Restrain (Siren Book 3) (4 page)

Her rhythm falters, and she cocks her head. I can't make out what her expression means. Under my palm, her ribs heave. I cup her breast, unsure what I said to upset her. “Every laugh, every movement, I feel you. Like you were a part of me all along. Two pieces of the same whole, meant to fit together. We were
meant
for each other.”

She echoes me quietly. “We were
meant
for each other.” The words sound less joyous coming from her.

So much about her I don't understand. Can't. Maybe won't. But she's
mine
.

Though I wouldn't have thought it possible, even
more
blood rushes to my dick. And then it's
her
turn to read my thoughts. She smiles, and begins moving slowly, the stuff of dreams.

Maybe I'm thinking of this wrong.

I'm hers
.

Chapter
Eight

Milla

My deception
hurts
. It's working well, on some level, but even without Calder inside me, I'm plum
fucked
.

That he cares is plain; if I disbelieved him, I might insulate my own feelings. But I can't. Sincerity's etched in every desperate touch, every loving word.

I'm in over my head, and it's too late to back out.

So I deflect. I give him my body, as a consolation prize for when he realizes that he doesn't want my soul.

Damnit, Calder
.

He feels like he belongs beneath me.

“We were
meant
for each other.”

We were meant to be the death of each other.

The scabs on my injured leg have gotten scraped off, but the thought of changing positions isn't worth considering. The soreness and pain grounds me. Makes me feel like on some level, what's on the outside reflects what's inside. My wounds are my truth. No one can say he didn't see it.

But he notices anyways, and rolls me beneath him, nearly hitting my head on the floor. Still, the motion costs him, too. He winces, probably still bothered by a cracked rib he sustained several weeks back, not long before my “close call”.

My legs lock around him with no conscious direction, my body demanding he stay inside me,
always
stay inside me, never leave me.

Shows what my body knows, doesn't it?

He fucks me slowly, drawing out each delicious thrust until my nerves are screaming at a fever pitch, begging for every movement, every thrust, every flex.

He fucks me like he needs me—as though I needed that to let me know that he
does
.

Once upon a time, when he fucked me I shut my eyes and pretended he was someone else, so that no revulsion would show in my face. Now, I'm an addict, begging for my next fix. And I've never felt him as I come. I've never let myself. I'm not about to break that rule now.

It's not him—it's just the sense of being cared for so deeply. It warms me, rattling the chains I wrapped around my heart.
It's not him
. Maybe I should just be happy knowing I'm capable of this. That someone thinks I'm worth it.

It's not him
.

Still, I can't help but drink in everything, memorizing it while I have it. Even if I hate its source.

He moans, clearly not far off, but not willing to cross that finish line without me. And I can't take the intensity of it, can't take what I see in his eyes. Yet I can't look away.

“Calder,
please
,” I whisper, knowing how much he loves my sweet nothings. “I want to feel you come. I want you to fill me—”

I don't make it any further than that before his moan overtakes me, and he spills his seed inside me. He almost falls to his back, gasping, riding through his own afterglow. “You weren't there with me,” he says, then his eyes darken with sympathy. “The leg bothering you?”

“A bit.”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't've let you get on top.”

I grin, holding my tears in. “Like you could've stopped me.”

He chuckles, and I rest my cheek on his chest, both of us emotionally spent and ready for sleep.

I lie awake for hours, his touch still ghosting across my skin, my body still shaking with need.

I'm not his.

Chapter
Nine

Calder

For the first time in entirely too long, the nightmares don't come hot on sleep's heels. I sleep soundly. Milla's smell envelopes me, weaving a steadily comforting thread through my dreams, and when I open my eyes in the morning, her face is the first thing I see, though she's still asleep, her hair falling around us in a halo.

She's pure, all woman, musky and sweet. Not even the reek of the tank's corpses reminding me where she's been. Sometimes I still imagine I can smell them in my hair, even improvised sponge baths unable to make a dent in the smell. I'm sure it's in my head; if it isn't, she hasn't complained, and doesn't seem bothered. No nightmares creasing her delicate brow.

As she stirs, I kiss her forehead, and trace my thumb along a defined cheekbone. She smiles up at me, and shuts her eyes, lazily. We might as well be waking up before church on a Sunday, and deciding to go back to sleep, the kids' Sunday School be damned. It's something so normal it sends a pang through me, to have gone without it for so long.

Somehow, she's become the fulcrum for my ability to imagine a life, a future some ways away from now where we aren't wiping rust flakes off our skin and living in a cage. Maybe she's right; maybe it's not healthy.

But I'll fight to the death for its potential.

*              *              *

As the weeks go on, Milla's fearless, shimmying along pipes thirty feet off the ground to undo the ties on the cooler, dropping it down to me. She seems to take any kind of hesitation on my part or Allen's as a personal affront, shooting us
I'll do it myself
looks, before moving to do whatever the task at hand was.

Allen's gotten some kind of a spark, too, enlisting me in impromptu exercise sessions, doing pullups on everything that looks like it'll hold our weight. Even our captor seems to be in a good mood, as the sandwiches in our meals are interspersed with other picnic treats, like crackers and, on one occasion, cans of soda.

Milla avoids Allen like the plague, wandering off on her own whenever possible. I can understand it; she's plainly been changed by her ordeal, and I can imagine that me in her space doesn't help, since I know that our connection never was everything to her that it's become to me. She's quieter, the old anger tamped down and replaced with something fragile and passive.

I don't know that I'd call what we have a romance, but with every day trickling by, it warms me clear through, a little hotter each time. It gives me hope, and that's
everything
. I've learned not to talk about what we have; each time, it sparks some kind of anxiety I don't understand in her. Maybe it's just self-consciousness at not being able to reciprocate any words of affection. I can't imagine her being the type to write a love letter.

I don't think I'll ever understand her, but each day here is another chance to discover the secrets in her eyes.

I want to taste her cunt, want to feel her wrapped around me. I want to drown myself in her. But I can't quite convince myself to take what she's offered, knowing her heart's not in it. I want to see a fire in her eyes when I claim her body.

“What's wrong?” I can't resist asking when I notice a particularly sour look on her face, one day.

“Nothing. It's just—what's he waiting for? Why haven't we found somewhere to go? Seems like there's been a door opening eventually, every time. We're being led somewhere, only now he wants us
here
. That scares me.”

I put my palms on her back, and begin rubbing the tension out of her shoulders. “It's a good question. But I don't know that worrying about it will help. We'll find out when we find out. In the meantime, we seek, and we prepare. Your leg's looking a lot better, but you're still limping. Every day that the status quo stays is another day you have to heal.”

She stares at me, her eyes guarded. “You're a good leader, when you want to be.” Her lips tighten in a forced smile, and I don't quite get her sadness.

“Um, thanks. I like having a purpose. Truthfully, I never really felt like that, before. I was following instructions toward something that I couldn't see the endgame for. That was Mom and George's job.”

She looks away, and there's a hitch to her breathing I don't like. I change the topic. “So what was your family like? What're you going back to?”

It backfires, as her expression falls further. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. Surely it's not that bad. People are happiest to reconcile after near-death experiences. Once we're out of here, you're
golden
.”

She shakes her head. “No, there's no one. My sister died when I was a kid, my dad several years after, and my mom abandoned me when I was seventeen. I don't even know if she's still alive, after all these years.”

I stroke her hair, and she leans her head into my hand. “I'm sorry, Mil. My dad died when I was young, too. It's awful trying to comprehend something like that. The rest, I don't even know where to start.”

She shrugs, shaking her head to clear the memories. “It's water under the bridge.”

“Okay. So taking my foot out of my mouth, what's the first thing you'd like to do when we're free?”

She shoots me a peevish glance, her inner pessimist annoyed at humoring me. “Cook something, I don't care what, and eat it while it's hot.”

That startles the hell out of me, and I laugh. “Really? That's it?”

She bites her lip, wiping the emotion out of her face. “Yeah. If I get out of here, it's back to work, hoping the bank hasn't repossessed my house or something. And the hours they run us at the shipyards, warm food that
hasn't
been reheated is a
huge
treat. You work twelve hours, come home, do a load of laundry or get your lunch ready for the next day, and go right to sleep to be up for the next shift. The shifts rotate all the time, and it's not uncommon to have a turnaround that means you have less than eight hours to rest and handle the rest of your life.”

It's alien that such a tiny thing has such a disproportionate impact on her. But I'm starting to see why she'd long for something warm and fresh. And also why she never wanted to talk about her work with me. “So what'd you like to eat? I'll help you cook it.”

She smiles wistfully. “Maybe macaroni? Or a cake?”

“If you keep talking like that, I'm gonna miss ice cream.”

She ducks her head, and glances at me from under her lashes. “So what's gonna be your big hurrah?”

I have to take a moment to think it through. “For enjoyment, probably getting drunk, taking a woman dancing...” I wink. “But really, I want to get back to work. I want to look at the details I couldn't before, and catch these mistakes. I want to find out what they're doing, and why, and make reparations to the people they ripped off.”

She blinks, not expecting that answer. “What?”

“The checks I signed that never made it to the people who were counting on them. I want to find out where the money went. And I don't care if it bankrupts me, I want to make it right for the people who deserved those checks.”

A slow smile stretches her lips. It's genuine, and contagious, and I'm not sure what she's smiling about. “That's a beautiful idea.”

“Now I just have to make it happen.”

The smile is gone, immediately. “You do that.” To console me about her abrupt mood shift, she stands on tiptoe to kiss me, her lips soft and hungry. It chases all thoughts of pressing the conversation further from my head.

*              *              *

As I lay next to her, petting her hair and stroking her arms every time she stirs, contentment swells in me. I never could have imagined something so intense coming from this. Every second with her feels right; even our continued inability to escape is a minor inconvenience.

She rolls away from me, the slope of her ass pressing against my rapidly hardening cock, and there's a plastic click, and the vibration of impact on the bottom of the pipe. Careful not to disturb her, I sit up, to see what just happened.

After a moment, I spot a little piece of plastic three quarters of the way from her pocket, resting on the pipe, and curiously, tug it the rest of the way out. It's a little more difficult leaning out to hold it up to the light without disturbing her.

A blade unfolds from the handle, the whole thing
obviously
well kept and frequently handled, from the prints on the handle. Why on earth would Milla be hiding a knife?

I'm being stupid. She's not hiding it; the subject just never came up. And Denise found a flashlight, or someone left it with her. It's another piece of the puzzle, but not one that automatically incriminates Milla. Who knows
what
she had to do with that knife when she was on her own?

Still, I glance at her face, a hint of light cutting across it and highlighting its smooth angles. Could she know something? Could she be hiding something? I want to trust her. She's been here since nearly the beginning of this, and she
can't
have suffered as she has, if she knows something that could save us.

The coolness of the blade contrasts with the emotions coursing through me, and the indecision. Do I put it back in her pocket and hope she doesn't notice? Do I keep it, in case it comes in handy when we aren't together? Do I ask her about it in the morning, ask her to tell me where it came from? Can I trust whatever she says if I do?

The questions keep me up for hours, and when she starts stirring, I make my decision in that moment of haste. I shove the knife in my pocket, and kiss her the rest of the way awake. If it's nothing sinister, she'll just ask if I've seen it, and explain where she found it. And if she won't, it means she doesn't want me to know she had it.

I don't want to play this sort of mind game, but I don't see any other choice.