No, he couldn’t and Rora was grateful that he hadn’t. Strike wouldn’t look at her, his indifference made her heart race. Did he doubt her?
“Though I suppose…” the Black Jewel said, tossing her gloves aside and strutting to Strike to slide her body in front of his, though his weapons didn’t move from their targets. With her back to his chest, the Black Jewel curled her arms backwards around Strike, holding his body against her as she smiled at their captives. “We could watch… and you could do me right here.”
Bella bent forward, resting her elbows on the back of the couch and pressing her ass into Strike’s groin. As she began to grind, Rora bit her lip, reminding herself not to blow their cover, not to grab the woman and claw her eyes out. Strike had a weapon pointed at her and she’d guess if she did anything to threaten Bella, he was supposed to shoot her, so she had to grit her teeth and let that witch arouse her boyfriend.
She was so busy concentrating on what Bella’s ass was doing to Strike that she almost missed Bella’s hand coming toward her face. “My Arousing Aurora,” Bella purred, stroking her hair and curling her talons around Rora’s chin to pull their mouths close. “I missed you, duckie.”
Rora didn’t move when Bella kissed her. Even after the Jewel’s tongue slid into her mouth, she kept her focus set, and when Bella’s head tilted to press their mouths closer, Rora’s eyes met Strike’s, which were cooler than they had been before.
Just the sight of his anger made her respond, but not in lust, Rora bit down hard, tasting Bella’s blood a second before the woman hissed away and brought her hand across Rora’s cheek so hard that she fell from the couch.
Leaping onto her feet, Rora jumped onto the couch and over the back ready to receive Bella who was swinging already. “Not this again,” Strike said somewhere in the background as the women screamed and wrestled each other to the floor.
Fingers were lost in hair, nails scratched. Rora got Bella onto her back and grabbed for her throat. But the Jewel fought back, grabbing a handful of Rora’s hair and pulling hard, making her scream. She fell to the side, and kicked out, but Bella’s body disappeared from hers and when she spat her hair away she saw Strike holding the woman back.
Huffing and puffing, Bella’s eyes were wild, but it wasn’t fury for the blood on her chin, it was desire that burned from her. Strike couldn’t have that tight a hold on her because Bella spun to face him and grabbed for his belt.
“Fuck off, Bell,” he said, trying to push her away with his elbow because he was still holding a gun.
“I want you to fuck us both,” Bella panted, yanking his tee-shirt from his jeans.
Strike pushed her away hard, and she fell against the back of the couch. Pulling the second gun from his waistband, he pointed the weapons at his victims again, which included her.
“And how the fuck do you want me to do that and keep these two from running off?”
Bella looked at Junker and then at her. “We’ll tie them up,” she said and dropped onto her knees. Crawling to him, the Jewel pressed her hands to his groin. “They deserve one last moment of pleasure before we gut them… don’t they?”
Rora’s sickness returned while watching the pair stare into each other. She tried to be subtle about moving onto her knees, preparing herself to attack Bella again.
Without looking, Strike pulled back the hammer of his gun and she froze. “Don’t fucking move, Kero,” he snarled.
He could’ve let her get to Bella, let her pull the bitch away from him. Instead, he’d chosen to protect the Jewel and keep her close, with her hands there… on him.
Bella’s laugh made Rora grind her teeth. The Black Jewel spun away from Strike and on all fours crawled toward her. “He belongs to me, duckie,” Bella murmured. “Just like I always told you he did.”
She swallowed hard when Bella rose to kneel in front of her. She didn’t kiss her this time, but she did caress her face, pushing her hair from her cheeks and brushing her lips along her jaw.
“We would’ve worshiped you,” Bella whispered, undoing the buttons of Rora’s vest over her chest.
There were only four buttons descending over her chest, but when Bella pulled the fabric apart hard, it ripped further, revealing her bra to the room. Bella ducked and kissed each of Rora’s breasts.
Hissing, she shoved at the woman, but Bella caught her wrists to hold her in place. “Ah, ah, duckie,” she said. “If I tell my prince to shoot, he will. You better do as you’re told, or your fun will be cut short…” Her fingertip trailed into Rora’s cleavage and down over the partially torn material toward her jeans. “What would you like… hmm? What’s your favorite? I offered you the world once… I can offer you it again…”
Bella’s voice was seductive, there was no denying the pull of that woman’s sultry tone. Rora could understand how the oblivious could be pulled in by the beauty. But Rora saw only what Strike did, the Black Jewels’ rotten core.
“I want nothing from you,” Rora spat.
Bella just smiled and kissed her chin. “What about our prince? Would you like him to pleasure you? He could be inside you in a moment; it would take just one word from me.”
Strike had already refused Bella’s other advances, so how she could believe he’d perform for her on demand, Rora didn’t know. But when her eyes rose, she didn’t see Strike looking at her, he was focused on Junker, who was watching the scene unfold from the couch. High on his knees, Junker leaned against the back of the seat he’d been on when he tried to kiss her. But with a gun only a few inches from his head, it was no surprise that he hadn’t moved.
“I don’t want him anywhere near me,” Rora hissed. “He’s as insane as you are.”
She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to have Strike inside her now. Except in her fantasy it wouldn’t be here in front of these people. They’d be somewhere safe, far from here, alone, without any of these troubles hanging over them.
“What you want is less important to him than what I want,” Bella said, still stroking Rora’s body. “If I tell him to force you, he will.”
Letting a smile rise to her lips, Rora leaned in as if to kiss Bella, but at the last moment, she leaned back and spat in her face. “No, he won’t. He’s disgusted by you.”
Bella screamed and leaped onto her feet. Rora remembered Bella’s arm moving away, but she didn’t remember the hit or any pain. Everything just became black.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The next thing Rora remembered was blinking open her eyes, fighting darkness that wanted to take her back, and a sickening moment of panic. For that breath, she feared she was back in Bella’s basement, attached to the wall.
Except the scent of clean wood and warmth erased those fears fast. Orienting herself, she recalled that she was in Leandra’s hiding place. Her wrists were bound by rope above her head. She was attached to one of the bannister spindles, with the empty space under the ascending stairs behind her.
Strike was holding one weapon and had another in his waistband. He and Bella were standing at the back of the couch, discussing what to do with Junker.
“I’ll take him out, they’ll never find the body,” Strike said.
“We have to find out what they did with Leandra first,” Bella said, her hands on Strike’s hips. “Our duckie was naughty stealing that woman away from us…”
“You don’t need her,” Junker spoke up.
Strike’s back was to her, but Rora didn’t need to see his face to know he was angry. “Fuck you, Square. You’re a walking corpse, don’t push me to make any rash decisions. They won’t work out for you.”
“Bella,” Junker beseeched the woman. “I have the Point. We have everything we need.”
One of Bella’s hands fell from Strike’s hip and her chin rose. “We? What do ‘we’ need?”
“I’m on your side,” Junker said, smiling.
More interest grew in Bella’s expression. “So, I have all the men… that’s good to know. Why should I believe you?�
�
“Maybe because men are groveling, pathetic idiots, just like you always said,” Rora said, feeling nothing but disgust.
Everyone turned to her. “Ah, she’s back with us,” Bella said, turning to her, though there was a good twenty feet between Rora and them. “We were just discussing how you’d been naughty… Do you want to tell us where Leandra is? I’d hate to mar that beautiful body with the scars of torture, but my prince does have a way with a blade.”
“Junker’s wrong,” Rora said. “He doesn’t have the Point.” Junker’s optimism faded. “But if you give me your word that you won’t harm Leandra, or even approach her, I’ll give you what you want.”
“Ah,” Bella said, tapping a fingertip on her lip and then drawing the digit down the center of Strike’s chest. “Do we believe their sudden change of heart? Weren’t they the ones concerned with our decency?”
“I don’t care about that,” Junker said, a new kind of cynicism in his voice. Maybe her lie had been the final straw for him or maybe he was just reprioritizing fast. “All I care about is him.”
Bella’s surprise probably matched Strike’s. Rora’s heart began to race again. “I don’t go that way,” Strike said.
Bella laughed and threw her arms around Strike. “I love a man who’s willing to experiment. But if you’re implying an exchange, a sample of our prince in exchange for what I want, we will have to subdue him first. He’s less open-minded than me and my duckie… You can have her too, she’s already incapacitated… though she does have a habit of being rebellious… sometimes that makes it more fun.” Bella turned to the side to lean on Strike who looked over his shoulder in her direction as Bella walked her fingers up Junker’s chest. “And if you’re not spent after—”
“He’s her half-brother,” Rora blurted out, her eyes matched to Strike’s. Her love had to know, and she didn’t care that Junker wasn’t ready for the big reveal, telling Strike the truth was most prominent in her mind. “He knows you killed his father.”
It wasn’t exactly gratitude on Strike’s face, but he did get a look of understanding. In a fraction of a second, she saw the flicker of a thousand calculations sprint across his gaze.
Bella and Junker seemed to be busy staring at each other. So Rora took another risk to mouth, ‘I love you’ though she had no idea if Strike saw it or not, he was too busy trying to figure out how this changed the plan.
“That we killed his father,” Strike said, and for a second Rora thought he was talking to her, but his eyes slowly slid around to Bella. “Right, Belladonna? I killed him because you begged me to…”
“Oh my God,” Rora exhaled, trying to play along with Strike’s plan. “He’s right. I… Oh my God, Junker, I’m sorry… I forgot, she… she did. She told me she did.”
“No,” Junker said. “You’ve got it wrong, Aurora.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Bella said. Rora hadn’t expected her endorsement. “I begged him to kill Daddy and my disgusting brothers.” Pushing away from Strike and from Junker, Bella backed away a few steps. “And I might have my prince kill you too.”
Strike raised his gun, adjusting his position to aim at Junker’s head. “No!” Junker said. “No, you don’t know… you don’t know what he’s like! He’s bewitched you!”
“My prince loves me,” Bella said. “He always has… You’re a stranger to me, why should I trust your word?”
“Because I can get you what you want,” he said, glancing at Rora. “Aurora will tell you everything you want to know…”
Bella turned to her. “Will you, Rora? And what’s your price?”
“Leave Leandra alone,” Rora said.
“And…”
“Let me kill Exile.” Junker said.
That wasn’t part of Rora’s plan and panic made her start to sweat. Tugging at the rope that was cutting into her wrists, she tried to be subtle in her attempts to free her hands.
“But, Junk,” Rora said, trying to come across as the concerned damsel in distress. “If Bella was complicit… she ordered her brothers’ deaths. What if she turns on you? You could get hurt.”
“I only turn on disgusting men who put their hands on me without permission,” Bella said.
Though apparently Bella’s permission extended to every woman on the planet. Bella had no problem with rape, and no problem threatening women with it. But it seemed to the Black Jewel that if she gave her permission for a man to touch a woman’s body, even one that wasn’t hers, it was enough.
This was arrogance above any that Rora had ever experienced. “No!” Junker suddenly called out and shoved away from the couch. “No! This is wrong! Bella! Bella!”
Marching toward the mantelpiece, he seemed to be losing his marbles, but reached up suddenly and grabbed something. Metal glinted, but Rora couldn’t see what was in his hand. Bella screamed and lunged forward, pushing at Strike who fired a shot in the same instant.
Junker wailed, but didn’t go down. He clung to his arm, but spun around with a knife extended toward Strike. A knife, Rora exhaled her relief, that wasn’t as dangerous as a gun. Bella didn’t seem to know that though, she’d plastered herself against Strike, protecting his body.
“You can’t love him!” Junker called, blood running from the wound on his arm that suggested a bullet had just grazed him. “You can’t have wanted our family dead!”
“I can!” Bella screeched. “And you will not hurt my prince!”
Finally, something Rora and the Jewel had in common. “If you ask forgiveness, if you tell me you’re sorry…” Junker said like he was trying to make sense of this. “Get over your infatuation with him—”
Movement to the right made Rora take her eyes from the stand-off. Someone was in the kitchen.
“Burke,” she said.
Strike turned to her, but she nodded sideways toward the kitchen. Strike pulled the second gun from his waistband just a second before the kitchen door opened and Burke came in brandishing a weapon of his own.
Strike backed away slowly, putting more space between him and the couch to better keep the two other weapons in his sights. He couldn’t watch both Junker and Burke at the same time, not unless he got to the other side of the room and widened his view.
Bella, still working for her without knowing it, stayed against Strike, offering a shield.
Rora tugged at her bounds and felt one loosen. She was the only one restrained, and though she was in a corner, she didn’t like being helpless.
“This is fucked up,” Strike spat out.
She didn’t envy his position, there were three guns and a knife in the room now; one man bleeding, one woman trussed up, and everyone wanted something different.
“Isaac Burke,” Bella said and squealed. “We might have a present for you.”
Torres!
Rora had forgotten about the other agent. Well, she hadn’t forgotten about him exactly, but when she hadn’t seen him, she figured he’d either bolted or Bella had got bored of him and killed him. Burke moved further into the room, seeming only to be concerned with aiming at Strike.
“Stand down, Exile,” Burke said. “We’ve got you surrounded.”
“If you had me surrounded, you wouldn’t be in here alone,” Strike said.
Rora tugged some more and found each of her wrists were tied individually to the bannister with the same length of rope. One wrist loosened and her elbow bent, but she kept it there, not revealing that she’d just managed to free one hand. Discreetly, she began to dip her hand in a circle to let the length of rope uncoil and fall from her wrist. When it got long enough, she let the loop fall behind her head to hide it from the room. It had just touched the base of her neck when she ran out of rope to free.
So she had one wrist still fixed to it anchor, a tight circle of rope around the other though it was no longer fixed to the bannister, and a length of rope hidden behind her head. Bella was telling Burke that they were going to be friends, and that he had to be smart because both Exile and Junker were p
repared to shoot him if they had to.
But Rora was only half-listening. She watched the confident Burke, his focus on Strike, ready to get his man, or whatever he wanted from the Jewel. Rora didn’t care about what he wanted, all she knew was she didn’t like this setup one bit.
Burke had discounted her as a threat, so as he crept closer to Strike, he didn’t even look at her. She waited, tense, ready for him to move just close enough that she could…
Leaping up, she wrapped both legs around him from behind, catching him off guard, making him fall backward. In a flash, she tipped her own head out of the way and looped her spare length of rope around Burke’s neck.
Ignoring the screaming pain in her fixed wrist, she used the other to pull the rope tight around Burke’s neck. Using her legs around his waist to pull him down, her own body acted as a weight to choke him.
The gun must have fallen from his hand because he used both to claw at her as she huffed and tugged. Opening her mouth, Rora screamed out the exertion of strength she was using to pull the rope around his throat and in her legs to pull him down.
Strike appeared in front of them. He grabbed Burke by the top of his head while sweeping his legs out from under him. Her victim’s weight fell suddenly, jolting her, then Strike laid one punch to Burke’s temple and the guy went limp.
It took her a panting second to loosen her own grip from his body. Her legs relaxed, her arm dropped, and as Burke slid onto the floor in an unconscious slump, she too lost the ability to stand upright.
But as she sagged forward, Strike put an arm around her waist to support her. “We gotta untangle this shit,” he said and for a second, Rora thought he was talking to her.
But when she looked up, his attention was on Bella who nodded. “Separate them, tie them up!”
Kiss Chase Page 24
