by E. S. Carter
James shifts almost imperceptibly, all shadow of his previous nerves gone and in front of me is the formidable man I met that very first day.
He smiles smugly before correcting me about his name, the one linked to his parents, the one that connects him to Grim.
“It’s Cooper, but you know that. And you can choose to believe me about the other Craven daughter or not. I have nothing to gain from misleading you.”
“You’ve convinced me to attend this fool’s errand,” I correct, fighting against the need to grip him by the throat and force him to kneel while I thrust the barrel of my gun deep into his plump mouth. “I’d say you’ve already gained, but unless you have concrete proof that will encourage me to play along—” My eyes dip to his lips and my voice drops a few octaves before I add, “—play nicely along, then you’d better start thinking of ways to entice me into not spilling anyone’s blood. Because, James Cooper, I am very adept at both playing nicely and spilling blood.”
He doesn’t swallow hard, like most men in his position would do at my threat. He doesn’t try to break eye contact or show any sign of weakness at my words, and fuck if my trousers don’t begin to get a little restricted in the groin area at his grit. This man has a set of balls on him. The thought of grabbing him by them and making him beg has my mouth salivating.
“I have proof,” he replies unblinking. “Get on the jet and buckle up. We leave immediately.”
He dismisses me with a hard-set jaw and dark eyes that dare me to disobey. When I remain still and silent, he turns his back on me and strides further into the plane.
“Yes,” my monster whispers as we watch his broad frame move powerfully through the small space. “The fun we will have breaking him.”
Ten minutes after take-off, a thick brown binder hits the table before me with a heavy thud, followed by a half-full tumbler of whisky. I turn my head in time to catch James strolling casually back towards his seat, his high, full arse and firm thighs stretching the fabric of his trousers with each step. Anyone else wouldn’t get away with disrespecting me the way he does, and the realisation annoys me.
I push the liquor away to the edge of the table. I rarely drink, preferring a clear head, needing to maintain control to keep my mask in place. Drunks disgust me. Weakness disgusts me.
If you can’t control your urges, if you let them rule, you’ve drawn your enemies the perfect target on your back—a bullseye to your destruction. I will never become weak. It’s the only thing I have faith in.
Opening the binder, I pick up the first sheaf of paper and my eyes land on an image of a small child no older than twelve or eighteen months. She looks like every other child of that age with no distinguishing features other than drool on her chin and the chunky layers of fat that cover her bones. I believe it to be a girl only because of the colour of her outfit—pink.
Discarding that one face down, I move on to the next. This one depicts a girl at the age of four, maybe five. She has dark hair like Faye, but again, no other striking similarities. She looks well-fed, happy and content, a doll of some kind in one hand and a wide grin on her round face.
The third page is a photo of the same girl now at age ten or eleven sat next to a woman. A woman that is not Faye’s long-dead mother for I know what Alec Craven’s whore wife looked like, although she does bear an uncanny resemblance. The girl is sat next to her on a sofa, looking up at the woman—likely the child’s mother—with the look of adoration kids generally only bestow upon those they love and trust beyond measure. A look the woman returns tenfold.
The fourth picture is the girl as an older teen. No dark-haired mother in this photo and the difference between this and the last one is stark.
Gone is the adolescent puppy fat, this young woman before me is skin and bones. Dark circles frame the underside of her deep blue eyes—eyes that seem vacant, broken and empty—and her pale skin is now a sickly shade of ill health. Her long, dark hair hangs lank and dirty around her face, and her shoulders hunch making her seem smaller and younger than she is. I’m not stupid. I’ve seen dozens—no hundreds, possibly thousands—of men, women and children who look just like this. She is now owned. She is now mere cattle. The fodder of a rich man’s slavery.
It’s the next photograph that makes me take notice. A grainy image of Faye’s tyrant father, Alec Craven, with one arm around the woman from the previous photo and his other hand lightly squeezing the shoulder of the young girl as they walk down a heavily shaded, tree-lined path. To an outsider, it’s a picture of an ordinary, happy family. Only I know what Alec Craven was capable of, which is why I look for the warning signs, and I’m surprised when I find evidence of none. It really is what it appears. A man, woman, and young girl happily enjoying each other’s company.
“I think he loved her,” James speaks from over my shoulder.
I don’t acknowledge that his words have caught me off guard. Instead, I put the paper face down and move on to the next. I was so preoccupied with the photograph that depicted Craven as a happy family man, that I didn’t hear James come and sit behind me.
“Hmm, if you say so,” is all I offer in response before picking up the next paper and bringing it closer to my face.
I don’t even flinch at the blood-soaked body. I’ve seen far worse up close and personal. The woman—Alec’s woman—looks at me through dead-fish eyes, the film of death turning their previously bright blue into opaque marble. Her mouth is agape in a silent, forever scream, and her hands limp across her wide-open belly in an attempt to protect the foetus that has been torn early from her womb and discarded like leftover meat. I’m not a doctor, but the baby that will never take its first breath looks perfectly formed, if a little on the small side, telling me she was at least in the late stages of her second term of pregnancy when she died.
“When you severed Alec’s head in the river that day, you signed their death warrant.” James’ voice isn’t accusing, merely factual.
“I would never order a pregnant woman’s murder, no matter who she was choosing to spread her legs for. Her death has nothing to do with me.” My voice is steel. I dare him to argue with me.
“Not intentionally, no. But without Alec, his beloved mistress Ilona and their daughter, Lily, were left without protection. Just because the Hunters didn’t know about them, doesn’t mean many others who wanted Alec’s head didn’t. They survived a whole week without him. A feat really.”
“And where is his so-called daughter now? Who owns her?”
I can feel James smile even without turning to look at him, and I finally place the grotesque image of Ilona’s demise face up on the table before leaning forward slightly to grab the next.
“That is what Lily looked like the week before Alec’s death,” James says as I lift the next image.
I stare transfixed at the woman in the picture, allowing James’ words to sink in. Unlike the recent image of her in slavery, this woman glows with vitality and health. I’d age her at nineteen, maybe twenty—a year or so younger than Faye—and in this candid, colour, high definition picture of a woman grabbing a coffee on a generic British high street, I finally see a little of her older sister in the shape of her eyes and the stubborn set of her jaw.
She’s striking.
“She’s in Budapest,” he continues. “She’s not who I’m going there to collect, but I assumed you’d want to take a prize like that home for your beloved sister-in-law. Maybe a late wedding gift?”
“Who owns her?” I grit out, my tone betraying my desire to know the name of the man who will meet the business end of my Walther PPK.
That damn smile again. I hear it in his words.
“Sasha Federov, sole owner of The Dominion, the name he’s given the last dregs of the former Kingdom. He sees himself as an emperor, not a king. He thinks his father and the now dead Kings were weak. He thinks he’s capable of taking over Europe and then the world. He has a target on, not only your back but on everyone associated with you. What he doesn’t know i
s that you are heading his way.”
“And you?” I ask after digesting this information.
“Me what?”
“Does he know you are headed his way? Have you done a deal with this Sasha and offered him my head? Are you looking to get a foot in the door again, James?”
I feel him shift and lean forward in his seat. His hand appears in my peripheral vision as he grips the edge of my leather chair, and his voice whispers directly into my ear, “God help me, I am looking to get into something, but it isn’t the front door of The Dominion.”
The words tickle and vibrate through my skin, and I clench my fists to stop myself from grabbing him by the neck and hauling him over the back of the chair.
“And what, do tell, are you trying to get into?”
The beat of silence so thick with anticipation is broken with the hoarse confession that slips from his lips.
“You.”
Then he stands in one abrupt movement, making my chair jerk slightly as he uses it to pull up his weight before he strides towards the back of the jet and the men stationed there. They are his team of mercenaries. Men who are loyal to Cooper and Cooper alone.
The echo of his confession thrums through my blood.
“Gotcha,” my monster growls through sharp, bared teeth as he prowls around the cage hidden deep in my chest.
And I allow a smile to slip free. One that mirrors the beast inside.
Gotcha.
Four
James
It was idiotic and foolish of me to expose myself to Luke. I could practically feel him vibrate at my one whispered word, and I couldn’t decide if he was likely to kill me or fuck me if I hadn’t moved away.
What was worse, if I was truthful with myself, the moment I was close enough to breathe in his scent, I didn’t care.
I was delirious with need for this man.
It was disorientating.
It was deadly.
I blinked away the heady rush of lust and briefed my team of trusted men on the plans for our arrival.
We were to head to our secluded base, procured for us by an ally, which was situated far enough away from Sasha Federov’s operation not to be spotted, but close enough for us to attack when the time was right.
Timing was the only sticking point of our current discussion. I wanted to wait a few days and scope the place out, while Jason, the head of my special ops team, wanted to hit them within the first twelve hours.
Usually, I bent to his suggestions, and he’d never steered me wrong, but this time I was stalling, and I hated myself for the reason why.
This job wasn’t a particularly difficult one, and if we resolved it quickly, any reason I had for being in Luke Hunter’s presence disappeared in a cloud of gun smoke and blood splatter.
I selfishly wanted to draw this out, even if only for an extra day. This attraction to Luke was making me careless. I needed to get it out of my system, and I hoped twenty-four hours in close quarters would force Luke’s hand one way or the other.
Don’t get me wrong, if it went ‘the other’ I wouldn’t go down without a fight, but something in my gut told me this dark thing between us that bubbled and sizzled wasn’t one-sided.
“I think you’re wasting time,” Jason, my head of operations said without preamble and ripped me from my thoughts. The man was straight to the point and didn’t care if I was the one that lined his many offshore accounts. He wouldn’t pull any punches with me, even if I’d made him obscenely wealthy.
A former SAS Lieutenant, he’d left what was more commonly known in the armed forces as The Regiment, because I’d made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Plus, I’d rescued his sister from The Kingdom’s clutches. She’d been picked up to order while backpacking in Thailand and was due to be shipped to a farm in deepest Russia, to serve Federov himself. For that, Jason Plummer was forever in my debt, but he was still a man who didn’t bow to anyone.
“It’s not time-wasting, it’s prudent,” I countered. But we all knew it was a weak argument.
“If you give me a legitimate reason for holding off, I’ll accommodate you. If not, we go in tomorrow night at the latest. End of discussion.”
I eyeballed the man I trusted above all others. Yes, I paid him well for his trust, but he’d never done anything to make me doubt it. Jason eyed me right back, his jaw set, his stare challenging.
“I’d cut out your tongue for defying a direct order.”
Jason’s gaze snaps from mine to the person I hadn’t heard come up behind me. His grey eyes flash with contempt, and the thick vein in his neck pulses angrily.
“You’d be dead before you fucking tried,” Jason grinds out, his spine ramrod straight, his fists clenching at his sides.
“No,” Luke continues as he came to stand alongside me. The small aisle at the back of the jet too narrow to leave space between us which meant I felt the pressure of his entire body against my side. “You’d be bleeding out on the floor in a puddle of your own piss.”
Jason steps forward, his broad chest expanding. “Care to find out who’s right, pretty boy?”
Luke doesn’t move from my side, and I don’t need to turn and face him to see the smile I know paints his face—the smile of a Hunter at play.
Luke tuts, his voice calm and controlled, as always. “There’s your first mistake,” he warns Jason. “Juvenile name calling is beneath a man who wishes to intimidate someone who he knows to be a danger to his health.”
Jason’s face turns an angry shade of red, and the thick vein in his neck soon has a twin on his forehead.
The bigger man takes another step and rounds the small table strewn with geographical maps and schematics.
“Listen the fuck up, pretty boy,” Jason spits, less than an arm’s length away from the object of his fury. “I realise you think you’re the big man of the Red Order, but you only got the job because your brother can’t swim. I don’t take orders from you or anyone else. You got that?”
I know this is the point where I should step between them and intervene. It’s time to halt the direction this shit is heading, but a small perverse part of me wants to see Luke in action, and it isn’t more than a second before—
Crunch.
Faster than I can process, Luke pounces. His hand shoots out like bullet exploding from the barrel of a gun, his pointer and index fingers stabbing only once into Jason’s Adam’s apple, the bigger man’s eyes flaring wide before his one hand lifts to defend himself while the other clutches his constricting throat. Luke doesn’t even bat away the fist that comes for him, he simply twists his head to the side before his hand reaches up to grab at the back of the taller man’s neck. Still winded and blindsided, it takes only another second for Luke to bring down Jason’s head to meet his perfectly raised knee, eliciting a deafening crunch that signifies my lead of security’s newly broken nose.
Fuck.
Luke had barely moved, yet two precise actions had brought down a man a head taller than him and almost twice as wide.
I don’t doubt that Jason had misjudged Luke’s lethality, thus giving the man beside me an advantage, but even then, the damage Luke has caused in mere seconds is brutal.
I feel lightheaded. Luke’s display of power should have me drawing my weapon and issuing a threat of my own, but my head isn’t spinning because of the danger he possesses, but because, so help me God, it’s a fucking turn on.
I’m rooted to the spot not out of fear but out of necessity. I have to force the thrumming in my blood to stop and mentally scream at my plumping cock to back the fuck down.
“I will fucking end you.”
Jason’s garbled words bring me back to the moment. Luke hasn’t moved, even as Jason rears forward to take this fight to the next level. I flick my gaze to another of my men and give the nod, but before he can step forward and attempt to restrain his leader, Luke has the business end of his handgun pressed into the wrinkled skin of Jason’s forehead.
Right between his bloodshot ey
es.
“That, not so pretty boy, is how you intimidate someone you feel is a threat. Not with words.” Luke’s statement is calm and measured, not an ounce of emotion on his clean-cut face, but his eyes, they tell another story. It’s a story of blood splatter and brain matter as it explodes from the back of Jason Plummer’s head. A story of a Hunter’s smile as Jason’s cerebrum bursts into pieces and paints a macabre collage of colour over everything in its path.
I have never been drawn to power. Never lusted for it for myself let alone been attracted to it in another, but on Luke, it’s more than a need for dominance and control. It’s as much a part of him as the colour of his eyes and the pale tone of his flawless skin. On Luke, power is a narcotic—an addictive drug that floods my senses and has me craving for more like a mindless junkie.
“Yes,” I think as I watch Luke smirk before tucking his gun away and giving Jason one last, long look. “This man will be my undoing.”
I don’t take my eyes away from the younger Hunter brother as he strides back to his seat at the front of the jet without even gracing me with a look in my direction.
Even when all I can see of him is the top of his dark head, I keep my gaze firmly locked.
“Get cleaned up,” I say at length, still staring transfixed at the front end of the plane. “The plan is the same. We wait a day, maybe two before we head to meet Federov.”
A grunt comes from the beaten man behind me, but I don’t turn.
“Oh, and Jason,” I warn softly. “I wouldn’t rile Mr Hunter again, if I was you, even though he’s wounded your pride.”
Another indistinguishable grunt.
“You’re my best man,” I add honestly, not wanting to mollify but rather clarify. “But, I agree with every word he said.”
I finally turn to look the head of my team in the eye and see his anger hasn’t abated, only grown stronger. I drop my voice low enough for it not to carry any further than the surrounding men. “Let it go. Because—” I tilt my head in the direction of Luke “—you don’t want a man like him for an enemy. He won’t only take you out, but also every person you’ve ever loved. Swallow your pride, Lieutenant. Or I think he’d enjoying making you swallow it by force, and then he’d cut off your tongue like he threatened, and make you swallow that too.”
