by M. S. Willis
“She’s not the only one.”
Their eyes met and Maddy’s shimmered with honesty. “There’s someone else that gets you, even though the time you’ve spent together hasn’t been under the best circumstances.”
Hope blinked. “If you’re talking about Xander, you do realize the bastard drugged me, raped me, and has pretty much taken advantage of everything he could with me.”
It was odd to Hope how Maddy didn’t seem offended by what she’d just heard. Growing up in the networks, the acts Hope had described were commonplace, most people didn’t even bat an eye to hear of it being done; but Maddy hadn’t grown up in the networks and she had been made into one of the worst types of victims: a slave. Death was preferable to a person like Hope.
“You attempted to kill Aaron — to kill Xander, as well. Did you expect him to fall to his knees and beg you to play nice?”
Hope laughed softly.
“Xander did what he had to do. I think you’re more upset with the fact that he was able to get to you, more so than the methods he used to accomplish it.”
“He’s annoying.”
Maddy laughed. “Yes, he is.”
Hope looked at her, noticed Maddy’s endearment for Xander written across her expression. “He won’t stop calling me ‘Sunshine’”
Maddy’s face puckered, looking like she’d just bitten into a lemon before she burst out in laughter again. Holding her hand out, she said, “Hello, Sunshine. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Cricket.”
“Seriously? That has to be aggravating. Why does he call you that?”
“I have no idea. He won’t tell me.”
Hope grinned. “I’d stab him for something like that.”
Her expression softened. “I can’t say I haven’t considered it.”
The door slammed open and Hope’s eyes immediately shot to Xander when he burst into the room.
“Maddy, you need to go back to your suite now.” Quickly crossing the room, he grabbed Maddy by her arm and lifted her from where she sat on the floor. “Go to Aaron. Get out of the west wing.”
“Where’s my sister?” Hope interrupted Xander’s obvious panic with her own.
Pushing Maddy towards the door, he ignored Hope. “Go now.”
Without another word, Maddy hurried from the room, allowing the door to slam behind her.
“Where’s my sister?” Hope looked up, her eyes narrowing from fear.
He didn’t answer, just knelt down in front of her, pulling cuffs and the leash from the pockets of his long coat. Hope flinched away. “What happened to my sister? Answer me!”
His hand was suddenly wrapped over her face so tight, the bones of her jaw and cheek ached from the pressure. His eyes looked black when he stared at her. “Do not say another fucking word if you want to get out of here alive. I’ll tell you what you want to know eventually, but for now, you’ll turn the fuck around so that I can put these restraints on you and you won’t resist me.”
She stilled, her mind reeling with confusion, but her body reacting instantly to the force behind his tone. When she’d submitted, he let go of her face so she could turn around as told.
Chapter Seventeen
Xander led Hope down a dark trail, her feet tripping over roots sticking up from the ground. The chain of the collared leash he’d secured to her neck rattled into the bone chilling wind that blew across their bodies. He attempted to peer through the fog of night, not able to quite remember the path he’d traveled so many times as a child exploring the expanse of the compound. An owl hooted above them, the sound reminding him that predators watched him while he betrayed the man who’d become his brother.
Catching Hope before she could fall, he pulled her against him so that he could whisper to her without the wind carrying his voice to any man who looked for him. “I know you’re weak, but you have to move faster. You’re an assassin, put those skills to work now, make no sound as you walk.” She looked up at him and his eyes burned back down at her.
“Be a shadow, your life depends on it.”
Moving quickly across the path he found again, he shook his head. Aaron was out for blood and Xander didn’t know how long he could hide before the edge of Aaron’s steel ran across the perfection of Hope’s body. They’d searched the house and found nothing except for the indignation of the unit leader who lived in the house. Once everything had been searched and when no chains, or blood, or other evidence of Hope’s story could be found, Xander watched as Aaron’s eyes darkened, as revenge and vehemence coursed through his veins until only a single target remained — Hope. Aaron had entered that house expecting to feed his darkness. Finding nothing, he focused on the only other way he had to fulfill his need for slaughter.
The path had become overgrown through the years, and not many who remained on the property knew of the existence of this path. Xander wondered if any of the men who knew of it still remembered the way. As it was, Xander was walking blind, the canopies of the trees too thick to allow moonlight to trickle down and break up the thick black that surrounded them.
It felt like hours passed before the full moon above them came into view. They were within feet of where the tree line opened up to a small creak that ran across the compound and he sighed in relief the hear the water babbling across the rocks. Hope slowed beside him, her breath billowing out in front of her in steamed clouds that caught the gauzy light of the moon. Tugging on the leash he led her along behind him, turning once he reached the water and moving quickly towards a rock wall that jutted up from the earth — the entrance to its cave hidden by the wild shrubs growing at its base and the vines that hung over its roof.
“Go inside, sit down and don’t make a sound until I return.” Releasing the leash, he watched as Hope was swallowed by the dark interior of the cave before he returned his attention to the landscape around them. Xander slowly crept back to the other side of the rock wall, listening for any disturbance in the woods from which they came. After ten minutes, he relaxed to hear nothing but the rustling of leaves.
Moving back to the cave, he climbed inside. “Hope?”
“Over here.”
He couldn’t see her as he moved through the cave, the vines falling from the ceiling brushing over his face and hair. His hand brushed across her skin when he reached the back and found her huddled into a corner.
“Please tell me what’s going on.” Her voice was whisper soft and shook with the biting cold of the air.
Using his hands to feel along the wall, he searched for something he hoped remained over the many years it had been since he visited the cave. Finding a soft spot, he moved the years of dead vines covered over several times by new layers. He reached in and grasped the handle of the trunk he’d found here when he was a child.
Pulling it out, he opened the lid, grabbing the old musty blanket he knew would be folded inside. It smelled horrendous for the amount of years it had been stored, but it was warm and dry. Quickly moving back to Hope, he placed the blanket over her body, attempting to warm her against the winter wind blowing outside.
When her teeth finally stopped chattering (they were so loud they echoed between the stone walls and ceiling), he sat beside her, and leaned his head against the wall. “Your sister was not in the house. There was nothing in the house.”
“What?” It was a choked back question, disbelief and absolute heartache dripped from that single syllable. The tone of her voice making it obvious that she hadn’t been lying when she sent them there. “I don’t understand. You missed something, a false floor, a hidden door, something. They had to be there, unless …”
She didn’t need to express her fear and Xander had already considered that when Hope failed to kill Aaron, the men had disposed of the women in case she told Aaron who’d sent her. “We missed nothing. I checked personally for any type of hiding place. The house was clean.”
She was stunned silent; her gold eyes almost incandescent against the bits of light that breached the cave. Rage swirled be
hind the gold and her body shook in her attempt to contain the inferno within her mind and body. He listened to her breath out a deep breath, before slowly refilling her lungs to do it again.
“Let me go.”
“I can’t”
“Let me go. Let me the FUCK go so I can go find my sister.” She lunged towards him, attempting to fight her way free despite the fact that her hands were bound at her back. She pushed him back against the wall, dodging his arm as he attempted to grab her, standing up she ran quickly attempting to escape. Xander grabbed the collared chain pulling her back off her feet, her breath knocked from her when she crashed against the ground. Crawling over her, her placed his hand over her mouth and brought his face close to hers to ensure she saw in his eyes the seriousness of his words.
“Aaron Carmichael has ordered your death. If you are caught, you will be presented to him for execution, do you understand NOW why I cannot let you go?!”
She stilled beneath him. He stared at her for a few minutes, ensuring that she was listening to what he had to say next. “Even though I believe your story, Aaron does not. He believes you’re attempting to play The Estate against each other. If we don’t figure out what to do, he will find you and he will kill you. If your sister is alive, the only way you are going to help her is to stay alive yourself.”
“I’ll fight the bastard. I’m not afraid of him.”
Xander’s eyes clenched slowly shut as he attempted to withstand the feeling of his loyalty being torn in two. He would always protect Aaron and Maddy, would die if it was required to save one or both of their lives, but he couldn’t let go of Hope either. Opening his eyes again, he answered, “I cannot let that happen.”
Her eyes blinked, the gold peeking out from below her dark lashes. “Will you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Get off me. My hands are behind me and this is, quite possibly, the most uncomfortable position you’ve had me in yet.”
A short burst of laughter broke from his mouth, but he rolled his weight off her, sitting up and reaching over to assist her into a sitting position as well.
“What can we do? If they’re not at the house, I don’t know where else to look.” Hope dared asked a question to which she feared there would be no answer.
His tone was emotionless and cold. Slipping quickly into the role of guard and spy, he detailed what he knew, giving her the only options left to find her sister. “The house you described, it’s the hub of our drug unit.”
“They should be the weakest of your units. Drug runners typically rank low in the majority of the networks. Why would they attempt to kill Aaron when they stand no chance of taking over control of The Estate?”
Xander smiled, delighted to find that she was as bright as she was beautiful. He wasn’t too surprised — the mark of any good assassin was the ability to think and to do so quickly.
“I can only think of two reasons, the first being that these particular men were corrupted by Joseph more than we thought. When he was alive, the mansion was a veritable abattoir. It was one of those places where you grew nervous if you didn’t hear agonizing screams in the halls. The silence only meant more death …”
“That’s common knowledge about this place. I don’t understand how that plays into the drug runners’ thinking.”
“Simple. When Joseph was killed, Aaron ordered that the sexual abuse and depravity stop. We knew there would be some who were so enchanted with Joseph’s practices that they’d either continue despite our warnings or attempt Aaron’s life.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “But, Aaron keeps a slave.”
Xander grinned. “I would have thought you’d seen past that by now.”
“Maddy’s not a slave, is she?”
He stared at her for a few seconds, a small trail of moonlight breaching the vines covering the cave and resting over the gold in her eyes. Shaking his head no, he fought against the urge to cover her mouth with his, to grip her by her hair, and bury himself inside the fire that burned inside her. Her next words interrupted the fantasy.
“What’s the second reason?”
Taking a second to remember the topic, he got a grip on himself to answer. “Another change Aaron made in the network was to bring down the unit that dealt with prostitution and human trafficking. The men who lived because they accepted their reassignment were transferred to the house you identified. We’re most likely dealing with men who are unwilling to give up their prior habits.”
Her shoulders dropped, the knowledge of who held her sister an obvious weight on her body. Light flickered in again allowing Xander to see that she looked down and that a tear fell from her face. When the light died again and when there was nothing more to see of her than a silhouette, she looked back up again. “How can we get her back?”
“There’s a warehouse owned by the network that the drug runners’ utilize as a base of operation. I suspect that if they removed the women rather than killing them, they would have gone there.”
“Then let’s go there. Tonight.” Steel inlaid the words of a warrior, Hope’s voice was firm and resolute.
“We wouldn’t get off The Estate property. I’m sure Aaron is plotting my death as well as yours at this very moment. There won’t be an inch along the walls not covered by guards.”
She was frustrated and her words sped with her anger. “But the walls must end somewhere!”
“If you are far enough out to where the walls end, you have a good day of hiking if you want to see civilization again. And by that point, the terrain is too difficult to manage — it’s a natural barrier.”
“Fuck!” She doubled over, her body shaking from the futility that consumed her. After a few moments, she gained control of herself and sat up. “How do we escape Hell?”
Xander smoothed her hair back with his hand. “We don’t. The only thing we can do is wait for Aaron to calm down and hope like hell he doesn’t remember that this cave exists on the property before that happens.”
“That’s why you sent Maddy, isn’t it? She calms him.”
Xander nodded in response.
It grew quiet, only the nocturnal chorus of animals and insects piercing the heavy silence. Hope moved to sit against the wall and Xander reached out to help her, choosing to sit at her side. An hour or more could have passed before she spoke again.
“If Aaron was so against sexual abuse, why did he let you rape me?” Her voice was a whisper that brushed across his ears.
Xander grinned, not ashamed of what he’d done to tame his beautiful beast. “You were an enemy. Aaron wanted information and he wanted you dead. How I obtained it was my decision.”
“So, why did you do it?”
He turned to look at her in the low light of the space. “You asked me to break you, I complied.”
The tone of her response gave away the fire that, once again, sparked inside her. “I was drugged.”
He chuckled. “But you weren’t drugged in the gym.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell slightly open from shock. Holding her stare, he leaned forward and brushed his lips across hers. “And you aren’t drugged now.”
His fingers were wrapped into her hair faster than she could react to what he’d implied. Working over her leg, his other hand explored over her body when he leaned in to take her mouth fully with his.
Chapter Eighteen
His mouth melded to hers, his tongue demanding entrance while the fingers he had tangled in her hair held her head in place, allowing him to devour her slowly. Initially caught off guard by her surprise at his earlier words, she didn’t see him strike before she was melting under lips skilled in stealing her breath.
Hope’s body heated to feel his strong hand traveling over her tired muscles. The grip of his fingers digging into the knotted muscles, sending shooting sparks across her skin, each one relaxed under his hold. Rough from years of weapons use, the skin of his palm moved under her shirt and up her torso, each bruise ringing with pai
n when he touched it. She was rendered weak almost instantly, the beginnings traces of endorphins flittering through her blood. With her hands locked behind her back, her chest was pushed out, easy access for his agonizingly slow exploration of her body. He teased at the swollen flesh, brushing the tips of his fingers across skin inflamed with need for his touch. She groaned in complaint and he finally took an aggressive hold of her breast, rolling the tip between his fingers and causing her heart to pound harder against her chest.
“Tell me you don’t want me now, Hope. Tell me you want me to stop giving you everything you are desperate to feel.” He pinched the sensitive peak sending a jolt of painful pleasure slicing along her central nerve, sparking a fire within her core. His lips traveled along her jaw and down her neck, his hand pulling her back by the hair slowly stretching the skin for his kiss and his bite. Her breath pounded out of her, erratic and uncontrolled. Running his nose along the rim of her ear when he whispered, “Do you remember what I told you about your secret, how I would use it against you?”
She didn’t respond — couldn’t respond. Chuckling wickedly against her skin, he explained, “Your desperate need for pain is the only drug necessary to make you agreeable with anything I wish to do to you.” He released her hair, only to grab the collared chain at her neck. Pulling her up from the wall, he kept his eyes locked to hers when he directed her to straddle his lap. “Stand up.”
She watched his hand loosen over the chain, giving her just enough slack to stand, but not to move away. His eyes burned into hers, enchanted her to a point where she didn’t want to look away and where she wanted to do exactly as he instructed her. She knew, that by doing so, he would reward her by taking her to a place where her thoughts would scatter and would grant her relief from the anger, fear and frustration that plagued her.
His hand gripped her pants at the ankle and she looked down to see his fingers pulling at the fabric, slowly removing the clothing from her body. Once past her hips, the fabric slipped quickly over her legs, bunching over his hand. After releasing the chain, he lifted her leg, one by one, and removed the sweatpants from her body. Sliding his hands up the back of her calves, his eyes trailing along the length of her legs and up further until the sapphire blue locked to her eyes.
