Authors: Summer Cooper
S
he hadn’t wanted
to cry, but once the first tear spilled down her cheek, she couldn’t seem to stop. And it was no use trying to keep the sobs quiet, either. She could muffle it to a few helpless whimpers of distress, but there were five of them in the back of this van and no one was going to miss her little gasps for air.
What looks they shared amongst themselves, Lily did not know—her face was turned down at her lap as she tried to control herself—but to her surprise, none of them told her to shut up. No one hit her. No one made snide comments. She’d been bundled into the back of the van quickly, the second-in-command’s hand clamped around her upper arm, but he let her go as soon as she was safely away from the doors. She thought she felt him looking at her, and grimaced at the thought of those eyes. Bad men shouldn’t be so attractive.
And then, minutes later in the darkness, her head jerked up.
“He knew you were coming and he went to the panic room and just
left
me!”
These were hardly people she could expect to sympathize, and she knew that, but she had no one else to say it to. To her surprise, a few of them nodded grimly, as if acknowledging that this was an entirely unacceptable thing to do. Given that they’d just kidnapped her, she didn’t know what to think of that.
The van came to an abrupt halt and she was thrown sideways into the second-in-command’s lap. He set her upright gently, hands lingering on her back, and then took her arm again when one of them opened the door. It was odd the way he moved, she thought—half as if he couldn’t bear to touch her, half as if he wanted nothing more than to do so. He did not meet her eyes while he climbed out of the van with her, and she had only a glimpse of a house on an empty street before he laid his other hand, almost gently, over her eyes and guided her inside.
They walked across hardwood floors and a few carpets, turning every once in a while, until they came to a room that smelled of old books and leather.
“You can all go.” Their leader’s voice issued, still making shivers run down her spine. Footsteps receded and the door closed, but the man holding her did not go with the rest. He guided her a little ways further, and then took his hand away, gesturing to a brown leather chair.
“Please.” As if this was a social situation. He walked over to the desk where the other one stood, poring over papers and photographs with a frown on his face.
She waited, watching them. They were muttering to one another, absorbed in whatever it was that had happened, and she didn’t think they would notice if she slipped away. She started moving slowly, slipping her feet out of her high heels and padding across the carpet, eyes fixed on them.
She was nearly at the door when they looked up and she turned to run, wrenching at the handle and finding it—of course, of
course
—locked. She jerked at the dial, but it was too late. Arms closed around her waist, and another pair of hands pried her fingers from the door handle. The second-in-command jerked her up against his body,
hard
, as their leader stood close to look down at her.
“I wouldn’t do that again.”
Awareness flared. His voice was rough and fiery, like whiskey on a cold night, and it seemed to slide over her skin like velvet, igniting desire in a flare of heat between her legs. Pressed between the two of them, she could feel the hard planes of his chest once more, see the faint light glinting off the stubble on his jaw, and she was captivated once more by those pale blue eyes—like ice, only hot enough to melt her.
She wasn’t so captivated, though, that she couldn’t feel the heat of the second-in-command behind her. One of his hands held her arms locked behind her, and the other had come to rest on her hip. It felt awkward, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Almost as if he was trying to reassure her…but she could feel every nerve ending thrumming where his hand rested.
“I…” Her voice trailed off. “What are you going to do with me?”
Their eyes met over her head and she saw the leader’s jaw clench. They stepped backwards abruptly, and she stumbled against him, her hands on his chest.
He thrust her away so fast that she might have been poison.
“Go sit down. You’re in no danger now.”
“How can you say that?” Lily demanded, and his eyes narrowed.
“Sit. Down.”
She padded over to the chair and sat, looking up at him sullenly. Somehow, the fact that this was a comfortable chair made her even less happy.
“You work for Kenneth Watts,” she said defiantly, looking up at them.
The second-in-command raised his eyebrows. “Well done.”
“Cameron…”
“Oh, come on. If she was dangerous, she’d have tried to do more than get away.” Brown eyes held blue ones until the leader shrugged, ill-tempered, and dropped into the seat behind the desk.
The second-in-command smiled as he pulled off his face mask, revealing blond hair, clean-cut features, and a wide mouth that was presently smiling. He gave a mock bow that, to Lily’s surprise, seemed almost genuine.
“I’m Cameron, as you’ll have guessed, and this is Liam.”
“You’re hit-men.”
“You’re awfully righteous for a woman who works with James Dominick,” the leader commented.
“James Dominick does not hire people to go into houses in the middle of the night and abduct innocent women!” Lily said furiously. She waited for shame to cloud their features, but saw, instead, an almost pitying look pass between the two of them. “…Does he?”
Cameron didn’t seem to want to answer. He looked away, folding his arms.
“Yes,” Liam supplied finally, with a look at Cameron that said he was going to remember not having backup in this conversation.
“Oh, my God.” She looked away, her head spinning, the world taking on some sick new shade. “Oh, God. What he’d done. The man said he knew what James had done. He kidnapped someone?” She looked back at them. It had to be a joke. They were messing with her mind. “He didn’t really kidnap someone.”
“It seems that some of his business partners were rather less than cooperative lately,” Liam said softly. “He thought he might use pressure to tip the scales.”
“Oh, my God.” It seemed like the only thing she could say. Her hand was at her mouth, and her words were muffled, but she knew they heard her. “The gold deal. It was that, wasn’t it?” The look in their eyes was sufficient answer, and Lily bent over, her face in her hands.
She felt so stupid. How had she ever thought she was changing James? She’d been exactly what everyone called her: a front, a ruse. She was the nice one, the one who asked after people’s children and brought cookies on holidays. And James was free to be the same ruthless bastard he’d ever been, using her time and her words to send emails threatening his colleagues, his rivals. For all she knew, it had been
she
who put through the wire transfer to pay for the hit-men who cemented that gold deal.
She was so stupid. She could have been more assertive, spent more time trying to check his more ruthless impulses. She thought slow and steady was the way to go, and she’d been so wrong.
A touch at her shoulder made her jump. To her surprise, it was Liam, looking deeply awkward as he tried to comfort her.
“You should get some sleep. It’s very late.”
Lily stared at him, chin trembling. She couldn’t seem to remember how to use any of her limbs, and with a sigh, he put his hands under her arms and lifted her up, easily, setting her on her feet and waiting to see if she would stay up. He was the one who opened the study door, Cameron’s hand on her back propelling her gently forward, and they led her through darkened corridors with Cameron’s low voice guiding her and his hand back over her eyes.
Liam switched on a light—too bright to her eyes, after the dim study—to show a bed with a blue coverlet, a bedside table with an old-school windup alarm clock, and heavy curtains pulled down over the window.
“Get some rest,” Liam advised. They stood awkwardly in the door, tall and well-muscled, seeming oddly uncertain of themselves. Then the door began to close.
“Wait!” She was shoeless, shivering—mostly nerves, she thought—and she didn’t want to be alone.
“Yes?” Cameron asked her finally.
“You never answered me,” she managed. “What are you going to do with me?”
Again, they exchanged that look, and again she could not decipher it.
“You’ll stay here,” Liam said simply. “No one will bother you.” His teeth were gritted on the last phrase. “You’ll get to go home when Dominick coughs up the information we need.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” She whispered.
“Good night, Miss McDermott.” The door swung closed.
“He left me there to be captured!” She pleaded. Why she was pleading with them, she did not know, but she launched herself at the door and yanked at the handle even while she heard the lock turn. “Please! He doesn’t care about me! He doesn’t care!”
There was a silence, too long, and then footsteps receded slowly down the hallway and Lily leaned her head against the door, trying not to sob with fear.
“
S
top pacing
,” Liam ordered from behind the desk.
“I
can’t.
” Cameron threw him a look and returned to his circuit of the room. “I want to go up there and…”
“Don’t think about it.”
It was good advice, but the time for it was long past. From the first moment Liam had passed the woman over, a wordless plea in his eyes, Cameron had felt desire growing, flaring out of control. She’d trembled in his arms, lips parted softly in her fear, and he could feel the curve of her spine, the delicate strength in her neck. She smelled clean, faintly like flowers. And from the look in her eyes while they held her together in the study, she didn’t have the first damned clue what they wanted of her.
It was a unique torment. They’d never
gone
for innocents. Innocents didn’t want to do what Cameron and Liam wanted. They might both be in their prime, either one of them a catch—just as long as the girl wasn’t too particular about what they did for a living—but taking both of them…wasn’t a thing most girls would do. They’d spent the last few years looking for come-hither glances and long red nails, a certain sway of the hips that said a woman knew just what they were looking for and was only too eager to give it to them. And they’d had fun, a good counterpoint to a job where any day might kill them.
But from the look in Liam’s eyes, having Lily in their arms had told them both the same thing: fun wasn’t enough anymore.
Fun
, and well-practiced moans, and woman who left matter-of-factly the next day without being asked, had begun to make them both feel empty inside. The women they bedded cared nothing for them, and no matter how practiced their hands and their mouths were, it wasn’t enough.
And then…
her.
Trembling between them, and Cameron could almost have said she knew what they wanted, and she wanted them back. That fine, soft brown hair straggling out of its bun, the rosy lips still parted as if she didn’t know he was rock-hard while he held her in place, and slowly going mad from the way her chest rose and fell… She was so small, 5’5” at the most—and Cameron, the short one, was 6’4”. To look down and see the slope of her neck, the gentle rise as her breasts trembled with her frightened breaths…
Oh, God, he was going to lose it. He was supposed to hold her on his lap in the car, but at the first bounce, he’d had to shove her aside. That round ass bouncing on his lap would have made him come, right there. He was halfway to tearing off her shirt, pushing her skirt away, taking her in front of everyone—
He dropped into one of the chairs with a groan.
“You’re still thinking about it,” Liam said.
“Like you’re not,” Cameron challenged.
“Of course I am.” Liam looked up, and his ice-blue eyes held something dark, something dangerous. Cameron knew what that look meant. He’d
heard
the moans of the women Liam turned that look on, and it was making him even harder to think of Lily straddling his friend, held in place by one strong arm, that round ass exposed for Cameron’s fingers.
When his gaze cleared, Liam was looking back at the paperwork.
“So we’re just not going to talk about this?”
“What is there to talk about?” Liam demanded. “She’s our prisoner. We kidnapped her. We can’t…there’s no way even to
ask.
You saw her, she’s worried we’re going to kill her.”
“You could have taken the time to explain we wouldn’t,” Cameron muttered.
“I was trying to get out of there with everyone’s clothes still on, and I
said
no one was going to bother her.”
“But she didn’t believe us, did she? Oh, come on, you couldn’t have told her so that—”
“She’s not the kind of woman you can just ask that of.” Liam’s face was strained. “She’s…she knew what we wanted. She
knew
. Some part of her. But she couldn’t admit it to herself. She’s too innocent for that.”
“She wanted us,” Cameron murmured. His eyes drifted closed at the thought of her spread out on the bed, legs around his waist.
“It doesn’t…” Liam made a strangled sound. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t…”
“I know.” Cameron groaned. “It’s not going to stop me from thinking about it, though.”
“Well, find something to distract yourself,” Liam advised. “Or it’s going to be a long few days.” He paused, pen hovering over a sheet of paper. “Do you think she’s actually a virgin?”
Electricity shot through him. He didn’t go after virgins, didn’t want the young women with their hair still in ponytails and their bright, innocent faces. He’d never understood the appeal, never been much of a one to go for corrupting innocence.
Until now. Now, the thought was enough to make him want a cold shower. Or eight.
“You are going to drive me mad,” he said shortly. “I’m going to bed.”
“Bed?” Liam’s voice was amused. “Or a shower?”
“Shut up.” Cameron resisted the urge to slam the door behind him and climbed the stairs. He was almost shaking with desire, and he turned resolutely away from the old guest bedrooms and toward the room he’d shared with Liam for most of the past year. What he wouldn’t give for there to be a woman there tonight,
any
woman. It wouldn’t be the same, but it might get him through the night without losing his mind.
The sound caught his ear when he was nearly at the door and he turned, hand on the doorknob. For a moment, he thought it had been nothing, and then it came again: a quiet sob from down the hall.
Cameron squeezed his eyes shut and turned the knob, intending to strip off his clothes and drop straight onto the futon in the corner. He needed release before he saw her again. Then he might have a shred of self-possession.
But the sob came yet again, and he felt his hand come up from the doorknob and his body walk down the hallway even while he screamed at himself to turn around, to go back to his room, that she wasn’t safe with him. That those luscious, perfectly tempting curls and her heart shaped face and her brown eyes were too much for him not to beg for what he wanted.
What both he and Liam wanted.
He hoped Liam was just as distracted as he was. Smug bastard.
The lock clicked under his fingers and he opened the door carefully.
“Lily?”
A sob was his only answer. She had turned out the light. Shutting the door behind him—at least a tiny barrier to her escape—Cameron edged into the room and followed the sound of her crying to the bed. He sat cautiously on the edge of it and felt her shift away.
“Please don’t be scared,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to say that this wasn’t what they did, and that they weren’t going to kill her, and that her boss was one hell of a jerk for leaving her there while he ran for safety. He wanted to say that if they weren’t trying to save another life, they never would have taken her. But all of those words seemed inadequate.
“Why shouldn’t I be scared?” She whispered, tears in her voice. “He’s…he doesn’t care for me. He doesn’t care for anyone. And he’ll just let me die.” Her voice quavered on the last word, and any shred of resolve disappeared.
“You’re
not
going to die,” Cameron told her forcibly. “We are
not
going to kill you.”
Liam was going to kill him. He would say that being afraid they’d kill her wouldn’t actually kill her, but it might keep her from running away. He would say that if they needed her to make a call to James Dominick, the quaver of fear in her voice had to be there.
And if he was here right now, Cameron knew he’d break, too. They’d done things that would horrify other people, but they had a line. No pain. And no innocent people. She should know she wasn’t going to be made to suffer for this jerk, that they would never do to her what he was having done to someone else.
Her sobs paused briefly at his words.
“What?”
“We need to scare your boss. We need him to tell us where he’s hiding the people
he
kidnapped. But we would never, ever hurt you. You haven’t done anything. You weren’t involved.”
“But I
was
,” she whispered. “I’m sure I sent some of those emails. When I think about—”
“Then don’t think about it. You can’t truly think you’re culpable.” He reached out tentatively, and wrapped his fingers around her hand. She stiffened, but didn’t pull away, and so he kept his hand there, touching her, marveling at how comfortable this seemed. “We don’t. Even the guy who hired us would say you aren’t. We’re just trying to get someone back. Remember how Liam said no one would bother you?” A thought occurred to him. They hadn’t planned for all of this. “Your family is going to worry.”
“I don’t…have any family.” She looked down. “My mother died giving birth to me. My father died five years ago. No siblings.”
“A boyfriend?” Could he be more obvious?
“No.” Her voice was bitter. “No boyfriend. No cat. No one to miss me.”
He couldn’t believe that, not for a moment.
“You’ll go home soon,” Cameron said finally. His fingers tightened over hers, and he tried not to leap away when she drew closer. He didn’t know what to say other than that he didn’t want her to go—and he couldn’t say that.
“You’ll keep me safe?” She asked, not understanding the danger she was in, too focused on the fear that someone might truly kill her. All of a sudden, her face was closer.
He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But Cameron felt his hand rise in the darkness to the faint outline of her face. He cupped her cheek, drew her closer, and their lips met.