by Riley Ashby
I took a deep breath as I pushed open the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Strangers milled, walking at different speeds, standing near the curb trying to flag down taxis, or waiting on a ride share. But I couldn’t see Chad—or anyone I knew, for that matter—in the faces around me. I counted back from sixty as I observed the passersby, telling myself I’d go back in when a minute was up, but my countdown expired, and still I peered at everyone who passed me. I saw no one familiar.
I peered a little too long at a young man standing near the curb staring at his phone. He looked up and away, then back to me with a smile.
Shit. I looked away as quickly as I could. I was just trying to see if I recognized him, not check him out. Chad wasn’t out here. I should go inside.
“Hey.” I looked up to see the man had stepped closer to me, wearing a tentative smile on his face.
I tried to smile politely, but it came out like a grimace.
“I have to go,” I said, but he stepped closer before I could move.
“I just wanted to …”
“I have to go,” I repeated, but before I could turn away, my vision was covered in black.
I walked for hours, trying to forget the feel of her mouth wrapped around me, the warmth of her tongue and the suction of her cheeks as I spurted down her throat. I never should have let her get so far. But when she finally touched me—her own hand, not mine, and she looked so damn sexy as she lowered herself toward me—I couldn’t make myself move. Every rational thought shut down when she tilted her head to talk, lips brushing against the head as she called me Daddy. And then, without waiting for a response, she dived over me once more and swallowed me down to my balls.
Even harder to shake than the memory was the guilt. And not guilt over what she’d done … what we’d done … it was guilt over not feeling guilty at all. It was a huge relief to finally give in to the base desires I’d been grappling with for weeks. The muscles in my shoulders unclenched as I sank into the mattress, raising my head only enough to watch her go down on me and feel my lust rise according to the bobbing of her head. The way her hair tickled my stomach and thighs as it fell around her shoulders.
I didn’t feel bad at all for letting her suck me off. In fact, I wanted her to do it again, immediately.
It was a decision point for me, a fork in the road. I’d told her I didn’t want something corrupt, but she was doing her damnedest to prove to me she was anything but. She didn’t lie to me, even if she was good at keeping secrets. I’d been the one deceiving us by keeping her at arm’s length in the name of my own interchangeable ethics, applied unevenly across the different parts of my life, depending on what I stood to gain. But that only proved I should stay away and let her find someone much more worthy of her time and attention. A man who hadn’t betrayed his country, even if it seemed like the right idea at the time.
I had to get out of here. No more screwing around playing house with my charge. I had to get back.
The phone rang in my ear, connecting me across thousands of miles to the one man on the other side of the country who could give me my job back—my rightful place at the FBI. I leaned against the wall of a building when he finally picked up.
"Boss, it’s me. Archer."
I thought I heard a sigh, but when he spoke, his voice was warm. "Bryce Archer, you son of a bitch. How are you?"
I couldn’t fight back the smile in my voice. "I’m doing all right. Out in LA right now."
"Austen mentioned it. How is the California life treating you?"
"Not quite the same. I want to come back, boss."
This time, he really did sigh. "I thought I made this clear before you left, Bryce. That’s not an option."
"I know we talked, but I thought—"
"The Bureau is very clear on this. Bribes like the ones you took, especially from the people we’re still hunting down, can’t just be overlooked. Do you know how much money we’ve spent trying to re-ingratiate ourselves with some of those groups? You’ve put us years behind schedule on some of these cases."
I bit my lip in frustration. "I could help you get back on schedule. You know I have the skills to catch us back up."
I could hear him shake his head through the phone. "I’m sorry, Archer. The answer is no."
It took everything I had in me to hang up the phone calmly and slide it back into my pocket rather than throw it into the street. That was it. Everything was over. I was never going to get my job back.
This was nearly as bad as finding out my mom was dying. And just like after that phone call, the only thing I wanted was her arms around me.
My phone beeped at me, prompting me to pull it back out of my pocket with a frown. It was the alarm I had set to let me know if Josie left the apartment. My frown deepened to a scowl as she came into view on the security cameras in the lobby. I’d hacked into them after she ran off the second time, determined to keep an eye on her in case she got any more big ideas—like she apparently just had. When the doorman handed her a folded piece of paper, I took off sprinting.
Whoever was sending her those letters would not be happy I had stolen her away a few days ago. She didn’t think there was anything to fear from this mysterious pen pal, but my gut told me differently.
I snuck glances at my phone as I ran, watching her read whatever was written on the paper. She looked around the lobby, as if searching for someone, and then took a step toward the door.
“Don’t do it, Josie,” I growled as I took a corner. The apartment building was at the end of the block. Only a few more yards, and I’d be there.
I saw her in person as she stepped onto the sidewalk, casting about that same searching glance. Someone stepped closer to her, and she shrank back a little. They spoke, but she was shaking her head. She was trying to shake him off, whoever he was, but he was persistent. He reached out a hand, and I snarled at the thought of someone else touching her.
I saw all this the moment before someone else snuck up behind her and threw a bag over her head.
I actually slowed because I was so shocked. They were going to pick her up right here on the street? But I couldn’t stop; no one else was going to do anything about it. It was up to me to help her.
My shoulder slammed into one of the men holding her, sending all three of them to the ground. I stayed on my feet and grabbed for Josie, pulling her back up to me and wrenching the hood off her head.
Her scream died in her throat when she recognized me and then she leaped on me, throwing her arms around my neck as she buried her face in my chest.
“Oh, thank God,” she muttered, but I didn’t have time to comfort her.
“Get back up to the apartment.” I shoved her toward the door, where the doorman was already sprinting out to help.
“Get her upstairs!” I shouted at him, and he nodded. He pulled her back inside and locked the doors behind him.
I stumbled sideways as something hard connected with the side of my head, but I didn’t have time to be knocked off my feet. My fist swung through the air as I spun, adjusting at the last second as my assailant’s face came into view. I landed a blow right on his nose, sending him falling backward as blood sprayed forward. The other man, the one with the hood, was coming up fast on my other side, but I ducked and caught him around the waist, running him back into the door of the apartment building. The glass in the door shook, and I heard my quarry let out the entire contents of his lungs in a whoosh.
Hands locked around my neck, pulling me backward, but I had to put at least one of these assholes out of commission before I could proceed. I jammed the heel of my palm up into the nose of the man I was holding against the door. The bones of his nose crunched beneath my palm as his head slammed against the glass once more. I let the arms around my neck pull me back, and the lifeless form of the other man fell to the ground.
The guy who had hold of me was strong, there was no doubt about that. He caught himself as I tried to throw the two of us backward, tripping me and sending me for
ward onto the concrete. My skin protested, then broke against the rough ground, dirt grinding into my eye and blurring my vision. But he wasn’t strong enough, and he definitely wasn’t angry enough. I bit his hand hard enough he had to let me go, and I was on him in a second. I blinked away the dirt from my eye and elbowed him in the solar plexus as I stood, spinning to fall on top of him on the ground. I trapped his arms beneath my knees and wrenched his face toward me.
There was no way this man was the same one in the pictures sent to Josie. He was handsome; I could see that despite the blood on his face. Not a nerd lacking social skills. This couldn’t be the guy who was sending those photos.
“Who the fuck are you?” I growled in his face. Sirens sounded in the distance. Damn, the cops were fast today. I lowered my head, hoping that if someone happened to be filming this, my face wouldn’t find itself all over the internet in a few hours.
He spat in my face. “You’ll get nothing from me.”
I didn’t have time for theatrics. When I hit him once more for good measure, his head hit the concrete. His face went slack, and his eyes rolled back into his head. I heaved him over my shoulder and took off sprinting.
I ran down a few blocks before cutting through a side street and back up on the other side. There was a back door to the apartment building residents weren’t supposed to use, but I had the code for the keypad used by the cleaning staff. I dropped my captive near the door and sprinted up the stairs to our floor. I was completely gassed by the time I burst into the hallway, nearly doubled over as I tried to catch my breath. But I couldn’t stop moving. As I progressed toward the apartment, Josie’s door flew open, and she jumped into the hallway.
“Get the fuck back inside,” I shouted, but she was flying down the hall and jumped in my arms, wrapping her legs around my middle as I struggled to catch my breath and carry her back to the apartment at the same time.
“Are you okay?” She held my face in her hands, examining the cut above my eyebrow, and the black eye I was sure was forming. “Jesus, Archer, I can’t believe you got there in time. I was so scared.”
“You shouldn’t stop being scared.” I kicked the door shut behind us and dropped her, leaving her to catch herself as she fell to her feet. I flipped the dead bolt, then pulled the couch in front of the door for good measure. “Get in your bedroom, now.”
She ran down the hall without second-guessing me. I followed through to her bathroom and washed my face and hands in the sink. The blood ran red, then pink, and finally clear as I cleaned the strangers’ blood off my hands, and the cut on my face clotted enough to stop dripping. I whipped out my cell phone and sent a few texts, then went into the bedroom.
She was sitting on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring at me. As I approached, she rose to her knees.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “They said there was something waiting for me downstairs, and I didn’t think they would try anything out on the sidewalk, and if they did, I was going to call you, but—”
I grabbed a fistful of her hair, and she fell silent. She froze in my grip, eyes fixed on mine, waiting for my judgment.
I had planned to scream at her, but the look in her eyes stopped me. She slipped from pliant and obedient to … outright flat. She lost every trace of personality and fight that had vexed me—and turned me on—thus far. Her face went slack as she waited for her punishment.
There it was. She’d finally realized I wasn’t making this up, and I wasn’t acting like this for kicks. She saw the real danger, and she was folding in on herself. She was back to whoever she’d been while she was held captive. The compliant slave willing to do anything. She really had been fighting against regressing this entire time, but the threat of actual violence from an outside source had convinced her to put her mask back on.
I couldn’t talk to her like this. I didn’t want to talk to her like this. I wanted my Josie back, the one who gave me lip but ultimately trusted me. Trusted me not because she had to, but because she knew who I was better than anyone else.
My fingers released one by one, letting her hair fall back down along her back. I dropped to my knees on the floor so she was above me on the bed, and some of her identity came back to her face. She blinked a few times as if coming out of a trance.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I put my hand over her mouth.
“Do you understand what almost happened?” It was a struggle to keep my voice low. I tried to think of the time I had befriended a stray dog I ran into on my walk home from school. I had to coax it out with hamburger and cheese, talking in a high-pitched voice that would have gotten me ridiculed by all the guys at school if they knew. But it came out eventually. “I just happened to be nearby. I just happened to have turned on the tracking on your phone. If one of those two things hadn’t happened, you’d be gone right now.”
She sat back so we were at eye level, hands caressing my face. “You left.” Her voice was a whisper, but I heard the pain. And she was right to be upset. She was supposed to count on me to protect her, and I ran off for hours.
I sighed. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have left you for so long.”
She nodded, satisfied with my apology. She put all her trust in me at face value because she could see through whatever I told her. Even when I tried to control her by pretending to give in to her advances, she knew right away what my angle was. Somehow, in all the time I’d spent watching her and learning her habits, she did the same to me without my noticing.
“What are we going to do? Are those guys gone? Do you know who they were?”
I stood and pulled her with me gently. “Pack a bag. We’re not staying here anymore.”
“Do you need to pack, too?”
“I’ll wait here while you pack. Then we’ll go over to my side, and I’ll get a bag together. I’m not leaving you alone.”
She packed swiftly and in silence, and I finished throwing some of my clothes together just as there was a knock on my door. Josie jumped, but I wrenched it open after a quick check through the peephole. Tori and Castel were in the hallway, hands on their hips underneath their jackets. Guns at the ready.
“Car is waiting,” Castel said by way of greeting. “We’ve got the would-be kidnapper in the truck. He’s still out.” I ignored Josie’s questioning look and pushed her out the door in front of me. She was silent as we hustled down the back stairwell, averting her eyes from the drops of my blood smeared on the steps where Castel and Tori had trod on them on their way up. A large black SUV was waiting in the back alley, driven by none other than Ellery King himself.
“Where are we going?” Josie only spoke once the car doors closed and we were in motion. She sat between Castel and me. I couldn’t help putting a hand on her knee even as Castel glared at me over her head.
“Ellery is going to let us stay with him while we get this sorted out.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Mr. King.”
He glanced at her in the mirror. “Not a problem.”
“Call him Ellery,” Tori said. “He hates that.”
Josie looked concerned for half a second before Castel rolled his eyes. “Don’t believe her. You can call him Ellery, but you won’t make him mad.”
She turned to me, and I forced out a smile and squeezed her knee. They all knew each other, and they were comfortable joking like this. She was used to being the butt of a joke and not in on one.
“I think we should get her some food,” I said in an attempt to change the subject.
Tori texted the staff at the house to have them prepare some food for us, and I asked them to deliver it to her room. I finally shot back the glare I was getting from Castel just as hard as he was giving it to me, and he looked away with a huff. I didn’t care what he thought; I wasn’t going to leave her alone. I should have known the first time she snuck out I couldn’t trust her, but I’d foolishly hoped she would obey me once I’d caved to her a little. Apparently, it wasn’t enough to hold her in place. My hand tightened on her kn
ee as we came to the house, releasing only to grab her hand and drag her out of the car.
“Where’s she sleeping?” I asked gruffly, and I carried both bags over my shoulder as we were shown to a room.
Castel was on our heels, trying to get my attention. “We need to discuss—”
“Tomorrow,” I snapped, pushing Josie into the bedroom and turning to face Castel. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Can you handle that guy for tonight?”
He pursed his lips. “Tori could stay in here. She’d keep her safe.”
I shook my head. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll see you in the morning.” I slammed the door in his face.
Josie sat on the king-sized bed staring at the sandwiches on the nightstand. She was still breathing hard, and as the door closed, her eyes flitted around the room and eventually landed on me. She opened her mouth once, closed it, opened it, and then closed it again.
“Go on,” I said, waving my hand at the food. “You can eat.”
She grabbed it and scarfed it down so quickly I thought she’d choke. “Slow down!”
She swallowed a huge bite and looked at me sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize to me if you choke to death.” I sat next to her and ate my own portion as she continued eating at a more measured pace. When we finished, Josie laid back on the bed, rubbing her stomach.
“I needed that,” she moaned. I twisted to look at her.
She wasn’t going to get out of this so easily. I needed more explanation. “Why did you go downstairs?” I asked, putting my hand on her thigh again. Higher than her knee. A little too high. She clapped her hands over her face.
“I want to figure out what’s going on. Who’s after me. You say you’re looking into it, but you haven’t told me anything.”
“You’re right. I haven’t been looking into it as much as I should be.”
She peeked at me through her fingers. “You’re doing a lot of apologizing today.”