shown me so much joy. I’m grateful, Rushe, you’re a good instructor.’
‘Yeah, class dismissed,’ he muttered, wrapping his hand around hers. ‘We’re running out of time.’
Again, he glanced at his watch, as he had done so many times since they’d been in here. ‘Time? When are they coming for me?’
He’d been on the inside of the gang, and he’d been reluctant to tell her why he’d been so preoccupied with his watch all night. All of that caused her to reach the conclusion that he had more information than he was volunteering. He answered while he scrubbed his hand across his stubble, confirming Flick’s suspicions.
‘Meeting’s at four AM,’ he said. ‘Journey’s about an hour.’
‘What will happen?’ she asked. ‘Where is it? Who will be there?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This is only the second shipment. The first never got through.’
‘What happened to the first one?’
‘Victor’s wingman screwed him over and took charge of the merchandise. He’s not seen him since.’
‘Jansen,’ she said, and this caught his interest. ‘I heard the conversation, in Victor’s office; I was in the next room with John.’
‘They’ll put you in a van,’ Rushe said in that deep, flat, detached tone of his, except it wasn’t the dangerous anger she read on his face. Witnessing his quiet resignation broke her heart because by breaking her they’d broken him – the strongest man she’d known in her life.
‘I won’t go quietly,’ she whispered. ‘I mean the van, the journey; I can handle that but... I won’t just bend over for them, Rushe.’
‘You listen to me,’ he said, tightening his hold on her hand. ‘I don’t want you to give up. Don’t goad them into hurting you. You’ve got a mouth on you, Kitten, but it’s mine, and I’m telling you to keep it shut.’
‘You want me to... I can’t Rushe. I can’t just let it happen and do nothing.’
‘You are gonna do nothing,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna go where you’re told, and you’re gonna do what you’re told.’
Flick snatched her hands from him, and recoiled against the wall behind her. ‘You want me to... Rushe, they’re gonna—‘
‘I know,’ he said, reaching over the bed for her, but she moved away.
‘I won’t. I won’t do it. I won’t let them.’
‘You will,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Because I’m gonna come and get you, and I want you to be healthy when I get there, do you understand me? For once in your life, follow my instructions.’
‘You can’t... how do you know they’ll let you out of here alive? You might never see daylight again. They could take me out of the country, out of the hemisphere for all I know. No, no I won’t do it.’
With her head swinging back and forth, Flick tried to block out the possibilities. But what was going to happen to her wasn’t as important as what was going to happen to him. Once they found out that he wasn’t law enforcement
there would be no need to keep him alive. If Rushe had nothing that Victor wanted, then he was dispensable. Flick at least knew that they’d keep her alive long enough to sell her, and if she saw an opening, a chance to escape, she was going to take it.
‘We’ll get through it,’ he said, landing on the bed. ‘I will come for you, Flick... I don’t know when, but I promise you I’ll come.’
‘No.’ She shook her head again. ‘No, I won’t let them touch me.’ Rushe reached for her, but Flick batted his hand away and pounced up to perch on her tiptoes in a crouch. ‘Nobody touches me!’
‘Kitten,’ he said, shifting up the bed, but she backed up against the bare black wall that served as a headboard.
‘No! No, I don’t want their hands on me!’
‘You think I do?’ he shouted back. ‘Do you have any fucking idea—’ He punched the wall with the side of his fist, brick dissolved again, but it was the blood on him that she noticed.
In reflex, she sprang forward to grab him. ‘Don’t hurt yourself.’ Flick traced her lips back and forth on his wound.
‘I’m going to find you,’ he said, stroking her hair as she kissed his hand. ‘Trust me.’
‘I trust you. I’ve trusted you from the start. Even when you told me not to. But they’re going to do things to me... things that might... if I ever got back to you, I might never...’
‘We’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘All you have to concentrate on is breathing, ok?’
‘You won’t want me.’
‘This isn’t your fault,’ he growled with a ferocity that made her shiver. ‘You are my woman. I don’t care how many fuckers I have to kill to get to you, I’ll do it. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘How did we not see this coming?’
‘There is precedent, but I had no idea that Victor—‘
‘Not Victor,’ she said. ‘This.’
Alarm flashed on his face when Flick took his hand to her heart. ‘You’re the best thing I’ve ever had in my life,’ he said, and Flick looked up to see his awe. ‘That’s what you said to me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you want anything to do with a guy like me?’
‘You’re the strongest, most honourable man I’ve met in my life. I love you, Rushe. It’s not a choice. It’s not something I can switch on and off. You protected me, fed me, pleasured me, took care of me. You did whatever was needed to accomplish what was in my best interest. You told me to leave that shack to protect me from Shiv, and from this. You sent me home when I didn’t want to leave your side.
‘You broke me out of here,’ she said, and a salty tear broke onto the crack in her lips. ‘You took me to my parents; you made me believe that you didn’t care, because that was what was best for me... In that room earlier, you put your body between mine and danger, even when we were astronomically outnumbered. I love you, Rushe, because you treat me like a woman, you see me; you knew what was in me before I did. I had no idea that strength like this existed, not until I met you.
‘Skeeve groped me but I taunted him, I wouldn’t let him see me tremble, because I’m better than him, we’re better than him, and someone has to stand up for what’s right, even against the odds of good sense... just like you did for me in Dell’s.’
‘There are things I should tell you,’ he said. ‘Things you should know.’
‘I don’t trust these walls any more than you do... We’ll have to hope that... You can tell me everything when we’re together again.’
‘Damn, she’s fuckable,’ he said. ‘That’s the first thing I thought when I saw you. I thought you were going to keep going. But when you stopped... I froze up.’
‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire,’ she said. ‘That’s roughly what I thought when I first saw you in that room in Dell’s.’
‘You thought I was going to hurt you.’
‘I didn’t know who you were.’
‘You keep that guard up, Kitten, but keep your mouth shut. I’ll be pissed if I show up and you’ve stood me up.’
‘Stood you up,’ Flick said, and grabbed for his watch to check the date. ‘Oops.’
‘Oops what?’ he asked.
‘I stood up Hayden again,’ she said, and pursed her lips to hide the smile that threatened.
‘Hayden,’ he frowned. ‘You’re dating?’
‘Lover, I’m about to be bundled into a van and sold to the highest bidder. I think you have more pressing concerns about other men.’
‘Did he fuck you?’ Rushe demanded with that angry brow crowding his eyes.
‘You found your anger,’ she said. ‘And does it matter?’
‘Yes. Tell me!’
‘Are you jealous?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Answer me.’
Rushe was honest to a fault... when it suited him. ‘I never sleep with a guy on a first date,’ Flick said.
‘I’ve never taken you on a date.’
A statement that Flick couldn’t argue with. ‘True... and I won’t sleep with you the first time that you do.’
When his exhale was almost a laugh, Flick saw how his face softened when he looked at her. ‘Suits me. Sex doesn’t have anything to do with sleeping.’
‘You’ve used that line already, and you were lying to me when you did.’
‘I don’t argue with women.’
‘No,’ she said, crawling into his lap. ‘We can find some other way to settle our differences.’
Flick pushed her mouth up to his, and when his tongue touched her lip, she opened to him because blood, or pain, was nothing. This could be the last space, and the last time they spent with each other. In all of her life she’d never realised that love like this existed, and Rushe had even less experience of the phenomenon than she did.
‘Say it again, Rushe,’ she murmured on his kiss, when his hands snaked up under her tee-shirt.
‘What?’ Letting his hands move around he took a breast in each palm, and she sighed into his caress.
‘Tell me that you love me.’
‘You gonna stay alive ‘til I find you?’ he asked, and she nodded but he pinched her nipples, which seemed to be connected to her eyelids because they popped apart. ‘Speak.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
‘Good then.’ On an inhale, his mouth came towards hers, but there was a clatter outside that made them both sit up and stare at the door.
‘What was that?’
‘They’re coming,’ he said, stealing another glance at his watch. He cupped her face to train her eyes on him. ‘I love you, and I’m going to find you.’
More tears escaped, and Flick clawed his chest. ‘I’ll be good, I promise.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t let them hurt you,’ she said. ‘I’m not worth it.’
His mouth tilted to an almost straight diagonal, forming a smile that she wanted to remember every second from now until she could see it again.
‘Kitten, you’re the only damn thing in the world that is.’
Someone was at the door unfastening locks, so she grabbed him to her body and kissed him again with every ounce of sorrow and anger she had.
‘None of this is your fault,’ she said. ‘Don’t blame yourself if anything... I love you.’
The door swung back, and three hulks of varying ethnicity entered with John and Skeeve behind. ‘Time to go, little girl,’ Skeeve drooled.
‘You gonna give us trouble?’ John asked Rushe, but Flick climbed out of his lap.
Her intention had been to rise from the bed, but Rushe linked his fingers between hers, and she stopped. He was holding her hand. When their eyes met Flick relived every second of their time together. Rushe didn’t have to say the words because they were written all over his face, which she was surprised at, given the audience. Then as she had the thought, all affection left his countenance, and he pinned those bullet eyes onto John.
‘If I beat the crap out of you, it might make me feel better.’
&nbs
p; ‘Doubt it,’ John said. ‘We’ve got another three guys in the hall.’
Maybe they had hoped Rushe would fight. Had they hidden the other men so that they could come in when Rushe didn’t expect it? Perhaps when he thought he had won they would unleash the second wave, but it didn’t matter.
‘There’s going to be no trouble,’ Flick said to John who held out cuffs to attach to her wrists.
Flick did exactly as she was told, and the men started out of the door, but she stopped. ‘I’ve never been able to walk away from you without looking back.’
Deliberately she turned to see him there on the bed, exactly where she had left him. The pain around him broke her heart. He’d always blame himself, and Flick knew Rushe would come for her, and he would probably die in the process, because nothing would make him give up. He took his responsibility of her seriously.
‘I’ll do as I’m told,’ she said.
‘You could use the practise.’ Then he shut down. In one instant, Rushe was that man she had met in the alleyway. ‘Get.’
John got hold of one arm, while Skeeve snatched the other, and Flick was tugged out of the room. The pair dragged her down the corridor with three bulky men in front of her leading the way. The sound from behind her of locks being put in place reminded her that he was in there alone, and ripping himself apart for doing nothing to help her. But nothing could be done.
The three hulks who had come in with John and Skeeve closed ranks behind her, and after one door and a corridor, a turn here, and a turn there, Flick noticed a dull light from the end of this passage. It told her that they were heading for the exit, and then the rush of cold night air made her tense. The van would be out there, and her instinct was to dig her heels in, to refuse to leave with them, to make a fuss, to fight.
Rushe wanted her to be safe, all of his actions were to assure her safety, and she hadn’t even thanked him for the five million dollars that she’d never be able to pay back. So many questions buzzed in her mind, but it was unlikely that they would ever be answered. His words kept her warm. His unexpected declaration made her heart swell even now, as she replayed the moment.
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