Griff gazed into the waning flickers of firelight and accepted the threatening memories, ones that could erode years of pride and self-control.
“Oh, God, Griff, you have no idea what it will be like for her.” Nic’s words haunted him. Why hadn’t he told her the truth, that she was wrong? He did know what it would be like for LaTasha to be subjugated by a madman, made to obey his every whim, forced to become a hunted animal in order to survive.
Griff shuddered.
He could feel York’s hot breath on his neck.
Griff stood as still as a statue as the man’s hands skimmed over his shoulders, down his back, and roughly grasped his taut buttocks.
“You’re an incredible male specimen,” York said. “Tall, large bones, broad shoulders, muscular, and quite beautiful as only a young man can be.”
York sighed as he released his hold on Griff, then he ran his fingertips over the raw welts on Griff’s back. Griff winced.
“When you learn to obey my every command, the floggings will stop. It’s entirely up to you, Griffin. I don’t enjoy having Sanders whip you, but it’s your own fault for being so rebellious.”
Griff forced his mind back to the present.
More than anything, he wanted to help Nic recover. But at what price to his own sanity?
Chapter 26
If she could elude him for a while longer, give him the kind of hunt he wanted, he might offer her some food tonight. But if he found her too soon … Please, dear Lord, no! LaTasha tried not to think about the cage. The first time he had locked her inside that terrible cage and left her outside all night long, she had bruised and bloodied her hands and feet trying to break free. After hours of useless struggle, she’d wept like a baby.
She had thought he had broken her that night. And he almost had.
But come morning, she had welcomed the new day. Another chance to escape from the crazy man who had kidnapped her and brought her to this island prison.
Sweating profusely, winded, her legs burning as if they were on fire, LaTasha emerged from the wooded area and ran toward the beach. This was the first time since he had brought her here and begun their daily hunts that she had gone this far away from the spot where he had released her, only a few yards from the house. She wasn’t sure how far she had traveled, but it had to be several miles, although she had deliberately gone in circles a couple of times. She had done that to confuse her stalker and buy herself more time.
The sand on the beach shimmered a creamy white, like tiny diamond chips piled high over the ground. Dropping to her knees, she gasped for air. When she brought her head up to drink in the fresh sea air, she saw a dilapidated building, really nothing more than a small shack. The wooden structure was bleached a pale gray and many of the boards were warped.
LaTasha forced herself back on her feet and trudged through the soft sand to the shack. She didn’t dare stay here long enough to fully inspect the place. The Hunter could find her at anytime. As she rounded the building, intending to run up the shore as far as she could and then back into the woods farther up the beach, she came to a dead standstill when she encountered the boat.
Turned over, with its underside exposed to the sun, rested a small wooden boat, two oars beside it, braced against the back of the nearby shack.
Thank you, dear Jesus, thank you!
What if the boat had holes in it? What if the wood was rotted? What if—
Don’t worry about any of this today. Concentrate on the hunt. Run as far from this place as you can. Don’t let him catch you here.
He doesn’t know this boat exists. He can’t. He has no intention of allowing me to leave this island.
LaTasha knew that she could find her way back here, to this newly discovered means of her escape. But she had to be careful. Be patient. Make plans. Wait for the right moment.
Pudge parked his dirt bike, got off, and removed his canteen from his backpack. Hunting here on this tiny island wasn’t as challenging as it had been at Belle Fleur. He had known those thousand acres as he knew the back of his hand. And he supposed, given time, he would learn every inch of Tabora Island. The wooded areas were like jungles—damp, dense, and smelly. Rotting vegetation and small dead animals. The beaches were nice, unspoiled, but a bitch to walk on and it was impossible to maneuver his dirt bike on them except in the places where the sand was packed down, and there weren’t many areas like that.
LaTasha had tried his patience those first few days, but once he had punished her sufficiently, she had become his willing prey. She had proved to be quick and agile, a truly magnificent animal.
But she was not as cunning as Nicole. None of them had been.
He supposed he could not expect perfection from all of them, could he? Nicole had been special in a way no one else had been or would be. It wasn’t LaTasha’s fault that she did not inspire him the way Nicole had. The one time he had whipped LaTasha, the act had not given him any real pleasure until he had pretended he was thrashing Nicole.
He didn’t hate LaTasha. He hadn’t hated any of them. They were nothing more to him than participants in his game, their only purpose to provide him with pleasure. But he now hated Nicole. Hated her for outsmarting him and escaping. Hated her for trying to kill him. Hated her because she had diminished his enjoyment for hunting other prey.
Pudge upended his canteen and poured the remaining water over his head, then shook his head from side to side and let out a warrior’s whoop.
Run for your life, my beautiful ebony antelope. You have only eleven more days before I bring you down with one fatal shot and claim my trophy.
“Why don’t you want to talk about your husband?” Dr. Meng asked.
Nic eyed the lovely doctor, who sat in the white wicker chair directly across from her in the sunroom. Every day for the past week and a half, Nic had spent an hour each day sitting and talking to Griff’s precious Yvette. The woman never raised her sweet voice, never became agitated or frustrated or angry. Sometimes, Nic would say something for the sole purpose of getting a negative reaction from the woman. Not once had Nic’s tactics achieved the desired results.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like the good doctor or that she thought she had any reason to be jealous of her relationship with Griff, but damn it, how could you warm up to someone so perfect?
“Nicole?”
“Yeah, I heard you. I was just wondering about your clothes. You’ve worn a different outfit every day since I met you. You must travel with a shitload of luggage.”
Dr. Meng’s full, perfect lips lifted in a hint of a smile. “I keep many clothes here at Griffin’s Rest. I consider this my second home.”
Nic glared at the other woman. “Why am I not surprised,” Nic mumbled sotto voce.
“You are trying to change the subject, Nicole. Why is that? You have told me about your parents, your brother, and your stepfather, but you have said very little about your husband.”
Nic rubbed her hands up and down her thighs, then jumped up and walked to the end of the sunroom facing the woods. Afternoon sunlight cast deep shadows across the ground, dark outlines of the towering trees. The fat evergreens grew abundantly alongside the oaks and maples, their branches now barren in mid-December.
“How is talking about Greg going to help me come to terms with being abducted and tortured?” Nic did not want to discuss the details of her marriage with anyone, not even a trained professional. Not again.
“Nicole, I’m going to ask something of you that requires a certain level of trust.” Dr. Meng rose from her chair and walked toward Nic.
Nic turned and faced her. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I’m not sure I trust anyone completely.”
“Not even Griffin?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“We’ve tried several different techniques and so far none of them have seemed to help you, but it is early yet and we will probably retry some of those techniques again. But I have a very special procedure that often helps my patients.
Do you trust me enough to allow me to employ this method with you?”
Nic shrugged. “Sure, why not? We’ve tried rewriting my nightmares using imagery where I’m in control of the outcome, but I’m still having nightmares. No better or worse than before. So, what’s this special procedure you want to try on me today?”
“May I take your hands in mine?” Dr. Meng asked.
Nic scowled. “You want to hold my hands.”
Dr. Meng nodded. “Only for a couple of minutes.”
“What’s that supposed to do?”
“It will allow me to sense what you are feeling.”
“Huh?”
Dr. Meng held out her hands. “Please, Nicole, let me help you.”
Nic hesitated, a strong sense of uncertainty demanding an explanation. But the look of genuine concern in the doctor’s mesmerizing black eyes persuaded Nic to lift her hands and place them in Dr. Meng’s.
Nic looked down at where Dr. Meng held her hands between them, as gently as if her hands were delicate flowers that would crush easily. A strange sense of calm spread through Nic. Her body relaxed. She shot her gaze up to the other woman’s face.
Yvette Meng had closed her eyes and seemed to be in some kind of trance.
“Dr. Meng?”
She didn’t reply for a full minute, then she sighed deeply and released Nic’s hands.
Nic’s feelings of calm and relaxation lingered. “What happened? What was that all about?”
Dr. Meng opened her eyes. “Tell me about how Gregory died and why you blame yourself for his death.”
So much for calm and relaxed. Nic tensed, but she felt an overwhelming need to be honest about her feelings where Greg was concerned.
“Greg killed himself. Shot himself.” Nic looked away from Dr. Meng, her gaze focusing on a single pine tree standing tall and proud in the middle of so many older and larger trees. “I thought I knew my husband. I believed that whatever problems we were having were the result of our both working so many hours, dedicating ourselves to our jobs. I thought if we had a baby, if I made more time for him, for us …”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dr. Meng said. “You must stop blaming yourself.”
“Greg was in trouble and I didn’t know it. I was his wife. I should have instinctively known that he needed help.” Nic crisscrossed her arms over her waist, clutching her elbows, hugging her body protectively. “He should have been able to come to me and tell me that he … he—Oh, God, even now, after all this time, I still can’t admit the truth.”
“What was the truth?”
Nic laughed harshly. “My young, handsome, ambitious husband, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent with a spotless record, became a drug addict.”
She had confessed Greg’s sin aloud and the world had not come to an end.
“Why didn’t I see what was happening? Why did he turn to drugs? Did he think he couldn’t come to me for help?”
“You are not responsible for your husband becoming addicted to drugs and you are not responsible for his suicide,” Dr. Meng said. “Gregory chose his own path, made his own decisions, just as you and I do. If he did not want to come to you for help, he could have gone to someone else. He could have sought professional help. He didn’t. His own weaknesses destroyed him.”
“No, please … Greg was kind and dear and we were good together, at least in the beginning. He really was the perfect sort of man for me.”
“Perfect for you because he was the opposite of your father?”
Nic groaned. “Oh, crap! Do we have to talk about my father again? The man was a macho, chauvinist control freak. We’ve already established the fact that I became a ball-bashing feminist because of dear old Dad.”
“Have you ever considered the fact that the reason you are having such difficulty working through the trauma of your abduction is because you don’t want to admit to anyone, not even yourself, that for a brief period of time someone else controlled you completely, just as your father once did?”
“My father did not control me. I wouldn’t let him. And I wouldn’t let that damn psychopathic freak control me, either. Do you hear me? No one controls me. Not ever!”
“You’re wrong,” Dr. Meng said, her voice velvety soft. “In such a subtle way that you don’t even realize it, your father still influences your thoughts, your actions, and your reactions. And the Hunter creeps into your mind when you are asleep and even sometimes when you are awake and takes control.”
“No!” Nic screamed. “No, no, no …” She ran from the sunroom, the truth of Dr. Meng’s words chasing her like demons from hell.
Chapter 27
Griffin had watched helplessly while Nic withdrew from him more and more each day. It was as if, with her every action, she was telling him that she did not want or need him. And because she was never hostile to him or the other members of the household, was actually pleasant most of the time, he realized that she was playing her own Nic-is-recovering-just-fine game. For the past week, she had been spending the better part of each day helping Barbara Jean and Mark Crosby decorate Griffin’s Rest for Christmas. Once or twice, he’d heard her laugh. Talk about sweet music to his ears.
“Nicole is hiding,” Yvette said. “She has chosen to pretend that she is well adjusted and capable of living a normal life.”
“Yeah, I know. She told me this morning that she’s planning on going home to Woodbridge after New Year’s and that she expects to return to work as soon as possible.”
“Unless she faces what has happened to her and admits the truth to herself, it is only a matter of time before she self-destructs.”
“We can’t let that happen.”
“I cannot help her if she will not let me.”
“Damn it, Yvette, there has to be something you can do.”
She shook her head. “Until she accepts the fact that she cannot control every aspect of her life and that having been held captive and subjugated against her will does not make her a weak, spineless, easily manipulated woman—a woman like her mother—she won’t be able to begin the healing process.”
“She’s still attending therapy sessions every day, so try a new method of some kind. Talk her into medication or hypnosis or—”
“You are not listening to me, Griffin. I am trying to tell you that before I can help her, you must help her.”
Griff’s stomach muscles tightened. “What can I do to help her? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
Yvette held her hand over his. “May I?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She took his hand in hers. “You know what she needs from you.”
“No.”
“You know that she thinks of you as strong, brave, and powerful, a real man’s man, similar to her father in some ways and therefore her male counterpart.”
“I can’t,” Griff said.
“I have spoken to Sanders and we agreed that you must do this to help Nicole. We give you our permission.”
“You know what you’re asking me to do, don’t you? You’re asking me to bare my soul to a woman that I … who means more to me than … How can it help her to know that I was stripped of my dignity, that I had my life stolen from me, that I was forced to become a wild animal in order to survive?”
Yvette squeezed his hand tenderly. “I believe that in asking that question, you also answered it.”
Mia O’Dell stuffed three shopping bags into the trunk of her Jaguar, then turned and took two more bags from Logan Carter. She always waited until practically the last minute to do her Christmas shopping. It was so much more fun that way. And Logan was such a dear for staying with her for the entire afternoon at The Summit, the absolutely most divine place to shop in Birmingham. She had spent far more than the amount Daddy mentioned as her limit. But it didn’t matter. She had her father wrapped around her little finger. And she had learned long ago that his bark was much worse than his bite. He might shout out orders and get all gruff and huffy, but deep down, he was an old softie. Daddy couldn
’t say no to his three girls: Mia, her little sister, Meli, and their mom, Joyce.
“I have only a few more gifts to buy.” Mia fluttered her dark, thick eyelashes at Logan.
“Ah, Mia, enough’s enough.” He caressed her butt. “I thought we were going to take advantage of my folks being out of town for the holidays. So far, you’ve been over at my place only once.” When he pinched her, she swatted his hand away. “Hey, honey, a guy’s got needs, you know.”
She cuddled up to his side and smiled. “Just four more gifts and I promise we’ll go straight to your place and I’ll give you what you want.”
He nuzzled her neck. “I want a blow job just like the one you gave me last time.”
Mia sighed. Why did guys like having their dicks sucked? And they all liked it. Every last one of them. She’d found out in high school, when she was sitting home without a date most weekends, that the one way for a not-so-pretty, not-very-popular girl to attract boys was to go down on them. The first time, she’d actually thrown up. The second time, she had merely gagged. But before she’d graduated from high school, she’d perfected her skills and could give head better than the most experienced hooker.
College guys were only older versions of high school boys. And she’d found that even the goody-goody young men who attended Samford University, where she was on the cheerleading squad, appreciated a woman with a talented mouth.
She didn’t delude herself into thinking that Logan was in love with her. He liked her, but he dated her for the sex. Unfortunately, she was in love with him.
“Since your folks will still be on that riverboat cruise Christmas Day, why don’t you spend the day with my family? You know Mom will be serving a feast. She’s had Sophie baking up a storm for days now.”
He shrugged. “I guess I could do that. Are you sure your parents won’t mind?”
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