“Now I know how Bella felt about you,” she spat.
Growling at her, he pounced, snatching her wrists and planting them on the door behind her. “You love to sink your teeth in,” he snarled. “Be vicious, baby. No rules. No fear, my queen, we’ll build our own world.”
“No,” she said. He tried to kiss her again, but she brought up her knee to smash it against his groin, making him buckle. Rora shoved at him before stamping on his foot. “No means no! No to this! No to your sick, evil little plan! No to being your queen! No to kissing! And definitely no to sex!”
“Fine,” he hissed and spun around to march back to his seat.
Fury and adrenaline pumped through her chest, killing little pieces of her heart with every beat. “You don’t have to do this,” she said when he dropped into the seat and opened Opal. “Please, Flame, just… just toss it and we’ll forget this. You can still have me. I’ll be yours. We’ll belong to each other.” He sneered up at her and grabbed the Point from the table to open it; he angled it against the port. “No! Please! Baby, just let it go! You can still choose me!”
He didn’t know it, but this was the final exam. The test she’d set in motion when she chose north over south. Every atom of her being wanted him to pass but putting the USB into Opal proved his intention to choose the Point over their relationship. But there was still time, he could still choose her, he could still pass.
“You were temporary,” he grumbled, his fingers curling tighter around the device. “Always knew it.”
“No,” she said, hoping the angel on his shoulder might find her voice. “There’s still time, I want to be permanent. Forever, for all eternity permanent, just please, please…” She begged and actually dropped onto her knees with tears streaming from her eyes. “Please, Strike, I’m pleading with you. Don’t do this. I’m yours until you put that into the port. Connect it, and I’m gone forever, Strike.” His cold eyes rose to hers. Desperation flavored her throat when she sobbed. “Please, baby… My Flame, my love… put it down… don’t force me to leave you… I don’t want to walk away. Let me stay with you, please.”
“You can,” he said, his fingers clenching around the device. “We’ll do it together.”
But that wasn’t the deal, he couldn’t have both.
“No,” she whispered. “This is the moment of temptation you talked about. If you connect that to Opal, I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again.”
For half a minute, they looked at each other across the room, him with his hand poised to push the device into the computer, her on her knees, her hands clasped beneath her chin, her face stained with tears.
“Please,” she whispered one more time.
“Satan’s son is beyond redemption,” he said and pushed the device into the computer.
He might as well have been driving a knife into her heart. In that instant, he took her soul. Her hope. Her faith. All of it was gone.
Rising from her knees, she swallowed her grief. Rora was consumed by numbness; there was nothing to fear because she had nothing.
Turning around, she said nothing else, she walked out of Buddy’s apartment and left her love to his triumph.
Autopilot took her down the stairs. Her head was bowed; she didn’t even see anyone enter the building until she was just a couple of meters from the door.
“Isn’t this convenient,” a female voice exclaimed. “Victims are just delivering themselves right to the front door.”
Rora gasped, her attention flew up and she was stunned to see Bella there in front of her. The dark silhouette of the black-souled woman was haloed by the light from outside. It didn’t make her look angelic, in fact it managed to make her look downright demonic.
“Bella,” Rora said and tried to take a backward step, but there were men closing in around her from every direction.
Something stung her neck, making her grab for the source of the pain.
“We’ll take this one to go.”
Bella’s laugh was the last thing Rora heard before she blacked out.
twenty-seven
The shock of icy water hitting her face woke Rora up with a sputtering gasp.
She struggled to breathe against the impact of the cold. Coughing and choking, she tried to lift her head to see where she was, but darkness surrounded her, and she… she couldn’t move her hands.
Pulling on them, she felt something wide and metal around her wrists, holding her in place. And when she tried to move her heavy feet, the jangling sound of a chain came from the floor. The wall at her back was cold, it scratched on her, tormenting her skin, creating a cascade of prickling pain over her exposed back.
Blinking down at herself, Rora let her eyes adjust to the lack of light and managed to get a rhythm to her breathing. She was naked, cold, in the dark. Her feet were locked in lengths of chain that were attached to the floor and her hands were connected to metal stocks on the wall.
Someone touched the curtains of her hair that hung over her face and she recoiled, but there was nowhere for her to go against this exposed-brick wall. Whoever it was, they got closer and pushed her hair away from her face with a… feminine touch.
“Bella,” she croaked.
The Black Jewel was there in front of her, smiling, perfect, gorgeous, and glittering with anticipation. “Hello, Arousing Aurora… We have unfinished business, duckie.”
The woman was alive. Strike had said he didn’t know if she was alive or not. But Rora wasn’t too surprised. If anyone would have the ability to bounce back no matter what, Bella seemed like the type.
“He’s not coming,” Rora said. “Or did you take him too?” Though the truth was, Rora was so dazed right now, she couldn’t make sense of much. “Or were you in on this together from the start?”
“My prince will come,” Bella said. “But not for you… This isn’t about him.”
“Then what’s it about?” she asked. “The question? Because your prince knows the answer. He has it. All of it. You took the wrong person if that’s what you’re looking for.”
Except that was a lie.
After Rora walked away from Strike in Buddy’s apartment, her former love would have accessed the USB device they’d taken from the resort only to discover it contained nothing more than the landscape images she’d hidden with Benjamin.
Benjamin had thought the Point was there in that hotel room, just as Strike had, both men were wrong.
If Strike had chosen her, he’d never have needed to know about her deception, just like Benjamin never had. But he’d picked the device thinking it did contain the Point.
In that moment of choosing between the north and south routes, she’d decided to test her love, but she’d been smart enough to have a failsafe and chosen not to take him to the real device.
Rora had put temptation in front of the man she loved believing that he would never give in to it. But he had.
The real Point was safe where she’d hidden it alone.
Strike would be on the warpath.
“Well,” Bella said, creeping even closer and tracing the back of her finger down Rora’s shoulder and over her breast to circle her nipple with a knuckle. “That is, of course, part of it… I expect my prince to do whatever he has to, that’s who he is and… he’s a man. Men are pathetic in their weakness. But you… you should’ve known better. You corrupted him. You hurt him.”
Now that was so incredible that Rora regained some of her wits, enough to make eye contact with Bella. “And people call me crazy?”
Stepping back, Bella backhanded her hard, making Rora taste blood. “You took him and twisted his mind! You tried to take advantage of me! Tried to use me! I cared about you!”
“You knew me for ten minutes,” Rora said. “You didn’t care. You just wanted to play with me and I’d have let you if he hadn’t interrupted us.”
“Don’t,” Bella spat, lunging forward to dig a sharp fingernail into Rora’s upper chest. “Don’t you blame him! This was your weaknes
s! Not his! He’s a bastard, a weak, sniveling male. I hold you to a higher standard!”
“Because I have a vagina?” she asked, her head dropping. Her arms were burning, her shoulders aching, and the shivering was becoming more than numbing. “If it’s him you want, have at him, he’s on the market… You thought he loved me; you accused him of it like it was a dirty crime… Turned out, he agreed with you. He used me… He wanted one thing, and it wasn’t me. He doesn’t love me, Bella… He still belongs to you.”
Grabbing her hair, Bella hauled her head up just to slap her again. “He always belonged to me! They all belong to me! Everything I want is mine and you will learn that… no matter how long it takes.”
The sinister statement felt like a promise and a threat at the same time. Curling her lips in a smile, Bella leaned in and kissed her, pushing her tongue into Rora’s mouth before purring on her retreat.
“Mmm, you taste so sweet…”
Taking one step back, and then another, Bella admired Rora’s figure for a second then spun around to march across the room.
Two men who’d flanked the entrance, turned to loosen the lock and opened the heavy door for Bella.
“Wait,” Rora called out. “What do you want with me? Let me go! Bella! Bella!”
The door closed behind the threesome and darkness closed in around Rora again. She was trapped. Imprisoned. There was no way out and no one coming to save her.
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Hide & Seek Page 24
