It wasn't just because after I'd gotten a taste of her, practically half of my thoughts were consumed with burying my cock inside her. Though there was that too.
It was this kind of shit.
She should have been in the back, sleeping off another dose of the ketamine. Because it shouldn't have mattered if she was in a k-hole. It shouldn't have mattered that she felt like shit. Because, she was not a permanent fixture in our lives. She was here for a job. And then she was going to be disposed of.
That thought, though, it made a strange, sharp sensation pierce my chest.
At some point, I found myself passing back out as well, waking up when Ly announced we were almost home to Josephine draped over me, her face nuzzled into my neck, her hand placed over my heart, her legs resting on either side of me.
Clearly, I'd been feeling her wiggle against me because I woke up with a painfully throbbing cock pressing between her spread thighs. That skirt of her dress had ridden up to allow her legs to go on either side of me, and since Lenore's kind didn't believe in undergarments, that meant Josephine's pussy was as bare as it had been the last time I was close to her.
Without meaning to, my hips shifted up slightly, pressing against her, dragging a sleepy sigh out of her.
My gaze shifted toward the front, finding Minos leaning against the window, passed out. Behind me, Lenore seemed asleep as well. Ly's focus was on the road. And Minos's whiny music was still playing loudly enough through the speakers.
I was a real fuck for crossing the line again, but I couldn't make myself give a shit as I jerked my hips upward against her again, waking her up with the sensation.
She didn't respond at first, likely still out of sorts from the drugs leaving her system and from sleep.
My hips ground upward again, getting a quiet gasp at her as she pushed up slightly, looking down at me with those sleepy brown eyes that were a mix of confused and heated.
My hands slid down her back, sank into her ass, grinding her down onto me, watching as her lips opened on a silent moan as a shiver racked her system.
She didn't pull away.
She didn't say no.
No, instead, she did another little wiggle with her hips.
That was all I needed.
I used her ass to grind her against me as I thrust upward, finding the rhythm that made her breathing go fast and shallow, made her muscles tense, made it impossible for her to keep her sounds in.
My hand went to the back of her neck, pressing her face hard against my shoulder to muffle her sounds as I drove her up, then over the edge, feeling her body shudder as a throaty moan vibrated against my shirt.
She didn't move after, just clung to me as aftershocks racked her system. Satisfied. While my cock was still throbbing for release.
Don't get me wrong, if you weren't getting the woman you were with off too, I didn't see the point. But I don't remember the last time I walked away from a sexual encounter with a woman and didn't finish myself.
Now I'd fucked around with this woman twice. Twice. And I got nothing out of it.
What the fuck was going on with me?
"We're here," Lycus called, making Minos jolt as he startled awake. Behind us, I could see Lenore sitting up as well.
Taking a steadying breath, I folded upward, pushing Josephine off my lap, trying to bring some calm back into my system.
"I'll come back for Red," I snapped, grabbing Josephine around the wrist, and dragging her out of the car with me, up the drive, through the front door, and upstairs.
To Red's room.
I wanted her in mine.
And that was exactly why she couldn't be.
I needed to get some distance from this woman.
Because I got the distinct feeling that something was going to happen if I didn't. Something similar to what had happened with Minos and Lycus.
And that couldn't fucking happen.
Chapter Eight
Jo
They lived in a mansion.
I don't know why that was so shocking to me, but as Ace practically dragged me out of the car, I couldn't help but feel a little bit in awe of the massive gray stone house with its abundance of windows, its utter privacy on a giant piece of land with a whole forest around it.
Perfectly secluded.
Which didn't bode well for me, did it?
But I didn't let my mind drift there as Ace unlocked the front door and pulled me inside, his hand biting into my wrist that was barely starting to lose the bruises from the cuffs from that first night.
I tried to tell myself that I was fascinated by the home because I was trying to learn the layout so that I could possibly find a way to escape one day or night when everyone was occupied.
The fact of the matter was, though, that I'd grown up really poor. I was accustomed to cheap apartments in bad neighborhoods where nothing was ever quiet, not even in the middle of the night when I was trying to sleep. I was used to thrift store furniture with holes and burn marks and weird odors that never quite came out, no matter how much dollar store perfume my mother doused it with.
And while I'd done decently well for myself as an adult, choosing a steady career that paid relatively well, especially for a single woman, I had never seen actual grandeur up close and personal.
It was like touring a celebrity's house. Without any of the actual pointing out of things as Ace dragged me right up the front staircase, giving me only a brief look inside what seemed to be a library—which made sense since Ace clearly liked books—and what seemed to be a kitchen toward the back of the house.
There had been lush Oriental rugs lining the hallway, looking expensive and soft, but I didn't get to test that theory out for myself as Ace kept up the breakneck pace up the stairs, seeming to forget—or simply not caring—that my legs were a lot shorter than his, so every step he took was two for me.
On top of that, I was still not quite right after he'd dosed me the second time.
I'd dealt with a decent amount of overdoses in my line of work, unfortunately. I knew a bad trip when I was experiencing one. And judging by the fact that he shot me up instead of shoved a pill down my throat, I felt relatively safe in assuming it had been ketamine. One of the several date-rape type drugs.
I didn't want to consider why he had access to such things.
Clearly, he didn't need them to coerce me into forgetting myself and letting him do things with me.
That wasn't quite fair, though, was it?
There had been no coercion. He'd given me ample time to object. I just hadn't. And I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around why that was.
Sure, I had a normal, healthy sex drive.
And, yes, he was an attractive man.
But that had never been enough for me to completely forget myself and let someone bring me to orgasm in a public sort of setting.
What the hell was that about?
Maybe now that we were at a permanent location, I would have some time and space to work through my swirling, uncomfortable thoughts.
For God's sake, I didn't even know where we were. I should have been focusing on trying to figure that out, not letting my freaking captor put his hands on me.
"Here," Ace snapped, practically tossing me inside a bedroom, making me stumble, needing to grab the side of the four-poster bed to steady myself.
"What? You're not going to nail the windows shut?" I asked, shooting daggers at him.
"If you would like to fling yourself out of a two-story window, be my guest," he said, tone biting.
And with that, he moved back out, slamming the door.
I didn't imagine this was my chance to escape, so I took a couple deep breaths before looking around the room.
I imagined this was Red's bedroom judging by the more feminine look to it from the toss pillows on the bed to the green tufted velvet couch under a set of the massive windows that, as Ace suggested, did lead to quite a drop. The kind of drop that would break all the bones in your legs if it didn't
outright kill you.
So that was out.
Trying not to feel defeated, I moved into the attached bathroom, finding bright white everything. Including a deep soaking tub.
Everything was neat. No personal touches were lying around. So I guess Red was a tidy person.
I had at least half a dozen things on my sink vanity at any given time. I always told myself I would be one of those people who put things away as they used it, but it never happened.
There were voices down the hall, then inside the bedroom as they brought in Red.
"How is she?" I asked, looking at Lenore, hoping she'd been keeping an eye on her while I'd been incapacitated.
"She seems okay," Lenore supplied, pulling down the comforter so the men could slip Red onto the bed.
"I'll grab the supplies," Ace announced, making his way toward the door, seeming to hug the other wall simply to be as far from me as possible.
"You gonna look her over?" Lycus asked, snapping my attention back to him.
"Of course," I agreed. "You all can go," I added. "I imagine Red would appreciate her privacy," I told them.
The poor woman had been nearly, if not completely, nude around these men for days. Even the most confident women I knew didn't let it all hang out around male friends. If that was what these people were to her. I didn't even know. I didn't understand their dynamic.
There had been motorcycles and leather jackets.
I couldn't claim to know much of anything about them, but I figured they had a motorcycle club of some sort. Which explained their willingness to kidnap and steal, I guess.
"I'm fucking beat," Ly said, dropping an arm on his woman's shoulders. "Come keep me company," he added, pulling her along with him.
"If you need anything, we are two doors down," Lenore told me, giving me a smile before she was led away.
"You need food, right?" Minos asked, reaching up to pull his long hair into a bun. "We got you food at the last stop but you didn't want to eat."
My stomach had felt like someone was wringing it out back then. But now? I was famished.
"I'm starving," I agreed. "Thank you," I added.
Aside from Aram who was nowhere around, I had the best feeling about Minos. And I figured it wasn't a bad thing for me to get on the better side of at least a few of these people.
Minos said nothing as he moved out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Alone, I moved toward Red, pulling down the sheet, checking her wounds, feeling for her pulse and temperature. Aside from a few spots on her back that looked a little red, likely from moving around in the car, she was looking pretty good. All things considered.
Once I had the supplies, I would give her another saline rinse and another dose of her medicine. But in another day or two, we could probably ease her back on the pain medicine. She was on a heavy dose, and it might have been the reason she was still so out of it, lost in her own head.
I now knew a thing or two about being drugged. And getting to the surface of your consciousness felt a hell of a lot like swimming through molasses. Red hadn't gotten a break from the drugs yet—for good reason, her pain would have been excruciating—but as soon as we could, we needed to give her the chance to surface again.
"That's everything for now," Ace's voice startled me, making me turn to find him dropping a bag on the couch. "You stay in here."
With that, he was gone, closing the door.
I figured that was it until about fifteen minutes later when I heard drilling. Then the slide of a chain on the other side of the door.
So that was that.
Unless one of them was coming in to check on Red or bring me food, I was locked in.
After a couple hours of pacing the bedroom, I was seriously starting to contemplate tying together all the bedding and clothes in Red's closet to scale down out the window like some prison movie.
In the end, though, I'd raided Red's closet, intent on taking a shower, then getting some rest.
The only problem was that Red was the kind of woman I was convinced was the figment of male movie makers' minds, not one who actually existed. She was the kind of woman who didn't own a single pair of "comfy" PJs. Oh, no. She was the sort of woman who favored lace and silk. All of it short and tight.
Her day clothes were similar. Tight jeans, short skirts, tops that were heavy on the cleavage spillage and skintight.
On a sigh, I stole some of her panties and a burgundy silk tank and shorts set that was lined in black lace. It was entirely too sexy. But it was clean. And that was really all that mattered after being in the same dress for days.
So I showered, going ahead and using all of Red's various beauty products, then took one of the many blankets from the closet—wondering all the while what these peoples' obsession was with warmth—and climbed onto the couch to sleep, at least a little comforted by the locked door.
See, the problem with locked doors was they could be unlocked.
When you were unconscious and vulnerable and unaware.
I woke up slowly, sleep stubbornly clinging to my thoughts, leaving me laying there with closed eyes, lulled a bit by a low timbre of a man's voice in the room. It took a solid minute or two before I realized that what I was hearing was not what I wanted to hear.
Ace's voice.
In the same room as me.
My eyes snapped open, slow-blinking into the darkness of the room, finding the source of the voice.
Ace was sitting in a brown leather barrel chair that hadn't been in the room when I'd gone to sleep. He'd changed into a pair of gray sweatpants and a black hoodie, despite the thermostat likely being set around eighty.
He had a book open in his hands, one much thicker than the last one.
At last I put off love,
For twice ten years...
I wanted to hate the man.
He'd certainly earned my derision.
But I found myself captivated by the smooth sound of his voice, the confident, familiar way his mouth moved over the words.
My eyes drifted closed again, wanting him to think I was still asleep so I could listen to him read for a while longer.
I didn't pretend to understand my reaction to him.
I didn't even get my apparent newfound interest in old poetry.
There was just something hypnotic about the way he recited the poems—with a sort of reverence I found myself inexplicably drawn to.
"Are you done pretending you're asleep?" Ace asked, making me jolt at the sudden change in tone.
His reading voice was smooth and soothing.
The voice he used on me was sharp, cutting.
Like he was annoyed with me.
With me!
Meanwhile, I was the one ripped off the street, cuffed, injured, held captive, used, and drugged.
The bastard.
"I was hoping you would shut up and leave," I told him, sitting up, my chin jerking up.
"Dressed up for me to tell me to fuck off?" he asked, closing his book as his gaze raked over my exposed skin. And there was a lot of it, thanks to Red's signature style.
"For your information, Red seems to be allergic to cotton and comfy," I told him, confused and annoyed by the way the skin his gaze moved over felt suddenly warm and sensitive. I was sure that if I looked down, I would find a flush over my chest and neck. So I went ahead and didn't look down. I didn't need proof of how screwed up I was about this whole situation, and this man in particular.
He ignored that, likely knowing it was true.
"No riveting commentary about the poem selection tonight? Were they, perhaps, pretty?" he asked, not even trying to pretend he wasn't mocking me, throwing my own words back in my face.
"Why are you such an asshole?" I snapped, too annoyed to care about keeping the peace, not provoking my captor. "I mean, where do you get off being so nasty? Were you the one kidnapped, held against your will, and drugged? If you find me so inconvenient, you can let me go. I will even let my damn self out," I sai
d, flicking off the blanket, and making my way toward the door.
It wasn't like I thought he would actually let me go.
I was just sick of being a good little captive while he made me miserable and confused.
My hand barely even closed around the doorknob before I heard a growling noise—so animalistic-sounding that I felt my heart leap in my chest—a second before a hand slammed into the door above my head as another hand grabbed the back of my neck, yanking me backward, forcefully turning me. His hand slid around my neck to my throat, slamming me back against the door by it.
"Don't fucking test me," he demanded, voice rougher than I'd heard it.
And his eyes.
His eyes didn't seem so blue anymore.
They seemed red.
But no.
That didn't make any sense.
People didn't get red eyes.
It was just a trick of the light.
I swallowed hard.
Because I was supposed to be terrified.
Why, then, was there something else coursing through my system? Something warm and liquid, something that made my nerve endings feel like they were humming, something that made me very much aware of an oppressive weight on my lower stomach?
"Or what?" I heard myself asking the question like I was suddenly outside my body, watching on as some weird, bold, daring version of myself decided to try to go toe-to-toe with her captor.
"You should keep your mouth shut, Josephine," he told me, my name sounding way too good rolling off of his tongue. "Or I will find some other use for it," he added.
It was a threat.
Yet my sex tightened at the sound of it.
"You said you wouldn't force me," I reminded him, head feeling a little swimmy with the pressure of his fingertips on each side of my throat.
"You think I'd need to force you?" he challenged, hand sliding to my shoulder, pushing until I started to go down on my knees.
I knew I was going to hate myself for it, but my hands rose, grabbed the front of his pants, and started drawing them down.
The Healer (Seven Sins MC Book 2) Page 7
