With one hand, he twitched the thin sheet so it draped over her. The linen was scratchy and rough against her bare skin.
“Too bad, I was enjoying the view.” His tone was slightly mocking, but with no real heat.
Sophia wasn’t sure what she’d expected to change, but there was an energy that traveled between them now that hadn’t been there before. She was still naked and chained to the bed of course, but it was a small step in the right direction.
The handcuffs rattle as she pulled on them. “Are you going to leave me like this?”
He slid into the bed next to her, but maintained a slight distance between them. “I can’t trust you not to try escaping.”
“Can you at least handcuff my legs, instead?” Maybe if her hands were free, she could find a way to get loose. The handcuff key was likely still in the jeans lying crumpled on the floor. She might be able to get to them. “This hurts too much to sleep.”
“We’re here so I can sleep, remember? I don’t give a fuck if you do or not.”
Asshole. Maintaining this submissive act was really pushing her to the limit. “Please—”
“Shut up or I’m going to gag you.”
She glared up at the ceiling, suddenly fighting back tears. “You really are an asshole.”
“Nothing’s changed between us, sweetheart. You got that?” Suddenly he was looming over her and the gentle lover from before was nowhere to be found. “You aren’t going to manipulate me. No matter how good your mouth or your ass or your cunt feel around my dick.”
This time she didn’t stop the flood of tears. They coursed down her face and soaked the pillow underneath her cheek.
“Stop it,” he commanded.
But she couldn’t stop even she’d wanted to. She didn’t even understand what she was crying about. Maybe for the horror of being kidnapped, for her lost innocence, or for wanting the person who tormented her more than she’d ever wanted anyone before.
She was crying for all of it.
Hunt shifted to bring his face closer to hers. She could barely make out his features in the darkness but his eyebrows drew together—whether in anger or confusion it was impossible to say.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said over her racking sobs. “This is just the way things have to be.”
“You are hurting me,” she gasped on a shaking breath. “You’re killing me.”
He traced the course of a tear down her cheek with one finger, his touch almost reverent. “I never meant for anything to get this far. You were never supposed to be this involved.”
“You kidnapped me.” Anger momentarily overcame her self-pity. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“I thought your father would act like a man with some integrity and give me what I need.”
She couldn’t resist the humorless laugh that spilled from her lips. “A man with some integrity? That’s rich coming from you. I doubt my father has ever kidnapped and raped a woman before.”
Hunt moved more completely over her. The sheet slipped to the side so a line of his bare skin pressed directly against her. My heart automatically skipped a beat.
“You might be surprised by what your father has done.” His breath was hot on her cheek as he leaned closer. She thought he was going to try to kiss her, but he just whispered harshly in her ear. “And you can’t rape the willing, baby. You were practically gagging for it.”
Sophia twisted her hips to try to shove him off, but it was like trying to move a brick wall. The last thing she wanted was a reminder of what she’d been reduced to. “And when you finally find this information you want or you finally accept that it doesn’t exist…what about me?” Her tears had dried up and she was too angry for them to return. “What happens to me when this is all over?”
He abruptly rolled away from her. “Go to sleep.”
“Do you even know?” she whispered harshly in the dark. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do next?”
“Sophia, please. Just be quiet.”
Hunt’s voice sounded resigned and so tired. She realized with a start that perhaps she had managed to get under his skin, despite what he said to the contrary. His body was turned away from her so his back was at her side. He hadn’t moved far because she sensed the heat of his body through the thin sheet.
She knew in her heart that something had changed between them. They were connected now, in a way that they hadn’t been before.
But was that connection enough to save her?
Chapter Fifteen
Hunt felt like a fucking idiot.
Sophia sat silently beside him as they drove down some backroad that was just miles and miles of darkness. A pair of headlights passed them heading in the other direction once every thirty minutes or so.
The stereotype was always of the woman getting too emotionally involved after sex and letting a quick fuck get into her head and mess it all up. But he was the one acting like an overly emotional bitch. He was the one who’d let some little girl crawl inside of his head, and now it was impossible to get her out.
He wanted to know what she was thinking, but not enough to actually ask her. Not enough to reveal that his mind was in complete turmoil. Plus, the last thing he wanted was another round of waterworks out of her.
They’d been on the road for over an hour before he even realized that he hadn’t remembered to handcuff her again. Fuck, she was messing with his head.
He didn’t want to kill her. And he didn’t want to let Savage do it, either. Enough innocent people had been hurt already and he couldn’t add her to the list. He had to give in to the beast eventually, before he lost complete control. But he wouldn’t indulge the darkness with her, not if he could help it.
It was beyond reason, but he wanted to keep her safe. Not just because he’d fucked her and desperately wanted to do it again. But because she was innocent in all of this and the thought of her dead felt like his own heart was being ripped out of his chest. He’d thought he would do anything to bring down the people responsible for Project Alpha, but he didn’t want to be the kind of monster who would kill an innocent girl, especially after all the things he’d put her through.
But none of that showed on his face or in his demeanor as he silently drove in the darkness. The girl needed to believe that he was capable of anything so that she wouldn’t rely on him as her hope. She needed to protect herself, from him and anything else about to come her way.
That still didn’t leave him with any better idea of what he was going to do with her. He still wanted whatever information the senator had locked away, even if he never got to use it. He had to know the true extent of this.
After they got the information, he and his guys could disappear. That had always been the idea. It didn’t matter that she knew his name and had seen his face. They’d be long gone before she even had a chance to so much as describe him for a police sketch.
Of course, that was assuming the information was there to be found.
Sophia’s rabid defense of her father bordered on the pathological, but what if she was right?
Hunt liked to think even the evilest of men wouldn’t let something like this happen to their daughters if they could put a stop to it. Maybe their intel was wrong. Maybe the senator hadn’t given up the information they asked for because there was nothing to give.
No, he thought sharply. He refused to believe it. Every lead that they’d managed to track down—wire-transferred payments, approval of government contracts, names on dummy accounts—all of it led back to the senator. Without him, the trail went cold. Senator Reynolds had to be the key to finding Project Alpha and destroying it once and for all.
Sophia stirred beside him. He thought she’d fallen asleep, but she had just been staring out the window into the night as lost in her own thoughts as he was.
What was he going to do with her?
They passed a small road sign welcoming them to Tennessee. He could already feel the anticipation building like a f
ire in his soul. He’d placed a call to Chase before they’d left the motel. He and Savage had come up empty with the senator’s office. This storage unit was their last chance.
“How far do we have to go now?”
Sophia turned to look at him with bloodshot eyes. She must not have slept at all during the handful of hours that they’d spent at the motel. Not that he blamed her; sleep had been elusive for him as well.
“It’s in Ashland City,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.
“And where is that?” Hunt asked impatiently. She’d picked of a hell of a time to decide to shut down. He’d wondered how long it would take for all this to finally bowl her over. Nobody was strong enough to withstand something like this without breaking eventually.
“We’re on US-41, right?” she asked with a heavy sigh. “When you get to Springfield, get on SR-49 south and it’ll take us right through. Do you need me to draw you a map?”
The kitten still had claws. It made him want to push her a little harder. He’d rather see her angry than defeated. “I can think of a better use for that mouth than making smartass remarks.”
She glared over at him. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He cut his gaze over at her before returning his attention to the road. She was still hunched up against the door like a dog afraid it was going to be beaten if it made itself too big of a target. But when she glared at him, there was the tiniest spark of fire in her eyes. “Don’t remind me of how good it feels to be inside of you?”
“That was a mistake. It’s never going to happen again.”
They’d see about that.
“It’s probably going to be hard to get locked back in the convent after this now that you know what you’re missing.”
“Please shut up.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and Daddy dearest will marry you off to a man adventurous enough to fuck you with the lights on.”
“Shut up!”
“Anal’s probably off the table, though.”
Without warning, she launched herself at him. Clearly nobody had ever taught her how to throw a punch, but she was angry enough to make up for the lack of skill. Her blows would have been easy to ward off if they weren’t doing sixty miles an hour down an abandoned country road in the middle of the night.
“Jesus, woman. Are you trying to kill us both?”
Hunt wasn’t even sure he could hear her over the obscenities she was shouting at him, interspersed with the occasional wordless shriek.
He managed to keep her at bay with one hand and navigate the car to the side of the road without crashing it. He let her go at him for a minute or two without trying to subdue her, just warding off the occasional strike that got too close to his face.
She did manage to clip him good in the ear. At that point, he’d had enough.
“All right!” He grabbed both of her hands and forced them down into her lap. She initially struggled but subsided once she realized that she couldn’t possibly break the hold that he had on her.
Sophia tried one more time to wrench away and he waited a beat before letting her go, just to make sure she got the message. She only went free if he allowed it. When he finally released her, the strength she’d used to pull at his grip sent her flying back toward the passenger door.
Hunt threw the car into park so he could take his foot off of the brake and turn completely toward her. He didn’t trust her not to lose her fucking mind again.
Oppressive silence descended, broken only by the sound of her harsh breathing.
“You finished?” he asked, which turned out to be a mistake.
She let out a primal scream that was piercing in both volume and intensity. Her hands slammed down repeatedly on the dashboard over and over again, so hard that he hoped she wasn’t hurting herself.
This was it, Hunt thought. He had pushed too hard. She’d officially lost her fucking mind.
Eventually Sophia collapsed against the dashboard, obviously exhausted from the emotional display.
“Sophia…”
When she turned to look at him, her eyes were wide, gaze wild. Her face was streaked with tears. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He was already regretting not handcuffing her to the seat like last time. “You need to calm down.”
“Calm. Down?” She spat the words out like they tasted bad. “Do you have any idea what is happening to me right now? I feel like my head is about to explode.”
There was nothing for him to say to her. He wasn’t the hero or the savior; he was the man dead set on destroying her life.
“Are you done trying to hit me or do I need to handcuff you again?”
She seemed to deflate a little in the seat, like all the wind had been blown out of her sails. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry.”
And she didn’t look sorry. The set of her mouth was belligerent, like she challenged him to respond to her anger.
“It’s almost over.” He pitched his voice low, trying for something that sounded reassuring. “Get me to that storage unit and we’ll be done.”
“We’ll never be done.” Her voice was emotionless and the gaze she turned on him was dark and unfathomable. “There’s no moving on from this. You ruined me.”
He didn’t like the feelings that were being stirred within him. And he didn’t like the way she looked at him like he was some demon tormentor here to make her suffer. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m never dramatic,” she snapped. “Everyone knows that about me. I’m steady and reliable.”
“I think almost causing a fatal car crash counts as dramatic.”
“This is all your fault. My body is covered with bruises. I haven’t slept in almost two days and I can’t remember the last time that I ate something besides a white bread and bologna sandwich.”
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said, picking up on the one part of her screed that was actionable. “I think I saw a diner a few miles back.”
Sophia stared at him, expression suspicious. “Are you serious?”
“We need to eat, right? Unless you’re planning on doing something stupid.”
Her body relaxed the smallest amount. “I’m not sure that I believe you.”
Hunt didn’t respond to that. Instead, he silently put the car in gear and turned back around in the direction they’d come. He’d remembered seeing one of those cheap places with semi-trucks in the parking lot and roadside advertisements for steaks that cost less than a superstore T-shirt.
“I don’t understand you,” she said as they pulled into the empty lot.
“Are you going to behave?” he asked, as if she would tell him the truth. “Or do I need to leave you handcuffed in the car?”
Her hand automatically moved to rub the opposite wrist as if the weight of the handcuffs were something she could already feel. “I’ll be good.”
He didn’t believe a word of that.
“C’mon.” He parked the car and got out, acting like he wasn’t waiting for her to follow him. But he keenly listened for the sound of her door opening and the slam as she closed it. Her footfalls were soft but distinct behind him.
Hunt was attuned to the sound of her movements, even as he feigned a lack of concern. If she couldn’t be trusted to make the smart decision, it was better that he figured it out quickly. And not when they were in the middle of nowhere at a nearly empty truck-stop diner, rather than somewhere she could actually get real help.
He knew it was a risk taking her out in public. Her picture had been splashed over every news station on a near-constant loop for the past two days. But the perfectly groomed schoolgirl in those pictures bore very little resemblance to the dirty, disheveled girl behind him. He’d already traded her skimpy pajama shorts for a pair of baggy sweatpants, matched with an oversized shirt. Her long hair was pushed up underneath a baseball cap with the bill pulled low over her face. The inside of the diner seemed dim enough that none of the few people inside were going to get a good look at
her face.
Briefly, he considered punctuating that earlier threat. Warn her that if anything happened to him, then Savage would be coming straight for her. And whatever he did would make him look like a saint. But he abandoned the impulse almost the moment it crossed his mind. She was going to do whatever she was going to do. And so was he.
The bell above the door jingled when he opened it. He held it for her and she took her sweet time catching up, another little display of temper. He could handle the brattiness as long as she didn’t do anything truly stupid.
Sophia slowed down enough that he was holding the door open for a beat too long, the little bitch. But he let it slide off his back. He wasn’t actually trying to be a gentleman, but standing in the door like this gave him an opportunity to scope the place out from the best vantage point without being obvious about it.
The diner was pretty run-of-the-mill for its type. An empty bar made of chipped wood ran the length of the back wall with a dozen or so barstools pushed up against it. There were a handful of metal tables covered in red and white checkered plastic. One table was taken up by a young woman with her toddler in a highchair next to her. A bored waitress stood behind the register, and he could see a burly man through the little window opening of the grill.
He could definitely handle it if Sophia decided to get out of hand.
She finally passed under the arm he had up holding the door, her expression sour. He took her shoulder and propelled her toward one of the tables in the corner and nearest the door to the kitchen. It wasn’t even a conscious decision to pick the table with the best access to multiple exit routes. At this point, that sort of the thing was just an instinct. He directed Sophia to the seat nearest the window and then took the one next to her.
Her hands were gripped in her lap hard enough that her knuckles had turned white. “I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway.”
He reached past her to grab the plastic menus that were tucked in between the metal napkin dispenser and a bottle of ketchup. She flinched away from him. He didn’t like that much, but left it alone. He couldn’t really blame her for being skittish after everything that had happened.
Hunted by the Feral Alpha Page 15
