by Niles, Abby
“So she’s finally straightened up?”
“That night scared her, Liam. I didn’t even realize how badly until later.”
A dark shadow passed across her eyes, and her anger started to boil his blood.
He took a deep cleansing breath, not needing the spike in her emotions to affect him, not wanting her to see what her feelings could potentially do to him. If she ever saw him go into a Bahrraj episode, saw him completely helpless to her emotions, he’d have no dignity left. Plus, she was so sensitive. The guilt would eat her alive, possibly push her to do anything to fix him—including bonding herself to him. While that would give him the internal peace he craved, Ava being stuck with him for eternity out of guilt wasn’t the solution. He’d rather suffer than feel like he’d forced her hand.
“Why…” he rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the pressure of her emotions building within his body…“Why are you angry?”
Her mouth popped open before she shook her head with a huff. “This is really an unfair advantage you have.”
He didn’t want this advantage. Wouldn’t have it if she’d bonded to him. “Maybe so, but I feel it nonetheless, so explain.”
“What’s there to say? Emma could’ve died for being so damn stupid. I still have some residual anger over that.”
Her bottom lip disappeared beneath her teeth. She might know his tells, but he also knew hers. She wasn’t telling him everything. “Did we break up because of Emma?”
He made sure to use her human term instead of his shifter one, not wanting to get her refocused on his terminology.
“Why would you think that?”
“We never saw eye-to-eye when it came to your little sister.”
“No. We didn’t, but she wasn’t the reason I left. We just weren’t a good match.”
He didn’t need to see her gnawing on her lip to know she’d just uttered a huge lie. They had been the perfect match. A match made for each other. “Why did you really let me go?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“I don’t buy your excuse. You were set to dump me before we’d even sat down to talk. Before I told you what I was. What is the real reason, Ava?”
“Is this what it’s going to be like until we either escape or die? You bringing up the past?”
“We’re not going to die, and it’s hard not bringing up the past when you’ve never had the decency to tell me why you left. I know you aren’t telling the whole truth. Out of the blue you didn’t want anything to do with me. I want to know why.”
A hissing sounded in the room, and clouds of white smoke billowed from the vents on the floor on his side of the glass. He jumped to his feet. She did the same.
“Liam! What’s going on?”
Eyes and lungs burning, he started coughing. The smell of sleeping gas overwhelmed his senses. Grabbing the front of his shirt, he pulled it over his mouth. He looked up, making sure Ava was all right. She stood staring at him in horror, then she ran up to the glass and pressed against it. As the gas filled his room, her image faded until he was surrounded by nothing but white smoke.
Groaning, Liam lifted his head groggily then pushed off his stomach and sat up. Memories of the gas filling the room, his inability to stay awake, hit him.
Ava!
Blinking his vision into focus, he found Ava strapped down on the board again, unconscious. A dark bruise now discolored her left cheek. Rage blinded him as he fought to his feet. What the fuck had the asshole done to her while he’d been out?
The bastard hadn’t injected her with whatever it was that made her dead to Liam. Her life flowed through his blood as always. But why gas him? The man had already proven he could overpower Ava. Had it been so Liam would wake to this? Wondering what had happened, how she’d been strapped down? Where that fucking bruise had come from? Or was it to make him aware that he was powerless against their captor, that with one flip of a switch he could be rendered helpless?
The masked man entered the other room, and Liam froze, dread consuming him. When the man pulled a stainless steel rolling cart out from behind Ava, dread become outright fear.
Scalpels and an assortment of other surgical instruments littered the metal tray. Ava was still out cold. A part of him was thankful she had no clue to the horror developing beside her. The man lifted a scalpel and approached her. “Have you ever heard of the game Operation? I love that game, but it missing something for men like you and me. Yeah, we have bones and stuff, but it leaves out the important parts that make us what we are. I thought I’d create a game especially for us.”
Liam threw his body against the glass. No words of protest came to his lips, no thought, just blind terror to get to her. To save her. The glass didn’t budge at his assault, and he bellowed his rage, ramming it again.
“I hope this is sharp enough.” When the man ran the blade down Ava’s forearm, she woke up screaming, trying to thrash away from the pain. “Oh, good. It is.”
Liam’s beast roared, and his skin prickled, his face burned. The sensation fizzled as quickly as it had appeared, but he charged the glass with all his force. It rattled, but kept in place.
“Now the rules of this game are simple. I have to carefully remove the bruises without slicing into the delicate skin around it. I won’t get zapped like you do if you mess up in the human game, which is a little anti-climatic, but I have to work with what I have.”As the man used the blade to carve around the bruise, Ava’s screams intensified. A caterwaul came from deep inside Liam and the prickles intensified.
He tapped into the surging presence of his beast, its raging power. With the added strength, he smashed his body against the barrier between him and Ava. A loud pop ricocheted in the room.
The masked man stopped, then took a step back.
That’s right, motherfucker. I will kill you. Fear for your life.
“You can’t do that, Liam! It’s not how the game is played. You’re ruining everything!”
He continued to pummel the barricade. The glass webbed.
“Shit.” The man dropped the scalpel and backed away.
With one more forceful drive, the webbing exploded across the entire surface before another pop sounded and the glass barrier disintegrated, raining onto the floor in thousands of small chunks. Liam launched himself through the opening and dove for the fleeing bastard, seeing nothing but the red haze of rage. The door crashed shut in his face, just as he slammed his body against it. Bellowing, he rammed against the steel again and again. Even with the added force of his beast, the door laughed at him. He placed his palms flat on the metal, hung his head and yelled—a long, frustrated, enraged sound.
The bastard had escaped. He shoved away from the door and stalked the room. Fury made his chest heave as he eyed every crevice, searching for a weakness in their prison, looking for a way to get him, kill him…and found none.
They were effectively trapped, but sooner or later the bastard would fuck up, and he would be ready to pounce.
“Liam!”
He wasn’t sure how many times she’d called his name, but her yell finally penetrated, and with it the adrenaline fled, making him blink out of the bloodlust that consumed him. Agony radiated up and down his torso, but he pushed it away. Only one thing mattered. Ava.
Blood ran down her arm and leg as he fumbled with her bonds until they released. She fell into his arms and he held her tight. The amazing part was she held him just as fiercely, as though she never wanted to let him go, her face buried in his shoulder, her arms locked around his neck. Then he heard the first hiccupped sob.
Knotting his fingers in her hair, he tugged her head back, then latched his lips to hers. The peace that entered his body was like coming home. His beast hummed and he felt it all the way to his marrow as the disconnection to his beast snapped back into place, where it belonged. Making him whole again.
He groaned against her lips. She would always make him whole. He had to find a way to make her love him again. Make it so when they got out of this hel
l, she wouldn’t walk away.
When she opened her lips to him, welcomed him inside, his happiness soared. He didn’t think she was even aware of her surrender as she willingly kissed him back, her tongue flicking against his in a mad need that matched his own. After everything she’d claimed, she still wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
Pulling back, he pressed his forehead against hers. The blood trailing down her arms wet his neck. When he lowered her to her feet and stepped back, he saw the blood streaking down her leg. His beast growled, wanting to emerge, to use its special powers to heal her. Liam fought it back.
Something told him that hiding the fact that he was reconnected with his beast from their captor was essential.
The man had wanted to play a game, had all but admitted he was a shifter and would’ve known cutting into another shifter’s bonding marks would have produced a rage so profound the beast would make an appearance. Yet, he seemed shocked when Liam had webbed the glass. He hadn’t been expecting the beast.
Thankfully, Liam hadn’t been completely reconnected to his beast then. Now he was. Kissing Ava, having her willingly in his arms, had given him back his beast.
“L-Liam?”
“Sorry. I was just—” His words halted as he looked up and saw the pallor of her skin, the fear in her eyes. “What is it?”
“What did you do to make him h-hate you so badly? Why am I always being p-punished for something y-you did?”
The fear, the accusation, in her voice tore at his gut. This man was making her believe the worst of him. Just seconds ago, he had her in his arms, but the distance between them had never been greater. When he finally got his hands on this bastard, he’d rip the fucker’s head off.
He went to take her hand, to again insist he knew nothing, but stopped at the blood dripping off her fingertips. The fact that she seemed oblivious to her injury let Liam know shock was setting in. After everything she’d been put through…
Because of something he’d done.
Ava shuddered. The way she stared straight ahead scared him, and he hesitantly put an arm around her. As he gently walked her to the bathroom, she allowed him to lead her without a fight, which freaked him out more. He lightly pushed her down until she sat on the toilet lid, then turned to the sink and wet a towel. The entire time the blank expression didn’t leave her face.
Dropping to his knees before her, he cradled her arm in his hand, keeping it away from the dried blood caked on his skin—blood that was not hers, praise Dea. He stood up and scrubbed his hands in the sink, refusing to touch her with such filth on his hands. Kneeling before her again, he softly dabbed at the wound on her arm and was thankful to see it wasn’t deep. Then he placed his hands on her knees and tried to spread her legs to reach the cut on her thigh. She jerked, clamping her legs together. Though it pained him that her first reaction since he’d started cleaning her wounds was because he’d touched her knee, he was glad to see some life returning to her eyes.
“Baby, I need to see how bad it is.”
The tension eased. As he cleaned the cut, fury crashed over him anew. It would leave a scar—always be there as a reminder that this bastard had dared to hurt her, that he had disfigured Liam’s mark before he’d gotten the chance to show her the true power and beauty of it.
Could he wipe the rest that absent look from her face if he finally showed her?
He softly brushed his thumb over the uninjured mark on her other thigh.
She gasped, jerking, her legs widening even further. “Oh…God.”
The light caress had the intended effect, pink livened her skin as her eyes rounded in disbelief. Thank Dea, she was back from whatever bad place she’d been.
He brushed it again, then gently pressed. A slow moan seeped from between her lips as she clapped down on his wrist and tugged his hand away. “W-why does that feel so good? It never feels like that when I touch them.”
He inhaled sharply, jerking back. She had touched them before?
“Ava…when did you realize what the marks did?”
”Why?”
“Just curious.”
“A few weeks ago.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“Really?” She tried to tug her face from his hands. “You have to ask that?”
“It matters.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was having a little bit of alone time, okay? I brushed against them and it felt good. Don’t read anything into it.”
When she shoved past him, he let her escape, reeling from her confession. She didn’t understand how the marks worked or what she’d just admitted to him For her to give herself pleasure through the marks, she had to think about him—only him, no one else—when she touched them...with lustful thoughts. And she’d done that after she’d left him.
Liam smiled. Maybe there was hope after all.
…
As she rounded the wall, Ava silently cursed. When he didn’t immediately follow, she was thankful. She couldn’t look at him right now, not after admitting she’d played with marks she supposedly scorned.
Thank God he had no clue she’d been thinking about him during that time.
The night she discovered what the marks were capable of was still a vivid memory. It was the night she’d looked up to see Liam standing on the sidewalk outside her house. All kinds of conflicting emotions she’d thought she had control over had resurfaced the moment she’d seen him, but the one that stood out the most was how much she missed him. Missed his arms around her, his smell—everything about him.
Later, she found herself lying in bed, with the hem of her gown around her hips as she studied the bruises, knowing they weren’t the hickies he’d spent months claiming them to be.
She’d never doubted him. Never had a reason to…until now.
Ava paced around the room. Why had she kissed him? After he’d yanked off her restraints and she’d collapsed into his arms, the horror she’d felt from waking in intense agony disappeared. The moment Liam’s arms had closed around her, held her tight, it’d been like coming home, and everything else had faded into the background.
How did he still have that power over her with the hell that was happening around them—happening to her because of him?
He swore he didn’t know who was behind this, but how could she ignore the possibility that two men had made threats, had hurt people, in the name of Liam?
Long list.
Exactly how long was it, and how long before another decided to join the ranks?
What could he have done to it initiate this type of vengeful response? The Liam she’d spent six months desperately in love with was good to his core. But that was before she learned he was a shifter. That he’d lied about owning her to try to force her to stay. Who knew what happened to him in his shifter world. He might be totally different.
What if she didn’t even like shifter Liam?
He stepped out from behind the divider with his shirt off as he scrubbed at the blood on his arms with a wet towel. The deep purple splotches on his torso caused her heart to plummet. “Oh God. Liam.”
Stopping, he looked at her, then glanced down at his body. “It’ll heal,” he reassured her.
He said it so nonchalantly she took him at his word. Then he disappeared behind the divider on his side of the room, only to return a few moments later tugging on a fresh shirt. She’d always loved admiring Liam’s chest, but had to admit, she was thankful he’d covered the damage he’d done to himself saving her. The terror on his face as he had repeatedly slammed his body against the partition was forever branded in her mind.
Maybe he did have his enemies, but she was certain he would move heaven and earth to get her out of this alive, just as she would do the same for him.
As he passed his tray of food, he picked it up.
She watched him closely as she sat down on the mat. He seemed so much more relaxed than the raging man that had shattered into the room. How? There was no way to escape. He’d proven that when
he’d failed to take the metal door down. If he couldn’t get through it, then she sure as hell couldn’t. And then there was the gas.
“Liam, what if he gasses the room?”
“The partition is gone. He won’t do that again, unless he’s done with his games.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There’s a reason he only gassed my side, Ava. The amount it takes to knock me out would kill you.”
“But—”
A slight shake of his head had her cutting off her words. As he walked toward her, he held her gaze, an unmistakable warning in them. She swallowed. He was planning something. What, she had no idea.
He sat beside her, balanced the tray on his knees, then cut into the steak. As he stuck the tip of the fork in front of her mouth, he said, “Eat.”
Leaning back, she pushed the utensil away. “No way. I saw your abdomen. You need that more than I do. I can eat the oatmeal.”
The gentle brush of his thumb ran across her cheek, and she flinched from how tender the area was. The man had apologized right before backhanding her hard. She didn’t remember anything else after that.
Then Liam’s hand glided over her jawline to her throat, a finger tracing the ring of bruises there. “You can’t hide your injuries like I can mine.” He shook the fork. “Now eat.”
Still she hesitated.
“Please, Ava.” He closed his eyes briefly, but not before she saw a glimpse of pain. “If this is really about me, if you are being hurt because of me, please eat this.”
The raw agony in his voice caused her breathing to cease. Even though he’d sworn this wasn’t about him, this was the first time she’d seen something other than rage toward their situation. Was it possible he really didn’t have enemies? Or at least wasn’t aware that he did?
Either way, she couldn’t ignore his pain. Leaning forward she did what he asked and closed her lips around the prongs. After he went to cut another piece, she covered his hands with hers, then took the fork from him and lifted it to his lips. “Compromise.”
He studied her for a moment then opened his mouth and closed his lips around the fork, lips that had felt so good against hers again. The thought came out of nowhere as flutters erupted in her belly. His pupils dilated as the dark brown irises faded to a bright caramel. She loved watching his eyes do that. Had forgotten how much she’d missed it, how it had always, even before she knew what he was, made her feel special.