Dark Nights Boxed Set: The Complete Series

by Skye Warren

  He didn’t laugh this time. At the first touch of his hand, I flinched away. But I only succeeded in pressing myself against the impossible plushness beneath me. He stroked my hair again, fingering the strands softly before letting them drop. He was exactly as gentle as the first time. Almost caring.

  Don’t engage. That was standard operating procedure for a prisoner of war—and the drug trade was war. Wait for rescue. Yeah, that was un-fucking-likely. I could be almost anywhere by now. In a room with a bed wasn’t exactly specific. Besides, I sensed he was something else, and I was too, like maybe this was personal. And that had a totally different set of rules. Reach out, humanize yourself, make him want to help you.

  But either way, one thing was clear. If I had the chance to escape, I would take it. That chance didn’t have to be large. It could be a single hand free, jamming his throat into the footboard of the bed until he passed out. It could mean running away from a man with a gun and letting him shoot me in the back. Criminals had been resorting to suicide by cop for decades. Only fair I could turn the tables if I needed to. I had no idea what this man would do to me, but it seemed likely that by the end I’d rather be dead.

  An evil sociopath. A young woman. Fill in the blanks. Unimaginable horrors visited upon my body were practically mandatory.

  So why did I feel a budding sense of relief? I struggled to contain it. Could he see it on my face? What sort of twisted, fucked up…but I already knew the answer to that. I’d been like this from the moment I’d turned in my dad. No, earlier. When I’d seen the blood on his hands, and I’d known. I am in a family of crazy people.

  I am crazy.

  The textbooks couldn’t say that. The criminal behaviorists and the psychologists didn’t know either. Survivor’s guilt. Fucking clueless. They wouldn’t know crazy if it tied them up and stroked their faces, but I did. Oh, I felt it too. Shimmery and translucent, like looking in a mirror. Like being made of glass.

  “Let me go,” I said, surprised at how bold I sounded. Unafraid. And why shouldn’t I be? What could he do to me, except what I’d always wanted? “You won’t get away with this. The FBI will find you.”

  “Shhh.” He touched his finger to my lips in a sensual parody of a comforting motion. Not resting his finger across my lips, the way people usually did. He ran his forefinger across the seam of my lips, sending small tingles through my sensitive skin. What a crazy fucker.

  But he didn’t know who he was dealing with. I could give as well as take. I bit him. I bit him, feeling his flesh give between my teeth, tasting the faint salt and musk of a clean man. A soft exhalation escaped him, part pain and part surprise. The callused pad of his finger rasped across my tongue. Like a dog with a bone, I wasn’t letting go.

  He pinched the bridge of my nose. I bit down harder, sucking air into my mouth around the sides of his finger. It wasn’t enough, though. Dizzy, I opened my mouth to breathe in deeper, and he was free. In seconds, my small rebellion had been crushed. Rendered ridiculous. Only, why hadn’t he slapped me? Punched me? I would have let go of his finger in the face of violence, whether from shock or submission. But he hadn’t hurt me. Just done the bare minimum so I’d let him go.

  He didn’t punch me now either, in punishment. He could have, and I probably deserved it, by the rules of this messed up captivity game. I hadn’t broken skin, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a black and blue ring around his forefinger tomorrow.

  “So fierce,” he whispered, stroking my hair again.

  And God. God. Why was he so gentle with me? His touch, the bed? It was a perversion, this kindness. A hardworking single father who killed in his spare time. A kidnapper who petted me and gave me luxuries I’d never afforded myself. The world had turned upside down, the sky underneath me while I looked up at the glistening sea.

  “Please.” Less brave now. Was that my voice? More like a whimper. “Just let me go. Tell me what you want from me. Leave me alone.”

  Three different requests. I was panicking. I recognized it with a kind of detached calm. One part of my mind was thoughtful, examining my predicament with professional precision. The other part was flipping the fuck out, an animal with her back against the wall. I jerked in my bonds, accomplishing nothing. I wriggled again, knowing I looked ridiculous and not giving a shit.

  Fear had a taste, I discovered. Harsh and metallic. Like blood. I’d first tasted it in the surveillance van when I’d thought Hennessey was in trouble. He still might be in trouble.

  “Fuck,” I panted. “Let me go.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he murmured, his voice barely above a breath. The only clue to his identity was the slightest hint of an accent. “I promise.”

  My laugh cut the air, bitter. “Oh, you promise. I don’t even know you. I can’t trust you.”

  “You can. I may not answer every question. You may not like what I say. But here, in this room, it will always be the truth.”

  His voice rang with sincerity. Impossible. And yet, the offer was too seductive to ignore. I could ask him anything and hear the answer. What would we ask if we could be sure to know the truth? I found myself quiet. The truth had always been terrifying. I’d learned early on not to ask questions.

  This will be our little secret, okay?

  As a child, my ignorance had been an uncomfortable sort of bliss. And the truth had set me free, but only in the most painful ways. I’d been alone in the world, tossed with one indifferent family after another. The truth wasn’t what I really wanted from him, but it was all he was offering.

  “Is he alive?” My voice came low and thready. I was afraid to know the answer.

  “Who? Your partner?”

  I flinched beneath the blindfold. “The man who was with me at the docks.”

  “Ah, that one. Very much alive, last I heard. He was wearing a vest. Unlike you.”

  Relief. Because Lance had worn his vest. Had he been shot because he wouldn’t die? No, I was giving my captor too much credit. He didn’t care about Lance’s life. He wouldn’t care about mine.

  “Are you going to let me go?”

  “Eventually.”

  Most kidnapping victims died within the first twenty-four hours. “Are you going to rape me?”

  “No. Not until you ask me to.”

  Then it wouldn’t be rape, his tone implied. But we both knew otherwise. I was his captive, under his control. There were thousands of ways a person could be made to do something they didn’t want to. Ways a person could be made to ask for something they didn’t want. Coercion. Blackmail. Persuasion. Which ways would he choose?

  Deep breath. “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “Only as much as I need to.”

  Which meant yes. As horrible as it sounded to be hurt, there was a relief as well. At least this time I wouldn’t be spared. There was also a glimmer of hope with how regretful he sounded. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt me. Maybe it was something we could talk about. Negative transference. That was another fancy buzzword the textbook left me with. He didn’t want to hurt me. He wanted to hurt himself. Yeah, I was sure that would go over great with a sociopath.

  Last question.

  “Are you Carlos?”

  Silence. I thought for a moment he’d invoke that privilege he’d been careful to retain, not to answer certain questions. Or maybe put me on the defensive with his many aliases, Carlos Laguardia, or Matthew Genner, or William Hernandez. That he’d staunch the trickle of information altogether, but in the end, he did none of that. He told the truth.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “But then you knew that. You knew the answer to all these questions. You just wanted reassurance. Put your mind at ease, little one. You’ll be tortured here. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  Tears leaked from my eyes, dampening the cloth across them. He was right, and I hated that he was right. I hated that I’d always escaped every horrible scenario and that I’d never had the strength to hurt myself instead. I looked at cutters with longing, tho
se who could inflict brutal self-harm. Even people with anorexia caused long-term damage to their bodies.

  I’d never been able to do those things. I just chased after bad guys, like Carlos, and hoped they’d be as horrible as their reputations demanded. That was the only way I’d ever atone for not turning my father in sooner. It was the only way I’d atone for turning him in at all.

  Survivor’s guilt. That wasn’t the half of it.

  “I’m going to break you,” he continued. “Until you look to me for food, for pleasure, for survival. And the truth is, I’m never letting you go. Not really. You’ll walk around outside this place, away from me, but no matter where you go, I’ll always be here.” He tapped my temple gently. “I’ll always be with you.”

  Was that supposed to be terrifying or comforting? I wasn’t sure which way I felt either. Both, maybe.

  “I’ll punish you for every lie you ever told, for everything you ever took that you didn’t really deserve. For every single thing you’ve ever felt guilty for. But there’s a price. You can’t be a regular person when we do that. We can’t hold onto decorum and manners and cut you open, raw and bleeding, can we?”

  And I realized then that Mr. Hyde wasn’t really evil personified. He was a man without decorum or manners. He was raw and bleeding, all over. He was me, inside this cell. I couldn’t control this shift any more than Dr. Jekyll could. I could only react, only feel pain and anger and fear. And in the end, if the darkness ever lifted?

  Dr. Jekyll hadn’t been able to live with himself.

  Laguardia continued stroking my hair, softly, innocently. My eyelids grew heavy beneath the blindfold, my limbs relaxed in their binds. Exhaustion crept over me like night blanketing the earth, dark and peaceful. Sleep, his touch told me, and I will watch over you until morning. The same promise made by the moon. But neither Laguardia nor the moon would keep me safe. No one could promise that, least of all a madman, a man pulled by the tides of cruelty. I succumbed anyway, drifting in an inky ocean and lulled to sleep by a killer.

  My killer.

  Chapter Ten

  I woke up choking, drowning. With a painful gulp, I swallowed my own spit, struggling to close my mouth around the obstruction and failing. A gag. Round, rubbery. I flicked it with my tongue, but it didn’t budge. My jaw already ached and I wondered how long it had been there, how long I had been out. Time passed like lights blinking through a tunnel, a flash and then another until they blended into each other. Fitting, because I was underground now, traveling at high speeds, forced to follow this path to its end.

  Where are we? I wanted to ask, but instead I just managed to mumble, “Mmmmf.”

  A blindfold still covered my eyes, but it had shifted enough where I could see through the bottom. Yellow light concentrated to my right side. A lamp. On a bedside table, maybe. The room as a whole was dark, but when he turned toward me, I caught the impression of brown eyes, almost black. Of a shadow of growth on his jaw. Of a terrifying half smile on his lips. I shut my eyes quickly, not wanting him to catch a glimpse of my eyes open.

  Too late. He tugged on the blindfold and my sight was gone. My cheeks heated from being caught. I squirmed in place. Air kissed my skin, awakening every sense. I was naked, while the part I most wanted uncovered, my eyes, were blind.

  Powerless. He wanted me to feel powerless.

  The part of me that had trained to deal with criminals like him tried to reason it out. To make a mockery of him the way he’d made a mockery of me. He clearly had a small ego if he needed to exert control over someone less strong than him. Maybe his mother had ignored him. Or he had a tiny penis and the boys at school had mocked. There was always a reason. It didn’t excuse his behavior, but it explained it. Like a puzzle piece fitting into place. I just had to find the crazy-shaped square and I’d stop feeling so fucking terrified. I’d stop trembling.

  No one had ever hurt me, but that was about to change.

  A brush against my ankle was almost too light to feel. But I did feel it, and I knew that my pantyhose were gone. When had he taken them off? I tensed, straining, focusing on the tender flesh. Light fingers ran up the arch of my foot to the inside of my ankle. Over and back, across the bone that jutted there.

  “So pretty. So delicate. So easy to break.”

  I jerked against the bonds, the ones that held my legs down and my arms up. Oh God. To break me as a person? To break my ankle? Either one was pretty horrifying. What a sick fuck. A really sick fuck with a tiny penis and an emo sob story. He was just like every other criminal on the fucking Most Wanted wall at the Bureau. He was nothing.

  But that was a lie I told myself. Because I’d always known he was different. Smarter. More deliberate. He toyed with the FBI like a lion with a mouse, and even as the mouse stared into the jaws of its killer, it felt a little impressed. A little in awe.

  The hand smoothed up my calf. His thumb and forefinger framed my kneecap and stroked it. Not causing me pain, but firmly enough to replay the words in my head. So easy to break. If he tried to torture information out of me, how long until I gave in?

  Not long, I feared. Once a man gave up decorum and manners, it wasn’t a huge step to giving up honor too. His. Mine. It blended together in a flow of molten fear, incinerating everything in its path.

  “Be a good girl for me, and no one gets hurt. Not you. Not, what was his name? Lance.” The pause felt heavy, poignant. His voice dropped. “Not your partner either.”

  A shiver ran through me. What did he know about my partner? Knowledge could be dangerous. It could be used against me.

  Did he know I cared about Hennessey?

  “He’s very worried about you,” he said, taunting me.

  At least that meant he was alive. Behind the blindfold, I could see his slight smile. Beneath the soft scent of roses, I could smell the clean-sweat smell of him. The ghost of him stood close so close I could feel him, right in front of me, and a small sound came from my throat—fear, frustration. Longing.

  “Are you worried about him?” The air brushed my cheek as he leaned close. “You should be. He’s playing a dangerous game. One wrong move, and he’ll end up dead. But you don’t want that to happen, do you? Do you think you can save him?”

  His broad hand cupped the inside of my thigh. Sparks radiated from his hand, sending small shocks through my leg, tensing my stomach. And there, I felt a strange and undignified heat begin to form. Physical awareness. Proximity. The body’s natural defense to an encroaching threat. A woman’s natural response to ten thousand fucking years of male dominance. I made excuses for myself, but in the end, I still felt guilty for the clenching of my cunt.

  The term survivor’s guilt had never felt more appropriate than now. This was how I would survive. By preparing myself for him. By wanting it. And why shouldn’t I feel guilty for that? It was sick, and so was I. But as long as I was good for him, no one would get hurt.

  Hennessey wouldn’t get hurt.

  “The skin here is paler than anywhere else on the body. Do you agree?”

  The muscles of my thigh bunched. God. I wished he’d do something extreme. Just beat me or whip me. Just get it over with. The waiting was torture. The gentle touching.

  “So easy to mark,” he said, but before I could register the words, a blinding pain racked my body. I gasped, unable to breathe or think. Even when I felt the pressure ease, pain sang a red-haze song through my blood.

  He touched the hot points of flesh where his fingers had dug in. “One, two, three. They’re red now, but I think they’ll turn black and blue before this is over. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To prove how hard you worked for it. You’d press them when I wasn’t here and get wet for me.”

  You’re sick, I wanted to say. “Mmmf!” A line of drool leaked from the corner of my mouth and ran down my cheek.

  His fingers roamed upward, probing the lips of my cunt. Without preamble, they slid inside. I gasped, sucking in my own spit and swallowing to clear it. His fingers were blunt and un
kind and knowledgeable. They knew the angle of a woman and the place deep inside to seek out. He finger-fucked me until I bit down around the gag and stiffened my body against the oncoming tension. Physical awareness. Proximity. The body’s natural defense. That was all it was.

  He pulled out just as suddenly as he’d started, and my flesh closed around the space left behind. His fingers walked up my quivering belly, leaving wet dots from his fingertips, my own body’s response in humiliating points. Past my belly button. My anxiety rose with each small step, as his fingers dried on my skin. He walked his fingers until they reached the curve between my breasts.

  I breathed so hard and so fast that I panted. I struggled to suck in air through my nose and around the gag. The world went hazy and dim. I was going to faint…but I didn’t. That would be too damn easy. Instead, I just lay there, having a nervous breakdown while he touched me in a single place. My breastbone, like pointing at someone, like accusing them.

  Stop, I wanted to say. “Mmmf…” A muffled plea, like a sheep bleating on its way to the slaughter.

  “Yes, you’re right. Enough of that. We have things to do. Very busy.”

  He stepped away, and I heard rustling. Dread sank in my gut. Whatever was coming next, it would be much worse.

  In that hollow minute of uncertainty, an image of Hennessey flashed through my mind. What would he do in this situation? I couldn’t imagine him tied up or beaten, but he could have been, just as easily. If the timing were a little different. If Laguardia still wanted to torture a man instead of a woman. I had no doubt that he had tortured his share of men, turned them into Mr. Hydes against their will. Like the good, misguided doctor in the story, we’d drunk the potion, trying to protect mankind from the monsters within us. And created a new monster instead.

  A sharp pain sank into my breast, and a sound of surprise escaped me. Surprise and anguish. And relief. God. Finally. It hurt worse than I was expecting, but then it was supposed to. That was what made it punishment. The second strike drew a gasp from me. The third, a soft whine.