Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (27 page)

“Yes?” I expel the word in a hushed whisper.

“The sooner you get to telling me, the sooner I can get to fucking you. I’ve been dying to take that ass again since you made me turn it raw and pink back at the club. The longer you make me wait, the harder I’ll take you.” He steps back, catches my hand and leads me to the sofa. “So, shall we get to it?”

Shall we get to it?

Five small words that lay between my protective fortress and the wrecking ball poised to bring it down.

My breath shudders out, and I decide that I’ll start with the skinny version instead of the whole bloated, worm-infested carrion.

He sits and pats his lap. My ass still stings from my earlier punishment, so I crawl onto him with my knees on either side of his lean hips. His hands immediately settle on my waist, and he holds me in place. It’s a perfect position for fucking, especially with me being minus panties and the fragrance of my come wafting up between us.

His nostrils flare and his eyes darken as he breathes in deep. The atmosphere becomes charged, but I know there will be no fucking until words are said and naked, ravaged souls—mine at least—are bared.

He captures my wrists and runs his mouth over my knuckles as he stares at me. “Let’s start with the emails. Who’s sending them, and why?” he asks.

“I don’t know who’s sending them. But I know why. I’m...I think the end game is blackmail.”

He freezes for a moment, then presses his mouth against my skin one last time before he lowers my hands to his chest.

“The end game...”

“Yes.”

“How long has been going on?”

“A few weeks.”

This thumbs massage my hip bones, and I melt into his touch. “And why would anyone want to blackmail you?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know.”

He stares at me, and this time I don’t resent his silence. My answer demands elaboration, and I give it.

“What I mean is, I haven’t done anything worth being blackmailed over.” My mind screams at the un-wholeness of that answer, but I smother the rant. “Unless you call being at the wrong place at the wrong time a crime.”

My words are flippant, nothing like the barbed wires of resistance digging into my soul as memories I only allow to roam free in the dark apocalypse of my mind, break free into the light of day.

“Where and when was this?” Mason asks.

Reality drowns me.

I’m doing this. I’m really doing this
.

I take a deep and useless breath as my gaze clouds and I’m back in that cold, horrid underground suite of rooms.

Ice drenches me until I can’t feel the tips of my fingers. Maybe I react to the cold, or maybe I just look frozen. Peripherally, I feel Mason take my hands in his and warm them with his breath.

“Six years ago, I went to a party, hosted by someone I believed to be my friend. I had no idea what sort of party it was. I was young and wanted to fit in, and everyone was talking about the party to end all parties. I charmed my way into an invitation and on the day, I was driven from my campus at UCLA to a house somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. I have no idea whose house it was. I was taken to a part of the house named
east wing
on Friday night. I woke up in hospital on Monday morning.”

Mason may have tensed. Or he may have sprouted a halo and turned into Angel Gabriel. I don’t know because I’m sucked violently into the past.

Keely

Six Years Ago

“
Omigod
! Leo, what the fuck is going on? Why is that girl screaming?”

I’m still holding my stinging cheek from the virtual slap from the TV bimbo. I look around, certain that if I search hard enough, I’ll find the remote to turn this acid trip off.

Another scream rips through the room, this time from behind a black curtain positioned in a different section of the room. A flap opens as someone goes in and I catch a glimpse of another girl. This one is suspended from ropes tied to the ceiling. But there’s a floodlight set up on a tripod over there too, showing her naked and severely contorted body, and the avid audience staring up at her.

My hammering heart climbs into my throat, and my hand falls uselessly to my side. As a teenager in a sex-centric world, I’ve on occasion thought of what an experience in a sex club would be like. Even as a nineteen year-old virgin, I know this isn’t it.

Morbid curiosity dampens my fear for a moment, and I stare at my surroundings.

In total, I count eight floodlights illuminating squared off areas the size of my living room back home. Besides the floodlights, there are no other lights. It doesn’t stop my gaze from probing the dark, trying to make sense of what I’m witnessing.

It registers that Leo hasn’t responded and I start to turn.

Suddenly my TV bimbo has gotten stronger and is yanking me by the arm down the dark middle of this amphitheater of fuck knows what to fuck knows where.

I start to fight, then realize it isn’t my virtual nemesis, but Leo’s hand shackling me. He’s dragging me along faster than my unfamiliar stiletto-shod gait can keep up. I stumble and nearly trip, but I catch myself at the last minute and try to reverse my forward momentum into my first circle of hell.

“Leo, let go of my hand, please.” I try to pry him off me, but he’s strong. Way stronger than me. He has to be in order to do all but the most dangerous of his own action stunts during film shoots.

“I’m sorry, Keely,” is all he says.

“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Sorry for what?” My voice is high-pitched with pure panic as we pass yet another curtained off square. Someone in moaning, and it’s not the type of moan that proclaims pleasure.

It’s the type of moans that says:
you’re hurting me. I don’t like it, but I’m at a point where I know I can do fuck all about it
.

The rise of excited voices in that section also tells me there’s an audience lapping up whatever is being done to the individual beneath the spotlight.

“Please, Leo. You were right, I shouldn’t have come. It’s not too late. I...I can leave. Just let me go and I’ll forget this ever happen. I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.” My words tumble over each other, and my heart tears it’s moors and plunges into my stomach when I see where we’re headed.

My eyesight has adjusted enough in the semi-darkness to see a last, unlit area at the back of the cavernous room. I can also pick out the dark, eager figures crowded around the parted curtain. They turn as Leo drags me forward.

“No!” I mean to roar the word like a fucking lioness, but it emerges as a whimper unworthy of a cockroach.

The ominous sound of a switch being thrown drenches the single chair in the middle of the room in blinding light. I see the black ropes snacking from the back of the chair and I spend a hot, insane little second wondering why they’re not white like the others. Am I not worthy? Or am I worthy beyond my own comprehension?

The pause button on my nightmare releases and a scream kamikazes into my throat. Before I can let it rip, Leo’s hand slams over my mouth.

“Whatever you do, Keely, don’t scream. This will be over much quicker if you just go with the flow.”

I lose all feeling in my knees, and my body drops like a stone. Leo catches me easily by the waist, and his other hand cups the back of my head and shoves me through the gap in the curtain. When I’m directly beneath the light, he releases me.

One calm part of me helpfully steps forward and offers flashes of my young life in a shockingly brief, but totally Oscar-worthy clip. I’m sure I hear ghostly applause as the other part stares at Leo, mummified in fear and shock.

“Why are you doing this?”

His head drops for several seconds, and I see that regret from earlier flash over his face. But he lifts his head and all I get is a blank, beautiful canvas.

“Take your clothes off, Keely.”

“Fuck you,” I say. The feeble power in my voice bolsters me a little. “Fuck you! Fuck you!
FUCK YOU!
”

“Dammit, Dorian. This again?”

I jerk at the bored, disembodied drawl. The murmurs from behind the curtain stop, and that scares me even more than anything that’s gone on so far.

“That’s fucking strike two. You know what happens should you commit a third fowl,” continues the voice.

Dorian/Leo shakes his head. “She wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“Did you not invite her?” the voice queries.

“Yes, I did, but—”

“And what do the rules say, Dorian?”

His jaw clenches tight for a minute, and terror slashes across my every nerve. “
One for all. Free for all
.”

“Prepare your guest, Dorian. If you can’t calm her down, help will be provided. But remember, that’ll be a third count against you.”

The voice shuts off and a feed that sounds like a radio’s echo sounds through the room before the voices rise again.

Leo raises his head and I see determination in his eyes. I shake my head as he advances toward me.

“No! God, please, no! Leo, stop this. You don’t have to do this.”

He reaches me and grabs my arms. “Dammit, Keely. Shut the fuck up!”

I fight with renewed strength. Whatever he’s planning to do to me, I don’t intend to make it easy for him.

“You weak, fucking pathetic asshole! Why did I think you were even worthy of one
second
of my time?” I snarl, my voice shaky with terror.

“That was your mistake, not mine.” His fingers dig into me as he hauls me toward the chair.

I kick and scratch and spit. Some blows connect. Some hurt me more than they hurt him. My knee catches a sharp corner of the chair and it doesn’t move. I realize it’s bolted to the floor and fight harder. Leo’s shirt rips beneath my frantic effort to escape my reality. The stench of blood and fear gags me as I’m thrown into the chair.

That’s when my screams finally step up to the plate and put in the performance of a lifetime.

I’m hoarse by the time the first rope snakes around my calf.

The radio feed slices through the air again, and I hear a sigh. “That’s it, Dorian, you’re out. Space Cadets, step in and secure our guest,” the voice says.

Leo freezes, then shuts his eyes for a sick little second. “I warned you, Keely. You should’ve listened.”

mason

N
othing will ever compare to the black rage that has lived in my soul since Toby died. I feed it, constantly and affectionately, to ensure it thrives. It has become the central nervous system that dictates each moment in my life.

Thus far, I’ve believed that I will have no room in my life for anything else.

And yet, as I listen to the words falling from her lips, an expanse shifts within me, a cavern widening itself to accommodate the sweet agony of new, undiscovered rage.

She stops suddenly and flinches.

I jerk back into myself and realize my fingers are digging in to her hip. I let go, flex my fingers, but I don’t feel right. This rage is different. It drills into me with a relentless single-mindedness that makes thinking an impossibility. I can’t catch my breath, and it slowly dawns on me that I’m not as calm as I was when I set out to avenge my son’s death.

My vision is blurred with red rain, and I can’t tell whether I’m sitting or floating.

Warmth seeps into my cheeks. “Mason?”

Fear and apprehension infuse my name, and I battle to pull myself back from the edge. I blink and focus on her. Her beauty is compelling enough to ground me a little. Her hands on my face reel me in just that little bit more. Enough to formulate a single thought.

I place my hands over hers and shift one palm to kiss it, before I ask, “What happened after that?”

Anguish and despair contort her face and her shoulders slump.

“I don’t know,” she whispers raggedly. “I’ve never been able to remember. I woke up in the hospital three days later. According to the police, I was pumped full of sedatives and dumped somewhere on Mulholland Drive. A couple on a morning run found me and called the ambulance—”

“Stop.” The black roar in my head makes saying the word difficult, but I need a break from the influx of rage eating me alive.

She purses her lip and nods, before her head drops to my shoulder. A tiny wounded sound pipes from her throat and slays me.

I surge to my feet with her in my arms. Her hands grip my nape and her breath washes my face as I stride with her to the bedroom. Silently, I undress her and carry her to the bathroom. She doesn’t need a shower and neither do I. In fact, I like smelling myself on her to the point where I wouldn’t care if she never showered after I fucked her.

But I need action, and while my preferred mode would be to fuck, I don’t trust myself not to visit a sliver of my rage on her. Memories of what I did to Cassie in the year after I lost Toby filter through my mind and for the first time in forever, I experience a tinge of shame and regret.

I turn on the shower and guide Keely beneath the spray. She hasn’t said a word since I stopped her from speaking, and I feel slight panic that I may have shut a door I didn’t intend to shut.

I smear gel over her body and wash her silky skin beneath the water. When she reaches out to brace her hands on my chest, I cage the flames leaping through my blood, and force myself to continue.

“What’s his full name? The guy who invited you to the party.” My voice is a shiny scalpel, intent on honing the new rage inside me. To achieve that, I need names. Faces. Histories and vulnerabilities. Because I don’t intend to stop until I’ve achieved the same results I did five years ago, right before I exiled myself to Roraima. “Tell me his real name,” I urge calmly when I sense her reluctance.

Keely’s beautiful green eyes flicker and her cheeks, already pale from recounting her ordeal, whiten a little bit more. I gentle my fingers, let them slide over her skin, when all I want to do is rip out throats and piss on severed heads.

“His name was Leo Brummer.”

My fingers tense against her spine. “
Was?
”

She nods. “He was found in his apartment, overdosed on coke six months after that weekend.”

The scalpel freezes midair. “
He’s dead
?” The thought brings me no satisfaction whatsoever. In fact, I feel intensely aggrieved at the loss of prey.