I looked away. Just five hours, I told myself. Get her to a phone and then we can part ways. Five hours. You can do five hours. I’d just have to harden myself and be gruff with her. Keep her at arm’s length. I could do that…, right?
I risked looking at her again. She was barefoot and that made her seem even smaller and more helpless as she looked up at me. That protective urge I was fighting came rushing back.
Dammit!
“Yeah,” I told her. “I can show you the way.”
10
Ralavich
I HURLED the decanter across the room. It shattered, glittering shards spraying across the marble floor as the rich stink of bourbon filled the air. “How could you let this happen?” I bellowed. “You let her steal a car and just drive off?!” I pointed at the three guards who’d chased Bethany down. “And then your men, they just let her waltz off with some yokel?!”
“You didn’t see this guy,” one of the guards muttered. “He was fucking huge. Knew how to handle a gun, too.”
I scoffed and, behind me, Alik gave a grunt of agreement. He’s former Spetsnaz, Russian special forces, and he didn’t think much of the mansion’s guards.
The head of the club, a bald man called Preston Cairns, was unfazed. “Mr. Ralavich. I understand your frustration. While you wait for this to be resolved, perhaps you’d like to spend some time with one of the others you purchased? I could have one of them brought to your room, along with some vodka.”
I glared at him. I’d disliked him right from the start. I knew he thought I was beneath him, that I wasn’t good enough to be in his fucking club. But he needed my money and I needed him. There were powerful Russian men who would pay dearly to fuck unwilling American women. With the supply chain Cairns had set up, I could make a fortune.
But for myself, I wanted Bethany. It wasn’t just that she had a body made to give pleasure and a perfect, sweet face. There was something about her I found fascinating. Back in St. Petersburg, I’d sat for hours, watching her in the call center. At first, it had just been about her innocence, her goodness. The way she helped her colleagues, taking the calls they didn’t want to. The way she looked truly pained, as callers called her a bitch or a whore. That was intoxicating. Few women were innocent, anymore. Defiling a woman like that would be fun.
But then I discovered something else about her. As I watched her take call after call, hours of abuse that would break any other person, I saw an inner strength in her. Deep down, she was made of rock.
Breaking a woman like that, seeing her fight and fight and finally snap and become my personal whore...that would be an experience. One I wasn’t going to miss out on. “I don’t want the others,” I snapped. “I want her.”
Cairns sighed. “We have procedures in place, Mr. Ralavich. We’ll get her back. And we’ll kill the man who’s helping her.”
11
Cal
WE WERE WALKING. I wanted to make as much progress as we could before the clouds moved in and we lost the moonlight. Bethany was keeping up a respectable pace, considering she was in bare feet and wearing a dress.
The dress. With the moonlight shining through it and the breeze shifting and flattening the thin layers, it looked ghostly and insubstantial, like those gorgeous curves were cloaked in nothing but mist. When she took a step, I could see it pull tight across her ass. When she lifted one knee to climb over a fallen tree, the dress fell away from her leg and I glimpsed her smooth, pale thigh.
I forced myself to look away.
“So you live out here?” she asked.
I went to answer but nothing came. It had been so long since I’d talked to anyone. When I’d first found her, the adrenaline had been flowing and we’d been talking about things, and that had helped. But now we were onto small talk, and the parts of my brain that were supposed to do that were jamming and snarling like rusty gears. It was all I could do to spit out a few words. “That way.” I nodded east. “‘Bout ten hours’ walk.”
She looked around her. “I can’t imagine being so far from everyone.”
She didn’t understand that being far from everyone was exactly what I needed. What I deserved. I looked down at Rufus. We had each other. That was enough, right?
Rufus looked up at me, then trotted over to Bethany and pushed up against her legs as she walked. She reached down and tousled his coat. “I can’t believe he found me, in all this.”
I grunted. If it was fate, fate had a twisted sense of humor. I shouldn’t be anyone’s white knight.
I figured I’d just stay quiet: that would be best. But Bethany’s voice was comforting, soaking into my mind like soothing oil. Slowly, grudgingly, I felt those jammed-up mechanisms start to ease and turn, just as they had when I met her in Seattle. And I was worried about her. “You want to tell me what happened?” I asked at last.
She lowered her head and the air filled with that heavy, aching silence you get when what’s inside is too painful to let out. For a while, I wasn’t sure she was going to be able to tell me. But one advantage of being not much of a talker: I’m a hell of a listener. We tramped through the undergrowth for a good mile in silence, the only sound being the snap of twigs and the rustle of leaves, and eventually, it started to come out. She told me about working at the call center and her boss, watching them all on cameras, and this Russian guy Ralavich and the secret club at the mansion.
The rage rose inside me, white-hot and vicious. I wanted to hunt this guy down, make him as scared and helpless as he’d made her.
She told me how she’d escaped. And as I listened, I started to realize just how out of her element she was in the woods. She kept glancing around us at the dark trees, as if afraid of what might come out of them. Every step she took was uncertain. She was as out of place here as—
As I’d been, in Seattle. My chest contracted in sympathy. Aw, hell…
“We need to help the others,” she said.
I was thrown. “Others?”
“Ralavich bought nine other women. And there were other men there, they must have bought women already, or theirs are on their way. We have to get them out!”
I just stared at her. She was exhausted and terrified, she’d been through hell and she was still worried about helping others. This woman had a core of steel. She didn’t seem to realize how brave she was. I nodded dumbly.
Telling me about it must have brought it all back because her shoulders tensed and her breathing went tight. She marched quicker through the undergrowth, as if trying to put distance between her and the memories. “I’m sorry I involved you,” she said. “They’re going to come after us. They’re going to come after us and find us—”
She was starting to panic and I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t used to being around people, let alone a scared woman. “Hey…” I muttered awkwardly.
“They’re going to find us, they’ll find you and they’ll kill you and they’ll take me back—”
“Hey,” I said, more urgently.
“Back to that place and to—to Ralavich and then—”—she gulped—” to Russia and—”
“Hey!” I grabbed her hand and hauled her to a stop. God, her hand felt so small in mine, her fingers slender and cool. “Now you listen. You listening?”
She blinked and I saw the wetness in her eyes. That need swelled up in me and my chest went tight. For a second, I couldn’t speak. But when I did, the words came from somewhere deep inside, each one heavy and loaded with power. “He will not get you,” I told her. “Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
The words spilled out before I could stop them. “Because I’m going to protect you.”
She bit her lip and nodded. And I just—
I knew what I was. I knew I was as far from a hero as it was possible to get. But the way she looked at me...she believed me. She believed in me. It made me want to be that guy.
I gazed down into her eyes and the protective urge rose higher. All I wanted to do was sweep her up in my arms and
crush her against my chest. I still had hold of her hand...and I couldn’t let go.
12
Bethany
I WAS STANDING so close to him that I had my head tilted way back to look up at him. Those cornflower-blue eyes blazed down at me and the determination I saw there...it made me feel safer than I ever had in my life.
He was still holding my hand and I could feel the warmth of him throbbing into me in big, urgent pulses. He squeezed gently and I never wanted him to let go. That silver guitar string inside me was drawn tight.
And just for a second, he was open. Vulnerable. And I glimpsed something, buried beneath all the strength. Searing pain and heavy, brooding anger, trapped inside, like catching sight of a river of magma as a gap opened up between huge, heavy rocks. I squeezed his hand. What is it? What’s wrong?
Then it was gone and there was only impenetrable rock again. He dropped my hand and looked up at the sky. “Cloud’s nearly on us,” he muttered. “We should get moving.”
I blinked in surprise, then nodded, my mind spinning. He was in agony, inside, but he had it so well hidden, I hadn’t seen it until now. What happened to him?
He marched on, stoic and silent, and I fell into step alongside him. I missed the touch of his hand already. And then, as the wind picked up a little, I shivered. It wasn’t just the cold, it was the endless blackness of the woods around us. I felt so small, in the middle of all this—
He noticed, cursed, and whipped off his thick, red-and-black plaid shirt. “Sorry. Didn’t think. You must be frozen.” Suddenly, the shirt was around me, big enough to be a coat. It was gloriously thick and still warm from his body and it smelled of sweet woodsmoke and pinecones. I cuddled into it. Cal pulled it closed and then kept his hands on the lapels for a moment as he stared down at me. He was still gruff, but I could hear the concern in his voice. “Better?”
I nodded dumbly, overcome by the look in his eyes: that fierce will to protect me and, beneath it, just a hint of that awful pain. I have to help him!
He removed his hands almost reluctantly and we walked on, Cal on one side of me and Rufus pushing up against my legs on the other.
Cal seemed to know exactly where he was going but I couldn’t understand how: everything looked the same to me. We climbed carefully down steep banks and up rises, over a few small streams and through spooky, empty clearings where the moonlight lanced down in thick shafts through the trees.
We came to a gully as deep as I was tall and he had to lower me down by the hand until my feet touched bottom. On the far side, he put his hands together and motioned for me to put my foot in them, so he could boost me up. As I pushed off and climbed, I was very aware of just how thin the dress was, and how warm his cheek was as it nestled against my hip.
A little further on, he grabbed my shoulder to stop me. “Gorse bushes,” he warned, nodding at a sea of undergrowth ahead of us. “They’ll scratch your legs to pieces.”
We looked at each other. Then he held his arms out and nodded. I’ll carry you.
I swallowed. He bent down and I tentatively put my hands on his shoulders and...jumped—
My breasts pillowed against his chest and I went heady. His arms folded around my back and pressed me closer. God, he was so big: it was like hugging a bear. My legs slid either side of his body and I closed my eyes as his hard abs mashed against my groin. It was just like my dream.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” I replied, trying to keep my voice level.
He straightened up and I gasped as we lifted into the air. The wind blew my hair across his face for a second and I felt him sway. “You okay?” I asked, worried.
Now it almost sounded like he was trying to keep his voice level. “Mm-hmm.”
Then he was marching through the gorse bushes, the rough denim of his jeans battering the thorns aside. Rufus expertly threaded his way between and under the tangled stems and waited for us on the far side, tail wagging.
When we were through, Cal put me gently down. My whole front was deliciously warm from where it had pressed against him. The feel of him—the huge, solid bulges of his pecs, the washboard of his abs—was imprinted on my mind, never to be forgotten. It had felt so right, like that was my natural place, and all I wanted to do was nestle in again. I looked at a tree in the distance, unable to meet his eyes, and hoped he couldn’t see how red my cheeks had gone. He pulled a few gorse stems from his jeans, freeing the thorns that had stabbed through the fabric. I was sure he must have picked up a few painful scratches but he made no mention of it.
A little further on, we came to a clearing and he stopped. “We should stop here for the night,” he said.
Spend the night out here?! “Why?”
He pointed at the moon. “Cloud’s just about to hit. Once it does, there’ll be no light at all. Remember that gully we crossed? We could step right into the next one and break our legs.”
I stared at the thick bank of cloud that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon. It was already nibbling at the moon. I nodded, completely thrown. In the city, the night just means the sky changes color. The idea that darkness could trap you somewhere until morning was alien and chilling.
He found a spot, took a blanket from his small backpack, and laid it out on the ground. “Stay here with her,” he told Rufus. Rufus immediately sat down on the blanket. I knelt next to him and watched as Cal walked off into the trees, getting smaller and smaller and then—
It came as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch. One second, I was watching Cal through the trees; the next, I couldn’t even see Rufus next to me. It was black, the sort of darkness I’d never known. I looked around in panic but there was nothing, not the soft, glowing square of a window with a streetlight outside, not the bright rectangle of a phone screen, not even the tiny, cold sapphire of a laptop power LED. I couldn’t even tell if I still had my eyes open. I heard myself begin to panic breathe—
And then I heard the slow panting of Rufus next to me. I groped in the darkness and found him, then flung my arms around his big, furry neck, cuddling close. “Good boy,” I whispered to him, relieved. “Good boy.”
I strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything. How far had Cal gone? Would he be able to find his way back? I petted Rufus, stroking his head and then scratching behind his ears. He pushed his head into my hand in ecstasy and thumped the ground with his hind leg.
It was the first time I’d really stopped since this whole thing began. Reality caught up with me and my stomach lurched. Only that morning, I’d been starting my shift at the call center. I should be tucked up in bed, now, asleep, ready for another shift tomorrow morning, and instead I was...I looked around at the impenetrable blackness. I was out here, in the middle of nowhere. And somewhere out there, the men from the club were looking for us. Just knowing that things like the club existed was terrifying.
And what about Cal? He’d saved me from the guards, he was taking care of me...but I still barely knew him. And I was out here alone with him, about to sleep out under the stars. About the only thing I knew about him was that he lived way out here on his own. Didn’t that make him a little...strange?
Suddenly, I heard footsteps, right in front of me. I sat bolt upright, but then Rufus gave a happy woof and leaned forward to lick a hand and I knew it was Cal. I heard him clearing a patch of ground, then the rattle of dry twigs and the clack of branches as he built a fire. Then the flare of a match, dazzlingly bright after the darkness. For a second, it lit him up as he hunkered down in front of me, his face only a few feet from mine. It threw dancing shadows under those heavy, brooding brows. It turned the gold of his hair and beard to warm amber. The flame danced in his eyes as he watched me and I realized it must be lighting me up for him, too.
I felt myself relax. Yes, he was a stranger. Yes, he was intimidatingly big. But there was something in the way he looked at me that told me he’d never, ever hurt me.
He put the match to the fire he’d built and the flame cau
ght and slowly rose. I’d never heard fire, before. I’d never been in a place quiet enough. Out here, it was like a living thing, a fourth person who’d joined us, filling the air with snaps and creaks, sticks shifting and tumbling as it devoured them. An orange glow filled the clearing.
Cal sat down close to the fire. “Let me see your feet.”
I scooched around on the blanket and extended my feet towards him. Rufus pressed close to my shoulder, curious about this new game. I’d almost forgotten about my feet hurting: I’d been walking on them for so many hours, the pain had just become normal and the numbing cold had helped a little, too. But now, as Cal’s big hands warmed them and the blood flow returned, I winced at all the cuts and scrapes I’d picked up.
“Nothing too bad,” Cal muttered. “But you can’t keep walking around like that or they’ll get infected.” He took a first aid kit from his backpack and cleaned and dressed the wounds, his hands gentle despite their size. I had to push my feet almost into his lap so that he could get to my heels and when he lifted them, the dress slithered down my legs. I pushed it back into place. It slithered down again and I felt Cal’s eyes following it.
When he finished, he sat back and considered. “My boots won’t fit you.”
I blinked, my heart unexpectedly lifting and bobbing. He would have given me his boots?!
“But I’ve got something that might work,” he said. He dug in his backpack again and brought out a pair of dry, thick socks, then gently slid them onto my feet. They felt so good I nearly wept. Then he brought out some waterproof bags and put one over each foot, tying them in place with a cord around the bottom of my ankle and again at the top.
I tried a few experimental steps and they were great: warm and so much more comfortable than walking barefoot. “Thank you,” I said with feeling. Then I looked down at myself and laughed. I was in a billowing ivory dress, torn in places and stained with dirt, topped off with a plaid shirt that was far too big for me. There were pine needles in my hair, my calves were muddy and I had plastic bags on my feet. “I look ridiculous.”
Deep Woods Page 5
