Master (An Impossible Novel) (Impossible #6) (13 page)

Through the nausea that swirled within me, I registered that there was something wrong with his voice.  It was far too low and rough to be his natural speaking voice.  And he reeked of too much cologne.  The man was smart; he wasn’t giving me any clues to figure out his identity.  With my hands secured and my eyes blindfolded, I had no means of learning more about him through sight or touch.  If I ever made it out of this, I wouldn’t be able to ID him.

His nose skimmed along my jawline, as though he was sampling the smell of my fear.  He groaned out his pleasure, and something hard jerked against my hip.

His cock.

I gagged and tried to pull free of his hold, but my muscles barely twitched.  The edges of my mind were beginning to go hazy as the drug he had injected me with affected my thought processes.  Only adrenaline kept me conscious.

“This is how I’ll keep you,” his hand tightened around my limp wrists. 
“Restrained, blind.  You’ll look to me for everything; food, cleanliness, pleasure.  You’ll come to love me.”

“You’re insane,” I managed two slurred, terrified words.

His dark laugh oozed over me.  “Oh yes, pet.  I’m insane.  And you’re very brave.  That makes me… happy.”  He sighed the word, as though it both surprised and relieved him.

One hand skimmed down my side to find the hem of my shirt.  The leather of his gloves was cool and slick across my bare skin as his touch glided up my stomach, snaking beneath my bra to find my breast.  A small, unintelligible protest teased at the back of my throat.  Cognizant thought gave way to primal panic, but my body was incapable of fight or flight.

“You haven’t learned yet, but you belong to me.  You let him touch you.  You’ll be punished for that.”  His fingers closed around my nipple and twisted cruelly.  A sound of pure fear choked up from my chest, and he chuckled against my neck.  His cock jerked against my belly in lustful delight.

“But not yet,” he continued.  “You’re going to come to me.  I’ll even leave you a clue.”  He squeezed my breast.  “I could take you any time I wanted.  I could take you right now.  But that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?”

Something buzzed against my hip.  My confused mind couldn’t work out what was happening.  All I knew was terror and disgust and powerlessness.

“I have to go,” he told me regretfully.  “But I’ll see you soon.  Come and find me, my brave little pet.”

His heat dissipated, leaving me cold and immobilized and terrified.

Chapter 10

Get up!  Run! 
His heat had left me, but that didn’t mean he was gone.  Through the haze in my mind, I knew he was enjoying toying with me.  This could just be a cruel game, a trick to make me think the threat was truly over.  I had to get out of this room.  It was too private.  It could be hours before anyone found me.

Lethargy sapped my muscles, and although my arms twitched to push myself up, they remained uselessly stretched above my head.

“This is how I’ll keep you.  Restrained, blind.”

Panic continued to swirl through the drugs.  It was the only thing keeping me awake, but reality was becoming harder and harder to hold on to.  I couldn’t remember what was happening to me; I only knew I was afraid.

I can’t see.  I can’t see. 
It would be so much easier to just give in to that blackness and fall asleep.

“Katie!”  There was a pounding noise, and a small cry of fear escaped me.  “Katie!”

No! 
He hadn’t left.  He was still here, waiting to torment me, to touch me…  I gagged and managed to roll onto my side and push up on one elbow for leverage.  I had to get away.

There was a loud
bang,
accompanied by the sound of splintering wood.  Strong hands closed around my shoulders, and I went tumbling back down.  Terror suffused my addled mind, consuming all my senses.  Fear was the darkness before my eyes, the metallic taste at the back of my throat.

“Katie!”  The hands shook me.  Light seared my eyes when the cloth was lifted from them.  It hurt, and my lids were so heavy.  Temptation to fall into the waiting blackness almost overcame me.  Coherent thought was beyond my capability, but I knew I couldn’t let myself go.  I couldn’t make myself vulnerable to my attacker.

“Fuck!”  He was holding a syringe, studying it.  A strangled whine eased around my thick tongue.  I couldn’t let him give me more drugs.  But my muscles didn’t so much as ripple with my need to escape.

He tucked the syringe in his pocket, and his arms closed around me, lifting me up.

“I could take you any time I wanted.  I could take you right now.”

“
It’s okay, Katie.  You’re going to be okay.  I’m getting you to the hospital.  Just stay awake for me.”

I blinked, forced my eyes to focus.

Reed. 
Reed was carrying me.

My eyes closed without a thought, and I gave myself over to him.  Instinct told me Reed meant safety.
I didn’t have to fight anymore.

His arms tightened around me.  “Damn it, Katie,” he almost growled.  “Open your eyes.”

I couldn’t obey.  With the threat gone, the adrenaline in my system had run its course.  I would have been weakened and exhausted under normal circumstances.  But with the drugs in my system, I was unable to resist the beguiling peace they offered.  I was dimly aware of Reed’s curses as I gave in to the silent darkness.

  I didn’t drink often, but I must have really gone for it the night before, because I had a wicked hangover.  My head pounded, and my mouth was cotton-dry.  My soft pillow felt like a stone against my tender skull.  I let out a soft groan and struggled to recall what the hell I had done to myself.

“Katie,” my name was a hoarse utterance.  He cleared his throat.  “Here.  Drink some water.”

A straw slipped between my chapped lips, and I greedily sucked in the blessedly cool liquid.  After three long pulls, a wave of nausea rolled over me, and I turned my head away.

“You’ll be okay.  The doctor said the discomfort will go away in a few hours.  You just have to get hydrated.”

The doctor?
 
The straw was back at my lips, but I opened my eyes rather than my mouth.  I blinked against the pain of harsh, sterile light.  Reed was hovering over me, his handsome features taut with concern.

“Drink,” he insisted in that dark voice of his.  My lips parted, and I forced down more water.  It made my stomach turn, but it was a relief to my parched tongue.

I looked past Reed and was shocked to find that I was lying in a hospital bed, with an IV stuck in my arm.

“What happened?”  I croaked.  I didn’t remember getting injured…

“You haven’t learned yet, but you belong to me.”

I retched and only barely managed to keep down the water I had just drunk as pieces of horrific memories coalesced in my mind.  My stalker had found me.  I had put myself in a vulnerable position for less than a minute, and he had been ready to act.  It was stupid of me to stay out alone.

Blindfolded, held down.  The sickly sweet smell of him, the gravelly voice that uttered such sickening words…

My skin crawled where he had touched me.  I shuddered and hugged my arms across my chest, covering my breasts as though I could protect my more vulnerable areas from the memory of him.

“Hey,” Reed’s voice was gentle, but it held the barest edge of anger.  “You’re all right.  It’s over.”  His arms closed around me, and I buried my face in his chest.  I breathed him in, washing away the stench of too much cologne with his rich, salty scent.  My exhale left me on a soft sob.  He let me cry against him.  His strength was a bulwark against the disgusting memories, but the quiet rage I detected in the tightness of his muscles was a subtle reminder that I had been violated.

“I need you to tell me what happened,” he said softly when my cries had quieted.  I tensed in his arms, but he gave me a reassuring squeeze before he pulled back slightly.  His hands remained around my shoulders, tethering me to him, and he fixed me in his earnest black stare.  “I know it’s difficult to face, but it’ll be easier if you get it out now.  I need to know so I can catch this fucker, but you need to tell me so that it won’t haunt you.  Let me help you.  Trust me.”  His lips softened with something akin to yearning at the last.

“I do trust you, Reed.  But I don’t know if I…”  I swallowed hard.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

His expression turned stern.  “Don’t bury this, Katie.  You know that won’t solve anything.  It won’t help you deal with it, and it won’t help us catch Parnell.”

Parnell. 
Reed said the sadistic bastard’s name as though he was certain of my stalker’s identity.  I wasn’t so sure.  I wasn’t sure of anything.  And that was exactly how my attacker had intended it.

“I don’t know, Reed.  There’s nothing to tell.  He caught me off guard and hit me with the drugs, then blindfolded me.  I couldn’t see him or touch him.  He disguised his voice, and he was wearing a ton of cologne to mask his scent.  He wore gloves.  I can’t give you anything that would help you ID him.”

“That’s helpful, Katie,” Reed encouraged me.  I gave him a dubious look.  “That tells me he’s intelligent, and he knows how to counter your training.  He’s familiar with investigative techniques.  He’s probably a repeat offender, which further points us toward Parnell.  We’ll track him down, Katie.”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  It didn’t seem like Parnell.  He hates me.  The man who attacked me seems to…”  I struggled to find the right words.  “He doesn’t just want to hurt me.  He wants to
keep
me.  He said…  He said he would make me love him.”

Reed didn’t seem to realize that his fingers were digging into my flesh.  I welcomed the little bite of pain.  It kept me grounded in the present.

“I swear I’m going to find him, Katie.”  A fervent light gleamed across his dark eyes.

I shook my head.  “He wants
me
to find him.  I don’t know what to do, Reed.  He said he could take me at any time.  And obviously, that’s true.”  I shivered at the knowledge of how easily he could have abducted me.  I forced my mind to go into work mode, to analyze my attacker as though he was an ordinary suspect.  “He’s arrogant.  He gets off on seeing what he can get away with.  If I don’t find him, he’ll just keep coming for me.  But if I go after him, I’m giving him what he wants.”  Something occurred to me.  “I think he knew you were coming.  He left right before you arrived.  How would he know that?”

“I don’t know, Katie, but we’ll look into it.  The first thing we have to do is find Parnell.  If it’s not him, at least we can rule him out once we question him.  He might just be saying he wants to keep you in order to scare you.  If he does hate you, that would make sense.  Especially if he’s smart enough to throw you off from
IDing him.  He could be misrepresenting his intentions as well.”

I knew deep in my bones that Reed was wrong.  “No,” I said quietly.  “My attacker wasn’t lying.  He says I
belong
to him.  He keeps calling me his pet.”

“Did he touch you?”  The barely contained rage in Reed’s voice let me know he was asking about more than just my stalker’s hands around my wrists.

I looked away, unable to meet his eyes.  “Not really.”

He cupped my cheek in his hand and firmly turned my face back to his so that his eyes could burn into mine.  “Did he touch you?”  He wasn’t going to tolerate my evasiveness.

“He reached under my shirt,” I heard myself whisper.  “But he was wearing gloves.  He didn’t really…”  I trailed off.  The denial sounded desperate in my own ears.

“You let him touch you.  You’ll be punished for that.  But not yet,”
he had said.  He had twisted my nipple, but that wasn’t my punishment.  The way his cock had jerked against me let me know he had so much more planned for me.

“Yes,” I admitted.  “He touched me.”

Saying it aloud made it so much more real.  It made it so much worse.  I tore my eyes from Reed’s and gasped in a breath, pushing the horror away.  “He said he would leave me a clue,” my mind searched for something else to focus on.  “Did you find anything?”

Reed’s lips thinned, but he allowed the subject change.  The harsh grip of his fingers on my arms let me know that he didn’t want to think about it, either.

“The syringe.  I sent it to forensics for immediate processing.  They should be able to let us know what drugs he gave you.  I also turned in the blindfold.  There might be trace DNA in the fabric; skin cells, hair.  If not, they can analyze the fibers for the source of the cloth.  Anything they find will help.”

“Good,” it took all my determination to sound like a detached professional.  “That’s good.”  Even though I had only been awake for a few minutes, exhaustion sank into my bones.  “I want to go home,” I said, my voice small.

Reed’s fingers stroked through my hair.  “I’m sorry, Katie, but you can’t go home.  I swept it for bugs today.  He’s been watching you at your apartment.  He knows where you live and how to get in.  You’re going to stay at my hotel.  I’m not letting you out of my sight until we bring this guy down.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised that he had a plan in place, and that it involved keeping me close.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.  Not after the fresh reminders that pain with sex was sick and wrong.  Not after Dex had told me he loved me and the implications that he wanted to be my Dom.