by Pam Godwin
Her friends included. Except they weren’t looking for her anymore.
“You don’t have to go to Caracas.” She considered his wealth and all the places he could live. “You can go anywhere, do anything, right? Why not retire?”
“I chose this life. End of.” He rested an arm across his brow, his expression relaxed, almost sleepy.
She’d never seen him asleep. He kept his door locked at night and was downstairs before she woke most mornings.
A peculiar blanket of warmth settled over her, and her fingertips tingled. Why did she suddenly feel so weird?
What were they just talking about?
She blinked, trying to remember as a strange pull urged her to stretch out beside him on the mattress. Something was wrong.
“I think Boones drugged the soup.” Holding her hand in front of her face, she marveled at its weightlessness. “I feel stoned.”
“Probably. He knew I wouldn’t take those pills.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Lie down.”
“That doesn’t make you mad?” She gave in to the heavy weight in her limbs and lay on her side, facing her captor without a twinge of worry or panic. How weird.
“Can’t be mad at Boones.” He shifted to his hip, bending an arm beneath his head and mirroring her position. “He cares.”
Fringes of thick lashes swept downward, hooding his brown eyes as he reached across the space between them. The pad of his finger rested on hers, barely a touch, yet it shivered every nerve ending in her body.
She held still, studying his slack expression. He seemed different, less threatening. Normal. Like a person capable of having a conversation without kicking her in the stomach.
“How do you know about my brothers?” she asked.
“Public records mostly.” His gaze lifted to hers. “Are you aware all three of them are in prison?”
“No.” She waited for a simmer of emotion behind her breastbone and felt only a brief pinch of anger. “For drugs?”
“They were smuggling cocaína for a Mexican cartel. Someone ratted them out.”
They deserved it. After her mom died, they were supposed to be her protectors. Instead, they turned her childhood home into a crack-house, exposed her to a world of drug dealers and addicts, while chasing away every boy who showed interest in her in high school.
In the end, they were the reason she fell onto Van’s radar. He’d overheard them talking about their little virgin sister in a bar, bragging about how they’d protected her virtue. Van followed them home, abducted her, and she hadn’t seen or talked to them since.
Her hand curled into a fist. “Fuck them.”
He pried her fingers open and rested his huge palm over hers. “Tell me about your time with Van Quiso.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” She slid her hand away.
“I’m not asking.” He caught her wrist and used it to yank her chest against his.
She shrunk back, straining to hold a sliver of space between them. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Why not just tell him? He probably already knew the details anyway.
With a deep breath, she talked through the ridiculous requirements Van had beaten into her. Kneeling, eyes down, constant nudity, perfect dick-sucking techniques… She was vague about the sexual training, and Tiago didn’t press for details. Just mentioning blow job seemed to put him on edge.
His fingers tightened around her wrist with bruising pressure. “I despise that ceremonious BDSM bullshit.”
“There was nothing sane or consensual about it.” She twisted her arm in the shackle of his fist. “You’re hurting me.”
He released her, and she rolled away from him. But his arm hooked around her midsection and hauled her back against his chest.
“What are you doing?” She shoved at the bar of muscle across her stomach, unable to move it an inch.
“Go to sleep.” His breath caressed her hair.
“Release me.” She squirmed in his grip. “I’ll go get your girlfriend, and she’ll make it real good for you.”
God, she sounded snarky, but she couldn’t stop picturing him fucking Iliana, pile-driving her against a wall or whatever they did together. Her jaw stiffened, and her insides boiled. She needed that venom to remind her she didn’t want to be here, cuddling with a gang leader.
“You’re jealous.” He dragged his nose along her neck.
She flinched at the sensation, confused by his gentleness. “Captives don’t get jealous. They get Stockholm syndrome.”
Soft laughter vibrated his chest. “Tell me about Texas.”
A safe topic. She calmed down, as much as she could in the iron bands of his arms, and shared some impersonal details about home, highlighting scenery, culture, and local food.
She missed it, her friends, the simplicity of everyday life. The more she talked about it, the heavier her heart grew. He listened without comment, and eventually, the effects of the drugged soup pulled her into a heavy sleep.
When she woke, Boones was standing over the bed with a peculiar look on his scarred face. Tiago stirred behind her, his arm still locked around her waist.
“I brought dinner.” Boones pointed a gnarled finger at the tray of tacos on the floor and squinted at Tiago. “Rate your pain on a scale of one to ten.”
“What’s the rating for drugged?”
Boones flattened his lips and blinked. “You’re staying in bed.”
“Good idea.” He pulled her to his chest, fitting her buttocks tightly against his hips and upper thighs. His cock, neither soft nor swollen, rested along the crack of her ass.
And so that was how it went for days. Every hour sanded away the distance she so desperately tried to maintain. She couldn’t avoid him, couldn’t breathe without his eyes on her.
Because he didn’t just confine himself to his room.
He locked her in there with him.
Kate’s demands to leave his room were met with silence. Tiago Badell and his goddamn smugness incited a level of anger unlike anything she’d ever felt. But she’d agreed to obey him. The night she met him, she’d agreed to do anything in exchange for Tate’s freedom.
For days, he abstained from exercise and limited his activity to eating, showering, and napping. There was no Iliana. No business meetings or phone calls. And no fucking freedom.
It wasn’t the confinement that made her feel restless and trapped. It was him.
This lazy version of Tiago was suspiciously pleasant, talkative, and sometimes, he was clingy. Not clingy in a dependent, insecure way. But in a growly, aggressive, bring-your-ass-here way.
The next three days came with some startling revelations. Behind the face of a crime lord was an intelligent conversationalist. They talked for hours on end, analyzing Venezuelan politics, arguing about American football, and while finishing off the tequila, he shared his thought-provoking views on religion, extraterrestrials, and the future of technology.
She philosophized with him late into the night, floating in a bubble of complacency, where she let her guard down and basked in his company.
When he flashed that infectious smile, her bitterness dissolved. When he held her tight against the heat of his skin, she didn’t pull away. At some point, her brain decided he wouldn’t hurt her, not here in this quiet one-room world inhabited by two.
Even as she knew he hadn’t earned that kind of trust, she struggled to maintain distance. Meanwhile, he seemed to have no trouble keeping his defenses in place.
He napped with her tucked in the curve of his rock-hard body, but he didn’t sleep soundly. Whenever she thought he’d fallen into a deep slumber, she would move ever-so-slightly, and those sinful eyes would pop open without fail.
Like now.
“I thought you were asleep.” She lay on her side, her legs trapped beneath one of his, and his mouth so close she smelled mint tea on his breath.
He grunted softly and stroked a knuckle along her cheekbone. Heat ro
lled off that touch, and the air around him vibrated with power and dark suggestions. Her body tightened in response, fearing what he was while aching for what he could offer.
“Christ, you’re stunning.” He said it spontaneously, vehemently, his expression unguarded.
“Thank you.” Captivated, she leaned closer and hovered a hand over the wound near his eye, too scared to touch him. “How’s your head?”
“Fine.” He curled his fingers around her wrist. “Ask my permission.”
The words clogged in her throat, her mouth parched. It was in these suspended moments that he posed the most danger to her, when he made her want things she should never want from him.
Something had happened to him in his past, something deeper and more painful than the wounds on his head. Though he refused to discuss his life prior to Caracas, she ached to show him compassion. She just didn’t know how.
“I’m growing impatient.” His hand clinched around her arm, fingers biting into bone.
Her eyes felt too wide as the question fell past her lips. “May I touch you?”
He gave an inviting growl and guided her palm to his cheek.
Thick stubble shadowed his face, and beneath the tickle of hair, his jaw felt like solid metal. Not clenched. Just…hard.
Were all men so sharply cut and rigid to the touch? She’d only put her hands on Van Quiso and the few boys she fumbled around with in high school. The sensations from those encounters weren’t worth remembering.
She let her fingers dip, roving past the squared underside of his chin to explore the column of his neck. Sturdy and so very masculine, he felt as strong as oak and granite, any of nature’s most durable materials.
Her gaze darted to his, and the intimacy in that eye contact stole her breath.
“Don’t you get sick of looking at me?” She withdrew her hand.
“You have one-hundred-and-ninety-three eyelashes on the top lid of your right eye.”
“You did not count them.” She rubbed the lashes in question.
“Stop.” He gripped her arm and drew her gaze to the single brown eyelash stuck to her fingertip. “Now it’s one-hundred-and-ninety-two.”
A profound happening pulsed between them, a metamorphosis she couldn’t explain away. It flapped loudly in her chest and sizzled static across her skin, refusing to be ignored.
Maybe she was having a mental breakdown.
“You can’t say things like that.” She wiped her hand on her shirt.
“Things like what?”
“I don’t understand why I’m here.”
“We talked about this. You’re a payment—”
“No. Why have I been in this room for the past three days? Am I one of your experiments?”
“What does your gut tell you?”
“I only hear my captor, and not once has he told me I’ll survive.”
His expression closed off, and he rose from the bed. “I need to take a shower.”
He wore jeans today, and off they went on his way to the bathroom. Kicking them free at the doorway, he disappeared around the corner, wearing only boxer briefs. A moment later, the shower turned on.
Panic crept in. She’d pricked the bubble they’d been floating in and sent them plunging back to reality. This wasn’t some profound happening. He was her captor, holding her against her will. That was the ugly truth.
She climbed from the bed and paced, eying the door to the corridor, the door to the bathroom, and pausing on the jeans he left on the floor.
Her pulse sped up. It wasn’t uncommon for him to leave his clothes unsupervised within her reach, as if he thought she were too afraid of him to try anything. Well, fuck that.
She raced toward his pants on silent feet and searched the pockets. Phone, finger blade, keyring, wallet—it was all there.
The splash of water around the corner announced his movements in the shower. She focused on the phone, tried to unlock the screen and make an emergency phone call. It required a code, and after too many attempts, the keypad prompt locked her out.
Shit!
She tossed it aside, removed the cash from his wallet, and shoved it into her pocket, along with the finger blade. Arturo would follow her down to the ground floor. If she could lead him outside, catch him off guard with the blade, cut his throat if she had to, she might be able to make a run for it.
Her heartbeat shot into overdrive, nearly exploding. It was a risk, one that would either set her free or end her life.
Palming the keyring, she bolted out his room, down the hall, and paused at the door to the stairs. Pipes groaned in the old walls. He was still in the shower.
Her hand grew slick around the keyring. One key unlocked this door. The others could’ve been for the cars, the house, a safe? She didn’t want to tip off Arturo, so she tried the handle first.
It gave beneath her grip, and she sucked in a breath. Then she opened the door.
Arturo stood on the other side and leveled his eyes at her. Then they lifted, pointing at something behind her.
Sinister energy crept over her back. The hairs on her arms prickled, and her stomach rolled over in violent waves. Reaching through the paralyzing dread, she gathered the courage to peek over her shoulder.
“You disappoint me, Kate.” Tiago’s gaze, black as coal, burned into her face from a few feet away.
Dressed in the jeans she’d ransacked, he prowled toward her, holding a bundle of rope. His hair was dry. Not a drop of moisture on his shirtless chest. Yet the sound of water still ran through the pipes.
The fake shower, the discarded jeans… It had been a test. One she failed.
“I’m sorry.” She whirled to face him and inched back. “I was scared and—”
The cold, sharp edge of steel caught her beneath the chin, driving her head upward. With a gasp, she dropped the keyring, grabbed Arturo’s arm, and teetered back against his chest.
“If you speak or move a muscle without permission, Arturo will slice you open from ear to ear.” Tiago tossed the rope at her feet. “Drop your arms.”
Tears burned the backs of her eyes and scorched down her throat as she obeyed.
He gripped the front of her shirt with both hands, ripped it down the front, off her shoulders, and flung it aside. When his fingers bumped her bare chest, she bit down on her lip and tasted blood.
She trembled to scream, beg, bargain, to do anything to remove that heartless, frightening look on his face. But it was too late for that. She’d fucked up and wrecked their imaginary peacetime.
Crouching before her, he removed his belongings from her pockets. Then he yanked down her jeans and panties, stripping the last of the clothing from her body.
A feverish chill swept through her, simmering into convulsions that wobbled her knees and dotted her vision.
He didn’t grope her or stare at her nudity, didn’t so much as look at her.
“Take her downstairs.” He picked up the rope and tossed it to Arturo. “Tie her to the table.”
Four limbs tied to four table legs, Kate lay face up and stretched open, her nude body arranged like an X-shaped centerpiece for the sick and depraved. She shook so viciously the table rattled beneath her. Because she knew what was coming.
He lets his guards rape his prisoners.
He likes to watch.
When Arturo had dragged her into the kitchen, Boones took one look at her and disappeared into the bedroom down the hall. Tiago hadn’t come downstairs yet, but there were two others in the kitchen, staring, anticipating.
Iliana perched on the chair to her right with a hand gently massaging Kate’s wrist near the rope. If the touch meant to calm her, it was a wasted effort.
Sitting at her left, Arturo braced his elbows on the table and held the tip of his knife against her neck. Dishes cluttered the tabletop around her, emitting aromas of fried meats and stomach-turning spices. She was going to throw up.
Her mouth flooded with saliva, and she swallowed, battling the fear that attacked her s
o cruelly. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved without permission, acknowledging the verity of Tiago’s threat in the blade at her throat.
Arturo and Iliana didn’t speak, either. The entire room held its breath, waiting for el jefe.
Too soon, the tread of boots sounded on the stairs, triggering a fresh surge of shivering panic. He strolled into the kitchen, showered, and decked out in black dress pants and a white collared shirt, unbuttoned at the throat.
Trenches rutted his wet black hair from his fingers pushing through it, his jaw cleanly shaved and hard as stone.
Approaching the table, he paused at her feet. A short conversation with Arturo followed in Spanish. Then he looked down and helped himself to an eyeful of her spread thighs and everything intimate and vulnerable in between.
Liquid fire filled her eyes, blurring her vision and spilling from the corners. She glued her gaze to the ceiling, pinned her lips together, and bit back the sounds of her grief.
Since the night she’d been taken from the diner, she knew it would come to this. The past forty-six days had only dragged it out, delayed the inevitable. Crying about it wouldn’t change a damn thing.
That was exactly why she’d jumped on the opportunity to steal his weapon and escape. She wouldn’t regret the boldness of her actions. She only wished she could dredge up some of that bravery now and face her punishment.
The soles of his boots scraped the stone flooring as he stepped closer and leaned in. Bent over her, he braced his hands on either side of her hips. The heat of his gaze ghosted across her pebbled flesh, his presence a smothering, inescapable force.
Now would’ve been the time to beg, but a mere swallow jogged her throat against Arturo’s blade. Her heart thundered, every thrashing beat a plea to survive.
She didn’t want to look into the eyes of the crime boss, but she needed to know. If there was any trace of the man who counted eyelashes and snuggled during naps, maybe she could connect with him, make him remember she was a person.
With agonizing effort, she inched her gaze to the buttons on his shirt, up to the bronzed skin of his throat, and higher to his sculpted lips, straight nose, and the coldest, darkest eyes she’d ever seen.