by Kendra Leigh
“If you left me?” he hisses.
“That you didn’t report it.”
“Of course it’s for the best. We don’t want to antagonize them anymore. It’s not as if they hurt you.”
If I didn’t realize it before, I do now. I hate my husband. “No. Best not to antagonize them. Might be your turn next if we do.”
Just as I suspected, fear slinks its way onto his face, and I feel a sense of satisfaction. My eyes scan the room again. “Where’s Shadow?”
“What?” He looks bemused. “You’ve not even asked how I’ve been managing, but you ask about a fucking cat?” He shakes his head. “It must be around somewhere. I haven’t really seen it.”
Fear steals inside my heart. “When did you last see her? Haven’t you given her any food?”
“Savannah, enough about the cat. I’ve had enough to do working and having to come home and make my own dinner without worrying about a stupid animal.”
“I’m sorry.” I pull myself to my feet and head toward the kitchen. I need to look for Shadow.
“Where are you going?”
“I need some water.”
Like the sitting room, there’s mess everywhere. For a man who claims to be OCD, and schedules me a grueling and outrageously strict cleaning routine in order to reduce the need for him to carry out obsessive behavior and therefore avoid stress and anxiety, he’s managed incredibly well. Lying controlling bastard. I find a clean glass, turn on the faucet, and fill it. Shadow’s feeding bowl is empty and there’s no sign of her. I call her quietly, wanting desperately to go outside, but I don’t want to rile Nick further.
Returning to the sitting room, I find him pacing the floor, hands on hips. “Where was this place they took you to?”
“I have no idea, Nick. I didn’t see. I was in the trunk awhile, an hour, maybe two. I was kept inside—a garage or outhouse—there were no windows.”
“Did they feed you?” He looks almost concerned.
“Yes. A little.” I want to go upstairs and search for Shadow. “I’m exhausted, Nick. I’d like to go take a bath … if that’s okay?”
“Yes, of course.” I’m about to turn to the stairs when he moves toward me. “Wait. Are you sure they didn’t … touch you? In any way?”
The question burns a hole in me, and I keep my chin low, my face averted. “Nobody touched me.”
Nodding, he lifts my chin. “They better not have.”
* * *
After searching the first floor for Shadow and finding nothing, I lie back in the tub, hot water and bubbles up to my chin. I pray that she’s found somewhere to hunker down until I return or maybe gone off hunting. I’ll wait until morning and then I’ll search outdoors for her.
Fatigue plagues my body with pain, the weight of the stress and tension burning into my joints and muscles. My heart is heavy with all the emotion I’ve been harboring all day, the revelations and shock all suppressed tightly into a ball waiting for me to face them. I’m terrified to open the floodgates to my thoughts, but I know I can’t evade them any longer.
Jackson Dean.
Nothing was real. He was just a person playing a role. Everything he said and did, just play acting, and I fell for all of it. Making out that he cared about me. Preying on my vulnerability, laughing at my naivety, and forcing his way into my head and my heart under false pretenses. He was paid to sleep with me, plain and simple, which makes him nothing more than a whore. And me? It makes me a tragic worthless mess. How much must he have pitied me, knowing I’m so undesirable, so unlovable that my friends have to pay someone to pretend to want me? My flesh crawls with self-loathing. I grab the body wash and begin to scrub, closing my eyes against the deluge of tears, but all I can see when I do is his face filled with kindness, his brown eyes, his smile—a mask—and the hurt cuts deeper and deeper.
“Why are you crying?” Nick’s voice slices through the atmosphere, forcing me to plug the gaps where my emotions pour through. He leans in the doorway, his expression steeped in puzzlement.
I shake my head, rinsing away my tears with the warm soapy water. “I don’t know. Tiredness probably. Relief that I’m home.”
“Well, yes, I’m relieved that you’re home, but I’m not crying.” He pushes off from the doorjamb and saunters toward me to perch on the side of the tub. “Is there anything else that’s bothering you? Anything you’re not telling me?”
My heart pounds beneath the water as I try to read him. Does he know I’m lying? Is he asking out of concern or trying to catch me out?
“Savannah?”
“I just missed you,” I blurt out.
“That’s sweet.” He reaches out to push the damp strands of hair from my face, and instinctively I flinch away from him. It’s the tiniest of movements, but it annoys him … I can tell. “How much did you miss me?” There’s a familiar change to his voice, a sordid undertone. His hand moves to his crotch and rubs at the growing bulge. My stomach churns.
“A lot. I missed you a lot, Nick, but I’m so exhausted.”
“Nonsense.” He stands and undoes his pants, pushing them to his knees. “Show me how much you missed me.” He guides my head toward him and forces himself into my mouth, his hips moving in time with his grunts.
As I fight my urge to gag, I close my mind to it, praying that he won’t last long, and as I feel his rhythm build, he gathers my wet hair from where it drapes around my shoulders and back, twisting it around his hand and closing it inside his fist. He stops abruptly, pulling from my mouth and pushing himself back into his pants. One look at his face tells me he’s outraged. With his fisted hand he pulls me painfully by my hair out of the tub and drags me toward the mirror, his cruel eyes dragging their way around my naked body. Then I see what he’s seen. The mirror in the cabin had been a tiny shaving mirror above the basin. This is the first time I’ve looked at myself naked in over a week. My skin is sun kissed, particularly my shoulders, legs, and upper back. Clear strap lines are visible from the vest tops I’ve worn this week, sitting or swimming in the sun.
Nick’s eyes search for the nearest thing he can lay his hands on—my hairbrush—the first searing blow, the second … the eighth landing clean against my ribs.
Chapter Seventeen
Jackson
“OPEN THE GODDAMN BARRIER!”
Joe is standing, smug as fuck, at the top of the ramp, his arms folded as if I have all day. Walking out of Savannah’s life is hard enough without being held up by a lanky twat in a suit. The only way I can think to dull the pain is to run. Get out of here as fast as I can. The sight of Savannah standing there, vulnerable behind a blindfold, will be forever imprinted in my mind. It went completely against the grain to just abandon her like that; she’s become such a large part of me in such a short time. She genuinely looked terrified. I mean, talk about take it to the extremes.
“I need to settle with you first. Step out.”
He isn’t budging, and I’m all fired up now, so if he wants to get into this shit, let’s have it. I get out of the car and slam the door. “What the fuck is with the fat guy’s attitude down there, and why all this cloak and dagger shit?”
“Don’t worry, it’s all protocol. Did you enjoy yourself, Mr. Dean? I believe Natalie pulled you out of retirement for this job; she’s eager to know how you found your reemergence.”
“Reemergence? She wishes. Tell Natalie to kiss my arse.”
He raises a brow. “A very nice ass it is too.”
“Cut it out.”
“Okay, keep your pants on, if you have to. I’m only saying. You straight guys don’t know how to take a compliment.”
As he speaks he’s watching over my shoulder toward the basement garage. I open my mouth to tell him again to open the barrier when he shushes me, his hand behind his ear as if he’s listening for something.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for holy hell to break loose. It should be any minute now.”
“The hell are you talking ab
out? What’s going on down there?”
“The best bit, of course, the reveal, the surprise.” He waves his hand theatrically. “The moment the recipient takes possession of all the facts. Most take it well, but some are literally
f-urrr-ious.”
“What facts? Wait … you said recipient. You mean participant.”
“Those that knowingly partake in the fantasy, sure, they’re participants. But, like anything else, you have to move with the times—supply and demand—and there is a monumental demand, my friend. If people want to spend their millions buying sexual fantasies for their spouses and their friends, who are we to deny them. Supply, supply, supply. Your subject, Mrs. Harper, is one such recipient, and a very lucky one at that.” Still confused, I glare at him, forcing him to elaborate. “Recipient … The receiver of the gift.”
“What fucking gift. What’s the gift?”
“You are, asshole? Somebody bought Mrs. Harper a wonderful birthday gift. A fantasy. All wrapped up in your tidy little ass.” He looks exasperated. “Did nobody tell you this?”
The blood drains from my face, I can feel it. It makes me sway. I hook a thumb over my shoulder indicating the basement. “Are you saying that S…Mrs. Harper has no idea what this is?”
“Not an inkling. If you did your job right.”
“She thinks I really abducted her?”
“An abduction!” He claps his hands together, his face lighting up. “How perfectly sexy, so erotic, and so the in thing nowadays.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Oh. Well, yes, I guess, if that’s what was in your detail.”
My detail? He means the big black file with the specifics of Savannah’s fantasy.
“That would be the Gold-Plus Package,” Joe continues, “A full week—you must be hardcore.”
“Gold fucking plus? I don’t care what color it was. No one told me she didn’t know!”
He jumps a little at my tone, stepping back away from me. “It was all in the detail. Don’t worry so much. She didn’t look too brutalized.”
I want to hit him. But instead I find myself hightailing back down the ramp toward the basement. I need to find her, explain.
“Wait! You can’t go back down there. It’s against the rules,” he shouts after me.
“Try and stop me.”
By the time I reach the bottom, the fat guy with attitude is climbing into an SUV. He reemerges the moment he sees me, fresh creases rippling through the flesh on his face as he scowls in my direction. “What can I help you with, Mr. Dean?”
“Where is she?” I head toward the door in the corner.
“If you mean Mrs. Harper and her party, they left. The contract is over Mr. D—”
Turning, I stalk toward him, my pointy finger jabbing at the air angrily. “Where did they go? Who was in her party? Was it a guy?” Skinny Joe’s words reappear in my head. “If people want to spend their millions buying sexual fantasies for their spouses and their friends, who are we to deny them.”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge confidential information, Mr. Dean. Might I remind you that any breach of your contract could result in a lawsuit being filed against you? Pursuing the subject after completion is a clear infringement of the rules.”
“Do you want me to tell you where to stick your fucking rules?” My finger is right up in his face now, the anger inside me barely containable.
The big guy wraps his fat fist around it, pushing it away. “Can I suggest you go home and cool off, Mr. Dean?”
“You can suggest whatever the hell you like. You just get Natalie to call me. Otherwise it’ll be me bringing the lawsuit.”
* * *
By the time Natalie calls, I’ve practically worn out the sitting room floor of my Upper East Side apartment. “About time!” I blast down the phone.
“You always were a hotheaded bastard, Jax. What are you getting your pants all knotted up about?”
“Why didn’t you tell me she didn’t know shit about fucking anything?” I’m so mad by now I can scarcely form a sentence.
“It wasn’t kept from you, Jax, it was in the detail. And why does it matter anyway? You clearly did a good job if it didn’t even come up all week.” She laughs. “Or more likely you were too busy coming up all week you didn’t have time to chat, right?”
“Don’t be so crass, Natalie! I don’t give a shit about the detail. You should have told me. And it matters because I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known. I want to know who gifted it.”
“You know I can’t tell you.”
“Bollocks! I need to know, Natalie. Was it her husband?”
“Something tells me you got too close to this one, Jax. Don’t fuck with me. You signed an NDA, remember. It protects the subject and the company. If you go near her again, I won’t hesitate in suing you.”
“Fuck you, Natalie! I did this as a favor to you, you owe me.”
“I owe you jack shit. You’ve been paid every cent you’re owed.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Morally, you owe me, and you know it.”
There’s a silence on the line, and I can almost hear her thinking. After a few beats, she speaks slowly and precisely. “The credit card used was in a woman’s name. That’s all you’re getting. Now leave it alone.”
I don’t even know why it matters, but it does. For some reason, knowing that a woman gifted the fantasy, and that it’s highly unlikely that her husband had anything to do with it, seems to ease this overwhelming anxiety that’s been eating at me since I left Savannah blindfolded in that parking lot. I mean, what kind of husband would buy his wife a gift like that. The fact that she’s married is hard enough to bear; the thought of him being a complete disrespectful prick toward her would be intolerable.
I suddenly remember the day we took a walk in the woods. I’d made reference to her husband having fucked up and it being the most likely reason she was there. The statement was true. The main reason married subjects participate in a fantasy with a stranger is almost always because their marriage is floundering. More often it’s because the husband has fucked up in some shape or form and she’s seeking the attention or revenge or the pleasure she deserves elsewhere. But what had she thought I meant? Had she assumed she was kidnapped because her husband had pissed someone off, owed them money or similar?
It’s clear Natalie isn’t going to give up any more information, so I falsely assure her I will leave it at that and hang up. I need to get my head around this. I need to think back over everything that’s happened, play back the conversations we had in my mind, understand how we could both get through an entire week with an entirely different perception of what was happening.
Going back to the beginning, I try to remember the file I flicked through countless times before the day I took her. The so-called detail on Savannah Harper’s fantasy. The first page was the only one I paid any real attention to: her basic details—description, address, time and date the contract started and ended. The rest was just T’s and C’s, dos and don’t’s, what to do in the event of—crap I’d read a thousand times before. The only other factors I thought were relevant were the address of the cabin and the specifics of the fantasy. A kidnapping. I was instructed to take her captive, bundle her into the trunk of my car, drive to the cabin, blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t an unusual request, like skinny Joe says, you’d be amazed how many people opt for the darkest of fantasies. I’ve done jobs like it before, many times. Admittedly, I’ve never carried out such a long contract—two days probably being my max—but it never crossed my mind, not even once, that the paying client, whose instructions I was following, wasn’t Savannah herself. I thought Savannah was role playing when she put up a fight and ran off into the woods. When she asked questions about why she was there and who I was working for, I believed she was playing along. If I’d thought she was genuinely terrified, I’d have stopped, asked questions, but I honestly didn’t. Granted, I figured it was different than jobs I’ve done before, but I assume
d she was nervous, didn’t really know what to expect or how she was supposed to act. To some degree, I thought that she’d maybe lost her nerve or just wasn’t ready for the whole shebang. That was why I backed off. After twenty-four hours, I kinda forgot why we were there and just let it happen naturally. Despite the Detail, I thought that was what she wanted, the steady, slow approach. I wanted to respect her. She was beautiful and cautious and vulnerable in so many ways. She was so far from the conventional sexual fantasy client that I lost sight of what our association was supposed to be and focused entirely on what I wanted it to be.
Deep down, did I know something felt wrong? It seems so obvious to me now. I remember having doubts, something about the whole thing feeling off. I knew there was something about her, that she wasn’t like the others, but despite the bloody blue beacon blaring loud and proud, I hadn’t listened to the warning. I just put my uncertainties down to me being out of touch, off the scene for too long, too old to know what clients wanted these days. Everything that happened between us felt real to me; that’s why I felt so gutted that last day—because I knew I was developing feelings for her. I thought she felt the same, but when I saw her sitting on the end of the bed all packed up and ready to go back to her husband, it was like she’d switched off from the role I assumed she was playing. I’d done my job and now I was surplus to requirements. But it was real. It was real for both of us. Only now she thinks I was the one who was acting. She thinks I seduced her purely because I was paid to. That everything which transpired between us was fake—every tender moment, every silent exchange, everything I didn’t say because I thought my eyes or the way I touched her face or stroked her hair or held her hand while she fell asleep said it. Jesus, this thing is so fucked you couldn’t make it up.
Natalie’s right. It’s almost as if we didn’t talk, but we did, sometimes for hours into the night. Only now I realize that we didn’t really discuss anything that wasn’t encompassed inside of the delicate transient bubble we cocooned ourselves in. How we got there or who we were before we arrived didn’t matter. All that mattered was us—Sparrow and Bear.