Cuffed

by Angel Payne

  Finally, finally, she skittered the right direction. Back. At last, her face contorted with the emotions that needed to be there. Shock, confusion, fear. Oh yeah, couldn’t forget the fear, no matter how much it made him feel like spewing his dinner. Maybe it was a good thing that she’d come. That she’d finally seen, touched, and smelled all of this. That she now got how his planet could never share the same galaxy with hers, let alone the same solar system.

  Nausea hit him again. A bowling ball of a headache joined it. More dizziness followed. The confusion of seeing her here, followed by the realization she wasn’t an apparition, capped by his free fall from the helicopter of Top space, had him reeling like the end of a three-day op without sleep. No, this was worse. There was no bad guy to show for the ordeal. Only a head full of pain, a cock full of lust, and a gut full of frustration. And yeah, he heard his heart’s screams about its omission from that list. He snarled inwardly at that. Nothing’s changed since yesterday, you bonehead. Where Rayna’s concerned, you don’t get a vote.

  He needed some air. He needed some solitude. Goddamnit, he needed a wormhole and clearance for the other side of the universe.

  At least he could easily get the first two. After jamming the whip back into the rack, he wheeled and stalked out the door out to the room’s adjoining patio. Not every room in Bastille had one; he’d just gotten lucky to stagger into this one, where Max had erected a walled pavilion that continued the harem theme outside, much to the delight of club members who enjoyed under-the-stars fornication. Nobody “daring to bare” outside tonight. Those fuck-friendly stars were in hiding too, leaving just a black midnight and a chilled October wind.

  Z gratefully sucked in the cold, dumping himself into a chair fitted in protective plastic for the winter. The covering was damp. It had rained earlier, and he smelled more on the air. Thank fuck for that. The scent was a blessed one-eighty from the spiced temptation of Rayna’s essence. He bent his head back, letting the drizzle drench his face, allowing his equilibrium to swim.

  “What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

  Her voice didn’t stun him now. He would’ve been surprised, if not relieved, if she’d left now. That didn’t make the ache in her tone any easier to handle.

  “Go home, Rayna,” he growled. “I know you need to talk. I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”

  There was a rustle as she sighed. She’d probably folded her arms, getting all gorgeous and huffy on him. Fuck.

  “I got the message the first time with the mighty whip stunt, okay? But somebody’s got to keep you from dying. Might as well be me.”

  Incredulity prompted one of his eyes open. Oh, yeah. Huffy. Gorgeous. Damn her. “What the—”

  “You’ve been sweating. In leather pants and nothing else. Now you’re sitting in midnight rain, shirtless and hatless, all but inviting hypothermia into your bloodstream for a nightcap.”

  “Thanks, WebMD.”

  “You’re being stupid.”

  “I’m a soldier, damn it. I’m used to a little rain.”

  “Let me help—”

  He stopped her by slamming a fist to the stone table. The glass stones in its fire pit jumped against the cover tarp from the impact. Both his eyes were open now. And shit, so were hers. Those deep green fantasies were even more exotic in her fury, especially when she parted her lips at him, too. He wanted to tame that mouth in at least fifty ways. He was hungry to bite it, growl orders against it, open it wide for the invasion of his. And that would be just the start.

  “If you ‘help’ by even one more step, what I’ll do to you would be—”

  “What?” She bore down by another step. “What would it be, Zeke?”

  He dropped his head. Stared at his curled fists. How easy it would be to just open them up and reach for her. To tangle his fingers into her beautiful strawberry strands and drag her back inside by them. To lay her out on the bed and kiss her senseless while he cuffed her down, yanked those sweats off, freed his cock, and—

  With a guttural moan, he hit the table again.

  “It would be what neither of us needs.”

  Despite the dictate in his tone, Rayna didn’t budge. Hell. She wasn’t going to let up on this sheet check, was she?

  Fine. He knew how to do this. He did it for a living, goddamnit. Inwardly, he streaked his face the color of the jungle and imagined his loaded gat in his arms with a shitload of hostiles on his ass. With that new fortitude, he lifted his face and drilled her with a steeled stare.

  “Go home, Rayna. I mean it.”

  For a long second, she still didn’t move. For another, she shifted only those incredible lips of hers. Their hopeful defiance vanished, replaced by a bitter twist. They tightened as the depths of her eyes started to glisten silver, though the tears never liquefied. Without another word, she turned on him and disappeared inside the dungeon.

  Zeke waited for the relief to come. It didn’t. He dropped his head back and peered into the thickening mist. “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen,” he snarled. “That officially concludes the Zeke Hayes fuck-up-alooza for the night. Be sure to buy your T-shirt on the way out.”

  A new flood of light from the building jerked him upright. Rayna appeared again, head aglow with a burnished halo, shoulders set, head high. She let the door close without giving him a passing glance. Instead, she fished her car keys from her purse.

  He rose, but she still didn’t look at him. Her only movement was a nod at the pavilion’s little side gate. “I assume this alley will get me back out to the street?”

  “Affirmative,” he muttered.

  “Good.” She paused long enough so he caught a glimpse of her profile—and the tiny wobble of her chin. “I don’t want to see…everyone again.” Even without her pause, he would’ve deciphered her subtext. Everyone meant Luna. “Tell Sage I’ll be in touch.”

  He let out a frayed sigh. Pathetic. But it was either that or the command, right on the tip of his tongue, for her to stay. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Will do.”

  The clang of the gate behind her was filled with brutal finality. Thanks to the soaked pavement, he heard every wet thwop of her retreating steps. The high alley walls took care of the rest, pinging back every word she softly railed at herself during that walk.

  “Great. Way to go, Rayna. That went about as wrong as it could have, huh? Maybe, girlfriend, you do need to go back to the jungle. Maybe you really are just a stupid little squaw.”

  He forgot to breathe again.

  Funny how that happened when words acted like arrows in a guy’s chest.

  He spun around. His brain whirled too, feeling like an onion peeled by a coked-up chef.

  Stupid little squaw.

  Rayna was a crazy-smart woman, but even she didn’t have an expression like that lying around for fun. She’d used it on purpose. Because it meant something to her. Because she’d heard it before.

  And damn it, so had he.

  “Shit.” It was a hoarse punch of sound into the fog. He wagged his head, maddened by his inability to match the trigger to a memory. He only knew his heart suddenly pounded and his body dropped its lethargy like a snake shedding skin. As he turned and stared through the fog, his stomach filled with its special bile for those occasions when something or someone needed protecting. The last time he’d felt all this at once, he’d been carrying Rayna through the jungle, speeding her as fast as he could to the transport back to Bangkok—only minutes after he’d met her for the first time.

  Right? Or not?

  Christ. Did she know the answer to that? Was that what had brought her here? What wasn’t he remembering? What hadn’t she told him? No, you bastard. You mean, what didn’t you let her tell you?

  “Rayna.” Her name barely made it out past his constricting throat. On the second try, he forced out a full bellow. “Rayna?”

  The summons rang along the alley walls, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t hear her boot steps anymore. Thanks to the thickening mist,
he couldn’t see her, either.

  Another moment went by. No discernible whump of her car door or quiet start-up hum of her hybrid.

  Shit. The Triple Crown of dread pounded harder in his gut. Burned deeper in his veins.

  He raced for the gate and hurdled it. When her shriek sliced up the alley, he broke into a full run.

  Chapter Seven

  Rayna shouldn’t have assumed the night wouldn’t get crappier. As she emerged from the alley and crossed the sidewalk to her Jetta, a man emerged from the shadows behind her, proving that assumption wrong.

  Really wrong.

  Horror spurred her stunned cry. A second later, she choked it short. This couldn’t be real. Her mind had been wrung like putty tonight. This had to be a sick aftereffect of that. Or maybe, please God maybe, she was just dreaming. Maybe all of this—the bizarre session with Sally, the massive mess of a confrontation with Z, and now this—was just a hideous dream. All she had to do was wake up.

  Do it. Wake up. This isn’t real. He isn’t real.

  But the monster with the tailored suit, proud stance, and slicked black hair curled a very real and disgustingly familiar smirk at her. It spread across a face of smooth sienna skin and part-Asian features that could be considered exotically handsome, if they didn’t mask a soul that was blacker than an adder’s.

  How is this possible? She’d wiped that sneer from the bastard’s face three and a half months ago—when she’d fired a bullet into the face that framed it. She’d watched them zip a black body bag over its lifeless pallor before they dragged him away, filling her with a relief that was so complete she’d been sapped of the energy to even wipe her tears. A couple of FBI guys had stayed with her, murmuring praise for her courage in putting the monster down. She didn’t have the mettle to tell them the truth, about how courage had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t verbalize how she’d become someone else when watching King drive a dagger into Zeke’s gut, her body and thoughts filled so savagely with rage that she’d turned into an unthinking animal.

  The agents had assured her King’s torment was part of her past. He’d be great worm food in a week, and they were already transferring his twin, Mua, to the darkest cell they could find inside the max-security block of the Clallam Bay Corrections Center. It would be Armageddon before the cockroach saw freedom again.

  Apparently, Armageddon had begun.

  “Ms. Chestain.” The criminal drawled it in a silky tone as two men materialized and flanked him like security at the elbows of a Fortune 500 CEO. They fixed her with stares that matched their muscles for steely hardness. “You are even more lovely in person than in your pictures, my dear. I’ve gazed at so many, you know. Surely you remember my brother’s enthusiasm for photographing his treasures before he parted with them?”

  Revulsion knifed her. King’s photo sessions would haunt her forever. The monster would croon at Sage and her like they were in a Parisian fashion studio instead of his jungle warehouse, making them pose in their chains, recording their humiliation beneath flashbulb strobes and oily compliments.

  You’re not there anymore. And this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  She shook her head. That forced the memories away, but the three men in front of her, stepping slowly closer, remained horribly real.

  “I’ll scream,” she threatened.

  Mua smiled. “Oh, please do.” He stopped but motioned his henchmen to continue. “My fantasies of this moment have been filled with many of your cries, dearest, though I wonder if they’ll touch the real pleasure of hearing your terror on the air. I highly doubt it. Being locked in a stone box does become limiting, even with the dream of avenging one’s brother’s death.” As the hulks approached and backed her against her car, the bastard emitted a silken hum. “So please, my little Rayna, indulge us with a vocalization or two.”

  Out of sheer defiance, she only glared—officially completing the circuit on her stupidity tonight. Terror blazed through her as the hulks moved with speed that defied their size, snaring her arms in meat-hook grips. Fighting them was a lesson in pain. She had no doubt they’d snap her bones if forced. She pulled in a lungful of air, reconsidering the scream, but the taller goon clamped a hand over her mouth. He didn’t let up there. His fingers squeezed into the back of her jaw.

  “Shut up, slut.”

  Thanks to her freshly ignited memories of King, it only took those three words to ignite her from dread to rage. The fire exploded into the bite she twisted into the inside of the henchman’s middle finger. The lunk howled and released her, allowing her a full-scale fight against the other guard. She went for the obvious, raising a knee toward his groin, but Mua’s men were better trained than his brother’s. The asshole was ready. He quickly caught her knee and hooked an elbow beneath it. In a dizzying sweep, her whole word was upended. Her breath was pounded out of her from behind, and her view consisted of nothing but mist-shrouded streetlights.

  She blinked, realizing the assailant at her back was actually the hood of her car. The smaller guard now shoved her knee close to his chest, keeping her pinned to the hood with his other hand with his palm shoved between her breasts and his round face consumed by a leer.

  “Didn’t King’s notes say she was the docile one?” he drawled. “Well, if this is docile, I’m a fuckin’ monkey. No wonder he had such a high ticket on the pair of ’em.” He let his fingers trail over the swell of her breast. “Such a hot package. I bet she’s a fine little ride.”

  Her head continued to spin. Her blood was a tribal cry of fear and fury. The docile one? That had probably been true—at one time. When she and Sage were first captured, she’d been the one to calm Sage, to exhort to her friend that compliance would keep them alive. But what kind of living had it been? Shackles and fear, humiliation and dread, the constant unknowingness of what the next minute, let alone the next hour or day, would bring.

  She wasn’t going back to that. She wouldn’t. She’d make them kill her first.

  With that resolve locked into her mind, she glared up at Round Face. “You got the little part right, asshole.”

  The guard’s nostrils flared. “Don’t tempt me to show you otherwise, baby.”

  “I’d love that. But I don’t think there’s a microscope handy.”

  She had at least three more zingers lined up, but Round Face erased them with a backhand that thrashed her head to the side. Rayna grunted with pain. Stars cavorted in her vision.

  “Idiot!” Mua’s shout was a razor of fury. “I said no marks on the merchandise!”

  “What’re you so pissy about? Nobody’s gonna look at the bitch from the waist up.”

  The bastard was making this too easy. Rayna rolled her face center again, cocking a weak smile, “Well, nobody’s looking at you below the belt, buddy.”

  Being prepared for his next blow didn’t lessen the impact of it. As the agony radiated, the stars in her vision mutated into cartoon-style birds. She was stopped from laughing by the creature’s bloodred eyes. They told her conscious mind what her gut already knew. If she kept goading the goon on, her death wasn’t going to be pretty or painless.

  Maybe if she scraped up the strength for one scream, it would reach down the alley and—

  What? Zeke was ready to go back into the club as she left the patio. He was on his way back to Luna now, if not tucked at her side already. He wouldn’t be listening for her any more than he’d heed a flushing toilet.

  Mua’s roar thickened her hopelessness. “Barbarian!” he shouted at the henchman. “Were you raised in a puddle of shit? When you are on my time, you are not an animal!”

  “Well said, cocksucker.” The words cut into the air like a sword of black steel. Very sharp, very pissed-off black steel. “Good thing I’m not on your payroll, then.”

  Rayna craned her neck and tried to focus her vision. “Z-Zeke?”

  Her sob was diluted by a bestial snarl that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The next second, Round Face’s weight was ya
nked from atop her. Before the bastard got out half an oath, he was cut short by a punch she’d only heard in movies as a sound effect. The real thing made the air shudder and vibrated down to the pit of her stomach, too. When Round Face blew out a rickety moan, she decided the nausea was worth it.

  Until the next moment.

  She raised her head enough to recognize that the incredible had come true. Zeke really stood there, his wrath so palpable that the mist itself followed suit, turning into violent rain. Round Face still lay on the asphalt, clutching his gut and his groin at the same time, but the larger henchman clearly hadn’t gotten the back off memo. The guy came at Zeke with single-minded purpose, eyes slitted black, teeth bared white. He was surrounded by the night’s heavy tears, which made a perfect camouflage for the thick silver chain he swung in one hand.

  “Zeke!” she screamed. “Watch—”

  Her breath clutched as the bastard whipped the weapon with a vicious underhand. Zeke caught the chain with stunning reflexes but not before a half-foot of it whipped around his forearm with a sickening chink.

  “Oh my God!” The words tumbled out as she scrambled off the car and started toward him. Two steps later, she froze in her tracks from the force of his fiery glower.

  “Run!” he ordered. “Now, Rayna. You know what to do!”

  Her sobs stuttered and then stopped in her throat. The boom of his voice was a reset button on her instincts. He was right. She did know what to do, and standing here like a melodrama damsel wasn’t it. She needed to get him some help. Lots of it.

  Despite the anguish of having to leave him, she spun and ran back toward Bastille’s entrance door. She half expected to fight Mua himself on the way, but the cockroach seemed to have disappeared, a fact that disturbed more than comforted.

  The cold made her hands sting as she beat frantically on the club’s steel door, but she didn’t let up until it was opened. Her breath of relief was cut short. Max’s hulking form didn’t fill the doorway. A curvy woman, looking like Rihanna’s doppelgänger complete with gold boots and a matching fetish mini, flashed a friendly smile.