Countered: A Dark Suspenseful Gothic Romance (The Rule of Lawes Series Book 2)

by Felicity Brandon

  “Shhhh.”

  The cautionary hush came from the crate beside April—Lucy.

  “Whatever you two are planning, don’t land us all in shit.”

  “Sorry,” whispered Hannah.

  Her apology was met with silence, and April rolled her eyes.

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “We need a way to overpower them.” Hannah sounded pensive. “Once we’re out of the cages and the training yard, I mean.”

  That much was obvious, but how?

  “I’ve always thought the treatment rooms are the weak link,” April confided as she surveyed the darkness. “Down here, they hold all the cards. There’s no way out.”

  “They hold all the cards everywhere,” Lucy snapped. “I don’t know why you’re going on about this. There’s no getting out of here—you’ve both proven that, haven’t you?”

  April’s hands balled into fists at Lucy’s tone. “So, what’s your answer then, Luce?” she hissed. “Just stay locked up down here for the rest of our lives?”

  “No.” Lucy sounded wounded. “I just mean, you’re always in trouble, April. They’re going to be expecting something from you. Why don’t you just try to be compliant for a change?”

  April sighed for the third time. She hated everything Lucy implied, but while she was loathe to admit it, maybe she was right. Some time off and good behavior might go some way to throwing Lawes and Fuller off the scent.

  “I can be good for a few days,” she decided after a moment. “Long enough to lull them into a false sense of security.”

  “I think you’re right.” Hannah’s tone was excited. “The treatment rooms are the weak link. Lawes proved that the other day when he did my filling.”

  April’s body straightened. “How did you get away?” she inquired in a low whisper.

  “He didn’t strap me down properly,” she explained from the gloom. “And you provided the perfect distraction.”

  April smiled in the darkness. “You got out.”

  “Yes,” she answered wistfully. “If only Fuller hadn’t been patrolling the area.”

  “They’re always patrolling,” Audra interrupted in a sad little voice. “Always watching.”

  “Hannah got further than anyone else,” April reminded them. “Further than me. She proved it’s possible. If we work together. We just need a way to get one over on them and a way to get up there.”

  A heavy silence landed on the group. April knew what they were thinking. Each woman caged down there was conscious of precisely how to get back up to the treatment rooms. It was the easiest thing in the world—all they had to do was face the fear which had brought them there in the first place.

  “One of us will have to go up for treatment.” Even as she said the words, April knew it would be her. After all, Hannah had just had a filling, and April wasn’t going to entrust the hope of their latest rogue mission on anyone else.

  It had to be her.

  “I’ll do it.” She inhaled. “It’s been weeks since they assessed me, and Lawes mentioned I had a cavity when I first arrived.”

  Her belly lurched at the memory of the way he’d strapped her down and forced the godawful dental gag into her mouth. She had been terrified, especially once he’d unzipped his pants, yet her fear had morphed into shameful heat between her legs—a fact that wasn’t lost on her captor.

  “Okay.” Hannah’s voice drifted from across the room. “That’s the start of a plan. Now, all we need is time and some way of knocking one of them out.” She laughed wryly at her own conclusion, and April smiled in her direction.

  “I might know a way.” Stacy’s tiny voice was barely audible.

  “What?” April shifted inside the cage. “What do you know?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” Stacy sounded panicked.

  “Just take a deep breath,” Hannah told her soothingly. “Anything you know will be good.”

  April nodded approvingly at Hannah’s tone. She had a way with people, there was no doubt about that. Maybe, just maybe, this newest arrival could be a way out of this prison.

  Hannah offered hope.

  “Okay,” Stacy replied. “Okay, I’ll try. It’s something Zander told me once when I was up there, having work done. It struck me as a strange thing to divulge at the time, although I know he was only trying to calm me down.” She paused as though the whole sorry experience had just come flooding back to her. “I never forgot it.”

  “What was it?” April ensured her tone was softer, too. “Please, Stacy. Tell us.”

  Settling down as best she could against the hard interior of the cage, April suspended her scepticism and listened to what Stacy had to say.

  Eighteen

  Hannah

  Days began to blur into one long, torrid ordeal, four, five, or possibly more of them passing in a haze of cages, leashes, and animal feeding bowls. The hours of daylight were dominated by Lawes and Fuller, punctuated by the humiliating regimes they insisted on enforcing, but night time belonged to the women they held. That was the time Hannah could take stock and try to recall just how long she had been there. At the beginning of every night, she added the new number in her mind, like a mental calendar, and though the increasing digits reminded her of her bleak plight, it also helped to keep her sane. The night had never held much appeal for Hannah in the past, but now that she was a captive, she started to look forward to them. Though she loathed being confined in the cage, she knew what it meant—they all did—and when whoever was on duty delivered the usual cascade of warnings, an air of excitement began to build among the women. Hannah wondered if the men had come to sense it—not that it mattered.

  The darkness belonged to them.

  They had taken a natural enemy the men had wielded against them and made it their own.

  Their time.

  Time for them to talk. Time for them to build on their plan.

  The bones of the thing had started to take shape. Even that first night when she and April had spoken, the beginning fragments were there. April had offered to be the one to feign the need for treatment. She also promised to be on her best behavior until they decided to push the button, a task Hannah could tell was frustrating the hell out of the brunette, but one which, nonetheless, she had achieved ever since. Hannah could tell Lawes was falling for it by the way he looked at April. Hannah had seen that expression on his face before and knew what it meant—Lawes wanted April—and every time April did as she was told and wrapped her firm body around his calf, Hannah could see his hard exterior softening.

  The plan was forming all right, and Stacy’s insight was going to be their secret weapon. The thing that Lawes and Fuller never saw coming.

  “Hannah.”

  It was Fuller’s bark which roused her and drowsy, she rose from the cold floor to find the basement bathed in light.

  “Yes, sir?” Her head hurt after hours talking late into the night, and she badly needed to stretch her tired limbs.

  He crouched down at the front of her cage. “Sleepy, are we?”

  Hannah flushed at his accurate analysis. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fuller.”

  Fuller shook his head with a smile. Hannah could be wrong, but he seemed to have developed something of a soft spot for her since he’d allowed her to come in the pillory, and she fully intended to exploit it if she could.

  “Out you come.”

  He released the lock on the front of the cage and reached inside for the leash, now permanently attached to her collar. Pulling it slowly, he drew her from the cage. Hannah crawled out awkwardly, glancing around to find the other cages already open and vacant.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Fuller told her as though he had read her mind. “You’re the last one today.”

  Hannah sighed wearily. Her back and shoulders ached, presumably from hours of being cramped inside the bloody cage, and now she had a day of more mortifying torment to look forward to.

  He led her toward the training yard and into the small, dark room whi
ch doubled as a bathroom. There was one squalid toilet in the corner, which each woman was permitted to use twice a day. Based on the stomach-churning odor of stale urine and the state of the place, it shouldn’t have been much of a privilege, yet that was how it was presented to the women. The promise of far darker alternatives was hurled around whenever one of them refused to cooperate. Hannah’s belly knotted as she crawled toward the lavatory.

  “Make it quick.” Fuller’s tone was curt as she climbed up and perched on what passed for the seat. “You need to have breakfast, then join the others. Today, Mr. Lawes and I want you around the course.”

  The sense of dread in Hannah’s chest burgeoned with his edict. Hannah had successfully evaded the damn obstacle course for days with excuses of lingering dental pain and exhaustion, but grimly, she knew her time was up. She had run out of reasons not to join the others, and even though the idea of being bridled and cropped around the place filled her with revulsion and loathing, she was aware there was no longer a choice.

  Finishing, she crawled behind him out of the grotty room and back past the rows of cages to the feeding room. It was futile to ask to wash her hands. There was nowhere designated for such a deed among the so-called patients, and anyhow, when she spent her life on her hands and knees, there seemed little point to Hannah. She followed Fuller into the room used to feed the women, noticing only one bowl remained in the far corner. Fuller led her over to it.

  “Get to it,” he ordered, seemingly irritated at Hannah’s late start.

  As she hung her head over the metal dish, she wasn’t sure why he was so frustrated. Surely, he could have woken her if he’d wanted. Her late beginning to the day must have been of his and Lawes’ making—everything in this place was of their design. Lowering her head, Hannah began to collect the cardboard hoops with her tongue, the same as the day before and the day before that. It was always the same—the same dog bowls on the same unforgiving floor, and the same impatient men, looming over them.

  “I’d like to see you tackle the course well today, Hannah.” His voice bounced off the hard walls, but she didn’t raise her head to acknowledge it. Forcing the unappealing hoops down her throat, she murmured her best response.

  “Yes, Mr. Fuller, sir.”

  That’s all there ever was to say. Yes, Mr. Fuller, sir. No, Mr. Lawes, sir.

  The women were like old-fashioned wind-up toys, stuck on repeat, their reactions and responses reduced to the same two or three predictable answers they repeated as a mantra.

  “Good pet.” He sounded distant, yet Hannah felt his fingers as they ruffled through her hair. “I knew you were special the first moment I saw you in Mr. Lawes’ chair upstairs.”

  She resisted the urge to push his fingers away, knowing what it would earn her and not having the energy this early in the day.

  “You’ve been incredible at everything you’ve attempted, save for that ill-fated escape attempt, of course.” His tone lowered disapprovingly at the memory, and Hannah was thankful she could hide her face in the bowl. “There’s just this one remaining challenge to overcome, Hannah.”

  Hannah assessed the empty bowl. “Please, may I have a drink, sir?”

  Instinctively, she clenched her pussy while she requested the drink, the act still mortifying no matter how many times she had to endure it.

  “What?” Fuller glanced down to find the hoops vacuumed up. “Oh, you’re finished. Good.” He smiled at her efficiency and wordlessly, turned, collecting another bowl from a shelf as he dragged her onward.

  “Here.” Fuller placed the dish on the floor, and Hannah peered inside.

  There was what she assumed was water already inside, so tentatively, she thrust her tongue into it, hoping to cleanse her parched mouth after the dry, tasteless cereal. Hannah sighed as she lapped a tiny quantity past her lips. Drinking this way hadn’t got any easier, and she doubted it ever would. Fuller was beside her the entire time, gripping the leash, which connected them as if he suspected she would bolt. After a few moments of trying to coerce the liquid into her throat, Hannah gave up and shifted closer to his trouser leg.

  “Had enough, pet?”

  She tensed at the name he used, sickened inside at the way the men here chose to keep them.

  “Yes, Mr. Fuller, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  One yank on her collar as he strode away reinforced his demand, leaving Hannah to scuttle after him. They moved in silence, the smart giant in his pin-stripe suit and the naked, crawling woman, both gliding back past the open cages before he brought her to a halt by the lines of leather bridles.

  “I think one of these will be in order today.”

  Hannah inhaled at his verdict. The very last thing she needed to help her over the humiliating obstacle course was to be harnessed in black leather at the same time.

  “Please, Mr. Fuller.” She squeezed her eyes closed as the plea left her lips. “Must I wear one?”

  “Yes.” His tone was resolute. “There can be no exceptions. Not even for you, Hannah.” Fuller reached for one of the harnesses, running the leather through his fingers before selecting it. “It won’t take long to dress you,” he said matter-of-factly, already wrapping the chest straps around her body as though it was completely normal to do this to a woman on all fours.

  Except as he tightened the buckle behind her back, Hannah knew, of course, this was totally normal to Fuller and his partner. This was the dark empire they had built.

  It took a few moments to complete the process, but depressingly quickly, Hannah found herself secured in the various straps and buckles.

  “There we are.” His tone was almost elated. “You look amazing.”

  She hung her head, wanting to disagree in the strongest possible terms but bit back the retort, which threatened to rise.

  “Let’s leave the muzzle today and see how you do.”

  Hannah blinked up at the man towering beside her, grateful at least for that one, small mercy, but there was little time to relish in the thought. Fuller was moving again, his long strides cutting through the distance until the leash tightened, and the leather at her neck became intolerable.

  “Come!” he barked, pointing to the floor by his feet. “You know better than this, Hannah.”

  Resigned to her fate, she pressed her palms forward, ignoring the scream in her aching knees and the way the straps chaffed against her sensitive flesh. The space around them opened up into the training yard, and the odious hurdles of the course loomed ahead.

  “Ah, there she is!” Lawes grinned at their approach, and as they neared, Hannah saw April, leashed at his side.

  Good, little obedient April.

  The two women exchanged knowing glances. Both were harnessed like human ponies, though April’s harnesses were more extreme with leather that covered the sides of her eyes, like blinkers, meaning she could only look directly ahead. Hannah’s belly clenched at the look of the additional straps, but she pushed the trepidation away, recalling April’s words from the night before.

  Play the game, Hannah. The memory of her voice was so strong, it was almost as though the woman kneeling in front of her had actually spoken. That’s what we do until the time is right. Butter them up, grin and bear it, and play the game.

  “Yes, Miss Bowman finally decided to join us.” Fuller’s tone was playful but mocking. “And as penance, she is going to attempt the course for us today.”

  “Excellent!” Lawes clapped his hands with excitement. “It’s about time, too, Mr. Fuller. Zander and I had a wager you were too soft on our newest recruit.”

  “Hardly.” Fuller sounded unimpressed, and if Hannah didn’t know better, she would have thought he was embarrassed. “Hannah and I have just been discussing it. She’s more than ready.”

  Lawes’ lips twitched. “In which case, April and I shall retire to watch her progress.”

  He winked at Hannah and flushing, she looked down at the sawdust littering this section of the floor. She pulled in a sh
aky breath as he led April away, her glance wandering over the course to find Matthew and Zander instructing some of the others near the finish.

  “This is the first jump.” Fuller lifted his hand and gestured toward the wooden fence, which apparently, she was expected to get over.

  Hannah gulped. This was really happening. She was harnessed like an animal again—a feat she had managed to avoid over the last few days by making herself indispensable to Fuller in other, more enjoyable ways—and he expected her to clamber over the damn fence. She eyed the thing again, taking in the size and scale of the hurdle. It wasn’t the largest on the course, by any means, but that did nothing to quell the rising anxiety in her tummy.

  Leading her closer to the thing, Fuller stood, waiting as Hannah sized up her challenge.

  “Well?” His foot tapped against the coarse shavings that served as the floor. “Why are you making me wait?”

  She lifted her chin to find narrowed blue eyes waiting for her.

  “I d-don’t know how, sir.”

  “What do you mean?” Fuller scowled. “You’ve seen the others! Now, get up and over the thing.”

  Hannah inched closer, her nose practically grazing the wooden plank running between the two posts. Gingerly, she looked up and rose to her knees, contemplating her best approach to the problem. She could probably hoist her legs up and over it, though it would certainly be one of her most awkward and ungainly performances to date.

  “Hannah.” Fuller sounded furious, and as she met his gaze again, she noticed how red-faced he’d become. Slowly, he lowered to his haunches, so their faces were only inches apart. “If you make me wait much longer, I swear I will haul you over my lap and punish your peachy backside.”

  She gasped, although it was more the tone of his voice that intimidated her than the threat itself. Not that Hannah wanted the punishment—she sure as hell didn’t deserve it—but there was a part of her that wondered if it might be easier to take it and skip this fucking jump altogether. She was a woman for fuck’s sake—not an animal! Women were not made for this sort of thing.