Sold into Slavery (17 page)

With a gasp, she grabbed the sheets and pulled them around her, her heart slamming in her chest. Someone was here! Someone had infiltrated the compound. She had to make sure they knew she was here too.

“Help!” she cried, but her voice came out as a choked whimper. She rolled from the bed, taking the sheets with her. Her body screamed its protest, still aching from the steward’s brutal treatment, but she had to get up. She had to get to that door! She had to get it open.

As if she’d willed it, at that moment the door flew open, and Leah, startled, screamed.

A man stood there, silhouetted against the bright light behind him, which flooded into the bedroom, lit only by the single lamp near the bed. “Oh, my god. Oh, Leah. It’s you. It’s you! I found you. My darling, you’re alive.”

Before Leah could process what was happening, the man advanced into the room and leaned down, lifting her into strong arms. It couldn’t be real—she must be dreaming, and yet, and yet!

“Devin!” she breathed, pressing her face against his broad chest, tears of relief and joy coursing down her cheeks. “I knew you would come.”

Chapter 12

Devin knocked lightly on the hospital room door, which was ajar. “Leah?” He pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, aware he was holding his breath. She was sleeping, curled on her side like a golden angel, a white hospital gown over her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her long, thick lashes brushed her cheeks.

The nurse had told him she was dehydrated when they brought her in, but other than some slight malnutrition, some bumps and bruises, and the burn on her back, she was in excellent condition. An IV drip, a few good meals and plenty of rest had made a huge difference, the nurse told him.

Devin had seen the bandage on her back when he’d scooped her into his arms during the rescue. She’d been crying too hard to explain, clinging to him and kissing his face through her tears. He hadn't wanted to press her then, nor had there been time, even if he’d wanted to. He’d wrapped her in a blanket and held her close, letting her cry.

One of the task force officers had entered the small bedroom moments after Devin. Using a walkie talkie, he called for two medics, giving his location. Not long after, two men carrying a stretcher came bursting into the room. Leah didn’t want to let go of Devin, nor he of her, but he’d given her one last kiss and whispered, “They’re going to take to you to hospital. I’ll be right behind, I promise.”

Leah, along with three other young women, had been whisked away by helicopter, taken to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok for evaluation. Devin tried to stay out of the way while Khalil, Hajiz, the two burly guards and several other men were handcuffed and loaded into the large police van that had arrived on the premises.

Amir had left with the police, while Devin had been driven back to Interpol headquarters in Bangkok, where he was debriefed, as they called it. Basically, he had been thanked for his assistance in the operation, and then lectured about civilians sticking their neck out and risking the safety of all involved in a police operation.

As soon as he could get away, he had hightailed his way to the hospital, only to be stonewalled there because Leah was in a high security ward, with no visitors allowed. By sweet talking a nurse on a nearby unit, he was able to get information as to Leah’s general health, which was good overall, the nurse had reassured him.

He spent the night in a nearby hotel, watching a strange Thai movie with English subtitles on the television until he fell asleep, sometime near dawn. Amir had pulled a few strings after the twenty-four hour observation period, procuring a family visitor’s pass for Devin, once he’d gotten Leah’s okay.

Amir had warned Devin about the brand on Leah’s back, explaining that the branding of women abducted by slave traffickers wasn’t all that unusual. It was a way to stake a claim, marking the prostitute or slave as property. Devin shuddered to think of Leah being subjected to such brutal, dehumanizing treatment. At least she’d only been held for four days. Imagine if they hadn’t acted fast enough, and Khalil had disappeared before they got there, taking Leah with him.

Now Devin sat in the visitor’s chair beside Leah’s bed, drinking in the sight of her. He had never permitted himself to think she’d been killed, not while she was missing, but now, staring down at her, he realized how incredibly lucky they had been to find her at all, and to find her alive.

He wanted to lean over and scoop her into his arms. He wanted to enfold her into him and keep her safe always. At the same time, he was almost afraid to touch her, as if she might shatter on contact. She looked so fragile lying there.

When she woke up, would she be glad to see him? They’d known each other for all of a day before the horrendous abduction. It was possible she’d want nothing to do with him after this. It was possible she couldn’t wait to get on the next flight to the States, putting this nightmare behind her, Devin included.

Leah sighed in her sleep and her eyelids fluttered open. “Leah,” Devin said gently, not wanting to startle her. “Hi, there,” he added inanely as she fixed him with those startlingly blue eyes.

“Devin.” She reached out a hand and instinctively he leaned closer. She stroked his cheek, her eyes pooling with tears. “Devin,” she said again, the word like a caress.

“Leah,” he replied, blinking back his own tears as he smiled at her, his heart swelling.

Turning slightly, Leah lifted herself on her elbows. Devin stood, reaching to plump the pillows behind her. She winced as she leaned back against them.

Alarmed, Devin said, “You okay? Should I get the nurse?”

“No, no, I’m fine. A little sore, but I’m good.” She smiled at him. “Sit down. I’ve had enough of people clucking around me. Just sit down and let me look at you, Mr. Bond.”

Devin grinned at the reference to his looking like Sean Connery, for a moment transported back to that first day on the beach, and the light, sexy banter that had gone on between them. Would they be able to get back to that sweet, easy place?

He sat, a million questions burning on his lips about what she’d been through. Instead he said, “How’s the food in this place?”

She smiled. “Not bad. They bring me meals like every twenty minutes. The nurse is worse than my mom.”

“Speaking of,” Devin said. “Have you contacted your parents? Are they flying in?” In his mind, Devin had already decided Leah would be on the first plane out of Asia as soon as she was released and given clearance by Interpol. He realized he didn’t even know what state she lived in. He knew next to nothing about this girl, other than that she had occupied most of his brain and all of his heart since the moment he’d met her.

“God, no,” Leah said emphatically. “I haven’t told them. They would shit bricks. My dad would go nuts with the
I told you so
lecture about a young woman traveling abroad and my mother would just cry and fix me with her mournful cow’s stare. That’s all I don’t need, thank you.”

“Oh!” Devin said, genuinely surprised. “I just assumed—“

“That because I’m twenty-three and American, the first thing I’m going to do is run home to mommy and daddy?” Leah interrupted, her lovely eyes flashing with the spark that had first attracted him. “It’s my money, not theirs, and my life.”

Devin couldn’t suppress a grin. Leah was her feisty self, or so it seemed. “My apologies, Ms. Jacobs. I meant no offense.”

Leah shook her head, a sheepish smile moving over her face. “Hey, I’m sorry. The Interpol guys keep asking me about my parents, and when they’re coming for me, like I’m twelve or something. Do I want to get out of Thailand? Hell yeah. But not so I can go running into the arms of my parents. I was thinking…” She paused several beats, fixing Devin with a bold stare, though it was belied by the color creeping up her cheeks. Reaching back, she tugged at the elastic holding her hair back and wound the long, silky golden strands around her fingers.

“I haven’t been to London for some time,” she finally said. “Amir’s getting a replacement passport for me at the embassy. Know of any cheap flights out? Oh, and I would need a place to stay.”

~*~

Three Weeks Later

“What’re you doing?”

Leah whipped her head away from the mirror and toward the sound of Devin’s voice, making no attempt to cover her naked body. Devin stood in the bathroom doorway wearing only his silk boxers, looking, as he always did to Leah, good enough to eat with a spoon. Only forget the spoon.

“I was looking at the brand in the mirror,” she admitted. The burn was healing well, so the doctors said. The skin was still covered in ugly scabs, but that was to be expected as a normal part of the healing process. It could take up to a full year to completely heal, eventually fading to a ridge of pink or white, the intensity of the color dependent on the amount of pigment in the skin.

“I hate how you got it,” Devin said, moving close and pulling her into his arms. “But I think of it as a badge of courage.”

“A what?”

Devin looked into her eyes, his face blazing with tenderness. “A badge of courage. A wound sustained in a war. Something you can carry with pride, because you didn’t give up, Leah. You kept up your courage. They might have controlled your body, but you didn’t let them take your dignity or your pride.”

Leah smiled. “It didn’t feel like that at the time. It was just a matter of survival, I guess. It’s not like I had a lot of choice in the matter.”

“You chose to keep your wits about you and you didn’t let them break your spirit. A lot of people would have broken down under that kind of pressure. You didn’t.”

She looked into Devin’s earnest, handsome face. “And you didn’t give up on me, either. You refused to believe I’d just gone off to Bangkok, like that creep tried to make you think.”

“After what we had shared, I knew you wouldn’t do that, Leah.”

Leah reached up, stroking Devin’s cheek. “I used to dream of you at night. That somehow you would find me and come for me.” She circled her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. “And you did. Somehow, you did.”

They kissed for a long time and then Devin led her back into the bedroom of his London garden flat, which they’d barely left since arriving. They’d spent most of their time eating, sleeping and making love. When they weren’t doing that, they were talking, endlessly processing what had happened for each of them during the horrific four days Leah had been held captive.

At first Leah had been hesitant to tell Devin the details of her time at the compound, afraid of both his reaction, and her fear of reliving it through the telling. But he’d been so gentle and easy to talk to that once she started, she hadn't been able to stop. It was like peeling an onion, pulling away the layers of pain and terror she’d endured. And as she poured out the story, it felt somehow as if she could toss the layers aside in the telling, their sting and power lessened by exposure.

True, she still woke sometimes in the night, her heart racing, sweat pouring from her body, caught in a nightmare where she was running, desperate to escape, only to find herself again and again back in that crawl space beneath the stairs, or hanging from a hook, a whip slicing the skin from her back in long, painful strips while she howled.

She would wake crying, or gasping for air and always, always, Devin was there, his strong arms encircling her as he whispered, “You’re okay, baby. You’re safe now. It’s all okay.”

She wanted him to be right. She needed for it to all be okay. She told herself over and over that she was free. She was safe. Everything was fine. And for the most part, she believed it. But could it ever really be fine? Would she ever get past the nightmares and the horrific memories? And what about all the women and girls still enslaved? Just because Yousef Khalil’s operation had been shut down, there was still a world of evil out there.

She’d learned a huge lesson and knew she would be far more careful in her future travels, but despite what others might think, or how they might have reacted, it hadn’t dampened her wanderlust. Though just now, at this moment, all she wanted was to stay cocooned with Devin, eating the wonderful cupcakes he brought from the Hummingbird Bakery and the delicious Indian food from the local corner market, and making love until they fell asleep in a tangle of legs and arms.

“Hey, you put new bedding on while I was in the bath,” Leah said, plopping down on the fresh, white sheets of Devin’s king size bed.

“I did,” he admitted, smiling. “In honor of your first whipping.”

“My what?” Leah stilled, though her heart picked up its pace. She’d been asking over the past few days when they would reintroduce BDSM into their lovemaking. At first she’d agreed with Devin that they should take it easy and be careful while her brand was healing, but as the days passed, she found herself longing for more than vanilla sex with only a dash of spice. She wanted the full treatment.

“You heard me, sexy girl. Your first whipping.” Devin pulled open a drawer of his bureau and withdrew a coiled whip, similar to the one she’d seen in Pattaya, though the lash wasn’t as long and it had ended in a nylon cracker.

“Some call it a single tail, but the proper term is signal whip,” Devin said, running his fingers along the braided leather. “Because it’s shorter, it’s more suitable for indoor use than the bullwhip you saw in Pattaya.” Letting it unfurl, he snapped it in the air, the cracking sound drawing a startled gasp from Leah, not to mention a sudden, sharp tug in her pussy.

He moved to her, gently pushing her flat onto the bed. She lay back willingly, her nipples suddenly aching and hard. He dragged the long, soft leather thong over her breasts, stomach and thighs. Leaning over her, he grazed her neck with his lips, sliding lower to tease her nipples with a gentle, sensual flick of his tongue.

“Have you ever experienced a whipping with one of these?” Devin drew the tail over her body, resting the handle between her legs, which, somehow, had fallen open.

Leah moaned. “No,” she whispered huskily. “I’ve always wanted to experience it. I know it can be very intense.”