Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (13 page)

“No, get away from me!” she cried, rolling onto her belly and scrambling for the shelter of the bathroom.

Erias stalked toward her knowing full well how scary he must look with his heavy black biker boots, black jeans, black long sleeved thermal t-shirt and ten feet of rope, but she had left him with no choice. How else was he going to get her to listen to him?

“I’m sorry
,
lady, but you leave me with no other choice.”

Cheyenne leapt to her
feet,
and using
the last of her strength, bolted into the bathroom and slammed the door shut just as the man’s large frame came into view. No sooner had she flipped the
lock; he
slammed his fist into
it.

Using her own body, Cheyenne blocked the door, wedging her feet against the sink cabinets in front of her. If he really wanted to get in there wasn’t much she could do to stop him. The man was massive and the sheer strength a person with his build must have seriously outweighed an
y
thing she did. Karate lessons be damned.

After a long while of turning the knob and pushing against the door, Erias briefly entertained the idea of bus
t
ing
it down
, but knowing the layout of the bathroom and the fact that she had obviously wedged herself between the door and the sink, he didn’t want to break her legs or an
y
thing trying.

The easiest thing he could think to do would be to flash himself inside and take her by force, but then how would he gain her trust after seeing something like that?

The human mind didn’t usually take kindly to the unnatural and unexplained
,
and there was no way in hell he was going to explain what he was to a woman who lived her life around discovering the wonders of the world. There was no doubt in his mind that five minutes after confessing
,
the men in the white coats would descend upon him and start cutting him apart to find out all his secrets.

Secrets
like his couldn’t be solved by
science,
and so he would have to go about extracting her the hard way. “Count to ten
, Erias. T
his is just a female. Give it to her sweet and you’ll have her eating out of the palm of your hand in no time.” Taking a large breath to calm his self, Erias placed his hands on either side of the door and spoke to
her.

Cheyenne’s heart was pounding so hard she could hear it thundering in her ears. Her vision was clouded by unspent
tears,
and she felt sick from whatever that was that had blown her across the room. She was fighting to remain
conscious
and scared out of her mind of what kind of situ
a
tion she would wake up to find herself in if she allowed herself to
succumb.

It wasn’t until she heard his rich
,
masculine voice rumble through the thick wooden door
that
she realize
d
he had stopped trying to force his way in.

“I’m not very good with this sort of thing, but I’m sorry for frightening you. All I wanted to do was talk, I swear it.”

Cheyenne couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know what to make of his sudden
apology,
and she couldn’t tell if this was a trick. Surveying the small room, she noted that there wasn’t a single way out of there except the way she came in. She was
trapped.

“I don’t blame you for not believing me. I know I can come off a little…”

“Scary,” she provided.

“Yes, scary.” Erias smiled a little at hearing her voice. At least she was willing to talk to him. Resting his head against the door
,
he decided it best to take a different approach. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Erias.”

Cheyenne recognized the olive branch he was
offe
r
ing,
and though it warmed her a bit to finally be able to put a name to the face that had plagued her every thought since she had laid eyes on
him; she
wasn’t about to let down her
guard.

“Erias…?” she prompted, urging him on.

“Erias Caspriscopious.”

She laughed. “Where the hell are you from that you have a name like that?” At his silence
,
she cursed to he
r
self. She hadn’t meant to offend him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…Look, sometimes I have this bad habit of
putting my foot in my mouth and…
Wait, what the hell am I apo
l
ogizing to you for? You’re the one holding me captive and trying to tie me up like some sort of psychopath.”

“I am not a psychopath,” Erias gritted, barely hol
d
ing his temper in check. “Look, why don’t you tell me your
name,
so I don’t have to keep calling you lady and woman and all that?”

“Why don’t you shove it up your ass!”

“Damn it
,
woman, you are a pain
in
my ass!” Erias yelled through the door. “Fine, have it your way. Stay in there until you rot for all I care.
It makes
my job easier.”

He couldn
’t believe that she was so hard
–
h
eaded that she couldn’t even give him her name without first gi
v
ing him an attitude. Here he was trying to be amicable, make amends for any misunderstanding that may have o
c
curred since they
met,
and yet she couldn’t even put aside her petty, child–like behavior for one minute and meet him half
way.

It was like talking to himself! 

Now he understood why Behr was so annoyed with him all the time. The woman was a carbon copy of
him,
and he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes without feeling like he needed to run his fist through the wall. The only thing she had going for her was the fact that he wanted to touch her almost as much as he wanted to touch
himself.

If
she was so much like him,
though,
then he knew exactly what tactic to use to get her out of the bathroom wit
h
out having to harm on
e
pretty little hair on her
head.

Picking up the phone, Erias smiled to himself while he dialed room service.

Chapter 10

Through a muddled haze, Cheyenne heard the hotel room door open and Erias’s deep baritone speaking to someone. From what she could tell it was another
man,
and the muffled sounds of their laughter set her blood to
boi
l
ing, but
she hadn’t the strength to do much more than listen and consider what her actions would be if she could just lift an arm to bang on the door or move her mouth to
scream.

At least then someone would know she was there. As it was, she had become some psychopath’s dirty little secret.

What had he done to her?

The nearest she could figure was that Erias had erected some sort of invisible electric fence like the one her mother had installed in the yard for her little Yorkshire. She had always thought it humorous whenever the
ten-pound
pup would race toward the sidewalk and then yelp as a small electrical jolt made him think
twice.

Yeah, well, whatever system he had wired that door with packed one hell of a wallop. Her head was still thro
b
bing from her impact with the
wall,
and her fingers were a mass of pinpricks like when she slept on her arm wrong.

Still, she would rather be locked safely in a bat
h
room where she could plot her escape than bound and gagged and at the mercy of a lunatic.

Her stomach grumbled, echoing through the small space. God, she was so hungry. Her head swam in a wave of lightheadedness. She really needed to
eat, but
she’d
be damned if she
asked
her captor to feed her. She’d just have to tough it out. People could live for twelve days without food she’d heard once. Or was that water? Whate
v
er, she’d survive.
Hopefully.

Blinking
against the dark grey blotches invading her vision
,
she fought to remain
conscious.
She had to figure a way out of
here.

And she would.

If it was the last thing she did, she was going to come out of this alive. To sleep was to
die,
and she would not die. Cheyenne Oppenello was a fighter to the very
end.

Just before she lost consciousness, the most del
i
cious aroma she had smelled since before arriving in Ic
e
land, assaulted her senses. Whimpering against the gru
m
bling pain caused by her empty stomach, she closed her eyes and slipped off into darkness.

“Any more bright
ideas,
E?” Behr leaned back in his chair and gave him a derisive smirk before taking a
n
other sip of his
beer.

“Yeah, just one, but it involves taking a chunk out of your
hide,
so I’m thinking you won’t like it
much.”

Taking the final bite of his burger, Erias had to wrestle the urge
not to
look at the bathroom door. With every minute that more silenced
passed,
and she didn’t come
out; he
grew tenser.
The
last thing he would do is admit to Behr or anyone else, including himself, how much the female had wormed her way into his
heart.

He couldn’t even figure why. She was irritating, stubborn and she obviously didn’t feel too fondly for him
either, but
it wasn’t hard to miss that she held some sort of attraction for him. A gift from Persephone herself, no woman could resist the allure of his potent
masculinity.

He found her fairly attractive as well, and that’s what he told himself was the reason for his preoccupation with her. Since his wife had passed, he wasn’t interested in any woman beyond a quick roll in the
sack,
and that’s how he intended to keep it until the day he could be with her
again.

Wishing one of his god
s
given powers had been x-ray vision, Erias glanced at the door willing the female to emerge
,
then quickly back to his plate before Behr
noticed. 

“Maybe we should turn a fan on or something,” Behr suggested, reaching across the table to snatch a fry from the plate of food that was quickly growing cold.

Erias shot his hand out and slapped him away. “That food isn’t meant for you,
dog
. If you’re still hungry go scrounge something
up,
but don’t touch anything that belongs to the female again unless you want to lose that paw.”

Behr growled low in his throat at the derogatory name. No one called him a dog and lived to tell about it. If he and E weren’t so
tight,
he might have to kill the
man.

“I’m going to let that one slide this time since I know how testy old men like yourself tend to get
, but co
n
sider yourself warned—
don’t
ever
use that tone with me again.” Rising to his full height, Behr kicked the chair out behind him and flashed from the room back to the mou
n
tain.

The oppressive darkness of the hall was nothing compared to the
inky
void dwelling inside of him. What E had called him had really struck a nerve and had him grin
d
ing his teeth to the point of pain in order to avoid the memory that one careless comment had
triggered.

He thought he had buried the past in the past, but he could never hide from it for long. There was always som
e
thing, a misspoken word, a funny look cast his way that always managed to bring the shame of what he was and wished he’d never been, back to the forefront of his mind.

With his mind, Behr willed light into the dark, ca
v
ernous hall and tried to ignore the hulking reflection of him as he made his way back to The Gate.

He absolutely hated looking in a mirr
or. It held too many memories.
It reminded him too much of a time best left
forgotten, but
he also hated the
dark,
and so he would
deal.