H
arley slammed
the door behind her and locked it, sobbing with relief as she saw that the bathroom became a laundry room. And on the other side of the stackable laundry machine was a door leading outside.
As she dashed through the small space, she grabbed the hand towel hanging near the sink and wrapped it around her bloody wrist. The wound was definitely starting to sting, but she was so high on adrenaline she barely felt it.
Breathing hard from a combination of terror and going too long without food or much water, she shoved through the door, emerging into another sunny day in paradise. It seemed wrong for the sun to be shining on a day like this, but Mother Nature had proven that she didn’t give any more of a damn about human drama than humans gave about her polar ice caps.
Harley froze, taking in her surroundings as her eyes adjusted to the bright light. She was in the middle of a clearing, near several other cottages, on the other side of which lay thick rainforest, much denser than anything on Ko Tao. She was definitely on a different island, but she didn’t have time to wonder which one.
She had to move, hide!
She broke for the forest, sprinting for all she was worth, refusing to look back over her shoulder, even when she heard Clay shout again and the thud of his footfalls following her across the grass. She clenched her jaw and pumped her arms harder at her sides, silently thanking Dom for forcing her into the best shape of her life. If she ever saw him again, she was going to kiss him senseless, and vow never to skip abs and legs again.
And she was going to see him again. Him and Jasper.
She hit the cool shade of the forest and took a hard left, veering away from the dirt trail leading to the right. The trees were closer together and it was harder going with sticks and rocks digging into the bottoms of her bare feet, but it would be harder for Clay to follow her this way. If she stayed on open ground, he would catch her sooner or later. She was barefoot, weak, and had much shorter legs.
But if she could get to one of the thicker parts of the forest—maybe find a bamboo grove or a swampy area with water to sink beneath—she might be able to lay low long enough for Clay to lose her trail.
“Stop, Harley,” he shouted, sounding close but not dangerously so, not yet. “The longer you run, the worse it’s going to be for you when I catch you.”
Worse than nearly choking me to death?
But she didn’t speak; she couldn’t afford to waste her breath.
She ran faster, weaving around trees as she followed the gentle slope of the hill down into a stiller place, where the air was thick and humid and the sea breeze was a distant memory. Sweat dripped down her forehead to sting into her eyes; she blinked it away and pushed harder. Clay was losing ground. His footfalls were farther away now and a hiding place was in sight.
At the base of the hill was a vast patch of thick, prickly-looking bushes interspersed with bright green ferns that stretched all the way to a moss-covered bluff on the far side of the small valley. If she could get deep enough into the press of growth and lie still, it would be nearly impossible for Clay to find her.
She reached the edge of the low-growing shrubs and dove to the ground, scrambling forward on her hands and knees beneath the thick foliage. Her hands sank into the moist soil and the sharp edges of roots sticking up through the earth tore the skin on her knees, but she kept crawling as fast as she could, putting ground between her and Clay. She heard him curse, followed by the sound of brush behind violently swatted aside, and dared to hope that her plan was going to work.
Without a machete, there was no way Clay would be able to walk through the dense growth and he was so large it would be a tight fit for him low to the ground. Harley was half his size and as the brush thickened, she was forced onto her forearms in order to squeeze between the increasingly close trunks of the bushes. If she were doing anything but running for her life, she would be fighting a panic attack.
She hated tight spaces. She and Hannah both suffered from claustrophobia. Hannah blamed hers on the time Harley had accidentally locked her in their secret attic hideout when they were kids. Harley blamed her own on the night she’d spent inside her ex-boyfriend’s trunk in high school.
She had broken up with Kerry—casually mentioning that she’d already invited her new man to her pool party next weekend and that Kerry should consider himself uninvited. He responded by throwing her in his trunk, slamming it closed, and shouting that he was going to drive the car into a lake and watch her drown.
She spent the next five hours sweating and shaking with fear as he drove around the back roads, stopping often enough that she was in a constant state of terror, certain the car was about to roll into the water. Finally, just after dawn, he let her out on the front lawn of their private prep school, about thirty minutes after she’d lost control of her bladder. He took pictures of her mascara-streaked face and the piss stains on the front of her jeans and then drove off with her purse in his backseat.
She walked the ten miles home, flipping off the one sweet little old lady who stopped to ask if she was okay. She didn’t want anyone to see her like that and asking for help would have been admitting that she needed it. Instead, she stewed the entire way home, plotting the perfect revenge for Kerry—which she pulled off without a hitch, without regret, and without getting caught, just the way her father had taught her.
Back then, there was nothing she’d hated more than being vulnerable. To be vulnerable was to be like her mother, a woman who had let a man destroy her without even putting up a fight.
But right now, she would welcome help with open arms. She would even welcome her father or Marlowe waiting at the edge of the forest with a gun. Sure, they were devils, but they were the devils she knew.
She didn’t know Clay, not anymore, and that scared her as much as anything else. If he caught her again, she had no idea how to make him dance to her tune. Here there was only Clay’s music and her blood flowing out to coat the dance floor.
Stifling a whimper as a root poked at her wound through the towel, she wriggled into a shadowed place between four larger bushes and curled into a tight ball. She tucked her chin to her chest and fought to slow her breath, not wanting to give Clay any clue where she was hiding. Her ears strained and after a moment she heard a soft grunt and another rustle of leaves from far to her left. It didn’t sound like he’d made it far through the bushes and she couldn’t see any sign of his feet.
She bit her lip as she turned to gauge how far it was to the bluff on the other side of the brush. Would it be better to keep moving and put even more distance between her and Clay? Surely she could find another place to hide—the forest was ridiculously dense—and maybe that place wouldn’t have beetles the size of her hand crawling over her bare legs and mosquitoes swarming around her bloodied knees.
And even more importantly, Clay would have no idea where to start looking for her.
Trusting her gut, she rolled back over and belly crawled slowly through the last of the dense bushes, trying not to make a sound. After only a few minutes, the small trunks began to grow farther apart again as the shrubs thinned near the edge of the grove. She came back onto her hands and knees, but kept her slower pace, not wanting Clay to see her when she emerged.
She was nearly to the wide, leaf-scattered stones at the base of the cliff, where enough sun filtered through the leaves that she was grateful that her hair was no longer sunlight-catching blond, when footfalls sounded from her left. She jerked her head to the side to see Clay sprinting straight for her.
He’d gone around the bushes, not through!
With a strangled cry, Harley lurched to her feet and turned to run only to skid to a stop when something long and dark sprung up from the ground in front of her.
She flinched then froze, eyes going wide as an ominous hissing filled the air.
T
he snake was a king cobra
, at least twelve feet long, reared up on its belly with its hooded head even with Harley’s chest. Thankfully, she’d had the sense to stop running, but the animal clearly still felt threatened. It could strike at any second and Harley wouldn’t have time to blink, let alone dodge the attack, before the snake’s fangs were in her.
“That’s a king cobra,” he said in a soft, soothing voice. “One of the most venomous snakes in the world.”
“I know,” she whispered, summoning another long, witch’s hiss from the creature.
“Don’t talk,” he warned gently. “Just listen. I’m going to come up very slowly behind you. Don’t turn to look at me and don’t make any sudden movements until I tell you to.”
Keeping an eye on the snake, Clay slowly stripped off his white tee shirt and clenched it lightly in his hand. He eased a foot closer and then another, his steps silent on the warm stones where the cobra had been sunning itself. “Now in just a second, I’m going to throw my shirt on the ground just ahead of you to your left. As soon as you see it in your peripheral vision, turn and run toward me as fast as you can. I’ll get out of your way and follow behind you. The snake should attack the shirt and give us enough time to get away before it can recover for a second strike.”
“And if it doesn’t?” she said, so softly he could barely hear her.
“It will,” he said with more confidence than he felt. He’d read up on the wildlife of the island while he was preparing the facility for his captive, but until now, surviving an encounter with a king cobra had been purely theoretical knowledge. “Just don’t hesitate. Not even for a second. I know you may believe otherwise right now, but I don’t want you dead.”
Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t speak or give any other sign as to whether or not she believed him.
Clay inched closer, his gut telling him he should be prepared just in case Harley decided not to follow directions. Not following directions was one of her strong suits, and one of the things he’d loved about her once upon a time.
But this wasn’t a locked gate at a private beach; this was life and death. King cobras dispensed an insane amount of venom into the bloodstream, the quantity ensuring most people who were bitten died within minutes, long before they could reach medical help.
There was antivenin in the infirmary back at the installation, but it would take at least ten minutes to get there. They would never make it in time.
If Harley didn’t do exactly as he said, chances were she would die.
It wasn’t until right now, seeing her facing down a snake longer than the both of them put together that he realized he didn’t want her to die. He wanted his son and he wanted to never have to see this woman, who made him so aware of his own capacity for ugliness and evil, ever again, but he didn’t want her dead.
“On three, Harley,” he said, slowly drawing back his arm. “Just do exactly as I said and you’re going to be fine. One.” He stepped a little closer. “Two.” His entire arm tensed, ready to throw the shirt far enough to the left that the snake wouldn’t be able to shift directions easily. “Three!”
Everything happened at once—he threw the shirt, the snake leapt into the air, its powerful body flying at the scrap of cotton with fangs bared, and Harley made a break for the other side of the cliff, running in the opposite direction from where she’d been told to run.
But Clay was ready for her. She barely made it two steps before he grabbed her around the waist, hauling her against him as he turned and ran.
It was an awkward position—Harley dangling from one arm as he pumped hard with the other—but the knowledge of how fast cobras could move lent him the adrenaline rush to make it work. He kept running, ignoring Harley’s grunted shout to be put down and the uncomfortable strain on his muscles until he was on the other side of the grove of thorn bushes. Only then did he glance back, his grip on Harley relaxing as he saw the cobra fleeing in the opposite direction, up into the mossy stones of the cliff.
“No you don’t,” he said as Harley squirmed free and made a break for the top of the ridge. He caught up with her easily, grabbing her hips and spinning her around before bending low enough to flip her over his shoulder. “No more running away.”
“Put me down,” she panted, pummeling his lower back with her fists.
“Not a chance, now behave yourself,” he said, swatting her bottom hard enough to make her flinch and cry out. “If you bruise my kidneys on the way back, I’ll take it out on your ass later.”
She stiffened but stopped hitting him and a few moments passed in silence as he circled the brush and started back toward the trail, doing his best not to think about Harley bent over his knees with her bare ass in the air. He had never been into that sort of thing, but he liked the idea of reddening Harley’s ass as punishment for running away from him.
He could imagine the way her muscles would lock tight from a combination of shame and discomfort. He could almost see the red welts his hand would leave behind and hear the way she would cry out as he took her punishment further, sliding his fingers between her thighs, playing with her until she was wet and squirming and hating herself for responding to his touch.
“You can put me down,” Harley said, interrupting his fantasy. But it was too late. His cock was already hard, trapped at an uncomfortable angle by his boxer briefs. “I can walk. I won’t try to run away again.”
“How dumb do you think I am?” he asked, tightening his grip on the back of her legs.
“I don’t think you’re dumb,” she said. “Honestly, I’m too tired to run anymore. I haven’t had any food since lunch yesterday and I—”
“Speaking of dumb,” he interrupted, quickening his pace, hoping physical exertion would help banish the carnal hunger pumping through his veins. “I can’t believe you would rather take your chances with a king cobra than do what I told you to do.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised,” she said in a weary voice. “You already proved that you might kill me. The cobra’s intentions were still up in the air.”
“If I hadn’t grabbed you, you would be dead right now,” he said, but her words sent a fresh burst of self-hatred rushing through him.
He had lost control and then lost his focus, forgetting that leaving someone like Harley tied to a bed wasn’t nearly enough to ensure she would stay put. He had to pull his shit together and treat her the way he would treat any dangerous suspect during an interrogation. She wasn’t a pretty, helpless, petite woman; she was a sociopath, and he’d been a fool to forget it, even for an hour.
Harley’s breath rushed out in a sound that was almost a laugh. “So you want me to thank you? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” he said as he stepped back onto the trail and the cottages came into sight. “I know you’re incapable of gratitude. Or any other normal human emotion.”
“Fuck you,” she growled, her fist slamming into his ass. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know me anymore!”
Rage rushing through him, Clay flipped her back onto her feet, grabbing her around the upper arms and leaning down to whisper his next words into her flushed face. “And you don’t know me, and don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t,” she said, eyes glittering as she held his gaze. “I’ve got plenty of bruises to remember the new you by.”
“You can always have more,” he snapped.
Her lips stretched in a mean smile. “Lovely. That’s just what Jasper needs, a father in his life to teach him how to abuse women.”
“You’re not a woman, you’re a criminal.”
“So are you!” she shouted, standing up straighter, her arm muscles flexing beneath his hands. “You kidnapped me and nearly strangled me to death.”
“Keep talking,” he said through gritted teeth, fighting the insane urge to shove his tongue between her lips and silence her with a kiss, “and I’ll rethink the pain reliever I was going to give you.”
“Fuck your pain reliever. And fuck you.” Her breath rushed out as her gaze flicked from his eyes to his lips and back again.
That hint of awareness was all it took to send him over the edge.
Fisting his hand in her hair, he crushed his mouth to hers, making a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl as she opened for him and her tongue darted out to wage war with his own. Their tongues writhed against each other, fighting for supremacy, as their lips pressed so tight together he could feel her teeth bruising his lips as they fell to the grass. He rolled on top of her, grinding his erection between her legs as she bucked into him, both of them making animalistic sounds of rage and lust that drove him even wilder.
Her fingernails clawed into his bare skin, leaving scratch marks behind as he gripped her breast through her shirt and squeezed hard enough to make her gasp into his mouth.
“No, fuck you,” he mumbled before pulling her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down, summoning a pained, pleasured sound from low in her throat as he released it. “I’m going to fuck you, you evil bitch. And you’re going to come on my cock knowing you spread your legs for the man who is going to ruin your life.”