Forbidden Captor

by Julie Miller

  Shuffling to the side, Tasiya scooted away. As soon as she was clear of the desk, she turned and ran.

  His threats chased her out the door. “That’s right, you witch. Run. Run!”

  “Hey, sugar. What’s your hurry?”

  She didn’t bother sliding to a halt as Marcus Smith emerged at the top of the stairs in front of her. She shifted directions to run right past him. “Leave me alone.”

  But his bear-size paw latched on to her wrist and hauled her up to his level. “Now that ain’t nice—”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Tasiya jerked her arm away. Her hand flew back and hit the wall, scraping knuckles against stone and shooting a jolt of pain straight up to her elbow.

  The sharp ache cleared the fog of panic that had consumed her long enough to shove Marcus aside and dart down the spiral staircase.

  “Hey—”

  “Marcus!”

  Boone Fowler’s summons kept Marcus from pursuing her. But Tasiya didn’t stop running until she reached the relative security of her tiny room off the kitchen. She unfurled the blanket she’d hung across the opening, sank onto her bed and hugged her pillow to her stomach. Burying her face in the pillow’s muffling softness, she screamed until her throat was raw and her energy was spent.

  She was less than a human being in this place. Without kindness. Without security. Without respect.

  By the time she could think clearly again, she looked at the clock. It was going on eight o’clock. She had seventeen hungry prisoners to feed.

  Men who’d been chained, caged, tortured, beaten. Men who might be executed on Marcus Smith’s whim.

  It was empathy, more than duty, compassion or even fear, that finally prompted her to rise to her feet and dry her eyes. Tasiya straightened her bed, repinned her hair and walked into the kitchen with a determined stride. She fixed an unsmiling mask on her lips and buried her emotions in the deepest hole she could find.

  She was a prisoner, too.

  Only, her chains were the greed and lust of powerful men. Her cage was the deal she’d made with the devil to save her father’s life.

  Chapter Four

  Bryce’s hands stopped their diligent work as he tipped his head to listen to the food cart clanking over the uneven stones in the passageway.

  She was coming.

  That better not be his pulse rate kickin’ into a higher gear. Bryce’s sigh of self-disgust ached against his tenderized rib muscles and stirred the plaster dust at the base of the window. He had to move past this fascination with the woman. He had to focus.

  But he’d been thinking about Tasiya’s visit all day long. He’d thought about that silky waterfall of raven-colored hair when Marcus and his thugs had him chained in the interrogation room, pointing out every antique torture device they could use on him before resorting to good old-fashioned fists. He’d thought about those dark, exotic eyes instead of reading the standard hostage script Marcus had pushed in front of his face.

  Even now he could close his eyes and remember the normal, out-of-place scents of cooking and coffee that had clung to her skin and clothes.

  There was something racing through his veins he couldn’t control. An excitement. Anticipation. It made him itchy inside his own skin.

  Man, wasn’t this a disturbing development?

  It wasn’t like this was a date. It was only dinner.

  Hell, it was scarcely that.

  When he heard Tasiya’s cart round the corner, his years of training were the only thing to rouse Bryce’s survival instincts enough to brush away the loose plaster at the window. He’d been digging with the iron brace around his wrist so he blew away the telltale bits that had collected there, too. Then he used his toes to cover his tracks by nudging the dust out of sight into the cracks in the floor.

  He rolled the stiffness from his neck and turned to face the bars of his cage.

  Escape.

  He forced the word into his brain, forced the memories and reactions out of his system. He put himself firmly in the moment and completely focused on the task at hand.

  His goal was to get her to take a message to one of the other bounty hunters. Powell or Campbell or O’Riley could strike up a conversation with her. They were smart enough to see that she might be the key to getting out of here, too.

  If he could get her to take a message.

  But Tasiya Belov wasn’t in the mood for talking.

  Bryce frowned. Something about her was different tonight. Not just the elegant way she’d swept all that hair up onto the back of her head. Not the jeans she wore that looked just as feminine against the willowy curves of her body as the conservative sweater and skirt she’d worn last night.

  Nah, this was something in her posture. There was a brittleness to her carefully precise movements as she set aside the flashlight that had guided her here, wrapped the bread and poured a cup of water from her pitcher. He saw a blankness in her expression that he recognized from battlefields—from Maria, stranded in the middle of that San Ysidran minefield with mortar shells winging her way, bringing certain death.

  Fear.

  Helpless, paralyzing fear that could only be dealt with by denying the expression of any emotion.

  Son of a bitch.

  What had happened to her? Bryce drifted forward, forgetting for a moment that he might be the cause of that fear.

  Tasiya froze. Her gaze careened from the cup she was setting on the floor to his feet inside the cell. Bryce stopped in his tracks.

  He retreated, and she slowly stood and turned his way.

  She wasn’t making eye contact. Instead she stared at the middle of his chest. But he had a feeling she wasn’t seeing the old scars or the new bruises.

  She wasn’t seeing him at all.

  “You okay?” The deep, rusty sound of his voice startled him almost more than it startled her.

  Tasiya blinked, and a spark of light and focus gave her eyes life as she raised her gaze to his. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she’d just woken up from a troubling dream and didn’t quite know where she was. “You do not say much, do you?”

  Not an answer, but at least she was talking. “Nope.”

  “The other prisoners…say more.”

  “I reckon.”

  She tilted her head at an angle and squinted, drawing a fine line of confusion above the bridge of her nose. “Reckon? I do not know that word.”

  Maybe that’s all this was. She was having a little trouble with the language, misunderstanding things, feeling isolated—homesick, even—by the frustrating process of learning to communicate in a foreign language.

  And he thought he could draft her as a messenger?

  That’s when Bryce saw the knuckles of her right hand against her pale-blue sweater. The porcelain skin was swollen and discolored with darkening blotches of deep purple and violet.

  The blood in Bryce’s veins steamed. Her distance tonight wasn’t about words at all. “Who hurt you?”

  Tasiya glanced down at her hand, as if embarrassed or frightened that he had seen it. She quickly tucked the betraying appendage beneath her arm, out of sight. “I hit it against a wall.”

  She must have punched the wall pretty damn hard.

  Or somebody had punched it for her.

  A protective anger churned inside his stomach. It had always been this way for him. If somebody was hurtin’ and he could help them… Well, hell, what else was a big brute like him good for?

  His grandma had said that soft spot of his would always keep him human, no matter what the world threw at him. Seemed like it never caused him anything but trouble, though. It complicated things when they should be simple, like telling Tasiya to ask the other bounty hunters whether or not they were being beaten every day in the same interrogation room.

  That alone should be enough of a clue to let them know his condition, a bit of the militia’s routine and get them to start comparing notes about the prison’s schedule and layout. Plus
, it would get them to thinking about striking up a relationship with Tasiya so that she might willingly—or without knowing it—aid them in an escape attempt.

  But this wasn’t simple. A woman getting hurt while he was around didn’t sit right with him. Even chained up in a damn cage, he couldn’t bring himself to use Tasiya the way he needed to.

  Not when somebody else was already using her.

  He’d have to move on to plan C or D, or whatever letter of the alphabet it took until he could find a way out of this place with every bounty hunter and surviving Special Forces soldier in one piece. Maybe he could devise a plan that might even help Tasiya. He shook the thought out of his head and tried to focus on his own mission again—get the hell out of here and take down Boone Fowler and his militia in the process. But it was too late. He’d already passed into complicated territory.

  Tasiya retreated to the far side of her cart as Bryce crossed to the bars to pick up his bread and water. He needed to eat and drink and send her on her way before he started thinking crazy things and making foolish promises.

  But his grandma had known Bryce better than he knew himself. He sat on his cot, demolished the bread in a few bites. Then he washed it down with the water and said, “You get into any kind of trouble, come see me and I’ll do what I can to help.”

  Bryce let the words fall into silence. They drifted across the moonlit shadows to the woman whose eyes gleamed like polished mahogany against the pallor of her skin.

  Their gazes locked through the ghostly moonlight—hers, seeking, searching, disbelieving…his, merely stating a fact.

  Finally Tasiya released a deep, perplexed sigh. She smoothed her palms against the denim at her thighs, steeled her posture and walked up to the bars that separated them. That tiny line of confusion that added dimension to her beauty was back in place as she wrapped her fingers around the bars and leaned in. “Why would you want to help me, when your enemy shows you no mercy?”

  Interesting. She wasn’t interested in how a man in chains could help her, but why he’d want to. Bryce stayed put, respecting her caution, admiring her courage. “You my enemy?”

  She considered the question for several moments. “I do not know. You do not feel like an enemy. But it is not wise to trust in this place.”

  “Nope.” She was being smart. There wasn’t a man in this compound who didn’t have an ulterior motive, himself included. Hell, he hadn’t yet figured out why she was here on the island. He licked the crumbs from his fingers and rose to his feet. After stuffing the napkin inside the mug, he held it out to her and explained, “Helpin’ folks is what I do.”

  She wrapped her fingers around the mug, linking them together even though they never touched. “You have a funny way of speaking, Bryce Martin.”

  Like calling him by his first and last name wasn’t an odd way to talk?

  But her serene smile hit him like a punch to the solar plexus, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe, much less take offense. God, she was beautiful when she smiled. As though a light went on inside her and spilled over into his dark world.

  Bringing a smile to her strained expression made him less self-conscious about his hillfolk drawl, less guarded about his fearsome appearance, less aware of the band of keys on her arm that were so easily within his reach.

  But before Bryce could move past that awkward, adolescent rush of pleasure and take advantage of her trusting proximity, his stomach interrupted. A deep, low-pitched rumble protested being teased with a snack when it was looking for a full-course meal.

  Tasiya’s gaze dropped down his bare torso. Her cheeks heated with color. Bryce wished Marcus Smith hadn’t taken his shirt so he and his men could jeer at his deformities. He should be able to hide himself so Tasiya didn’t have to see the scars, didn’t have to fear the bulk of him.

  He should forget about her and her safety and her smile and grab the damn keys.

  But Tasiya had taken the mug and backed beyond his reach before he could reconsider.

  “You are still hungry, aren’t you?”

  Bryce shrugged, damning that soft spot inside for caring what happened to her and complicating his escape. “I’ll live.”

  “A few bites of bread is not enough to sustain a man your size. It is not enough to help you heal from your injuries.”

  The rations they’d been feeding him weren’t enough to sustain her. “I’ll get by.”

  She stacked the mug on her cart. But Bryce was mistaken in thinking she’d been making polite conversation. “There is dried fruit in the pantry. I could add it to the bread I bake tomorrow—to give you vitamins, a more balanced diet. There are different grains that are more filling.”

  He eyed her bruised hand. She wanted to defy Boone Fowler’s orders? “Don’t do anything that’s gonna get yourself into trouble.”

  She nodded as if he hadn’t spoken. “I will bake this bread tomorrow. For you and your comrades. To keep up your strength.”

  “No.”

  “You would help me if you could. I will help you.”

  “Don’t do it,” he warned, fearing repercussions beyond his control. “Fowler will know.”

  “Good night, Bryce Martin.” She pushed her cart down the passageway.

  “Forget about the bread. Watch your own back.” Bryce yanked at the bars, wishing he could pull them apart and stop her. “Tasiya?”

  But Tasiya Belov, her noisy cart and her surprising stubbornness had already disappeared around the corner.

  “PAPA?”

  “Daughter, it is good to hear your voice.”

  Anton’s weary sigh concerned her. “You sound tired.”

  “I am fine,” he reassured her. “I think they give me something in my food to make me more docile.”

  Tasiya released the blanket that now covered her door and paced to the far corner of the room. She’d seen no one in the kitchen eavesdropping on her, but she wouldn’t risk anyone overhearing the panic that sprang into her voice. “You are not cooperating with Dimitri’s men?”

  He dropped his voice to a whisper she could barely hear across the miles. “I cannot stand what he has done to you. Maybe we cannot stop his bullying ways, but I do not intend to make his rule over our lives an easy one.”

  “Papa…” Hadn’t she promised to defy Boone Fowler’s bread-and-water rations order for the prisoners? It wasn’t much in the way of rebellion against the rules and oppression here, but it was one little stab at independence that might keep her from going completely mad. However, hearing that her injured father might be taking a similar stand against Dimitri Mostek worried her. She hugged an arm around her stomach, but found little comfort. “You must be careful.”

  She’d witnessed the penalty for not cooperating with a superior here. Verbal abuse. Humiliation. Even violence. She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered the horrible welts and bruising she’d seen last night on Bryce Martin’s ribs. Though they’d all been tortured in one way or another, it seemed as though he was being punished more than the other prisoners. Isolated in the last cell. Kept in the dark. And perhaps because he was able to endure more abuse, Fowler’s men inflicted more.

  It pained her to see such a physically able man as Bryce being hurt that way. To think of her more fragile father enduring such cruelty… “Please do everything they say. Let me take the risks, Papa. I am young and strong. I can do this. Knowing you are safe is what gets me through each day.”

  “Is it really so awful there?”

  “It is lonely.” She bit her tongue to keep from blurting out how her encounters with Boone Fowler and Marcus Smith had alternately shamed and frightened her. Anton didn’t need to worry about that. “But I am fine.”

  “Is there no one there you can talk to?”

  You get into any kind of trouble, come see me and I’ll do what I can to help.

  Bryce Martin wasn’t exactly what she’d call a confidant. But in the dark shadows of the night, when she’d felt vulnerable and alone, when she’d ached for a kind wo
rd—for hope—he’d noticed. He hadn’t said much, but the depth of his voice had resonated across every shattered nerve, calming her, grounding her. He seemed solid as a mountain to cling to, yet just as forbidding.

  There was a kindness to his perceptive gray eyes that had washed over her like a gentle spring shower. A sadness, too, as though the ugly marks on his body were etched even more deeply inside.

  He’d called himself a monster at their first meeting, and she’d believed him. But last night she’d seen a glimpse of the heart within the beast. And that paradox, as much as the anticipation of speaking to her father, had given her the strength to survive one more day.

  But how could she explain to her father that she was drawn to such a man, and still ask him not to worry?

  “I am fine, Papa,” she repeated. “Do not test Minister Mostek’s patience. Please.”

  A self-satisfied laugh grated against her ear. “Excellent advice, my dear Anastasiya.”

  Her father had been taken away from her again. Determined not to give verbal vent to her frustrations, Tasiya began to pace, three steps this way, three steps back. “You did not let me say goodbye to him.”

  “You should not test my patience, either,” Mostek warned. “You had your chance to talk. Now tell me what Fowler and his people are up to.”

  She shoved her fingers into the hair at her temple, massaging the twinge of a headache that had formed the instant Dimitri returned to the line. For a moment, she considered setting the phone back on the charger and disconnecting the call. For a moment. “They talk about a video they will make next week.”

  “Good. They are staying on schedule. My superior will be pleased.”

  “Minister…” Tasiya stopped her pacing, swallowed her pride and begged. “Dimitri. There is no place I can go here. I cannot leave Mr. Fowler and his men. I promise I will still call you…but can’t you let my father go free? Aren’t I payment enough for his transgression?”