Vanquish (8 page)

Unfortunately, his ability to claim custody was nonexistent because
he
didn't exist. Not to the authorities and not to Mr. E's widow. Exposing his identity would link him to Mr. E's trafficking operation and land him life in prison. So his safest avenue to Livana was through Liv.

He gnashed his teeth. Before he could approach Liv, he needed to understand how she'd freed eight slaves and made the buyers
disappear
. Cartel? Hired hit man? Last thing he wanted was to become one of her disposed bodies.

With a swift adjustment of his finally-flaccid cock, he strode toward the only illuminated doorway in the hall and stopped at the entrance, his thumb on his hip, fingers near the concealed gun at his back.

She perched on a stool at the center of a bed-less bedroom, facing him, her back rigidly straight and her gaze on his gloved hand.

Four leather knife sheaths lay on the workbench behind her. His eyebrows crept up his forehead. Definitely a far cry from cowgirl boots. Would she ever cease to surprise him?

Rubber utility mats lined the floor. One wall held a treadmill, a Smith machine, and a metal rack stacked with free weights, arranged by size. No wonder her ass was a wicked bounce of muscle. He imagined her bent over and the inviting space her firm cheeks would create between her thighs.

Heat pierced through his body, contracting his muscles and leaving little room for patience. Fuck, the wait felt like a hundred searing needles, but he relished it, wanting her beneath his skin.

His bulk filled the doorway, legs spread wide, arms loose at his sides, confident he could draw the gun before she could wedge a hidden weapon from that tight dress. While he waited for her to look up, he drank in her features. The regal curves of her face. The tiny slope of her nose. The way her lips naturally tipped upward despite the tension around her mouth. But why the hell had she changed her clothes?

The overhead light reflected off the blond curtain of her hair. The color seemed...wrong, too pale for her honey-light skin. It fell over her face as she stared at the floor, a paradox of insecure beauty.

He tilted his head. Of course, he knew very little about her, but he was missing something crucial, a fragile facet beneath the pristine makeup and trained physique.

He rolled the toothpick with his tongue. “Why do you bleach your hair?”

Golden-brown eyes connected with his, blinking furiously, so deliciously nervous. “It's...” She huffed. “None of your business.”

Slowly, cautiously, he slid back the hood of his sleeveless sweatshirt. Her breathing quickened as her gaze skimmed his exposed biceps, his face, and lingered on the scar that divided his cheek. She looked away, her shoulders curling around her ears.

He knew the effect he had on women. Whether it was their fascination with big, scary men with scars or their complete dismissal of danger, he only needed to flash a smile to lure them in. Amber was no different, despite the self-berating that was likely occurring in her flustered mind.

Short breaths rattled her lips. Her knees squeezed together, and her fingers entwined beneath her perky tits, pressing against the knuckles of the opposite hand.

Watching her battle her distress felt a little like foreplay. For every tremble across her skin, his mouth moistened, his pulse purred, and the nerve-endings in his fingers stirred and tingled. His body fed from the energy clashing between them, rushing blood below his waist and hardening him for a fight between her uptight thighs.

She glanced down, and her breath caught.

He followed her gaze, past the discomfort straining his jeans, to his socked feet. He flexed his toes. “What?”

“Where are your shoes?”

Her disregard for his arousal was a shocker. No matter. He'd prepared for this line of questioning. “By the front door.”

Her nose scrunched in a naively erotic way. “Why are you wearing gloves?”

“Same reason my shoes are by the door.” He lifted a shoulder, deliberately vague, letting her squirm.

Her lips pressed together, and her chest heaved. “I don't understand.”

“Your house is obscenely clean.” Which had fuck-all to do with covering his fingerprints and softening his footsteps. He caught her eyes and winked. “So I put on my driving gloves and left my shoes.”

“Driving gloves haven't been fashionable since the sixties.”

“My '65 Mustang might be dated, too, but it's bad-ass.

He savored the little nuances of her floundering expression. The skin tightening over arches of her cheekbones. The vertical lines between her eyebrows. The bounce in her gaze, ping-ponging everywhere but in his direction. And finally, her wavering sigh.

Got her. Earlier, when his arms were locked around her, she might've sensed his cruelty. But now that she'd let him in, she would be fighting that intuition, convincing herself he wouldn't bother with conversation if he intended to harm her. Lucky for him, she didn't know how he operated.

He held up his gloved fingers, wiggling them. “You should thank me. You don't know where my hands have been.”

Her nose twitched again, her eyes fixed on the packages beneath his arm. “Um...thanks?” She squared her shoulders and dragged her gaze to his, the display of courage ten times more forced than her voice. “My mail?”

As he crossed the room, she rose like an animated mannequin, a vision of posed glamour, an artist's illusion. He stopped a few feet away, mesmerized by the unnatural yet graceful way she held herself, until she raised a stiff arm and gestured for the packages.

He handed them over and nodded at the sheaths behind her. “Should I worry about where the knives are?”

“Probably.” She turned toward the bench and removed the bottles of dye, arranging them in a neat little line with the labels facing her.

“Your vagueness isn't very friendly.”

She sighed. “I don't forge blades. I make things from leather and sell them online.”

Her only source of income? That would explain her financial problems and her urgency to ship this project.

She unscrewed the first bottle, and the plasticky smell of chemicals singed the air. “You can sit on the stool while I finish and tell me the real reason you were on my porch.”

Perceptive little thing. Bossy, too. He let it go and sat, facing her backside as she worked. “When was the last time you left the house?”

Her shoulders bunched. “Thirty minutes ago.”

“Before that.”

“None—”

“Of my business?” He stretched his legs out in front of him and angled his head to watch the glorious flex of her ass. “Do you know your neighbors?”

Her hands paused; then she blotted a rag with brown stain. “No, so I won't be able to answer questions about your
old friends
.”

The six months he'd spent watching her house, he hadn't seen a twitch in the shades. “Gonna go out on a limb here and say you've never even seen your neighbors.”

Her hip cocked out as if she'd lost her balance, but her hands continued to work the dye into the carved designs.

The flourish of knotted swirls in the leather appeared impressively intricate, even if the details weren't clear from where he sat. “You always work in a dress and heels?”

“You always chatter like a fourth grade girl?”

He snapped his molars together. Fuck, she was frustrating. “If you'd answer my questions—”

“You didn't answer mine.” She bent over to inspect her work, and sweet Jesus, the short dress rose a good two inches up her thighs. Much more of that and those hard cheeks would be gripping his dick.

He swiped a gloved hand over his face. What was her question? Oh. “Why was I on your porch?” He smirked at her back. “Your bench has a great view of your kinky neighbors. Did you know they fuck on their kitchen table?”

She spun, her wide bright eyes colliding with his.

His smile stretched, giving her a good show of teeth.

She studied him, nibbling the corner of her lip, and her face relaxed. “You're fucking with me.”

He hadn't even begun. “If that's what you think.”

Her eyebrows pulled together as she returned to her dye. “I'm almost done,” she mumbled. “Then it'll need a few hours to dry.”

And he needed to poke around, unsupervised. “Got anything to drink?”

“Juice and beer in the fridge. Tequila under the sink.”

He moved toward the door. “Want anything?”

She glanced over her shoulder, eyes on his gloved hands. “No, thanks.”

Smart girl, but not smart enough.

In the kitchen, he opened every cabinet and drawer and found the same diabolical order as the rest of the house. Condiments and plastic containers grouped in fours, organized by size, labels facing out. Same thing in the fridge.

He poured two fingers of gold tequila. Cheap stuff, but even a watered-down mixto pretending to be tequila was better than domestic beer.

Drink in hand, he slipped into the sitting room and made a beeline to the books. When he'd sought out his victims as a human trafficker, he'd been bound by the contract of the slave buyers. Gender, hair color, body type, temperament, everything had a requirement. Now, he was free to choose whom he wanted for
his
pleasure, and tracking, watching, and studying a quarry was the most exhilarating part of a capture.

He had no reason to enslave another person again, but he couldn't fight his nature forever. Would Amber be an adaptable slave? Would she be missed? Did she have any nasty secrets he wouldn't be able to work with? Who
was
Amber Rosenfeld?

His investigation began with the top shelves of her bookcases, which held hundreds of hardbacks. Stacked in a repeating pattern of vertical and horizontal groups of four, the covers featured moonlit mansions, bloody handprints, shadowed doorways, and demonic eyes. While the horror collection was unexpected, the alphabetized order wasn't. His fingers twitched, and his smile built.

It took him less than a minute to fuck up her program, swapping out books and rotating some upside down. As he switched the final books, one of the flaps opened, revealing a signature and a personalized message.
For Paul, with best wishes.

Something pinched in his chest. Who the fuck was Paul?

He opened another.
To Teresa
. He released a breath. The next five he checked were also autographed and personalized to random somebodies.

He gnawed on the toothpick, his mind racing. Did she steal from people's autographed collections? Why would she do that?

Crouching, he inspected the spines on the lower shelf, which was hidden behind a leather ottoman. He shoved it aside, and the font on the spines told him these texts didn't contain stories of ax murderers and ghosts. He leaned in closer to read the titles, and oh baby, there she was, all laid out in a dozen manuals.

Break Out Guide for Shut-ins. Face Your Phobia. Imperfect OCD. Living With Agoraphobia.

OCD was a term he knew, and one that had been scraping at the back of his mind since he'd walked in. But what the fuck was agoraphobia? He cracked open the text
Out Without Fear
and flipped to the first page.

Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder in which a person has a fear of being in open places where it is hard to escape. The individual might feel embarrassed, helpless, or trapped, and the intense fear can manifest into a panic attack. Agoraphobics avoid attacks by restricting or completely eliminating activities outside the home.

No shit? That solved the mystery behind her meltdown outside, and maybe why she'd run from the door when she unlocked it. He skimmed a few chapters as a weird mix of emotions clumped in his stomach. Part of him felt bad for the girl, a quaint feeling to be sure. If he were a fucking pansy, maybe he'd explore that. Instead, he focused on the sharper, more familiar sentiment that clung to his gut.

He wanted her vulnerability. To use her body. To bleed off the pent-up shit inside of him. To fill the emptiness. To get his fucking mind off Liv Reed.

Amber was the one he’d been waiting for, and considering the irony that she lived right next door to Liv, maybe Amber had been waiting for him.

Van knew the risks in kidnapping all too well, but taking an agoraphobic outside her door? Christ, that was a new one. Were there medical considerations? Would Amber keel the fuck over and die from an aneurysm?

Wait, why did he care if she had seizures and shit?
Because he didn't want to kill her.
If he managed to successfully move her, she probably wouldn't even try to escape. His muscles swelled with heat just thinking about her locked in his house.
Locks optional?

The swoosh of the bathroom faucet interrupted his romantic thoughts, followed by the approaching click of her heels.

“What are you doing?” Her horrified whisper sent a quiver of pleasure down his spine.

Just to rile her a bit more, he didn't stand, didn't turn to acknowledge her. Instead, he pocketed the toothpick, lifted the glass of mixto tequila from the shelf, and drained half. He took his time, drawing out the tension that wafted from her, savoring it. Unlike the piss burning his throat. Lighter fluid would've gone down smoother.