by Sienna Blake
“Listen to me,” he says. “We have to get rid of the body, okay? But I need your help.”
“Wha−” It comes out as a choke. I swallow and try again. “What do you need me to do?”
“I’m going to get out and push him down so he’s lying across the floor and clean up the windows. While I do that, you need to change your shirt and wipe your hands and face clean using the mirror, okay? Then get back in the car.”
My hands and face?
I look down at my hands. Oh God. There is blood splatter all over my right hand. I whip my face around to look in the mirror, but Caden stops me, his fingers on my jaw directing my eyes to his. “Stop. You need to hold yourself together, okay? You have no other choice but to stay strong.”
You don’t know how strong you are until you have no other choice.
Yes. I am strong. I have been strong before. I can be strong again. I swallow my resolve and feel my insides harden. I nod. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
He gives me the hint of a smile. “Good. Let’s go.”
We both get out of the car. Only then do I notice where we are. We have stopped by the side of a road full of warehouses. There are barely any streetlamps and nobody around at this late time of night. I don’t recognize this street as being one that I drove down when I followed Caden to the docks. He must have turned off the route at some point so that we would be in a deserted street when the gun went off. Smart, smart Caden. No witnesses to worry about.
Not for long. The dawn is just beginning to lighten the far horizon. I wipe my right hand on the shirt I’m wearing. Using the side mirror and the hem of the shirt, I wipe my face. I get out of the car and open the door to the back seat, forcing myself to concentrate only on my bag on the seat. I unzip it and take out the top shirt. Thank God it’s a black one. I strip my bloody pink sweatshirt off and replace it with my new clean black shirt. I go over my body and wipe off any stray spots of red before I get back in the car. Caden finishes up in the back and returns to the driver’s seat.
He pulls from the curb straight into a U-turn.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going back to my place to pick up my rental. You’re going to drive that car and follow me, okay? So we can dump the body.”
Dump the body?
I feel all numb as we pull up back at Caden’s apartment. I’m not sure how, but I manage to drive Caden’s car and follow Caden all the way to a quiet spot along the river. I barely know what I’m doing as I watch Caden drive Mack’s car – with Mack and my bloody shirt still in it – into the river with the help of a rock on the accelerator pedal. As the black roof of the car submerges, my mind sinks with it.
Chapter 19
I just killed a man.
Blood on the walls. Blood. Blood on my hands. Blood everywhere.
I’m a monster.
These thoughts circle through my mind like the slow gears of a clock, over and over.
Click.
Click.
I’m shaking in my seat, in the passenger seat of the rental that Cade is now driving. I keep finding spots of blood on my body that I missed. It’s everywhere. All over my fingers and arms and I can feel it starting to dry in spots all over my skin and my face. As it dries it crinkles and pinches at my skin. I need to scratch it all off. It won’t scratch off. Caden keeps glancing over at me. He turns the heat up, but it doesn’t stop the chatter of my teeth.
He pulls the car out the front of his apartment block.
“Stay here.” His voice cuts through the rattle of my teeth and my head and of all my screws coming loose.
He gets out of the car. Where is he going? Oh God. He’s leaving me. Alone. I almost scream and run after him. Before I do, a noise behind me tells me that he hasn’t gone anywhere. He has just popped the boot of the car. He shuts it then reappears at my door, opening it. He bends his large body down to me and wraps me in a blanket in his arms and eases me out.
My hands fold limply at my chest. I shove my face in his neck and breathe him in. His wood smoke cologne, the smell I have come to love, the smell I have come to associate with happiness and safety, is mixed with sweat. It anchors me. That and his strong arms around me are the only things keeping me sane.
I feel him carry me through the building and to his door. With barely any effort he unlocks his front door with me still in his arms and we slip inside. My beautiful Caden is so strong. So strong.
He goes straight for the bathroom. He makes me stand in the shower while he strips me. He turns on the water, testing it to make sure it’s not too hot or too cold, then he eases me under it. I can barely feel the water at first.
“Start washing yourself. I’ll be right back.”
He disappears out of the bathroom.
My heart clenches at being left alone. I see the water running pink from the blood. His blood. The man I just killed. Shot. Murdered. Blood, blood everywhere. On the glass. On the wall.
The warm water flows over my cold shock and I start to thaw. As I thaw the cauldron of guilt begins to boil in my heart. My mind starts to replay the sound of the gun going off and the look in his eyes when he knew he was about to die and the hot blood that sprayed up into my face and into my open mouth.
Just that one small movement of my finger. One half-breath, one click and a life is over. That’s all it takes.
I think I hear myself crying. There they are, my soft cries that barely register over the running water beating off my back. I can feel them, each sob wrenching from the depths of my soul. My legs shake and I can’t hold myself up anymore. I crumple to the cold tile floor and tuck my face into my knees.
The shower door opens. Caden kneels beside me and his hands brush at my hair. I reach out for him. Even though he’s still fully clothed and he still has his shoes on, he comes into the shower with me. He sits against the shower wall and pulls me into his lap. He tucks me into his arms, into that space that I fit in so well.
“It’ll be okay. You’re okay,” he chants as he drags the flats of his palms across my back. He lowers his chin onto my head and he’s all around me, soothing me. The heat of his body is like a blanket.
“I…” my throat seizes up. My lungs heave to try to get more air in.
He shushes at me and rocks me. We sit just like that as the hot water runs down over us like a waterfall. I cling to him like he is the only thing stopping me from falling off this precipice.
Finally, I hear his voice over the rush of water. “Do you remember the night that I asked you if you could you forgive someone who has to do something bad in order to do something right?”
I nod. I remember that night.
“Do you remember what you told me?”
“I said, ‘Yes, I could’.”
He nods. “Then I asked you if you could love that same person.”
I grip onto him tighter. I understand what he is telling me. He is here for me like I was there for him. No matter what either of us does, we’ll forgive each other. Love each other.
“Caden, what happened to you to make you ask me those questions?”
He flinches and I hear him sigh. He’s not going to tell me, I know it.
To my surprise, he begins to speak, “Jacob’s men asked me to do two things to be initiated into their crew. First, I had to sleep one of their girls…”
Valentine. This was supposed to be Valentine. “But you didn’t.”
“No. I sat in her room for an hour and we talked about crap. Baseball, boxing, that kind of thing. She’s actually a pretty cool chick.”
I ignore the irrational stab of jealousy that pierces my heart. I’m not going there. Caden risked his life by not sleeping with her. He could have, but he didn’t. For me. I have no right to be jealous. “And the second thing?”
“I had to kill someone in front of them.”
I gasp. Oh. God. I pull back to search Caden’s face and he lets me. I can see the pain of the experience pinching at his beautiful features. “I’m so sorry, Caden. You
don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Her name was Michelle. She was one of their girlfriends and there was some evidence that she had been talking to the police. I’ve killed a lot of people in my life as a cop, but… she was the first one who didn’t deserve it.”
“But you had to. They would have killed you instead, wouldn’t they?”
He nods. “They ambushed me with it. They brought me to a room where she was being held. She was naked, bruised and bleeding from everywhere. They had already beaten her and raped her so many times over. She was begging to die. They would have killed her eventually anyway if I didn’t do it. But it doesn’t make it feel any better.”
He reaches up to the shower handle and shuts off the water. We sit like this for a while, warm from the water and each other.
“Do you remember the first time you killed someone?” I ask.
He nods. He slips his fingers through mine and pulls our hands to his lips. He brushes soft kisses over my fingers. “It was a drug bust in a house. I went in with an officer friend of mine, Daniel, Daniel Johnson – we called him DJ. He was a police medic and he was trying to get to a gang banger who was bleeding out on the floor. Another gang member attacked DJ from behind with a knife. I hesitated before I shot him. DJ was stabbed.”
“Oh God. Did he survive? Your friend, I mean.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have hesitated. He might still have been alive if I didn’t hesitate.” He sucks a drop of water from my knuckles. “You shouldn’t feel bad that you didn’t hesitate. Don’t ever feel bad. You did the right thing.”
He stands and pulls me up to my feet. He towel dries me carefully, slowly. Starting with my face. His fingers are gentle around my eyes and ears. Then my neck and torso. I watch his careful assessment of me as he makes sure he gets between every finger. My skin warms up as he rubs the towel along my legs. He’s still fully clothed, dripping wet, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He must be cold.
Finally, he hands me the towel. “Dry your hair. Put on some fresh clothes. I put your bag on the bed.”
I look over to the bed through the open bathroom door. It looks warm and safe like a world contained far away from where I am now. I need to get naked with Caden. I need it. Distraction. I grab his arms before he can push me out of the bathroom and press my mouth to his. I’m hungry and desperate and I know it, but I don’t care. I just need a little piece of escape. I need Caden to consume me and wash away all these memories so fresh in my mind like the smoldering ruins of a recent fire.
He pulls away. “We don’t have time for that. Go get dressed.”
Rejection stabs me. He didn’t even kiss me back. I blink up at Caden and remember Caden isn’t his real name. We just shared our first shower together and our first secrets together. It felt intimate and close for me, but for him it was probably just a way of getting me to calm down. He didn’t do it as my lover, he did it as a cop. A cop calming a victim down.
Is this what I am to him? Just a victim?
What did I expect? That now we would… what? Become a couple?
I almost laugh at my naivety, reflected in Caden when he gently pushes me out of the bathroom so that he can get changed in private. Nothing’s really changed.
I don’t know how I manage to dress myself. My fingers feel thick and stiff. My limbs feel longer than usual and I panic for a moment when the collar of my shirt gets stuck over my head, causing the world to darken and my arms to feel trapped.
I’m already dressed and sitting on the bed when Caden comes out of the bathroom, fully dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, our stained and wet clothes in a plastic bag.
“We should go.”
Of course. We should go.
Once I am back in the rental car Caden reaches over to clip on my seatbelt. It’s the first time he has touched me since the shower.
“We’ll head out of the city and go north. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
I stare out the window at the new morning, but I don’t reply.
I curl up, but I don’t sleep. I watch as the city blurs past, then as the houses turn to forest. As we leave the city limits I wait for the small release that I get when I know I’m leaving a city for good. It’s a feeling of disconnection, of letting go.
I don’t get it.
Instead my stomach clenches. It tightens. As if this city has found a way to weave a thread into me, and by leaving, it is pulling our connection tighter. We are bound, this city and I.
There are also so many questions on my mind. Where are we going? What will we do? But I can’t bring myself to ask just yet. My body feels devoid of strength, like someone has sucked out all my bones. I slump in a tangled ball in the passenger seat, my knees up to my chest.
You got what you wanted. You found out who Caden really was. Are you happy now?
And now… what? Now that I know, where do we go from here?
* * *
Bound Forever (Bound #2)
Hanna Peach writing as
Sienna Blake
The stunning conclusion to Bound by Lies…
“Kitten”
Caden and I on the run. Together. But he still won’t let me touch him and I know he is still keeping things from me. I am determined to uncover everything – at any cost. Even if it tears us apart.
Caden
Jacob is back. He’s back and he knows about her. Now, everything that binds the three of us together are twisting and tightening, pulling us all together. I can feel the inevitable coming…
I don’t know how this will end… all I know is, there will be blood.
Adult romantic suspense. +18 years.
TRIGGER WARNING: This novel contains scenes that include or allude to sexual violence.
Out now
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Read on for an excerpt of Bound Forever
And on how to get a FREE ecopy of my full-length novel, Paper Dolls
Dear Readers
Nobody who really loves you would ever EVER intentionally hurt you or manipulate you into staying with them. If you or someone you know is being abused, please, please reach out for help to your local abuse charity.
You are stronger than you know, but you don’t have to do this alone.
For the UK, Freephone Refuge’s 24 hour helpline: 0808 2000 247.
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Books by Sienna Blake
>>>See all of Sienna’s Books in Amazon<<<
Bound Duet
Bound by Lies (#1)
Bound Forever (#2)
Paper Dolls
Dark Romeo Trilogy
Love Sprung From Hate (#1)
The Scent of Roses (#2) ~ out 13 July
Hanging in the Star
s (#3) ~ out 10 August 2017
Beautiful Revenge ~ out September 2017
Excerpt of Bound Forever (Bound #2)
Chapter One
Blood splatter soaks through the backs of my eyelids. I snap my eyes open with a gasp. I become aware of my body, my curled and twisted limbs, and feel the ground rolling along underneath me. Somehow the cursed strap has found its way to press upon my throat, choking me. I’m trapped within in the passenger seat of our getaway car.
Our getaway car.
Caden
and I.
That sentence should feel wonderful but it doesn’t. It is separate, like we are. Divided, on either side of the law, on either side of this invisible line.
Based on the daylight crowding out the insides of the car I estimate it’s only mid-morning. Which means we must have only been on the road for a few hours now.
“You’re awake.” Caden’s voice rumbles to me, causing my heart to patter. I curse it for reacting to his voice the way it does.
I look over to him. At the same time he takes his eyes off the road and catches my eyes holding them for a second. I take him all in. All of him.
Most people would look at Caden and see danger. You can see it in his sheer width; his jaw, his shoulders, chest, arms, everything tight and coiled with a dormant power. His thick lips hide a row of straight white teeth. His large and rough-looking hands, now clutching the steering wheel, could so easily wrap around my throat. His piercing dark green eyes, so thick with lashes you would swear he lined the rims with kohl. Those eyes watch me. They don’t miss when the pulse in my neck speeds up, when my breath hitches or when my eyes widen almost imperceptibly. Most of all you can see danger in that jagged scar that cuts right across his left eyebrow. It tells you he doesn’t walk away from a fight. But because it’s his only scar says that he always wins. See… deadly. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?
