Savages Recruit (24 page)

His nod was curt. “My room it is. But one more word out of you, one more bit of attitude, and you're going into a cell, young lady.”

To Zora's embarrassment and frustration her sense of self possession deserted her entirely and she was sniffling with self pity by the time Savage deposited her in what he said was his bedroom. The big man's snapping was harder to take than his slapping, that was for sure.

“Have a shower and get some rest. I will see you in a bit. Remember, no trouble,” he said sternly as he ushered her into the room, which was not anywhere near as large or nice as she had thought it would be. It was about three times the size of a cell though and a bit of poking around after he locked her in and left her to her own devices revealed a well appointed en suite.

There wasn't much furniture to speak of, just a built in wardrobe, a wall mounted television and a double bed in one corner of the bed on a stark iron frame. When she sat on it gingerly, she was pleased to find it soft enough. It was nice of him to let her sleep there, she thought, resting her head on a pillow that smelled ever so faintly of his cologne.

It wasn't until she got into the shower and the hot water was beating down on her head and shoulders that she realized the mind game Savage had managed to play on her. She'd been flipping out about being brought back to the compound and he'd somehow made her feel grateful to be locked up in his bedroom.

“He is a dangerous brain ninja,” she observed out loud to herself, wondering how he'd managed  to manipulate her so neatly. The line of thought turned out to be like picking a loose thread on a sweater. The more she thought about things, the more things began to unravel. Who was Savage really anyway? He was some kind of special ops soldier, that was all she really knew about him. She'd assumed that he was of the bulk and muscle variety, but he'd done no real muscling at all that she'd seen, unless you counted spanking and that didn't count at all.

Maybe Savage's strength didn't lie in his physical being, maybe it was all in his mind. As she soaped herself, she recounted the events of the previous weeks. He'd managed to snatch her out of her life, then convince her to risk what was left of it in Bulgaria, all the while getting himself laid. Sure, she'd resisted and been a brat, but in the end she'd dutifully done what he wanted – and  after everything she'd done, she was back in lockup, being made to feel grateful for being able to sleep in his bed. What a mind fuck.

What if he didn't really like her at all? What if everything she'd ever experienced with him was just a big ploy designed to manipulate her? What if the spankings weren't even meant to be disciplinary? What if they were just a way to distract her from what was really going on? A way to make her feel naughty and bad for being a totally rational person?

The thoughts came thick and fast and unsettling. For the past few weeks she had been practically drunk on Savage. He had been there day and night. She'd barely had a thought that did not involve him. He'd captured her mind like a parasitic worm, taking over her free will and twisting it to his own ends.

She climbed out of the shower, toweled herself dry and put on the only clothing in the room that was even a little bit appropriate, one of Savage's t-shirts. It came halfway down her thighs and, like the pillow, it smelled faintly of him. But she wasn't buying it. With a suspicious eye, she looked around the room, looking for evidence that it really was his room and not some set up he'd planned in advance to keep her quiet and docile whilst he decided what to use her for next.

Maybe he wasn't even debriefing, maybe he was in his actual room. Maybe he was going to his actual house, maybe he was with someone else. The maddening thought struck home and once in her brain, refused to be dislodged.  As quickly as she'd been made to be docile and accepting of her imprisonment, Zora turned herself into a seething ball of anger.

“Fuck this!” She screamed at nobody and everybody. Odds were that there was a camera in the room. Why wouldn't there be? There was probably one in the bathroom for that matter. The perverts that monitored the place probably got their jollies watching her shower. “Fuck everything about this!”

She started charging about the room, looking for something to vent her frustration on. All she found were a couple of pairs of very shiny leather boots in the closet. She took them and began hurling footwear around the room, at the door, at the walls, at any surface that could be hit with a boot. When she'd thrown all four boots, she picked them up and started throwing them again, dodging them as they rebounded off the cream walls, leaving black smudged marks where they slammed into the paint. She was so caught up in the manifestation of the tantrum that had been brewing across continents that she didn't notice the door had opened until she threw a boot at it and it didn't make a pleasing 'thunk' against the wood but rather sailed merrily out into the hallway.

“ENOUGH, GIRL!” Savage boomed loudly from the cover of the corridor. The shock of his voice so sudden and loud made her jump and shriek in surprise. She went spinning around with a boot still clutched in her hand as Savage peered around the door frame in an attempt to avoid further footwear missiles.

“Get back!” She wielded the boot menacingly even as the large man filled the doorway and came towards her with a very dangerous expression indeed on his handsome features. “I said get back!”

He did not get back. He came on steadily, his eyes locked on her with a predatory gaze that kicked her fight or flight response into high gear. With a blood curdling shriek she hurled the boot at him as hard as she could.

Chapter Sixteen

The boot hurtled through the air, cartwheeling as it sped along its trajectory right at Savage's nose. A lesser man might have been hit by the missile but the earlier boots had prepared him and he sidestepped the flung footwear with ease as he made his way towards Zora who was already casting about for something else to throw.

He reached for her and she cowered momentarily, expecting a slap or worse, but he did not hit her. He drew her into a bear hug and kept a tight hold of her wriggling body as she fought him, her heels and elbows and fists drumming against his body. Try as she might, she couldn't free herself. Savage said nothing as she flailed about, he just held on tightly, preventing her from doing much damage to him or anything else in the room.

Unable to move, she finally resorted to a barrage of cursing that incorporated entirely new words concocted in her rage addled brain. That approach ultimately failed to have an effect either and she became hoarse from the shouting long before he showed any signs of giving in. Realizing she was hurting herself far more than him she hung in his grasp panting heavily, almost entirely out of breath and energy. That was when Savage finally spoke. “What's gotten into you, girl?” He transferred his grip to her wrists and turned her to face him. “You were fine fifteen minutes ago. Now you're acting like a three year old.”

“Fuck you!” Zora sobbed, trying to pry his hands off her. “You're a liar!” She might as well have been trying to shed iron manacles for all the good her attempts to move his solid fingers with her smaller digits did. He held on tight, refusing to let her go.

“I have not lied to you,” he replied, his voice low and gruff, but not angry.

“Yes you have!” She said breathlessly, panting from her exertions. “You say whatever you need to say to get me where you want me to be. That's lying. This isn't even your room, is it?”

“It's a room I sleep in sometimes,” he said, almost avoiding the question.

“But it's not your room.”

“It's better than a cell, isn't it?”

“That's not the point!” Her voice rose to a near hysterical shriek as she started fighting again. She took a big sweeping kick at his privates, an overly vicious move that set her off balance and made it easy for him to sweep her back and onto the ground.

“Enough, Zora. You're going to hurt yourself,” he warned, pinning her down on her back, his large hands on her wrists, the bulk of his body over her waist preventing most of her movement. “Now listen to me. You're tired. You just came back from a very stressful mission. You need your rest.”

Her eyes burned with anger. “No, you know what I need? I need to not be locked up underground. I'm a person. Not a fucking mole.”

“You don't have any other option right now.” His face had gone hard with determination. “You'll do as you're told or you'll suffer the consequences.”

It wasn't the right thing to say. At least, not if he wanted Zora to remain calm. “Fuck you and fuck your consequences. I hate you!” She spat the words angrily, trying to tug her wrists out from his grip, forcing him to clamp down harder.

“You're not giving me any choice Zora. I'm going to have to put you in a cell until you calm down.” The sorrow in his voice might have been real or it might have been an act. She wasn't buying it.

“Yeah I bet you're real sorry. I did everything you wanted. EVERYTHING. And now I get locked up in a box.” Her eyes glittered with spite. “Well I hope you don't need me for anything else, because I'm not doing anything for you ever again.”

When Savage replied, he did so in a soft, certain voice. “If I want you to do something, you'll do it.”

“No I won't.”

He terminated their conversation by hauling her up and over his shoulder. She cried tears of frustration and rage all the way to the cell. She'd been such a fool to think that he cared about her. The nights they'd spent in passionate embrace seemed very long ago as he strode through the halls with her as nothing more than his captive.

After being dumped unceremoniously on a much less comfortable mattress than the one in the pleasant room upstairs, Zora was left to languish in a small concrete cell two levels further underground. She hated Savage more than she'd ever hated anyone. Men you'd had sex with were not supposed to be able to find it in themselves to lock you up. They were supposed to be nice and simpering and meek dammit. Or at least grateful enough not to betray you the minute you got home.

She paced around the small cell, her fists clenched by the sides of her body, her teeth gritted with impotent rage. Eventually however, her anger faded and was replaced with a deep sense of exhaustion, an exhaustion that seemed to go right into her very bones. She flopped down on the bed, utterly defeated and slipped into sleep's welcome embrace.

***

“MATTHEWS!”

A voice like a foghorn blasted Zora into consciousness. When she opened her eyes to assess the situation she found she didn't know the owner of the voice. It was just some self important guy in a uniform. They all looked the same when they wore uniform, like interchangeable robots. “Where's Savage?” She thought the inquiry was fairly polite given the abruptness of her awakening, but by the spasm quick contortion of the soldier's face she gathered it was not nearly polite enough. Her question was ignored as further orders were barked at her, orders she was not overly inclined to take.

“Get up and get showered. You're wanted for debriefing.” He was fresh faced and full of self importance. Zora wondered if he even shaved yet. If he did, he had a hell of a razor.

“I don't give a rat's ass if I'm wanted to be the Empress of China.” She pulled the blankets up over her head and turned on her side to get some more rest. She might be a prisoner, but she'd get up when she was good and ready. In short order she experienced the sickening sensation of gravity working against her. The room rotated sharply as the soldier flipped the mattress with her still on it and tossed her onto the hard concrete floor.

“You asshole,” Zora observed from under the mattress.

“Get cleaned UP.” Whether the emphasis on the up was reference to something or simply an expression of frustration, Zora did not know. She did know she wasn't going to respond to this bullshit treatment the way she was supposed to.

“Go fuck yourself.”

That was how Zora ended up being dragged through the compound and shoved into a hard chair that made her squirm almost constantly in the effort to get comfortable whilst wearing nothing more than Savage's oversized shirt. A bright light shone in her eyes, making her squint. Beyond the light a dry crackling voice questioned her incessantly with questions that seemed to be entirely inane. None of these things served to improve her mood.

“You recently went on a mission,” the voice rasped officiously. “Can you describe it to me?”

Zora put her hands in  her lap and looked directly toward the speaker, pretending as if the light searing into her retinas painfully didn't bother her. “Awesome.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was awesome,” she clarified, poker faced.

The voice was entirely unperturbed and apparently immune to her attitude. “I meant, could you describe the progression of events?”

“Oh sure,” she said, pretending to comply. “Plane. Car. Drive. Terrorist. Terrorist. Code. Plane. Cells.”

“A little more detail?”

She sighed deeply before adding just a little more detail. “Big plane. Nice car. Long drive. Silly terrorist. Easy Code. Comfortable Plane. Violation of human rights cells.”

“Ms. Matthews...”

“No, no, it's cool. I know what you want. More detail? Really heap big plane go zooming over oceans. Zooooom.” She made the plane noise and stuck her arms out in a manner reminiscent of such a vehicle.   Unfortunately the retelling of the story did not get much further before she was interrupted by the voice once more.

“Ms Matthews, would you say that the mission concluded without incident?”

“Yeah,” Zora agreed, finally giving in and shading her eyes from the light with her left wing “Can we kill the light?”

“Soon.” There was a shuffling of papers. “Describe your exit.”

“I saved the world and we went to the airport where we got on a plane.”

“And that was without incident?”

“I'm here aren't I?”

“If you could answer the questions directly please, Ms Matthews.”

“Yes,” Zora rolled her eyes. “It was without incident.”