by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
He picked me up and flung me over his shoulder, and I kicked, clawed, screamed, hit…all of it seemed to bounce off him as he strode toward the water.
“I’m doing this for you.”
I screamed, coming unglued as he tossed me into a boat. The water terrified me, but as he unwound the rope anchoring me to the dock, that almost split me in two. “Come with me! Please, Rafe! Please—” I broke into unintelligible sobs, left with nothing to do but drift away from the island. From him.
“Alex!” he called as he let loose another boat—Zach’s I guessed. It floated in the direction mine had. “You’ll hit land a little ways upstream. Stay calm. I’ll find you.”
I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t speak.
“He won’t hurt you anymore. Not when I’m through with—” A loud grunt tore through the night, and my lids popped open.
I scrambled to my knees as he battled with Zach for the gun. Holding both hands over my racing heart, I screamed Rafe’s name. And I screamed and screamed some more when they fell to the ground and Zach beat him over the head with a rock. Rafe stopped struggling.
He wasn’t fucking moving. The scene before my eyes crawled in slow motion as Zach pushed to his knees, then to his feet. He stepped back, body swaying, and aimed the barrel at Rafe’s unmoving form.
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod…
I screamed at him to stop, but my voice cut out when the blast echoed off the mountains. I almost fell into the water, reaching, pleading, praying for Rafe to get up, but Zach kicked his body into the river.
My mouth opened, yet no sound came out. This wasn’t happening. That shot was a car backfiring from the highway, or someone testing their illegal mortars a few weeks early of the Fourth of July. Any second now, Rafe’s strong arms would pull him to safety and he’d beat the shit out of Zach.
But he didn’t surface.
Zach dove into the water with a splash, and his strokes brought him straight for me with the stealth and speed of a shark. I could do nothing to save myself. Water lapped against the boat, paralyzing me. My fear trapped me, held me prisoner in my own mind, and Rafe…
He wasn’t coming up, wasn’t gasping for breath and diving after Zach.
My heart fractured, split wide open, and I didn’t recognize the howl of agony spilling from my being. Zach pulled himself into the boat, his sodden clothing weighing him down, and shoved a hand over my mouth. I flailed as he wound an arm around my neck. I fought him with everything I had, even as my gaze fastened to the spot where Rafe had gone under. I longed to slip into the void after him, to vanish as he had. I didn’t want to live if he didn’t.
The headlights crawling along the highway, like pairs of lightening bugs, blinked out in my periphery, and the night narrowed to nothing, yet that empty spot in the river burned in my mind.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vanish
Rafe
I jerked awake in the depths of icy water, kicked weak and useless limbs, and eventually broke the surface. Gasping, I pulled myself onto land with jittery arms and spewed water from my lungs, coughing until I puked. I rolled to my back, and the throb in my head made itself known. So did the fire in my left shoulder. The sky spun like a damn acid trip. Wet and itchy grass cradled my body, and I groaned as I ran my fingers along a nasty gash in my skull. I pulled my hand away and winced at the blood covering it. Too much blood.
Shaking uncontrollably, my heart rate doubled as I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t get myself off the ground. The stars seemed to distance themselves, as if they knew I’d suck the light out of them. I thought I heard someone scream, and something about that hysterical plea fisted my insides. What the fuck had happened to me? I recognized my dad’s island, but why I was sprawled on it, hurt and bleeding, I didn’t know. Another scream cut through the air, abruptly cut short as it carried in the night. Someone was in trouble, needed my help, yet I couldn’t move…couldn’t stay…awake.
Someone lifted me, followed by the unmistakable sway of a boat ride. A voice kept talking to me, telling me to hold on.
Almost there, buddy.
Almost where?
A horn blared, tires screeched, and frantic voices exchanged meaningless words because everything was meaningless. None of it made sense. Where was I?
Didn’t someone need help?
A sharp pain stabbed my chest at the thought. I was unworthy, a sadistic ass who’d done horrible things…who had I done this to? And why would I do something so…what had I done? Why was trying to remember making my head throb like a fucking drum, pounded on by brutal drumsticks that inflicted the most horrid pain? I felt those strikes clear though my eyeballs to my teeth.
Hands grabbed my body and lifted, sliding me onto something cold and hard and bumpy. An engine rumbled to life. I groaned as I rolled, though an arm steadied me, as did the leg stretched out at my side.
A bright light woke me, searing my eyes and intensifying the throb at my temples, which kept time to the rhythmic beep that irritated my ears. I rubbed the blurriness from my vision and took in the small room. What the hell? Had I lost a fight, beaten so badly I’d needed hospitalization?
Why couldn’t I remember?
Someone shifted on my left, and I found a guy slumped in a chair, his dark blond hair a mess on his head. His drawn face displayed signs of fatigue.
“Thought I’d lost you, man.”
I blinked. Something wasn’t right. He must have been in the wrong room, or confused.
I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, he was still staring at me, waiting for an answer. “Why are you here?”
“Seriously? We get into one fight and this is how you’re gonna play it?” He brushed the hair from his brown eyes. “That’s cold. If I hadn’t come back, you would’ve bled to death. Lucky for you, you sonofabitch, it was a clean shot, so no permanent damage.”
I blinked again, feeling as if I were missing several cards from the deck. “I don’t remember. How long have I been here?”
Some of the anger left his shoulders. “You’ve been laid up three days. It was touch and go for a while. You lost a lot of blood, and they didn’t know how long you’d gone without oxygen.”
What the hell? No one choked me out. It just wasn’t done. I choked my opponents.
“Must have been some fight.”
He raised a brow. “That’s a mild way of putting it. No one can piece together what happened.” He gave me a heavy look, then lowered his voice. “Which is a good thing since you-know-who vanished, though I’d like to get my hands on whoever did this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m guessing you let her go? There’s been no sign of her since. I said I found you on the side of the highway, so the island is secure. No cops crawling it.” He sighed. “So what do you remember? Because fuck, Rafe, I don’t have a clue what happened out there.”
I studied this tattooed stranger through squinted eyes, still having no idea who he was or what he was talking about, yet he acted as if he knew me. “Um, I remember seeing Nikki the other night.” Hell, that girl could fuck a guy raw. My dick twitched as I remembered how she’d ridden me.
“How bad did you bump your head? Nikki showed up a few mornings ago. Close call too.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I knew the risks when I signed on for this, but I gotta say it—these past few days have been a bitch.”
“What?” Was he purposefully speaking in riddles? I’d fucked Nikki the night Zach and I had gone head-to-head. I was still on a high from winning that title, knowing my dream of fighting in the UFC was a real possibility now. As for the rest of what this guy at my bedside said, it made about as much sense as his presence.
I glanced around the room and tried to figure out what I was missing. Plain white walls, standard hospital machinery, and that fucking beeping that increased the throbbing in my head. Most notably, someone was absent. “Where’s my dad?” I wasn’t surprised my brother hadn’t shown up. He was a
lways too busy to differentiate his asshole from his mouth, and he’d never approved of my career anyway, but Dad would be the first one here.
The guy narrowed his eyes. “Something’s not right…” He jumped to his feet and hit the call button.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting help, ’cause you’re not acting like yourself.”
“Dude,” I said, “How would you know? I don’t even know who the hell you are. No offense.”
He collapsed back into the chair, eyes wide, and his panic penetrated my tough veneer. His reaction scared me, and I didn’t know why.
“That is not funny,” he said. “Cut the crap.”
I shook my head. “Seriously, who are you?”
He pushed his hands through his hair. Three times now, he’d done that. Must be a nervous tick. “This isn’t happening.” His gaze bored into me. “Who’s the President?”
“Of the UFC?”
“No! Of the fucking United States.”
I furrowed my brows. “Bush, why?”
“Shit,” he said, then dropped his head into his hands. A few seconds later, he looked up, his face taut with stress. “What year is it?”
“2006. What the hell is going on?”
“You’ve lost eight years of your life, man. That’s what’s going on.”
The End
Thank you!
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Rampant, book two in the Condemned series, is now available!
Blurb:
Life is twisted. Cruel. After being ripped from the safe haven of Rafe’s arms, my new kidnapper is waging a sick game. Unable to make my body do his bidding, he’s resorting to psychological warfare. He’ll bend my mind until I break, and when I do, that just might be my saving grace.
I’ll forge through hell to get back to Rafe, body and spirit broken and bleeding, but I’m unprepared for what I find. He’s done what I can’t: he’s erased eight years of pain and betrayal. I don’t know how to bring him back to me, because bringing him back means ripping him to shreds all over again.
About Gemma James
Gemma James is the multi-genre author of several novels and novellas, from new adult suspense to dark erotic romance. She loves to explore the darker side of human nature in her fiction. She’s morbidly curious about anything dark and edgy, from deviant sex to serial killers. Readers have described her stories as being “not for the faint of heart.” She lives in Oregon with her husband and their four children—three rambunctious UFC/wrestling-loving boys and one girl who steals everyone’s attention.
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Also by Gemma James
ULTIMATUM (The Devil’s Kiss #1)
ENSLAVED (The Devil’s Kiss #2)
RETRIBUTION (The Devil’s Kiss #3)
THE DEVIL’S KISS TRILOGY (The Devil’s Kiss #1-3)
THE DEVIL’S SALVATION: FINAL EPILOGUE (The Devil’s Kiss #4)
THE DEVIL’S KISS: COMPLETE SERIES
TORRENT (Condemned #1)
RAMPANT (Condemned #2)
FERVENT (Condemned #3 – coming soon!)
Spin
USA Today Bestselling Author
CD Reiss
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Copyright © 2014
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental
Cover Art designed by the author
Chapter One
Oh, Jonathan.
I mentally rolled my eyes, if such a thing were possible, and kept my physical eyes focused on the woman singing. She had a lovely voice. It wasn’t quite like a bird, but more like a dozen of them layered one on top of the other. The effect was hypnotic.
I glanced at my brother again. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah?”
“You just agreed that the Angels were superior to the Dodgers.”
He looked away from her, and I sensed the air between them rip. I hadn’t felt anything but annoyance with his lack of attentiveness until he looked at me again, and his entire face changed from voracious and single-minded to the usual bemused and arrogant.
“This season?”
“Are you even paying attention?” I asked.
“Look, you have six sisters and me. All your sisters will tell you to forget Daniel Brower completely. I’m telling you to forgive him if you have to, but if you’re going to, just do it and drop it. I’m the one you keep talking to about him, and I keep giving you the same answer. So it sounds like you want to go back to him.”
He was in love with his ex-wife, who had left him for another man. Of course he’d be the most forgiving, and of course he was the one I chose to be with.
“I can’t. Every time I look at him, I can’t stop seeing him having sex with that girl.”
“Don’t look at him.”
I folded my hands on the table. I shouldn’t see my ex. Ever. But he’d called, and I had lunch with him, like a damned fool. He’d said it was business, and in a way, it was. We had a mortgage together, and bills, and I knew the intimacies of his campaign for mayor about as well as I’d known the intimacies of his body. But with so much dead weight between us, I had trouble eating. In the end, of course, he’d asked for me back, and I’d declined while holding back tears.
“He keeps asking to see me,” I said.
“Jesus Christ, Theresa. He’s stringing you along.” Jonathan tipped his drink to his lips and watched the woman standing by the piano like a hawk observing a mouse. “I thought I had it bad.”
I felt a sudden ball of tension wrap up in my chest. I couldn’t exactly place it, but it irritated me. “Do you know her? The singer.”
“We have a thing later tonight.”
“Good, because I was going to say you might want to introduce yourself before you slobber on her. Maybe dinner and a show.”
He smiled a big, wide Jonathan grin. After his wife left, he’d turned into a womanizing prick, but he rarely let us see that side of him. He was always a gentleman, until I saw him look at that singer. It made me uncomfortable. Not because he was my brother, which should have been enough, but because of an uneasy, empty feeling I chased away.
“Go to Tahoe or something for a few weeks,” he said. “Slap some skis on. You’re giving yourself an ulcer.”
“I’m fine.”
The musicians stopped, and people clapped. She was good. My brother just applauded with his eyes and tipped his glass to her. When she saw him, her jaw tightened with anger. Apparently, he knew her well enough to piss her off.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I know damn well how not fine you are.”
I looked him square in the eyes, and I knew his hurt matched mine. He healed himself by seducing whoever he fancied. I didn’t think I could use the same strategy. It stopped mattering when the singer made a beeline for our table.
“Hi, Jonathan,” she said, a big, fake smile draped across her face.
“Monica,” he said. “This is Theresa.”
“That was beautiful,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“You were incredible,” Jonathan said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“I’ve never heard of a man trying to sandwich another woman between fingering me and fucking me in the same day.”
I almost spit out my Cosmo. Jonathan laughed. I felt sorry for the girl. She looked as if she was going to cry. I hated my brother just then. Hated him with a dogged vehemence because not only was he messing with her feelings, he still looked at her as though he wanted t
o eat her alive. When I saw how she looked at him, I knew he would win. He would have her and a dozen others, and she wouldn’t even know what was happening. I couldn’t watch.
“I’m going to the ladies’,” I said and slid out of the booth, not looking back.
I leaned against the back of the stall, staring at the single strip of toilet paper dangling off the roll. I had a few squares in my bag, just in case my brother brought me to yet another dump, but I didn’t want to use them. I wanted to dig into that feeling of emptiness and find the bottom of it.
You always have a few squares in your bag. And two Advil. And a tampon.
Daniel’s voice listing the stuff I carried for emergencies; his face, smiling as we went out the door for some charity thing; him in a tux, me in something, holding a satin clutch into which a normal woman couldn’t fit more than a tube of lipstick and a raisin.
“You got your whole kit in there?” he’d asked.
“Of course.”
“Space and time are your slaves.”
I’d been pleased at the way he looked at me, as if he couldn’t be more impressed and proud, as if I ruled the world and his servitude was the natural order. Pleased as a king opening a pie and finding the miracle of four-and-twenty blackbirds.
But though I’d been with him for seven years, he’d never looked at me the way Jonathan looked at that singer. Never. Maybe that was why Daniel had had sex with his speechwriter. He didn’t revere her; he fucked her.
Daniel had always called me Tink, short for Tinkerbell, because of my curvy, petite frame. A sprightly, delicate fairy. Not someone you looked at hungrily.
I saw the singer in the hall, looking distant and resolute at the same time, as if she was convincing herself of something. She stopped short when she saw me.
