When he slid up the other side Zeke wanted to toss his hands into the air like he’d seen cowboys do after roping a calf and call it good, but blast if he wasn’t home free yet. He eased her back to the ledge, which was better than against him…until he couldn’t look away from what had been cuddled to him.
“The shirt,” Greer whispered.
“Yep.” Zeke moved as though he’d been shot at. He yanked the fabric hanging from his shoulder, found the bottom, and stretched it over her head. They worked together to maneuver her arms into the holes and cover her torso and upper thighs. The room seemed to sigh with them.
He held out his hands, ready to get out of the cramped space. “You ready to try walking?”
“Yes.” Greer settled her palms against his.
Zeke grit his teeth and ignored the zing, the connection. She pressed into his hold. Her set mouth cracked under the strain. A grunt rumbled in her throat. The instinct to scoop her into his arms flared. He doused it in WTF and let her struggle through.
“You’re almost there. Two more inches, then lock those knees out.” He heard himself cheerleading, but couldn’t believe it.
Her lips turned white under the pressure of her strain. She met his gaze and straightened with a heaved sigh.
No telling why, but Zeke bit back his excitement and exchanged it for a meager nod. “We’re not done yet.”
“I know.” Greer pulled back her shoulders and took a wobbly, defiant step forward. She took another and another until they’d left the loo and lacked only three or four strides more to the table. Her weight shifted into his hands, relying on him more and more for each step. Two away she panted. “I’m not fuzzy anymore, but I just don’t have the strength.”
“You don’t lack strength, Greer. You just lack energy.” He wrapped his arms around her middle and shifted her to the waiting chair. “Hell, you haven’t eaten in days. I don’t know what they fed you, but I’ve been lucky to get you to swallow and hold electrolytes the past three.”
“Three days?”
“Here. Nine there.”
He lowered her to the chair, and then stood…or tried to. She caught his forearms in a pitiful grasp. He took a knee and met her gaze. Greer’s long lashes lowered to her fingers, which caressed the skin just above his wrist. She studied the bruised, raw flesh and gnarly scabs.
Her lips parted. Zeke tensed. He didn’t want to talk about it, wouldn’t talk about it. No point.
“Where’s Raisa?” She released his arms and shifted her gaze to the plate.
For a couple of seconds his feet didn’t move while his brain processed. He turned away, grabbed two glasses, filled them with water, and then sat across from her. Greer’s teeth sank into a piece of toast. She reached for a glass and urged him on with a wide glare.
“If she follows my instructions, she’ll be fine.”
Greer took several gulps. “Where?”
“At one of my safe houses.”
“Why didn’t you bring her here?”
“I didn’t plan to bring you here, but you couldn't tell me what I needed to know.”
She tossed the crust of a toast point onto the plate. “So why even save me? Oh wait, because you wanted information. Of course.”
“I saved you because you were under my command when you were taken. I kept you because I need to know what you learned about the Stas’ operation and if you saw Derrick Coen at any point during your abduction or imprisonment.”
Her hands covered her sob. “No. They have Derrick too.”
Well, that answered that.
When he didn’t answer she composed herself. “You can’t find him?”
“It’s more difficult to find men.”
“How’d you find me?”
“They only have two gentlemen’s clubs in the city. That’s where they put the women young and pretty enough to make them money. The men and older women they send to their packing and transportation hubs. They’re scattered across the country.”
Despite the gravity of their conversation, Greer picked up a piece of bacon and bit half of it off. Self-preservation took over. A breath Zeke hadn’t realized he’d been holding eased from his lungs.
“My cover sucked. I was a waitress. Sure the men talked in hushed tones, but the minute I showed up their attention shifted to other things. Sick sons of bitches.” She pointed the piece of meat at him. “The only one of us who might’ve learned anything valuable is missing. I mean, you were a bouncer. You couldn’t have learned much.”
“A list of all the compounds.”
“How’d you get in the club?”
“Submitted really nice fake documents, called with a Russian number, pretended to be a member of the old-country mob, and vouched for myself. Then I brought lots of money.”
“Where’d you get all the money?”
“An account.”
“Whose?”
“None of your business, Lilly Rush.”
“What?” The eggs she forked into her mouth stalled mid-chew.
“You mean, who?”
She swallowed. “No. I pretty much mean what the hell are you talking about?”
“You’ve never seen the TV show Cold Case?”
Greer guzzled the rest of her water, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked at him as though he’d beamed in from outer space. “You have?”
“I moved here last year, left all my mates back home. What else am I going to do from sundown to sunup?”
“Sleep?”
“I don’t need much.”
“Back on target. Where’d the money come from?”
“You mean, who is Lilly Rush?”
“Fine.” She shoveled in the last of her eggs and a crumb of bacon, and then chewed once before inhaling. “Forget the money, for now. How did Derrick manage to get placed as a runner?”
“They’d trust a man more easily than a woman.” Zeke stabbed his eggs. “Well, that, and as a waitress he’d have made shit for tips.”
“You do have a sense of humor.”
Zeke winked, added more food to her plate, and put his in the sink. “I have some work to do. You can take the bed.”
“We just had breakfast.”
“Dinner,” he corrected.
“What?”
Standing over the desk with his back to her, he could no longer see her face, but if she could manage it now she’d have a haughty hand on her hip.
“What if I can’t make it there? What if I need to go to the bathroom again?”
“Your mouth works just fine. So, you can tell me when you need help.”
“How do you expect me to sleep? I’ve been sleeping for three days.”
“Greer?”
“What?” she huffed.
“No more questions until morning.” Zeke tried to keep the pleading from his voice, to make the command sharp and final.
“What are you working on?”
Tomorrow he’d get rid of her and find Derrick Coen, but there was a massive load of hours until dawn.
5
When Greer stretched, every fiber of her being got behind the event. The nerves that had throbbed yesterday sang in praise of freedom. Each muscle yawned with contentment. Her fingers reached. Her back arched. Her toes curled.
The haze of drugs, along with the need for more, faded into the background like a bad dream. As soon as her eyes opened though, all her unanswered questions stampeded with thundering hooves.
Zach Saulter lay three feet away. He dragged a lazy arm over his eyes, and then rubbed a hand over his mouth and sturdy chin.
Greer’s hand flew to her heart on a two-fold mission. One, make certain she still wore clothes. Two, keep the thudding under wraps.
“Calm down. I didn’t steal your virtue.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Sure you were.” He turned those stormy eyes on her. “But I’m the one who had to worry about having his virtue stolen.”
“Hilarious.” Greer turned onto her side t
oward him, tucked her legs to her chest, and adjusted the pillow under her head.
“What?” His lips pursed. “You think you couldn’t steal it because I don’t have it or because you don’t have it in you to do it?” He rolled onto his side and shrugged for emphasis. The move shifted the sheet. It fell off his bare shoulder. “Because those vicious limbs could fleece the kindness of a monk. I swear you kicked me in the kidney three times and the nuts once.”
She tried to follow the line of conversation, but the hump of his massive shoulders and the swell of the top of his pec made breathing difficult.
“You said the bed was mine.”
“I just wanted a two-foot strip.” He held his hands two feet apart indicating the distance, but he’d lost her completely.
Bubbled, peeling skin jarred her more than his beautiful physique, which was saying something because his muscles caused a tingle in muscles she didn’t know she had. The burn was an irregular shape just above his nipple. Her finger automatically lifted to her mouth to cover her shock.
His gaze lowered to the maybe week-old wound, turning to a scar. When he met her gaze again the drowsiness had vanished, along with the hint of playfulness he’d revealed. The wall rose into place, high and proud.
She couldn’t let it go.
“How many days?”
He’d been imprisoned by the Stas. It explained his disappearance and his injuries. But as frightening and infuriating as her captivity had been, his had been worse. Much worse. Her fingers ached to reach out to him, this man who chained his emotions in tidy bindings behind a cold visage.
The warmth in his gaze fled. Zach eased to his back.
“Please.” Greer couldn’t stop the plea’s escape.
His jaw twitched. He drew a breath. She held her own in preparation for his answer.
Zach yanked back the sheet, revealing a wide, lean torso. His feet swung to the ground and he stood in one graceful maneuver. The jaundice of healing bruises marred his sculpted back, the powerful globes of his exposed butt, and the robust columns of his hairy legs.
Oh, Zach.
She almost sobbed the words, but managed to choke them back for ones that might not chafe so much.
“Saulter?”
He sighed and gave her his facial profile. “It’s just a body, Greer. I didn’t get naked to put the moves on you. I can’t sleep in clothes.” He shuffled to the dining table and grabbed his jeans off the back of the chair.
Greer sat, tossed the covers off her legs, and shifted onto her heels.
“I don’t care about that. It’s your…bruises. Your scars.”
“You don’t?” Calling her bluff, Zach gripped the pants in his fist and turned.
Greer double-fisted the reins on the naive part of herself that smacked a hand to her forehead and fainted, as well as the hormonal one that fell to her knees in writhing moans of worship. She kept her gaze trained on Zach’s challenging gray eyes and off his fully erect manhood.
“I don’t.”
She should care that a man had slipped naked into bed with her. Though, it was his bed. It should teach her to get into a man’s bed at all. Not that he’d done anything presumptuous.
Her chest expanded on a fortifying breath. Meaningfully, inch by inch, Greer lowered her gaze first to the scar on his chest, and then to another on his abdomen. His thickly-veined cock twitched. Her lungs screamed for release. Her lady bits tingled in response, but she refused to swallow the saliva pooling in her mouth.
She continued down his body to the cuts and bruises on his legs. If only she’d had the wherewithal to journey back up his hulking warrior body without blushing. Instead, she shifted her gaze to his. Too late she realized his gaze was locked on the front of her shirt. More accurately, the points of her nipples that tented the fabric.
“You don’t?” One of his brows cocked lazily.
“I want to know how long they had you and why. I want to know what they did to you, how you managed to suffer through it, and how you escaped. I don’t expect you to tell me all of it. But at least the basics.”
He chuckled, causing the etched lines of his abs to contract. The hollow sound echoed through her, nearly knocking her on her ass.
“Get dressed, Greer.”
“You first,” she shot back.
“It bothers you.” He grinned, a trite showing of teeth. “At least I know there’s blood in your veins and not ice.”
Anger thrashed about inside Greer’s chest.
“Me? Oh, you’re one to talk about ice in the veins.” Her hands flexed, keeping pace with her rage. “You’ve never smiled or yelled or cried. Not once in seven months have you shown a true emotion. It’s all for show. Even when you get mad. It’s fake. You’re fake.”
Ooh. She hit a nerve with that one. His eyes came to life, sparking as they had the day before. Red colored his cheeks. Striations shown on the tops of his shoulders and in his arms from the strangle hold he kept on the jeans.
“I’m fake? You’ve watched me like a bloody leopard ready to pounce on my cock at the first chance, and then I find out you’re a virgin.”
“Well, I already knew you were an asshole. Not hard to figure out. And I didn’t watch you for that.” She jabbed a finger at his junk.
“You can’t even say it,” he laughed.
“Oh, for the love…” Greer tossed her hands into the air.
“Why’d you watch me then? I mean, if you can’t even say penis, you surely wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“Fuck you and your big dick.” Her voice rose an octave with each word.
That hiked both his brows. “So, now you’re interested?”
“I watched you because I wanted to see something real from you, something honest.”
They stood there for a full minute, descending from the height of frenzy.
“Well,” he sneered, “sorry to disappoint you.”
“You didn’t.”
Zach stilled with his thumbs hooked in either side of his pants, ready to step into them.
“I saw it yesterday when I accused you of buying me for your own pleasure. You were angry…and disappointed that I’d even think you capable of it.”
His jaw firmed and something passed through his undecipherable gaze. It vanished before she could get a read on it. He shoved his legs into his pants, tucked his heavy balls and beautiful penis inside, and then zipped.
“Get dressed.”
“In what?” Greer gestured to her ensemble. “And why?”
“You ask more questions than any person I’ve ever met.”
He jerked his shirt off the other chair and shoved his head inside.
“It’s the only way you learn things.” She collapsed onto a hip. “So, why get dressed?”
“What if I said, so I’m not tempted to fuck you?”
Heat stained her chest, but luckily the T-shirt covered it. If only she could ignore the baking of her internal organs. “I’d say you were trying to avoid my question.”
“Sod it all.” Zach shrugged on his holster, secured his gun and extra mags. “I’m taking you to your dad.”
“My dad! Why?”
“I have things to do and I can’t babysit you any longer.”
“I don’t need you to.” Greer scuttled to the edge of the bed, stood—thanked God she could finally—and jumped up and down to prove her point. “I need you to help me figure out why I was taken in the first place.”
“Your dad can do that. He’s powerful enough.”
She stiffened. The entire United States knew her family. They saw her dad daily on the house floor and her uncle exiting Air Force One. But most people didn’t know they were her family. As a security measure and memorial to her late mother, on her thirteenth birthday, Greer had taken her mother’s maiden name.
“How do you know that?”
“It’s my job to know.”
“No one at US Elite knows.”
“I know.” He pointed at the dresser to her left. “Cl
othes are in the bottom drawer. They won’t be great, but they’ll fit.”
Greer crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“I already told you. I want to know why I was taken.”
“There’s an old British proverb.” Zach slid a long fixed blade into its sheath on his left side. “It goes something like…you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” He tapped a finger on the tip of his lips. “Yep, that’s it.”
“I’m going with you to find Derrick.”
“No, you’re not. You’re too skinny. You can hardly hold your own weight.”
Greer’s ire frothed again. “You’re not my boss anymore.”
Zach stepped forward. “No. But I’m bigger than you and in this world that’s all that counts.”
When he took another step in her direction Greer clenched her teeth and lifted her chin. “I’m not going.”
“You can stay.”
After all that it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing with Zach Saulter was easy. “I can stay, if…”
Lids narrowed around his turbulent eyes. “Tell me why you really don’t want to go home?”
Greer’s arms fell at her sides. He saw through her, at least as well as she saw through him. Enough to know that there was more to the story.
“I don't want my dad to know I was taken. That I was put on the market to the highest bidder.”
“It wasn't your fault.”
“It wasn’t his, but he'll feel that way.”
“Why?”
“He’s my dad.”
Zach tightened his stare. “The truth this time.”
“Because he recommended me to US Elite.”
6
Z eke had a crap ton of things to do and not one of them included chopping fire wood. For cripes sake, the sun beat down hot enough to sear his back and shoulders, and he wouldn’t be here when the season came to use the split logs. But it was either plow logs or Greer mother-fucking Britton. With each swing of the axe sweat spattered the splitting stump like shrapnel. Pretty soon he wouldn’t have any perspiration left. He hadn’t grabbed a canteen or even his laptop when he’d stormed out four hours ago. An hour in he’d found out the hose water tasted more like metal than water. At least his computer had a password from prying eyes.
Prisoner Mine Page 6