by Cerys du Lys
“I won’t need the lights for this.” Still fuming, I hauled Ellie, who had gone curiously quiet, back up the track toward the sea, not setting her down until we were well out of sight of Sinan and his cohorts.
“You deceiving bitch.” I dumped her in the shelter of the rock-studded mountains. “Who the hell are you working for?”
“Just because I speak Turkish—”
“You’re some kind of fucking law enforcement agent, aren’t you?”
She shook her head vigorously.
“Why are you even denying it?” I felt like strangling the bitch. For real, this time.
“I speak Turkish because I lived here as a child. I didn’t tell you because it seemed safer to play dumb. I didn’t mean to reveal it back there, but I was scared and angry, and you—”
“I’m fed up with your lies.” Seizing her by the wrist, I hauled her along with me. “You’ll talk, damn you. You’ll tell me the truth.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Tough. I’m sick to death of all you sneaky government types. You’re going to find out that it was real unprofessional to put yourself at my mercy.”
“Nick, please. You’re making a mistake.”
“Be quiet, or I’ll touch your neck the way I did that first morning. Only this time you won’t wake up. Now walk.”
For once, she obeyed me.
I rowed us out to the sailboat, which was anchored nearby in the quiet bay where we’d landed two days before. It was windy and the sea was rough. Spray doused us as I wrestled with the oars. I was glad of it—I had to expend the violent energy somehow. I was so fucking furious my vision seemed red around the edges. I don’t often blow my temper, but god help the people around me when I do.
Who the fuck was she? Why was she here?
Chapter 21
Ellie
I was cursing myself for my stupidity. It had been a bad time to defy my captor—when there were so many other people around. The real reason was that I hadn’t been able to enter that cavern. My claustrophobic anxiety about dark, tight places had risen up and engulfed me. My heart had started pounding and I hadn’t been able to catch my breath. My legs had gone weak and if Nick hadn’t lifted me off my feet, I think I would have collapsed.
I hated it. I felt so goddamn weak and useless when the panic struck me. My thoughts and emotions would start to spiral down in an obsessive manner and I couldn’t seem to stop it no matter how hard I tried.
Now that I was safely away from the cavern, my panic had receded.
Now I had something real to fret about.
He marched me down to the master stateroom. He seemed tense, as if he were expecting me to launch an attack on him. Did he think I was capable of fighting him? What was I, some federal agent who knew judo or kickboxing? I tried my best to seem innocent and non-threatening. But then I thought, screw it. I wasn’t going to cower. I threw back my shoulders and straightened my spine.
He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt today. His shirt was damp from the spray. I could see his hard muscles flexing under the cotton. I wanted to touch him, find his nipples, graze them with my teeth. Shit, what was wrong with me? I had made him furious, and god only knew what he was going to do to me now, but still I wanted him. I’d been pumping his grandfather for information about his childhood. Was I falling for the guy? Was there no end to my folly where he was concerned?
As soon as we got into the stateroom, he slammed the door and crowded me against the wall where the sink was, his tall body hovering over me in a pissed-off, threatening manner. “Hepburn sent you, didn’t he?”
“Who the fuck is Hepburn?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the same person I’ve always been. I have the same reason for being in Turkey. I just know Turkish. That’s the only difference.”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, as if he expected my secret identity card tumble out of my clothes. “You’re a professional. You’re with Interpol, or maybe even the CIA. Or the Turkish authorities, I suppose.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Yes!” I clutched his forearms and tried to pry his hands off me, but he was too strong. “Look, you douche, I lived in Turkey from the time I was seven to the time I was fourteen. My mother was working on a dig in Central Anatolia. I went to school in Ankara. All my friends spoke Turkish, so I learned it without even trying, the way children do.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I was terrified. I figured you’d never believe that an American tourist could speak Turkish. It’s not exactly taught in U.S. high schools.”
“Why didn’t you admit it later, when you were no longer in fear for your life?”
I hesitated, and he answered for me: “Because it allowed you to learn things you otherwise wouldn’t have known. Right?”
He pushed down on my shoulders. Again, as so often before, he forced me to my knees. He loved doing that. I didn’t even resist. I knew how to sink down gracefully now. He pressed me down in front of him so my head was about at the level of his crotch. As he jerked me against him, I felt him harden, same as always. He might be furious, but he still wanted me.
When he hardened, I softened and grew damp. That always happened, too, dammit. Why, why did it keep happening? What was this blazing monster of need and desire that roared between us? Why wouldn’t it leave me alone?
Nick grabbed a piece of rope from one of the shelves and bound my wrists behind my back. He wasn’t gentle. He wrapped the rope up, almost as high as my elbows, and pulled it tight. It strained the muscles in my arms and shoulders. It fucking hurt. I yelled in protest. “You sadistic bastard!”
“Did I ever pretend to be anything else?” He grabbed a big hunk of my hair and wrenched my head back so I was looking up at him. “Tell me the truth.”
“Fine—knowing Turkish did allow me to learn things. This in particular—you’re the one who’s involved in human trafficking. You told Nigel you were going to sell me. Yeah, I understood that. You said I was special merchandise, and you were going to sell me to someone who likes to brutalize and humiliate American girls. Which is what you like to do yourself, isn’t it?”
He didn’t reply. He had gone still. He was probably trying to remember what else he had said in front of me, thinking I didn’t understand.
“What your grandfather and your cousin are doing is bad, but it pales beside your crimes. Do you know what happens to girls who are sold into sexual slavery? Do you even care? Do you stroke yourself while thinking about it? Does the idea of raping and dominating females get you off?”
“As a matter of fact, it does.” His voice had turned icy. He came around in front of me, where I could see him. He reached out and tore open my shirt, leaving my breasts bare except for my bra. Then he opened his jeans and grabbed his erect cock in one hand and started doing exactly that—stroking himself. “Dominating you, in particular, Helen of Troy. It gets me off like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” And while I knelt there watching because for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off him, he stroked faster and faster, while staring at me kneeling, my arms painfully trussed up behind my back, until groaning, he came, directing his cum at my face and neck and breasts.
“Fuck you,” I said, because otherwise I was going to break down and cry. I hated him in that moment. I hated him because even as he humiliated me, I wanted to touch him, kiss him, feel him pounding between my thighs.
He got a towel from the head and wiped his seed off my skin. Then he untied me and dragged me over to the bed. I thought he was going to rape me...if he could get it up again, which he probably could if he mistreated me some more.
But he left me there and stomped to the door. “I’ll deal with you later.” At the door, he paused, his back to me, his body stiff. “I used to think I could never sink to Nigel’s depths,” he said in a hollow tone. “Obviously, I was wrong.”
He went out and sl
ammed the door.
Chapter 22
Ellie
It was getting dark. I had been alone all day in Nick’s cabin on the boat, and now night was falling. I was curled up on the bunk, staring at the blackening sky through the porthole and wondering when he would return. The lights didn’t work. I had flicked switches and checked bulbs to no avail. Then I remembered Metin’s words, “There’s an electrical problem with the boat.”
How long was he going to leave me alone? All day I’d been expecting his return. And dreading it. I kept reliving every nasty thing he had done to me, of which there had been many. We’d had exactly one sweet sexual exchange, but we’d both been drunk out of our heads at the time. Everything else we’d done together had been twisted and dark.
Hours passed, but there was no footfall, no sound except the creak of boards and the lapping of waves against the hull.
What if he left me here all night?
Does the idea of raping and dominating females get you off?
As a matter of fact, it does.
Was that true, or had we just been taunting each other? It was clear that he liked the rough stuff, but that wasn’t the whole story. He could have fucked me many times over, but he hadn’t. When I’d tried to get him off with a blowjob the other night, he’d interrupted me and given me an orgasm instead.
He’d noted his grandfather had been so successful because Sir Avery trusted his instincts. My instincts kept telling me that there was something more to Nicholas Gabriel than he had permitted me to see. Was I an idiot to have such feelings? He was years older than I was, and I’d only had one serious relationship with a guy before. What the hell did I know? Compared to him I was a beginner at the whole kink, yearning and obsession thing.
My so-called instincts were probably born of the need to survive in a dangerous situation. From the morning we’d met, the bright-haired god had been the only thing standing between me and endless night. I’d tolerate anything he did to me—I’d even eroticize it—as long as I could keep breathing.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore. And, as it continued to get darker, I stopped caring, because with the dark, came my fear.
I was mentally exhausted and more than a little confused. Weak, in other words. Prey to the terrors that came by night. More so than usual, I guess.
Because Nick had been so pissed over the revelation that I knew Turkish, I’d never gotten the chance to explain why I hadn’t been able to bring myself to enter that cave. I’d never told him I was claustrophobic because I’d been afraid he might use it against me. Revealing a weakness to an adversary would be foolish.
I sat up and peered out the porthole. There was no moon. The sky was slightly overcast; it seemed too cloudy for stars. Out in the Aegean, so far from city lights and inhabited land, the darkness was absolute. Impenetrable. Before long, I couldn’t see my body, not even the ghostly outline of my fingers held up in front of my face. But I could feel my body. My harsh breathing, my skittering heartbeat.
Soon my heart was flapping as if it meant to take wing and fly away. My belly cramped and my face was as hot as my hands and feet were cold. I was breathing too fast, using up too much air. I tried to tell myself that I would not run out of air, that it was impossible to run out of air. But my sensible, rational mind held no sway over the childish part of me that feared the blackness and dreaded suffocation.
Control yourself, you dumbass.
But I could not.
Sweating, I flung away the blanket. The beating of my heart was so strong and painful that I expected each hammer stroke to be the last. It was so ironic. I’d rebelled against Nick at the dig this morning because I couldn’t face entering a dark, subterranean cavern. I’d been afraid the place would bring on a crippling anxiety attack. I’d avoided it, incurring Nick’s fury in the process, only to suffer the full effects of the attack here, instead.
What a stupid fool I’d been. Surely the cave wouldn’t have been as dark as this tiny cabin. In there, at least, I wouldn’t have been alone. Nick would have been with me. Nick, who protected me, Nick who had promised never to leave me alone in the dark.
I began to cry silently. I curled up in a fetal position on the bed. Unreality was settling over me. I began to wonder if I really existed, if anything existed around me besides endless night.
It was so dark. And I was afraid to be alone. I sobbed until my throat was raw; I dug at the dirt until my fingers were bleeding and numb. The air around me had been dank and musty, but soon it was thin and dry. Soon I felt dizzy and my lungs protested as they gasped for air. I was a child, but old enough to know I was facing death. I was already in my grave...locked up in airless darkness, writhing, scraping, and screaming to get out.
I jolted upright in bed, where I must have fallen asleep. Was I dreaming? Fuck. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was. All I knew was that I had to escape. I rolled off the bed and crawled across the floor, pressing my fingers wildly along the wall until I felt the vertical crack that marked the door. I knew it was locked. I’d pounded on it earlier, attempted to spring the lock with a nail file, all to no avail. I located the handle and clung to it. But it was locked, locked. I pressed my face to the cold metal of the door and wept.
Chapter 23
Nick
I was drinking raki with Metin and staring belligerently at the sea. “Fuck all women,” I ranted. “Do you have a woman, my friend?”
“Not at present. And you shouldn’t use that language about Ellie.”
“You’ve defended her from the start, haven’t you?” I swilled the milky white liquid in my glass, and then gulped a swallow that burned all the way down. “I should have let you take her. You’re closer to her own age, at least.”
“I’m older than I look. And I would have been happy to take her, had she had eyes for anyone besides you.”
I scowled at him over the raki glass. Metin flushed slightly and looked away. He played with his own glass for several moments before adding, “I don’t think you should have left her alone tonight.”
“She’s better off alone,” I said, tormented by violent images of all the things I wanted to do to her. I yearned to punish her for lying to me. I could think of all sorts of delicious ways to torment my disobedient slave.
“I don’t think she’s safe,” Metin said.
“None of the men would dare bother her.”
“One would.”
I stared at him over the rim of my glass.
“He boarded the yacht and messed with the electronics. He tried to sabotage the radio,” Metin reminded me. “He hates you. I think he would dare anything. I’m not saying anything will happen. Just that you shouldn’t give him the opportunity.”
I sipped again, staring over the water toward the boat. Max’s boat. A memory came to me, vivid and shattering: my best friend Max pale and shaking with a combination of grief and anger as he told me what Nigel had cruelly admitted about his rape of Max’s girlfriend. Max had been accused of that crime because he and the girl had been together. He’d left her alone for a short time, and Nigel, vengeful because the girl had dumped him for Max, had followed them and raped her. He had blindfolded her first so she wasn’t sure who he was.
A few years later, it had been my girl Elizabeth whom Nigel had pursued. He’d eventually succeeded in snaking Elizabeth away. They’d been together for a while, but he had abused her. I’d never learned exactly what Nigel had done, but it had ruined her. And cost her her life.
Elizabeth had hanged herself a few years later. She’d left a note blaming Nigel for the trauma she couldn’t seem to escape.
Nigel was going to pay for that. Soon, very soon.
If I didn’t fuck things up.
I only had a few days left before Hepburn moved in.
Hepburn, the dude who had married Elizabeth after Nigel had broken her.
Hepburn, the man who had vowed vengeance for the death of his wife.
Who the fuck is Hepburn? Ellie had asked. I’d assumed s
he knew, but now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe she was exactly who she had always claimed to be—Ellie Heath, innocent bystander with a camera who had gone camping on the Aegean coast of Turkey and walked straight into my own special hell.
Rob Hepburn was the spook behind this whole scam. He worked for some cloak and dagger federal agency. He was determined to get Nigel and he didn’t give a fuck who else he took down in the process.
I’d been fine with that in the beginning. I wanted to destroy Nigel just as much as Rob did. The dirtbag had tormented me for most of my life.
I didn’t know Rob too well. I’d met him once or twice when he’d been married to Elizabeth, but it wasn’t as if we were friends. After she’d left me for Nigel, Elizabeth hadn’t had much to say to me, and I’d had less to say to her. But when I’d heard she was dead...fuck. I’d been amazed how much that hurt.
He’d come to me last fall, as a courtesy, he’d said. That was when I’d first found out about my grandfather’s slide into thievery. I hadn’t even believed it until Hepburn had shown me his proof—stolen artifacts, an astonishing number of them. And my foolish Granddad in it up to his scrawny neck.
“Nigel’s dirty,” Rob Hepburn had told me. “We believe he’s involved in all sorts of things—drug smuggling, illegal weapons trading, maybe even terrorism along with the art theft.”
“So arrest him.”
“I want more than an arrest. I want to put him away in a Turkish prison. And you’re going to help me do it.”
“I love the thought of Nigel rotting in a Turkish prison, but why the fuck do you need my help?”
“I don’t. But Sir Avery does. If we take Nigel down for this, your grandfather will be implicated too. I shouldn’t care about that, but I met the old guy a couple of times. Beth loved him, as I’m sure you know.”
