Anything for Him: Dominated (#1) (8 page)

BOOK: Anything for Him: Dominated (#1)
2.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“What…” was all Gloria managed to get out
before Gerry fired.

Shock was upstaged by terror. Meghan did
not wait to see what would happen next, she reached out one shaking hand and
shut the door, praying he had not noticed it being open. Instantly she was
thrown into blackness so deep her senses were rendered momentarily useless. Her
fingers fumbled at the knob, the click that was the lock sliding home made her
sag in relief but that was shattered when a hard kick made the door rattle in
its frame.

She reached out blindly, scraping her
nails across the rough walls until she found the banister. Her feet shuffled as
she tried desperately not to lose her balance, the fall alone could kill her
and she knew it. The stairs were pitched at a nearly direct angle but worse,
the floors were cold and uncovered concrete.

A second kick made her whimper in fear
and she felt her knees start to shake. A thin high pitched whine followed by a
loud noise that sounded like a hollow thud coupled with light pouring through a
hole that had appeared in the door told her Gerry was shooting his way in.

She ran, her feet slipping and her heart
racing. She cleared the last stair just as the door caved in under the
brutality and allowed him entry.

“I know it’s you!” Gerry yelled. “Come on
up here and I won’t have to do anything to you.”

“You killed my mother!” Meghan screamed
before she could help herself.

“No, Meghan…” His words dripped with
annoyance. 

“I saw you!”

“She wasn’t your mother,” there was a
slow chuckle from above her and Meghan ducked into the shelter of a small
overhang that had been used to store small bags of fertilizer at one
time.  There was another whine and small chips of the plaster and brick
from the wall splintered and flew. “Hell, you little bitch.  You’re all
grown up now; it’s time you knew. She wasn’t your mother and Tom…well, he isn’t
your father.”

Meghan saw Danny just then; he was seated
in an old kitchen chair that had been placed in the center of the large central
room. His head was hanging and his arms and legs were bound to the chair with
thick lengths of hemp rope.  He raised his head and, carefully - steadily,
he tipped his head her way, in a quiet attempt to let her know that he was okay.

Another bullet whined off of the cold
floor and she saw that if she didn’t get Danny out of harm’s way he would be
killed. She smiled at him and his face went stern. “No,” she heard him say and
then she was moving across the floor.

Bullets chunked and thudded. She grabbed
the chair, with him in it, and half-dragged, half- threw it across the room.
They hit the far wall with a solid thunk and Danny wheezed out an injured
breath. More bullets shattered the shelves in front of them.

Danny stared up at Meghan. His thoughts
were in total disarray and he knew he needed to think but he was completely at
a loss at her courage, at her willingness to die for him.

The ropes came undone and Danny staggered
to his feet. The blood returned to his limbs in a painful rush and he found
himself unable to walk unaided. He had to lean on Meghan’s slight form and they
made it into the second part of the cellar just as Gerry tired of trying to
kill from the staircase and rushed into the main room.

Meghan slammed the thick wooden door
shut, bullets chunked into it and she automatically ducked.

“How many bullets does that bastard
have?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know. He shot my mother.” Tears
swelled up in her eyes and she leaned her head against his chest, relishing the
feel of his solidity and warmth. “He said she wasn’t my mom.”

“I heard him.”

Things were starting to make sense to
Danny but he could tell they had yet to click in Meghan’s head. He wrapped his
arms around her and held her close as more bullets tore into the door.

Meghan stared at the shelves. The dusty
bottles of wine sat in their dusty rows, cradled securely in their little nooks
and the floor radiated a chill below her feet. She could not believe Gloria was
dead; she did not want to imagine that she was. Her mother had never been
especially warm or even kind but she had still been her mother. Or had she
been?

The sound of a second set of footsteps
put an end to her thoughts. “Dammit Gerry, what the fuck is going on here?” The
words were muffled but they could hear them thanks to the holes in the door.

“Your wife was going to tell the cops
what we were doing if we didn’t give her a bigger chunk of the payoff,” Gerry replied.
“I don’t know about you but I am not willing to share.”

“I guess that doesn’t fucking matter much
now, does it? She’s dead! Where the hell is Sullivan?”

“Hiding out in there with your beloved
daughter.”

The sarcasm in Gerry’s voice made Meghan
flinch. Danny shook his head at her and pulled her toward the small room where
her grandmother had stored the food she canned. “Windows,” he said, pointing to
a dirty pane that was barely visible on the far wall.

Meghan followed him into the chamber and
fear rapidly set in. She felt like a child again, one who had been locked into
a small space and left behind. Her heartbeat accelerated and her breath grew
quicker. Danny noted her distress and wondered at the cause but his highest
priority was getting her out of there and to safety. The fact that she had had
to come to his rescue was not lost on him and once more he was astounded by her
obvious love for him. And he was grateful for it as well.

The door shuddered open and the two men
came in. Gerry headed right; Tom came at them from the left. They rushed
through the room, past the jars filled with the cloudy liquid that surrounded
apricots, grape jam, pickled watermelon rinds and spiced pears. Tom spotted
them heading for the windows and he rushed Danny.

Danny had already turned around. It took
him only a second to size up the situation. Tom was unarmed, Gerry still held
the gun but the angle he held it at told a story Gerry was unaware of. He was
letting it dangle limply and Danny knew he had used all of his bullets. He
might use the gun as a bluff but it would be a useless one.

Tom was a scant few inches from Meghan
and Danny reacted. He clasped his hands together, pivoting on the balls of his
feet in order to use his entire upper body strength to hit the other man. When
his hands met Tom’s solar plexus a satisfying whoosh of air ensued and Tom bent
double, his face red and his mouth open in a gape of pain and fear.

Gerry raised the gun and Meghan grabbed a
jar of pickles from a shelf. Her arm flexed and the jar sailed across the room.
It turned end over end and then it hit Gerry with a solid and far from hollow
boom in the area right above the spot where his eyebrows met. His eyes rolled
upwards and a look of almost comical surprise crossed his face before he crumpled
to the ground.

Danny, his hands up in preparation for
another shot at Tom saw Gerry go down. He heard the crash of the jar as it hit
the hard floor. The vinegary reek of the pickles filled the room and Meghan
sneezed before slumping to the floor, the long delayed reaction to the whole
surreal situation finally settling in. Tremors wracked her body and tears flew
down her ashen cheeks. Danny punched Tom again, savagely, knocking him to the
ground where he curled up in a fetal position.

Meghan fought his hands when he tried to
comfort her but he persisted, wrapping around her and stroking her hair.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, “we are getting
out of here and you never have to come back ever again. These people are not
your family, I am. We can start all over.”

“She was never my family,” Tom wheezed
and Danny saw the baleful look in the older man’s eyes. “That damn brother of
mine got some whore pregnant and if he had lived she,” he nodded at Meghan,”
would never have even been thought about. Someone would have paid her mother
off and she would have fucking vanished and the inheritance would never have
gone to her. But he died and my mother turned him into a fucking saint. We had
no choice but to take that little bastard in and raise her, if we didn’t she
would have cut me off totally.”

It all clicked together. Meghan
remembered her grandmother’s stories of her uncle, the way she would hold her
on her lap and tell her of the man who had been so wonderful. She thought of
Danny saying he had met her uncle and that he had been a decent guy.

Sirens wailed from the distance and
running feet hit the stairs. Gregory appeared in the doorway, still wearing the
dark clothes he had worn when he had helped his father and Gerry kidnap Danny.

“The cops!” Gregory yelled before his
brain had time to process the entire scene. “Dad? What is going on here?”

The steel cuff on Meghan’s wrist felt as
heavy as her heart but she knew, without a doubt, that it was time to pick a
side. “You are all going to jail.”

Gregory stared at her and then his face
crumpled. Never, in his entire privileged life, had he ever been beaten at
anything. He had believed that if they grabbed Sullivan they could make him
tell them where he had the information on them that could ruin them. It had
never occurred to him that they were committing a crime.

He had come into the kitchen to find his
mother bloodied and moaning feebly as she tried to crawl across the floor. His
first thought had been that Sullivan had gotten free and shot her but she had
told him Gerry had shot her. Everything crashed in and he put his head down and
began to weep.

“You fucking little coward!” Tom sneered
as he got to his feet, keeping one eye on Danny.

“You’re the one down here on the floor!”
Gregory yelled back.

When the cops came into the cellar the
scene they happened on was one that they would discuss for a long time. Gerry,
who had a goose egg the size of a fist on his forehead, had woken up and was
muttering incoherently, Gregory and Tom were arguing heatedly and Danny and
Meghan were holding each other tightly, as if they would never let go.

 

~ * ~ * ~

 

The bedroom was filled with the smell of
lilacs and jasmine. Meghan, fresh from a long soak in the tub, stood against
one wall as she had been instructed, her naked body gleaming in the moonlight
filtering through the drapes. Her eyes were heavy with desire as she watched
Danny finish his preparations. Her skin tingled and her pussy gave a moist
throb as he turned to her and beckoned.

“Kneel,” he said as she moved to the spot
he had pointed at.

She did, her knees sinking into the
luxurious carpeting. The sound of her heartbeat seemed abnormally loud and her
mouth felt dry, she licked her lips to compensate.

“This means you are mine. This is more
important than a wedding ring, although I may choose to give you that one day
as well. A collar shows that you are owned, and that you are loved and wanted.
The cuffs are a smaller piece of what the collar represents. This collar, if
you accept it, means that we are bound together in ways that go beyond mere
love, beyond just being together.”

Meghan watched as he took a small key
from his pocket. His face was solemn as he spoke again. “This unlocks the
collar I want to give to you. If you choose to keep this key, and you can, it
is your choice; you can still wear your cuffs. Your cuffs show you serve me,
and you can do that without choosing to acknowledge yourself as a submissive,
as someone who wants and needs to belong to someone who will always earn the
right to be the dominant person in this relationship.

“However, if you choose to allow me to
keep the key, then I will place my collar around your neck. It is all up to
you.”

He proffered the key. Meghan watched it
draw closer to her face; her eyes traced its every inch from the barrel to the
head, noting its shape, its solid form. He took her hand and pressed the key
into her palm. “Choose,” he said.

Meghan felt dizzy and butterflies
exploded in her stomach. Everything narrowed down to just the two of them and
the tiny key that was resting in her hand. She looked up at his face, surveying
its planes and angles, imprinting it on her mind.

She could hear the beating of her heart
under her ribs; smell the lingering scents of her bath oils. His eyes were
fastened on hers, compelling her to choose. He stood there, tall and strong in
his black silk shirt and slacks, his shoes gleaming with polish and his ebony
hair stuck through with blue highlights, and she knew he was the most
incredibly gorgeous man that she had ever seen.

But it was more than that. He was loyal
and he protected what was his. He had forced her to a decision and truth about
her family and in the weeks following the incident he had stood beside her as
the inevitable scandal had erupted. Her parents had kept her crime spree
conviction as under wraps as possible to save themselves from public shame but
once that news reporters got wind of all that had transpired and that the
entire Lowry clan, with the exception of Meghan, were in jail on various
charges, there had been no place to hide.

And he had not allowed her to. He had
stood right beside her and spoke to the press for her. He had issued what had
come down to a challenge to overly eager reporters and they had backed off
after that. Her family life was still being talked about in the gossip rags and
would for a long time to come as the empire that they had nearly ruined
finished the slow topple it had begun and was then set back to rights.

BOOK: Anything for Him: Dominated (#1)
2.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Far In The Wilds by Raybourn, Deanna
The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown
Run Baby Run by Michael Allen Zell
Rich Girl Problems by Tu-Shonda L. Whitaker
Sexy Book of Sexy Sex by Kristen Schaal
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu