Falcon (Kindred #5)

by Scarlett Finn

  “They spoke of these things?”

  She nodded. “They would laugh about the women they’d murdered for drenching them in urine. They’d laugh about the way they punished them. About how they’d pay her back in kind for days. Every man on site would soak her bound body every time he needed to relieve himself.”

  Stopping, she could feel her voice beginning to waver. Devon didn’t want to drown in emotion when they’d only just started talking. She had to show strength, to remind herself that she was free, and that sharing this experience would help those still imprisoned.

  “Take your time,” he said, displaying more patience.

  Sealing her lips, Devon swallowed to provide respite to her dry tongue. “I know it wasn’t brave of me, but stories like that terrified me, and they had dozens of them.”

  “They told you these stories?”

  “No,” she said, once again spreading her hands on the table, keeping her fingers wide apart, maybe just because she could experience this kind of freedom to do what she wanted to with her own limbs and digits. “No, they told each other, they boasted. They didn’t address us as fellow human beings. We were poked and prodded, pushed and shoved. We were rarely given explicit instructions, which was part of the reason I figured something was going on before the auction, because the procedure that night was different.”

  “We’ll get to that Let’s take it a step at a time,” he said. “So they spoke to each other? Told each other these stories?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They would jeer and laugh, reminisce about certain girls. They would talk about different things they’d done to them. It didn’t seem to be policy for them to touch a girl, to rape her, unless that girl was never going to make it to auction. Except they didn’t call it that, though, they just said, ‘make it to the end’ like it was a game, like there was a finish line, a goal to be achieved.”

  “There is for them,” he said. “The goal is to sell the girl and steal a new one to take her place.”

  These men thought that what they did was a game. Devon knew they didn’t take it seriously, not as anything more than a way to make money. “Will it ever end?”

  “We know where you were located,” he said. “But storming the place will blow our cover and we’ll be blacklisted. We can’t afford to take a risk like that to eliminate just one cartel.”

  To take down one, she thought, and a memory of something she’d overheard surfaced. “What if you could take out several?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, straightening up.

  “A few times, they were talking about a meet. Something the head guys do several times a year. Something to do with turf and clients and clarifying territory. They meet.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “I don’t know their specific names, not all of them,” she said. “I can give you a list of the five or six they mentioned.”

  “Five or six?”

  When he was this dry, he was difficult for her to get a handle on and she began to worry. “That might not be all of them,” she said, sorry that she may have disappointed him. “There could be others, they never specified how many different groups were allowed to be part of the meeting. Only that each boss was allowed one body man and no more.”

  “They’re paranoid,” he said.

  “Anyone who shows up with more than that is fair game. They were talking about it because there was some kind of war going on at the top as to who their gran jefe was going to take with him this time. Those who were vying for power want to be seen at his side. It makes them seem valuable and important. No one could decide who that could be and Yago, their boss, he hadn’t fingered anyone yet.”

  “This meet was soon?”

  Considering this, her attention drifted. “They didn’t specify a date, although they said that it would happen between their next two market days… that would mean auction, right? That would mean after the day I was sold and before their next auction?”

  “That would be a rational assumption,” he said.

  Glad that she had recalled something which might be of use, she shared more. “They said whoever went to the meet with Yago would probably be in charge of the next gig, which made it tough for them to make decisions about the women they should gather.”

  “Auctions happen several times a year. Each cartel has their own schedule. Some are pretty reliable and others are erratic. But this is useful. We know which group held you. We can talk to Carlos and find out when they plan to hold their next auction.”

  If they weren’t a gang that the Kindred usually dealt with, this could be a good opportunity for them to start rescuing women from there as well. “How will you do it?” she asked. “You can’t be honest about why you want to know.”

  “It won’t be difficult,” he said. “These men are desperate for money. When they hear someone like me is interested, they’ll start talking about special orders.”

  Squirming, disgust flavored her throat. “You can do that?” she asked. “Order a woman?”

  “Most men with my means, who are into this lifestyle, do.”

  “What kind of things do they ask for?”

  He shrugged and linked his fingers. “Something as simple as hair or eye color sometimes. Some like them young, virginal. Others like their women to be feisty, to be fighters, women that they can break. Some like those who fight back because the harder a woman fights, the more violent he can be.”

  Her ragged breath didn’t relieve her aching lungs. “How can there be men out there who enjoy other’s terror?”

  “You’re not supposed to understand. The fact that you don’t and that it repulses you proves you’re a decent person, shy, one who doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this.”

  “Are you going to make another attempt to push me away?” she asked. “Is that your subtle way of telling me again that I don’t belong here?”

  “You don’t belong here,” he said. Before she could voice any protest, he held up a hand to silence her. “After I lost my parents and faced who I’d become, I treated this place like my prison. I chose to limit my access to the world because all I ever did when I was out there was damage.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, thinking of the products that had made the world better and the people he’d touched with his generosity. Even if they were shallow sorts who were taking advantage of him, they’d still learned something from their association with the great Xavier Knight.

  “My basic needs were met, but I wouldn’t allow myself to indulge, and I promised I would spend the rest of my days here to protect the world from my detrimental effect. I worked to create items that could make up for some of my disgusting behavior.”

  Devon had found a way in just by fulfilling her promise. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “What happened with Bronwyn made me hate myself more,” he said. “After we discovered her fate, I shut myself up here again because my beliefs had been reinforced. While what I make might be good and fun, or interesting and useful, my impact on people, individual people that I had one on one interactions with was negative. I made people’s lives worse. I know that Thad blamed me for what happened, he blamed himself, too, and he might have slid into a despair similar to mine had it not been for the Kindred. Brodie, Swift, and Art, they got Thad through and roped me into doing what we do now when I would have preferred to close the doors and block everybody out.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell them to go to hell?”

  “Thad needed me. He didn’t fly then, his funds weren’t up to much, and his social scope is limited. He’s outgoing and happy, he gets along with people far easier than I do. Except a sense of humor doesn’t wash with these guys south of the border. He didn’t have my rep as a guy with plenty of money and a penchant for partying. By then it had been years, half a decade since I’d lost my parents, but I convinced that scum that I’d come out of retirement and found myself a new hobby.”

  “Slave auctions,” she s
aid. “And because you felt responsible for what happened to Bronwyn, you couldn’t say no when Thad asked for your help.”

  “Right. So here we are, four years later. We buy the women, we fix them, and send them on their way. But Thad’s itching to hurt these guys hard. The more I see, the more I want to take them apart. This information, it’s useful. If we can hit these guys during the meet, we’d be anonymous, they wouldn’t be expecting me to be around, like they are at the auctions. If we can find out when, then Swift can find out where, and we’ll be able to set the place up before they get there.”

  “Set it up how?” she asked. “What is it that you plan to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Rave and Swift, we’ll come up with a plan. But this helps. You’ve helped. I want you to know that we’re going to take these guys down for you and Bronwyn and every other woman that they hurt.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you think I don’t belong here,” she said.

  Resting against the back of his chair, he curled his fingers around the edge of the table. “Because this is supposed to be my prison. The auctions are my penance, my hard labor, if you like. When I’m not there, I’m here. Being here is supposed to be punishment.”

  Sometimes he frustrated her. “You’re locking yourself up for a thousand years because your parents died hating you, according to what you believe,” she said.

  “Because I didn’t deserve what they gave me. My father built Knight Corp. Without him, it wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t have the money and the house and the ability that I do now to go to these auctions. I’d have squandered it all. I’d have lost everything.”

  “Zave—”

  “The drugs, the women, it was juvenile indulgence, and I’m embarrassed by it. I hurt people. Good people. I used women, stole them from good friends who cared about them. I wasn’t a nice person, shy. I didn’t deserve to come out of that period of my life intact, with a successful company, an expensive home, and a nest egg larger than most people could make in ten lifetimes. My father set me up, proved he cared about me, even when I was ridiculing him. My mother adored me. When I was a kid, she was so proud, and had high hopes for what I’d become when my intelligence began to shine through. By the end, she couldn’t look at me.”

  “So you think that by having me here…” she said, trying to figure him out. “I’m some sort of extravagance you shouldn’t have in a prison meant for punishment?”

  “It’s a prison like no other, I’ll give you that. It would be laughable to suggest that my life here isn’t privileged. I have my work. Access to everything that I need. I have privacy. I have facilities for exercise, grounds that you wouldn’t find at any penitentiary.”

  It was a metaphorical prison, she understood that. Exiling himself not only protected the world as he claimed it needed to be, but it protected him from experiencing further grief. As long as there were no people in his life, he couldn’t lose or disappoint them.

  “Bess is no jailor,” she said. “And Thad worships you, you have to see that. I think this has gone on long enough. Maybe I had to go through that horrific thing to bring me here to you. Let’s face it, we’d never have met otherwise.” If he was always here and she was in New York, there was no way their paths would have crossed.

  Pain was the emotion she read on his face, which was usually so free of sentiment. “Please don’t tell me you went through that because of me.” Panic made her hold her breath. “Shy, I thought that saving you was maybe the reason for everything else. But don’t tell me that you were in that place because of me.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said and tried to reach for his hand, but the table was too wide, he would have to offer it, to lean forward and meet her halfway if she had any hope of touching him. It was little surprise that he didn’t. “Do you know what I dream about? I dream about you holding me. I dream about you looking into my eyes and telling me that you don’t want me to leave, that you want me to be by your side. I dream that you’ll stop trying to chase me away. I dream about you touching me, about you kissing me, about you giving in to what you’ve told me you want. It’s torture, Xavier, to know you’re in this house, wanting me, and you won’t let me in. Sometimes I wake up aching for you, wishing I could just speak to you. My whole body is alive when you’re around, every nerve is so sensitive to the dream I’ve had of your hands on my skin.”

  His steady eyes landed on hers. “I think now is the time to give you your gift,” he said.

  Devon waited for it, because she hadn’t seen him carrying anything. He got up and left the room only to come back a moment later carrying a long narrow box. Jewelry? No, it was wider than it would need to be to contain a necklace, longer than a bracelet, and what use did she have for jewels here?

  He seated himself again and with a single finger, pushed the box to the center of the table. She didn’t know what it was, but his gifts had always hit the mark before. So, she picked it up, and after narrowing her eyes on him, she glanced down at the box and then tried to see if he gave anything away. Except he didn’t. He never did.

  Pulling off the lid, she put it down and unwrapped the tissue paper that was cradling the item inside. The long, narrow cylinder of plastic was smooth, its coating soft, and although the gift shocked her, she smiled.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked. “It’s a vibrator.”

  “I made it,” he said.

  That in itself was impressive. They were on an island in the middle of nowhere, and he could toss something like this together. “No man has ever…” Her blush made her self-conscious when she ran her fingers over the device. Putting it back into the tissue paper, Devon found herself unable to look at him. “I don’t know what to say. Why did you…?”

  “You said you wanted me to make you come,” he said, and while he could say the words without flinching, her face must have burned brighter.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she whispered. “I appreciate this, but…” Drawing her finger around the rim of the box, she did what she could not to look him in the eye. “I thought you might be in the room, that you might participate.”

  “It’s my craftsmanship,” he said. “You can reach climax with a tool I’ve provided.”

  “Not the tool I was thinking of,” she said, flashing a timid smile at the table.

  “You’re altering your request.”

  “Not altering,” she said. “Defining it, being more explicit.”

  But he didn’t sound offended, he was enticed, intrigued by her adjustment. “You’re issuing a challenge.”

  Surprised by her own daring, she looked him in the eye. “Will you rise to it?” she asked.

  Bess came in and got a few paces toward the table before she stopped to observe the charged atmosphere. “I’m interrupting again.”

  “No,” Zave said, not shifting his gaze.

  With Bess in the room, Devon became more self-conscious and folded the tissue paper over the object to secure the lid again. “We were just talking,” Devon said, which was a ridiculous thing to say because they were sitting at opposite sides of the table, what else would they be doing?

  “Shy has a challenge for me,” he said, titillating her with his plotting.

  “A challenge?” Bess asked. “You like those.”

  Zave got up. “You did well today, shy,” he said. “Now I have work to do.”

  Kindred work or work rising to this challenge he claimed that she’d extended. Sliding the box toward her chest, she covered it with her forearms. Bess came over wearing a grin. “Another gift?” she asked, and Devon nodded hoping that the flames in her cheeks would prevent the woman from asking too many questions. “You keep tying him up, dearie. You’re doing a fine job so far.”

  Bess went to the sideboard to begin arranging space for the napkin she must have finished folding. Devon found herself fixated on the door Zave had exited. This gift wasn’t what she’d intended, but she knew that she would indulge because if nothing else, he’d made it
for her and it would be rude not to utilize it.

  Except that was only half the truth. She wanted pleasure at his hands, and this was the closest she would get. This was a gift she could keep forever, one she would always treasure.

  FIFTEEN

  Temptation dwarfed fear on the first night with her new gift. Although she’d been alone in the dark, she’d been self-conscious when she first turned on the toy and listened to the sound she knew he’d heard after creating it.

  Getting used to the buzz, she’d run it across her fingers, up the inside of her sensitive wrist, and while telling herself it was an accident, she let it graze across one nipple and then another. It hadn’t taken long for the item to find its way between her thighs. Soon, the endorphins of pleasure had erased all traces of embarrassment.

  Devon had used it again on the second night, and when she woke up in the dark, disorientated after a nightmare, she’d retrieved a glass of water, washed her face, and returned to bed. When slumber didn’t come to meet her, she sought distraction with the intimate toy.

  It was late on the third night when she reached for the drawer in the nightstand to take out the toy she’d secreted there. As far as she knew, Bess had never gone through her things. But Devon always nestled it in the back corner beneath every other item she kept there, just in case.

  The thrill of sharing the secret of her toy’s existence with Zave intensified her pleasure when she used it. It was only him she thought of when she played with it. Devon had just twisted the base and parted her thighs when she heard the tapping on the door.

  Turning it off, Devon grabbed for the sheet when the door began to open before she’d uttered a word. The pounding in her heart dried her throat, and she was afraid to breathe because she had no idea who would be coming to her this late or why.