Hacking Darkness: A Reverse Harem Romance (Dark Codes Book 1)

by Marissa Farrar

  But it was Kingsley, alone this time. He made his way down the stairs, not looking at me, but at the small plastic jar he held in his hands. He reached the bottom and glanced up to see me there.

  He held out the container. “I brought you something.”

  I glanced at it, my eyes narrowed. “What is that?”

  “Arnica.”

  I frowned. “Arnica? What’s that supposed to be?”

  “It’s good for healing bruising. I thought it could help.” He started to unscrew the lid, and I realized what he planned on doing.

  I put out my hand. “It’s fine. I can do it.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do it for you. I’ll do a better job. You can’t even reach half of your back.”

  “I said I can do it,” I repeated, my tone hard.

  He looked at me, fixing me with those dark brown eyes. “Don’t make this hard on yourself, Darcy. I said I would do it.”

  I didn’t know what to do. Should I argue? Should I fight him? He could do a lot worse to me than just put some ointment on my skin, and he seemed to want to help, though I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, scowling, but giving in.

  He nodded across the room. “Lie down on the bed. Face first.”

  My muscles stiffened. I didn’t like the sound of that, but what choice did I have? If he wanted to, he could tie me up again, bind my hands and feet. He could do a lot worse than rub some ointment onto my skin—as long as that was all he planned on doing.

  Giving in to this small thing wasn’t what I wanted, but I couldn’t see the point in fighting. I would be the one to come off worse.

  With my body tense and trembling, I crossed the room to the bare bed. I’d yanked all the sheets and blankets off it, which I’d used to create my little nest. Now it was only a bare mattress, and I was pleased about that. It was stupid, but not having any pillows or sheets or blankets helped to remove the intimacy.

  I climbed onto the bed and lay down on my stomach, before awkwardly reaching around to pull my t-shirt up, exposing my bare back and the bruises littering my skin. I pillowed my face on my folded arms, my heart fluttering in my chest like the wings of a panicked bird. The mattress dipped with Kingsley’s weight, and he sat on the edge next to me. I glanced over at him as he dug his fingers into the jar, drawing out a dollop of thick white cream. I couldn’t look then, turning my face down, every inch of my body tensed in anticipation.

  His fingers pressed to my lower back, and I flinched at the cold of the cream. But, strangely, his touch against my skin wasn’t unpleasant. He rubbed firm, slow circles, pressing enough that the muscles relaxed, but not so hard that it hurt the bruising. I wondered how his black skin looked against my white—a sharp contrast that fitted so well together, like yin and yang.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice muffled.

  He finished that area and scooped out a second dollop of ointment, then moved lower, his fingers slipping beneath the waistband of my jeans.

  Automatically, I tensed.

  “Relax,” he said, “it’s not like that.”

  I knew exactly what he meant—that this wasn’t sexual—but it was hard for my thoughts not to head that way when I was lying on a bed, my skin exposed, and with one of the men who’d kidnapped me giving me a massage. His fingers continued to move rhythmically, pressing deep into my sore muscles. He edged lower until there was a blurred line between whether he was still touching my back or the tops of my buttocks. Though I hated it, I couldn’t stop the pleasure he was giving me from spreading down, sending heat racing between my thighs. I tried not to respond, yet I found myself pushing my hips down into the bed, trying to apply pressure to the sensitive spot between my thighs that needed it the most.

  Kingsley finished that area, and I tried not to acknowledge my disappointment. He moved up higher, continuing with the slow, firm circles. I didn’t want to enjoy him touching me, but my body responded to his administrations, and I grew sleepy with bliss. Even when his hands slipped up, over where my bra strap would have been, I didn’t tell him to stop. If anything, I wanted those clever hands to rub out the kinks in my neck and shoulders as well, make me feel human for the first time since I’d been kidnapped that morning.

  The thought broke me from my reverie. This man had kidnapped me. Just because he was showing me a little kindness now didn’t excuse him from that. I was still in exactly the same position.

  “Roll over,” Kingsley said in his deep, smooth voice. “I’ll do your front.”

  That snapped me out of it. I rolled away from him, yanking down my t-shirt as I did so. “I can reach my front!”

  He continued to watch me, unperturbed by my outburst. He shrugged and handed me the plastic jar. “Suit yourself. I was only trying to help.”

  I snatched the cream out of his hand. “You can help by letting me out of this damned cellar.”

  He shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

  He nodded and got to his feet. He really was a fine build of a man, and the shirt he wore did little to hide the muscles bulging beneath the material. His touch had been so tender, considering the size of him, but I didn’t doubt he had the capability for violence inside him. These men had shot the FBI agents who’d taken me from my house. I couldn’t allow myself to forget that they were dangerous, even if they were all young and good looking, though Kingsley wasn’t as young as the others. I didn’t mind that. I felt as though he was the most steady of the four, Alex the hotheaded one, Lorcan moody, and Clay more playful. I wondered what Isaac would be like—the most dangerous one, perhaps?

  Kingsley turned and left me holding the jar, the feel of his fingers still ghosting across my skin. I already missed the feel of the massage, but I couldn’t encourage him. It was a crazy and risky road to travel down—not that I wasn’t already heading well down that route.

  I watched his broad, strong back and shoulders as he mounted the stairs, trying to stop my gaze slipping lower, to take in the sight of his very firm, rounded buttocks moving beneath his slacks, and how the muscles of his thighs strained at the pants he wore. It had been a while, admittedly, since I’d been with a guy, but I didn’t think I was so desperate as to start eyeing up my kidnapper, or at least one of them. Not that the others weren’t also eyeing-up material, because they certainly were, but they were also a group of kidnapping killers who wanted to do God-only-knew-what with me. Though I knew I had a twisted mind, I couldn’t allow myself to think those kinds of things.

  I waited until he’d left the room and locked the door behind him, before I allowed myself to fall back onto the bed, my hands covering my face. What the hell had I gotten myself into here? I was losing my mind. I couldn’t get the feel of those big, strong hands all over my body out of my mind. The stirrings he’d elicited in me hadn’t faded since I’d told him to stop. If anything, they’d only grown stronger, and my imagination wandered to what would have happened if I’d lain back and allowed him to continue. I knew I shouldn’t be thinking this way—the man was part of a team who had kidnapped me—and yet sometimes the deepest desires stemmed from the things we were supposed to want the least.

  The urge to slip my hand between my thighs and finish what he had started was overwhelming. Flutterings of arousal rose higher through my core, and I squeezed my legs together, trying to control them and only succeeding in making things worse.

  Damn. I needed to snap myself out of it.

  I wasn’t about to take a cold shower, but some water on my face should help.

  What if his hands had kept moving lower, his fingers slipping between your cheeks, brushing over your ass and dipping lower ...

  I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, trying to dispel the image. But still my mind wondered what it would be like to be with a man of his size. He’d make me feel tiny, his body engulfing mine, his strength powerless to fight again
st. Would his cock be as big as the rest of him? Would he struggle to fit inside me, or would I be so wet by that point my body would be ready and willing to take him?

  As my thoughts had progressed, so my hips rocked against the rim of the sink. The perfect height to put pressure on my clit. Still mindful of the cameras, I knew they wouldn’t be able to tell what I was doing. My back arched over, my chin to my chest, my eyes slipping shut. Bad, bad, bad. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And yet it felt so good. I knew the insides of my panties would be soaked by now—they’d already grown wet from Kingsley touching me.

  The muscles in the backs of my thighs and calves clenched, my toes curling against the insides of the sneakers I still wore. My movements grew faster, and with it my breathing changed, first little gasps, then trapping the air inside my lungs as I built higher and higher. God, I was so close and I hadn’t even touched myself properly. My mind stayed with Kingsley, with the thought of him pushing inside me, so big and forceful.

  I came hard, my core pulsing and sending rushes of pleasure through my entire body. I wished I had something inside me to clench against. The little cries I gave as I came sounded too loud in the confines of the small bathroom, and I hoped that if they did have cameras, they didn’t have any sound on them.

  As the final waves of my orgasm faded, I wasn’t filled with the normal sense of bliss, but instead shame and humiliation swept over me. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I remained panting at the sink as my heartrate dropped back to normal. Not knowing what else to do with myself, I left the scene of my crime and went back to the bed where Kingsley had given me the massage.

  I lay down and rolled over onto my side and curled up in the fetal position. I didn’t know the exact time, but I figured it must be heading into nighttime by now. Though I’d already had a nap, with nothing else to do and wanting to escape my current situation, if only in my head, I allowed myself to sleep.

  I WAS BACK IN MY HOUSE, my father standing in front of me. I could tell by the way his brow was drawn down, his lips thinned into a line, that he was mad at me about something, but I couldn’t tell what. Behind him, the patio doors led out to darkness, and I knew it was night. Deep down, a part of me knew he shouldn’t be here. My father was dead, but that didn’t stop the delight and hope building inside of me. Perhaps I was wrong, and he wasn’t dead after all. Maybe that had been the dream and this was real.

  He looked exactly like he had that night. He’d always been a handsome man, dark hair, just starting to salt and pepper, strong and athletic from the runs he liked to do on the weekend. He wore one of the many suits he owned, and I remembered the scent of the polish he used while shining up his shoes every Sunday night.

  “Dad—” I started, wanting to tell him how good it was to see him and how much I had missed him, but he lifted a hand and cut me off.

  “No, Darcy. I don’t want to hear it. Every time I give you a little freedom, you betray my trust.”

  My heart sank. I was unable to stop the words coming out of my mouth, the exact same words I’d said on that night. “It was only ten minutes. Jeesh. Why do you have to make a big deal out of everything?”

  “It’s a lack of respect. I tell you a time to be home, you should stick to it. It’s not as though you’re someone who loses track of time, Darcy. Not with how you see things.”

  We’d known, even back then, when I was only a teenager, what I was able to do. Some people didn’t figure it out until they were older, but my father had picked up on the differences in me at an early age. My ability at only four years old to pick out of the air exact dates of events in my short life. I hadn’t just been able to count, I’d seen the numbers laid out in front of me. I was no genius. I just saw things differently than others, but because of that, I could never use the excuse of forgetting the date or losing track of time, not when I was able to see it laid out in front of me like my own mental clock and calendar.

  I wanted to tell myself to shut up, that I was twenty years old now and didn’t have to fight with my dad about curfews anymore, but I couldn’t seem to get the words to come out of my mouth. It was as though I was on a track and was unable to deviate off course.

  Because this is the night he died.

  The realization caused my stomach to clench. Any moment now, shots would be fired, and then my father would collapse and die in my arms.

  I wanted to tell him to get down, to move, but my mouth opened and those same words from six years ago came out instead.

  “Rachel doesn’t even have to be home until after eleven,” I protested.

  “What Rachel’s parents—”

  The sound of two silenced gunshots thwacking through the glass patio doors stopped my father in his tracks. Surprise caused his eyes to widen, and he glanced down at the spots of blood that had appeared on the front of his shirt. The bullets had passed straight through his body.

  “Dad!” I cried, stepping forward to catch him as he slumped to the ground. I hadn’t been strong enough back then, and we’d both ended up on the floor, him half on top of me. I felt something hot and wet over my hands and lifted one to see it covered in bright red blood.

  The patio doors burst open, and men stepped into the house. It was them, Alex, Kingsley, Clay, and Lorcan. And a fifth, who stood in the open doorway, the night behind him, his face covered with a mask. The fifth man I hadn’t yet met. Isaac.

  No, but that hadn’t been what happened that night, it hadn’t been those men who’d come into the house. It had only been one. One who’d moved swiftly through the property, finding what he wanted and leaving again, leaving me holding my dad as he’d died in my arms. I’d thought he was going to kill me, too, but he hadn’t.

  I hadn’t thought about my father’s killer that night, but I’d thought about him many nights after. No one had ever found out who it was, and I’d been too distracted by my dying father to be able to identify him. I imagined what had gone through the bastard’s head on that night. Had he given us one final glance, perhaps wondering whether to put a final bullet in my dad’s head, but deciding the job was already done, and then vanishing with the thing he’d come for? The memory stick.

  And as he’d lain dying in my arms, my father had babbled out apparently random numbers, knowing that I, of all people, would be able to keep them in my head.

  But he hadn’t considered that the screaming inside of me had blocked out everything he’d said.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke to find Clay already in the room. I’d fallen asleep on the bare mattress, and when I saw him standing over me, I instinctively reached for blankets to cover myself, blankets that were still under the stairs where I’d left them.

  My bad dream remained with me, clinging to me like the silken threads of a spider’s web, but the dream didn’t matter. It hadn’t been real, and the reality I’d woken to was far worse.

  Clay held up both hands. “Relax, sugar. I’m only bringing you some food.”

  “I don’t want any of your food,” I said sullenly, sitting up and swinging my legs off the side of the bed. My head still felt foggy from sleep.

  “Sure you do.”

  Scent permeated the air. Was that coffee? Bacon? My stomach rumbled, and my mouth flooded with saliva. I perked up, glancing over at the tray Clay had set down on the table while I’d still been asleep.

  “Coffee’s not too hot,” he said apologetically. “Alex thought you might try to throw it in my face or something if we gave it to you hot enough to scald.”

  I shrugged. It was a fair point. That was exactly something I would have considered doing.

  I got to my feet and went over to the tray. I was right—coffee, a bottle of water, a small bowl of fruit, and some bacon and toast. Whatever these men wanted to do with me, starving me didn’t appear to be something I needed to worry about.

  “Go on, eat,” Clay said, encouraging. His stormy gray eyes looked almost hopeful, as though he wanted to please me. He dragged his hand through his jaw-length,
dirty-blond locks and nodded over at the food.

  I took a seat, but didn’t touch anything. I glanced up at him and raised my eyebrows. “Are you just going to stand there and watch over me?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sorry. After you getting away on me last time, I’m taking precautions.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  His lips twisted. “Sorry.”

  I huffed out a breath of frustration. It was a good thing I wasn’t one of those girls who was paranoid about eating in front of hot guys. Not that I was thinking about Clay being hot, just that I didn’t give a shit about what he thought of me. An idea threaded into my mind, and I went with it.

  I picked up the coffee cup and slurped it as loudly as I could, making an ‘ahh’ sound after I’d swallowed. Then I lifted the toast and took a huge mouthful, chewing loudly and with my mouth open. I munched and chomped, switching between the bacon and bread, throwing a bit of the chopped fruit in for good luck. The temptation to dribble a little, or perhaps spit something out, was strong, but I was actually starving and didn’t want to waste good food. I glanced over to Clay to catch him watching me with his eyebrows drawn down, his nose wrinkled in disgust, and I had to choke back a laugh. Good, my little show had the desired effect. I wanted to gross him out.

  When I’d finished, I sat back and let out a huge belch and then rested my hands on my distended stomach.

  Clay leaned in and cautiously picked up the tray containing the plastic plates and cutlery, as though he thought I might try to take a chunk out of him, too.

  “You know, there’s a whole dresser over there with changes of clothes in it, if you wanted to take a shower and freshen up a little.”

  I shot him a glare, the good feeling from the food and my little game evaporating. “And why would I do that? To pretty myself up for someone?”