Fearless

by Maren Smith

  “Get in,” he ordered.

  Kitty climbed into the backseat, pulling her foot in quickly in case he decided to make that first pre-emptive strike a hobbling one.

  Smirking, Ethen shut her door.

  I’m a good girl. Kitty closed her eyes, rubbing her damp palms against her jeans. I’m safe. Except she wasn’t. I’m loved. Not in this car. I don’t have to be afraid of anything. Opening her eyes again, she watched Ethen get in behind the steering wheel. The car came to life at the push of a button. He smiled at her in the rearview mirror, but his eyes offered neither mirth nor friendship.

  “I should think you would thank me for coming all the way out here in the middle of the night to collect you.”

  “Thank you.” Her tone was as flat as his stare. She couldn’t believe she was sitting here; she felt like such an idiot.

  “A few months out of my care and you’ve already forgotten how a proper apology should go. I can see you’ll need some re-educating.”

  The déjà vu was strong. The last time she’d been in this car, catching glances from him in that mirror, she’d been scared shitless and he’d been angry. Ethen was doing his part, but something had changed in Kitty. Her chest was every bit as tight as back then, but not with fear this time. Well, not a lot anyway, but what fear there was wasn’t overwhelming. Instead of feeding into her panic, all she could feel was the dull throb of anger building up under the back of her skull.

  “That’s all right,” Ethen promised as he backed out of the stall and headed for the nearest exit ramp. “I have nothing else to do with my time. We can go all night, if that’s what it takes.”

  Was she really going to let him drive her back out to the isolation of his country house where he’d beat and raped her so brutally? And how fucked up in the head did she have to be to actually excuse him for that? She’d huddled on the kitchen floor, naked, with nothing but a litter box, barely able to walk even a few feet to steal her own cellphone off the kitchen counter, and she’d excused him.

  What the hell was she doing?

  Kitty glared at the back of his head, tightly clenched fingers squeezing tighter and tighter, until she could feel the pain radiating out of her whitening knuckles. The urge to strangle him with his own seatbelt was at once the most terrifying and exhilarating plan she’d ever hatched, and it was all she could see when she looked at him.

  “Don’t,” he softly warned, his own eyes darkening in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you dare look at me like that. Not after all I’ve done for you.”

  Drop your gaze. Look at your hands, your feet, anything but him. That old fear was right there, as fresh and vibrant as ever, and yet what came pouring out of her mouth was an equally soft and accusing, “You mean like stealing my money and leaving me with nothing?”

  Ethen laughed, a low chuckle as cold as the promise his stare was making. “I don’t have to steal. Everything you own is mine, remember? As per the agreement you signed when you accepted my contract of ownership.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it!” she spat. “You got me fired! You beat the shit out of me!”

  They were almost at the line at the exit gate, but he slammed the brakes and threw the car into park. Hooking his arm over the back of the seat, he twisted far enough around to stab a finger back at her. “You will speak to me with respect—”

  Kitty snapped. She grabbed his finger, yanking his arm down behind the seat and punched. He both ducked and flinched, and her knuckles connected with the back of his head. It was the wrong place to hit a person. Pain exploded through her fingers, all the way up through her hand and into her wrist, but it was at once the worst and the best feeling of her life.

  Swearing, he yanked his captured arm back out of her grip, but she hit him again. And again, despite the pain. His own temper snapped, but his seatbelt held him hostage and Kitty was already out of hers, slapping and slugging around the back of his headrest, scratching and screaming as months of pent up rage she hadn’t even known she was drowning in came vomiting out of her. If she could have got at him around that blasted headrest, she’d have sunk her teeth into the side of his neck, she was so angry. It was that vicious and terrifying desire more than the pain in her hand that finally stopped her attack.

  That and his wallet, which she took out of his inner coat pocket, swiping all the cash he had. She hit him with that too, twice, while he was still fumbling to get out of his seatbelt.

  She took his cellphone too, which she beat to death against the dash of his car, right before she kicked her door open and fell out of the back of his car.

  Flinging his seatbelt off, Ethen started to follow her, but she wasn’t running. The minute she got her feet under her, she grabbed for his door. Anger gave way to shock. He slapped the locks down before she wrenched it open.

  “Come on!” When yanking the handle didn’t work, she switched to kicking his door. She slammed two glorious dents in his perfect, tidy, shiny black car. “Come on!”

  She lost her balance when the car took off, nearly falling on her butt.

  “Go on and run!” she bellowed after him. “I know where you live, coward!”

  She was a little surprised he would run. But then, this was an airport, with plenty of cameras and cops. If he looked back, she didn’t see it through his tinted windows. Ethen got to the exit gate right as the last car in line went through it, but he still had to stop.

  “I’m coming after child support!” she shouted.

  He barely stopped long enough to tap his credit card to the chip reader, and then he was through. Tires squealing, he took the corner without hitting his brakes.

  “You just landed yourself the world’s craziest baby-mama!” she roared from the middle of the exit ramp, haloed in the headlights of half a dozen cars that were keeping a wary distance behind her.

  God, that felt good.

  Panting, weaving on her feet, Kitty came slowly back to herself in time to see the first car tentatively drive around her. Her head was pounding. Barely aware of the odd looks she was getting from those inside, she was a little surprised airport security wasn’t speeding their way to arrest her.

  She looked down, a wad of his money still clutched in one hand, astounded by her own capacity for violence. Her other hand was bleeding, thin rivers of crimson that dribbled down her shaky fingers from where she’d split her knuckles and cut herself smashing his phone.

  The faint crunch of tires on pavement pulled up behind her. Kitty startled when a man with entirely the wrong accent asked, “Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?”

  He was the driver of a yellow cab. The light was off, and it was empty.

  Flying high on euphoria, but coming down fast, Kitty’s hand shook when she offered him her money. She had no idea how much was even there. She saw twenties and tens and several ones, but she was buzzing too much to count. “C-can I get a ride?”

  The look he gave her said he didn’t mind helping, but that letting her into the back of his cab wasn’t his first option. But he also looked at the money in her hand and, unlike her, was fully capable of tallying the sum. “Where are we going?”

  She gave him Garreth’s home address, but even as she wrapped her wounded hand in the napkins the driver gave her and crawled into the back of his cab, she realized her mistake. Australia was fourteen hours ahead of D.C. time. “Is it still Friday?”

  Switching on the fare light, the cabby glanced back at her. “All day long.”

  Fridays Garreth would be at Black Light. He worked there most weekends, but Fridays were different. On the first and third of every month, he was a dungeon monitor and resident EMT. On the second and fourth Fridays, however, he and Hadlee got to play. They wouldn’t be home, not until late. Which meant Kitty had a choice: she could either sit outside Garreth’s apartment until whatever o’clock they came home, or she could go to Black Light and surprise them. Maybe sit in the bar, have a sip of something to calm her rattled nerves, and then figure out what her next st
ep should be.

  “Are you sure?” the cabby asked when she changed addresses.

  No, she wasn’t sure of anything, but she fed enough money through the slot in the protection barrier to satisfy him, and off they went. At least she was home.

  Honestly, she thought it would feel better than this.

  Chapter 16

  Noah’s arresting officer was a man by the name of Billy Cuthrie, and he was a complete git. But, the airport’s security supervisor was not. He was, in fact, a romantic fellow at heart. He not only let Noah go with a warning, but he looked up Kitty’s flight and even found Noah an alternative.

  “You’re in luck,” he said. “It’ll cost a helluva lot more, takes two extra flight changes and the first plane won’t leave for another two hours, but it’s half the layover time if you go to France first, then Canada, and then Washington. You’ll actually land within half an hour of her.”

  If he hadn’t been to China recently and still had his passport in his truck, he couldn’t have done it. If he didn’t have a cousin willing to drop everything and run to his bank in Cooktown, transferring over enough money from his account into Noah’s, he wouldn’t have been able to do it either. Fortunately, Noah had both, although the loan did cost him a leather jacket and the use of his boat.

  “If you get drunk and crash it, you’re a dead man,” Noah promised him.

  “Bring me home a swanky American girl,” his cousin brightly returned. “I like red heads.”

  And back around the world Noah went, not for the purposes of rest and vacation, but for the first time in his life because he was chasing a woman. He didn’t even know why.

  By the time his plane touched down in Washington D.C., the shock of Kitty’s actions had worn off. Now Noah was pissed, partly with himself because he really couldn’t afford to do this, and partly with her, because money and affordability aside, he couldn’t bring himself not to follow her. All he’d wanted was one month, and she’d agreed to that. So, what the hell? Why would she leave? He was determined to find out and to keep his temper firmly under control until he did, and then when it was over and done and he’d given her a piece of his mind, then he’d probably just go home.

  Yeah, who was he kidding? He’d never wanted to paddle a woman so hard in all his life. The whole trek from the plane to the car rental counter, it was all he could think about. He didn’t have anything with him, but that was okay. He had his belt, he had his hand, and if push came to shove, he was pretty sure he could find a switch to cut even in the States’ capital.

  As if it would come to that. He’d never struck a woman in anger and he wasn’t going to start now. He also never spanked for punishment, but in Kitty’s case, he was sorely tempted to make this the exception. She deserved it for running back to Ethen alone!

  He just couldn’t understand it. And yeah, he wasn’t thinking straight right now, and yeah, the way his palm kept itching made him wary about trusting his instincts, but if he did nothing else, he wasn’t leaving until Kitty was away from that abusive son of a bitch.

  “How long will you need the car?” the lady at the counter asked as she entered the information from his International Driving Permit into her computer.

  Noah held up one finger. He honestly didn’t know how long it would take. An hour to track down Ethen’s house, five, maybe ten minutes to storm the place and throw Kitty back in the car, another hour to drive to Garreth’s where she’d be safe. He rolled his shoulders. From everyone but him, that is.

  “One day rental,” she said, more to herself as she finished registering him. “Let’s see what we’ve got…”

  “You got one with GPS?” That would make finding Ethen’s house and then Garreth’s afterward much easier. Once he got Kitty in the car, he was going to have enough to do scolding—paddling—and talking sense into her—shake her until her eyeteeth rattled; Ethen? Seriously? What the hell, love?—he didn’t need the added aggravation of also having to street-map his way around a foreign city.

  “We can do that,” the lady behind the counter said brightly, and soon Noah was heading for the highway in a relatively new business special with excellent gas mileage and an onboard GPS, stammering out directions to Ethen’s house in a spot-on imitation of Porky Pig.

  The farther out of town he went, the more Kitty’s initial reaction to his house began to make sense. Ethen’s home was every bit as remote as Noah’s, and though he’d not been out this way the last time he was in D.C., Garreth had told him about that midnight run when he’d gone to rescue Hadlee. He’d told him about Kitty’s rescue too. As Noah drove, certain gut-churning details kept popping into his head.

  There was no mistaking the abandoned gas station when he passed it. Not with the bones of old gas pumps protruding from the concrete, its lot grown over by weeds, and that graffiti-tagged phonebooth in the corner. Wadded trash littered the bottom, and for the next several kilometers all Noah could think about was a broken, battered Kitty walking this country road in the black of an icy night, without clothes, without shoes, only to end up huddled in the bottom of that phonebooth with nothing but a layer of garbage to keep her warm. For four kilometers he thought about it, his grip strangling the steering wheel, his jaw locked so tight it made his teeth ache.

  For all that it was dark as pitch out here, he found Ethen’s wooded driveway. It wasn’t half as long and winding as Noah’s back home, but it was unpaved and as full of weather ruts, none of which stopped him from speeding down it a good ten kilometers faster than he should. It must have rained earlier in the day. The ground was muddy and he slid when he braked, mud splattering the side of the house and only missing ramming the porch by a fender-width.

  A tall blonde woman peeked out the kitchen window when Noah slammed out of the car. She was naked, not that he cared. Up until that moment, he thought he was doing rather well at keeping his temper in check, but as they stared at one another, his rapidly darkening mood must have shown itself. Her mouth moved in a whispered curse he didn’t need to hear to recognize.

  Oh shit didn’t half cover it.

  The woman bolted for the front door, getting there ahead of Noah barely in time to lock it. She leapt back wildly though when he reared back and kicked it in. Wood splintered and glass in two of the six old-fashioned frames shattered as the door slammed into the opposing the wall.

  The blonde slapped both hands over her mouth, but otherwise didn’t make a sound.

  “Where is she?” Noah growled, and from the more brightly lit living room, where all he could see was the form of a woman hunched inside a dog kennel, came a man’s, “What the hell was that?”

  Noah had thought he was keeping his temper under control. Right up until Ethen ventured out of the living room and the two men saw one another. After that, all Noah saw was red.

  “Who are you?” Ethen said, a half second before recognition lit and his eyes widened. “Pony-girl, call the police.”

  But Noah had already closed the half dozen steps between them. His balled fist knocked Ethen sprawling backwards to the accompanying screams of two horrified women.

  Grabbing his nose, Ethen rolled on his back.

  Stepping over him, Noah had the padlock on the dog kennel in his hand before he realized the woman staring wide-eyed back at him through the wire door was not Kitty. She had gag cuts at the corners of her mouth and fading impact bruises across her shoulders, hips and ass. She looked terrified.

  She looked terrified of him.

  “Where’s Kitty?” he asked her.

  Shaking her head, the woman shrank as far from him as the back of her kennel would allow.

  Sniffling through the blood and involuntary tears, Ethen half-laughed as he eased himself to sit up. “She’s not here.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Noah warned. “I know you bought her a cab and plane ticket, so don’t even try to—”

  “She’s not here.” Laughing, Ethen pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it over his bloody nose. “You p
eople.” Making no effort to get up, he glared at Noah as if he both hated and was amused by him. “Yes, I paid for her to come home, and she assaulted me. Just like you assaulted me. And, just like I intend to do to her, I am going to sue you over it.”

  “You’re going to sue me?” Noah echoed, unimpressed.

  Ethen smirked.

  “Good on you, mate,” Noah said, only too happy to return the smile. “Let’s make it worth the price, yeah?”

  Ethen grabbed his arms when Noah grabbed him, dragging the taller man to his knees by his hair.

  “Crawl,” Noah ordered, damn near scrubbing his nose to the floor. If it wasn’t broken before, it was before they were halfway through the kitchen. “Crawl like you made her crawl.”

  The blonde got out of his way. Hands clutched to her chest, she followed from a safe distance as Noah dragged her dom through the house to the back bedroom. He found the cage built into the framework of Ethen’s bed, exactly as Hadlee had once described it. She’d said it was the cage he liked to put Kitty into, the one that had left her terrified of confining places. It was the reason Noah always left the bathroom light on at night. It was one of many reasons why Kitty shook when she thought he was going to punish her.

  Flinging Ethen up against the cage, he unbuckled his belt and ripped it from around his waist. “Get in.”

  Ethen scrambled, but Noah still managed to whip him twice across the back and legs before he was too far under the bed to read. Slamming the door, Noah threw the sliding-bolt and padlocked it with the one he found hanging on the door. No doubt waiting for Kitty’s return.