Taken at Midnight: Black Mountain Academy

by Amelia Wilde

  Taken at Midnight

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Connect with Amelia

  Also by Amelia Wilde

  1

  Desiree

  I should have changed my clothes.

  Walking alone at night dressed up as a modern version of Cinderella—a slinky, strappy dress in eggshell blue—probably wasn’t my brightest idea. But when the show was over I wanted to spend another minute wearing the tiara and shining in the lights.

  There aren’t any lights on this stretch of sidewalk. The fake diamonds in the tiara no longer shine.

  And if I was paranoid, I would think that someone’s following me.

  My heels click and scrape along the sidewalk, the straps biting into the tops of my feet, and a cold breeze whips under the hem of the dress. I’m wearing tights—of course I’m wearing tights—but the bite of the air against my thighs feels almost obscene. I stayed late, helping the crew with the set. That’s why I’m here on a sidewalk at nearly midnight.

  So there’s the dress, the cold, the night pressing with pinprick stars through swaying branches. Houses on either side of the street watch blindly, windows dark, and I catch flashes of blue there—my dress. A fallen Cinderella hoofing it for too many blocks in her stage shoes.

  I’m probably imagining the hairs rising at the back of my neck. Anyone would get goose bumps in a stiff breeze like this. And because I got a little too caught up in the imagination of the play, I didn’t bring a coat. Actually, I didn’t bring a coat to the school auditorium at all, not in the rush and the adrenaline of putting on the show.

  Breathe in, breathe out. In the distance—three blocks?—light spills out onto someone’s yard. That has to be the party. I can almost hear the music at the edge of my senses, a deep, thudding bass. Like a heartbeat. Not like my heartbeat. My heartbeat is fast, racing, my body trying to keep warm and hustle up in these damn shoes.

  Fine—maybe I wasn’t honest about the paranoia. Maybe I lied by omission. I do feel it, but it has less to do with the dark and the cold and the creeping sensation of someone watching than it does with the prophecy.

  Prophecy is a strong word. A Biblical thing. Something weighted in magic. Obviously, I do not believe in magic. There’s no such thing as a fairy tale princess or a Prince Charming or anything other than grit and work and showmanship. Honestly. I’ll never be one of the rich kids but I can play one on stage. I can buy the cheap curling iron and spend time before school making myself over with drugstore makeup so none of them realize I’m on scholarship. And then I can walk my ass alone to the cast party so that nobody sees that my dad failed to pick me up. Again.

  Did it have something to do with that ridiculous fortune? I try not to think about it while I pick up the pace, but it just seems so immediate, being that it’s my birthday. Today. In three minutes, the clock will strike midnight, and I’ll be eighteen. That’s when I’ll meet my destiny, according to The Prophecy.

  I snort a little at the capital letters in my mind. Prophecy. That’s what my dad calls it. Once, when I was young, we visited one of those mystical shops, the kind with crystals and cards and all kinds of things displayed on shelves like precious magical objects. One of the women read my father’s cards, or so he says. And the cards laid it out plainly—as plainly as tarot cards can. They named a date and a time and a person. My eighteenth birthday. The first moment of the day. Me.

  And maybe, maybe, I’m hoping that something magical really does happen tonight. Maybe that’s why I’m still dressed in my costume from the school play, tiara still balanced on my head, my feet killing me. Listen—if something magic happens tonight, I want to be dressed for it, not slouching around in the skinny jeans and t-shirts I usually wear. I know it’s silly. The kind of thing only a girl would hope for, a girl who begged and begged to try out for every school play all her life even though she’s nothing special, really, just blonde and a half-decent singer.

  If something magical happens tonight—

  I take a deep breath and pause at the corner of the sidewalk. The street stretches out in either direction, far into the midnight black, dotted with a few halfhearted street lamps. Still, I look both ways at the intersection. Getting hit by a car would not be a magical experience. My purse pats my hip and I slip my hand inside to check my phone. A single text message awaits from my friend Chelsea, who is without question the nicest human on the face of the planet. She’s one of the evil stepsisters in the play but in real life she’s the closest thing I have to a best friend. We are best friends. We’re just not the kind of best friends I imagined growing up. Chelsea, in real life, is wealthy and still kind, jealous of my role as Cinderella but still supportive. Chelsea always asks me to go to the football game. Chelsea has never been to my dad’s house.

  It’s not like her house.

  Where are you??? The text reads. We already watched the video of the play. You were SO AWESOME!!

  Blush heats my cheeks. Watching a video of the play is one of the more bizarre things that happens at cast parties. We just performed onstage, but a palpable excitement runs through the room when that video starts on someone’s flat screen TV. Everyone acts cool, like they don’t care, but I see their faces in the blue light. I see the way tension runs along their bodies. It shouldn’t mean anything, a school play. Not to people like this. But when everybody’s looking at the TV and not each other it’s so obvious that it does.

  Mean something.

  A car rumbles along the street somewhere behind me. No headlights, so it can’t be close enough to worry about.

  Almost there!! I write back while the wind drags its nails across the back of my neck. And...send. Should I say something else? About how good she was in the play? No, probably not. I didn’t actually watch the video. I did see her onstage. I hover my thumb over the keyboard. It’s a delicate dance, being friends with people from school. A girl has to walk the line between being too needy and too distant. Being too needy would be an enormous mistake, because then people would know that I’m not rich and carefree like they are. Too distant might make me seem too rich and carefree, and then they’d know I didn’t need friends. They would know I was only using them as a stopping point on my way to something bigger and better.

  I don’t want Chelsea to think that. I also don’t want her to know that I’m scared to death of losing her at the end of senior year. People like Chelsea will go on to Ivy League universities or, at worst, the Little Ivies, and I still haven’t worked out a way to get the money for that. If I can get a scholarship at the community college I’ll be lucky.

  Tonight’s not the time to honk about that. Or text anyone about it. The show adrenaline crash must be going to my head.

  On my phone, the time on the screen ticks over to midnight.

  A shiver runs down my spine and I drop my phone back into my purse. That house is only two blocks away.

  Anything could happen between now and then.

  I check again for traffic. Nothing. One big inhale of the night air, and I’m prepared to meet my destiny. I lift one aching foot from the curb.

  I haven’t completed the step—my toes are still hovering inches off the ground—when the hand comes down over my mouth in such a swift and decisive motion that I don’t see it at first. It looks like a blackbird’s wings, dark against more dark, and then there’s leather over my lips, clamped tight
. Leather over strong, huge fingers.

  My body jerks in its own version of a scream but I don’t make a sound, other than a muffled groan against the leather. It’s soft, expensive, and even while I struggle to open my mouth and bite it doesn’t give.

  I’m so focused on the hand that I’m too late for the other arm that wraps around my waist, trapping one of my wrists in the process.

  Oh my god.

  Oh my god.

  In all the scenarios I’ve ever imagined—and what girl doesn’t imagine this kind of scenario—I at least had a chance. I would use quick, powerful movements to get my hands up, up, up, around the man’s wrist. I would kick at his shins. I would squish my head down toward my neck to break his grip.

  I would run.

  But now I’m a rigid board in his arms, frozen, panting, and all of these options float through my mind like wisps, like nothing at all. I try to stab one heel down into the top of his foot and miss.

  He’s too tall.

  And I’m not on the ground anymore. Not really. My heel gets purchase on the top of a shoe and brushes away. I can’t get my head down toward my shoulders to break his grip because he’s not choking me, just holding me still against a hard body. I can’t breathe, not enough, but the air that I suck in—

  He smells good, like leather and something clean and sharp that I can’t put my finger on.

  A laugh surrounds me, blocking out all the other night sounds, even the taunting whisper of the wind. “Are you done?”

  I try to get my free hand up to pinch him, to do anything, but I’m blocked by the glove and the sleeve of his coat. I arch my back in an attempt to thrash away.

  This only presses me closer.

  If I was tired from the show, I’m not now. I’m awake. I’m more awake than I’ve ever been, muscles firing. It’s so pointless. I can tell it’s pointless because this one touch tells me all I need to know about how strong he is.

  I kick out one more time, which earns me another laugh.

  I missed his shin completely. I swung wide, like I didn’t want to hurt him.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  A piece of advice bubbles up—don’t let them get you into a vehicle. If you do, then your chances of survival go way down.

  But we’re already moving, me in his arms, him striding confidently toward the edge of the sidewalk. A car. There’s a car there. I was so stupid, I was so focused on that text message, that I didn’t hear it approaching. It’s a huge, black SUV. In the reflection from the windows I can see us, briefly, darkly. Me, a spill of eggshell blue. Him, a dark, tall menace with dark hair. He’s a frame for me. The worst possible frame. I’m like a butterfly pinned for display.

  At the back of the SUV he bumps it with his elbow and the trunk pops open. I have no control over my movements anymore, just a wild hope for survival, and all my kicking and wriggling does nothing, nothing. All the small prayers and begging I’m pouring into the leather of his glove do nothing. “Ah, Cinderella,” he says on the wings of another laugh. “Such a fighter.”

  Another cry meets its untimely doom against his glove. It would be an awkward dance if he wasn’t so powerful, so graceful, even in this moment of committing a crime. A lean here, a grab there, and the glove lifts from my mouth.

  “Don’t do this—”

  A chuckle, and then a gag. It tastes as expensive as his glove did and fills my mouth. He ties it snug behind my head.

  It does something to me.

  It makes me tilt toward the SUV, frozen again, and this gives him the opportunity to pin my arms behind my back and tie my wrists. With what? It feels like an actual tie, like a silk tie, the kind the boys at school wear.

  He does the same to my ankles.

  My dress rucks up to my thighs and I roll over, trying to get it to go back down, but this only has the effect of turning me toward him.

  For the first time, I see his face.

  Dark eyes. Dark hair. Cheekbones that look priceless, that look forged from wealth and cruelty. Dark clothes. A body like a tower, like night. Rich, something whispers in the back of my mind. This is no back-alley mafia member who lurks in shadows and flits in and out of jail. No, no. This is a prince.

  Just not a charming one.

  He’s absolutely beautiful. If I wasn’t already struggling to breathe, it would knock the air from my lungs.

  My body goes still. It’s not wise to provoke that kind of beauty. Any fairy tale can tell you that.

  “Relax, princess,” he says. “We’ll talk when we get to where we’re going.”

  My legs give one last feeble attempt to get away, and I arch against the floor of the SUV. His dark eyes take this in, a harsh sweep along the lines of me, and he laughs again. A mean, sensual sound.

  And then he slams the trunk shut.

  2

  Maximus

  Fuck. A thousand fucks. A thousand irritated fucks for the thing I’ve done.

  For the thing I’m still doing.

  It’s my hands on the wheel of the SUV and not a driver’s. I’m here tonight on a sensitive errand. The kind of errand that could easily go wrong if some stupid fuck decides to take matters into his own hands.

  I’m the stupid fuck in this scenario. It’s not my usual look, I’ll admit. I’m usually a man who goes by the letter of the contract. That’s how I’ve made my money and that’s how I planned to continue making my money. On and on until my eventual death.

  The little princess rustles in the back of the SUV, making sweet sounds against her gag, while I wend my way through the dark streets, cock straining at the front of my pants.

  I was supposed to collect her.

  Not take her.

  But that’s the thing, that’s the sick, fucked-up thing. I went to the school play. I saw her on the stage. And I fucking wanted her.

  She’s eighteen tonight. She’s eighteen right now. Right now, that tight little body is both legal and my express property. What’s she going to do, escape? Not likely.

  I would have taken her in the parking lot, but she spent forever doing God knows what after the show ended. I would have taken her outside the school, but the direction she went has lots of security cameras pointing at it.

  And then I wanted to watch her walk.

  She’s got that petite body on a pair of high heels and it’s so fucking obvious how hard she’s worked to be comfortable in them. My Cinderella is not some born and bred society bitch from the Academy, no, no. If she was, she wouldn’t be in this position right now.

  She would not be curled on the floor of one of my many disposable vehicles.

  She would not be part of a business deal she knows nothing about.

  And I would not be this fucked.

  I take the freeway entrance and accelerate, getting the fuck out of town.

  Something came over me when the last day died. It felt like fate. And then she stopped, the perfect prey, and bowed her head over her cell phone. It was the first message she’d sent since leaving the school and it felt like a dash of cold water on my face. Not enough to cool my heated cock, fuck no, but enough to make me realize that if I let her keep walking, if I kept watching that pert little ass sway under her princess dress, I’d let her get away.

  In that moment I made a decision—to act. And then I made a second one—to take.

  One is far more reckless than the other.

  She finally calms down enough to stop gasping through the gag, and I glance in the rearview mirror to be sure she hasn’t somehow died. Her chest rises and falls, the dress still tangled around her thighs. She’s alive. My body thrums with the possibilities. There are so many things I want to do to this little princess, so many reckless things, and now that I’ve started I feel bound by fate to see it through to the end.

  It’s one of my better qualities, I’m told. Commitment.

  I can hear her breathing over the hum of the freeway, and fuck, it’s sexy, thinking about that air going through the gag I put in her mouth. She has to
think of me with every single breath.

  I’m thinking of her, too.

  I’ve been thinking of her in an abstract way for several weeks now. Months, perhaps. Plans like this are rarely put into motion without adequate consideration, and she has been considered.

  The only thing I didn’t consider was how she would look in the moonlight. In the dark, on the street. In those little high heels. I didn’t anticipate how much I would want her. How recklessly and irresponsibly I would want her.

  Past midnight, and I’m having a bit of a quandary. Not a moral one, per se—in my line of work, there’s not much to do that would be considered the right thing to do. I was born into money and power, and anyone born into money and power knows very well that you don’t keep either one unless you’re ready to do a series of wrong things.

  But this?

  This?

  Well.

  Cinderella, though she obviously doesn’t know it, is part of a business deal, and now I’ve let my own penis get in the way. Highly uncharacteristic. I’m known for my ability to fuck and forget. What was it that struck me, out there in the dark, creeping through the night with my headlights off and my gaze pinned to her back like she might take flight and escape?

  She has not escape.

  The little princess sighs and shifts while I change lanes on the freeway.

  There’s an exit three miles ahead.

  If I take it, I can still undo everything I’ve done so far. I can take back the decision I made on the sidewalk. No one would be the wiser. I’d only be ten minutes off the set rendezvous time. There are plenty of excuses to be made for a thing like that. A traffic accident. An observer we hadn’t counted on. No one would know.

  But I would know. I would know what I’d done, and the chance I’d almost taken. And I already know every sordid plan they have for her.