Hell Breaks Loose: A Devil's Rock Novel (4 page)

Rowdy’s smile slipped. “Now you’re just being a selfish bastard.”

Suddenly Zane was there, sliding between them. “Guys, go easy. It’s all good. We’re friends here. Remember? Family.” Some
of Rowdy’s tension lessened. He didn’t look quite so eager to pounce.

Zane looked back and forth between them before settling his gaze on Rowdy. “C’mon, bro. The guy’s been in prison for years.
He’s got a right to be a little selfish. Let him have her.”

Rowdy didn’t react at first. His granite jaw remained locked. Reid was starting to think there was no avoiding it. They were
going to throw down. Then Rowdy grinned.

“What the hell? It’s been what . . . ten years or so? Shit, man, what have you been doing with yourself all that time?” He
grimaced. “Never mind. I can imagine how you been getting off.” He mock shuddered and then laughed with a shake of his head.

It took everything in him not to slam his fist into Rowdy’s face. What Rowdy was thinking, what he was implying, had not happened,
but it was no joke to him. He’d seen it happen to plenty of other guys at the Rock. When he closed his eyes he could still
hear the grunts and cries echoing through the night. It wasn’t the kind of thing one ever forgot.

He shouldered past the two of them, ignoring Rowdy’s shout, “Have fun! We’re gonna grill some steaks. We’ll bring you one.”

He held up his hand in a backward wave as he headed down the hall, eager to leave their company. Being around them made him
almost long for prison. There was a rhythm there. A norm. He knew who his friends were. Who he could and couldn’t trust.

It wasn’t until he stepped inside the bedroom that he realized being in here alone with her presented its own form of hell.

In her second year of college, Grace took a zoology course. She remembered the professor talking about apex predators, also
known as alpha predators. They ruled at the top of the food chain. They killed and felt no guilt. The weak fell beneath them
and that’s just the way the world worked.

She was face-to-face with an apex predator. She knew this with surety. He stared at her for a long moment before moving forward—and
that’s when she noticed the knife in his hand.

That glint of a blade in his fist seemed to fit him. Everything about him smacked of danger, and she knew she would feel that
way even if she wasn’t crouching like prey on a bed before him, waiting to be devoured.

A tide of panic swamped her. She curled back as far as she could go on the bed, pushing into the headboard. She had nothing.
No weapon of her own. Nowhere to go. No chance to run away. No chance at all. She was at his mercy. Vulnerable to him and
whatever he was about to do, and it made her angry. Angry because she was always vulnerable, always subject to someone. Never
free. Heat flushed through her. She twisted her wrists inside the cord binding, ignoring the pain.

Her stomach twisted sickly and a strange sense of calm descended. The kind of calm that comes with the realization that there
was nothing left
to
do.

She remembered watching shows like
Dateline
and
48 Hours
, when police officers rattled grim statistics about the likelihood of survival once the victim was taken from the site of
abduction. Well, she’d been taken. She’d let them take her. Hell, she’d made it relatively easy for them, and that burned
her up most of all. She had become one of those grim statistics.

He stopped at the edge of the bed directly in front of her. Her gaze scanned up his denim-clad legs to his brutally handsome
face, hard as granite, eyes like shards of green-shot amber stone.

After a pause, the long, lean line of him leaned over her. She flinched as his hands closed around her forearms and tugged
her away from the headboard. He pulled her hands toward him. Her fingers worked on the air, groping helplessly. They’d gone
numb and bloodless long ago from the tight cord at her wrists.

The blade flashed and she moaned into the rag, already imagining it cutting into her. Her mind raced. Would it be fast? Painful?
God, don’t let it hurt.

He tugged at the tight binding cutting into her wrists, forcing the restraints even tighter. He brought the knife down, snapping
the thin cord. She looked down, certain he had cut her, too, but there was no flash of red.

Immediately the pressure eased and blood rushed back into her hands, bringing a fresh onslaught of pain.

He grabbed the rag sticking out of her mouth and held onto it, locking eyes with her. “I’m going to pull this out, but if
you scream it’s going back in.” His gaze drilled into her. “Got it?”

She nodded and then the rag was gone. She worked her dry-as-cotton mouth and brought her hands to her jaw, gently flexing
the aching muscles in her face with a whimper. She doubted she could scream if she even wanted to. Her mouth was parched as
the desert.

Sudden shouts and laughter carried through the door and made her jerk. Her gaze darted in that direction, worry punching her
chest, making her breath ragged. It sounded like a party was going on out there. She hoped it stayed outside and didn’t find
its way in here. To her.

He followed her gaze and then looked back at her. A long beat of silence crackled between them. “Take off your clothes.”

“Wh-What?”

He repeated himself, speaking slowly, enunciating each word. “Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”

She glanced down as if needing to reacquaint herself with the notion of clothes. She swallowed against the golf-ball-size
lump in her throat. He wanted her naked? It didn’t take much imagination to see where that would lead.

She flushed cold then hot and shook her head swiftly, loose hair pelting her in the face. She started to shake. Slow tremors
that she couldn’t control. The fear, that ultimate degradation that she had not permitted herself to even contemplate since
the moment of her abduction, stared her in the face.

He leaned forward, his fists sinking into the mattress, springs creaking as he brought his nose into almost touching distance
of hers. He was close. Too close, and her shaking just got worse.

“You and I are the only two people in this house who aren’t high as a kite.” His breath fanned her lips as he spoke. He let
that sink in for a moment. “If you want to keep them out there—” He nodded toward the door. “—and away from you, then you
need to strip and get into this bed.”

He was serious.

This was really happening. He was giving her a choice of sorts. Him. Or them.

Her mind raced beneath his unflinching stare. She could suffer him or deal with an unruly gang of men. She scanned him and
her stomach knotted at his immense size. He could break her. And then she thought of the rest of them—rough and foul, with
eyes that lit up when they hurt her. Her cheek still throbbed where that one had slapped her.

Another raucous shout went up from outside the room followed by the sound of glass breaking. She flinched and darted another
glance to the door.

“That’s right,” he confirmed, his deep voice steady and guttural. She felt it like a touch. “They’re not the most civilized
boys. I had to tell them you’re mine just to keep them off you.”

Her gaze flew to his face. Lifting her chin, she hoped she looked a lot tougher than she felt. Inside she was shaking . . .
screaming. “I’m not yours. I’m not property.”

He waved a hand around the room. “Here, that’s exactly what you are. This isn’t your world anymore, princess, and if you hope
to survive, you need to play by my rules and do exactly what I say.”

She exhaled slowly, turning his words over in her head. He meant to . . . help her. Could he mean that? “And that involves
me getting naked?”

He lifted one big shoulder in a shrug. “You can keep your underwear on. If they come in here, they won’t notice that under
the covers.”

“How generous,” she muttered.

He looked at her blankly. “It is.”

Turning away, he tucked his knife back in the pocket of his jeans. She breathed a little easier with that out of sight. “So
just to confirm, you don’t plan to . . . touch me?” She couldn’t bring herself to say rape. As though putting a name to it
would make it a possibility.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that did nothing to soften his expression. If anything it made him look more sinister.
“You’re not my type.”

“Rape isn’t about that.” This time she had no problem busting out with the word. She’d visited with women’s victims groups.
She’d heard their stories. She could see their faces in her mind right now . . . their ravaged eyes.

He sobered again, staring at her as though seeing her for the first time . . . and seeing something else, too. Something distant,
visible only to him. “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s not. I don’t get my rocks off breaking people weaker than I am. You’ll
just have to trust me.”

Trust him? Was he kidding?

She stared at him. He looked back at her, his expression one of seeming patience.

She exhaled. “You just dabble in kidnapping, then?”

“I wasn’t in on this.”

“But your friends took me,” she shot back. “I’m here because of them. And you’re telling me to get naked. That kinda makes
you complicit.”

He chuckled. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the back of his collar and pulled his shirt over his head in one smooth motion.
“Complicit.” He shook his head. “College girls.”

She could hardly process his words because his chest was all she could see. Broad, tan, and muscled, with ink crawling over
one shoulder and bicep. It was an athlete’s body. Or the kind of body you’d see in a Calvin Klein ad. She had never seen a
man’s body like
this
up close and personal before.

His hands landed at the waistband of his jeans and her gaze flew away, determined not to watch. Heat crept up her neck to
her face, burning her cheeks. She heard his jeans drop.

The bed dipped under his weight, and she sucked in a sharp breath and scrambled to the edge of the mattress, still refusing
to look at the body radiating heat toward her. She felt like she was flying out of her skin.

“Easy there, princess. We just gotta make it look real.”

Her eyes widened. Make it look
real
? “Wh-What does that mean?”

“Get under the covers. I would suggest you scream to make it sound legit to the guys in the next room, except you’re so nervous
I’m not counting on you being very convincing.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. She was freaked out enough that she could probably provide the soundtrack for a good old-fashioned
slasher film.

He tugged at the comforter to get her to lift up. She readily obliged, hopping off the bed and backing away. His voice stopped
her cold. “Nu-huh. Clothes off.”

She touched the front of her badly wrinkled silk blouse, hesitating. It had been six months since a man saw her naked. And
that had been a quick breast exam followed by a perfunctory pelvic exam. It hardly counted.

Charles might be her boyfriend as far as the world knew, but they had never slept together. Of course they had kissed for
the benefit of the cameras. Nothing her mother would deem vulgar. Only chaste pecks. In private, however, they’d experimented,
willing to give it a go since her father was so determined for them to be a couple. For all they had tried, the spark wasn’t
there. Making out with him was awkward. Two fourteen-year-olds fumbling together in a closet had more chemistry. Grace had
put an end to it, sensing he would have gone all the way even as lackluster as they were together. And how humiliating was
that? Charles would suffer sex with her.

No, Nathan from college had been the last real boyfriend to see her naked. They’d dated before her father took office. They
broke up when he started grad school and she moved to DC at her parents’ behest. Three years since Nathan. Since sex. And
that had only ever been in the dark of her dorm room. Whenever Nathan attempted to turn on the lights she’d flipped them back
off, too self-conscious.

She toyed with a button on her blouse.
Just pretend he’s old Dr. 
Mattheson
,
she told herself.

“C’mon.” He sounded impatient. “It’s the only way.”

She looked at him then. Yeah, he so wasn’t Dr. Mattheson. She carefully trained her gaze waist up.
Not going to look down there.
God, he might read that as interest. “You won’t hurt me.” Even though she phrased it as a statement, a question hung in her
voice . . . a plea, and she hated that. Hated that begging for her safety was something necessary. How had this become her
life? “What’s your name?” she asked, hoping to reach him, to connect in some way.

He held her gaze, a muscle feathering across his clenched jaw. She refused to break eye contact and look away this time. Grace
waited for him to say it. Needed to hear him say it.

“Doesn’t matter.”

She wet her lips. “I’m Grace Reeves.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up as he slid between the covers. “Yeah. I know.” Thankfully, the covers were now draped over
him from the waist down.

“Of course.” She shifted uneasily on her feet. The rough voices of the men carried from the other room. As he said, it was
either trust him or put herself at
their
mercy. She felt her lip curl at that prospect. She already knew what they were like.

The naked man in the bed she had occupied only moments before nodded toward the door. “Why don’t you turn off the light and
get into bed?” A question and not a question. A well-toned arm patted the space beside him like he wasn’t asking anything
out of the ordinary. “It’s a big bed. We won’t even touch.”

She didn’t budge. She doubted a bolt of thunder at her feet could get her to move.

He sighed. “My name is Reid.”

It was something at least. A name. “Reid . . .” She said his name carefully, moistening her lips. “. . . promise me you won’t—”

“I’ll keep you safe, Grace Reeves.” The swiftly uttered words crossed the space between them and wrapped around her like a
double-lined fleece blanket. The words did their part and provided solace, but it was also his eyes. Steady and true. The
guy could be in politics. If he wasn’t a dangerous criminal. If he wasn’t built like an MMA fighter and sporting tattoos and
scarred knuckles. He had that mesmerizing quality that compelled trust.
And he was hot. Magic Mike hot
.

She gave herself a quick mental kick. Exhaling, she told herself that had nothing to do with it. Nodding, she moved to flip
off the light. In the dark, she undressed with shaking hands, leaving her underwear on. Her clothes dropped, whispery sounds
in the dark. The chilly air rolled over her skin, leaving a wash of goose bumps in its wake.

She walked barefoot across the room, rubbing at her tender wrists. She sank down on the mattress beside him, wincing at the
squeak of the springs—beside
Reid
—and pulled the cool sheet up to her chest, tucking the fabric under her arms. Scooting to the far edge of the bed, she hoped
that she wasn’t wrong. She prayed he meant what he had said.