The soaked cotton swab touched my head wound. I sucked my teeth at the stinging sensation. He blew on my neck to soothe the pain away.
I shoved the collar of the robe up to my neck and shimmied away from him. “I’m fine.”
Walking out of the bathroom toward the bed, he directed me to follow him back into the bedroom. He turned down the covers and crawled into bed. Propping his head on the pillow, he patted the area next to him.
Was he fucking serious?
He drew his eyelids halfway down his eyes. “Come here, Sugar.”
I glared at the bed as though the sheets were coated in poison ivy. “Don’t you have another bedroom to sleep in?”
“I don’t want you to have nightmares sleeping alone.” He gesticulated for me to come forward with his fingers. “Come…here.”
The source of my nightmare would be in the bed next to me. Why he didn’t understand that was beyond me. Nothing about Catch made any sense.
Holding the robe tighter around my body, I slid my feet across the floor and jumped into bed like the floor was on fire.
He leaned over, pushing the hair away from my ear. “Take off the robe, sweetheart.”
I delayed in unknotting it and wiggled out of it letting it drop to the floor. The pressure on the bed moved as he inched his now naked body against me, and gripped my waist and gave me a kiss on the shoulder that made my skin ignite.
He wrapped an arm across my torso, pressing the flat of his hand against my stomach, dangerously close to my pelvis. He pushed the front of his body against me until I could feel every bump, dip, and ridge in his body. His cock was firmly against my ass, not hard, but not completely flaccid either.
I was suddenly wide awake and too tense to sleep.
* * * * * *
An intoning beeping alarm made me jolt to sit upright. Catch was already out of bed and dressed in lounge pants. He shoved on a T-shirt and approached the padlocked chest of drawers on the far side of the room. He loaded a gun while glancing at his open laptop on the nightstand from across the room. Another gun rested beside the laptop.
He nodded to the gun on the bedside table. “In the very unlikely event someone sneaks past me, use the gun.”
Without thinking, I slipped out of bed. With a perplexed perusal of my body, he reminded me that I was naked. “Get dressed first.” He pointed to what he had laid out on the bench at the foot of the table. A white dress meant for afternoon tea with debutantes.
“That’s not appropriate for me to fight in.”
“Trust that I’ll fulfill my promise to protect you, and you won’t have to fight.” He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
My attention was split between the laptop and the gun. Picking up the gun, I checked to ensure he left it loaded.
On the screen, I watched Catch move throughout the pitch black house with a predatory stealth; he appeared to know every inch of the home even while blinded.
Two men ascended the stairs with guns drawn. Sparks illuminated directly in front of their faces. They fell immediately. In another camera, two men scattered downstairs. Catch moved with deftness and subdued them quickly. From what I witnessed with the way he took down the men, he was a highly trained killer. I wouldn’t have withstood a chance at topping him.
I checked the clip again, he only gave me one bullet. I had to make it count. I kept a wandering eye on the laptop, watching him disappear into what I thought was the kitchen.
I opened the back window a few feet shy of the bed. The overhang ensured if I jumped, I’d land softly.
The creak of the door opening forced me to whirl around with my gun drawn. A man clad in black, his face covered in a ski mask, stared at me from the doorway. He began to pull off his mask, hesitated, and folded the knit material up to his forehead.
I couldn’t immediately place him. I recognized enough of his face to assume he either worked for Michael or was often around Deana. “Did Michael send you?”
He lowered his gun as though he thought the coast was clear.
Catch approached him with stealth from behind, a muscular forearm went across the masked man’s throat, snuffing out his will to breathe. The man struggled, the gun flailed around as he fiddled with the trigger.
“Get down,” Catch barked at me.
I moved to the side away from the man’s flailing arms and line of fire. I held the gun up to Catch’s leg, intending to incapacitate him by blowing his kneecap apart and bury my gun into his wound until he told me where he hid Deana. The stranger in his grip began to lose his vitality, falling limp.
I didn’t hesitate; I pulled the trigger. A pop resounded…but there was no blood or a wound.
The gun was loaded with blanks.
“As I warned you, there would be no need to defend yourself. No one has ever made it past me and lived.” Catch’s voice was saturated with lightness. He stood and dropped the man to the floor. He checked the man’s pulse while keeping me in his sights.
I dropped the useless gun and stepped backward, knowing if I played it right I could escape through the open window. “You wouldn’t keep Deana alive. You’re holding her over me to keep me calm—compliant.”
“You think she’s dead? What gives you that impression?”
“Because you’re a sick fuck who likes to pull out his cock and fuck my mind every chance you have. Let’s not fucking forget you like to torture people before killing them. I don’t think you have a single shred of humanity inside that pretty package.”
“I’ve grown to like you more than I originally intended to.” He cocked his head to the side and approached me as though I was a jumper on the brink of taking my own life. “Because I do, I’ve been very attentive and accommodating to your needs. If that’s not a clue to my humanity, I’m not sure what is.”
I turned my body halfway toward the window. And in that second, I screwed myself. With swift and blinding movements, I was picked up and thrown down on the bed.
Catch pinned me down with his body. My hair was gathered in his hand as he situated himself between my legs. The cold and jagged gun was shoved underneath my dress and pressed against my bare pussy.
“This one is loaded with real bullets.” Amplifying the disposition of self-satisfaction, he winked at me.
I sucked in a breath and gasped. The gun? He was going to fuck me with a gun?
“Don’t…and I don’t need to add anything more to the word.” He slid the gun up toward my clit rocking the barrel back and forth. “Understood?”
“Yes,” I called out, wiggling in his hold.
Catch released me, removing his gun from between my legs. “Don’t worry about cleaning up after your second rescue team. It’s clear we’ve overstayed our welcome here.” He glanced back at the dead man on the floor. Sauntering by me, he approached the bed. He slid a pillow from my side onto the floor, revealing a needle hidden there.
I couldn’t scream or fight when he implanted the needle in my struggling arm.
He held me close, shushing me as the strength to stay awake left me. “Goodnight, sweetheart. I’ll see you soon.”
-10-
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES
I was tired of waking up in a new place unfamiliar to me. This time, the scenery was very off. The house wasn’t the chateau, but a modernist home with the heavy use of glass and open spaces. The view from floor to ceiling windows lining the right side of the room proved it definitely wasn’t anywhere in L.A.
Snow kissed the mountains. Dense trees and lush brownish greenery greeted my every turn. The thick cloud cover cast a gray hue over the landscape, and the sun appeared in the middle of descending.
The second story window gave a view straight down of a river circling around the snowy grounds and dense forest. In the distance, mountains extended up to the fog of the clouds.
Civilization was nowhere to be found.
“Shit,” I whimpered, looking around frantically for anything to help me grasp some semblance of calm.
&nb
sp; I flittered around and happened upon the door to the closet. On one side of the closet in the bedroom hung white dresses in various styles, fit for a teenager who received a promise ring from her bible-thumping-Sunday-school-teaching father. The drawers I thought would contain underthings were filled with condoms, sex toys, and collars with leashes. The bottom flat long drawer contained more whips than a crowded BDSM club.
Shaking my head, I returned to the closet and blindly picked up a dress to wear instead of the large T-shirt I was currently in. I felt all over my body, checking for an injury, or if Catch had done something sinister to me while I slept; nothing was off kilter. Giving myself a pep talk, I prepared to face another day of a mental battle with Catch as my hands roamed around my body.
“We didn’t fuck while you were unconscious. You will, without a doubt, be awake when I decide to.” Carrying a silver dining tray, Catch stood in the doorframe, watching me
I jumped clutching my racing heart. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
He placed a tray of breakfast on the bed and nodded to the shopping bags placed on a navy blue settee.
Holding my hands behind my back to abate the trembles, I looked through the bags. I pulled out a few white bathing suits, holding them up in the air as though they were filthy.
“There’s an indoor pool on the first level. Have at it.”
Was he trying to make a joke? Despite myself, I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “You are a fucked-up man, Catch. I’m stuck, fuck knows where, with obviously nowhere to run. I think you want to kill me, but you keep killing me with kindness for some reason, and it’s driving me fucking crazy because you’re torturing Deana for who knows why. Now…you want me to find some way to enjoy myself? What the…” The fit of laughter hit me so hard I couldn’t continue. Feeling winded, I flopped down on the settee and quieted down. “Where are we?”
For some reason I couldn’t discern, he gave me a genuine smile devoid of his usual sinister intent. “Norway.”
I swallowed hard, choked, and had a hard time recovering. “Why the fuck are we in Norway?”
He gazed out toward the horizon easily seen through the window with a smidgen of a boyish wonder. “They call this the beginning of the dark season,” he replied, ignoring my question. “You won’t see the sun very much, but I always preferred the dark.” His head snapped back to me. “Do you wonder how you got here?”
There was no point in asking him anything; he would never answer any of the questions I had. Everything I did seemed to be expected on his part. It was as if he was loaned a book on all things about me and studied me. I only wished I knew what he really wanted. I stared down the drawers full of fetish fun.
Keeping up his smile, he stepped in front of it. “I wasn’t sure what you were into, and I wanted to make sure you were satisfied in every way.”
I hadn’t expected that—not in the least. My strings were pulled ensuring everything worked at a rapid pace: my heart, my breaths, the flutter of my eyelashes. “I-I’m not into pain.”
“You know what I think?” He put his hands behind his back, approaching me. “I think you lack the experience to know what you are into.”
I swallowed again and tried to wrangle my ragged breaths to follow a more steady pattern. If I thought too much about the fact I was in the middle of nowhere with a murdering psychopath while stuck in fuck knows where Norway, I might’ve had a minor breakdown.
“Do you want me to pretend I’m your girlfriend? Is that what you want to let my sister go?” Feeling dizzy, I sank back, resting the back of my head on the couch.
“Sister?”
Pulled to sit upright by my stupid slip-up, I covered my mouth; it was too late. The crazy situation stole my ability to think clearly.
“You don’t have to look so afraid. I know who Michael is to you and that Deana is your half-sister. Why refer to her as your full blood sister?”
“Because she felt—feels like one to me,” I gave in, unable to keep up the lie. “How did you get her away? She was a daddy’s girl, and he’d never have let her go easily. And why isn’t he looking for her? He would use everything he had to find her.” The silence I was met with pulled my gaze from the plate of breads, meats, spreadable and solid cheeses on the serving tray.
His chin remained slanted to his chest when his eyes shot up at me. “Are you fucking with me right now, Sugar?”
Confused about what he meant and how my mini-rant concerning Deana meant to fuck with him, my mouth moved without words. Catch’s game was increasingly hard to play. “No.”
He peered at me as though I weren’t in focus. “Enjoy your breakfast and the pool when you’re ready.”
“Where are you going?” I stood quickly, wringing my hands. I might as well have said, “Don’t leave me here alone.”
He glanced back at me, squinting, smiling in the way he always did when he wanted to screw with my head. A smile that tricked my brain into thinking there was a soft and sweet man ruined by fuck knows what, hidden underneath the sadistic deeds.
“Why? Will you be lonely?”
“There’s no civilization anywhere from what I can see out of the window,” I surmised. “How are you going to get anywhere?”
“I have a car.” He turned fully toward me and ran a hand up my neck. His violet-blue eyes glimmered as though he caught onto a secret in the way I shyly stared back at him. “You won’t be alone long enough to miss me.” The wind kicked up around him on his departure.
What he left unsaid didn’t sit right with me. Catch knew a lot about me, he had to have. Deana wouldn’t have lasted long wherever he took her, unless…
I strode down the hall. “Catch,” I called at his back.
He halted and turned around, throwing his silent ire at me.
“I need to see Deana again—to know she’s okay. Can you do whatever you need to do so I can see her and know she’s alive? Have her hold up today’s paper? Reassure me she’s okay.”
He spun fully around, his blue eyes turning into slants. “You feel you’re owed more by me, Sugar?”
“No.”
“Then, don’t make me feel otherwise.”
“It’s just—” I called him back as he turned to leave.
“What? Spit it the fuck out.” His shout startled me. The man never appeared ruffled and always spoke in low and soft tones. Whatever it was in what I’d said earlier annoyed him. The clenching of his fists showed me if I pushed too hard, he might delve into his dark side and show me what the bad temper could do to me.
“What did I say to put you in a shitty mood all of a sudden?” I kept my question unassuming and soft.
He chewed his lip, turning pensive. He delayed as if he was going to continue his game of withholding information. “I didn’t care for the look in your eyes when I said I had a car.”
I plastered a smile on my face. “I’m not going to run again. Besides, where would I go?” I gestured around with tense shoulders. “I want to know how to make you happy and give you what you want. I want a clean slate.”
The agitation dissipated from his face only slightly. “Intending to harm the man who helped you get away from Michael Leone says otherwise.”
“And I’m sorry about that,” I apologized for the failed attempt to shoot him. I sashayed up to him and rested my hands on his sculpted chest through his oxford shirt. I tried sexy, even though I never had to try that angle in order to get what I wanted. Hard work, dedication, and being smart were the tools drilled into my head by my stepfather. While my stepfather would never say it, he wanted me to be the opposite of what my mother was; she used sex to get what she wanted.
He looked down at where my hands were placed.
“Tell me how to make you happy,” I cooed.
His hands were on my wrists, and with each passing second, his grip crushed my wrists. “I don’t want you to be fake with me. What I want from you will happen naturally.” He pulled me toward him. I crashed against his hard chest with the force.
>
“Got it,” I said, hoping with the way it was stated he would stop touching me. His fingertips, his mouth, his face, his entire fucking presence increasingly opened up parts of me I wasn’t ready to leave ajar.
It wasn’t the time to fight it and show him what I was capable of. I had no clear escape route or way of saving Deana, and until I did, I would be his obedient little lapdog no matter how much of my pride I had to swallow down. “I’m sorry.”
He gently kissed me on the cheek, narrowly missing my lips. “Is there anything you need while I’m out?”
I tried shaking my head but somehow it pained me more. “Personal…feminine stuff, probably. I’m overdue for…” My voice faded into the air.
Brushing the back of his fingers against my cheeks, he swept away the tears I hadn’t given permission to expel from my eyes.
“Have no idea where the fuck that came from.”
“I do, and I don’t want to see these again unless I’m causing you real pain.” He kissed my lips just barely, shocking me so severely my lips fell limp under the caress of his soft mouth, setting my face on fire. “You had it wrong,” he whispered. “It’s not only about you pleasing me. It's about pleasing you.”
Leaving me stunned and wading in a strong tide threatening to bring me further into the whirlpool, he left the room. The second the front door closed, I went on a rampage.
Traveling from room to room while checking for cameras, I tried to find something—anything. All I discovered were furnished rooms with minimal furniture, locked rooms, and a distinct lack of technology—not even a single television.
On the second floor, down the hall, a skyway led to what I assumed was the guest house. The entry door was locked with a mechanism, and it couldn’t be picked. I ventured outside, but with nothing to travel in and no coat, the frigid air forced me back inside.
I slanted my back against the door and tried to hold it together.
“Play along,” I said to myself under my breath to get my shit in order.
Lies & Lullabies Page 11