by Mae Doyle
Once my family was out of the picture, though, and I was alone…
There wasn’t any reason for them to want to find me.
That sinking feeling, along with the nagging thought that I had to bury my dad and that I’d lost my virginity to my fucking captor made it hard for me to swallow the steak he put in front of me, but I managed.
Okay, I did more than manage. He was not only a fucking god in the bedroom, but also in the kitchen, and that tiny little fact really pissed me off.
I dug deep, but even though my dad had given me words of wisdom for most every single problem that I would ever run into in my life, for some reason, he’d skipped any bits of wisdom that would help out when I’d slept with my captor. And liked it.
“You okay? You look like you smelled something bad. From where I’m sitting, this smells amazing.” N Nicolo gestured at his plate and then grinned at me.
A panty-melting grin. I groaned internally and speared a piece of steak, enjoying the bright red that flowed from it before I popped it in my mouth. Knives weren’t even necessary to cut this stuff. It was insane, and definitely better than any steak I’d ever eaten before.
“I’m fine. I just want to go home.”
“Darling, you don’t have a home to go to. Don’t you get that? Your dad is dead. You’d be dead if I hadn’t come along and saved your sweet little ass. You go strolling back through your front doors like nothing ever happened and the only thing that you’ll get is a bullet in the brain.”
He took a huge bite of corn and then washed it down with a drink of water.
His words sat like stones in my stomach and I pushed my plate away. “I think you’re wrong. I know that everything would be okay. I just can’t stay here with you any longer. I have…I have to go home.”
My chair tipped over as I stood up from the table, but Nicolo didn’t move. He had his eyes locked on me but he didn’t show any sign of wanting to follow me.
“I can’t be here.” Even though I was starting to sound like a broken record, I didn’t think that I could help it. It was almost impossible for me to handle the fact that I was stuck in this cabin with Nicolo, that I’d slept with him that…
I was spiraling.
I knew it, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
“You need to calm down.” Nicolo looked so relaxed that I wanted to punch him. If I wasn’t dealing with an injured shoulder and hadn’t promised him that I would attack him again then I’d lunge at him. I’d throw myself at his shoulder, pin him to the floor and then…what?
Punch him? Kiss him? Fuck him?
“Never, in the history of ever, has a woman calmed down when an asshole told her to,” I snapped back, turning from the table to stomp off to the bedroom. When I saw that there wasn’t a door hanging on the hinges, I lost it.
“And give me back the fucking doors!” I yelled, running over to hit him. I smacked him in the shoulder with my good arm, balling my hand into a fist and enjoying the thunk it made as I made contact with his muscle.
“You don’t deserve a door,” Nicolo responded, popping another bite of steak into his mouth. “You’re acting out, and you need to calm down or I’m not going to be able to talk to you.”
“Calm down!” I screamed, grabbing his plate and throwing it on the floor.
It shattered, drops of juice flying across the floor as his corn spun under the table. Nicolo sat silent for a moment, then stood up and stepped towards me, his arm out to grab me.
But before he could, something flew through the windows. The glass shattered, tiny pieces scattering across the floor, and Nicolo slammed me to the ground, his body landing on top of mine. I screamed with pain as agony shot through my shoulder, but he immediately clamped his hand over my mouth.
The desire to bite him was strong, but the look on his face terrified me.
“Shut the fuck up for once in your life, Isabella,” he hissed, his head tilted to the side. He was looking at the broken window, but it was black as sin outside and there wasn’t any chance of seeing a fucking thing.
Tears sprung to my eyes, not only because of the pain in my shoulder, but because I felt a flash of fear. If the terror I felt was what he had been trying to keep me away from by keeping me from going home, then I didn’t want to go anywhere.
He won. He fucking won.
“Will you shut up?” He whispered, his lips grazing my ear. I nodded and he removed his hand from my mouth, letting me suck in a deep breath.
“What the fuck was that?” I whispered. The sound barely left my mouth, it was like I was breathing the words, not even speaking them out loud.
“That,” he whispered back, his eyes still searching the windows, “was someone coming to finish the job.”
“I’m the job,” I whispered, fear gripping my heart. My body felt chilled and I was actually grateful that Nicolo was on top of me. He radiated heat and I felt like I wanted to crawl inside of him. If he could just hold me and protect me, then I’d be okay.
I just knew it.
“Stay down,” he commanded, then slid off of me. My shoulder ached and I did my best to half drag, half crawl under the table. I’d much rather have been in the kitchen, but there wasn’t any way I was going to try to make it across the room to hide.
Nicolo rolled across the floor and then popped up next to the window, pulling a pistol from the back of his pants. I hadn’t even noticed that he had it stored there, and the sight of it in his hand made my mouth go dry.
I could handle myself. I’d proven that time and time again, but knowing that someone was trying to shoot me, someone I couldn’t even see, terrified me.
I’d wanted so badly to go to home, but once the shit hit the fan, I realized that Nicolo was right.
Fuck.
Even though the last thing that I really wanted was to be locked in a cabin with him, it was definitely preferable to being killed, although it looked like the same assholes who kidnapped me before were perfectly willing to come here to finish the job.
“How did they find us?” I whispered at Nicolo’s back. He didn’t move or answer me. In fact, he was peering out the window with such intensity that I was convinced that he could see something out there, and it gave me chills.
“Nicolo!” It was a whisper-yell, which wasn’t something that I was particularly skilled at, but at least he turned around to look at me. His normally calm face was twisted with rage and a bit of fear. “What the hell are we going to do? Give me a gun!”
He scoffed and turned back to look outside before suddenly standing up, darting across the room, and turning off the inside lights. The cabin was thrust into darkness and I blinked hard, trying to readjust my eyes. It took a moment, but I quickly could see again.
Well, kinda. The shapes in the house were gray and dark, huge hulking pieces of furniture that I knew I would hit my shin on if I tried to make a run for it. Nicolo was coming towards me, slowly picking his way around the sofa to the table, his gun still drawn and his eyes on the window.
“I think they bailed for a moment. You need to get to the bedroom.”
“Like hell.” I pulled myself up to a stand and looked up into his face. “I want to come with you. I can handle myself.”
Even though it was dark in the cabin, I could see feel the way his eyes slid over my body and could almost hear him chuckle. “You think that you’re any good when you’re injured? To the bedroom.”
My temper flared. If I didn’t know any better that we were under attack, I’d think that he just wanted to get me back in bed. I opened my mouth to tell him this, but before I could say anything, another window shattered as a bullet came streaking into the house.
“Now!” He shouted, bending down and grabbing me. He easily tossed me over his shoulder, and even though the pain in my shoulder was severe, I didn’t cry out. I bit down on my good hand, my knuckles hard in my mouth. My teeth sank into my skin, but it was better than crying out.
“Oof!” The sound left me as I slammed onto th
e bed, but Nicolo wasn’t done with me. “Maybe you should have left the door,” I spat at him, forcing myself to sit up.
He reached out and grabbed my good arm, yanking me to him, then slammed the drawer on the bedside table shut. Before I could argue, cold metal snapped shut on my wrist and then onto the headboard of the bed.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hissed, yanking on my arm. The handcuffs held and I glared at him, even though I was sure that he couldn’t see me in the dark. “You’re…what? Going to handcuff me and leave me here so that I can get shot?”
“No,” he corrected, flipping a blanket up and over me to keep me warm, “I’m going to handcuff you and keep you here so I can go get rid of these assholes who are trying to kill you. Although I know that you think you can tromp around in the woods and be just fine, I’d rather not get you murdered.”
“You’re okay with kidnapping me but you draw the line at murdering me?”
He paused in the doorway and turned back to me. My eyes hurt from straining into the dark to try to see his features. Even though I could see his bulk, I couldn’t see his face, and that’s why there wasn’t any way for me to prepare for what he did next.
Nicolo bent low, his cologne suddenly surrounding me. I took a deep breathe, but before I could say anything else to him, he kissed me. His hand forked in my hair, twisting so that I couldn’t move. His hot mouth crushed mine, forcing any complaints that I was going to make to completely leave my mind. My body responded to him like I wanted him – desire pooling between my legs and my core tightening.
I tried to reach for him with my good hand, and the clang of the metal handcuffs on the bed brought me back to reality. Nicolo leaned back, and even in the dark I could see the satisfied smirk on his face.
“You just stay here like a good little girl and I’ll make sure to reward you when I get back. No screaming, Isabella, unless you want to wear a gag.”
My mouth went dry as I thought about what he was going to do to me when he returned. Without saying anything else, he left the room, slipping silently into the dark of the cabin. I listened hard, my heart pounding in my ears, and I heard the faint click of him opening and closing the front door behind him.
I really was all alone. I had no idea what he was going to do to me, but I had a pretty good feeling that he was going to come back. Any other guy and I’d be worried that my desiccated corpse would be found in the bed years later, but Nicolo?
Yeah, he pissed me off. Yeah, he wasn’t letting me leave. But part of me trusted him. That realization alone was honestly scarier than anything else that had happened to me.
Chapter 12
Nicolo
I had to get Isabella off of my mind if I was going to make it out of the woods alive. Some asshole, or assholes, had found us, and that didn’t scare me. It just pissed me off. I’d been coming to this cabin forever without any problems, but the one time I bring a girl here and the shit rains from the sky.
Ducking low, I ran down the front steps and paused right inside the woods surrounding the cabin. It was almost a new moon, so even though there was a little light coming from the sky, it wasn’t nearly enough to light up the clearing around the cabin. It certainly wasn’t enough to penetrate into the darker woods.
Unless the assholes out there had some kind of advanced gear that would let them see in the dark, we were all on equal footing. Well, except for the fact that I knew the woods like the back of my hand. I knew the shortcuts, the briar patches, where the bridge looked like it was going to make it across the river, but you only would if you knew how to jump the middle board every time.
Those assholes didn’t. Right?
I steadied my breathing and thought about where the bullets had entered the windows. They’d come from this side of the cabin, but the trajectory told me that the person shooting hadn’t been on the ground. They’d been in the trees.
Immediately, I dropped into a crouch and peered up around me. Huge trees stretched up to the sky, their branches all interwoven, making it difficult for me to tell where one tree ended and another started. It was obvious that at least one shooter was up in the trees, assuming that there was more than one.
I knew this type of asshole. They didn’t just bring one person with them. They came with a crew, ready to fight, especially if they were pissed because they didn’t get the job done right the first time.
Slowly I walked under the trees, glancing in front of me from time to time, but mostly keeping my face turned up to the sky. It was going to be tricky, but I had a pretty good feeling that I’d be able to see the mass of a person up in the tree.
Isabella kept sneaking into my mind. I had a hard time ignoring the way my cock thickened in my pants whenever I was around her. She had a fiery little mouth that would be much better used sucking my cock than spouting nonsense off at me.
As soon as I took care of our little problem out here, I was going back for her. I’d had a taste of how delicious she was, and I wasn’t about to pass up another opportunity, especially when she was cuffed to the bed and just didn’t have anywhere to go.
Grinning to myself, I took another step around an old oak tree and stopped, peering up through the dark. It was entirely possible that the dark spot up in the tree was an old nest of some sort, but I would bet anything that it was a person.
I whistled low, the sound like a quail in the underbrush, and I wasn’t surprised when the shape above me shifted a little.
You know what doesn’t shift when they hear something? Nests.
As much as I’d love to look the asshole in the face when I shot him, I needed to bring him down. It was going to be loud, even with the suppressor, and that meant that anyone else would be clued in that I was onto them, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. Frowning, I pointed my gun up at the dark spot and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet slammed into the mass with a sickening thud that I knew all too well and the person holding tight to the branches lost their grip and tumbled out of the trees, hitting every branch below them on the way down. I had no way of knowing where I had hit the person, so as soon as they landed on the ground, I jumped on top of them, pinning them to the dirt before ripping their gun from them and tossing it away.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, shoving my pistol up under their chin. Even through the jacket they had on, I could feel a racing heart.
The person shook their head and I shoved harder, the cold metal of my gun pressing so deeply into their skin that it would bruise, except they wouldn’t be alive for it to bruise. They were going to die and we both knew it.
“Tony Marino,” he finally gasped out. “Please, don’t kill – ”
I hate people who beg. Fucking hate them. Hate their spineless attitude, the way they seem so badass until it’s time for them to die, how they act like they’re better than everyone until they’re shitting their pants like a baby.
That’s why I pulled the trigger. The first time I shot him wasn’t going to be enough, but I didn’t want to hear a fucking thing from Tony about how I should save him.
Fucking beggars.
Rolling off of him, I grabbed his gun and darted deeper into the woods. The Marino family wasn’t going to be working on their own, so I needed to be ready for them. The last place I wanted to be when they came to find fucking Tony was crouched over his body like an idiot.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, I heard the crackle of a radio. “Tony? You okay? I heard a shot.”
Grinning to myself in the dark, I didn’t move. Sure, I could have gone to get the radio, but there wasn’t any reason. I was going to find this other guy, no problem.
“Tony, do you copy?” Another voice asked, and I raised my eyebrow. Two other guys. Didn’t matter. They could send dozens and I still wouldn’t let them anywhere near Isabella. I was willing to do anything and everything that I had to protect her, including killing some assholes in the woods.
“Switch to channel seven,” the first voice commanded, and tha
t did make me crawl out from the bushes to grab the radio. I fumbled a moment in the dark but I found the knob and switched over to their new channel.
Second guy was talking. “ – if Tony is dead then we need to get the fuck out of here. He was our eyes, and now we don’t know what’s going on.”
“Not a chance.” The first guy was obviously the one who was supposed to be in control. He sounded tired and exasperated. “Our job was to kill her. The other guys couldn’t, and we have to finish it off. Now, where are you?”
A long pause and I was afraid that the second guy wasn’t going to tell his little buddy exactly where he was going to did. “By the bridge.”
“Stay there. I know you’re spooked, and I’m on my way.”
I clicked the radio off and clipped it to my pants before turning and running into the woods. It made me sick to leave Isabella in the house by herself, but I wasn’t going to be so far away that I couldn’t still see the house. The bridge had always felt like it was deep in the woods when I was younger, but as I’d gotten older, I’d seen how easily I could be seen playing there when my mom stood on the porch.
As soon as I saw the guy standing by the bridge, I slowed down. He was leaning against it, shifting position from time to time and looking around him like he was nervous. I dropped to a crouch ten feet away and lifted my pistol, centering the shot to go right through his forehead.
Before I could pull the trigger, though, the first guy walked up. “You okay? You look spooked.”
The second guy nodded. “He got Tony.”
“Fuck Tony. We’re still here, and I’m going to make sure that it stays that way, okay?” He reached out and patted his buddy on the shoulder, which was just when I put a bullet through his throat.
The blood sprayed out and all over the second guy, who started to scream. He turned and tripped, dropping his gun, then jerked to the left and ran across the bridge.
Asshole didn’t know about the middle board. I ran after him, grinning, stepping over the body of the guy bleeding out on the ground. He feebly reached up like he was going to try to grab my pants as I jumped him, but even if he had, he couldn’t have pulled very hard.
