The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2)

by Rebecca Sherwin

  “Deal. Now sit.” I did, flinching and sighing when his large hands settled on my bare thighs, my robe parting without instruction instead of fighting the inevitable. “Ask your questions, Ashford. You’ve got until I can no longer resist you.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Could be seconds. Could be hours. Depends how intent I am on controlling the urge to fuck you on the desk.”

  My heart fluttered, skipped, and settled into a frantic uneven canter. On the desk. Cool, ancient wood punishing. Warm, slick bodies colliding. Ferocity. Hunger. A battle of wills and collision of eras. I almost forgot my questions.

  “Stop it or I won’t be able to concentrate.”

  “And that would be a bad thing because…?”

  “Because I want answers.”

  “Very well, Ashford.” He folded his arms, set his forearms on my lap, rested his chin on his arms and looked up at me with dark, deviant, irresistible playful eyes. How could he be all of those things at once?

  “You’re not going to lash out are you?”

  “At you?” He shook his head, the gentle movement striking me between the legs like hot pokers. “No.”

  “Okay.” I shifted, not to shake him off, but to give myself a slither of relief from the building ache in my core. “What happened to Seb?”

  Elias cocked a brow, as if he couldn’t understand why I was asking, but eventually answered, “He’s at home, or in the shop. He’s doing whatever he does.”

  “He’s not here? Or in one of the other Sectors?”

  “No. I told you, he’s under surveillance, but we’ve no reason to keep him.”

  “What does he think happened to me?”

  “You assume he cares.”

  “He doesn’t?” Elias shook his head slowly, letting me down gently. I didn’t like Seb much, but I’d hoped he at least wondered what had happened to me all those months ago. “What about William?”

  Elias’ nostrils flared and I knew he wanted to break his promise not to lash out at me. He wanted to lash…he wanted to administer lashings. But he didn’t move. He didn’t need to. His gaze was menacing, the white-hot angry heat rippling from him was more than enough, before he spoke.

  “You dare to mention his name?”

  “Yes.” I stood strong. It was a name. It was a person. Elias’ hostility was unwarranted and unnecessary. “I want to know what happened to him.”

  “Why have you waited so long to ask?” I shrugged. “Am I not enough for you? Tate has crept into your mind because you need more than what I can offer?”

  “No-”

  “I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re worried about, so the object of your fantasies is still very much in this world. As long as you are here, tied to me for all of eternity, you will not mention his name. Do I make myself clear?”

  “I’m not a slave. I don’t obey you. You remember, we took that word out of our vows.”

  “You will do as you’re told, Ashford,” he snapped. “I can’t stop where your mind wanders, but I can stop your mouth following the same path.”

  “My mind doesn’t wander. The last time I saw him was when you staged an attack. You kill people. You’re jealous and possessive and aggressive…why would I not think you’d killed him?”

  Elias smirked as dangerous fire sparked in his eyes. He was recalling a memory that pleased him more than I cared to question.

  “William Tate will remember his punishment for…a while.” He chuckled, the way one might when recalling a sweet childhood memory. “He will remember his place until he takes his last breath.”

  “What did you do?”

  Elias sat back, his hands twisting so his palms lay flat on my thighs before his fingers dug into the flesh.

  “I suggest you get through the rest of your questions, Ashford.”

  “What did you do today?”

  “Worked.”

  “Break it down for me, Blackwood,” I said, using his last name like he used mine, only mine was not in endearment. “What did you do today?”

  “Well, I drank coffee, I guzzled a bottle or two of water.” He hummed, mocking me, taunting me, teasing me. “I ate a chicken sandwich for lunch, and I crunched on an apple while I looked through files of more dead victims.” That was more like it. His pride in GRIT, his faith in the organisation and what it stood for, meant his explanation slipped from avoidance to gloating. I waited with baited breath as he continued. “Hamish, our coroner, called with results from the lab and gave me the names and addresses of people in the database. Do you want to know what they did?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard.

  “There were four of them. They roamed the streets in black masks like they were the fucking vigilantes. They looted shops and small businesses and killed anyone who got in their way. One gun. One of them shot and killed with bullets between the eyes, while the other three stole things that, really, are worth nothing in this world. We matched the striations in the bullets, connected all twenty murder-robberies, and found a fingerprint on one of the shell casings. An entire fucking fingerprint. All that looting and they didn’t think to steal a few pairs of gloves.”

  “What did you do?”

  He shrugged. Wasn’t it obvious? “We spent months scouring the crime scenes and finding evidence to convict. Like I said, we matched fingerprints. All four were staying in one house and we went in and got them.”

  “Are they dead?”

  His fingers flexed against my thighs and I flinched. His grip was punishing and strong. It bruised my flesh, but still I throbbed for him. My entire body pulsed to be closer.

  “Is that what you think of me? That I just execute with no thoughts or feelings?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  He laughed. It was manic and it was pained. He hated that I didn’t have faith in him, but what did he expect? Images of brain and blood spatter filled my vision when I looked into his eyes and saw myself reflecting back. I’d seen him in the Sector. I’d seen him kill in cold blood, and stand present and hard while women killed themselves for the privilege to fuck him.

  “No, I didn’t kill them. They’re in the Sector now. I made sure they’ve been fed, too. Fresh bread and bottled water.”

  “Why?”

  “No matter what you think of me, I don’t just wipe people from the face of the earth. They’re not evil. They’re not psychopaths. They were desperate, they were afraid, and they made mistakes. They didn’t laugh when we captured them. They were no older than you, and just as naïve. They cried, they begged for mercy, and they told God they were sorry. God may not be able to save them, but I’ll try my hardest to.”

  “Help them? You want to reform them?”

  “No more questions.”

  “Elias, wait.”

  “No!” He stood up, capturing my face in his steel hands. “No, Trixie. I’ve told you enough.”

  “But you help. You help, Elias. Why won’t you let me help with that?”

  “What if I’m wrong?” he whispered, sliding his hands over my shoulders to push the robe to the desk. His control was wavering. It excited me and frustrated me. I wanted to know more. “What happens if I grant them mercy and you’re in their line of sight when they show me how stupid I am?”

  “That’s a ridiculous excuse.”

  “That may be true, but you’re alive.”

  “Existing isn’t the same as living.”

  That caught him. Finally, after months of trying, I’d halted the beast that lived within my husband before he let loose and shut me out. He stood inches from me, chest heaving, eyes glimmering. Guilt became him. Remorse overwhelmed him. Realisation rippled through his blood and crashed into him over and over again with every pulse of the pounding vein in his neck. He worked on a swallow and I watched, enthralled.

  "What do you want from me, Ashford?"

  He dragged his hand through his hair and sighed through puckered lips.

  "I want to do this with you. We live two different lives.
I have no idea where you go and what you do, and you have no idea where I am and what I'm doing while you're not here."

  "Is that what you think?" He cocked his head and smirked. "You think I'd leave you to your own devices and not keep tabs?" I gasped and stood from the desk, stung by his flippant attitude. "Oh no, princess. I know where you are every minute of the day. I keep track of everything I own, and that includes you."

  "Is that so?" I asked, returning his ignorant attitude with the challenge he loathed to love. "You think you own me when you're away? You may know where I am and what I'm doing, but you can't own me...you have no idea of the thoughts in my mind."

  "I could hazard a guess."

  "Give it your best shot."

  He glared. I glared right back. Black collided with violet in a torrent of violent stubbornness and paralysing lust. Elias panted, his chest rising and falling sharply, pulling his powder blue shirt right across his powerful chest.

  "Jesus, Trixie." He took a step back, conceding defeat. "We sleep in the same bed. We fuck - every. Fucking. Night. Who gives a shit what happens during the day?"

  "Because we should be doing it together, not living fragmented lives that only collide to get off."

  "That's what you think?"

  "Can you blame me?"

  He resumed his position in front of me with one purposeful stride, surrounding me with his scent and choking me with his authority.

  "So you want to be joined at the hip?" he asked. "It isn't enough to be my wife? The woman I come home to, to escape the nightmare that is my day? You want to take that away from me because you're weak and insecure?"

  "I want..."

  "I know exactly what you want. You can't have it. You can't take the only thing that's still mine away from me."

  "You can tell you're an only child, you arrogant, selfish arse. I don't want to take it. I want to share it. I want to be everything, but right now I'm a release. A balm to soothe the burn of your job. You don't respect me enough to let me in. You know damn well I don't want to take anything from you."

  "So what do you want?" He growled, fingers curling around my throat as he rested me back to the wall. "You make everything about GRIT sensual and sexual and erotic...how the fuck am I supposed to keep my mind on the mission when you're so turned on by the things you claim repulse you?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means exactly what I said. I've spent my entire life shutting off the desires that rear up ten-fold when you're in the fucking Sector. I can't. I just can't deal with it."

  "I don't understand."

  Elias laughed, sending goosebumps stampeding up my arms as his fingers flexed and tightened around me.

  "Of course you don't. How could you!" He let go of me, taking a step back like I'd burned him. I rubbed at my neck, trying to soothe the burn from his aggressive hold, all the while wishing it returned. "You claim to see through me. You claim to read me and know everything about me, but..." He bowed his head. "You know nothing."

  "So tell me. Show me what I'm missing."

  "I can't."

  "Why?"

  "Because you'll leave. I wish you could; I wish I could show you and allow you to walk away, but I can't. You're here, you can't leave, and I refuse to live with—be bound to a woman whose soul has left mine because she hates the monster she fell for."

  "Bullshit." I stepped forward and shoved him in the chest. "You're a lot of things, Elias Blackwood, but cowardly isn't one of them. Don't you dare pretend you're afraid of my reaction when the truth is, you think it's beneath you to have to deal with it."

  Elias said nothing, as black eyes bore into me with rage. Yes, I did know him. I may not have had a clue what he was talking about, but I knew him. I knew what mattered. He laughed again, an uncomfortable chuckle this time. I'd hit the nail on the head, and he had no words. Instead, a storm brewed in his onyx orbs and he snarled at me as he captured his bottom lip between his teeth.

  "You think I'm being cowardly?"

  There was no vulnerability in his voice; no hint of fear of rejection. He was mocking me. He was entertained by my interpretation of what the hell he meant.

  "Yes."

  Elias surged at me, swooping me into strong arms like I was weightless, and flung me over his shoulder. He stormed from the office, before I'd had time to assume we'd head into the Sector, and he ascended the stairs up to the first floor, stealing into our bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

  "Why aren't we in the Sector?" I asked, before squealing as he tossed me carelessly onto the bed.

  "Don't move. Flex one muscle and I'll hit you so hard I'll knock you into next week."

  His threat should have terrified me, but a swarm of butterflies rioted in my stomach and my core clenched with deviant arousal.

  Elias crossed the room and tore open his wardrobe, tearing out a drawer and rummaging inside.

  "We're not in the Sector, because I don't want you to fool yourself into thinking I've morphed into someone else. You think you know the real me, and while that may be true, there are parts you haven't yet uncovered." He turned to face me, his face contorted in conflict before he sheathed his expression and a warrior stood before me. "You tease him every day, Ashford. You ask him to show you things you're not ready to see...you beg for things that will break you, just when you think you've pieced yourself together after decades of not knowing."

  "Who says I'm not ready to see?"

  He shrugged and took a step forward, a handful of silk ties in his brutal hands.

  "I guess we're about to find out." He slapped my thigh and scoffed, as if touching me were a burden he would load onto what he already harboured inside. "Spread them. Like the filthy harlot you are."

  Harlot. He'd called me a harlot. Yet he'd promised this Elias was the real thing. Confusion slammed into me and I gasped. Again, I should have been repulsed, but I wasn't...I wanted to be his harlot.

  "Now, whore."

  Whore. I was a whore. A whore for my husband. A whore for the sick desires that fogged the moral part of my brain and begged for something savage. A whore for the pleasurable pain I knew he wanted to bestow upon me. I was a whore for Elias Blackwood, and for everything that came with being a part of his life...which meant I was whore for GRIT.

  I parted my legs with a sigh, but not far enough. Grabbing my ankle, Elias yanked it to the corner of the bed and I watched in awe as he secured me to the post with his silver-grey tie. I watched in amazement as he fixed my other ankle with the royal blue tie that matched the rims of his irises when he was happy. I gasped with anticipation when the third tie, vibrant violet and shimmering in the soft light, tied my wrist to the third bedpost. And I said nothing, showed no reaction when he secured the other wrist to the fourth post, with his black and red pinstripe tie. I was trapped, spread-eagle on the bed, fully clothed and saturating my underwear more with every beat of my rapidly blackening heart.

  "Have you ever heard of Hematolagnia?" he asked, turning to face away from me again as he returned to the wardrobe and opened another drawer.

  I shook my head, but he couldn't see, too lost in whatever he was doing on the other side of the room.

  "No."

  I couldn't even remember what he'd said, too lost in the desire coursing through my blood. When my husband turned, he was brandishing a dagger. Small and light in size, but no less menacing, because the blade shone brightly against the harsh dullness of the hilt. The dagger was old, perhaps aged over centuries, and I wondered why Elias had it in our bedroom.

  "It has been in the Sector for years," he said, beginning to answer my unasked question. "I brought it here the day I cut you."

  A phantom knife spliced my skin, causing the fading silver scar to burn like a fresh wound.

  "Why?"

  "Hematolagnia is the 'official' word for blood fetishism."

  Fetish. I knew what that meant without having to think, although my mind wandered. Foot fetishes were weird—for me—but common. Sadism and
masochism were fetishes for pain—giving and receiving for sexual gratification. Elias and I teetered on the edge of a healthy sadomasochistic marriage. The thought sickened me...because it turned me on. The pain. The look in Elias' eyes when he administered it. The number of orgasms I'd had while in the throes of agony.

  "You have a fetish for blood."

  Elias tipped his head from one side to the other, dragging his fingertips over the flat edge of the blade.

  "It hadn't been a fetish until I first smelt the tang of your blood. I like to spread it. I've always loved to see it gush from a criminal. But-" he took a step closer. I winced. "Watching it trickle from you made me hard. So. Fucking. Hard. I wanted to make myself come while you bled out and I wanted to fuck you in the puddle left behind."

  "Why?"

  "Because it turns me on. The power of making you bleed. The satisfaction of hearing your cries when you leak crimson treasure. Priceless. Fucking invaluable and so-" Another step. Another wince. Another shred of fear that pierced my steely resolve when it came to Master Blackwood. "So…invigorating."

  "Do it," I said in a moment of sheer bravery, unafraid of his desires, and suddenly aching to give him what he'd wanted for so long. "Show me."

  "Don't give me permission, Ashford. Don't beg me to make you bleed. It makes you sound weak and submissive."

  "So you want me to fight? You tied me up so I couldn't."

  "I tied you up so I'd win. Doesn't mean I don't want you to beg for mercy, whore."

  "Stop it. I'm not a whore."

  "How many men have you been with, Ashford? How many sick fucks came inside your hot little cunt before I took possession of it?"

  "Stop it." Tears pooled in my vision and I tugged on my restraints.

  "I need to know."

  "So you can punish me for it?"

  He nodded. "It's all your fault. Being so easy, so desperate for a fucking you so stupidly mistook as love, brought us here. It's the very reason I've been away from my wife, casting her out like a toy only valuable when I need a release. I need to know."

  I shook my head. "No."

  With the flick of his wrist, Elias nicked my waist. I cried out and tried to writhe against my bindings, but they were too tight and silk soon became fire as it burned into my wrists. The heat became me, and I felt the bubble of blood before it ran free and trickled along my skin. Elias moved with stealthy grace and the pad of his finger swiped at the crimson trail. I watched, stunned into paralysis as he raised his finger to his lips and slipped it in his mouth.