Handcuffed by Her Hero

by Angel Payne

The men backed off, though they took up positions at both sides of the bathroom door. She went inside, used the facilities then did her best to wash off the stress of the day. Her face and hair were at Broom Hilda status, still streaked and tangled respectively due to her face plant in the grass beneath Zeke, as well as the meltdown she’d had while watching him writhe from the neurotoxin attack. She braced herself against the sink, weathering the violent shivers just from the memory of it. Somebody had propped open the window at the end of the stalls. She stepped beneath it, gratefully sucking in the crisp air, trying to wrap the memory of rain, wind and pines into her senses. All too soon, her world would be nothing but sweat, heat, mud, and bugs.

  She doused that thought by thinking of Zeke. They’d surely gotten him to the base by now, started him on detox from the poison Mua had pumped into his system—and gotten together a contingency in case the monster chose to ram that slider again for the sick fun of it.

  The sky roared to life with the engines of a descending plane.

  Her chest constricted with a mix of happiness and horror.

  “The beginning of the end, Ray,” she whispered. “Let’s get going.”

  When she emerged from the bathroom, the henchmen attached themselves to her sides, one at each elbow. Their grips were ironclad, matching the tenacious triumph on Mua’s face. He spoke on a throwaway cell but motioned them forward, making it known that he’d watch her board first from the safety of the terminal.

  The first goons pushed open the glass door toward the tarmac where a sleek white corporate jet had skidded to a textbook stop. The men tightened their holds and pulled her into the rain.

  Despite the icy drops on her skin, her face burned as terror detached her mind from her body. If she consciously thought about her steps being part of Mua’s victory procession, she’d crumble in grief. The son of a bitch wasn’t getting the satisfaction of watching that.

  The boarding door peeled back from the plane. A steward descended the short stairway and locked it down from the bottom.

  Just before ten soldiers in full battle gear spilled out from it.

  She was too petrified to scream, not that she could have. Both her watchdogs were instantly shot down, their grips taking her down with them. Their deaths saved her skin. She was able to flatten herself as the terminal’s big window was shattered from inside. An object had been flung from it.

  “Grenade!”

  The bellow came in Franzen’s distinct baritone. Rayna gasped from the awareness. Franzen? What the hell? What was the man doing here, leading a mission that would ensure Zeke’s mind was fried from the inside out before they were done?

  Now she knew where Z had picked up his big, dumb, and grizzly streak.

  She scrambled back toward the terminal as the explosive went off, deafening her as it blew a hole into the pavement and set the service shed on fire. But she didn’t stop her frantic crawl back to Mua. She huffed in desperation, begging fate that she wasn’t too late to stop the monster from throwing the switch on Zeke.

  Past the ringing in her ears, she heard Franzen yell again. “Rayna, no! Goddamnit, Chestain, don’t you dare go back—”

  She jerked open the door. “I’m not your sub, either,” she said under her breath.

  The second she clambered back inside, Mua jerked her to her feet. His hair tumbled into his face. His nostrils were wide, his teeth were bared. “What the fuck is this?”

  “You think I have a clue?” She fought to jerk back. Being this close him made her nauseous. “I haven’t peed without you knowing about it, Jabba the Hut. Tell me when I’ve had a chance to coordinate shit like this.”

  Mua coiled his hand into her hair. “Your sarcasm is not attractive, my dear. You’ll soon learn to bite that pretty tongue of yours. We’ll start with a lesson right now—and I know just the person to help you learn it. Let’s hope Sergeant Hayes is up for the task.”

  “No.” She croaked it. “Please! Mua—”

  The rest of it died before it reached her lips. Shock was a damn good mute button. “Huh?” she finally rasped, blinking at the contraption on the man’s right wrist. Though it was still silver, and still sported all the mechanisms Mua had unveiled this morning on Garrett and Sage’s lawn, nothing was lit. The thing was no better than a fancy stage prop.

  “What the fuck?” Mua repeated.

  “Hey, Mua.”

  The saucy taunt, issued from the back of the small waiting room, captured Rayna’s curiosity as much as the man who held her. She rapidly altered the perception. Mua wasn’t curious. He was horrified.

  Guess that was how monsters looked when the real version of their favorite play toy was transformed into a twisted piece of expressionist art—and dangled from the fingers of a catsuit-clad woman with a matching feline smirk.

  “Looking for this?” Catwoman teased. She tossed her chin with a purring tsk. “You boys are so stupid about where you put your gadgets when you shower. Somebody could come along and tamper with them so easily.”

  “Luna.” Both syllables were twists of raw rage. “What the hell have you done?”

  “No shit,” Rayna seconded. Her own reaction to the woman’s appearance was an unnervingly mixed bag. She couldn’t believe this long-legged hybrid of Lara Croft and fetish fatale was the same meek, spaced-out subbie she’d seen at Bastille less than a week ago—or the woman so desperate to get Zeke for her own, she’d done Mua’s dirtiest work for him.

  “What I should have done yesterday,” Luna declared. “Or for that matter, the day before. It’s called the right thing, Mua, and I’m doing it now.”

  Mua erupted with a snarl. “You fucking fool!” His fingers tightened against Rayna’s scalp. “What’s done is done, Luna.”

  “No.” She threw the chip controller down then crushed it beneath her boot. “It’s not done. I was listening this morning, asshole. At the mansion, when all of you boys were off having your fun at the wedding, I engaged the radio capability on your phone. Yeah, guess what? Dorky little Luna knows a thing or two about all that technical shit, too. I heard it all, Mua. I listened to every second of what you did to Zeke.” Her face contorted. “You said it would be simple. You said he’d suffer nothing worse than a Taser hit!”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” His breaths, harsh and desperate, resounded in Rayna’s ear. “You weren’t there, you little idiot. You have no idea—”

  “I have every idea.” She hooked a heel beneath the mangled machinery and kicked high, sending the thing through the window he’d broken with the grenade. “You tortured him, you goddamn monster. I listened to every disgusting second.” Her glare gleamed with brilliant purple fury, though tears glistened when she shifted her focus to Rayna. “And I listened to what it did to you, Rayna.” A heavy swallow moved down her throat. “And I heard what you told him.”

  Rayna gulped, too. She didn’t know what to do with that. Was it supposed to encourage her? Scare her? Luna talked about the right thing, but yesterday, the woman’s idea of that was the pain slut’s version of a Judas kiss. Come here, Zeke. This neurotoxin will only hurt for a second, then we can be together forever.

  “I was wrong.” Luna spoke it to her with the conviction of knowing just where Rayna’s thoughts had gone. “About all of it. What I did for him—what I did to him—wasn’t love.”

  Mua cut in with a biting laugh. “Very sweet, darling. But very late. Too late. What you did, despite your charming crisis of integrity, is going to land you in prison.”

  “I know.” Luna gave him another saucy smile just as a handful of soldiers burst through the back entrance of the terminal, filling in behind her. “But unlike you, Mua, I’m going to look damn good doing it.” She flipped her ebony hair with the confidence of a rock star before hiking herself onto one of the snack bar tables and thrusting her wrists forward. “Cuff me, guys. And if you want to spank me on the way to the courthouse, I won’t mind a bit.”

  It was done. Game over. Rayna only wished someone
in the room would convince Mua of that. As the team advanced on them, he hurled her away. Her head snapped around as she fell to the floor. Sights flew past her vision in a blur. Mua’s features, warped with outrage. The sweat running down his neck. The tension of his fingers as he curled them in a fist. The violence in his body, heaving with every word he roared. “You stupid twit! You mindless, witless slut!”

  His shrieks tore through the room. They impacted Rayna like underwater explosions. The whole room suddenly seemed submerged, a frustrating lethargy against the terror of her new realization.

  Mua’s hand wasn’t curled in a fist.

  It was curled around another grenade.

  “Nooooo!”

  She screamed it a second too late. Two soldiers tackled Mua the instant after he pulled the pin and threw the grenade, a fast ball that landed the thing beneath the table where Luna was still preening for her soldiers.

  She didn’t think. She lunged toward Luna and grabbed her with both hands. The two soldiers, who now saw the pineapple themselves, helped continue her momentum out the terminal’s back door.

  There was a terrible, consuming boom. Searing heat. Biting pain. Noise, so much noise and chaos. She tumbled and hit the ground. The soldiers shouted. Assets down! Assets down!

  Then the cold came. The chasm loomed, threatening to swallow her. She shuddered, shaking her head, mentally skittering back from the edge of that hole. “Don’t want to go,” she protested. “Don’t make me go. Don’t make me—”

  “Rayna.” The voice was firm, forceful. “Can you hear me? It’s Franz. Are you with me, sweets?”

  Her head pounded from her chattering lips. “Don’t make me go. Don’t make me—”

  “It’s gonna be okay, Rayna. Do you hear me? Hang on, damn it!”

  Sirens and horn blares. Shouts and orders. Thunder and the din of pouring rain. None of it made the black pit go away. None of it pulled the icebergs from her blood or the glaciers from her muscles.

  “Ray-bird.”

  A sigh caught in her throat. Escaped her in quaking spurts. She wanted to think she wasn’t dreaming. She wanted to think the envelope of his arms was real. She wanted to think he was really whispering against her forehead, kissing her eyelashes, brushing the warmth of his breath across her face.

  Maybe if she kept her eyes closed and imagined they were back in that tunnel in the park again, and he was chasing away Kier for her again…

  No. They were back in the jungle, and he was carrying her to safety again.

  No. They were in the middle of an enchanted forest, and he was saving her sanity again.

  “Hayes, you have not just defied the dozen orders I issued for your ass to stay put in that hospital bed.”

  “My ass was all about towing that line, Captain. But it is regrettably attached to the rebellious rest of me.” A mouth, warm and full, dipped to her ear and whispered, “Namely my heart, which really needs to tell you that I love you, too, Rayna Chestain.”

  A soft sob spilled off her lips. She opened her eyes. He was still here. He was still alive. He was still real.

  He slid his lips across her cheek, brushing them across her mouth before going on, “Just to be clear, the fact that I love you doesn’t get you out of how I’m going to open you up for that damn fool stunt with the grenade.”

  He was still her hero.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Eat your Jell-O.”

  Zeke parked himself on Rayna’s hospital bed, grinning at the fact that he weighed down the mattress enough to roll her closer to him, and shoved a spoonful of the wobbling red food at her. He also tried to ignore the fact that her answering pout all but begged him to kiss her instead of feed her.

  “Rayna.”

  “No!”

  “Are we going to do this again?”

  “I’m sick of the damn Jell-O.”

  “Eating the damn Jell-O’s going to get you out of here.”

  “You only had three days of this shit. I’m going on day number seven here, Hayes.”

  “I didn’t run to save Luna Lawrence from a fucking grenade, Chestain.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him and tried to roll away. Zeke caught her by the waist and yanked her back. Frustration was painted across her adorable face, and understandably so. She’d been forced to do most things in this side position because of how the blast had caught her. She and Luna had cleared the terminal’s back door before the grenade blew but that hadn’t stopped huge chunks of the wall from getting her. Everything between her nape and tailbone was pretty much a mess.

  It could have been worse. Much worse. If she’d tripped or stopped…or been delayed by even another second…

  He gulped hard while tightening his hold by a few careful degrees.

  “Luna’s the reason you’re alive and I’m not chained up in some jungle shithole, you dork.” She poked him in the chest. He would have growled but she lingered her touch, using a finger to trace the outline of his dog tags through his T-shirt. “She did the right thing in the end,” she went on in a more sober tone. “She went to Franz and worked with him to nail Mua.” She turned a hopeful glance up at him. “Did you talk to her guards? Is she okay?”

  “She’s doing good,” he assured. “She got buried beneath you in the blast. They’re actually releasing her to the prison infirmary today.”

  Her smile made her face dance in new beauty. Z was tempted to go silent and simply stare at her, but he came here to say some things to her. Things that couldn’t wait any longer.

  “You shouldn’t have been in that grenade blast with her, Rayna.”

  “Z—”

  “You should have heeded me at Garrett and Sage’s.”

  “Really? And let that bastard deep fry your nervous system?”

  He rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t going to happen.”

  She dug a knuckle into his chest now. “The hell it wasn’t!”

  He yanked aside her hospital gown to seize the skin at her hip. At the same time, he stretched his body down the bed, lying fully next to her. “You disobeyed me, Rayna.”

  Her lips pursed. The skin-to-skin contact had accomplished his intent. He had her full attention. “I wasn’t yours to command.”

  “As you clearly informed me.” He flexed his inside hand against her jaw, nudging her face up. Their gazes locked. He took full, glowering advantage. “I didn’t like it.”

  She didn’t respond to that in words. But her eyes returned his penetrating favor, saying so much more. They were perfect and lush and green, reminding him of the oaks in that park the day he’d taken her from Kier…the palms in the forest the night he’d taken her from King…and the pines of the mountains where he’d taken her for himself.

  That reflection stirred the next words to his lips. “I didn’t like it,” he repeated, “and I don’t want it to happen ever again.”

  Her brows lowered, a pair of dark strawberry slashes over her darkened gaze. “Oh? And how do you propose that prevention, Sergeant Hayes?”

  His grasp on her jaw intensified. “For starters, you’ll stop calling me Sergeant Hayes. And you’ll start calling me Sir.”

  Her brows shot back up. Her jaw popped open, letting her throat release stunned gasps past her cute pink lips. She almost made him snicker with her gorgeous case of shocked shitless. Fortunately, he was preoccupied with pulling out the thin black leather collar he had coiled in his back pocket. He straightened it so the single, delicate flamed-shaped drop was centered at the front as he slipped it around her throat.

  “This,” he explained, “will help you remember, firebird.”

  Her lips slammed shut as she gulped hard. “F-Firebird?” she stammered.

  “Yeah.” It resonated with the warmth that suffused his chest as his heart sped up with anticipation. “That’s what I’m calling you from now on.” He pulled gently on the red and amber gem. “Master Z’s subbie needs more than a collar. You’ll bear the name I give you, too. It’s pretty fucking perfect anyhow, yea
h?”

  Her jaw opened and shut a bunch more times. “Zeke,” she finally blurted, “wait. Are you really—”

  He cut her short with a deep growl and a tongue-tangling kiss. “Don’t you dare ask me if I’m serious,” he issued when they broke apart. He slid his hand beneath her panties, going for an open grope of her warm, firm ass. “That question, that doubt, doesn’t belong here. Not between you and me.” He lowered his head, biting at her mouth with savage possession. “Rayna Eleanor Chestain, you are mine. You have been mine for fifteen years. Fate had to kick me in the fucking teeth to show me, but I’m never ignoring that bastard again.” He loved watching her tearful giggle at that. He kissed her softly again before whispering, “I’m going to care for you and cherish you, honey. I’m going to spoil you and pleasure you. I’m going to give you everything you want, but not before you get what you need. And yeah…I’m going to dominate you in every way you’ll let me.”

  She sighed and gave him the gift of her glimmering smile. “Yes, Sir.”

  Zeke took her lips in a longer, deeper kiss. As he did, he trailed his hand under the cotton that draped her sex, letting his fingers drift into the heated crevice where her thighs joined. “Mmmm,” he growled. “Say it again.”

  “Yes,” she offered, so utterly sexy, so completely free…his bird taking flight on the wings of her surrender. “Yes always, Sir.” She moaned as he slid in a finger, claiming the most sensitive ridge of her wet, pulsing pussy. As she threaded her fingers into his cropped hair, she exclaimed, “Oh my God…once I’m out of here, I can’t wait to get started!”

  He dipped his lips to her jawline. “Who says we’re waiting until you get out?”

  “Whaaat?”

  “My collar is on your throat, firebird. You’ve said yes. Your submission to me re-starts now.”

  She stiffened a little with nervousness, though the tissues beneath his fingers turned even more moist and plump. “Y-Yes, Sir.”

  “Good girl,” he crooned. Shit, he loved saying that to her. “Now raise your leg and rest it on top of mine. That’ll open up your lovely cunt for me.” He realigned their mouths so he could give his next command in a murmur only she could hear. “I’m going to fuck you with my fingers, firebird—and you’re going to let me. You’re going to get slick and wet and hot, and then you’re going to come for me right here in this bed, in this room. Do you understand?”