Wicked and Enslaved (Trees & Laila, page 1
part #1 of Wicked Lovers: Soldiers for Hire Series
Contents
Wicked as Seduction
About Wicked as Seduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Wicked and Forever
About Wicked and Forever
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Wicked as Secrets
Wicked Lovers: Soldiers for Hire
Other Books by Shayla Black
About Shayla Black
WICKED AND ENSLAVED
Wicked Lovers: Soldiers for Hire
Written by Shayla Black
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Includes:
WICKED AS SEDUCTION © 2022 by Shelley Bradley LLC
WICKED AND FOREVER © 2022 by Shelley Bradley LLC
This book is an original publication by Shayla Black.
Copyright 2022 Shelley Bradley LLC
Cover Design by: Rachel Connolly
Edited by: Amy Knupp of Blue Otter
Proofread by: Fedora Chen
ISBN: 978-1-958075-07-4
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means—except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews—without express written permission.
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away, as it is illegal and an infringement on the copyright of this work.
* * *
All rights reserved.
ABOUT WICKED AS SEDUCTION
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He’ll protect her…even if he has to take her captive to save her.
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Tech wiz and former elite soldier Forest “Trees” Scott had one mission: Rescue the woman being hunted by a vicious cartel and get her to safety. It should have been simple…but the minute he sees the wary beauty with haunted eyes, his desire for her complicates everything. So does her stubborn refusal to trust him. When Trees is forced to abduct her, she vows to hate him—even as he finds himself falling in love…
* * *
For six years, Laila Torres has known nothing but brutality at the hands of men, so when the massive stranger with the forbidding mien kidnaps her, she’s frightened—and furious. But the giant’s protective care shocks her. With every word, he proves steadfast. With every forbidden touch, he awakens the woman in her. Soon, she’s facing the terrifying realization that he’s also dangerously close to capturing her heart.
* * *
But their ruthless enemies are closing in, threatening everything Laila holds dear. When she’s forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice, will she trust Trees and their love to save her?
Chapter One
January 25, 11 p.m.
Orlando
“Stop worrying and enjoy yourself. Everything here is fine,” Laila Torres said over the phone to her sister as she leaned over her sleeping nephew’s crib to pat his rising-and-falling back. “Jorge fussed when I first set him down, but after a quick bedtime story and a kiss from his tía, he drifted off. How is the concert?”
“It is good. The next band will start in a few minutes, but maybe I should come home now?”
“No, you should not.”
“Are you sure? I feel guilty, leaving you to babysit…”
“Why? I love to. Jorge is a joy. And mamás deserve a little time away for fun.” Valeria had been single parenting since the boy’s birth, and they had relocated to Florida three months ago with no sign of their dangerous past catching up to them. Surely, it was time to live. “Do not worry about me. Now that he is asleep, I will find something on TV and relax.”
Valeria sighed. “Is the house locked? Every door? Every window? Is the alarm set?”
Laila shared her sister’s anxiety. Despite the fact Valeria no longer had to worry about her late husband, Emilo, finding their location and trying to kill her for the sin of leaving him, the brutal thugs who had helped him run the vicious Tierra Caliente cartel were very much alive—and willing to carry out their boss’s final wish. They were hardly the only concern. Rumor was that, following Emilo’s surgical slaughter two weeks ago, his father, Geraldo, had decided Jorge must be brought back and raised to inherit the family narcotics empire.
If that was true and Geraldo succeeded, her beloved nephew would be taught to be all the things they’d run from—a drug lord. A killer. A rapist. She and Valeria would be unable to stop them from warping the little boy because they would be dead.
Laila preferred that fate for herself over the six dark years she’d spent in Emilo’s lavish prison, but Jorge deserved a future that wasn’t steeped in brutality and crime. “I have checked everything twice. All is well.”
A squeak from the other side of the house rent the quiet. Laila froze. Since she, her sister, and Jorge had been forced to relocate here, she had catalogued every creak and groan the house made.
She had never heard this sound before.
The scrape of something—metal on glass?—followed.
Her heart banged with trepidation.
“Thank you,” Valeria said. “You know I worry—”
“Shh. I hear something,” she whispered. “I will call you back.”
Laila didn’t wait for her sister’s reply before severing their connection and yanking the nightlight from the wall in Jorge’s room, just in case. Darkness encroached, the monster she’d been living with for years. It ratcheted up her fear, clawing at her throat. Her heart thudded. Her palms turned sweaty. But for her nephew—for survival—she forced herself to tiptoe through the shadows and poke her head into the hallway.
When she listened again for the sound, she heard something far worse.
“You are certain they’re here?” whispered one man from the living room, his accent like someone from her homeland.
They had been discovered again?
Laila sucked in a gasp. Fear seared her veins. Why was this happening? How had they found her family again? She had to get her nephew out of here.
“Of course they are,” snapped a second man.
Victor Ramos. She would know his cruel voice anywhere. She’d heard it each of the countless times he’d growled taunts in her ear while pinning her under him and violating her.
Laila’s fear turned to terror.
Why wouldn’t Victor let her go?
Later. First, she had to get Jorge to safety. She wished she had kept the gun she wasn’t supposed to have closer, rather than in her bedroom on the far side of the house, away from her curious, very mobile nephew. She would have to do without it and devise a plan in seconds or—
She couldn’t think about the “or.”
“What if the boy cries?” the first man asked.
“Shut him up until you secure him in the van. But do not harm him.”
“And the women?”
“Expendable,” Victor said. “Though I would like a last moment or two with Laila.”
“You want to fuck her again,” the first man said with a chuckle.
“Can you blame me? Her pussy is as sweet now as it was at fourteen.”
Rage and shame burned, boiling into a familiar hate. Somehow, someway, Laila would make that man pay for everything he’d done.
She would forever be indebted to EM Security’s sniper, Pierce Walker, for ending Emilo. In fact, she was grateful the team had rescued her from her brother-in-law’s compound in Mexico last September. She’d hoped that was the beginning of a new life, especially after she had cooperated with the feds. Since then, the US government had seemingly done nothing to stop her late brother-in-law’s narcotics operation. If they had, Victor Ramos wouldn’t be creeping through her house now.
EM Security was seemingly no better. They had rescued Valeria nearly two years ago as part of another hostage extraction. Afterward, her sister had hired the private security team to get her into hiding. It had worked…for a while. But in the last four months, their location had fallen into enemy hands twice.
Who else could be to blame except them?
She was done trusting any self-serving alphabet-lettered organization. If she had to take down the rest of Emilo’s nefarious cartel by herself for her family and her future, she would.
“I wouldn’t know. You and Hector always hoarded her.” The first man sounded bitter.
“If you help me find and subdue her, perhaps I will share.” Before he killed her. That’s what Victor meant. “Go search the west side of the house. I will look east.”
The place wasn’t large. It wouldn’t take long. Time was ticking.
Laila eased Jorge’s door shut and dialed emergency services while gathering some necessities and shoving them into Jorge’s diaper bag. If she lived long enough for the police to arrive, hopefully they wouldn’t question her immigration status.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Quickly, she whispered her dilemma to the dispatcher as she eased the bedroom window open. The burglar alarm didn’t blare. Victor had somehow bypassed it.
She winced at the squeak of the pane sliding up the track. Hopefully, the indiscriminate racket of Victor’s cohort searching the spare bedroom beside Jorge’s masked the sound. But she couldn’t get careless. She probably had under a minute before he burst into the room.
“I must hang up,” she told the dispatcher. She needed both hands to get out of here alive.
“Help is on the way. Stay on the line—”
Laila ended the call.
As she tucked her phone into the back pocket of her shorts, a stranger burst into the room, a hulk of dark clothes and a flash of white teeth. Fresh fear razed her veins…but fury won out. She was done being a victim, nor would she let Jorge become like them.
“There you are,” he said loudly enough to reveal he wasn’t Victor but softly enough that her longtime tormentor wouldn’t hear. Then he shut the door. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Laila knew why, and she’d be damned before she let him force himself into her body.
She stood in front of Jorge’s crib protectively. “Go away.”
“Not possible. But I can make your death painless”—he dragged a fingertip down her bare arm—“with the right persuasion. Why don’t you start by getting on your knees?”
Laila assessed her options. They were few and pitiful. He had her cornered. “No.”
With a thunderous scowl, he seized her arm. His pupils dilated as if violence excited him. “So you like it rough? You want it to hurt?”
He didn’t simply mean her murder.
She shuddered. “I do not want it at all.”
“Then play nice.” He reached for his zipper. “If you’re extra good to me, maybe I can be persuaded to spare you.”
“Cabrón,” she snarled, fighting every instinct to retreat, but Jorge was the son she would never have. Leaving him unprotected wasn’t an option.
Her assailant’s eyes narrowed with violence and the promise of pain before he groped his way down her body and jerked her against the hard ridge of his penis. Savagely, he cupped her backside, snarling when he found her phone.
He tore it from her pocket. “Who did you last call?”
Laila spit in his face.
He wiped his cheek dry with his sleeve and shoved her against the wall with a glare that promised agony. She stumbled back into Jorge’s diaper pail, its cold metal grazing her leg.
“Who?” He shook her. “The police?”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to answer.
“Bitch.” The thug hurled her phone to the hardwood floor, shattering it beyond use. “You won’t be calling anyone else.”
Laila tried not to panic. Her link with the outside world was gone, but did it really matter? No one had ever fought for her. As always, she would fight for herself—and Jorge.
She pushed free and bent to the diaper pail, lifting it between them by its sleek chrome sides.
The criminal sent her an amused stare. “That won’t shield you from me.”
He was right; it wouldn’t.
Instead, Laila swung it at his head.
The metal bin clocked him in the temple with a satisfying thud. He wobbled before crumpling to the floor, his phone clattering from his pocket and skittering to her feet.
She’d done it. No, she wouldn’t feel remorse for hurting another human being. He would have raped and killed her if she hadn’t fought back.
Now she had to get out before Victor finished on the other side of the house or got suspicious. The police were likely minutes away—if they were coming at all. In Mexico, Emilo and his goons had paid them all to look the other way. For all she knew, these assholes had already infected local law enforcement, too.
With trembling hands, Laila scooped up the stranger’s phone, flashing the device across his face to unlock it. Quickly, she changed the passcode as nerves made each breath roar in her ears. She had to call her sister. Valeria must be frantic. But Laila couldn’t let her sister run home—and straight into danger.
For now, she shoved the phone in her pocket, hoisted Jorge’s diaper bag, along with some clean clothes she’d been folding before Valeria’s call, onto her shoulder, and lifted her sleeping nephew from his crib. Thankfully, he didn’t stir. Then she climbed the recliner in the corner and jumped out into the inky night.
Before she could shut the window behind her, the bedroom door crashed open. Her gaze connected with a familiar black stare, shooting fury and retribution.
Victor.
Clutching Jorge protectively, Laila ran.
Since arriving here after the breach of their safe house in St. Louis, she’d done one important thing to prepare for an emergency: learned the neighborhood and planned escape routes. She knew places to hide where Victor hopefully wouldn’t find her.
As she dashed across the yard, her heart thudded painfully when he scrambled out the window in pursuit. Laila launched herself behind a pair of palms and through some overgrown oleanders. She crouched to hide, groping in the dark until she encountered the fence separating their house from the place next door.
Her first week here, she had discovered a gate buried behind climbing bougainvillea and clipped the fast-growing vine just enough to open it and slip free. The effort paid off now. Laila disappeared through the foliage, biting back a hiss when branches scratched her bare arms, then emerged into the neighbor’s yard. The house sat dark since the single man who lived there worked nights.
She made her way to his shed, which he seemingly didn’t lock, and breathed a short sigh of relief. Victor was undoubtedly wondering where and how she’d disappeared. It would take him a while—and a flashlight she would see coming—to figure it out.
Inside the dark, confined space, she watched through the tiny prefab structure’s window for light or movement as she soothed a groggy Jorge with one hand and pulled her assailant’s phone free with the other, quickly turning off location services. Then she rang her sister to reassure her.
No answer.
Laila tried to rationalize reasons Valeria wouldn’t answer, other than Victor’s brother, Hector, or another of Emilo’s underlings somehow finding her. She couldn’t imagine many.
Beating back panic, Laila dialed her sister again. After four rings, Valeria’s voicemail kicked in.
With her heart racing, she cut the call and started to text—until she saw a flash of light eking from the gate she had just used to escape.
No time to warn Valeria. She had to put distance between her and Victor.
Jorge fussed, grunting, a furrow forming between his half-open eyes as he worked up a wail of displeasure.
“No. No…” Frantically, she used one hand to search the pockets of the diaper bag to find her nephew’s pacifier while trying to placate him with the other.
If Victor got his hands on her, she was dead. And Valeria would never see her son again.
Anxiety choked Laila until she found the rubber nipple and worked it into Jorge’s mouth. He took to it, sucking contentedly and settling back into her arms with a slumberous sigh.
Grateful, she let herself out of the shed and stole across the neighbor’s patio through the shadows. On the far end, she let herself out the backyard on the side of the house, where she plastered herself against the fence, panting hard.
Thankfully, she didn’t see any of Victor’s other goons—yet. She needed to get out of the neighborhood, but Valeria had taken their one car to the concert. She knew none of her neighbors. The police still hadn’t arrived. And she wouldn’t get enough distance to escape Victor with a sleeping toddler in her arms.
