Dark Passions: Dark Romance Boxed Set, page 35
“I need the police right away at 879 Shadowcreek Drive. Garrett Fuller has a man tied up in the basement and has beaten him. He might hurt me, too. Please, hurry. He’s dangerous.”
The operator on the line started to ask for clarification when Jacqueline heard Garrett’s concerned voice calling her name. She hung up the phone and clicked it to silent in case 911 called back, fearing for her safety.
She quickly rinsed her hand, getting rid of any evidence that she’d discovered he was a liar.
“In here. Just kind of sick.” She knelt by the toilet and tried to look frail and miserable.
“Oh, baby.” He got her a glass of water to rinse her mouth, and rubbed her back. “What can I do?”
Jacqueline shook her head, fighting down her gorge. If anything was going to come up, it had to wait until she was alone. He couldn’t know. “It’s like the doctor said, I guess. The trauma hits later, when you’re least expecting it.”
Garrett was looking at the phone in her hand. Jacqueline laughed. “I grabbed the phone in case it rang, so I wouldn’t have to run out to get it. As if I could talk while I’m hurling. Doesn’t make any sense, does it? Am I going crazy?”
“No, Jackie. You’ve just been through a lot.” He looked to see if they had anything to help with an upset stomach. “I can run to the drugstore, get something that might help?”
“Oh, would you? You know how I hate this, and how hard it is for me to stop gagging.”
“Sure thing.” He kissed her hair.
“Maybe get some club soda? That helps, too. Thanks.”
He gazed at her for a moment. “I love you, Jackie.”
“I love you, too.”
He kept staring, until she started to gag again, hurrying him along.
“Be right back.”
She nodded and made another gagging noise, slumping when she heard him pull out of the driveway. As soon as the truck had gone far enough that she couldn’t hear its engine rumble, she raced from the bathroom to the basement, the urge to vomit gone now, replaced with a sense of purpose.
Please don’t be dead, please, God, don’t let him be dead.
Nathan shook his head at her, her name muffled under the gag tied tightly around his head.
“I love strawberries,” she said as she worked the knot. “I love them. And I love to dance, don’t I?”
Nathan’s eyes filled with tears as he nodded. She couldn’t get the gag loosened, but she quickly untied his hands and he managed to get the gag loose enough to push it down to his neck.
“Jacks.”
“And I love you. I loved you before, and I love you now.”
She threw herself into his arms and kissed him, and held him as if he might blow away any second if she let go.
“We have to get out of here, Jacks. Where--”
“Drugstore. Told him I was sick.” She worked the knot that held his ankles to the table.
“Good girl.”
“I called 911 before he found me. They’ll be here before he gets back.”
“Oh, no. Come on, we have to hurry.”
He practically dragged her up the stairs. They’d almost reached the door when Garrett burst in, his handgun trained on Nathan. Nathan pushed her behind him, but she forced her way back around to his side and clung to him.
“God damn it, Jackie. I was so sure we wouldn’t have to go through this. I didn’t want to do it to you again.”
“What did you do to me? You . . . altered my brain? Played God with my memories?”
Garrett shrugged. “Yes?”
His casual admission stunned her. “Why?”
“I wanted you. Nathan didn’t deserve you. I did. I loved you first, Jackie. But you didn’t really look at me. All you could see was him. It should have been our wedding, our--”
“Enough!” Nathan bellowed. “You can’t do this.”
“Our wedding,” she whispered. “Wedding.”
“Don’t think about it, Jacqueline.” Nathan squeezed her. “He’s saying too much, too much for you to deal with at once, okay? Think about something else.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t tell me anything? Because it could hurt me.”
He nodded grimly. “You need to remember on your own. Surrounded by people and things that are familiar, doing things that you used to do . . . .”
The cuffs. The paddle. They’d played that way. He’d given her a warped version of the truth in anger when he suggested maybe his game was to break her over and over. That had been a lie, but they did play games with each other. As a married couple.
“Is Nathan your real name?” she asked, feeling dizzy.
“Yes. Nathan Kaysing.”
Jacqueline squeezed her eyes shut and let the horror wash over her. “Mrs. Kaysing?” the man has asked her on the street. “Are you Mrs. Kaysing?”
Garrett had led her away, grumbling that he was just trying to hit on her by pretending to know her. She’d had a migraine the next day and been in bed for two. And she’d forgotten that encounter until now.
She flashed forward a little in time to a jewelry store where Garrett had taken her to choose a bracelet for their 4th anniversary. A man there, looking at wedding rings. “Jacqueline? Jackie! I haven’t seen you in ages? How is Nathan these days?”
“Nathan?” she’d asked him, and had been pulled away by Garrett before she could ask his name. The flu this time. Lots of sleep and bed rest, along with that same headache.
The memories were coming back hard and fast now.
“How many times did you do it? How many times did you play with my mind?”
Nathan’s head snapped toward Garrett. Jacqueline recognized that murderous look in his eyes.
Garrett smirked. “Apparently not enough.”
“Bastard!” Nathan threw himself at Garrett, his scream catching Garrett off guard for just long enough to give him an advantage. They tumbled to the ground, Nathan’s fists flying and then a hand wrapped around Garrett’s wrist, holding the gun up as Nathan pounded at Garrett with his other hand. A shot rang out.
Jacqueline screamed Nathan! just before the nearest window exploded inward, and the room went white.
Chapter 10
Jacqueline coughed, the smoke irritating her throat and making it almost impossible to see through the thick cloud of white. Instead of running away from the smoke, she was trying to swim her way through it to find Nathan and make sure he was okay. She kept thinking of Zane on the floor, blood on his back.
Not Nathan, not him!
“Jacks!”
Oh, thank God. “I’m okay!”
And then someone grabbed her from behind. She shouted and heard what sounded like Nathan grunting. She was pulled backward away from the smoke, into the kitchen. The officer wore a mask, and tried to pull her to the door.
“Wait, Nathan’s still in there. Garrett Fuller attacked us.”
“Just come with me.”
“Jacks, no!”
Another shot deafened Jacqueline. The officer grabbed his shoulder and shouted in pain. Before he could pull his gun, Nathan tackled him, tearing his mask away and punching him twice. The officer lay still.
“There was only one other cop in there--Garrett’s partners.” Nathan stood and showed her the gun he’d taken off one of them.
“Garrett?”
“Shot, but just a flesh wound. We have to go now before more police arrive.”
“Why can’t we wait for them? They can’t all be on Garrett’s side.”
“They’re not, baby. But they won’t understand what’s going on here. What Garrett did to you . . . it’s black ops, psyops, illegal and immoral . . . everything that’s never going to show up in a governmental budget report. Law enforcement aren’t equipped to deal with this, and the government would just as soon bury us in a deep, dark hole than handle things properly. We have to go now, while we can. I’ll explain the rest when I can, I promise.”
Jacqueline looked into those amazing, honest, unique green eyes. “Let’s go.”
They ran. Nathan took her to an unassuming house on the edge of town where he said one of his contacts kept things for him, in case things went belly up. He spoke with the elderly man who answered the door for only a few minutes before he was given cash, credit cards under a different name, an ID under the same name, a few phones and several keys. Then they spoke softly where she couldn’t hear.
Jacqueline looked on in amazement at this new world she never imagined existed.
“Is this her?” the older man asked.
“Yes.”
“You two be safe now. Give me an address when you can. I’ll send more burner phones and whatever I have that may help.”
Jacqueline didn’t know how deep all this went, but she felt safe with Nathan in a way she realized she never had with Garrett. They hurried to a parking lot, where Nathan found an SUV with the right plates. One of the keys he’d been given unlocked it.
As they drove away, he took her hand. “Zane’s alive. He’s in the hospital, but he’s alive.”
She slumped with relief. “Miss Esther?”
“They put her into an elder facility for evaluation because she explained to the judge how rude it was of him to keep singing when the hedgehogs were trying to sleep. They just assumed she was showing early signs of dementia. She walked out of it during Bingo yesterday and they haven’t found her yet.”
He kissed her hand. “Don’t worry. She knows who to contact.”
“Is she military, too?”
“No, she’s really Zane’s mom. She’s just . . . .”
“What?”
“You heard me back there, Jacks. You have to remember things on your own. Too many big revelations that don’t fit with your memories, and it can hurt you.”
“I am remembering, a little bit. Is it a big revelation? Something that might really throw me? Please?”
Nathan sighed. “She’s just a survivor. A tough lady. When we found her, because Zane wanted to meet his mother, she was still with Zane’s father. He’s the one that made her give Zane up. He was a menopause baby, a complete surprise, and Esther’s husband browbeat her until she agreed to give him away. She never wanted to.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yeah. Zane’s dad, he’d been abusive for years, and she survived it. She survived it with a smile on her face, even though he beat her so badly once that he damaged her eyesight. But Zane wouldn’t leave her there, so we just took her with us when we left. She’s been keeping him in line ever since.”
Nathan looked at her as much as he could while driving. “Jacqueline, you need to know, Zane’s as tough as she is. But if something did happen, he wouldn’t regret what he did. He’d die for you without hesitation. You’re his family.”
Jacqueline struggled to maintain her composure. She looked at the hand that held hers so tightly, and traced the lighter skin around his finger. “Wedding band?”
He nodded. “I had to make taking you look random, for your own safety. I’m sorry it had to be that way, but you needed to remember on your own. I didn’t think it would take as long as it did, but I didn’t know he’d wiped your memories more than once.”
She shivered, afraid of what that meant. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing, baby. You’ll start to remember more and more. It’s just that every time the technique is used, it leaves a layer behind, like sediment. Eventually, that layer gets so thick it’s harder to chip through. We’ll get there.”
“How long, Nathan? I thought Garrett and I were married for five years, but everything I believed was a lie, wasn’t it? How long have I really been with him?”
Nathan stared at the road, his jaw moving as he worked himself up to speaking. “He took you two years ago. And we’ve been looking for you every minute since.”
They drove for hours, changing vehicles twice more, before Nathan thought it was safe to find a motel. They found a cheap, rundown looking place that wasn’t picky about IDs or luggage or the reasons people needed rooms, and was happy to take cash in advance without the need for a credit card. They checked in under the name Trillston.
Nathan locked the door, pulled the curtains, and started peeling off his clothes. “Shower, then sleep.”
Jacqueline agreed, and saw no need to take turns. They showered together, her fingers sliding over his bruised cheek and swollen eyelid. She kissed his face, down the line of the bruise that went to the corner of his mouth. He stroked her hair under the spray, smoothing it back from her face, stroked her back, pulled her close with his strong hands.
“Jacks,” he whispered as she kissed his mouth, careful of his lip. “It took me so long to find you, oh, Jacqueline . . . .”
He lifted her and pressed her back against the shower wall, then lowered her so she could sink down onto him. Her legs wrapped around his hips and pulled her to him, bringing her down around his cock again and again as he thrust up into her, Jacks, Jacks a soft chant against her collarbone.
She remembered him feeding her chocolate-covered strawberries on their honeymoon, and him holding one too long so that the chocolate melted and ended up licked off her breasts, her belly.
Her hands tugged at his dark, wet hair as he took her, and she remembered dancing in her wedding dress, twirling like a princess, their first dance to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
When she cried out in pleasure, Nathan’s shout of her name vibrating against her neck, she remembered how Miss Esther had made her bouquet of silk flowers, which explained the oddly-hued brown and purple flowers, with one neon-yellow tulip sticking out, off-center, and how she’d held those flowers so proudly and loved them with her whole heart.
As the pleasure ebbed, she laughed remembering that bouquet and the boutonnieres Miss Esther had pinned on the men--no flowers, just a shock of green leaves. She laughed against Nathan’s wet neck until they stepped out and, still damp, fell into the lumpy bed.
After several minutes of just their breathing, Jacqueline spoke. “Those girls, Nathan, that were there on the first day?”
“Actresses. I paid them.”
Jacqueline had suspected as much. “So you never took their memories?”
“I would never do that,” he said seriously. “That technology, it’s fast and relatively painless, but it’s a violation. It’s going into someone’s private thoughts and shuffling them like cards. I know how to do it, I can get what’s needed to do it . . . but I won’t. Garrett, he deals in black market tech, among other things. He sees dollar signs and opportunity. And given how many times he was willing to use it on you . . . he has no moral objections.”
“He’ll never stop looking for us, will he?” Jacqueline kissed his chest and rested her cheek above his heart.
“No. But this time he won’t find us until we’re ready for him.”
“How much more is there that you can’t tell me yet, for my own good?”
“More than you know.” He stroked her hair and held her close. “But it’ll come back to you. We’ll get there.”
“What if I don’t remember everything?” Jacqueline lifted her face to look at him, his green eyes so vibrant even in the dim room. “What if there are things he burned completely away? Memories I can’t ever get back?” She could see how the question affected him as he worked his jaw and blinked, his hand stroking her cheek.
“Then we’ll make new ones, Jacks. We’ll spend a lifetime making new ones.”
She clung to him and dreamed of strawberries, waltzes and Zane’s too-soft voice telling her you made it, Jackie. You finally made it.
XXX
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Tangled Rose
By
Abby Weeks
I
Rose Meadows lay on the narrow bed of the motel room and stared at the ceiling. A wooden fan on the roof slowly rotated and her eyes followed the blades in their endless circular movement. The room was small and dimly lit. A pair of thin cotton curtains covered the window but she could tell it was daylight outside.
She was a prisoner.
She didn’t know how long she’d been lying on the bed, two days, maybe three. She’d been unconscious. They’d drugged her. Now she was awake. She was thirsty. Her throat was so dry she wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak if she tried.
She tried to move her arms but she couldn’t. Her wrists were fastened to the posts of the bed with leather cords. Her ankles too. She’d spent the first night struggling against them but it only made it worse. The harder she struggled, the tighter they got. Eventually, they’d torn into her flesh and left deep sores in her skin. She was startled at how quickly she’d lost her will to struggle against them. Maybe it had been the drug they’d given her, maybe the pain of the cords cutting into her flesh, but she stopped pulling against them and now she just lay there.
She was lying, spreadeagled, facing the ceiling. She was in as vulnerable and exposed a position as it was possible for a woman to be. She was wearing her full-body, leather racing suit. She was glad of that. It offered her some protection from the eyes of the men who sporadically entered the room and looked at her as if she was some strange animal they’d captured.
She looked at the window. She had no idea where she was. It was a motel room of some kind. The bed was simple. There was a wooden chair at a desk and two side tables with lamps. There was an upholstered armchair in the corner close to the bed. The walls looked yellowish, like they’d been stained by years of tobacco smoke. There was a door leading to a bathroom and Rose wished she was free to get up and use it. If they left her tied up much longer she’d soil herself.
For all she knew, that was precisely what they wanted.
She was their prisoner.
She’d allowed herself to fall into the hands of the Dark Rebel Motorcycle Club, the DRMC, one of the most brutal and notorious MCs in all of Quebec.
The operator on the line started to ask for clarification when Jacqueline heard Garrett’s concerned voice calling her name. She hung up the phone and clicked it to silent in case 911 called back, fearing for her safety.
She quickly rinsed her hand, getting rid of any evidence that she’d discovered he was a liar.
“In here. Just kind of sick.” She knelt by the toilet and tried to look frail and miserable.
“Oh, baby.” He got her a glass of water to rinse her mouth, and rubbed her back. “What can I do?”
Jacqueline shook her head, fighting down her gorge. If anything was going to come up, it had to wait until she was alone. He couldn’t know. “It’s like the doctor said, I guess. The trauma hits later, when you’re least expecting it.”
Garrett was looking at the phone in her hand. Jacqueline laughed. “I grabbed the phone in case it rang, so I wouldn’t have to run out to get it. As if I could talk while I’m hurling. Doesn’t make any sense, does it? Am I going crazy?”
“No, Jackie. You’ve just been through a lot.” He looked to see if they had anything to help with an upset stomach. “I can run to the drugstore, get something that might help?”
“Oh, would you? You know how I hate this, and how hard it is for me to stop gagging.”
“Sure thing.” He kissed her hair.
“Maybe get some club soda? That helps, too. Thanks.”
He gazed at her for a moment. “I love you, Jackie.”
“I love you, too.”
He kept staring, until she started to gag again, hurrying him along.
“Be right back.”
She nodded and made another gagging noise, slumping when she heard him pull out of the driveway. As soon as the truck had gone far enough that she couldn’t hear its engine rumble, she raced from the bathroom to the basement, the urge to vomit gone now, replaced with a sense of purpose.
Please don’t be dead, please, God, don’t let him be dead.
Nathan shook his head at her, her name muffled under the gag tied tightly around his head.
“I love strawberries,” she said as she worked the knot. “I love them. And I love to dance, don’t I?”
Nathan’s eyes filled with tears as he nodded. She couldn’t get the gag loosened, but she quickly untied his hands and he managed to get the gag loose enough to push it down to his neck.
“Jacks.”
“And I love you. I loved you before, and I love you now.”
She threw herself into his arms and kissed him, and held him as if he might blow away any second if she let go.
“We have to get out of here, Jacks. Where--”
“Drugstore. Told him I was sick.” She worked the knot that held his ankles to the table.
“Good girl.”
“I called 911 before he found me. They’ll be here before he gets back.”
“Oh, no. Come on, we have to hurry.”
He practically dragged her up the stairs. They’d almost reached the door when Garrett burst in, his handgun trained on Nathan. Nathan pushed her behind him, but she forced her way back around to his side and clung to him.
“God damn it, Jackie. I was so sure we wouldn’t have to go through this. I didn’t want to do it to you again.”
“What did you do to me? You . . . altered my brain? Played God with my memories?”
Garrett shrugged. “Yes?”
His casual admission stunned her. “Why?”
“I wanted you. Nathan didn’t deserve you. I did. I loved you first, Jackie. But you didn’t really look at me. All you could see was him. It should have been our wedding, our--”
“Enough!” Nathan bellowed. “You can’t do this.”
“Our wedding,” she whispered. “Wedding.”
“Don’t think about it, Jacqueline.” Nathan squeezed her. “He’s saying too much, too much for you to deal with at once, okay? Think about something else.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t tell me anything? Because it could hurt me.”
He nodded grimly. “You need to remember on your own. Surrounded by people and things that are familiar, doing things that you used to do . . . .”
The cuffs. The paddle. They’d played that way. He’d given her a warped version of the truth in anger when he suggested maybe his game was to break her over and over. That had been a lie, but they did play games with each other. As a married couple.
“Is Nathan your real name?” she asked, feeling dizzy.
“Yes. Nathan Kaysing.”
Jacqueline squeezed her eyes shut and let the horror wash over her. “Mrs. Kaysing?” the man has asked her on the street. “Are you Mrs. Kaysing?”
Garrett had led her away, grumbling that he was just trying to hit on her by pretending to know her. She’d had a migraine the next day and been in bed for two. And she’d forgotten that encounter until now.
She flashed forward a little in time to a jewelry store where Garrett had taken her to choose a bracelet for their 4th anniversary. A man there, looking at wedding rings. “Jacqueline? Jackie! I haven’t seen you in ages? How is Nathan these days?”
“Nathan?” she’d asked him, and had been pulled away by Garrett before she could ask his name. The flu this time. Lots of sleep and bed rest, along with that same headache.
The memories were coming back hard and fast now.
“How many times did you do it? How many times did you play with my mind?”
Nathan’s head snapped toward Garrett. Jacqueline recognized that murderous look in his eyes.
Garrett smirked. “Apparently not enough.”
“Bastard!” Nathan threw himself at Garrett, his scream catching Garrett off guard for just long enough to give him an advantage. They tumbled to the ground, Nathan’s fists flying and then a hand wrapped around Garrett’s wrist, holding the gun up as Nathan pounded at Garrett with his other hand. A shot rang out.
Jacqueline screamed Nathan! just before the nearest window exploded inward, and the room went white.
Chapter 10
Jacqueline coughed, the smoke irritating her throat and making it almost impossible to see through the thick cloud of white. Instead of running away from the smoke, she was trying to swim her way through it to find Nathan and make sure he was okay. She kept thinking of Zane on the floor, blood on his back.
Not Nathan, not him!
“Jacks!”
Oh, thank God. “I’m okay!”
And then someone grabbed her from behind. She shouted and heard what sounded like Nathan grunting. She was pulled backward away from the smoke, into the kitchen. The officer wore a mask, and tried to pull her to the door.
“Wait, Nathan’s still in there. Garrett Fuller attacked us.”
“Just come with me.”
“Jacks, no!”
Another shot deafened Jacqueline. The officer grabbed his shoulder and shouted in pain. Before he could pull his gun, Nathan tackled him, tearing his mask away and punching him twice. The officer lay still.
“There was only one other cop in there--Garrett’s partners.” Nathan stood and showed her the gun he’d taken off one of them.
“Garrett?”
“Shot, but just a flesh wound. We have to go now before more police arrive.”
“Why can’t we wait for them? They can’t all be on Garrett’s side.”
“They’re not, baby. But they won’t understand what’s going on here. What Garrett did to you . . . it’s black ops, psyops, illegal and immoral . . . everything that’s never going to show up in a governmental budget report. Law enforcement aren’t equipped to deal with this, and the government would just as soon bury us in a deep, dark hole than handle things properly. We have to go now, while we can. I’ll explain the rest when I can, I promise.”
Jacqueline looked into those amazing, honest, unique green eyes. “Let’s go.”
They ran. Nathan took her to an unassuming house on the edge of town where he said one of his contacts kept things for him, in case things went belly up. He spoke with the elderly man who answered the door for only a few minutes before he was given cash, credit cards under a different name, an ID under the same name, a few phones and several keys. Then they spoke softly where she couldn’t hear.
Jacqueline looked on in amazement at this new world she never imagined existed.
“Is this her?” the older man asked.
“Yes.”
“You two be safe now. Give me an address when you can. I’ll send more burner phones and whatever I have that may help.”
Jacqueline didn’t know how deep all this went, but she felt safe with Nathan in a way she realized she never had with Garrett. They hurried to a parking lot, where Nathan found an SUV with the right plates. One of the keys he’d been given unlocked it.
As they drove away, he took her hand. “Zane’s alive. He’s in the hospital, but he’s alive.”
She slumped with relief. “Miss Esther?”
“They put her into an elder facility for evaluation because she explained to the judge how rude it was of him to keep singing when the hedgehogs were trying to sleep. They just assumed she was showing early signs of dementia. She walked out of it during Bingo yesterday and they haven’t found her yet.”
He kissed her hand. “Don’t worry. She knows who to contact.”
“Is she military, too?”
“No, she’s really Zane’s mom. She’s just . . . .”
“What?”
“You heard me back there, Jacks. You have to remember things on your own. Too many big revelations that don’t fit with your memories, and it can hurt you.”
“I am remembering, a little bit. Is it a big revelation? Something that might really throw me? Please?”
Nathan sighed. “She’s just a survivor. A tough lady. When we found her, because Zane wanted to meet his mother, she was still with Zane’s father. He’s the one that made her give Zane up. He was a menopause baby, a complete surprise, and Esther’s husband browbeat her until she agreed to give him away. She never wanted to.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yeah. Zane’s dad, he’d been abusive for years, and she survived it. She survived it with a smile on her face, even though he beat her so badly once that he damaged her eyesight. But Zane wouldn’t leave her there, so we just took her with us when we left. She’s been keeping him in line ever since.”
Nathan looked at her as much as he could while driving. “Jacqueline, you need to know, Zane’s as tough as she is. But if something did happen, he wouldn’t regret what he did. He’d die for you without hesitation. You’re his family.”
Jacqueline struggled to maintain her composure. She looked at the hand that held hers so tightly, and traced the lighter skin around his finger. “Wedding band?”
He nodded. “I had to make taking you look random, for your own safety. I’m sorry it had to be that way, but you needed to remember on your own. I didn’t think it would take as long as it did, but I didn’t know he’d wiped your memories more than once.”
She shivered, afraid of what that meant. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing, baby. You’ll start to remember more and more. It’s just that every time the technique is used, it leaves a layer behind, like sediment. Eventually, that layer gets so thick it’s harder to chip through. We’ll get there.”
“How long, Nathan? I thought Garrett and I were married for five years, but everything I believed was a lie, wasn’t it? How long have I really been with him?”
Nathan stared at the road, his jaw moving as he worked himself up to speaking. “He took you two years ago. And we’ve been looking for you every minute since.”
They drove for hours, changing vehicles twice more, before Nathan thought it was safe to find a motel. They found a cheap, rundown looking place that wasn’t picky about IDs or luggage or the reasons people needed rooms, and was happy to take cash in advance without the need for a credit card. They checked in under the name Trillston.
Nathan locked the door, pulled the curtains, and started peeling off his clothes. “Shower, then sleep.”
Jacqueline agreed, and saw no need to take turns. They showered together, her fingers sliding over his bruised cheek and swollen eyelid. She kissed his face, down the line of the bruise that went to the corner of his mouth. He stroked her hair under the spray, smoothing it back from her face, stroked her back, pulled her close with his strong hands.
“Jacks,” he whispered as she kissed his mouth, careful of his lip. “It took me so long to find you, oh, Jacqueline . . . .”
He lifted her and pressed her back against the shower wall, then lowered her so she could sink down onto him. Her legs wrapped around his hips and pulled her to him, bringing her down around his cock again and again as he thrust up into her, Jacks, Jacks a soft chant against her collarbone.
She remembered him feeding her chocolate-covered strawberries on their honeymoon, and him holding one too long so that the chocolate melted and ended up licked off her breasts, her belly.
Her hands tugged at his dark, wet hair as he took her, and she remembered dancing in her wedding dress, twirling like a princess, their first dance to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
When she cried out in pleasure, Nathan’s shout of her name vibrating against her neck, she remembered how Miss Esther had made her bouquet of silk flowers, which explained the oddly-hued brown and purple flowers, with one neon-yellow tulip sticking out, off-center, and how she’d held those flowers so proudly and loved them with her whole heart.
As the pleasure ebbed, she laughed remembering that bouquet and the boutonnieres Miss Esther had pinned on the men--no flowers, just a shock of green leaves. She laughed against Nathan’s wet neck until they stepped out and, still damp, fell into the lumpy bed.
After several minutes of just their breathing, Jacqueline spoke. “Those girls, Nathan, that were there on the first day?”
“Actresses. I paid them.”
Jacqueline had suspected as much. “So you never took their memories?”
“I would never do that,” he said seriously. “That technology, it’s fast and relatively painless, but it’s a violation. It’s going into someone’s private thoughts and shuffling them like cards. I know how to do it, I can get what’s needed to do it . . . but I won’t. Garrett, he deals in black market tech, among other things. He sees dollar signs and opportunity. And given how many times he was willing to use it on you . . . he has no moral objections.”
“He’ll never stop looking for us, will he?” Jacqueline kissed his chest and rested her cheek above his heart.
“No. But this time he won’t find us until we’re ready for him.”
“How much more is there that you can’t tell me yet, for my own good?”
“More than you know.” He stroked her hair and held her close. “But it’ll come back to you. We’ll get there.”
“What if I don’t remember everything?” Jacqueline lifted her face to look at him, his green eyes so vibrant even in the dim room. “What if there are things he burned completely away? Memories I can’t ever get back?” She could see how the question affected him as he worked his jaw and blinked, his hand stroking her cheek.
“Then we’ll make new ones, Jacks. We’ll spend a lifetime making new ones.”
She clung to him and dreamed of strawberries, waltzes and Zane’s too-soft voice telling her you made it, Jackie. You finally made it.
XXX
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Tangled Rose
By
Abby Weeks
I
Rose Meadows lay on the narrow bed of the motel room and stared at the ceiling. A wooden fan on the roof slowly rotated and her eyes followed the blades in their endless circular movement. The room was small and dimly lit. A pair of thin cotton curtains covered the window but she could tell it was daylight outside.
She was a prisoner.
She didn’t know how long she’d been lying on the bed, two days, maybe three. She’d been unconscious. They’d drugged her. Now she was awake. She was thirsty. Her throat was so dry she wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak if she tried.
She tried to move her arms but she couldn’t. Her wrists were fastened to the posts of the bed with leather cords. Her ankles too. She’d spent the first night struggling against them but it only made it worse. The harder she struggled, the tighter they got. Eventually, they’d torn into her flesh and left deep sores in her skin. She was startled at how quickly she’d lost her will to struggle against them. Maybe it had been the drug they’d given her, maybe the pain of the cords cutting into her flesh, but she stopped pulling against them and now she just lay there.
She was lying, spreadeagled, facing the ceiling. She was in as vulnerable and exposed a position as it was possible for a woman to be. She was wearing her full-body, leather racing suit. She was glad of that. It offered her some protection from the eyes of the men who sporadically entered the room and looked at her as if she was some strange animal they’d captured.
She looked at the window. She had no idea where she was. It was a motel room of some kind. The bed was simple. There was a wooden chair at a desk and two side tables with lamps. There was an upholstered armchair in the corner close to the bed. The walls looked yellowish, like they’d been stained by years of tobacco smoke. There was a door leading to a bathroom and Rose wished she was free to get up and use it. If they left her tied up much longer she’d soil herself.
For all she knew, that was precisely what they wanted.
She was their prisoner.
She’d allowed herself to fall into the hands of the Dark Rebel Motorcycle Club, the DRMC, one of the most brutal and notorious MCs in all of Quebec.
