Yield (35 page)

Did he know what he was doing? Would the hooks tear out? I might fall...

I shut my eyes, unwilling to look at what seemed miles below when I had no way of saving myself if I fell.

Nothing happened, except the pull translated into a stretching in my shoulder blades that changed as the seconds passed and pumped me full of a soft, buzzing energy.

Safe, for now, I was safe. Then he swung me over, so that I was just able to see into the pit. Yes, there was water up to a few feet from the top. A full story deep.

Why?
What macabre deviousness came next? I hoped he didn’t have a thing for drowning and breath play.

My hands were still tied and he’d said he’d free them.

Pain? There was none. I was floating. Surfing on air. Happy. My dark thoughts had been banished, but they waited, circling at the back of my mind.

“My hands?” I croaked, tugging at where they were held by the leather.

I swung slightly, focusing on that feeling of being fastened to something and pulled upward, while the rest of me was elsewhere, scattered beyond where my body ended.

He showed me a big, shiny knife with a blade that curved forever.

The cuffs had a metal link he couldn’t cut.

He placed the knife at my neck, near where I’d sliced him. “Look at me.”

What was this?

I looked, fearful, my bottom lip in my teeth and my neck curved away from that sharpness, though my muscles there were weakening. I couldn’t hold my head up forever.

“I won’t cut you, unless you move. Don’t fucking move.”

He trailed the knife about my neck, before he drew it lower and made sinuous sweeps. I felt the blade encircle my nipples then he ducked under me and sucked on each, one nipple then the other, while the knife wandered elsewhere. I wondered how he knew how hard it pressed and when to stop so it didn’t cut.

With him licking at me, and mouthing me, holding my nipple in his teeth, my arousal climbed.

I whimpered as the tip of the knife tapped my clit and pricked me. When I squirmed, he tsked.

“Be still or I’ll slice you, make you bleed.”

But he’d already sunk his metal claws into me.

I guess I thought I could hold back, and keep part of myself contemptuous, even if he manipulated my body, but I failed. I drowned in his dominance as he teased me and threatened in his softest, most wicked voice. He fucked me with the knife hilt and made me squeal. I caught myself, eyes shut, grunting while he used that knife hilt inside me, as well as his mouth, teeth, and tongue on my flesh.

By the end, I was a limp, quivering mess of a woman, swinging at the end of his hooks and ropes.

Sweat ran down to the tip of my nose and dripped into the water along with a little blood.

He stood beside me, looking down at the water, with his hand resting on my back. “Blood dripping in water makes me think of seeds of pain.”

His words fluttered past and died.

A poet. A vile poet.

I had nothing left to give and simply rocked there, head down, recovering.

When he released my wrists, I did nothing more than lick my lips and twine my fingers together. He swung me out, further over the water.

Below was coolness. My parched throat could taste it from here.

The knife spun past, beneath my gaze, to plop into the water and spiral down into the pool, finally coming to rest at the very bottom. Lying there, smiling at me in its silvery dominance.

“Fetch it if you want to. The ropes will come loose if you pull the dangling strand. The hooks will hold you until I return. You won’t bleed, much, if at all. Hooks, if they tear out, do little permanent damage. A scar or two, at most. The skin heals. It happens sometimes. Four will hold your weight. One will not.

“You decide. Stay here, and I’ll claim you in an hour. I’ll be outside, at the pool.”

He was leaving?

Then he came into view, crouching to look me in the eye. “Let’s see how much of a rebel you have in you now.”

Was this a challenge? I heard his words but had trouble deciphering them. The orgasm had addled my already fried brain. I licked my lips again, thirsty.

What did he mean? That I could get loose?

The knife, down there, beckoned me, like a demon with promises of Hell.

If I had it in my hand...

Wren

How long did I hang there? I wasn’t sure. The effortless existence had consumed me.

The knife waited for me.

My arms hung down before me. I’d grown tired of clasping my hands together. The knife lay at the bottom of fathoms of water. Could I swim that far?

Why had he left it?

I could use it to escape, of course, if I made a superhuman effort but I was so tired. Even here, I could shut my eyes and sleep, cradled by ropes and hooks.

Knowing how he thought, he expected me to fail, and that somehow to him that would mean he was right.

Why now?

He was desperate...yes. The baby must have made him rethink his approach.

If I could get loose, why not just walk out of this house?

Because I’d still have him to contend with. He’d catch me again and haul me back. He might not think I could do this, but I could, even though the thought of killing him came with a whole other burden of guilt.

He was between me and Glass. Me and my life. My
child’s
life.

Perhaps this was more of a trap? His punishment, if I tried, might be extreme. What did it matter? It had always been this; I could see that now. Me or him. He was too obsessed to ever give me up.

What did it matter when I was yards above, spun out and tired, with hooks in my back?

All this was pointless...

I was never one for giving up.

When I pulled on the dangling rope end, the ropes fell away, leaving the indentations from the coils on my skin. As my weight fell only on the hooks, I jerked to a stop, and screamed.

Fuuuck.
Lightheaded, I waited for the pain to settle.

Blood dripped into the water; warmth running on my skin.

I should’ve let myself down gently. My legs seemed filled with cement.

How could I remove the hooks? Though I could contort my body and touch them, the weight pulling on them made removing them impossible. Unless...

I was hanging lower than the railings surrounding the pit and there was a ladder at the side, going down into the water. I’d need that, if I fell in. After five or ten attempts, I managed to swing far enough to hook my legs over the railing and sit there. For ages, I waited, breathing through the reawakened burn from the hooks. My legs shook. I was fairly sure I’d torn my skin more.

The baby. If I harmed it.
Mouth downturned,
I cupped my stomach. Was this right?

Yes, it was. The alternative was staying with him forever, as his slave. My child needed a proper father.

I looked past my shoulder at the water. How long could I hold my breath? I was tired, possibly losing blood, my limbs shaking. Who knew?

By extreme twisting, by gritting my teeth and whining and trying over and over, I extracted the hooks. The slippery thickness in my fingers combined with the slide of the metal as I pulled, almost had me fainting. Odd, really, after all he’d done. Three of them were out and I stopped to catch my breath.

At the final hook, blackness closed in from the edges of my vision, and I felt myself fall.

I woke, swinging backward, headfirst. The hook must have ripped out, because the rope was above me, dangling. My legs slid from where they curled over the rail and I plunged into the water, upside down, my arm knocking against the side of the pit.

Coolness. Confusion. Bubbles and blood drifted away.

Flailing, I found the surface, righted myself, and sucked in a lungful of air. When I next had a thought, my fists were wrapped around the ladder.

I looked down, careful not to slip my feet off the rung. My legs were blurry, a yard deep in the water. Far below lay the knife
.
Blood spread around me in a pale pink tide. I’d blacked out. Swimming down was stupid.

Stupid or brave or reckless. Pick one.

Brave, I liked brave. Moghul wasn’t winning.

I dived and arrowed down through the water. My eyes on the knife, I zeroed in on that dark thing wavering at the bottom of yards of water. Fainting was
not
happening. My fingers closed on it and I swooped into a turn, pushing off from the bottom and kicking.

The trail back up was marked with swirls and spots of red.

Chris

I took a moment to rid my mind of worry before I knocked. Behind this door was Glass, Wren Gavoche’s lover, a man on a mission to rescue her from Moghul. From what Moghul had said, Glass was prepared to call down the Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen if he thought it would help. I understood that need to protect someone you loved. It was why I was teetering. Help Moghul get rid of this man, or turn the tables?

Yeah, I could read between the lines. Just because he hadn’t suggested I murder Glass, didn’t mean that wasn’t what Moghul wanted done. Clean hands? I called bullshit.

I was about to be Moghul’s little yes man, his dirty right hand ass-wiping man, in exchange for a crap load of money. Millions and millions of money.

Was I even capable of thinking of running a sex trade business? Most of his illegitimate ones were based on that. It was depraved, a whole level of nastiness past what I’d done with Kat and Zoe.

There would be no going back, past a certain point. This man was likely to take my head off, if I set a foot wrong. Which was why I’d deployed men in the apartments to either side, ready to blast their way in via explosives planted on the walls. It was amazing what money, big money, could accomplish, once someone gave you the right contacts. My own little instant mercenary army – five men who knew how to kill people, dispose of them, and clean up afterward. Like caterers with benefits.

I could kick a man’s balls up through his teeth but compared to them I was a fluffy teddy bear. I wondered if Glass knew Wren had given me a blowjob. He must.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Let’s do this.”

I knocked.

Glass answered. The man from the surveillance videos, though he’d dyed his hair again to get into Australia. A macho guy with tattoos and a plain no-nonsense attitude. Straight as a stick of bloody explosives, I’d bet. Sandhurst qualified and SAS special forces. I hesitated. The button in my pocket would signal to my men.

Did I really want to go this route? Murder, to protect my ass, protect the business Moghul had given me...and Moghul’s ass too. All because this man was fucking heroic enough to want to get his woman back from her kidnapper?

I let my hand relax at my side.

“Yeah?”

“Hi, I’m Chris Garrick. Can I come in? I’ve got things to discuss with you.”

“Things?” His eyebrows rose.

“You know who I am. I know you. I can give you Moghul’s aka Vetrov’s address.”

At that, his eyes widened, then he looked suspicious as hell, and he drew a pistol from behind his back and trained it on me. “You turn around and step in here backward. Raise your hands. Sam will pat you down.”

I glimpsed the one man who’d come down with him rising from the sofa. On the coffee table in front of him were a couple of unwrapped sandwiches. The rest of Glass’s men would arrive in a few hours.

“Sure.” I turned and did as he asked, raising my hands and praying I wasn’t about to get a knife or a bullet in my back.

I hated the decision I’d been forced to make. Be a murderer or be a traitor. Then I thought again. These guys weren’t likely to leave Moghul alive. Unless he employed his own army, he was duck food. Guess I was both, either way – a murderer and a traitor. Only for some reason, this way seemed a smidgeon nicer. This way Wren would end up free.

I stepped backward through the door and waited while Sam patted me down. He found the signaler, my phone, my gun.

“What’s this?” Glass held up my signaler while still covering me with the pistol.

I considered my answer.

“Be careful with that. That was my second choice. Press it and five men blow their way in here and shoot you dead. I went with the better choice.” My mouth twisted. “I like a man with morals who knows how to love.”