Slow Agony (25 page)

Sometime in the early evening, they kicked open the door, and Griffin tumbled down the steps.

He landed at the bottom. I heard his flesh thud against the concrete, but he didn’t make a sound.

I went to him. When I touched him, I realized he was dark. His skin was pasty and cool.

Wait. Was he dark or dead?

I checked his neck. It hadn’t been hurt.

Everything else had, though. He was covered in cuts and bruises. They hadn’t bothered to send the blanket down with him. He was completely naked. His skin had been carved into, the same symbol that was tattooed onto this chest—over and over. All over his torso, his legs, his arms, his face.

He had two black eyes. His lips were busted open and swollen.

He was smeared with crusty, dried blood. I wondered how many times they’d cut him open. How many times he’d healed before they did it again.

I backed away from him, trembling.

I’d known it was going to be bad. But
this
... Seeing him so ruined and used. It was...

I couldn’t breathe, I was so angry.

This was Griffin. My Griffin. I never wanted him to hurt. I wanted to do anything I could to keep him safe. And these bastards had hurt him so badly that I hardly recognized him.

I clenched my hands into fists. Part of me wanted to tear up the stairs, howling in rage. I felt so much hatred at that moment, I was sure I had the strength to rip them all apart with my bare hands.

But then Griffin twitched.

He was healing.

I wrapped him in my blanket, and I was able to scoot him across the floor that way. He was far too heavy for me to carry myself.

I perched over him, watching as he slowly knit himself back together. He healed before my eyes. Within fifteen minutes, you’d never know how badly he’d been hurt. Of course he was still covered in old blood, but there was nothing I could do about that, short of hosing him down, and I wasn’t going to expose him to that.

Finally, his eyes opened.

At first, I don’t think he could focus on me.

But then his eyes locked on mine. “Doll.”

“Griffin, I remembered where Naomi kept the key to the basement,” I said. I held it up. “See? I have it. We’re going to get out of here.”

He looked at the key, but he didn’t seem to understand what I’d said. At least, he didn’t react to my words.

I plowed on. “We have to wait until later. When they’re all asleep, we’re going to sneak out. Okay? So, you have to be ready. I know you must be...” What? Was there some kind of word I could use to describe how he was feeling now? I didn’t think there was a word.

His gaze fluttered over me. He was lying on the blanket, so I was naked, hugging my knees to my chest, holding out the key. “Won’t let him hurt you.”

Oh, God. Was he even in there?

“Griffin? Do you hear what I’m saying?”

He stared up at the ceiling. “I hear you.”

“Do you understand?”

“You should go,” he said. “Then you’ll be away from Marcel, and he can’t threaten you anymore.”

He
did
understand. But why would he...? “We’re both going. Together.”

“No, I can’t leave,” said Griffin. His voice was distant. “He owns me.”

Fuck. What did Marcel do to him? He’d been gone for hours, yeah, but it had only been a day. How could Marcel have broken Griffin down so quickly? What could he have possibly done? I rubbed my face in distress. “He doesn’t. That’s not true. No one owns you, Griffin.”

He looked at me dully. “But he does. He knows how I think. He knows what I hate the most. He makes me...” He rolled off the blanket. “I’m going to be sick.”

He crawled over to the grate in the middle of the floor. I heard him begin to retch.

I went to him. I touched his back. I was tentative about it. He might not want to be touched.

But he let me. He didn’t protest at all. He didn’t throw up, though. We hadn’t eaten anything in days. There was nothing in his stomach.

He settled on the floor, running his hand over his mouth. He shut his eyes.

I rubbed his shoulder. “Griffin, you have to try to get it together. I need you to help me. I can’t do this without you.”

He dove into my arms, laying his head on my lap. “You’re so soft.”

I stroked his head. Oh, what were we going to do? He was broken somewhere. He wasn’t himself. I wasn’t sure if he really knew what was going on.

“I wish I could stay with you,” he said. “I wish I never had to leave you.”

“You don’t,” I said. “But you have to pull yourself together so that we can sneak out of here.”

He raised his head to look into my eyes. “Sneak out? Me too?”

“Yes, Griffin. Both of us.”

He shook his head. “He’ll hear us. He’ll know. And he’ll hurt you. I can’t let him hurt you.” He touched my cheek. “Not you, doll.”

“He won’t,” I said. “Not if we’re careful and quiet, and we do it right. Griffin,
please
, you are a trained assassin. You have survived worse things than this before. You said Jolene French taught you to turn off your emotions. I need you to do that now.”

I was taking a bit of a risk. I’d seen Griffin when he was turned off before. He was lethal and unfeeling. He was careless with me, but he’d never let me get hurt before. And right now, he was so hurt and sad that he wasn’t any good to either of us.

“Turn off?” he said. He smiled. “I forgot, doll. I forgot.” He turned away from me, taking a relieved breath. “Thanks for reminding me of that.”

He closed his eyes again.

Chapter Fourteen

Griffin was tying ripped pieces of blanket around me, securing them almost like a bikini. We needed to be able to move quickly, and we didn’t want to try the escape buck naked so he’d decided the best thing to do was to rip up the blanket. He was wearing a piece of it too. He looked like Tarzan.

He was about as stoic too. Since “turning off,” Griffin was all business. He wasn’t much on talking. He had a hard glint in his eyes. I recognized it, and it made me a little afraid, but I needed him this way or we’d never get out of here.

I’d bring him back. I would.

Assuming that my Griffin was still buried inside there somewhere and that he hadn’t been stolen by Marcel.

Marcel had already stolen my baby. He couldn’t have Griffin too.

We waited to make our move until it was pitch dark outside and until the noises overhead quieted.

When it had been dead silent for over ten minutes, Griffin and I crept up the steps, going as quietly as we could.

At the top, I fitted the key to the lock. Slowly, carefully, I turned it.

The door opened, squeaking on its hinges.

I bit my lip. Had someone heard?

But nothing happened.

Griffin and I emerged outside into the darkened hallway of Naomi’s house. To the left, the hallway continued, leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms. To the right, the hallway ended in the living room. Naomi had lived in this house with her boyfriend Derrick. When he got another girlfriend, she got to keep the house. She said it was too big for her. She’d always been trying to convince me to move in with her. But I’d liked my privacy. And I’d hoped against hope that Griffin would come back.

Now Naomi was dead. And I hadn’t been able to do anything for her.

I must have made a noise, because Griffin poked me, and I could see his eyes flash in the near dark.

He tugged me down the hallway, in the direction of the living room. That was the way out, after all.

“I’m going to get another beer.” A door was opening down the hallway.

Gah! There was a sliver of light that was getting bigger and bigger, brightness spilling out. It would illuminate us at any second.

I hauled Griffin inside the other bedroom, quietly closing the door after us.

“You want anything?” the voice asked, right outside.

Another voice, distant, a little muffled. “Yeah, sure, I’ll have one.”

“Be right back.” The first voice was already getting further away.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Behind me, a snore.

I jumped. Griffin and I turned. There was someone sleeping in the bed behind us. I put a hand to my lips. I’d thought we were alone.

“Shh,” Griffin hissed at me.

Was I making noise? I hadn’t realized.

The man stirred, moaning in his sleep.

My heart skipped a beat.

But he didn’t move again. He didn’t wake up.

“Here you go, Marcel,” said the first voice. We heard the sound of a door closing.

Griffin ripped open the door. He ran into the hallway and ran for the room where we’d seen the man come out of.

I wedged myself between him and the door. “What are you doing?” I breathed.

“He’s in there. I have to kill him.”

I agreed with Griffin. I wanted him dead as well. In fact, I intended to kill him myself. But this was no time for it. “We have no weapons. We’re half-dressed. We’ll come back for him. We can’t do it now.”

His face twisted, and for a minute, I thought he would throw me out of the way and jump through the door to strangle Marcel.

But then he nodded. “Okay. We’ll come back for him.”

“Yes,” I said.

We started up the hallway.

The carpet was soft under my feet. I remembered that it was a pretty periwinkle blue color, but I couldn’t see the color in the darkness. I liked the way my bare feet sank into it.

I started to step into the living room.

Griffin yanked me back, pressing me into the wall.

What?
He pointed.

There was a man sitting at the front door, which was wide open. He was smoking a cigarette and nursing a can of beer. I guessed he was keeping watch. The only thing in our favor was that he was facing out, looking to see if anyone was coming through the door.

How were we going to get past him? That was the only door out of the house besides the one in the basement, and it was padlocked shut.

He needed to move. Maybe if I made a noise, if I threw something into the kitchen, for instance, he’d go in there to investigate, and we could run through.

I was still holding the key. It had gotten us out of the basement. I guessed we didn’t need it anymore. I hurtled the key through the air, aiming for the doorway to the kitchen.

There was a small noise, metal striking metal, almost musical.

The man at the door turned around. “Mick, that you? You in the kitchen?”
No one answered.

The man sighed. He got up from his chair and loped through the living room to go into the kitchen.

He had to walk right past the hallway, where Griffin I were hidden in the shadows. I held my breath, praying he wouldn’t see us, that he wouldn’t look.

He didn’t.

We ran out as soon as he was out of sight. We bee lined out the front door, down over the steps of the front porch, and onto the gravel driveway.

I yelped.

Gravel on bare feet hurt.

“Quiet,” said Griffin.

He was striding across the gravel as if it didn’t bother his feet at all. I hobbled after him, flinching at each painful step. We made our way towards the van that was parked in the driveway.

And then the porch light came on.

Griffin hurled me on the ground, throwing me behind the van. I fell blindly onto the gravel, face up. It hurt. Tiny, sharp rocks bit into my mostly bare back. I managed not to make a sound.

He leapt on top of me, covering my body with his own.

“You looking for something?” said a distant voice.

“Yeah, I heard something in the kitchen. But I checked it out, and there wasn’t anyone in there.”

Griffin’s face was over mine. His eyes were hard, glittering—his jaw clenched. But there was something intimate about our closeness, possibly because we were hardly clothed. I could feel the warmth of his skin against my own.

A laugh. “You had too much to drink. You’re hearing things.”

Griffin shifted, his pelvis moving away from me.

He had an erection. I felt it.

I bit my lip. It turned me on. But being turned on seemed wrong. It wasn’t appropriate, we were on the run, and the things that had happened to Griffin...

How was he managing it, anyway? I tried to ask him silently, as if we could communicate with our eyes, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore.

“Maybe,” a voice was responding on the porch. “It’s for sure that there’s no way they got out of that basement with those padlocks on the door.”

“Definitely,” said the other voice. “Lay off the beer, huh?”

The sound of a door slamming.

The light went off.

Griffin whispered to me, his voice urgent. “We can’t take the car. It’ll tip them off. They think we’re still locked up. We need to use that to buy time.”

I nodded. “Makes sense.”

He got up and hauled me to my feet. Grasping my hand, he dove into the woods that surrounded the house.

I did my best to keep up.

The woods were dark, because there wasn’t much of a moon out tonight. Griffin moved like a cat, but I wasn’t as skilled as him.

I ran into branches and stepped on thorny vines. The forest reached out for me, tangling in my hair, lashing my cheeks, tripping me.

Griffin moved on regardless, his grip an iron vise on my hand. He yanked me after him, no matter how I faltered.

And I did my best not to cry out every time something cut or hit or scratched me.

If he noticed my discomfort, he didn’t let on.

Then, abruptly, he stopped.

He shoved me against a massive tree trunk, pressed his body against mine, and assaulted my mouth with his own.

I was so surprised by the kiss that I just let it happen, not even responding.

Griffin didn’t seem to mind. His hands were launching an onslaught on the scraps of blanket he’d tied around my chest. He pushed the fabric out of the way, prodding my breasts, pinching my nipples.

I gasped. Seemingly against my will, heat coursed through my body. I went limp, surrendering to the violent movement of his fingers.

He pulled his mouth away from mine, his expression feral. His mouth went to my breasts. His lips found my sensitive places. His teeth scraped me, bit me.

Vicious pleasure shot down me, searing a burning line from my breasts to between my thighs.