Dirty Halo

by Julie Johnson

“I very much doubt that.”

  I try to glance away, but his eyes — those blue, blue, blue eyes — are holding me captive.

  “You wouldn’t be in this car if you weren’t important. So… who are you?” he asks again, less patiently. “A friend of Chloe’s? Octavia’s new assistant? Gerald’s long lost niece?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I swallow hard, hoping it might dispel some of the panic rising in my chest. “Look, there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t know any of those people you just rattled off. I’m not important. I’m no one.”

  He lifts his hands in a defensive gesture, then settles back against his seat and lets his eyes slip closed once more. “Suit yourself.”

  Angling my body away, I cross my arms over my chest and peer resolutely at the blacked-out window.

  Well, that was a total fail…

  We drive onward, only the sound of the road beneath the tires breaking the silence between us. It’s so quiet, I can hear each rhythmic breath he takes. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned about our situation. In fact, he seems downright relaxed. It’s an infuriating contrast to my own state of distress.

  “How are you so calm?” I snap after another minute has passed in total silence, glancing back at him despite my best efforts.

  His eyes don’t open.

  “Hello? Can you hear me? Or did you consume so much alcohol you’ve slipped into a coma?”

  The only indication he’s listening is the slight curl of his lips, twisting up in a smirk.

  “We need to strategize. I think together we might have a shot at taking them down, when the door opens. If we—”

  He snorts — loudly — and finally opens his eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious!”

  “Love, it’s been a long night. A night which I intended to spend getting gloriously drunk to forget about all the shitty things that have happened today. Instead, I’m stuck with a delusional purple-haired pixie who’s either legitimately dumb or simply playing it, and, to top it off, my bourbon has run dry. Which means a hangover of massive proportions is soon to hit.” He closes his eyes once more. “So, no. I’m not going to strategize with you. I’m going to sleep and hopefully, when I wake up, this entire fucking day will have been a nightmare. You included.”

  Purple-haired pixie?!

  Nightmare?!

  God, he’s such a prick. I should’ve known he’d be about as useful as a cellphone with a dead battery. But I’m not about to adopt his defeatist perspective. If he won’t fight back with me… I’ll just have to do it on my own.

  Rage burning through me like fire, I turn to the partition and begin to wail on it with both fists. I let my anger fuel each punch.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  I bang and bang until my flesh is stinging and sore.

  A dozen hits.

  Fifty.

  One hundred.

  “LET! ME! OUT!”

  My raw screams are punctuated by skin-tearing strikes. My muscles are aching with the effort, but I don’t stop.

  “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US?”

  An angry tear streaks down my cheek. I don’t pause to brush it aside.

  “YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!”

  He moves so fast, I don’t even see him coming. One minute I’m pounding the partition, the next I’m pressed tight against a broad chest, my wrists neatly manacled by two massive hands, my ass firmly planted on two unyielding thighs. I try to jerk myself free, but his arms are steel bands. It would take a brick of C4 to extract me from his hold.

  When his mouth hits my ear, I go absolutely motionless; I don’t even dare draw a breath, frozen like a helpless bird between the paws of a lion.

  One wrong move, he could tear me to pieces.

  “Enough,” he orders in a soft tone that somehow lacks all gentleness — like the whisper of a sharp blade sliding into the space between two ribs. I thrash, but he doesn’t release me. In fact, he only pulls me tighter against him, until I can feel every delicious indentation of his chest plastered against the planes of my back. From this proximity, his scent — secondhand smoke and top-shelf bourbon and something spicy I can’t quite put my finger on — is intoxicating enough to make my head spin.

  “Let go of me,” I hiss between clenched teeth.

  “I will, when you agree to stop hurting yourself.”

  “Hurting myself? I’m trying to get us out of this mess.”

  “Love, there’s no getting out.”

  “You haven’t even tried!”

  “Thing you should know about me…” His nose grazes the side of my throat and I try not to shiver. “I don’t expend effort on useless outcomes. I’d rather put my energy into more… viable… pursuits, where the endgame is guaranteed to be satisfying. For all parties involved.”

  My thighs clench of their own volition. I never thought the word viable could be so damn sexy.

  I was wrong.

  “Listen up,” I bark. “You may be completely unbothered by the fact that we’re trapped in here, about to be sold into the sex trade. Or the internal organ trade. Or… some other kind of illegal back alley trade Netflix will no doubt release a documentary about in the coming months…”

  He snorts.

  I ignore the sound. “But I haven’t resigned myself to dying before my twenty-first birthday. So, let go of me. Now.”

  “Only twenty,” he murmurs, his breath warm on my skin. “So very young. So very naive.”

  “As opposed to you, hardened and wise in your old age?” I scoff bitterly. “What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

  “Too old for you, in any case.”

  “Perfect, since I’d never in a million years be interested,” I hiss scathingly. “Now, let me go. I mean it.”

  “Or what?” The streak of humor in his tone tells me he’s enjoying this verbal sparring.

  I clench my jaw. “I’ll… I’ll…”

  “Scream at the top of your lungs? Bang your tiny little fists raw?” He chuckles again, and I fight the urge to head-butt him. “Because that plan has been working so well for you. “

  “You’re demon-spawn.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “Thank god for small miracles,” I snap. “Now let me go.”

  “In a minute. When you’re calm.”

  I thrash again, but it’s a halfhearted attempt. All I manage to do is land myself more firmly in his lap. Even in his semi-inebriated state, he’s far stronger than me.

  Damn it.

  Damn him.

  Much to my dismay, I realize there’s only one way out of this. I expel a sharp breath and strive to slow my rapid pulse.

  Breathe, Emilia.

  Just breathe.

  For the next few moments, we simply sit there — two strangers pressed together in the dark, his body cradling mine like a steel glove. I attempt to calm myself in slow degrees, focusing on the rhythm of my breaths, matching their tempo to his. And though it’s totally insane… though the man at my back is quite possibly the most infuriating human being to ever cross my path… for the first time all night, for the first time since I saw the news about the Lancasters… the panic coursing through my veins eases, tempered by the stirring of another emotion. The fight drains out of me, and in its place…

  Not calm.

  Not peace of mind.

  Not rational thought.

  My heartbeat, which by all accounts should be slowing, begins to speed. The tempo of my breath increases, faster and faster, in time with each warm exhale I feel against my neck. Without any conscious effort at all, my spine bows slightly against his chest. I feel his thigh muscles flex beneath me and an unbidden bolt of arousal shoots straight between my legs.

  Oh, god.

  Oh, no.

  This cannot be happening.

  The currents in the air change, one sort of tension fading into another so swiftly, I can’t quite define the moment I stop feeling like a
captive in his hands. So subtly, I can’t pinpoint the second his hold alters from one of confinement to… something quite different.

  What the hell, Emilia!

  You hate this guy, remember?

  I hear a sharp intake of air from him and I know he feels it too — this new tension between us. His fingers flex against the fragile bones in my wrists, as though he’s fighting for control. Not over me; I’ve long since stopped struggling.

  Over himself.

  “Tell me your name,” he murmurs, shattering the silence. There’s a new edge in his voice that wasn’t there before. “Tell me who you are.”

  A reckless part of me wants to whisper something crazy — I’ll be whoever you want me to be — just to see how he’d react. To throw down a challenge and watch him rise to meet it. To let him use his capable hands to erase every raging feeling in my bloodstream until there’s nothing left but mindless passion.

  “I already told you,” I force myself to say instead. “I’m no one.”

  “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because your IQ is even lower than your standards, judging by the lipstick stains on your collar?”

  “Is someone jealous?”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Mmm.” His nose grazes my throat again and I feel my stomach flip. “I do have a rather active imagination…”

  “You’re heinous,” I inform him in a voice that would be much more convincing if it weren’t so damn breathy. “Now, let go of me.”

  He doesn’t respond. He also doesn’t loosen his grip.

  “You said you’d let me go when I was calm.” I swallow hard. “I’m calm.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  His thumbs stroke the paper-thin skin covering the veins in my wrists and I feel my heart skip a beat in response. “Then why can I feel your pulse pounding?”

  “My pulse tends to do that when I’m pissed off.”

  “Mhm.”

  Gritting my teeth, I strive to regain some control over my traitorous body. Frankly, it’s not listening to my brain at all anymore. It seems to be taking commands from another organ entirely. One south of the border, with a very different set of priorities.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  I suck in a bolstering breath and rack my brain for an escape route from this increasingly precarious situation. “Fine. Don’t let me go.” I shrug. “Fair warning, though, I’m about to throw up.”

  “Car sick?”

  “Nope. Being pressed up against you is making me nauseous.”

  He chuckles lowly. “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  He pauses for a long time. When his whisper hits my ear, I feel my internal temperature spike.

  “Liar.”

  I can’t think of anything to retort with because, well… he’s not wrong. The truth is, being pressed up against this man is making me feel many things, and sick isn’t one of them. If I’m feverish, it’s only from desire.

  Emilia, what the fuck are you doing? Get your head out of your hormones and get back to reality!

  In a move of desperation, I lurch sideways out of his arms and onto the seat. Or, I try to. Somehow, in my haste to get away, I miscalculate just how close together our bodies are. As I slide left, the motion brings my ass into full contact with the seam of his pants… and the undeniably swollen shaft that’s sprung to attention beneath.

  We both freeze at the impact.

  Holy.

  Fuck.

  He’s huge. And hard as a rock. Just the sensation of him through the fabric of my skirt sends a shockwave through me, strong enough to tear the remaining shreds of my composure into ribbons. It takes all my strength to hold my spine rigid, to keep my muscles tensed with indifference when every atom in my body is screaming that I should do the exact opposite. My heart is beating so hard, I’m sure he can hear it pounding at the pulse-point in my neck.

  I hate that a man I’ve never met before is affecting me this much, this fast. I hate that he’s been nothing but a jerk to me, that the world is falling apart around us, and that, regardless of all that… desire still throbs inside my veins, a relentless drumbeat.

  Hate it.

  Hate this.

  Hate him.

  So… what does it say about me that I’m more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life?

  There is something seriously wrong with you. That’s what it says, Emilia.

  He’s breathing hard. So am I. The moment drags on and on, neither of us saying a word, neither of us moving so much as a muscle. I have a feeling if I tried to pull away right now, he’d let me go with no resistance.

  So, why can’t I seem to budge?

  “Please,” I murmur finally. I’m trying to say please let me go but I can’t seem to conjure the rest of the words. For some unfathomable reason… my plea comes out sounding like I’m pleading for a wholly different sort of release.

  “Please what, love?” His voice is almost a growl.

  I press my lips tight together to contain the small sound that bubbles up from a dim, dangerous place inside me that I don’t want to acknowledge. A place that would gladly let this stranger take anything he wanted from me in this dark backseat, while giving me what would probably be the most exciting sex of my boring, vanilla life.

  Christ, Emilia. You’ve been kidnapped, the world is effectively ending… and you’re thinking about having sex with a man you loathe?

  His lips find my ear again and I practically moan at the sensation of his warm breath on the sensitive lobe. “You were right, you know. Earlier, what you said…”

  I blink stupidly.

  What did I say?

  Honestly, I’m not sure I care anymore…

  “I am a heartless asshole,” he whispers baldly. “You’d be wise to remember that.”

  Before I have a chance to retort, he releases me with a light shove. As soon as his hands fall away from my wrists, the fog of desire dissipates from my head. Reason returns swiftly and, with it, burning shame at my own weakness.

  This is exactly what happens when you let hormones hijack your brain, dummy…

  Face aflame, I scramble off his lap, back to my seat, as far from him as I can manage in this confined space. It’s no use — even pressed up against the hard plastic door panel, I can still feel his hands on my wrists, his breath on my neck, his heat crushing my back, his hard length…

  No!

  No.

  Never think about that again.

  It’s no use, though. Every atom in my body is still buzzing with supercharged sexual energy, despite the embarrassment clawing through my chest.

  He was only toying with you, I tell myself harshly. And you allowed yourself to get played like a damn harmonica.

  In theory, I’m smart enough to know that men like him are nothing but trouble — maybe served up with a side of a few screaming orgasms, but trouble all the same. Unfortunately, in reality, it’s a lot harder to ignore the ache spreading through my bloodstream like a lethal dose of heroin.

  Even without looking at him, I know he’s watching me. The weight of his stare rubs my nerve endings raw. I hope he can’t see the red staining my cheeks in the dark: evidence of just how thoroughly he managed to work his way beneath my skin in a few brief moments.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” I whisper, eyes dead ahead.

  There’s a heavy pause. “Like what?”

  “Like you’re trying to guess what color my underwear is.”

  “Love, I don’t need to guess. That skirt is so short, all I’d have to do was lean forward to find out.”

  My eyes roll so hard, I’m surprised they don’t get lodged in the back of my skull. “Honestly, of all the people I could’ve gotten abducted with, it figures I end up with someone like you…”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You really shouldn’t.” I shake my head, voice dropping to a disgruntled mutter. “Apparently the
horror of being grabbed by beefy men in bad suits and shoved into an SUV like a scene out of a bad James Bond movie wasn’t traumatizing enough. No! The true torture is an hour-long car ride in the company of an unbearable alpha male with a chip on his shoulder the size of the royal treasury.”

  “You know, that’s not the only thing the size of the royal treasury…”

  “You’re revolting.”

  “Funny, that’s not the vibe I was picking up from you while you were writhing in my lap.”

  “You mean when you groped me without consent? That’s not attraction. It’s assault.”

  The air goes so still, so tense, I almost cave and glance over at him. Earlier, when I insulted him, he was totally unfazed. This time, though, I’ve clearly struck some kind of nerve, because when he speaks again all teasing has been stripped from his voice. It’s almost a snarl.

  “I only grabbed you because you were hurting yourself, like a child having a tantrum. What happened after that, the way you reacted to me — that was something else. If you want to twist it in your head, if you want to pretend you didn’t feel it, that’s your prerogative. But don’t cry assault when we both know your racing pulse and wet panties are evidence of something else.”

  I flush, both chastised by his cold words and embarrassed by my own. I open my mouth to apologize for my unthinking accusation, then promptly snap it back closed.

  I don’t owe him an apology.

  I don’t owe him anything.

  He isn’t my friend. He isn’t my ally.

  He’s just a stranger in a bad situation.

  It’s probably far safer to keep it that way.

  The SUV rolls on beneath us, a steady rumble over unknown road. And though nearly another hour passes, we don’t speak again. Not when we feel the car make a sharp left turn. Not when we slow to a stop. Not even when the suits yank open the back doors and haul us out into the night.

  We’re finally here.

  ….wherever that may be.

  Chapter Five

  I’m not sure what I was expecting.

  Some kind of secret Germanian government facility? A wartime bunker complete with semi-automatic weaponry and helicopters circling overhead?

  Instead, I find myself teetering in my chunky black heels on the uneven gravel lining the circular driveway of a stately manor-house in the middle of the countryside. It’s three stories of impressive baroque architecture with a mansard roof and a marble-arched front doorway. There must be twenty windows on each floor, inset at precise intervals along the thick stone facade, all illuminated brightly from within.