by James, Gemma
Swallowing my nervousness, I finished rinsing and drying the pan, but when I turned around, I found Zach standing behind me, just a few inches away. I froze, gripping the handle as I eyed his height. There was no way I’d be able to whack him over the head from this vantage point.
“Let me,” he said, reaching for the skillet. I gave him the pan, and a sense of loss hit me as he hung it on the rack above the butcher block. Those pans were within reach, but just barely. I’d have to stand on my tiptoes to unhook one, then hope like hell I’d use enough strength to whack him over the head so he’d go down the first time.
Because I wouldn’t get a second chance.
“Lex,” he said, voice going husky as he closed the inches between us. “I’m in the mood for dessert.”
I feared what he wanted didn’t involve bakeware. “I can make something…if you want.”
His fingers clamped around my bicep, confirming my suspicion. “I want you.” He ushered me out of the kitchen, and I stumbled along behind him, heartbeat accelerating as he stalled in the living room. He pointed to the floorboards in front of the sofa. “Knees.”
When I didn’t immediately bow to his order, he ground his molars, and the look in his cold hazel eyes was enough to make me bend. I lowered to my knees as he reached for the button of his jeans. Exposing his hard-on, he shuffled forward, fisting his cock, and then his flesh pushed between my lips.
As I watched the dazed expression on his face—a cocktail of lust and madness while he thrusted in and out of my mouth—a new kind of terror held me in its grip. The kind of terror that made breathing impossible, because the life he had in mind for me was no longer a nebulous nightmare. It crystalized, and my new reality became as real as the warm flesh pounding between my tonsils.
He would keep me locked away forever—like a prized classic car—only taking me out when he wanted to use me. I’d never see other people, never have any type of freedom again. I would fail to exist.
There would only be Zach and his cock to live for.
And what happened when I started showing? Would he force an abortion? Possibly even cause one himself? I shuddered at the thought.
And that was a mistake, because his eyes narrowed into a glare as he yanked his cock out of my mouth. “Your attitude needs a major adjustment, Lex.” Jaw set in determination, Zach withdrew something from the pocket of his jeans.
A tiny plastic baggie.
“What is that?” I whispered, though I feared I did know what it was.
“Just a little E to loosen you up.”
I shrank back, but he stepped forward, eliminating the space between us as he grabbed me by the hair.
“So here’s what’s gonna happen,” he said, tone a conversational lie on his tongue. “You’re going to fuck me and enjoy every moment of it, because if you don’t, I’ll stick this shit up your ass. The result is the same either way, though I’d rather have your eager and sober participation.”
A cold sweat broke out on my skin, and my heart pounded painfully in my chest as I recognized the resolution in his expression.
And the corner he’d backed me into.
I couldn’t let him drug me. But could I fuck him and get off on it? Because that’s what he wanted. He wanted the ultimate betrayal to Rafe.
Zach settled onto the couch. “You can ride me willingly, or I can dose you. Your choice.”
I gulped in shallow breaths, the hopelessness of his ultimatum strangling me. There was no choice. I couldn’t let him fill me with ecstasy again—not now that I was pregnant. And I couldn’t fight him off.
Run, Alex.
The voice of instinct and survival prodded my limbs, stiffening them in preparation to flee. Zach didn’t know that I’d learned how to swim. It was my only advantage, the only thing I held in my arsenal. But I had to be strategic about it because he was bigger, faster, and stronger, and he’d have his hands on me by the time I reached the front door.
Why else would he be sitting on that couch like he belonged there, not a care in the world, complacent in the belief that he had the winning hand? He knew the odds and how they were stacked against me.
“You’ve got five seconds, baby.” His voice vibrated with a low growl. A warning. I saw myself sprinting across the room and yanking the door open.
Then my fingers brushed the collar circling my throat.
Zach had thought of everything. With Rafe gone, and Jax and Adam out of town, I was on my own to defend myself. But he’d thought of that too, because the threat of drugs ensured my cooperation, and the collar ensured my entrapment.
Before he could take this latest choice from me, I crawled onto the couch and straddled him. He took me by the chin, forcing me to lock my gaze with his, and I was incapable of hiding the tears burning my eyeballs.
“Please let me close my eyes,” I begged in a whisper. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to do this.”
“I know of another way, Lex.”
The ecstasy.
I blinked a tear down my cheek, and he swiped it away as if the sight of my despair burned a hole through his tar-black soul.
“Rub your cunt against me.” Voice softening with a hint of tenderness, he lowered his hands to my waist and waited for me to surrender. To give him the illusion he so craved.
The fantasy that I loved him back.
Inch by torturous inch, I lowered to his lap, and his cock slid between my folds. The start of a tingle went off in my nerve endings. A prick of shame. Another tear escaped down my face.
“C’mon, Lex. Work those hips.”
I drew in a breath and held. The seconds throbbed at my temples, like little hammers pounding in the reminder of how he wasn’t holding me down this time. There were no restraints, no fingers pressing my wrists to the mattress, no hand circling my throat.
Only the threat to my unborn child, and that was enough.
Moving into a steady rhythm, I dragged my pussy over his cock, cheeks flaming with unwanted arousal. His shallow breaths drifted across my face, spreading down the column of my neck. The friction between our bodies grew warm and slick and fucking wrong. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want this—that I had no other choice that didn’t involve him drugging me—the self-disgust still consumed, causing rancid nausea to burn in my throat.
Back in that cabin, when he’d taken me the first time, he’d launched a campaign of psychological warfare against me. This wasn’t much different, and I wanted to rail my rage at him. I wanted to gouge out his pale hazel eyes and all the smug triumph in them. I didn’t want to return his silent acknowledgement of how wet I was…of how exposed and open sitting astride his lap made me as the head of his cock teased with every thrust of my hips.
The fact remained there was nothing he could do to make my heart accept the joining of our bodies.
Hissing a breath between clenched teeth, Zach gripped my hips and pushed inside me. I gasped as his massive girth stretched me wide. Pummeling deeper, he wound a hand in my hair and pulled me forward until our lips came near enough to touch.
“Kiss me.”
I couldn’t stomach the idea. His mouth on mine, intimate and personal. Romantic.
Like everything else, he didn’t give me a choice. His lips claimed what didn’t belong to him, same as his cock, and his tongue darted along the seam of my mouth before plunging inside. And for those few seconds, when I let my lids drift shut and imagined it was Rafe sitting between my thighs, that it was Rafe’s tongue tangling with my own, I found a glimmer of freedom.
Until Zach broke it by groaning against my mouth. “Your cunt is beautiful.” He stilled, dick pulsing inside me. “You will never feel him like this again. Only me.” The vow was a dark caress on my lips, spiraling its poison and tainting the air I breathed. “Only me, Lex. Say it.”
“Only you.” The promise was complete horse shit. The mothership of all lies.
Because this couldn’t be the end. I wouldn’t allow it to end like this, even if I had to claw my w
ay out of here. Even if sitting on his lap and fucking him with as much willful intent as I could muster gave me the smallest of advantages, a sense of cooperation on my part, another lie in the script of Zach’s fantasy.
“I’m going to make you come so fucking hard,” he said, setting a rhythm that felt too damn good.
Don’t let him take more pieces of you. Fake it, Alex.
The thought had barely formed in my mind when liquid heat flared between my legs, and a needy moan departed my lips. His gaze bored into me, growing darker as the physical connection between us intensified. He hit my G-spot just right, with enough skill and willpower that it wasn’t long before I lost sight of what was fake and what was real.
This felt real, too fucking real, and when he pulled me into another kiss, I gladly welcomed the distraction—the opportunity to lose myself in the only thing that didn’t feel sick and dirty and wrong.
The thought of Rafe.
I wrapped myself in the memory of my husband’s heat, the solid security of his muscles, the certainty of his punishing hand. A vision flickered through my mind, unbidden, and I saw Rafe’s palm come down on my backside, again and again until my skin reddened with pain.
“Fuck…” I groaned through gritted teeth, duplicity unnecessary as I came in a horrendous rush, like a tsunami nobody saw rushing toward the shoreline. All the while, I pretended a pair of green eyes watched me shatter.
10. THE PIT
Rafe
Twenty-four hours had passed since Zach left with the key. In my waking hours, I’d done little else but pace the dinky room, fighting to keep it together. Horror tainted each breath. Frustration at my forced inactivity weighed down my feet.
This cell reeked of desolation.
For the tenth time in the last hour or so, I eyed the door, imagining the narrow hall behind it. Imagining it empty. It fucking sounded unoccupied. My son was alone, just down the hallway, waiting for someone to rescue him from this hell.
As his father, that someone should be me.
I pounded my fist against my palm in furious succession, and those harsh smacks tore through the silence, matching time to the pad of bare feet.
Impatient feet.
I wanted to do something, needed to do something.
Pulse throbbing at my temples, I closed my eyes, thoughts returning to Zach and the key he’d stolen from me. The waves of what-ifs crashed over me. What if Alex couldn’t withstand what Zach wanted from her? What if he broke her beyond repair?
What if he took her to a place buried so deep that no amount of searching the globe would help me find her? I might never see her again, and that thought alone had me breathing hard in the corner, one hand bracing my shaking body against the wall. Urgency flooded my system, and I gulped in breath after laborious breath in mounting panic.
But when I opened my eyes, the worn wall in front of me crystallized, snapping me back to the ground. Going into a fucking panic attack wouldn’t solve shit. Only one thing stood in the way, and that was two inches of wood and the balls to take a risk. As I studied the door, noting the height of the lock panel, I peeled my ears for sounds of life outside the chaos in my head.
The apparent vacancy of this place settled around me in disquiet temptation, tainting the air with the kind of dangerous hope that would make any desperate plan seem infallible. Before I could overthink it, I sent a swift kick to the door. That first strike merely strained the wood. The second got me a satisfying dent. The third broke through the final barrier, allowing me entrance into the hall.
Now that I’d broken through, I froze, questioning everything, especially the probable stupidity of this plan and how it was destined to fail. Getting to my son would be the easy part—it was getting him out undetected that worried me most because I had no clue what kind of security Shelton had in this place.
Did he have cameras installed? Men posted outside?
Fuck.
There was no going back now. I looked left then right, squinting in the dim light and searching for Shelton or his goons, but the hallway was as empty as I’d suspected. With light steps, I hurried in the direction of my son’s room.
Of his fucking prison cell.
But I didn’t want to scare the shit out of him by breaking down the door. Rapping my knuckles in three gentle strikes, I called out his name in a muted tone. The ensuing seconds of silence grated on my nerves, energizing my foot into a constant tap against the ground.
And then I heard it.
Three responsive knocks, small fists against the wood in inquiring hope. “Are you going to get me out?” His question was barely above a whisper, but somehow, I still heard it, detecting the color of blind trust in his tone.
“I’m gonna try. I need you to sit on the bed. Can you do that for me, Will?”
“Yes,” he said in a loud whisper.
I gave him a full minute before veering back in preparation. Putting as much strength as possible into the strike, I busted into his cell on the first try. The ruckus made me cringe, but there wasn’t shit I could do about that.
Will sat huddled on the cot, and the wide set of his deep green eyes punched me in the gut. I’d forgotten the resemblance, how staring at him was like looking straight into my childhood.
“Let’s get you outta here.” I held out a hand for him to take, experiencing his curious stare in a tangible wave over my skin, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I looked familiar to him. Did he sense the shared DNA between us?
Shaking the question from my head, I pulled him to his feet. There would be plenty of time later to speculate on what Will knew and what he didn’t. First, I had to get him to safety.
I turned, hand surrounding his smaller one, prepared to bolt, and that’s when the tall figure standing in the doorway caught my eye. My heart slammed against my ribcage.
“Going somewhere?” the guy asked, shifting, and the dim bulb behind him caught the top of his head just right, revealing Shelton standing between freedom and me. I stepped in front of Will while still keeping him in my periphery, but it was too late.
My son had seen his face. I was sure of it, and I was certain Shelton knew he’d been made, even as Will dropped to the cot, head in his hands to hide the sight of the man responsible for this situation.
“Don’t hurt him,” I said, trying to keep the plea from my tone. The less emotion I attached to the kid, the less power Shelton could wield over me.
“You fucked up, Mason.” He stepped inside as his favorite three goons filed in after him. They settled between the busted door and me, their arms crossed, feet perfectly spaced apart in the same stoic disregard. Military Dude, standing to the left of Shelton, cracked his knuckles.
Shit.
They had me cornered.
“Let me guess,” Shelton said with a wave of his hand. “About now, you’re realizing the mistake of your actions. Am I right?”
I took another step toward Will. “Leave the boy out of it. This is all on me.”
“Normally, I’d agree,” Shelton said, taking a calculated step forward. “Except what you do falls back on him.” He nodded in my direction, and before I knew it, two of his goons descended. I got in several good blows, drawing blood and curse words until Shelton grabbed my son.
Will let out a terrified shriek, and I froze. The way he looked to me for help gutted me.
The fight in me fled as suddenly as it had come. “Wait!” I shouted, allowing Shelton’s men to slap a set of cuffs onto my wrists.
Shelton put a knife to Will’s throat, and the boy’s complexion blanched. He stopped struggling as the solid metal pressed against his skin. We exchanged horrified glances. Time slowed to a crawl as a cold-sweat erupted on my skin.
“Don’t hurt him! Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Why should I give you another chance, hmm? What are you going to do for me in exchange for the boy’s life?” He tightened his hold on Will, making him cry.
“I’ll cooperate. I’ll make you a shit
ton of money.”
The next several seconds dragged past in heart-pounding anxiety. Slowly, Shelton lowered his arm and let Will go. My son scurried to the twin bed, folding himself into a ball in the corner as if he could simply disappear from the danger in the room.
I ached to hold him, to offer whatever comfort I could, but there wasn’t time. Shelton ordered two of his men to take me out of the room. They pushed me around the busted door and stalled in the hallway.
Shelton pointed at Military Dude, who stood inside Will’s room. “Find our guests secure accommodations and get this shit fixed ASAP!”
Hands shoved me from behind, moving me down the narrow hall past the busted door of my cell. They ushered me outside, and a deluge poured on us. My toes sank into mud as we trudged through knee-high grass.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Shut up,” one of them muttered, pushing me forward.
I heard the dogs before I saw them.
Muscular bodies hit the chain-link fencing, and vicious barks ripped through the night. Five Rottweilers, showing off angry teeth, imparting deep growls.
Shelton climbed a staircase that led to a platform at the top of the kennel, and the men herding me up the stairs after him halted, fear tainting their mannerisms. “What’s going on, boss?” one of them asked, shooting an anxious glance at his buddy.
“Which one of you bozos dropped the ball?”
Both men took a step away from the opening in the platform. The dogs jumped and snarled from eight feet below. “We checked on him before taking a smoke break. He wasn’t makin’ a sound in that room.”
“That must have been some break. Did you go to fucking Egypt?” Shelton crossed his arms. “If I hadn’t shown up when I did, he might have gotten one up on us. Fucking idiots!”
“Sorry, boss. Won’t happen again.”
“Damn right, it won’t.”
The next few seconds slithered by in slow motion. Heartbeat thrashing in my ears, I watched in horror as Shelton grabbed the shorter of the two men and shoved him into the pit.
