Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) (20 page)

Me, I could barely squash a cockroach.

I’d be more likely to invite a serial murderer to my bed. Ice trickled in my veins. For all I knew, he was one.

How many women had been through here and sold off as slaves?
Too many. There was no doubt in me – given the chance for revenge by my usual means, the power of the word, I’d do it. Whether it hurt him or not.

Escape.
Please let it be so.

H
e nestled his hands at my waist.

Accompanied by t
he bone-deep throb of bruises and the sting, that touch seemed to affirm some connection between us.
Wrong.
My pussy clenched. Stupid female reaction. I held my breath, resisting.

The intensity in his
gaze added to his hold, as if he claimed me.
What big brown eyes you have, sir.
I shivered. The familiar pull and push. Running backwards until I hit the wall wrestled with staying in his hands.

I took a controlled yet ragged breath. Time to reclaim some me. “Let go.
Please.”

When he did so I felt lighter, relieved, and bereft.

If she wanted distance right now, I would give it to her even though every
instinct in me said to give her a big hug. I wasn’t sure how she was even standing. She swayed as I looked at her. For a little librarian, she had strength in her, down deep, where it counted. Some of the men I’d worked and fought with could’ve learned from her. She bounced when others would shatter.

Me...
I’d left bruises on Elenor but she’d wanted them. Disgust was too good a word for me, except when I remembered how I’d felt
then
, in the moment.

It wasn’t surprising she was confused
since I’d totally fucked over my own head.

I’d never had a high like yesterday and I’d never
before felt so destroyed after an S and m session, or whatever you called what we’d done. Abuse, probably. Guess this was karma’s retribution.

“Think they’ll bring us breakfast soon?”
She fiddled with her fingers as if nervous. “It’s crazy, but I’m starving.”

“I hope so. You need it.
They left you a dress.” I fetched the little blue scrap of cloth from the bottom of the bed. The sheets were spotted with her blood. “I suppose you think you can get this on without help? It’s going to hurt you.”

“Yes. I’ll do it.” She put out her hand.

Ja.
Stubborn, but it was her call.

With the iodine on the scratches
, she was a spotty patchwork of orange-brown, red, blue, and pale skin, as well as the darker triangle reappearing at the juncture of her thighs.

Of course, if they’d
given her a razor, I’d have fashioned a weapon from it.

I saw more than bruises.

The curl of her ear enticed me, as did the delicate pout of her lip, the sadness in her eye and the sensual curve of her breasts. I was getting a little lost in admiring her and I realized that I wanted her to want me to touch her and in more than a purely sexual way. More than a “let’s have a comforting hug” way. I wanted to find out who she really was.

She shook out the dress
and turned away from me, as if uncomfortable with me watching.

B
efore I could be some creepy admirer, I needed to fix what was wrong and get us out. I didn’t look away. That quirky inclination to see her as mine tainted things. What did it matter when next time in the Room I could do what I liked?

It matters becau
se it’s the decent thing to do.

F
or all of a second, I looked away.

Watching her put the dress on when she was obviously hurting from bending this way and that, was an exercise in agon
y. My hands itched to do something. When the hem fell in place, it only grazed the back of her thighs, revealing a hint of butt, same as the previous dresses. Damn she was pretty. I’d never get tired of looking at her, whether perfect or blemished. Besides, some of those marks were mine. Some of them when she’d screamed through those orgasms.

No man could forget that. It had left an imprint on my mind.

The door rattled.

Jaz flinched enough that even her face twitched. She backed away and crawled onto the bed, then
curled up near the wall.

“Breakfast! Here, Pieter, boy.”

Mocking me seemed to have become a sport. They thought me safe, but I went obediently to be manacled. Getting angry was pointless. I needed to be good. The manacles clicked on.

Jaz
had perched on the bed and was absentmindedly swinging her long legs. A nonchalant act, perhaps. I was beginning to know her. Like anyone, she got scared. She just hid it well.

I
went over to the far wall, as they let the cleaning lady in. Same woman, plumpish, with dark curly hair at neck length. She never did more than glance at me though with Jaz she sometimes smiled or exchanged a word.

Three guards out there
covering the door. Breakfast had arrived with the lady. She bustled about doing a perfunctory clean and changing the sheets. Jaz helped her with that as if this was some family place and an aunt was fixing the bed linen in our room.

The p
aper plates held a fried mix of meat, tomatoes, and potatoes, and an apple for us each. They fed us, though not enough. I’d lost muscle mass.

After eating, with me
sitting on the floor and her on the bed, I washed off my plate and dried it. This one was a keeper. I needed it.

I’
d boiled my strategies down to me rampaging through this place killing people after somehow, miraculously, getting out of the room, and then of course I’d die.

Or there was m
e and her somehow escaping the room and then reaching the jungle, or a vehicle. Or, last and best, getting word out to my friends who were ex-military and here in PNG for the same reason as I was – looser country borders and policing, less chance of being arrested for past crimes. Some of the cops here were bought. My friends were not.

“Let’s play spin the bottle
.”

Jaz lowered her head and peeked
at me. “What? There’s only two of us.”

“It’ll be fun
, and I get to probe you for all your dirty secrets.”

The cogs were turning
. I’d bothered her. “We...don’t have a bottle.”

“We have this.” I twisted the plate into a long curled mess. “It’ll do
as a pointer.”

Sitting down in front of her on the floor
annoyed her. Her mouth twisted and there was evil in her glare, but she shrugged.

“Fine.
No kissing though, or anything, as prizes.” She drew her legs up and crossed them. “Not sure I have any dirty secrets.”

“No?
We just have to answer a question.” I lifted my brows. “We all have dirty secrets.”

Some of mine were so dark I’d not tell her in a million years, but s
ome of the others, I was strangely looking forward to spilling. A fact landed
ker-thud
in my head. It wasn’t likely we would ever leave here. Bleak but true. I wasn’t giving up but I knew the odds and they were poor.

She snorted lightly. “I guess.”

At the least, I wanted to get to know my pretty roommate. More of her than I did now. I might know the color of her nipples, but I wanted more, before we came to whatever end Gregor planned for us.

“Mm-hmm. Scared?” I grinned.

Jaz had this little blank expression that flitted across sometimes, like now. What did a librarian have to conceal? I flipped that. Maybe she
was
just scared. As if that was new.

Watching her making the bed and exchanging little smiles with the lady had brought back memories of me and
Elenor, back when I had a home...back when I had a wife who would smile at me or, when I got too silly, throw pillows at me.

I missed that so much.

Life has a way of giving you stuff you barely knew you appreciated, snatching it away and then going
see
that was what it was all about.

“Let’s do this. This squidgy end is the pointer.” I spun the
squashed plate.

“It’s you! Good! Tell me something funny.”

I pulled a face. “About?”

“Hmm.” She
wriggled her feet, with her hands on her ankles, looking every bit like an excited teenager. “Your childhood?”

“Okay. Let me see. One morning, when I woke up baboons were i
n our kitchen. Somehow they’d gotten in through an unlocked door. My mother had to shoo them out with a broom.”

Jaz giggled. “Baboons?”

“Yes.” I nodded, trying to look wise. “The mess in the kitchen was so smelly our dogs went crazy.”

“Baboon shit. I’ll never beat that.” Her grin
was big and infectious and I could’ve watched her forever.

Being creepy again.
Even if it was in a good cause.

I spun. “Your turn
to cough up a secret.”

“Jeez. Rigged. I get to spin next time.” She peered down.

Good. If she did that she’d be halfway on the floor. At the least I’d get to look down her cleavage, and why that was appealing when I’d just seen all of her was a baffling secret of female attractiveness.

“Rule. When you get a question it has to be connected to the last one. So tell me something from your childhood.”

“Ugh. No baboons there. I got lost on the way to school. My mum sent me off on my bike in Grade five. New school in an outback town, middle of Australia.”

How old was she in Grade five? Eleven? “Where’d you end up?”

“The library. I was playing hookie. I hated new schools.”

When they came to get the breakfast leftovers, we’d likely get to keep this
plate, and maybe the paper cup of coffee dregs. I needed that too. Writing in the dark was going to be hard to do, but I’d manage.

I’d thought a long whi
le last night and this morning. It all depended on the cleaning lady. What I planned could save us or it could bring Gregor’s anger down on us.

Giving Jazmine
hope had been my first gift. Even if I did have a plan, it was by no means as sure as I’d told her. It had been worth the lie to see the brightness transform her face. Lies to me were like payments to the devil. Hated them. A lie had killed my brother.

My second gift
to her was to do everything to keep her well. I wanted to earn some gold stars for my poor battered soul. I was so fucking tired of hating myself. I’d told her that I could forget things but it wasn’t true. Short term, yes. Later, no. The past came back and chewed me over, made me feel like every part of me was so wrong, so bad, and that I’d never be a good person again.

Enjoying what I’d done
in the Room had guaranteed a year of guilt.

We went through more questions and I slowly gave her more of me and began to doubt how much of her I was really getting.

It was unfair but...if she was lying, I guess I understood. I still hated it. I wanted her, not lies.

“Tell me something that you regret.”

Ah. Now that was a nasty one. I felt compelled to tell a truth, if not the whole truth. “When I shot a man in the face, and killed him.”

“Oh.”

She looked as if her stomach was as sickened as mine.

I’d said a stupid answer,
but I’d have done it again. Killing the boy guard was more recent. Funny how that made me numb more than sad.

The pointer was on her again. “Tell me something about being a librarian. Something cute, funny, amazing.”

“About being a librarian? Amazing? Seriously? Okay. The day I managed to pull a whole bookshelf over on my head. Talk about embarrassing.”

The
flatness in the telling made me wonder if that was true. How many questions had she answered that had made me go, was that really the truth?