It’s his hate colored eyes that have my lip trembling as he slowly approaches the bed. Dark and wild, simmering in unleashed rage.
A dagger of pure unadulterated terror stabs into my spine, tainting my blood with poisonous fear.
The villain of my story looks like an angry angel. There’s no way this man was sculpted from the same clay as the rest of humanity. Perfectly lean, chorded muscle wrapped in tanned, tattooed skin. The only reminder that he’s actually human are the few faded and jagged scars beneath his left eye and the slight bend in his nose.
A memory file opens in my brain, presenting me slow motion details. It’s from that night. The first time my memory failed me.
It’s him.
“I know you,” I whisper, unable to believe that it’s the same man. He’s got the same eyes and hair although his shoulders are much broader. His jaw more defined. The biggest difference is the one that matters most in my current situation. Years ago, he had a shred of kindness in his eyes.
Now, there is none.
“You don’t fucking know me,” he spits. He stares at me for a few beats that stretch on in silence as if years are passing between us once again.
Maybe, it’s the pounding in my head from what I now remember was a headbutt courtesy of… “Pike. Yo…your name is Pike.”
“Congratulations, you know the name of your target,” he says flatly. “Now, tell me who the fuck you are!”
The beach. The bullets. The… “You found me on the road,” I explain, searching his eyes for recognition. He steps closer, hovering above me, forehead creased, a frown on his lips.
The moment he realizes he knows me from before this night, he shakes his head slowly from side to side and stands upright once more. A mountain of a man looking down at a sheep in his field.
His head movement stills. “I always assumed you were dead,” he says it as if he wishes it were true.
That night. The van. My family.
The reasons behind my every action. I’m no longer a fractured version of myself. Logic and memory again take their rightful place on the throne in my mind, usurping fear.
Flexing my fingers within my restraints, I lean forward. “You assumed wrong.”His thumb hovers over the button. “No!”
“Name,” he demands, barely moving his lips. “I never did get it the first time.”
“I…I’m Michaela. Mickey.”
“Why the fuck did you come here?” he asks. “Who sent you?”
My head is pounding in pain, but I have my reasons to not tell him the truth. Five of them to be exact. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I lie.
“Bullshit!”
I’m assaulted again, screaming through the agony. This time, when it stops, there’s a ringing in my ears and a vibration thrumming throughout my entire body.
“Who do you work for?” he presses, hoisting me up from the bed. I kick and scream as he forces me down onto a hard, wooden chair in the center of the room.
He hovers over me, intimidating me with his nearness, but I won’t break, not for him. Not for anyone. There’s a humming in the air, a vibration amongst the animosity bouncing between our bodies.
I shake my head. “No one. I don’t work for anyone. I acted alone.”
He laughs, but the evil in his voice tells me he finds my answer anything but funny.
His hair falls over his face as he looks down, and I now fully understand the meaning of if looks can kill. He trails his fingers down my jaw, and I try to jerk away but he holds tight, pressing my cheeks together and forcing me to stare into his eyes like he needs me to see that his determination isn’t a game and that he will win. “You’re going to tell me who the fuck you’re with, or you’re going to regret it. It’s going to be fun to play with this pretty skin of yours. Carve it up and make it bleed. You look different from the last time I saw you. All grown up. Curvy. Fucking beautiful.” He pauses. “I doubt you’ll look as good when all of your pretty parts are in pieces.”
He draws a knife from his boot, the blade gleaming in the moonlight. He releases my jaw and sets the blunt end of the blade to my throat. “Who are you with?”
Who am I with? I repeat in my head and start to rattle off an answer so that he doesn’t hit the switch again. He wants a truth so I give him one. “I…I have three sisters and a mom and a dad. I am with Mensa in their elite youth program. I had a scholarship to Florida Gulf Coast University and am enrolled in their science program. I give lectures and teach a few lab courses.”
He takes a step back and turns his back to me, running a hand through his hair in frustration. He spins back around with his finger again looming over the button.
“No!” I scream. “I answered the question. I did,” I plead. My face burns. Tears stream down my face. Not for me, but for the answers I can’t give him. In frustration as much as in fear. “It’s the truth. I swear.”
“You know that’s not what I’m looking for. But go ahead. Play your games, and see where it fucking gets you.”
I meet his determination with my own, lifting my chin from my chest. Our eyes lock. “Do your worst. I’m not telling you shit.”
The side of his lip turns up in a devilish smile. His voice is eerily calm. “Wrong. Fucking. Answer.”
He hits the button, and this time, the music burns through my ears like a torch. The lights violently assault my senses. I pray for it to stop. I wail and scream and beg and cry and pull at my restraints, but it’s no use.
“Please. No more,” I whisper, as the terrible world I created spins around me.
It cuts off once again. “Last chance,” he warns.
“I…I can’t.” It’s as close to the truth as I can give him.
He descends upon me, wrapping his hand around my throat and squeezing. “That’s not good enough.” His eyes are bloodshot, his teeth bared like an angry animal.
I can’t help but again compare the Pike of now with the Pike I met on the road that night as I begin to run out of air. Everything is fuzzy.
He releases me suddenly, with an angry growl. I fall off the chair to the floor with a painful thud. My jaw taking the brunt of it as I gasp for air.
Pike’s bare feet move from one side of the room to the other as he paces the concrete floor. I know I’m going to die because I can never tell him what he needs to know.
I can’t help the laughter that bubbles up from somewhere deep inside, echoing in the room as if there is one of me un every corner.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Pike seethes, pointing the blade at me. He pushes me over onto my back and stands over me, a foot on each side of my elbows.
I smile up at him. “You’re going to kill me.” My voice is the textural equivalent of sandpaper.
“Still crazy, I see,” he snaps.
I shake my head. “No, you don’t get it. You’re going to kill me.” Another burst of laughter escapes me. I meet his beautiful angry eyes. “The only man whose ever kissed me.”
Chapter Eight
Pike
The only man whose ever kissed me
The truth is that if it weren’t for those words, she would probably be dead. The second they crossed her lips, I remembered feeling a need to press my lips on hers. How vulnerable she was. How weak. I wanted to protect her that night.
Now? I have no fucking idea. All I know is that the girl I tried to save, the only girl I’ve ever felt compelled to kiss in my life, is now my fucking enemy, tied up in my fucking warehouse like a junkyard dog.
And she’s not saying shit.
Worst of it all?
I still want to fucking kiss her.
Needless to say, day two also isn’t going fucking well. Mickey’s even more determined to push me off the fucking edge of whatever momentary moral dilemma I’m having. The truth is, that even if she tells me what I want to hear, the end result is the same. That’s how this shit works.
I should just put a bullet in her fucking brain and get it over with. But for the first time in my life, i
t doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not getting that blood-thirsty satisfaction from the thought of ending her life like I would after capturing an enemy. This feels more like taking a swig of the finest beer only to discover you’ve swallowed a wasp. It’s unsettling. And if it’s still alive? It also fucking stings.
Mickey. Her name is Mickey. She looks so different now, yet still the same. She’s filled out. Once all elbows and knees, she’s now the picture of an athlete. Strong lean muscles like that of a gymnast but with a ridiculous amount of curves. Thorne had been the one to strip her down and check her pockets for any sort of identification. I didn’t see the extent of those curves, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about them when she squares her shoulders in defiance and her shirt rides up high on her thighs.
Dark waves of long brown hair fall over her face. She jerks her head to the side to push the hair from her wide expressive eyes rimmed in red. Right now, those eyes are expressing a silent yet loud scream of rage and fear because her mouth is otherwise occupied.
Her lips are dark pink and her teeth are straight as she bites down around the gag. Her nose is small and straight. Besides the bruising from the headbutt and the vein popping out on her forehead, her skin is clear. Well, except for that little mark. She still has that freckle thing on the one side of her face between her nose and lips.
Of course, she does. Those things don’t exactly disappear.
She’s not the weak little thing she was back then.
But, she’s still fucking crazy.
She’s also more. So much more.
I may be feeling off about killing her, and I will have to kill her eventually, but I can’t say the same about torturing her.
Torturing her is an unexpected pleasure. Watching her suffer only to steady herself and prepare for another round––it’s doing something to me.
It’s doing a lot more to my fucking cock.
Right now, she’s pretending to be brave when she has no reason to pretend. Most in her situation would be begging for their lives and pissing themselves right about now.
There’s something intriguing about her defiance. Something…adorable. Stupid as fuck for crossing me, but still…adorable.
I trace the slender slope of her neck with my blade. Her throat is calling me to wrap my hands around it again, and I’m not sure if it’s to bring pleasure or pain.
Possibly both.
It’s going to be a shame to have to take her life, but this is her doing.
No second chances.
No fucking bullshit.
Another session ends with Mickey passed out from the sensory torture and me exhausted and more turned on than I have been in my entire life from one single girl.
I leave the warehouse and exhale. Dropping into a crouch, I try and catch my breath.
What the fuck is this girl doing to me?
My intentions toward her back then had been innocent. Protect her. Help her.
Now?
They’re anything but innocent.
There’s a lot of things I want to do with Mickey. To Mickey.
But now, the only person she needs protection from is me.
My inner voice laughs. It knows a part of me still feels the urge to help her. To protect the innocent kid I first met.
Maybe, she was never that innocent to begin with. There was gunfire that night. Someone knocked me over the fucking head. I always thought they were coming after her, but I see now it’s more likely they were coming for her. To protect her. Possibly from me.
Fuck. When it comes to this girl, my instincts are at war.
One tells me to punish.
The other to protect.
Only one can win.
* * *
Four days and still no headway. I thought she was pretending to be brave, but if that were the case, she’d have cracked by now. She isn’t pretending. She is fucking brave.
She still insists I have the wrong person. That she’s not the one I’m looking for. That she doesn’t work for anyone. That she’ll never tell me shit. Blah. Blah. That she has a family and is on vacation. Blah, blah, blah. That’s what she told me years ago. Was it a lie then? I know bullshit when I hear it, but there is something about her that causes a little bit of doubt to creep into my otherwise sure thoughts.
She’s not the typical soldier I’m used to interrogating, and I wonder what her reasons could possibly be to get herself mixed up with whoever is hell-bent on destroying my life.
I almost admire her. The way she dares me to do my worst with those dark fucking eyes of hers makes my heart race and my cock pulse.
I get excited when I walk into the room, never knowing what ballsy thing she’ll say next. Her bravery is as erotic as it is maddening.
Mickey might take a little more finessing. I’ll have to find out her motivations behind her actions in order to before she’ll crumble.
But she will crumble.
They all do.
Chapter Nine
Pike
Nine looks up from his laptop as I enter my office after another disappointing yet entertaining afternoon with Mickey. He’s sitting at my desk, his fingers flying across the keyboard. It comes in handy to have a hacker as a friend. “I can’t believe you know that chick,” he says.
“I don’t know her,” I argue. “I met her once and drove her home.” I tug on a white tank top and sink down into the chair across from him.
“That was four years ago, you said?” He scratches his chin. “And that’s all you did? You just drove her home?”
I sigh, knowing what he’s getting at. “I might have kissed her.”
He snaps his fingers and smirks. “I fucking knew it.”
I roll my eyes and prop my feet up on my desk. “I did it to shut her up. She was rambling on some crazy nonsense, and then she looked scared and maybe like she needed a distraction, so I distracted her.”
Nine goes back to his laptop. “Maybe, if you do it again, it’ll get her to talk.”
I’ve thought about that. A lot. “Shut the fuck up.” I point to his laptop. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve found or not?”
“I just pulled some files of hers.” He taps a few keys. “Here we go. Michaela Lovejoy.”
“Lovejoy?” I question. “It doesn’t even sound like a real name.” Yet, oddly enough, it fits her.
“If you’re done mocking your captive’s last name…” He squints at the screen. “Holy shit. You’re never going to believe this shit.”
“What?” I ask, sitting upright.
Nine’s eyes dart quickly from left to right as he reads. “It says here that she graduated high school at fourteen. College at seventeen with a double masters in behavioral neuroscience. She joined Mensa at age ten with a tested IQ score of one-sixty.”
“Is that high?” I ask, knowing nothing about IQ scores.
“For kids, it’s the most you can score.” Nine rubs his hand over his open mouth, and it annoys me that he’s impressed by the girl tied to my fucking bed.
He must mistake my irritation for confusion because he continues, “Think about it this way: I have a one-thirty-five which is well above average, and Albert Einstein had a one-sixty. She scored that at age ten.”
“She said she’s a teacher. Gives lectures or some shit,” I offer.
Nine scans the screen. “Yeah. She was a professor. She’s not just Michaela Lovejoy. She's Dr. Michaela Lovejoy Sc.D.” He says, with his mouth agape. His looks to me. “That’s a doctor of science.”
“I know that,” I mutter.
I did not know that.
My schooling consisted of never attending any classes, Christmas-treeing all of my tests, and finally, dropping out of high school before the end of freshman year.
I stand and round the desk, looking at the screen over Nine’s shoulder at a headshot of Mickey. She’s smiling and unbruised, but there’s no doubt the girl in the lab coat is the same girl in my warehouse. “What do you mean was a professor?”
“Was because she dropped off the radar a few years ago. Vanished. She has no social media, no online presence. Not even so much as a parking ticket, and her driver’s license expired six months ago.”
“What about her family? She’s always rambling on about them. Can you find out anything on ‘em?”
He hits a few keys. “Her family is…fuck me.” He whistles, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands behind his head.
“Her family is what?” I hate that I have to keep prompting him to tell me shit. I’d fucking read it myself if I knew it wouldn’t take me an hour to read the same thing it takes him a few seconds to get through.
His eyes meet mine. “They’re missing. All of them. The same time Mickey dropped out of sight, so did they. It says here––” he scrolls to an article written in the university newspaper. “––they went missing while on summer vacation here in Logan’s Beach and were never found.”
What the fuck? I shake my head. “That can’t be right. She talks about them now, not in the past. They’re alive, just like she is, and I’d bet money that she knows where they are.” I pace to the door of the office and back again. “Did someone stand to benefit if they died?”
“You think they faked their own deaths?”
I shrug. “It’s possible, if they were trying to collect on insurance or something.”
It takes a few minutes for Nine to pull up some court records. “Not that I can see. Mickey’s parents owed a lot of money to a lot of people, but they were never declared dead legally, which they would need to be for anyone to collect on anything. They owned a vacation property here in Logan’s Beach, a condo, as well as their main house in Ocala. Both properties went back to the bank.” Nine frowns and chews his thumbnail. “What could a girl with that kind of intelligence be doing mixed up with the kind of fuckers that have some sort of vendetta against us?”
Pike: The Pawn Duet, Book One Page 6
