by Lana Grayson
The engine still hummed.
But the car stopped.
I fell against broken glass. The airbag hadn’t deployed, my only salvation. The dust would have killed me…unless the men chasing me did it first.
My vision blurred. The coughing did nothing to clear my lungs. Twice I attempted to turn the car off, missing the ignition and pressing furiously against the radio. Lady Gaga roared against the nightmare. I didn’t have the energy or clarity to shut it off.
I was close to home.
I thought.
Maybe?
Get out of the car.
Deep breath. Didn’t help.
I twisted against the steering wheel. The movement strained an already spasming chest. I had to get out. I had...the door...
I pulled myself up, measuring each breath with a slight motion. Couldn’t overexert myself. Not with the pollen.
Dust.
Debris.
I crashed Josiah’s car.
My brother would have made sure I was okay.
Dad would have been so pissed. At least he was dead. Didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble. I was in enough for a lifetime.
My shocked laugh pulled me from the stupor. I shivered, but my legs untangled from the seat. I climbed up and forced my weight against the passenger door.
The bikes rumbled from the road.
They still chased?
What did they expect to find? A wreck like that should have turned me to corn-meal mush. I grunted and shoved the door open, heaving myself up and using my ribs to prevent the door from closing. My lungs hardly worked anyway. Why should they get protected?
I clattered to the ground and sputtered in the dirt. My fingers grasped the soil of my family’s land. It gave me strength. Something my brothers never understood and Darius Bennett would sooner salt than experience.
I took a step.
One step.
Then another.
And a third.
I stumbled into the corn, away from the car blaring techno pop in the shadows of the field.
Another step.
Where was I?
West field. No. North field? I left town traveling south.
Something cold slithered against my ankle. My cry didn’t squeak out. Not when a web crossed over my lips.
Corn silk.
Pretend its corn silk.
Breathe.
Run.
Too much to do.
Someone called my name. Maybe Mom saw the crash? She’d come running if she had managed to pull herself out of bed.
But the voice was deep—a melting wax of shadow and heat.
Not her.
I dodged the thrashing slap of corn as I ran. Destructive footsteps slammed behind me.
Did I cry? I hoped the wetness on my cheeks wasn’t blood. I didn’t stop sprinting through the endless, darkened fields of cold, dew-kissed corn.
My name again. Closer. I tripped over the stalks and crashed to the ground.
Get up.
My fists dug into the dirt again as the shadow burst after me. I tossed the handful, but the man in the helmet sidestepped the throw. I kicked. He grabbed my leg.
The panic attack won out. My puffing chest hyperventilated me before the asthma stole my vision. The biker dove to my side, picking me up. I swung another fist, but I struck only black riding leathers, protecting him from the road and my weak hits. He held me close. The dark helmet muffled his call.
“She’s over here!”
That delicious voice again. Familiar. I struggled to turn over, to crawl away. He called my name and shook me once as my head lolled in his arms. He ripped the helmet off.
Golden eyes swirled in my mind.
I swore my kidnapper looked like Nicholas Bennett.
A needle pinched my skin. I jerked awake.
Where was I?
The blood drew too slowly, delicately stolen from my vein. They tried to be gentle and failed.
Hands poked at me. I shifted, but I couldn’t move. Thick bindings strapped me down, the material stretched taut over my chest and wrists.
A hospital?
No. The shattering fear shredded me inside and out.
This wasn’t a hospital.
The hands rolled over my stomach. They tested the few bruises on my skin. My vision blurred and the dark splotches blended into the hazy darkness surrounding me.
The fingers moved to my belly.
Then lower.
Far, far too low.
What was happening?
And why...
It was too hard to think. Hard to see. I didn’t want those fingers. I squirmed from another needle.
I groaned. They didn’t care. I stayed at enough hospitals to expect a greeting or kind word or even a brisk order from the doctor to stay still while they finished their examination.
Something was wrong. My pulse leapt, though the sheer exhaustion of waking up layered my body in a strange weight. My mind screamed. Nothing escaped my trembling lips.
A doctor moved over me. The white coat fluttered as he reached for a pair of purple latex gloves.
I closed my eyes.
A chilled invasion sliced through me. I whimpered, but I didn’t have the strength to scream or to shift away.
I still cried.
The doctor’s fingers prodded inside me.
Oh, God.
I struggled. It didn’t bother him. He pressed hard on my navel and withdrew after a moment, passing beyond the cold, artificial light aimed between my legs.
Exposed.
So exposed.
A metal tool jingled on a tray next to the bed. The doctor rubbed where the needle prickled. He checked his watch and nodded.
And pushed my legs open.
“N—no.”
“Hush.”
My vision darkened again. My head fell against the pillow. I couldn’t yell. Worse, my body refused to fall asleep again.
The tool forced inside me. I tensed, but he worked fast.
“Virgin,” he said. “She’s healthy.”
“St—stop.”
They ignored me. A shiver of sickness bound in my stomach. He scraped the tool inside. I lost myself in terrified shivers, but the exam was done.
The shock faded after my first gasp. I could breathe.
One. Two. Three amazing breaths.
Each breath chased the tears of shame with a rush of relief.
The doctor spoke in a hushed tone, but I listened only to my inhalations. No wheezing shadowed my lungs. He hadn’t treated the attack. Did I survive on my own?
Where was I?
The fatigue blinded me, and it decimated my patience. I couldn’t speak. I kicked instead. The doctor frowned.
“—You have two weeks.” He answered questions I hadn’t heard asked. “Give her folic acid.”
Another needle punctured my arm. I yelped, but the liquid slurped through my veins like syrup, deadening everywhere it touched. I fought, but the doctor patted my arm.
He shifted my pants over my hips.
The button remained unfastened. It disgraced me more than anything.
A voice spoke from the shadows. “That’s a good girl, my dear.”
No.
I tried to rise. The drugs hardened my muscles into stone.
Not him. Darius Bennett’s words barbed my mind with a living nightmare that followed me into the darkness.
“Rest now. We need you healthy, Sarah. You have a very important job to do.”
***
It wasn’t my room.
The tall ceiling with delicate moldings wasn’t my own. The bay window overlooked a vast wilderness, not my familiar cornfields. The poster bed stuffed with down comforters. I hated down. I kicked it away before it triggered the asthma.
The motion dizzied me. Moving was bad. Whatever drugs sloshed through my system hadn’t fully cleared. I flexed my arm. Someone replaced my blood with molasses, but I was alive.
And whoever dared to imprison
me would regret leaving me whole.
I shivered. I had been kidnapped. Of all the idiotic crimes.
Did they expect me to write a check in exchange for my safety? Did they expect me to beg for mercy? Cower and promise never to tell a soul what happened?
Fuck that.
I was Sarah Atwood.
Atwoods didn’t surrender.
We rose at dawn to start working and didn’t sleep until the job finished. My ancestors made our millions tilling, hoeing, planting, and harvesting from sunup till sundown, breaking our backs and sweating our lives away in the summer heat. Once we tamed the land, we tended to the economy. Millions became billions, acres became miles, and corn spun into gold.
And still, my father spent his every waking moment inspecting the littlest details of our farms, our books, our crops, our workers, our animals—everything.
If my father poisoned himself through chemotherapy while securing a partnership with Sugarweed Corn Syrup, I wasn’t about to beg to save myself from an asshole who imprisoned me but didn’t have the common sense to tie me up.
I forced myself to stand. The drugs pumped heavier than my blood, and my balance pooled in my feet. The wooziness jeopardized my bravery, but at least I regained my dignity.
The button on my jeans remained unfastened.
My stomach heaved.
I didn’t remember what happened.
I fled from the lab, but the asthma attack turned to fog. My car crashed. That hurt, but I peeled myself from the wreckage and hid within the cornfields. I collapsed, and then...
Nothing.
Flashes though.
A strong chest cradled me—smelling of leather and rich shadow. I liked the scent, but I fought until that first prick of the needle.
It should have frightened me, but waking terrified me more.
Hands poking. Cold instruments. Blood drawn.
I hated doctors’ appointments—if only because I was always there. Breathing and X-rays and allergists and every specialist obsessed with the bits of me that never worked right.
I surveyed my arms, chest, and tummy. I hadn’t checked everywhere, but I felt generally unmolested. Still, the tension returned in my lungs. This time I earned the fear.
I didn’t know where I was or who had taken me, but I swore no one would touch me again.
Ever.
I studied my prison. The digs were far nicer than I expected from a kidnapping. In my mind, I imagined dusty cement and rusted chains, darkness and rats.
Instead, I woke in a poster bed puffed with soft mattresses and softer pillows. Muted golds blended with the aristocratic scarlet wallpaper, an older style. Whoever designed the room painstakingly refurbished the elegance without losing the gothic edge.
Dark woods and hauntingly beautiful paintings of fairy tales and villains added to the room’s antique sophistication, and my window overlooked acres of shadowed forests and mountainous peeks.
We weren’t in Cherrywood Valley.
No corn fluttered in expansive fields. No flatness stretched beyond our sight. The farm was rural, but not isolated.
Empty wilderness surrounded us.
Fear was messy. It stole what tenuous control I held over my breath. I didn’t have my medications which meant I couldn’t get upset.
I scoured the room. No phones or weapons, indications of names or locations or clues about what psychopath kept me prisoner.
The private bathroom might have dazzled me, but why did they give me such luxury? What use would I have for a separate, brass footed tub outside the stylishly tiled shower? I hesitated before the cherry vanity. The drawers layered with brand new brushes and hairdryers, make-ups and creams, lotions and perfumes.
It felt…permanent.
The carved dressers contained clothes. My size. My favorite books tucked within a case next to a cold fireplace. A towel rested on the nightstand, folded with a bottle of shampoo, conditioner, and a shower gel containing flecks of pure gold.
The door wasn’t locked.
My captors hadn’t kidnapped me.
They housed me.
What the hell was happening? This was no petty crime, no mad desperation for ransom.
I had no idea why I had been captured, but a simple, damning, terrifying truth festered in the darkness.
They didn’t want my family’s money.
They hunted me.
I’d make sure they regretted every moment of it.
My insides chilled. The pleasant room and comforts were more warning than hospitality. They dressed me in elegance and stole samples of my blood after violating me from the inside. I shivered.
I peeked into the hall. The sophistication of my room bled into the rest of the home. High-ceilinged hallways arched tall, beyond what seemed practical. My home was big, but this gothic-inspired, decadent prison wasn’t a house. It was an estate.
They maintained the mansion with a pride that had long shifted into arrogance. The dark rugs would have been stitched with gold if it was fashionable, and painstaking care crafted the lanterns on the walls, wiring electricity through the original sconces. The manor existed in a timeless, dreamlike perfection of antiquity and modern reflection.
A winding staircase yielded to a grand foyer. Chiseled tile and marble columns stretched well beyond the first floor, extending to a ceiling dominated by not one, but three extravagant chandeliers. Their prisms of light filled the impressive hall with a gentle radiance.
This was more than anything the Atwoods ever built. Who had this much money?
And why would someone so rich kidnap me?
The truth prickled at me. I ignored it.
My torn, bloodied clothes and muddied shoes didn’t belong in a hall this beautiful. Each step echoed in the isolation. I searched the hall expanding to my left. Every room sealed shut, formal and uninviting. The hostility radiated down the hall to the right as well, but a single door opened, and a cold, flickering firelight cast gold into the hall.
It wasn’t polite to force a guest to wander a home. It also wasn’t proper to kidnap her.
But it made sense.
I knew exactly who had me.
I burst through the doorway. The masculine study housed the obligatory bookcases and hearths, worldly mementos and every other indicator of old money they stuffed inside the bloated parlor. The elegance existed only to flaunt their wealth, and whatever beauty I thought existed within the estate rotted in the gluttony of Bennett greed.
“Of course it’s you,” I whispered.
Darius Bennett greeted me, a medieval king surveying the bounty of his hunt.
He claimed an executive leather chair and shadowed himself in the glow of the fireplace. His gaze revolted me. He looked at me like a piece of meat.
He wore a suit, but I expected the shining scales of a serpent to burst from the seams. He slithered down to his den like I was a mouse clamped in his jaws.
His sons waited for me as well.
Reed crumpled under my glare. Max wasn’t as easy, but I puffed with pride as he tucked an ice pack over his knee.
So he was the one who tried to pluck me from my lab?
I hoped he learned a valuable lesson.
But I ignored both Max and Reed. They weren’t the ones who deserved my ire.
Nicholas Bennett watched me in silence.
His inspection beat in my chest with a profound, unforgivable fury. I couldn’t easily breathe in his presence, and I hated that we shared the same air.
He traded the riding leathers of his motorcycle for a pristine, meticulously crafted suit. He looked just as good in the tight leather that cradled his every muscle as he did drafted in decadence.
But clean-cut and regal or muddy and violent, it didn’t matter. The Bennetts were criminals. I didn’t need a ranch’s worth of polished leather to prove their deviancy.
“How are you feeling, my dear?” Darius spoke only to watch me squirm.
He expected me to be frightened. I was, but damned if I’d let h
im see it.
“How dare you.” I hissed at the snake. He didn’t flinch. “Take me home, right now.”
Darius preferred his silence. My first breath stuttered. I coughed, but it was the last time he’d ever see that weakness. I borrowed Dad’s pride and stared down the men in the room.
They were supposed to be my step-family.
But step-families didn’t abduct their little sisters in the middle of the night.
They didn’t slash her tires and nearly kill her in a car crash. They didn’t drug her, transport her across the state, and sic doctors on very private, very off-limit areas.
Whatever game they played, whatever intimidation they planned, was absolutely inappropriate, illegal, and stupid. They’d learn quick I wasn’t just a twenty year old pushover.
I hoped.
“Kidnapping?” I snorted. “That’s low. Even for you.”
Darius offered me nothing. He waited while I twisted myself in fear and rage.
I didn’t like the way he looked at me.
Before, he saw me as little more than an annoyance, an obstacle he’d destroy just as he ruined everything else in the Atwood family. The blood on his hands terrified me, but I’d fight him. Not just to protect myself and Mom, but because Darius Bennett was the reason Dad died.
But now? The hairs prickled on my neck. He let his attention...linger.
He looked at me as a woman for the first time. His slimy scrutiny left filth over my curves. He imagined what hid beneath my clothes.
His voice echoed in my mind. The memory assaulted me like the doctor’s fingers. I squirmed. They revealed me. Virgin.
Darius’s Good girl sickened me with his pride.
“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded.
Nicholas gestured to an empty chair. He was lucky I didn’t kick the leather monstrosity into the fireplace.
“Ms. Atwood.”
He hadn’t dropped the spine-tingling warmth from his voice. The deep baritone wrapped over me like the shackles they neglected to snap over my wrists.
I didn’t look into his eyes. The last time I did, he held me in the cornfield, protecting me from the cold, the injuries, and my fading breath. He dared to comfort me in the darkness, and his honeyed gaze actually calmed me before I slipped into unconsciousness.
He didn’t share Darius’s stare, but I didn’t trust his brand of oppression. Nicholas was, undoubtedly, the most dangerous Bennett.
