Captured: Claimed Book 3

by M James

  “Go upstairs,” April says gently. “Both of you. It’s been a long night. You need rest.”

  I don’t bother arguing. I suddenly feel swamped with exhaustion, and I hear Erin following me up the stairs. When I turn to say something to her before she goes into her room, she just looks away from me, disappearing inside and slamming the door.

  The sound makes me flinch and tears well up in my eyes.

  I want my sister back.

  I want Zach.

  I want everything that I used to have and lost.

  I wish I’d known back then how precious it was.

  ---

  When I wake up the next morning, I decide to at least try to get some of Erin’s affections back. The bed next to me is cool and smooth—I’m not sure if Vincent even came to bed with me last night. You’d think the night after his fiance was almost killed, he’d want to be near her. When I check the time, I can see that he’d be gone for work for the day by now anyway, so I just throw on leggings and a loose white t-shirt and a long cashmere sweater, pushing the sleeves up above my elbows as I head down the stairs towards the kitchen.

  To my dismay, I see that April and Zach are already there, seated at the table with Erin. She looks more tired than usual, her face colorless and drawn, which I suppose makes sense after what happened last night.

  “Are you okay?” I ask gently, stopping by her chair, carefully not looking at Zach. “You didn’t say anything before you went to bed last night. Are you holding up alright?”

  “I’m fine,” Erin mumbles. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “You’re my little sister—”

  “I said I’m fine!” she snaps. “I don’t need to be babied.”

  “Well, I thought I’d make you breakfast. We had a long hard day yesterday. So maybe we just take it easy today.”

  “You can’t eat pancakes,” Erin snipes. “You have to watch your weight, right!” The way she says this is like an insult, and it almost tips me over, but I take a deep breath, forcing myself not to react, not to snap back at her. “You’re right,” I say slowly. “But you don’t have to. So pancakes it is. And eggs, and bacon, just like you like it.” I glance around the table. “Anyone else want anything?”

  “I already ate,” April says. “But thank you.”

  “I’ll take some breakfast,” Zach says with a grin, and his eyes meet mine for the first time since last night. I feel my heart flutter in response, even though I know with everything in me that I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t want him. Not when it threatens so much.

  But the pulse in my veins, the butterflies in my stomach, tell a different story. I feel like a teenager with her first crush all over again. I know the feeling so well because I’ve been through all of this before with the same man.

  I couldn’t stop it then, and I’m terrified that I won’t be able to stop it now.

  I can’t dwell on it. Instead, I just turn and go to the refrigerator, pulling out the things I need to make pancakes with fruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, and orange juice. I’ve always liked cooking, and one of the things I’ve hated the most about the pre-prepped boxes of meals that Vincent has delivered to me is the fact that I don’t just get to cook for myself anymore. It’s not that I don’t know how to make healthy food, but Vincent wants to control everything these days—down to making sure every bite of food that goes into my mouth is planned, measured, and ready to go.

  I do look better; I can’t deny that, exactly. I’m a little too thin, but my skin is brighter. I can feel that a few weeks of eating balanced meals and vegetables instead of picking at food and drinking too much has done wonders for my overall health. I can even see a faint hint of muscle tone, although I’m not exactly going to grow muscles on the diet that Vincent has me on—which I’m sure is the point. He wants me rich-girl skinny, not fit and Wonder Woman-strong.

  I hate that I can’t even fucking eat breakfast with April watching me, but I can at least cook for others, and that makes me happy. I even catch myself humming under my breath as I crack eggs into a bowl and whisk them, getting out a separate bowl for waffle mix and heating the iron. It takes me back to a time before all of this. A part of me pretends we’re somewhere else, in Indiana, and April is Zach’s friend, and Erin doesn’t hate me.

  It’s not real, of course, but I’m just going to be as happy as I can be, which is hard enough, between Erin’s attitude and Zach sitting behind me, reminding me of everything I want and can’t have.

  I add bacon to the frying pan, trying not to think about any of that. And I’m doing an okay job of it, for a few minutes, until suddenly Zach is at my elbow, pouring coffee into a mug from the machine percolating on the counter. I hadn’t even noticed it. He or April must have gotten the coffee started when they came down.

  “Hey,” I say weakly, focusing hard on the bacon in the pan as if my life depends on cooking it evenly.

  “I’m part of your security team now,” Zach says quietly. “Did Vincent tell you?”

  I freeze, still carefully not looking at him, fork hovering over the piece of bacon. “No,” I say finally when I can speak again. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”

  “He didn’t come to see you after all of that?” I can hear the disgust in Zach’s voice, faintly disguised as if he’s trying to hide it and doing a very bad job.

  “I don’t—I don’t think so. I don’t know. I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I got home.”

  “Well, he’s decided you need more than just April watching you and Erin, and Sonya—referred me. So now I’m part of your security detail. For now, anyway. Just thought you should know.”

  Zach takes his coffee and heads back to the table, leaving me reeling. It was one thing to have Zach in the house, always around, at the table at meals, showing up at inopportune times like when I’m out by the pool, but this is something else altogether. This is him around me all the time, watching me, following me, protecting me, I’m sure he’s thinking, but is he going to be reporting on me to Vincent the way I know April does?

  Can I not even put a fraction of trust in him anymore?

  The thought makes my heart feel as if it’s shattering all over again. I want to scream, want to cry, want to throw something in protest of this new development. Instead, I just numbly put food onto a plate, drizzling syrup over the pancakes and taking it to the table.

  I slide the plate in front of Erin, floored all over again how much she looks like a younger version of me in her fluffy pink robe over her pajama pants and tank top, her blonde hair piled atop her head in a messy bun. I miss my sister so much, the sister I had before Vincent poisoned her like he poisons everything, before cancer, before realizing I had no choice but to stay with Vincent.

  If only I’d gone back to them before all of this happened. Things might be so different.

  But I can’t keep dwelling on what might have been. Because I can see now, after what’s happened with Erin, what’s happening with Zach right now, how fucking pointless that is. How it just tears me apart, over and over again, every time I dare to want anything for myself, every time I let myself remember anything that once gave me happiness.

  I serve everyone else their breakfast in a kind of daze, taking my own premade overnight oats out of the fridge and putting a few strawberries on top. I pour myself a cup of coffee, too—Vincent will only allow me black coffee and says too much caffeine is bad for me, but this morning I need something. Some kind of jolt because I feel like I’m floating in a haze.

  And I still have my workout to get through.

  Erin decides to come with me to the gym today—Vincent decided that she can take advantage of my trainer too, if she wants to, so both April and Zach tag along, much to my dismay. I don’t like working out, at least not the punishing routines that Vincent has set up for me, but what I hate even more than working out is Zach seeing me on a treadmill with my hair plastered to the sides of my forehead, doing my middle-of-the-workout cardio, not to be con
fused with the cardio I do at the beginning, before weights, or the cardio I do at the very end.

  I really, especially hate cardio.

  But I do this, every day, six days a week, because I know the consequences if I don’t, just like I know Vincent will be angry, and now his anger comes with consequences.

  And on top of all that, the guy who was once and might still be the love of my life gets to see me in sweaty workout clothes, my hair sticking to my face, and my skin as red as a tomato. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing skintight yoga pants or a cropped tank top over my sports bra, all ridiculously expensive workout gear that I picked out because god forbid Vincent’s fiancée be seen at the gym in anything other than Lululemon. It shouldn’t matter how I look, especially what Zach thinks of it, but it’s all I can think about, as I pant and puff on the treadmill. How disgusting I must look.

  But then, he’s never been disgusted by me. Zach has always been my best friend through it all, the one who gave me his jacket and took me to the nurse when I got my period for the first time in the school cafeteria, who’s seen me sick and brought me soup, who held my hair back as a teenager when I got too drunk at house parties, who’s seen me happy and crying and angry and stressed and everything in between.

  Besides, I’m supposed to be sweaty. Guys like fit girls. What the hell am I even thinking about. None of this matters. I shouldn’t even want him to be attracted to me.

  Before last night, I was doing a good job of pretending that I didn’t. But now I can’t seem to stop. I think of his face close to mine on the floor, the scent of his cologne, the warmth of his body. I feel my heart rate going up as I remember how solid he felt against me, how safe, those broad arms holding me against his chest again for the first time in years, more muscular than they used to be, stronger. Arms that could protect me against anything, even Vincent.

  For a moment, it had felt as if no time had passed at all, as if I were a teenager again, as if we both were, and as if the world hadn’t conspired to tear us apart.

  I still love him.

  It’s the desperate, horrible, all-consuming, terrifying truth. I can feel it inside of me, threatening to take over, to slide through my veins like that opium Vincent named me after, pushing me to make bad decisions, to take risks that I shouldn’t. If I were going to defy Vincent, it should be for myself, for my own freedom, not for another man, not for another relationship. I shouldn’t be willing to risk Zach, too, because I can only imagine what Vincent would do if he even knew that we used to be friends, used to love each other, used to sleep together, all in the past tense—God help us both if he even thought it was in the present. I’d already be endangering my father and possibly Erin by defying him, by trying to leave—am I really so selfish, so desperate for love that I’d risk Zach, too?

  I don’t need anyone to tell me that even these thoughts are dangerous. Vincent has a way of figuring things out when I don’t think he possibly can, and this might be no exception. If he even thought of me doing, saying, or thinking anything inappropriate about Chase, Sonya’s boyfriend, a man new to the family who Vincent would have no issue with wiping him out in an instant. Vincent is not a man to be crossed. He’s proven that to me time and time again. Any spark between Zach and I could easily turn into an explosion that could hurt everyone I love.

  I don’t know why Zach would agree to this. Does he think he can handle himself around me? I don’t know how that makes me feel. I’d felt the undeniable pull between when he’d brought me down to the floor, felt that old connection flare, but now I have to wonder. Maybe Vincent didn’t give him much of a choice. Is he struggling with this too? Does he still care about me, love me, want me the way he once did?

  Even the thought that he might not makes my heart ache and my eyes burn, and that tells me all I need to know about my own feelings. I shouldn’t, but I want him to have missed me all of these years, to have fallen asleep dreaming about me at night, to have seen my face on every woman he’s ever been with—and that last sends a rush of jealousy through me.

  I wrestle my emotions down, stepping down off of the treadmill to start my next set of weights. I shake my hair out of my ponytail, pulling it back up atop my head as I cross the gym to where my trainer is waiting, in an effort to get the messy pieces tamed and try to look slightly more put-together.

  When I glance over at Zach, I feel those butterflies take flight in my stomach again, my chest and face flush hot, and I’m suddenly glad for the workout. I have to figure out how to hide these feelings just like I was doing before, except now they feel as if they’re bubbling up, frothing out of me, and I don’t know what to do with them. I feel that same heart-pounding, pulse-racing excitement that I felt as a teenager, palms tingling and stomach knotting. It would feel so fucking good if so much didn’t hinge on it, if I weren’t putting so much at risk just by allowing myself to entertain it for even a second.

  I hate this, I think desperately, fighting back the tears as I pick up the weights. I hate that I have to pretend to be someone that I’m not, that I have to play the role of the doting wife-to-be, that I have to submit to the ridiculous rules and routines that Vincent has set out for me. But I also know I have no choice if I want my family to have the things they need. If I want Erin to be safe, Zach to be safe. I can’t put anything past Vincent anymore.

  I think of everything Vincent has given them. I think of my father in a hospital bed, with the best care in the entire country at his disposal. I think of my mother, her financial worries eased, able to stay at his side and dote on him, knowing that he’s sober and in remission, that she doesn’t have to worry that the electricity will be turned off or that the car will be gone. I think of Erin, with everything she wants, even if I’m afraid of how that’s influencing her, for the first time able to just be a teenager and be spoiled and rebellious and happy.

  What is my happiness, compared to that? What’s dieting and working out and smiling at Vincent’s business associates? What’s enduring sex with him now and then when he decides he wants to flex his power over me? Even if it was possible, how could I ever lay next to Zach at night and know what my selfishness had cost my family.

  That guilt churns in my stomach all the way home. I can’t bring myself to look at Zach or Erin or even April, and I just stare out of the window until the car pulls up to the curb and I can escape inside, running up the stairs to my bathroom and shucking my clothes at record speed so I can get into the shower.

  But even there, I can’t escape it. Alone, my thoughts collide, my feelings bubble up, hurt and guilt, need and desire and longing all wrapped together until I’m turned on and on the verge of tears all at once. I lean my head against the shower wall, thinking about Zach, about our time together all those years ago, about his hands on my body in my room back in Indiana, when he taught me all the things I’d always wondered about.

  I hadn’t been his first, but that hadn’t mattered to me. Well, it had—I’d hated every other girl he’d ever been with, wanted them all to disappear with the petty jealousy of a teenage girl. Still, I’d told myself that bright, sunny afternoon that it didn’t matter if I was his first, as long as I got to be his last. That’s what I’d believed, as he’d slid into me panting, as he’d kissed my mouth and neck and breasts, as he’d promised that he loved me, that we’d have a life together, that he’d been wrong to keep us apart for so long. I’d believed him, and that still tears me apart even as my body craves him, craves knowing what it would be like now, with so much between us, so much unspoken hurt and anger and need and love all wrapped together.

  It boils up inside of me, fierce and overwhelming. My hand slides between my legs, where I’m slick and hot with desire, the feelings inside of me such a tangle that I both hate and love Zach all at once, but mixed up with all of that is a breathless need that leaves me gasping, aching, rubbing at my clit under the hot spray of the shower as I remember his solid body pressed against mine last night, the hard muscle of him against me. I picture th
e entire club emptying out, so it’s only the two of us, him leaning over me on the hardwood floor, the jazz still pounding through our blood as he pushes up my skirt and tells me that I’m safe, that I’m protected, that I’m loved, that he wants me more than he’s ever wanted anyone, more than Sonya, more than any woman he’s ever been with. In my fantasies, he’s looking down at me with those bright blue eyes and pleading for me to forgive him, to love him, to take him back, he’s telling me that he’s never loved anyone but me, and as he slides into me I whisper yes, yes, yes Zach, I forgive you, I love you, I want you, please please please don’t leave me again.

  I realize I’m whispering all those things aloud, the sound of my breathy moans swallowed up by the shower spray, my hips arching into my hand as I rub faster, picturing Zach’s muscled chest, his broad hands, his full lips, his gorgeous eyes, and that thick cock sliding between my legs, piercing me, filling me, healing all the places where Vincent has ever hurt me, making me whole again.

  It was only ever him. It could only ever be him.

  I can never love anyone else.

  “Zach!” I cry out his name as I come, crying and climaxing at the same time, my fingers rubbing frantically over my clit as I brace myself against the shower wall to keep from falling as my knees go weak. I can feel myself clenching, hollow, and aching for him, even the orgasm not enough to really satisfy the desire that I can feel flooding me, the same desire I felt all those years ago but acuter now, grown up and aware of what’s at stake and how much I’ve already lost and still have to lose.

  I crumple to the shower floor anyway, breathing in great, gulping gasps as I try not to scream, not to fall apart completely.

  I’d forgotten how much love can fucking hurt. How much it can tear you apart from the inside and make you wish you’d never felt it at the same time that you never want to stop feeling it. I’d forgotten how it could hollow you out until you feel nothing but a vast, aching emptiness and a desperation so great that you’d sacrifice everything and everyone just to make it stop for even a second, just to feel the relief of touching that person you love, kissing them, holding them, no matter who it hurts.