Deception, page 8
What’s next? Will they punish me for jumping off the cliff? Will I keep working as I have been?
But they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of patching me up only to kill me. If I’d learned one thing during my time here, it was that they weren’t wasteful or stupid. They must still have a plan for me.
“Everleigh?” Lucius called from the other side of the door.
My body had gone stiff, and my head spun when I tried to sit up.
“Can I come in?” he continued, his voice laced with concern. “Do you need help?”
I was too tired to call out to him. Too tired to continue fighting to get up. Maybe if I closed my eyes again, it would all turn out to be a bad dream, and I’d wake up in my bed in San Diego.
The door opened, and footsteps quickly approached. “Santino, necesitamos el doctor,” Lucius shouted to the living room.
The glass door slammed open, and he bent down, ignoring the water drenching him yet again. He lifted me gently off the tiles and held me close. My ribs groaned at the movement; my entire body did.
He sat down on the floor next to the shower and held me on his lap, wrapping a towel over my drenched body. I remained motionless, allowing him to wrap me up like a mummy and hold me.
All I could focus on were his eyes on mine. His beautiful unique eyes with the impossibly long and full lashes and the color a mix of moss and amber I’d never seen before. He brushed the wet hair out of my face. Caught in his gaze, his light touches made me breathless.
The doctor rushed in, breaking the moment. He knelt down next to us, opening his bag.
Lucius sat up. “Bonita, let him look at you.”
After checking me over and determining I was no worse or better off than before, the doctor motioned to my sopping clothes. “We need to get you out of your wet clothes and rewrap your bandages.”
I panicked at the thought of having to take off my clothes in front of him. I shrank back into Lucius, gripping his shirt as tight as I could while shaking my head.
“Please don’t,” I pleaded, my voice shaky from the effort of holding back my tears.
After a hushed conversation with Lucius, the doctor stepped outside the bathroom and closed the door.
“Everleigh. Look at me,” Lucius rasped.
I relaxed my grip on his shirt and met his eyes.
“Your bandages are wet. We need to take them off.” He looked pained as he gently swiped my tears away. “We’ll do this quickly. Santino left dry sweats and a T-shirt for you.” He pointed to a pile of clean clothes on the toilet that I hadn’t noticed until now. “You can barely move and need someone to help you. I’m here now. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”
I took a deep breath in. And out. In. Out. In. Out. I didn’t know why or how, but I trusted him. He had every opportunity to hurt me, but he’d been nothing but gentle.
With one last deep breath, I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded.
I felt the whisper of a kiss on my temple. “Thank you. Now lift your arms.”
I did as I was told, keeping my eyes firmly shut. The bandages loosened, and then he gently dried me off, his movements efficient. I still refused to open my eyes.
Soft fabric skimmed over my head, and he threaded my arms through the openings. Then he pulled the pants up my legs. “All done.”
He picked me back up and walked out. He spoke to Santino, and then I heard a door click shut. When he placed me back on the bed, I bit my lip, afraid of what was next. Tears escaped my closed eyes.
The doctor rewrapped the bandages that covered my arms, feet and midsection and put ointment on my many scrapes. Once he was done, soft sheets slid over my body.
“Everleigh.” Lucius found my hand under the blanket and held it in his. “Open your eyes.”
I shook my head; I was cold, even though he’d piled blankets on top of me again. The bed dipped and Lucius sighed, his body close to mine. “You have my word that nobody is going to touch you again.” His raspy voice did wonders to distract me. “Everleigh. Please. Open your eyes.”
“I’m tired.” I pulled my hand out of his, opening my eyes only to be hit with his pleading gaze and downturned mouth. “I want to sleep.”
He paused for a moment, studying my face as if committing it to memory. “Santino will stay with you.” With a nod, he left, leaving an oppressing silence in his wake.
It had been a week since I’d foolishly jumped off the cliff, and except when I went to the bathroom, there wasn’t a moment when I was alone.
Santino walked me everywhere and now stayed in the office with me while I was working. Lucius would then walk me back to my room after dinner and stay with me. We went to bed together, my body aching to move closer every night but never giving in. But there was no more hand holding. No more whispered conversations.
The weight I had gained thanks to Mariana’s excellent cooking was long gone, and I once again resembled a walking corpse. But who cared? Not me.
As soon as Santino picked me up this morning, I knew something was wrong. He kept shooting me glances, and he was fidgeting. Santino never fidgeted. It made me nervous. The morning was slow going, the work I still had to complete seemingly impossible.
And then there were Santino’s attempts at conversation. Since he’d never initiated a conversation before, this made me suspicious.
“Can I get you anything?” he interrupted my dark thoughts on how they were going to kill me. I thought chopping me up in tiny pieces and throwing them into the ocean would be a favorite. Like I had never existed.
“No, thanks.”
I forced the “thanks” out, not having forgotten my manners completely while having a pity party for one.
“You haven’t eaten anything yet.”
“Not hungry.”
“I’ll get Mariana to make you a sandwich.”
“No, thank you.”
This time, the “thank you” part came out growled.
He fixed me with his gaze, gearing up to say something else. The opening of the office door interrupted our uncomfortable stare-off. Lucius’s unruly mop of dark glossy hair peeked through, and his drool-worthy body followed. Even if I were about to be dismembered, there would never be a moment when I wouldn’t appreciate all that was Lucius.
He nodded at Santino, who got up and left without a word. I watched Lucius move around the desk and stop at my side.
“Let’s go,” he said and took my hand.
Too stunned to protest, I let him pull me up. “Where to?”
“You’ll see.”
Way to be cryptic. But what choice did I have but to follow?
Lucius walked me down the long corridors, his steps sure, his grip warm. He looked back at me with a tentative smile on his face, making me suspicious as to where we were going. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he seemed almost excited.
I was lost after the fourth turn, all the hallways looking the same. After another few turns, we stepped through a large door and into a pool area with a glassed roof and Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The sun shining through the roof caused the water to sparkle, giving it an otherworldly appearance.
Lucius visibly relaxed as soon as we’d set foot into the room, his shoulders less tense and his face losing some of its permanent frown lines.
The door fell shut behind us, the loud noise echoing in the cavernous space.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, curious why he would bring me here.
He held out his arms, meaning I lost his hand and warmth. “This is where I come whenever I feel like the walls are closing in around me.” He led me to the back of the room, to the large windows.
There was a blanket on the ground, a picnic basket next to it. The gesture was so sweet and unlike him that a smile stole over my face. My anxiety faded to a dull throb that was unlikely to give me heart palpitations.
Lucius stepped closer and pointed at my mouth. “That smile right there made begging Mariana to pack a picnic and enduring Santino’s teasing worth it.”
The heat rising to my cheeks was instant. I mumbled an incoherent response and studied the polished concrete floor.
Why would he do this for me? It’s a gesture for a friend. Or lover. Not a prisoner.
There was no way he was interested in someone as boring as me. I’d done nothing exciting in my life. A good day to me included a visit to the ice cream parlor and a movie. I was small and currently scrawny. I didn’t wear makeup. My thick hair was a tangled mess thanks to the humidity and my lack of care factor.
But none of that seemed to matter to him.
Lucius pointed at the pillows stacked on one side of the blanket. “Do you want to sit down?”
This was feeling more and more like a date—a thought I squashed immediately. He was only doing this to get me back on track. None of this meant anything.
I sat down and he followed, facing me. “I hope you’re hungry, because Mariana made enough to feed ten people.”
I laughed, feeling better than I had in a while. He didn’t have to go through all this trouble to cheer me up. Despite his questionable occupation, he was a good man.
I peeked inside the basket. “I’ll try everything, then.”
Lucius pulled out containers of food, the basket seemingly bottomless. He chuckled, lifting a small container. “There are even strawberries and dipping chocolate in here.”
My eyes lit up at the mention of chocolate. I couldn’t remember the last time I had any.
He placed the container that held the precious treat in front of me. “You look like you’re about to attack me to get to the chocolate.”
I grinned at him, hoping my addiction wouldn’t put him off. “You don’t know how much I missed chocolate.” I didn’t waste any time taking the lid off and cradling the container to my chest.
Lucius left me to worship the chocolate, foregoing the strawberries. I ate with abandon, barely swallowing before shoving more in. I’d never thought I’d miss small things like my books, chocolate, and my daily dose of television as much as I did. I’d taken it all for granted. And never would again.
By the time I had cleaned out the container, Lucius had set out all the food. There was everything from cut fruit to sandwiches to empanadas and cupcakes. Heaven on a blanket.
I selected a sandwich and enjoyed the homemade hot sauce Mariana added to it. Lucius was watching me, and I bit my lip, unsure how to respond to his intense study of me. “Aren’t you going to eat something?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was redness creeping into his cheeks from getting caught staring at me. But that was impossible. Someone like Lucius didn’t blush.
I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since my jump off the cliff, but Santino told me in as few words as possible that Lucius had been the one to follow me into the water and drag me out. I owed him my life.
Done with the sandwich, I looked up at him. “I haven’t thanked you yet for saving me. If you hadn’t jumped in, I would have drowned.”
“I would have never let you drown.” His declaration was fierce and spoken as if there had never been another option.
I hung my head. “Well, thank you anyway. Even though I thought death was better than the alternative, I changed my mind as soon as my feet left the ground.”
Lucius sat up, setting his food on the blanket. “Death should never be an option. You will make it out of here and get your life back.” He hesitated but then took my hand. “Trust me? Please?”
He would help me get out of here?
The crazy part of it was I believed him. Nodding, I found myself putting my trust into my captor.
He studied my face, clearly satisfied with what he saw because he continued eating.
We spent the rest of the meal getting to know each other. And despite Lucius not being incredibly forthcoming, he eventually told me about his mother who’d died when he was young and that he moved to the States when he turned eighteen.
We were lying on our backs, watching the clouds through the glass roof when Lucius turned to me. “Why did you come to Guyana of all places? It’s not exactly the number one tourist destination.”
Turning on my side to face him, I traced the patterns on the picnic blanket. “My brother went missing. And the last place he was seen alive was the same place you took me from.”
“And you think we had something to do with it.”
Meeting his gaze, I nodded. “I do. But getting kidnapped put a hold on my search for him.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for anything unusual. But despite what you might think, kidnapping isn’t what we usually do.”
His offer meant everything to me. Even if nothing would come from it, having someone else look for my brother was a huge relieve.
I’d realized one thing while here with him: He seemed to like me, but more in a little sister kind of way. He was affectionate, but not overly so. He also seemed protective and to care about me. But not once had he made a move to kiss me, no matter how much I longed to find out what his lips felt like on mine. Or what he tasted like.
And while he might be my savior, first he was my captor. And I would do well to remember that.
Chapter 14
Lucius
I didn’t want to leave. Spending time with Everleigh had been heaven. I knew I was pushing my self-control, but the need to cheer her up, to make her feel normal again, had been too strong to deny.
And the reward was worth whatever shitstorm I’d have to deal with once we got back. Every smile was precious. The beautiful sound of her laughter forever lodged in my heart. I ached to do more than hold her hand. I wanted to strip her clothes off and taste every inch of her. I wanted to sink inside her and forget how I’d met her in the first place.
But touching her was wrong. She was my prisoner. And I didn’t want her to feel like she had to do anything she didn’t want to. When I couldn’t delay it any longer, I walked her back to her office.
She turned to me when we made it back, a small smile still playing on her lips. “Thank you so much for today. It was exactly what I needed.”
I nodded at her, my throat embarrassingly tight, and she closed the door. I leaned my forehead against the wood, fighting the urge to open the door. She already looked lost again, something I’d tried so hard to erase.
“You said one hour. That was three.”
Santino’s angry voice snapped me out of my pity party. I wasn’t one to dwell on things that couldn’t be. And I had a part to play. One I’d neglected over the last few days.
And not just in the compound. My CIA contact was furious that I hadn’t shown up. But Everleigh came first.
But now I had to get my head back in the game, especially since I was so close to getting to Sam’s killer. He had been assassinated when one of our missions had gone wrong. We’d gone on a routine extraction of a diplomat. Our intel turned out to be wrong and instead of coming up against a handful of angry villagers, we’d been faced with an army.
And a sniper that took Sam out as we were about to get on the chopper that would carry us to safety.
“Last I checked, I don’t have to ask you for permission to take time off.”
“Not me who’s the issue but Maurizio. He’s been looking for you. He’s furious you took the girl away from her computer.”
We fell in step next to each other. “I’ll think of something.”
Santino stopped me in front of Maurizio’s closed office door. “I hope she’s worth it.”
I didn’t need to think about my answer. “She is.”
Shaking his head, he left me to deal with the boss myself. Not even he would voluntarily walk into an office that held a furious Maurizio.
I knocked and was told to enter. What I found was worse than I thought. Maurizio wasn’t only angry, but he also had company.
He spread out his arms, nearly dropping the woman sitting on his lap. “Since you decided to take a trip, we started the party without you.”
Bill, his biggest contractor—as he liked to call his gun and drug runners—was sitting on the couch off to the side, a woman dressed in only a thong giving him a lap dance. Two of his men were there as well, watching the show with hungry eyes.
Maurizio pointed to a chair off to the side. “Sit down.”
I knew this wasn’t the time to disobey him, no matter how much I wanted to leave. But hopefully they’d all be drunk and coked out in a few hours, and I could slip out. Maurizio was famous for his benders that lasted days.
They suited me just fine, because it meant I had more freedom to move around without being questioned. He also didn’t check the camera feeds very often, and I had time to erase whatever I didn’t want him to see. Might be a good time to sort out the mess I’d made when I didn’t show for the last job I was supposed to do for the CIA.
As soon as I took a seat, Maurizio slapped the ass of the woman doing coke on his desk. “Take care of him. He looks awfully tense.” He turned to me, his eyes glassy. “The little girl no longer doing it for you? After you went through all that trouble pulling her out of the ocean?”
I gritted my teeth to stop myself from taking his bait. He loved to goad me. “I have no complaints.”
The woman sat down on my lap, and I clenched my fists. Her perfume was overpowering, and her nose had white powder stuck to it. But pushing her off would mean stirring up Maurizio, and I needed him calm so I could get out of this.
I still had Everleigh’s strawberry and vanilla scent in my nose, the ghost of her light touch on my arm. I was in a constant state of arousal around her, and it didn’t take much to get me excited after being near her.
The woman rubbed her ass against my dick; the traitor came to life almost immediately.
I hated myself for my reaction but could do nothing about it.
Maurizio waved to another girl standing in the corner, wearing a short maid’s uniform. She held a bottle of Glenlivet, ready to fill everyone’s glass as soon as they got low. “Get him a drink.”
