Make Me Yours Evermore, Book 3 (11 page)

“You’re welcome, Kat.” I patted her leg. “Take care.”

The fear in her eyes only reinforced in me that what I was doing was right. Giving in to my perverted desires was wrong.

Yet I fell asleep that night with sadness and guilt worming in my gut. What I was doing might be right, but it also was a deep betrayal of the one man I’d have by my side if the world ever decided to end. I lay in the dark in my room and put my fingers on my eyes and pressed in, hoping to murder the ache in my head. It didn’t work too well. Dawn came and I woke bleary-eyed and sure that I was about to destroy something that meant everything for the sake of the welfare of one human being.

Like a man going to his grave, I pulled on my shorts and shirt then took out the two hundred and fifty in cash I’d kept for emergencies, and laid it on top of the bedside drawers.

I rolled my shoulders, blinking away the grit in my eyes. “You’d better be worth it, Kat. You’d better be damn well worth me doing this.”

When some noise woke me, I opened my eyes to see a man squatting on the other side of the cage bars. I gasped.

Andreas.

Oh my.

Some escape artist. I’d slept like a baby all night when I should’ve been planning. I remembered trying to think but my tired brain had shut down.

Andreas unlocked the padlock and opened the cage door. “You need to wake up damn fast, Kat. He’s down at the beach already. I made an excuse so I could come back. Money and car keys are there on the bed.” He jerked his head toward it. “The sooner you get moving the more time you have. I don’t think the car noise will travel all the way to the beach but just in case it does, be quick. Open the gate first then start the engine.”

I took his offered hand and crawled from the cage, sitting up on my knees and blinking madly. This was it. My heart accelerated.

At least my heart knew the situation even if my brain felt like someone had filled it up with hot fudge.

“Move!” He gestured, lifting his hand palm upward.

“I am!”

As I climbed to my feet, Andreas shot me a last frown then headed for the door. His black curls, olive complexion and dark brown eyes always made me think of a Greek tour guide.

Crazy words invaded my head.
Book now to get your next abduction cruise at a ten percent discount.

Two deep breaths then I staggered to the bed. Aches had woken up too, and my ass and legs throbbed. Every step made me want to wince.

“God damn it.” My ass could take a hike, to Greece maybe. I snatched up the keys and money, realized I had no pockets in my slave girl outfit and made for the door.

Something bugged me. An idea niggled. Think. I’d fallen into sleep while thinking about something, an important thing.

In the corridor I paused. Haste makes waste, even if being slow made Andreas have a purple fit. That made me think of what he’d made me promise. Something about that had been my last thought last night.

Don’t go to the cops.

Shit. I stared at my bare feet. I liked Andreas, admired his honesty and that he’d risk his friendship to Chris to help me. I really admired that. Most people were douchebags when crunch time came round but he’d stood up under fire and come to my aid. But, no cops? After what Chris had done to me?

I let the car keys dangle from my finger. In the deserted house the jingle they made scared me. Frantic, I checked the hallway. No movement, no footsteps anywhere. No creaks. No one. Just me.

This was about me…and Chris. Not Andreas. Why should I have to compromise? Or lie? Why should Chris win? Because that’s what this agreement did if I bent to Andreas’s demand and quietly slunk away and did nothing. Give it a week and Chris might be back at work smirking whenever he saw me. Or halfway to China.

The laptop. Yes. Hell yes. That was the other last thought.

I straightened then padded to Andreas’s room. If I was doing this, the more evidence, the better. Andreas had taken pictures. I’d watched him show them to Chris after dinner, last night. Passworded? Bullshit. IT experts could break into any computer given enough time. On a knee-high square coffee table, I found his bright red carry case, with the laptop inside it. Then I spent a few more seconds of my precious time staring, daring myself.

Go, chicken girl. Do it.
I picked it up and tucked it under my arm.

The thing seemed as dangerous as a bomb. I guess it was. This laptop would help me fuck over Chris in a way that would make him think Hiroshima, 9/11, and the coming of the anti-Christ were minor incidents.

“Sorry, Andreas.” I gnawed my lip.

I was sorry. I hated messing with friends and I considered him one. I was also fucking scared at what I was about to do. My heart stomped a clumsy tango against my ribs.

This needed doing.
Now
it was time to go.

Getting down to the garage was simple. They didn’t even have the door locked that opened onto the stairs. I crept past the car. While still under the house and in shade, I peered out.

Outside frightened me. Open area. Past a stone fence was greenery and tall trees with chirruping insects and things making mysterious noises. The Daintree forest seemed a palpable, awe-inspiring presence. Another two story house stood inside the wall about fifty yards to the left. The gate was twenty yards ahead of me. Open that first, Andreas had said.

I looked down at my dress and could see my nipples perked up from the fear. Some super-secret spy person, I was. There’d be clothes in the four wheel drive, if Andreas had remembered. I went around to the passenger side door, undid the door as quietly as I could, and swung it open, praying I’d find clothes.

Thank god. He’d remembered. On the seat were silver-grey tights and a big white T-shirt that looked man-sized. They’d have to do. I slung the laptop into the foot space and put the keys on the seat. I dragged off my dress then, feeling terribly exposed, I hurried to pick up the clothes.

A man’s hand clamped across my throat as he kicked into the back of my knee with a booted foot. I collapsed on that leg. My scream cut off. Fear of discovery rocked my shocked brain. Stupid? Or not? Who was this if not Chris?

I slipped, clawing for a grip on the car while also scratching at the man’s hand. Was it Chris? It didn’t
smell
like him. Sweat, acrid old sweat. His hands stank of engine oil.

He spat out one word, “Down!” as he dragged and shoved at my neck and twisted his boot round my other leg so I half-fell, half sagged to one knee on the concrete beside the car. Not Chris. I didn’t know him. Grit scored my palm.

“Scrim?” I grunted out, venturing a name.

He kneeled on my back and ground my naked body into the dirt. Desperate, scared enough that inside my head was an incoherent scream of fuck, fuck, fuck, I scrabbled at the dirt with fracturing fingernails, pushing up with palms and, hopefully, legs.

Only his weight came down harder, heavier. The bone of his knee thrust, crashing into my spine. I coughed out air, sucked in more while wriggling. Then I opened my mouth, this time intending to scream full-bore, at sky-splitting volume, ’cause I didn’t know who this was, what he’d do, where he’d take me. Anyone,
anyone
was better.

At the top of my inhale, he ripped back my head with a scalp-burning grip in my hair.

Instead of screaming, I whimpered.

Oh god.

Silence, just silence. Except for his breathing and a whispering, whipping rasp of something he manipulated. A bird sang somewhere far away.

He released my hair. Rope jammed up between my teeth and wrenched tight into the corners of my mouth, stretching my lips across my teeth. My tongue struggled to find a place to go in my mouth as it poked at the spiky strands of raw rope.

Efficiently, with no hurry, he found both my hands, took them behind me, and tied them with more rope. Tight. Several times he weaved it through and about my wrists then he knotted it. Though he’d shifted his knee down, what must be his whole weight pressed on my lower back. Pain was
everywhere
. Dirt pricked at one cheek, from my face being squashed into the concrete. My lips felt like they would split. My back was on fire. My breasts and belly hurt where twigs and gravel were caught between me and the ground. Already the blood in my trapped hands pulsed and swelled.

“That’s better.” His words rasped like waves churning over loose rocks. Then he hauled me upright by my hair and the rope around my mouth. “Now you look like someone owns you.”

When he spun me and forced me back into the side of the car, I finally saw him.

Terror made him big as hell. Deep scars – one slashed down his cheek. Square face. Peppered stubble.

My eyes refused to close despite the smirk on his face and utter confidence in the way he leaned over me. With the hand holding my mouth rope, he propped himself on the 4WD. Slowly, he wound the rope in until it was taut and my head had to kink up to that side. Then he stood there, sedate, barely breathing hard, examining me.

Me, I was panting like I’d run a hundred yards, my chest heaving and drawing his gaze to it.

Fuck.

Naked, I was naked. At the small of my back, the cold metal of the car gave my nails something to claw. Overcome, I shut my eyes, mostly, eyelids quivering, unable to either look at him, or to lose sight of him completely.

It was one thing defying Chris – I knew him and his ways – it was another defying this man. Something about his rough handling of me, his casual violence, sent fear skittering through my veins. My downcast gaze spotted a knife sheath then an outline under his shirt, at his waist. A gun?

Sweat trickled down my spine. Cold snaked across my skin. Even the muscles of my face trembled.

“Pretty. What a pity I have to give you back.” His mouth twitched up at one corner then he leaned in and gave a big, slurping lick up my cheekbone to my eye. He stepped back. “Be bad again, girl, hey? Then I might get to fuck you.”

With his free hand, he fished a mobile phone from his jeans pocket and tapped in a number, put it to his ear while smiling at me.

“Hi, Chris. It’s Scrim. Got you a present. Your girlfriend tried to escape in your car.” He paused a few seconds. “No. Not joking. In the garage. Come to your front door and I’ll give her to you. No. I can wait. Three or four minutes? Sure.”

Then we waited.

He murmured small threats, all the while we waited, as if the words had been set loose now that he had me at his mercy.

“What’s your name, pretty one? Can’t talk? One day, I’ll find out. Maybe while I fuck you. You think your boys in there are rough, wait ’til you see what we get up to with the loaners before they get shipped out.”

What the hell was he talking about?

As though it were an afterthought, he pulled a long knife from the belt sheath. Slow as the coming of the night, he raised it toward my face. Light curled along the blade and the point, sharp as sin, rested an inch below my right eye. I strained to see it, as if by knowing it came for me, my eye could dodge out of the way. Useless. He had my head locked in place.

No single thing had ever frightened me as much as that knife point waiting…waiting for its owner to drive it forward and sink it into my eye.

It slid closer and I pushed with my toes, trying to climb up the car.

“That got your attention. Knives do that to girls, I find. You’d be surprised at where I can fit a blade, even a super-duper sharp one like this.”

His words ran through my head in nonsensical threads that never came together. I was scared enough to want to see Chris again. Maybe even Andreas. Poor Andreas. I wasn’t sure why I pitied him but I wanted to see someone sane again.

The tramp of people walking through the house above made him swivel then put away the knife.

I breathed again, in shuddering gasps.

When he reached into the 4WD and grabbed the laptop, my heart flip flopped. The laptop. Coincidence? Did he know…no, he couldn’t. He couldn’t know what that meant. Maybe they…Andreas, or Chris, maybe they’d just think I stole it. Maybe. I was so, so fucked, dead, stupid,
ohmigod
. They’d know. They would. I tried to keep breathing around the rope in my mouth but the oxygen seemed to go nowhere useful. My legs weakened and threatened to give way at the knees.

“Come on. Time to see your daddy again. I hope he knows what to do with you cause if he don’t, I will be seeing you again, and I don’t think you want that, do you?”

With the last few words, he’d eyed me once more. Then he pulled me out from the car, and towed me toward the stairs by the rope around my head and mouth. I shivered, and stumbled, going back to the men I dreaded seeing.

By the time the door opened and Chris saw me kneeling on the landing, I was numb.

“Can I keep the rope for a while?” Though he asked the man who’d caught me, his eyes never left my face.

“Be my guest.” Scrim said, in an amused tone. “Give it back when you’re done.”

“I will, though that could be a few hours.” Then he leaned over and undid the rope around my hands, took the end of the head rope from Scrim and pulled. “Don’t get up, Kat. Crawl. Put your head down and crawl.”

I sniffed, torn by my usual response to Chris to do the opposite to his command. Then my energy evaporated. I crumpled inside. Too much had happened. I was weary and I was scared and for once I saw comfort and safety in being with Chris. So I lowered my head and I crawled in until I was beside his leg.

“This is yours,” Scrim said. “She was taking it with her.” Something was passed over my head.

“Thanks.” Chris shut the door. In the hallway, the echo of it shutting seemed muffled after the sharp sounds outside.

Another man stood a couple of yards away. Andreas. I could see his hand curl into a fist then uncurl. Next to his foot, he’d set down his laptop. “Hello, Kat. How…interesting to see you again.”

I swallowed. Two men standing over me and I had nothing. I was all out of bravado and snark and defiance.

“I’ve made a mistake, Chris,” he said slowly. “This was my fault.”

The moment stretched and I wondered what Chris was thinking or doing but when I went to raise my head he pushed it down.