Four
In her second year of college, Grace took a zoology course. She remembered the professor talking about apex predators, also known as alpha predators. They ruled at the top of the food chain. They killed and felt no guilt. The weak fell beneath them and that’s just the way the world worked.
She was face-to-face with an apex predator. She knew this with surety. He stared at her for a long moment before moving forward—and that’s when she noticed the knife in his hand.
That glint of a blade in his fist seemed to fit him. Everything about him smacked of danger, and she knew she would feel that way even if she wasn’t crouching like prey on a bed before him, waiting to be devoured.
A tide of panic swamped her. She curled back as far as she could go on the bed, pushing into the headboard. She had nothing. No weapon of her own. Nowhere to go. No chance to run away. No chance at all. She was at his mercy. Vulnerable to him and whatever he was about to do, and it made her angry. Angry because she was always vulnerable, always subject to someone. Never free. Heat flushed through her. She twisted her wrists inside the cord binding, ignoring the pain.
Her stomach twisted sickly and a strange sense of calm descended. The kind of calm that comes with the realization that there was nothing left to do.
She remembered watching shows like Dateline and 48 Hours, when police officers rattled grim statistics about the likelihood of survival once the victim was taken from the site of abduction. Well, she’d been taken. She’d let them take her. Hell, she’d made it relatively easy for them, and that burned her up most of all. She had become one of those grim statistics.
He stopped at the edge of the bed directly in front of her. Her gaze scanned up his denim-clad legs to his brutally handsome face, hard as granite, eyes like shards of green-shot amber stone.
After a pause, the long, lean line of him leaned over her. She flinched as his hands closed around her forearms and tugged her away from the headboard. He pulled her hands toward him. Her fingers worked on the air, groping helplessly. They’d gone numb and bloodless long ago from the tight cord at her wrists.
The blade flashed and she moaned into the rag, already imagining it cutting into her. Her mind raced. Would it be fast? Painful? God, don’t let it hurt.
He tugged at the tight binding cutting into her wrists, forcing the restraints even tighter. He brought the knife down, snapping the thin cord. She looked down, certain he had cut her, too, but there was no flash of red.
Immediately the pressure eased and blood rushed back into her hands, bringing a fresh onslaught of pain.
He grabbed the rag sticking out of her mouth and held onto it, locking eyes with her. “I’m going to pull this out, but if you scream it’s going back in.” His gaze drilled into her. “Got it?”
She nodded and then the rag was gone. She worked her dry-as-cotton mouth and brought her hands to her jaw, gently flexing the aching muscles in her face with a whimper. She doubted she could scream if she even wanted to. Her mouth was parched as the desert.
Sudden shouts and laughter carried through the door and made her jerk. Her gaze darted in that direction, worry punching her chest, making her breath ragged. It sounded like a party was going on out there. She hoped it stayed outside and didn’t find its way in here. To her.
He followed her gaze and then looked back at her. A long beat of silence crackled between them. “Take off your clothes.”
“Wh-What?”
He repeated himself, speaking slowly, enunciating each word. “Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
She glanced down as if needing to reacquaint herself with the notion of clothes. She swallowed against the golf-ball-size lump in her throat. He wanted her naked? It didn’t take much imagination to see where that would lead.
She flushed cold then hot and shook her head swiftly, loose hair pelting her in the face. She started to shake. Slow tremors that she couldn’t control. The fear, that ultimate degradation that she had not permitted herself to even contemplate since the moment of her abduction, stared her in the face.
He leaned forward, his fists sinking into the mattress, springs creaking as he brought his nose into almost touching distance of hers. He was close. Too close, and her shaking just got worse.
“You and I are the only two people in this house who aren’t high as a kite.” His breath fanned her lips as he spoke. He let that sink in for a moment. “If you want to keep them out there—” He nodded toward the door. “—and away from you, then you need to strip and get into this bed.”
He was serious.
This was really happening. He was giving her a choice of sorts. Him. Or them.
Her mind raced beneath his unflinching stare. She could suffer him or deal with an unruly gang of men. She scanned him and her stomach knotted at his immense size. He could break her. And then she thought of the rest of them—rough and foul, with eyes that lit up when they hurt her. Her cheek still throbbed where that one had slapped her.
Another raucous shout went up from outside the room followed by the sound of glass breaking. She flinched and darted another glance to the door.
“That’s right,” he confirmed, his deep voice steady and guttural. She felt it like a touch. “They’re not the most civilized boys. I had to tell them you’re mine just to keep them off you.”
Her gaze flew to his face. Lifting her chin, she hoped she looked a lot tougher than she felt. Inside she was shaking . . . screaming. “I’m not yours. I’m not property.”
He waved a hand around the room. “Here, that’s exactly what you are. This isn’t your world anymore, princess, and if you hope to survive, you need to play by my rules and do exactly what I say.”
She exhaled slowly, turning his words over in her head. He meant to . . . help her. Could he mean that? “And that involves me getting naked?”
He lifted one big shoulder in a shrug. “You can keep your underwear on. If they come in here, they won’t notice that under the covers.”
“How generous,” she muttered.
He looked at her blankly. “It is.”
Turning away, he tucked his knife back in the pocket of his jeans. She breathed a little easier with that out of sight. “So just to confirm, you don’t plan to . . . touch me?” She couldn’t bring herself to say rape. As though putting a name to it would make it a possibility.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that did nothing to soften his expression. If anything it made him look more sinister. “You’re not my type.”
“Rape isn’t about that.” This time she had no problem busting out with the word. She’d visited with women’s victims groups. She’d heard their stories. She could see their faces in her mind right now . . . their ravaged eyes.
He sobered again, staring at her as though seeing her for the first time . . . and seeing something else, too. Something distant, visible only to him. “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s not. I don’t get my rocks off breaking people weaker than I am. You’ll just have to trust me.”
Trust him? Was he kidding?
She stared at him. He looked back at her, his expression one of seeming patience.
She exhaled. “You just dabble in kidnapping, then?”
“I wasn’t in on this.”
“But your friends took me,” she shot back. “I’m here because of them. And you’re telling me to get naked. That kinda makes you complicit.”
He chuckled. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the back of his collar and pulled his shirt over his head in one smooth motion. “Complicit.” He shook his head. “College girls.”
She could hardly process his words because his chest was all she could see. Broad, tan, and muscled, with ink crawling over one shoulder and bicep. It was an athlete’s body. Or the kind of body you’d see in a Calvin Klein ad. She had never seen a man’s body like this up close and personal before.
His hands landed at the waistband of his jeans and her gaze flew away, determined not to watch. Heat crept up her neck to her face, burning he
r cheeks. She heard his jeans drop.
The bed dipped under his weight, and she sucked in a sharp breath and scrambled to the edge of the mattress, still refusing to look at the body radiating heat toward her. She felt like she was flying out of her skin.
“Easy there, princess. We just gotta make it look real.”
Her eyes widened. Make it look real? “Wh-What does that mean?”
“Get under the covers. I would suggest you scream to make it sound legit to the guys in the next room, except you’re so nervous I’m not counting on you being very convincing.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. She was freaked out enough that she could probably provide the soundtrack for a good old-fashioned slasher film.
He tugged at the comforter to get her to lift up. She readily obliged, hopping off the bed and backing away. His voice stopped her cold. “Nu-huh. Clothes off.”
She touched the front of her badly wrinkled silk blouse, hesitating. It had been six months since a man saw her naked. And that had been a quick breast exam followed by a perfunctory pelvic exam. It hardly counted.
Charles might be her boyfriend as far as the world knew, but they had never slept together. Of course they had kissed for the benefit of the cameras. Nothing her mother would deem vulgar. Only chaste pecks. In private, however, they’d experimented, willing to give it a go since her father was so determined for them to be a couple. For all they had tried, the spark wasn’t there. Making out with him was awkward. Two fourteen-year-olds fumbling together in a closet had more chemistry. Grace had put an end to it, sensing he would have gone all the way even as lackluster as they were together. And how humiliating was that? Charles would suffer sex with her.
No, Nathan from college had been the last real boyfriend to see her naked. They’d dated before her father took office. They broke up when he started grad school and she moved to DC at her parents’ behest. Three years since Nathan. Since sex. And that had only ever been in the dark of her dorm room. Whenever Nathan attempted to turn on the lights she’d flipped them back off, too self-conscious.
She toyed with a button on her blouse. Just pretend he’s old Dr. Mattheson, she told herself.
“C’mon.” He sounded impatient. “It’s the only way.”
She looked at him then. Yeah, he so wasn’t Dr. Mattheson. She carefully trained her gaze waist up. Not going to look down there. God, he might read that as interest. “You won’t hurt me.” Even though she phrased it as a statement, a question hung in her voice . . . a plea, and she hated that. Hated that begging for her safety was something necessary. How had this become her life? “What’s your name?” she asked, hoping to reach him, to connect in some way.
He held her gaze, a muscle feathering across his clenched jaw. She refused to break eye contact and look away this time. Grace waited for him to say it. Needed to hear him say it.
“Doesn’t matter.”
She wet her lips. “I’m Grace Reeves.”
A corner of his mouth kicked up as he slid between the covers. “Yeah. I know.” Thankfully, the covers were now draped over him from the waist down.
“Of course.” She shifted uneasily on her feet. The rough voices of the men carried from the other room. As he said, it was either trust him or put herself at their mercy. She felt her lip curl at that prospect. She already knew what they were like.
The naked man in the bed she had occupied only moments before nodded toward the door. “Why don’t you turn off the light and get into bed?” A question and not a question. A well-toned arm patted the space beside him like he wasn’t asking anything out of the ordinary. “It’s a big bed. We won’t even touch.”
She didn’t budge. She doubted a bolt of thunder at her feet could get her to move.
He sighed. “My name is Reid.”
It was something at least. A name. “Reid . . .” She said his name carefully, moistening her lips. “. . . promise me you won’t—”
“I’ll keep you safe, Grace Reeves.” The swiftly uttered words crossed the space between them and wrapped around her like a double-lined fleece blanket. The words did their part and provided solace, but it was also his eyes. Steady and true. The guy could be in politics. If he wasn’t a dangerous criminal. If he wasn’t built like an MMA fighter and sporting tattoos and scarred knuckles. He had that mesmerizing quality that compelled trust. And he was hot. Magic Mike hot.
She gave herself a quick mental kick. Exhaling, she told herself that had nothing to do with it. Nodding, she moved to flip off the light. In the dark, she undressed with shaking hands, leaving her underwear on. Her clothes dropped, whispery sounds in the dark. The chilly air rolled over her skin, leaving a wash of goose bumps in its wake.
She walked barefoot across the room, rubbing at her tender wrists. She sank down on the mattress beside him, wincing at the squeak of the springs—beside Reid—and pulled the cool sheet up to her chest, tucking the fabric under her arms. Scooting to the far edge of the bed, she hoped that she wasn’t wrong. She prayed he meant what he had said.
Five
It took all of five seconds to realize he might have been lying when he said she wasn’t his type. He had gone a long time without sex and right now female was pretty much his type. Young female, even better—or in this case, worse. A female that smelled soapy clean and faintly floral and he was screwed.
He kept to his side of the bed, rigid as a slat of board, inhaling deep even breaths as he battled for self-control. He’d mastered the art of self-control in prison . . . for keeping his composure when everyone else went bat-shit crazy around him. This shouldn’t be so hard. He shouldn’t be so hard.
He wouldn’t hurt her. He wasn’t that guy. He wouldn’t become that thing she was so afraid of. He wouldn’t become one of them outside this room. He’d spent years fighting to stay human inside a cage and wouldn’t turn into an animal now that he was on the outside. For however long he had until he was caught—and he fully expected that to happen eventually—he would cling to his code.
The smell of sizzling meat drifted to his nose, mingling with her floral scent. Apparently they were cooking. Just like it was an ordinary day with the president’s daughter captive in the next room. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, fixing on Grace’s features as she lay beside him.
He had to admit there was something about First Daughter Grace Reeves. Her big brown eyes appeared soft and intelligent. Even with fear lurking in the honeyed depths, those eyes were sharp, quick. Fear didn’t slow down the wheels turning in her head. She saw too much. She saw he was different from the rest of them. Granted, maybe he wanted her to see that. Maybe he needed her to. And not for her sake, but for his. He had to believe he was not like them. If prison hadn’t made him into one of them, it wouldn’t happen now. One female wasn’t going to snap his self-control and break loose a part of him that he had spent his whole life battling.
He wasn’t like his addict mother. He wasn’t like his deadbeat dad, who had floated in and out of his life, showing up to sleep with his mom, steal her drug money, and then take off again—only to repeat the cycle six months later. He wasn’t weak like Zane either.
Grace shifted. Her soft sigh filled up the small space between them.
Thankfully, it was dark. Thankfully, he hadn’t seen her naked. Not that it stopped him from imagining the small curvy body he had earlier assessed at a glance.
He jammed his eyes shut against the darkness as if that would rid of him of the thoughts. It was a struggle. She had a body that reminded him of a pinup girl from the forties. His grandfather had one of those vintage posters in his shed. Reid spent hours gazing at it as his grandfather worked on his old truck. His adolescent self had been mesmerized by the girl in the tiny sailor suit, her juicy, gartered thighs on display, all that creamy skin as tempting as a ripe peach in the summer, begging for the bite of his teeth. She shifted again, the mattress squeaking slightly. “You should try to sleep,” he said, his voice coming out much too thick.
“What’s goi
ng to happen to me?”
“I’ll try to get you out of this.”
“You said you would keep me safe,” she accused.
He sighed and dropped his arm over his forehead, cutting off his vision, reducing his world to darkness. Yeah, he’d made that promise. Stupid. It was a promise he had no right to make. Sullivan was behind this, and he knew firsthand the power that SOB wielded. Not to mention he wanted his pound of flesh and intended to take it out of Grace Reeves. Sullivan was a sociopath. He wouldn’t back down. “You’re in a fine mess here, Grace Reeves.”
“So you lied to me?” She scooted another half inch away, as if repelled by the possibility.
“I’ll do my best, but I don’t have any pull here. I’m not really one of them. Not anymore . . .”
“What does that even mean? You’re here with them.”
She would look at it that way. After all, the others had trusted him enough to let him “have” her. He’d told her that himself. Distrust crept back into the set of her shoulders. She thought he was lying. Or just blowing smoke. Either way, it was probably good for her overall chances of survival. As long as she was afraid of him, she wouldn’t drop her guard.
He lifted his arm from his forehead as she rolled onto her back and turned her face toward him. “Can you help me?” she asked, her voice stronger, imploring him. “Can you get me out of here? Maybe when they all fall asleep we can sneak out?”
Of course she would ask him that. She wasn’t stupid. He’d promised to keep her safe. But if he did that for her, his credibility would be shot to shit with these guys. He’d never get close enough to Sullivan then, and doing that—getting to the bastard, making him pay—was the only thing driving him. It was the only thing that mattered.
Her voice softened into something that reminded him of the whipped cream his grandmother used to dollop on top of pie. It was one of those rare sweet memories. “I . . . I can make it worth your while.”