by Measha Stone
"Put her on the phone," Bradley demanded. The slight curdling of his stomach intensified when the electronic voice laughed in response.
"Not an option right now. Right now, the only thing you can do, my big bad dominant is to listen to my instructions, and if you're a good boy you might have your little whore back by dinner time."
Bradley's fingers burned from holding his cellphone with such a grip. He could barely process the situation. Alex took tentative steps toward him. The room filled with stuffy unbreathable air, the heat of the space nearly suffocating him. "What do you want?" He managed to keep his voice steady, but that wouldn't last much longer.
"Money of course. I'm not greedy, five million should do it. Wire transfer. I'll send you information on where and when it needs to be sent. Do what your told, and you can get your girl back. Start fucking around, and I'll send her home a little at a time." The click of the other line going dead echoed in his ear.
"What's wrong?" Alex's grave expression mirrored the brick sitting in Bradley's chest. "Where's Erin?"
"I don't know." Bradley's chest vibrated with his growl. "Where's Kendrick? Is he here? I need him right now." He pushed past Alex and charged into the lounge.
Alex caught up to him. "No, he's not here today. What's going on?"
Alyssa walked up to them with a casual grin, which she quickly dropped on seeing the look on Bradley's face. "What's wrong?" She looked to Alex.
"Something's up with Erin. Have you talked with her today?"
Alyssa shook her head. "No, the girls all got together for lunch though. I had a class and couldn't join them."
"I'll call Kelly. You call Kendrick." Alex pointed to Bradley. Considering the heated glares Kelly shot his way every time they saw each other Bradley wasn't going to argue.
"What's going on?" Alyssa asked, but Bradley was already half way through dialing Kendrick and ignored her.
Kendrick picked up after the first ring. "Get here now," Bradley barked at him.
"Whoa, wait a minute." Kendrick laughed on the other end. "What's up?"
"Someone has Erin. They took her, get here now." Bradley turned away from the anguished expression on Alex's face. He couldn't let himself go there yet. He had to remain in complete control. He could lose it later. Much later. Once they had her home safe and sound. Then he would lose all control and kill the son of a bitch that dared to touch his fucking woman.
*
Bradley's office swarmed with people. Alex, Kendrick and Royce huddled around his desk while the girls all huddled on the couch in the corner trying desperately to keep Kelly from bolting from the room to go in search of Erin.
He hadn't intended for the whole damn gang to come over, just Kendrick, but once Kelly got wind of what was going on everyone showed up at once.
It was already late afternoon. The club would be opening in a few hours for their first set of round table discussions. Alex offered to have it cancelled, but Bradley didn't want to change anything yet.
"Those fuckers could be planning on bringing her here, or they might try to blend in with the fucking group. Alert the security team."
"Already done." Kendrick nodded and said, "I called in the off duty guys. They are on their way here. Either to help here or whatever else we want."
"Shouldn't we call the police?" Jessica asked from across the room.
"Not yet," Bradley said, and shook his head "This is personal. The police will just start playing games. Not until I know what the fuck they want. Then we'll decide." He checked his phone again. "I should have put a fucking tracker on her phone when this all started. I should have put a fucking guard on her! I never should have let her go about her fucking day as though there wasn't some fucking crazy person harassing her." Each statement raised in volume, and by the end his fists were clenched and his lips were pursed together so tightly his bottom teeth dug into his lip.
"Jess, Kelly, what else did she say at lunch?" Royce turned the conversation.
"Nothing." Kelly shook her head. "She said she was headed to some coffee shop for a meeting. She didn't say which one or with who. Some new client."
Jessica shot Kelly a glance then turned her gaze to Royce. He shot her a questioning glance, but she clamped her mouth shut. "Just normal girl talk, and then she headed off to the meeting."
"I called her office, her assistant was off today, but they got me to someone else who is trying to track her down. She should know where the meeting was supposed to take place and with whom." Kendrick slapped a hand on Bradley's shoulder. "We will find her."
"I know." Bradley pulled away and started pacing the office. There was little to do until the assholes reached out to him again. Kendrick already had several of his guys working to try and trace Erin's phone, the call might have been too short but they were trying.
Bradley's phone rang. The room went silent and all eyes trained on him. He lifted the phone to his ear. "Hello?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Erin could hear murmurings, but nothing came clear to her. Looking around the room was useless, everything was shrouded behind the black fabric tied around her eyes. She hadn't been able to get any answers out of Claudia, and the last time she screamed for answers she'd been backhanded. Her ear still hummed from the impact.
"Do you understand the instructions? Good boy." Claudia's sweet as sugar voice sickened Erin.
A manly chuckle surprised her, and she turned her head in the direction that it came from. She tried to move, but her hands were bound tightly to her ankles, leaving her hog tied and lying on her side. Wiggling a little she could make out a mattress beneath her with some coverings, but she couldn't tell how big the area was, and how much room she had before falling off.
"What an ass." The man snickered after Claudia tossed her phone down. The sound ricocheted around the room. It couldn't be so big if her phone made such a loud noise. The room had to be empty. Where the hell had she taken her?
There was a slight draft in the room, but otherwise it wasn't uncomfortable. Images of women bound and helpless in some cement basement cell came to her mind, but the room didn't smell of dust and dirt. It was more lavender and honey.
"He'll make the drop in one hour. Princess here needs to be ready, but I really don't want to give her back just yet." Bradley was coming. She would be okay once Bradley came.
"We could have a little fun with her first." At the man's suggestion, Erin's skin crawled at the snarl in his voice. "It's been a while since I played with someone as innocent as this one."
"Idiot. She's been fucking Bradley, so she's no innocent any more. Look." Erin's skirt was yanked up exposing her ass. She'd worn a thong that morning, to ease the discomfort of more than necessary fabric brushing against her still tender ass. "Look at these marks. He laid into her ass good last night." The skirt was thrown back down over her, but the hands moved into her hair, yanking her head back. "Right? You were a naughty girl so he punished you. I saw the whole fucking thing. He didn't even fuck you afterwards. Just punished you and left you to kneel in his office."
"That's what he does to girls he doesn't give a shit about."
Those words were like needles in her heart.
Claudia continued, "He's done playing into your fantasies. Now he'll want a real submissive. Someone who can serve him the way he deserves and craves. He'll be done with you by the end of the week." Claudia shook Erin's head then shoved her into the mattress.
"You are so damn jealous." The man laughed. "You want him all to yourself, but he's not going to want you after this is all done."
"Shut the fuck up. He's not going to know I had anything to do any of this. You'll get your fucking cash, you'll send me my cut, and you'll give this bitch back to him. He'll tire of her and toss her out, and meanwhile I'll be there to soothe him. It would be better if we could kill her. Then I could really get some good consoling in."
"I'm not killing anyone," the man told at her. "You do what you want with her, I just want my fucking money. That bast
ard ruined me with his fucking diving into old shit. He should have left it alone. All that digging around, thinking I didn't know what he was up to. Like I didn't know he had gone to his accountant for help." The man scoffed and a chair scraped against the floor. "Well, if we are meeting him in an hour, you better get princess cleaned up."
"I'm not touching her. She goes back the way she is. You go do your thing. I'll meet you there." The sickly saccharine voice was back.
A long pause made Erin wonder if the man had left. "Fine. Don't fuck this up, Claudia. How are you going to keep her from blathering your name all over the place?"
"I have my ways, don't worry about that. Just go kiss your wife, make nice-nice and meet me."
The door closed, and Erin tried to relax her muscles. Everything tensed and burned with the way she was tied up. "Do you want to know what my ways are, Erin?" Her breath was hot against Erin's ear. "If you never see him again, you'll never be able to tell him. But don't worry. I'll take good care of him. I know what he likes, what he needs. And it's not some fucking newbie who doesn't know shit."
A few seconds later the door slammed, and Erin listened to an empty room.
Would she really never see Bradley again?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"Why the fuck would she do this?" Bradley stared at the invoices Alex had been bringing him when the first call came through. Claudia Hoffman, owner of Hoffman Securities. "Are you sure?"
"I'm telling you if she owns that company, and she does, then she knows how to tap into our feeds. She's the one getting those photos. And if she can tap into our feeds, she can tap into our systems to get Erin's work information and her home address." Kendrick jammed his finger into the table top.
"Why? For what fucking purpose? If she owns this company, she has no fucking reason to ask for five million, she probably has more than that in the fucking bank."
"It's probably not for the money." Alyssa stood behind Alex with a sour look on her face. "Every time she's been in here the past few months she's asked about you, Bradley. If you were working, if you'd be playing. Brandon told me she cursed up one way and down the other when you bought Erin at the auction. He heard about it all night, every time the guy who bought her sent her for a drink. You were supposed to buy her, she said."
"Claudia?" Bradley wrinkled his brow and tried to think back on their short times together. "I never gave her any reason to think we were anything more than casual the few times we played, and I never said I was buying her at that auction."
"Well, sometimes the reality doesn't quite make it up to the brain, you know." Alyssa tapped her temple.
"But why demand money, how is that going to help?"
"I don't think it's her that wants the money." John entered the office, looking like a beaten puppy. "I'm sorry, I know I'm not welcome here, but I found out something that I thought would be important, but from what I'm hearing I'm too late."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
"You understand that I'm doing you a favor, right?" Erin wiggled her fingers, trying to make the blood start circulating faster, completely ignoring Claudia's attempt to get her to fight back. "I mean, you do know that he would tire of you eventually. Bradley is a serious dominant, and very experienced. Sooner or later he'd grow tired of having to explain everything, and answer so many questions. And then there's the whole testing the boundaries thing every new sub does: try to get a reaction out of him, see how far you can push him."
There hadn't been any of that between her and Bradley. Erin didn't want to push him, or make him upset with her. What would be the point of that? It was his approval, his pleased smiled that fueled her submission and her desire to be his.
"Did you push him?" Erin finally gave in and asked, the gag having been removed when Claudia started berating her. Hearing her chirp on and on was getting annoying. And at least the conversation would distract her from the pain in her hands. They would be leaving soon, at least that's what Claudia had told her, and Erin hoped that when it was time to go she would have the use of her feet and hands.
"What?"
"Did you push him? When you were together, did you push those boundaries?" Erin wished she could see her. Was she scowling or laughing? The blindfold kept her from seeing anything.
"Just a little. Enough to give him a reason to punish me, but not too much to make him think I wasn't submissive." Playing games to get a spanking from your dominant didn't sound very submissive, but Erin wasn't in the position to debate the topic.
"Bradley didn't see through that?" The bonds around her ankles burned as she began to wiggle her feet, trying to find a position that relieved some of the pressure.
"Oh, he probably did. But he loved it." Erin rolled her eyes behind the blindfold. She may have only known Bradley for a little while, but she knew him well enough to say that he most definitely would not have loved that sort of game playing.
A sharp pinch to her thigh made her jolt and cry out. "I saw that face you just made. You think you know him so well? Just because you're new and shiny doesn't mean shit. He'll dump you first chance he gets. Well he would if I wasn't looking out for him and taking care of it for him."
"You think Bradley is going to want you after he finds out you helped that other guy steal from him?"
"He's not going to find out, because you aren't going to be around to tell him." Her threatening comment hit Erin with the force of a car running over her. The blood drained from her face. She wiggled a bit harder and was gifted with a cackle of laughter from Claudia.
"I don't understand." Erin managed to get up to a sitting position, letting her feet dangle over the side of the bed she was on.
"What's there to understand? He's mine." A click resounded in the room, and a cold metal object pressed against her temple. "Maybe I should have let Travis play with you first."
Erin's throat convulsed. She couldn't catch her breath, and all her thoughts sprinted through her mind, too fast to catch one. She needed to do something, anything. There had to be a way out, a way to get some sense into the crazy woman holding what she assumed was a gun to her head.
One thought ran over and over again, letting her seize on to it. Bradley had been the best thing that ever happened to her. He'd opened her eyes to a part of her that she struggled to understand, and it seemed she may never get to see it all the way through.
"You think he'll forgive you for this? For killing me? He loves me." Erin found herself yelling at Claudia. She may not have her feet, or her hands to strike out but she could still speak.
Claudia started laughing, a loud robust laugh that Erin hadn't expected. "You think he loves you? Bradley doesn't do love, you idiot. You're just a shiny thing to him right now. You think that you're his first newbie sub? Please! He loves to train them and dump them. That's his thing. I'll let him keep doing that, he likes it, but you won't be in his fucking bed anymore. That's where I sleep."
He's trained other submissives? New ones? She should have guessed. He'd never said he loved her before either, but she knew it, felt it deep within her when he held her, kissed her. Hell, just the way he looked at her sometimes sent more security of love through her than she'd ever experienced with anyone. And she loved him. They hadn't said the words, but it was true. Wasn't it?
"That last punishment he gave you, it was harsher right? Yeah, he's just about done with you, but I don't feel like waiting that long, and you really are a liability at the moment."
The metal pressed harder against Erin's temple and she grappled for something to do, to say. "My assistant knows I was meeting you! They'll know I was with you."
"I know. I'm counting on it. That way when they find us here, me all dirty and scared from Travis's threats and beatings, and you lying there dead from him shooting you, they'll know why we were together." Deciding not to just sit there and take a damn bullet, Erin lurched forward falling flat onto the floor. Her face rubbed against the carpeting, but she tried to squirm her way to the door. Claudia laughed again.
> "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" She kicked Erin's feet when they finally managed to get a grip on the ground to push herself forward.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kendrick twisted the door knob and opened the front door of Travis's north suburban home. Bradley pushed past him and ran into the foyer looking around quickly.
A scream from upstairs alerted them to where Erin was, and they both ran up the stairs two at a time with Royce and Alex following right behind.
Another scream and a cry of pain put Bradley's body into a higher gear, and he moved past Kendrick to reach the closed door. He flung the door open to find Erin curled in the fetal position on the floor, hands tied behind her back, feet bound and a black blindfold still half way in place. Claudia stood over her, pointing a gun at her, blood dripping from her mouth.
"You fucking kicked me!" She wiped her mouth, inspecting the blood on her hand, as though to confirm that she really had been kicked.
"Claudia!" Bradley's roar shook the room. She wasn't given any chance to acknowledge his presence. He barreled through the door, and wrapped his arms around her while taking her down to the ground, and knocking the gun from her hands. She landed with a grunt of pain as he crushed her to the floor of the master bedroom.
"Bradley?" Erin's voice pulled him from his cloud of rage.
"No! You aren't supposed to be here!" Claudia grabbed for his arms, trying to keep him near her. Kendrick came to his rescue and yanked her hands away, pulling her up to her feet and shoving her to sit on the bed. "You aren't supposed to be here! I'm supposed to comfort you! Not like this!"
"You are crazy!" Bradley shouted at her. "You are batshit crazy." Ignoring her continual pleas and cries he quickly pulled his pocket knife out and began cutting away the ropes binding Erin. A jagged cut bled on her forearm, a knife on the floor was covered in blood. Her blood. She must have rolled over it in her struggle.
"Bradley. You're here?" Erin asked, rubbing her head against the floor to fully remove the blindfold. He tried to give her a smile, to comfort her, but the banshee behind him continued her rants.