Stolen Life

by Charmaine Pauls

  We carry on for the better part of an hour with me handing him the tools he calls out while I scheme in my head. It’s teatime when he’s done.

  “Ready?” he asks, holding his finger over the start switch.

  “I guess we’ll see how good an electrician you are.”

  When he flips the switch, the engine stutters to life.

  He shoots me a victorious grin and says over the noise, “It’s all about patience.”

  Right. Exactly my thought.

  Satisfied, he cuts the engine and wipes his hands on a cloth. His palms are broad and his long fingers competent. My stomach heats at the memory of those hands on my body.

  He folds his fingers around mine. “We’re done here.”

  “Where are we going?” I ask as he pulls me toward an awning where a Jeep is parked.

  “To finish the rest of the tour.”

  A man with salt-and-pepper hair who’s raking the driveway leans the rake on the wall and comes running.

  “Here you go, Baba,” he says, handing Ian a key.

  “This is Garai,” Ian says. “He’s the best ranger in the whole of Zimbabwe. When he’s not busy with the animals, he helps Wataida out with the upkeep of the grounds.”

  Garai beams.

  “Is everything ready?” Ian asks.

  “Yes, Baba.”

  “Good,” Ian says. “We’ll be back before dark.”

  The man goes back to his rake, and Ian opens the passenger door before helping me up the step.

  “Game drive?” I ask as he takes the wheel, my dark mood lifting at the prospect.

  Ian only smiles and starts the engine.

  He follows the gravel road to the end and turns right onto a dirt track. The wind is warm on my face. I grab my hair in a ponytail at my nape to keep the long strands from blowing in my eyes. Leaning over me, he takes a cap and a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment and drops them in my lap.

  Grateful for his consideration, I constrain my hair with the cap, pulling the ends through the back, and fit the glasses. I let my body move with the sway of the vehicle much like a sailor would go with the rocking of a boat. It comes naturally. It’ll prevent me from having a sore backside and bruised kidneys tonight.

  After a short drive, he veers off the road and crosses a field before parking a short distance from a cluster of Mopane trees.

  He takes a pair of binoculars from the back and hands them to me. “There.” He points in the distance. “At the roots of that crooked tree.”

  I adjust the binoculars and search where he’s pointing until I spot movement. I suck in a breath. Two lion cubs are wrestling in the grass. They’re falling over each other, making grunting sounds while a lioness watches from the shade of the tree.

  “Oh, my God,” I whisper.

  A third is trying to climb up the tree. After a while he gives up and joins the two that are still rolling around in a play-fight. He bites the ear of one of his siblings and gets a warning growl from his mother, who eventually grows tired of the raucous playing and grabs the third by the neck to lathe him with her tongue. A male with a flamboyant mane that ruffles in the breeze rounds the trees and flops down next to the female.

  “Ready to move on?” Ian asks when I lower the binoculars.

  Not by far, but I don’t want to stress the feline family out too much with our presence, so I nod.

  Our next stop is on a hill from where we can watch a herd of buffalo. The tall necks of giraffes are visible from behind the trees. He shows me the black rhinos and the kudus. On the way to searching for the cheetahs, we stop for a herd of ten elephants that cross the dirt track to drink from the river. It takes a while to find the cheetahs, but eventually Ian spots them where they’re sleeping in a Blackwood tree. By the time he’s shown me the springbok and eland, the sun is already low.

  Instead of heading back toward the lodge, he diverts toward the river and stops on an outcrop.

  “Come,” he says, jumping from the vehicle.

  “Where are you going?”

  He takes a basket from the back and puts it on the hood of the Jeep. “Here.”

  I take a quick look at the rifle in the back. I can easily grab it and hold him at gunpoint, but then what? Where do I go? To the airport? I can find an ATM somewhere and withdraw cash—although, from what I remember, the ATMs are often out of service in town—but I don’t have my passport. I won’t be able to cross the border. I need to work out the details first. I’ll only get one shot at escape, so I better not waste it.

  When I hop from the vehicle, Ian has spread out a checkered tablecloth over the hood. He’s setting out nuts and dried fruit in silver bowls.

  “What’s this?” I ask, stopping next to him.

  “Sundowners. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot a hippo or two.”

  I look toward the water. The river forks into a quieter branch on the left while rapids rage on the right.

  He takes a bottle of gin, tonic water, lemon, and two glasses from the basket. Sitting down on the hood with my foot on the bumper to take some of the weight off my sore ankle, I watch as he slices the lemon and prepares two gin and tonics, complete with ice from a cooler box.

  “Wouldn’t be sundowners without a G and T,” he says, handing me a glass.

  The sun is hanging by a thread. The sky is an African red, and, despite the warped situation, peace dawns on a small part of my soul.

  “There.” Ian grips my chin and moves my face toward the river.

  A pair of eyes and nostrils protrude from the water. The hide is the same brown color as the river. It’s easy to mistake the lump for a floating tree stump, until the hippo opens its gigantic jaw and yawns.

  I take it all in, the beauty of nature, the amazing sunset, the peace and quietness, the bitter taste of the alcohol, the chirp of the birds, and the coolness as dusk sets in. The man next to me.

  “This is why,” he says.

  I give him a sidelong glance, reluctant to look away from the hippo. “Why what?”

  “Why it feels like home.”

  My interest in the hippo vanishes. I focus all my attention on him. “Wolfe said you ran away from home at the age of fifteen.”

  His smile is amused. “He did, did he?”

  “He said you were sentenced to a reform school.”

  “Yep.” He swirls his glass and keeps his gaze trained on the horizon as he takes a sip of his drink. “Got caught shoplifting.” He looks at me. “That shouldn’t surprise you.”

  “What about that home? Didn’t you miss it?”

  He props his foot on the bumper and rests his elbow on his knee. “It wasn’t much of a home.”

  “What did you steal?”

  “All kinds of shit—food, toys, books…”

  A picture of his childhood starts to form in my mind. “What about your parents? Weren’t they worried when you disappeared?”

  “Don’t know.” He says it like he doesn’t care. “My dad was a coward and a drunk who channeled his frustration into violence that he took out on us and my mom.”

  I reach out to touch him, but pull back my hand. Ian won’t want pity. “I’m sorry it was like that for you and your mom.”

  He remains silent. Just when I think he’s not going to reply, he says, “My mom wasn’t much better.”

  The statement surprises me for two reasons. Firstly, that he’s telling me something so personal and obviously painful, and secondly, because I had a great mom, and I can’t imagine living with a shitty one. Why is he telling me this? Is he letting me in? He doesn’t strike me as the overly sharing type. Why would he make an effort for me? Because we’re on a road of no return, and he’s trying to make the best of it? Whatever his motivations, letting someone in is tough. It takes great risk on his part. I’m not going to throw it back into his face.

  “How did you survive?” I ask.

  “At first, on the streets.”

  My heart squeezes. “That must’ve been tough.”

  He
fixes his gaze on the sunset again. “The apartment we lived in was a dump. Any place was better than there.”

  My gaze is drawn to his chest and middle where the tattoos are hidden under his T-shirt. Survival, love, and humility, but he chose love first, even above survival. “What about your siblings?”

  “Damian and Zoe were ten and five years old when I left. Leon and I could earn our own way, but I couldn’t drag a ten and five-year-old along with us. Anyway, Damian has always been a tough little bastard. He was like a cork. No matter how deep you pushed him under, he always came out on top.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Zoe was just Zoe.” He smiles. “Such a dreamer. She knew how to cope by hiding in her head.”

  “Do you keep tabs on them?”

  “Yeah.” He straightens. “In their own ways, they’ve both made their riches, but it hasn’t always been like that.”

  “Didn’t you ever consider giving them money?”

  “Zoe will never take stolen money. My little brother was in jail. I set up an account for him, but when he got out he didn’t need my money.”

  He doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask how his youngest brother made his own money. I understand why he didn’t keep in touch. He wanted to remain invisible. He didn’t want his family to be implicated in his crimes, but what about now that the cops know his identity?

  “The cops are going to interrogate your family,” I say carefully.

  “Zoe is abroad, and Damian has come into his own power. He can take care of himself. Besides, I don’t think Wolfe is going to spill the beans just yet. He’s still hoping he’ll find you and turn you into his trump card. I’m guessing by now he knows how cleverly you tricked him with the bracelet.”

  I bite my lip, considering my fate as I stare into my drink.

  “You shouldn’t have run from me,” he says in a dark tone.

  When I look up, he’s staring at me like the lion had looked at the lioness, like he wanted to dig his teeth into her shoulder and hold her in place while planting another litter of cubs in her belly.

  “Shouldn’t have kicked me in the balls either,” he continues.

  “You didn’t give me a choice.”

  “Although, I have to say, the punch on the shoulder was a low blow.”

  I swallow, my gaze involuntarily dipping to his injured shoulder. “I thought you were going to kill me.” I don’t need to make excuses for my actions, quite the contrary, but I can’t help from asking, “How’s the wound?”

  “You tore open the stitches, but I’ll survive.”

  I wince. He’s not smiling, so I don’t know if he’s still angry about that or just messing with me again.

  “What were you going to do anyway?” he asks. “How did you imagine you’d get away?”

  “It’s not important.”

  He takes the glass from my hand and puts it with his on the ground. Placing a hand on either side of my body on the hood, he says, “Like hell it’s not. What were you scheming in that pretty little head of yours?”

  “Nothing.”

  He wraps a hand around my neck, brushing a thumb down the arch to my shoulder. “A clever girl like you? You had a plan.” His voice turns soft, husky. “Tell me, baby doll.”

  The air becomes charged. My body takes notice of the change in the atmosphere. The hair on my arms stand erect as he continues to brush his thumb over the curve of my neck.

  “Don’t make me wait, Cas.”

  The quiet threat in his voice holds promises I can’t make sense of, promises to punish and protect. The mixed signals are confusing.

  He leans closer. “You know what I think? I think that stunt you pulled deserves a spanking, and I’ll happily deliver. Your choice. You can either let the cat out of the bag, or I can lay you out over this hood with your panties around your ankles.”

  My cheeks heat with angry annoyance but also at the image he’s describing. However, a spanking isn’t where I’d like to go with him, so I say, “I was going to stay under the radar.”

  I don’t give him more. I don’t want him to know what I was planning, because I may still have to put that plan into action.

  His eyes flare. “Under the radar? Alone, with the cops on your tail? Do you have any idea how dangerous that plan was?” He drops his hand to my hip. “Wolfe isn’t stupid. Eventually he would’ve sniffed you out. Then what? Have you thought about that? Wolfe doesn’t play by the rules. He’s the kind of cop that plays dirty.”

  “You don’t have much faith in my abilities, do you?”

  “Not in escaping the whole police force.”

  “Yet you do.”

  “I have the benefit of experience. Years of it.”

  “I didn’t exactly have the chance to do a few practice runs.”

  He widens his stance and locks his hands around my waist to pull me between his legs. “You’ll never do anything so stupid again. Understand?”

  “What do you want me to say? Yes, sir?”

  “That’s a start.” He chuckles when I roll my eyes. Suddenly turning serious, he cocks his head toward the river and its magical sunset. “You can be happy here.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes, like me. You know why? Because I think this is you too. I think you need the open space as much as I do. That’s why I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to lock you up or take away your privileges. I’m not going to put a guard on your ass or lock the kitchen knives in the safe. I’m going to give you freedom within these fences, and if you prove to me you deserve that freedom, I’ll extend your boundaries.”

  He puts our mouths so close together only a breath of air separates us. “I’ll even give you a little head start in this game of trust—the advantage of information. This town, its transport systems, and every government official stationed in the vicinity belong to me. If you run, you won’t get farther than the airport.”

  His voice lowers with intent. “Know this. If you do run, I’ll slap a pair of ankle cuffs on you so fast you won’t have time to say my name. There’ll be no more playing nice. I’ll tie you to my bed if that’s what I have to do.” Cupping my jaw, he delivers the threat with a soft kiss on my lips. “The choice is yours.”

  The heavy blow is dealt with tender words. They sift down like snowflakes to settle cold in my heart. I tremble as he pushes me down onto the hood and leans over me.

  “What will it be, Cas?”

  He’s not asking if I’m on board with this limited version of freedom. When he unbuttons my jeans, he’s asking a different question, and, as always, when he slips his hand into my underwear, he gets the truth.

  Chapter 5

  Ian

  Despite what Leon and Ruben think, despite what Cas may hope, she’s a new permanent in my life. I’m old enough to have learned if a man wants to keep a woman happy, he should let her in. Jewels and flowers aren’t going to cut it. They’re niceties but not what matters.

  I’ve never told anyone about my past, not even Ruben. Leon knows what he remembers from our time in the hovel we called our childhood home, but not even he knows everything. I’ve never told him about the beatings I took for him when our lousy, no-good father was drunk. What’s the point? Knowing isn’t going to do him any good. He had enough to deal with protecting himself from the backhands and punches. Neither does he know about the men I had to suck off in dark alleys so we could eat. He doesn’t need the knowledge of where our bread came from during those first days of being homeless.

  That’s how I perfected stealing, first pickpocketing and later shoplifting. That’s what drove me to go bigger and get the hell out of Johannesburg. What I did is nobody’s business, but I won’t deny Cas any answers. Whatever questions she has, I’ll give her the truth. I’ll give her these difficult parts of myself to make up for what I can’t give her—a choice. However, I meant when I said she could be happy here. I feel it in my bones. She wasn’t just made for me physically. She’s my match in eve
ry way.

  That’s what I think as I pin her down on the hood of the Jeep and slide inside her tight little body. That’s the stake I claim. She’s mine. I told her so on the first night I kidnapped her, and I’ll keep on telling her with words and my body until the truth sinks in. That truth fuels the pivoting of my hips as I take her with harder strokes.

  Her thighs fall to the side, letting me in deeper. She’s letting me in in a different way, only into her body, but that’s all right. I’ve got time and patience. Eventually, she’ll open up to me on every level. I’m willing to fight for her heart. I’m not a good man, definitely not the kind of man who deserves her heart, but I’ve never let morals prevent me from taking what I want, and I’ve never wanted anything more than the woman splayed underneath me.

  I spread her wider, like a butterfly with its wings open, and take what’s mine with a fervor that drives me from the depth of my soul. In a distant corner of my mind, I register that I should use a condom, but it’s hard to stop when she’s hot, tight, wet, and fits me like a velvet fist. The simple idea of being buried inside her body is enough to set me off.

  Reluctantly, I pull out and belatedly find the condom in the pocket of the pants tangled around my ankles. She pushes up onto her elbows to watch, fixing her gaze shamelessly on my cock as I roll on the rubber, and I love that she likes to watch. I love that she’s taking as much with her eyes as with those plump, ravished lips and voluptuous body.

  Gripping her waist, I drag her to the edge of the hood and flip her around. Her ass is rounded and tight, her skin pale in the dusk that hangs over river. From the minute she caught my eye in the casino dressed in those skinny jeans, I wanted to see her ass naked. I tighten my fingers on those cheeks, greedily grabbing handfuls of her flesh as I wedge my hips between her legs and drive home.

  Moaning, she arches her back. The angle is deeper like this, but she’s wet enough to take me. My focus shifts from my pleasure to hers. I no longer want to consume her. I want to make her fall apart and then consume her.

  There are many delightful places on her body to hold onto as I pummel into her. I can bend her arms behind her back and lock my fingers around her wrists. I can wrap my hands around the slender arch of her neck. The narrow dip of her waist is a vulnerable spot for a man’s iron grip. The feminine curve of her hip was made for the shape of my palm. A small, soft breast and a hard, little nipple will give me perfect purchase. But it’s the silky, silver strands of her hair that I choose, and the swollen nub between her folds.