by Keri Lake
Hands braced at the footboard, I pulled the frame far enough away to keep from making noise and stared down at her. “Hang in there, Nic. It’s almost over.”
6
Dax
For six days I watched over her, as she slogged through detox.
In that time, the girl seemed to go in and out of lucid moments, some more violent than others. Much as I hated doing it, I’d kept her restrained to the bed, otherwise she’d have been tearing at her skin, or trying to eat the fucking pillow.
I stared at the bottle of painkillers sitting on the shelf of the medicine cabinet, just begging for me to crack them open and send me on one hell of a trip. The kind that stripped away the insanity of having to remain idle. Phantom tingles shot across my skin at the memory of nights I’d lain in bed without a fucking care in the world, pondering the simpler shit in life.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss those days.
I closed the medicine cabinet, shutting out the temptation.
My apartment had somehow gotten smaller while I killed the hours with whiskey and cigarettes. Two years, I’d vaped, only to fall back on a pack of Camel’s from the liquor store one block up the street. I lifted weights more hours in the day than I ever had before, just to exhaust the pent-up energy constantly buzzing through my body. I wasn’t used to being holed up somewhere.
No lie, watching Nicoleta go through that shit put me on edge. Like déjà vu, all over again, for me. Only, my poison was fentanyl, not a street grade sex drug.
I could’ve dropped her off at some clinic. Told ‘em I’d found her on the streets, or something. I’d done it before, the bleeding heart bastard that I was, unable to bear seeing a junkie left to die alone in some abandoned shithole.
Tesarik would find her there, though. In fact, the clinics would probably be the first place he’d look, assuming he had any clue how hard it was to kick Hedonic.
The sharp edge of the business card scraped against my fingers as I stroked it inside the pocket of my jeans. If her father had been keeping tabs on me, no doubt he’d have noticed I hadn’t been around in a week. Unless he thought I was dead, but I didn’t want one of my friends to end up on a chopping block to test that theory. For two days, I’d debated calling the number on the card. I’d wanted to wait until the girl had at least gotten through the shittiest part of her withdrawals—literally—before shuffling her around to somewhere new.
I’d done Hedonic withdrawals before, myself, and all I could say about it was something as mundane as getting my ass in the shower had felt like I’d been pummeled with a club the whole way there. Whoever said the comedown was mild failed to mention the withdrawals were absolute hell.
Besides, I’d welcomed the distraction the last few days. Losing Tesarik again had fucked with my head, and if not for taking care of the girl, I might’ve trashed my apartment in a drunken rage.
Fuck. I rubbed a hand down my face and slipped the card out of my jeans. Couldn’t really afford any more distraction, though. I’d rescued the girl, and could mentally check that part of it off. I’d done my good deed. Could let her go and walk away.
Except, I couldn’t.
I’d searched for her for too goddamn long, to hand her over to some swinging dick who claimed to be her dad. Even if the guy didn’t have a shady ass agenda, he probably knew fuck all about withdrawals. Particularly Hedonic.
Between the pain, the throwing up, the shitting and the sleeplessness, the body constantly craved. More. But the what part was the hell of it. Not even clinics had a good handle on Hedonic, which was still a relatively new drug on the streets.
Nicoleta wasn’t out of the woods yet. And I wasn’t quite ready to send her packing. Not until I knew she’d be okay.
Screams echoed down the hallway, and I strode out of the bathroom to the back bedroom, where she sat on the bed, knees pulled into her body, arms restrained, her eyes fixed on something at the opposite side of the room.
I followed the path of her stare, scanning each corner of the room, but couldn’t pinpoint what had her face looking like she’d just seen someone crawl out of the wall.
Her wide eyes shifted back and forth, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. Looked like another nightmare in play.
“You okay?” I could see she wasn’t, the way her body trembled, rattling the restraints against the bed, and the sickly shade of white her skin carried.
She didn’t answer, her gaze bouncing around the room, and down to the borrowed T-shirt of mine that sat just above her knees. She tugged on the restraints, clanging them against the headboard to which they were attached.
I stepped toward her, and she kicked back against the wall. “Are you cold?”
At her slight nod, I darted toward the blanket crumpled at the foot of her bed. As I spread it over her body, she hesitated before sliding back down the mattress.
Her throat bobbed with a swallow, and she turned her head away from me. “What is this?”
Asking questions about her surroundings was a good sign that she’d become more aware and coherent.
“This is … my old roommates bedroom. My apartment.”
Her gaze trailed over the room, and her face pinched with confusion. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Dax.”
“Tesarik … he’s …” She jerked on the bed, lifting her head as if the bastard were standing out in the hallway.
What I wouldn’t have given to see that little cocksucker standing there. “He’s not gonna hurt you anymore. You’re safe here.”
She tugged at the binds and glanced back at me, brows furrowed. “Safe?”
“Once you’re out of the woods, I promise to remove them. Relax, before your fingers pop off your hands.”
“Why the cuffs?”
I lifted my shirt to the three streaks across my stomach, where the lingering burn reminded me of the one time she’d tried to claw through me to get another dose of the pills.
The groove in her forehead deepened with a frown, eyes fixed on my wound. “I don’t remember that.”
“Wish I didn’t. Wasn’t pretty.” I lifted the Styrofoam cup from the nightstand beside her and angled the straw to her mouth.
Her gaze fell to the cup and back, eyes wary. Couldn’t blame her, except I happened to be the one who’d been feeding her water and cleaning up her vomit and shit the last few days. “What is it?”
“Water. Required to stay alive, ya know. Drink.”
One eye twitched as she lifted her head and wrapped her lips around the tip of the straw, keeping her gaze locked on mine, as she sucked the fluids. Her cheeks caved, ravenous it seemed with thirst, and when the gurgles told me she’d sucked it down, I set the cup back on the nightstand.
“I won’t keep you here long. You still have a few hard days coming up, but you’re almost through the worst of it. I got a doc friend of mine who’s gonna check you out. Make sure that cut on your thigh isn’t serious. Been cleaning and keeping it covered, but you’ve had a fever the last few days.”
“No doctors.”
“Nicoleta.” Strange the way her name rolled off my tongue, and her eyes twitched as if in reaction. “You need to be checked out. No one’s gonna hurt you. I’ll make sure of that.”
“I said no doctors.”
“Well, too bad. That cut’s been draining for three days, and it’s starting to reek. I can’t just pull some antibiotics out of my ass and make it go away.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “But you have Hedonic.”
“You don’t need it.”
“You don’t know what I need,” she snapped back.
Arms crossed over my chest, I huffed. I had no idea what the girl had suffered, so she was right, I was clueless as to what she needed. And the shit part about that was, whatever had happened to her made her view me as an enemy.
She didn’t trust me enough to tell me what she needed, that much I could see.
“I’m going to get you something to eat.”
; “I’m not—”
“I know. You’re not hungry. You’ve said that every day, but you have to eat to stay alive, so I don’t much give a shit if you’re hungry, or not.”
“What do you want from me? What is it you’re expecting me to do?”
I had to admit, her question threw me off for a second. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Eyes locked on mine, she rolled her head against the pillow. “I remember you. That day Tesarik bought me.”
I couldn’t get the visual out of my head. It’d driven me to the brink of madness, and for a split second, I wondered if she’d thought about me after that day, or if I melded in with all the other strange faces she’d undoubtedly encountered since.
“Why did you come after me?”
The answer seemed simple enough to me. So obvious, I didn’t understand why she’d ask it. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Bullshit! No one saves anyone. No one risks their life to help someone.”
“Maybe not in your world, Nicoleta. But in mine? That’s what we do. How we survive.”
Her eyes sharpened into mocking amusement. “Yeah, it’s big business in your world, isn’t it? Trading girls off like we’re nothing but objects to be bought and sold.”
I tipped my head, staring down at her with unflinching sincerity. “I don’t know what kind of hell you’ve lived through all these months, but I’m giving you my word. I will not touch you that way. You can trust me.”
“You’re right. You don’t know. And that’s why I can’t trust you.”
7
Nicoleta
“Eat.” Dax held a spoonful of broth to my mouth, the savory smell both heaven and hell.
“I’m not hungry.” My fight had grown weaker, with pangs of hunger gnawing at my stomach, and his persistence was admittedly wearing me down. I’d never known a man to do something for me without expecting something in return, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what the one beside me could possibly want.
“You are. Your pulse is hammering in your neck right now.” The amusement in his voice made me want to smack the unseen smile from his lips. “Probably so damn excited for this salty ass broth, you can’t even stand it.”
I turned my head away, the frustration of a missed meal tearing through my stomach with punishing fervor. “Give me my pills.” As pain struck the back of my head, I winced, catching jagged flashes of light behind my eyelids. What’s your purpose? “I need them. Right now.”
“No deal, sweetheart, but I’ll tell you what. You eat a couple bites, I’ll take the restraints off and let you walk around a bit.”
My head damned near snapped back in his direction. “Free?”
“In the room, of course. Look, I’m not trying to hold you prisoner here, and I sure don’t like tying a woman up when she doesn’t want to be, but you’re in rough shape. I’m in rough shape. I’m not a fan of getting kicked in the nuts, either. Hurts. Like a motherfucker.” The way his jaw hardened with anger, I had to assume I must’ve kicked him there at some point. “’Sides that, Tesarik is looking for both of us, so letting you go would be tossing you to the wolves.”
Perhaps he was, but the prospect of freedom outweighed any fear that Tesarik would get his hands on me again. Although, the very thought of being trapped beneath that pig of a man again brought acids to the back of my throat.
Something felt unfinished, nagging me, but the lingering fog sticking to my brain failed to produce little more than nameless faces in my thoughts and the maddening irritation of familiarity.
All I knew was, I needed to get away.
“Please, just eat.” Exhaustion weighed heavy on his words, which only served to add to my confusion. Had I not eaten under Tesarik’s imprisonment, the guards would’ve let me starve to death and laughed at my foolishness.
The prospect of freeing my hands held too much enticement, so I sat forward and slurped the broth from the spoon.
Dax’s lips twitched, but to his credit, he didn’t smile as he lifted the spoon to my mouth for a second gulp.
With his gaze cast from mine while he kept to the task, I took a moment to study him. His size alone was intimidating enough, and the tattoos that crawled up his neck, coupled with his dark, brooding expression didn’t exactly set him too far apart from the men who’d held me captive for months. He could’ve easily been one of them, with his roughhewn muscles and scarred-up body.
His eyes held something different, though. A deep, rich brown framed by thick lashes. And a weariness that gave them a sort of genuine warmth.
Over the last few years, I’d become something of an expert on eyes, as they’d often held silent answers to questions I sought. I’d seen my share of liars, thieves, manipulators, and the truly evil variety, like Tesarik. And Vinco.
Dax’s were concentrated. Focused. And brimming with shadows behind them.
Guilt, maybe?
If I had to guess, he was probably pushing thirty, at least ten years older than me. Muscles popped through the white T-shirt he wore. The small bit of hair sticking up from the neckline labeled him as rugged, somehow less self-absorbed than the guys with perfectly waxed chests. The sharp jawline and olive skin tone, paired with his dark eyes and hair, told me he might’ve had some Mediterranean roots.
Easy on the eyes, but hard to read.
He continued to feed me broth, while I examined him, trying to tease out why a guy would go through so much trouble. And the doc exam? Had to be a checkup, to see if I was ‘sell worthy’, as Tesarik always said. He usually had a doc on hand to perform last minute gyno visits, to make sure none of the girls had gotten pregnant or infected with STD’s. Who knew what happened to them if they had? Girls came and went so frequently in that place, I’d stopped wondering.
I just needed to get my hands free. If I could do that, I could get away. I could puzzle over where, along the confusing ride, I’d lost my way.
Fragments of information riddled my brain, an answer to everything, but it was like peering through distorted glass. I focused on his scarred hand, pushing those thoughts aside, and my head latched on to new questions.
Who is this man? Why is he doing this? Little thoughts I could muse to cast away the headache pressing down on the front of my skull.
At the last bite, my pulse damned near soared with excitement, while the warmth filled my stomach.
Dax set the bowl down on the table beside the bed and leaned forward. The way he sat, with his elbows resting atop his thighs, his tongue gliding over his lower lip with a no bullshit expression plastered to his face, appealed to whatever residual amount of Hedonic still pulsed inside of me. My body found him attractive in a rough and hardy way, but my head viewed him as nothing more than a roadblock to freedom.
“Okay, I’ll remove these, but promise me, no crazy shit.”
“Promise,” I lied.
I followed the path of his hands to the cuff tethering me to the headboard, and as he fed the leather flap through the loop, a buzz snapped both of our heads toward the door.
Dax glanced back at me, lowering his hands from the cuff. “That’s the doc.”
“No, no docs. Let me go! Let me go!” I kicked and squirmed on the bed. “Fucking let me go!”
“Shhh,”Dax urged, slapping a hand over my mouth. “Keep it down!”
I sank my teeth into his flesh, still kicking my legs, and he drew back his hand on a curse. Angling my hips, I booted out at him and nailed him in the nuts.
Dax flew forward, lips clamped, brows angled to a pissed-off scowl and veins popping out of his neck, as he cupped himself. He breathed hard through his nose like an angry bull, setting my teeth on edge.
Would he hit me?
Torture me?
From somewhere beyond my view, he lifted a syringe, sending a small bit of fluid out of its tip, and a jolt of panic shot through my body. “I was hoping not to have to do this, but since you’re so goddamn stubborn …”
“No! No!”
He held me down, the needle pricked my arm, and seconds later, the heat that rushed through my veins had my muscles feeling heavy, my tongue too thick in my mouth.
“No.”
“It’ll be over soon. I’ll set your arms free afterward. I promise.”
Whatever he gave me didn’t knock me out, just made me feel really … good. Like Hedonic, but without all the intense sensory stuff. Everything moved fluidly, as if we were underwater, and I giggled at the absurdity, watching Dax’s head tip almost in slow motion.
“I’ll be right back.” His distorted voice had me laughing harder, as I watched him exit the room.
Something told me I was a fool for laughing at a time when a complete stranger was about to examine my body, but somehow I didn’t care. I reveled in the sensation. The pull at my stomach, the stretching of my lips and tightness in my jaw. Seemed like years since I’d last laughed, and somehow the pain of my withdrawals seemed less.
Dax returned with a woman. Casually dressed in a white button-down shirt tucked into deep-blue, high-waisted mom jeans, she wore a pair of glasses set atop silvery gray hair. Her tan-wrinkled skin had me imagining her on a beach somewhere with a wide-brimmed sun hat, reading romance novels all day.
There was something oddly inviting about her.
“Oh, you poor thing.” She tipped her head sympathetically as she dragged a chair from the corner of the room, and drew her spectacles over her eyes.
“She’s a little combative at times. Tried to hurt herself. Kicked me a few times,” Dax said behind her.
“Well, kicking you makes sense. We’ve all wanted to kick you at some point.” She turned back to me and stroked a hand down my hair, almost lovingly. Nothing like the doctors Tesarik had hired to examine us, whose hands had been coarse and abrasive, probing and prodding. “You gave her the Versed, then?”
“Yes. It’s low dose?”
“Just enough to calm her down.” She lifted my arm, running a feather-light thumb over a tender spot on my forearm. “We don’t want this sweet girl putting another mark on her body.”