King’s Captive Read online

  It’s a game—push-pull-push.

  Julius always being the pusher.

  He dishes up meat to his men, Dan, Leo, Pa and the new guy. I don’t look at the new guy. He hasn’t learned the rules yet and frankly I’ve got no desire to watch him bleed, despite the fact that if he’s working for Julius, he most likely has it coming.

  The table’s split six to six.

  Julius prefers things that way—even.

  Even or in his favor.

  He places a dripping steak on his own plate, then puts the meat tray in the center of the table with the mountains of other food.

  My spine creaks more than his chair when he sits.

  Dan used to sit where I’m sitting. Before I “came along.” Now I sit here, on Julius’s right. Yep, I’m his right-hand girl. I’ve brought nothing to this table, contributed nothing, but here I sit at his right.

  I stretch for the garlic butter, and fork a large knob on top of the rib eye. You can bet your sweet ass I don’t hold back on that stuff. Never know when a girl might need a little garlic breath on her side. Male voices laugh and boom across the table, joining a chorus of scraping knives and clinking glasses.

  They don’t speak to me, so I don’t speak either.

  One of them, the stupid new one, watches me, though. He’s careful. Only glancing at me for a heartbeat or two before moving on.

  But I don’t miss that throbbing pause. If he’s not careful, neither will Julius. He’s too stupid to live, that one. I make new guy a black spot in my vision. Don’t see him. Don’t hear him. When I look around the table, it’s like that chair is vacant.

  “Something wrong with your steak, baby?”

  The voices around us dull. Everything grows quieter when Julius speaks.

  I set down my fork, one untouched morsel on the tines. “It’s a little overdone.”

  It’s not, it’s perfect. No steak would ever suffer overcooking in Julius’s care. I don’t smirk. By some divine miracle the satisfaction stays under wraps.

  “You should have said something.” He leans closer, leans right over me. “You know I’ll always take care of you.” His voice is low, dropped down to some husky key that seems to be reserved solely for me. My breath hiccups. Yes, he takes care of me. Every single moment of every single day. It’s Julius who feeds me. He who clothes me. He who keeps me safe.

  He who can take all away.

  He drags the steak off my plate with his fork, and tosses it onto the grass with a sharp swing of his arm. Not on a plate or in the bin, onto the lawn that looks as though it’s been trimmed by a thousand leprechauns with nail clippers, not a blade out of place.

  Julius did that. Julius, who likes everything just so.

  My pulse pounds in my ears like it’s trying to tell me something. I’ve heard this same thudding warning for years.

  Watch out, watch out, watch out.

  My heart doesn’t seem to realize I never stopped doing just that.

  He cuts his T-bone, then scoops half up. Blood drips in the space between us. He drops the cut on my plate. So rare it’s almost blue.

  I stare at his arm.

  His shirtsleeves are rolled up, his right arm exposed to the elbow. That’s the benefit of sitting on his right. I get his clean side. Don’t have to stare at the evil thing on his neck. Dark hairs run down his forearm to his wrist, growing finer as they bridge the top of his hand. I wonder how far I’d get if I rammed my fork in that arm—right in his wrist joint—if I just lodged it right in there...

  How long would it take for him to reach for the gun at his side?

  How far could I get?

  To the dock, maybe, with the help of a little adrenaline? Before Danny boy got to me. Before I remembered that every way off this island is Julius’s.

  Before I remembered the other things keeping me here.

  “Happy?” There’s that soft personal tone again, and it’s impossible not to hear. Impossible not to catch the switch when he speaks to me.

  I look at him, something like a smile biting the corners of my lips. “Thank you, Julius.”

  He turns back to his guests. The Connellys all sit together on the other side of the table. Jack Connelly in the middle. If Jack is here, it means one thing—today’s business is guns.

  The kind Julius carries around tucked in the back of his pants.

  Until I met him, I’d never seen a handgun.

  I’d seen plenty of shotguns. At home even our gardener walked around with one on his back. Growing up, I thought everyone who worked on acreage carried a shotgun. Dad told me they were for snakes. Yet, in all my years, I never saw a single snake.

  Not one.

  But then, there were a lot of men with a lot of guns on our ranch to keep them at bay.

  Now I know they were always waiting for a different kind of snake.

  Chapter Two

  “That’s some poker face she has there,” Jack says, as I slide the great big pile of money from the center of the table to my chest. There’s enough money before me now to buy a boat. It’s not a fraction of what I have in my underwear drawer. Not that I need cash, I have a literal fortune to my name. Too bad there’s not much money can do for me here.

  “Watch out for this one, she’s a stone-cold killer.” Jack leans back, watching me sort my cash into piles.

  I look at Jack from under my eyelashes, and smile. Money fans between my fingers. Jack Connelly can be described only as a silver fox. Shaggy hair graying at the temples, long scar down the side of his cheek. Dressed to kill in dark blue jeans and designer leather jacket. Too bad he’s a drug-smuggling, weapons-dealing, murderous asshole.

  Jack is smart with me. He’s looked, but doesn’t look.

  He’s attractive. I’ll give him that.

  In a sugar-daddy kinda way. What would it take to get Jack Connelly to steal me away from here?

  “Why do you think I have her play for me?” Julius speaks from behind me. He leans across me and picks up his glass of Scotch. His heat scorches my back. Ice clinks.

  I always play for Julius. Ever since he taught me in those first few painful days. When he forced me out of my room, made me look at cards and learn.

  Turns out I’m freaking excellent at this.

  I keep my attention on Jack. What’s Julius’s business today worth to him that I couldn’t outpay?

  Opposite me is one of only two people on earth who could take down the King. Jack’s gaze flicks across me briefly. Doesn’t linger at my breasts even though the dress I’m wearing suits the tropical climate.

  Doesn’t linger, but Jack sees.

  I know what I must look like to him. The platinum curls, natural all the way down to the white root. Good-girl face and bad-girl eyes.

  What could I do to him, for him, to get him to take me away?

  He looks back to Julius. Jack Connelly would have no shortage of pretty girls. And that, sadly, is all I am now. A helpless pretty girl.

  “Thank you for the hospitality, Julius.” Jack stands, and clamps his hand over the shoulder of one of his appropriately thuggish thugs. “You can expect the next shipment in seven days. Neil will personally be escorting the merchandise.”

  Neil crosses his arms. The fuzzy edges of the tattoos wrinkle as his biceps bulge. He nods at Julius.

  “Glad we could do business again.” Julius steps toward Jack and they shake hands. It’s a funny thing; Julius must be twenty years younger than Jack. He’d be no more than thirty to Jack’s fifty, yet when they clasp hands, it’s Jack who lets go first.

  Chairs skate backward on the polished floors as everyone gets up. The sound bursts my bubble. Everyone’s leaving and so must I if I don’t want to be caught alone. I tuck the money into my handbag, then push back my chair, slow and easy, then slip
to my feet. Inch away as the men shake hands. Take one last look at Julius’s broad back, then turn to the door. They’ll all be going directly out the doors from the poolroom. Still, I keep my strides even, thighs clenching until I pass through the frame, and hit the cool dark stretch of the hallway.

  My muscles loosen but I resist the compulsion to run before Julius notices I’ve gone. The sharp solid thud of dress shoes on wood echoes behind me. My backbone fuses for an instant. I stumble. One strappy heel twisting before I right myself, and keep my legs moving.

  His steps trail behind me. Closer and closer. He doesn’t call out, or order me to stop. Just closes in somehow without seeming to pick up the pace. He’s always that much faster than me, that little bit ahead.

  The light from the kitchen floods the end of the hall. I just need to make it through the kitchen and I’ll get to the back door. Be outside, then I can break into the jog itching through my quadriceps.

  I reach the end of the hallway. A hand closes around my wrist and brings me to an instant breathless stop.

  My skin sizzles where he touches me.

  “How did you like your gift?” he says, still behind me, still holding my wrist.

  I turn to him. Give him my best big batting eyes. “Thank you, Julius, it’s always good to keep up with current events. I found the horoscopes particularly satisfying.”

  He pushes the transitional sunglasses he wears for business up on top of his head, and I’m struck as always by his eyes. “Yeah, what do the stars say about your future?”

  I don’t normally give him this much. Like my opinion, let alone a preference. I keep my personality all to myself, don’t give him any weapons. He has enough over me as it is.

  But that newspaper fills the back of my mind.

  It’s like I’ve been living the same exact day over, and over, and over, and over. Days and weeks bleed together. Like a movie, or a dream, time has no substance, means nothing here.

  But that date—one month left.

  Now I feel each moment as though I’m handed a grenade every time the minute hand twitches.

  And I must do something, anything, to alter my course. I smile and wonder if it looks as stillborn on my lips as it feels on my face. “Oh, just that I’m going to meet a handsome stranger who will sweep me off my feet and take me someplace new.”

  A stranger who’ll kill you dead.

  Wickedness breaks across his face, and fuck me if it doesn’t make him that much better looking.

  “Ahh,” he says, and that one sound vibrates down my spine. He tugs me by the wrist and looks right down into my face. Those eyes in half-light—I want to close my own. Shut them out. They see too much.

  I keep my lids open, keep them wide.

  Hold his gaze.

  “Is that what you want, romance?” His voice drips with sweetness.

  I’m no stranger to this side of him. He’s always offering, and offering, and offering, as though there’s an alternative to his food, his shelter, his company.

  Luring and baiting.

  Until I’m craving his cooking. Singing his damned songs. Thinking about his presence when he’s gone. He’s a devil—offering my damnation peeled, sliced and arranged on a china plate.

  I suck in air. His scent is on my gasp, heady enough to taste. Spicy cologne, and something all him—male and feral.

  He leans down, lowering his head.

  I turn my face away.

  Hold my breath.

  His face touches my neck. Hairs stand and rise over my body. Not what I’d thought he’d leaned in for, yet somehow worse. His nose runs intimately from the base of my throat to my jaw. His sharp inhale hums right against my skin.

  “What’s this you’re wearing today?”

  I stare from the hall to across the kitchen, to the door to freedom. “I spent some time in the garden. It’s called sweat.”

  He chuckles, low and rough. “Of course it is.” He touches my cheek, turns my face and makes me look at him.

  I blink slowly, unable to stop the sight of him filtering through my lashes.

  “Do you want to kiss me good-night?”

  My lips part. Open with no answer and hardly any conscious volition.

  The question repeats in my head. A thousand times. For every day I’ve been here and every day he’s asked. The full weight of time bears down on me in these moments and I understand exactly why people go crazy in prisons.

  This is all there is.

  Reality shivers. His lips are right there and I see them speak, again and again and again. In my mind, in memories, in dreams. Things he’s said and things I know he has not, until maybe the dreams are real, and this a nightmare.

  Now it’s his breaths filling the space between us. Closer.

  I almost lean in. Every day the struggle is the same. My will no stronger from practice. Julius’s voice compels surrender. Every single day it’s this—this temptation beating in my blood. Begging me to try. See what it’d be like to just-give-in.

  I breathe in, breathe out through pursed lips, reach down inside myself to the place that’s hard and strong and inaccessible.

  “No.”

  He brushes my cheek with his fingertips. Maybe I’m going even crazier, seeing things with my eyes open instead of when they close, but for a moment I think there’s something a little heartbroken in the way he looks at me. “Why do you always lie to me?”

  My chest squeezes and I wrench my face away.

  His hand falls from me, but his voice rises up to take its place tormenting me. “One day, baby, I’ll have only the truth from you.”

  * * *

  I don’t slow down until the lights from the main house no longer illuminate the trail to the bungalow. That’s the one liberty I have here. My bungalow. My one-room, one-bathroom sliver of sanctuary. Not sure why he gave me this gift of space. Never understood why he never made me stay in the huge suite opposite his in the big house. So that the days when he’s here and not off doing his thing on the mainland he could watch me more closely, and fuck with me completely.

  Maybe he likes his privacy.

  Perhaps there’re things he’d prefer I not see.

  There’s plenty of room here for seclusion and secrets. The island used to be a resort. A private one people with too much money liked to hire out for weddings. Now it belongs to Julius.

  He and Pa live in the big house. There’re always people crashing here, his men or his guests. They get the other bungalows.

  Mine is the closest to the big house.

  I duck under a low-hanging branch of the frangipani tree that guards my bungalow and take the first of the heavy stairs to the door.

  Movement streaks through the blackness of the balcony.

  I freeze, fingers stiff and brittle as they close over the smooth wood handrail.

  Could he possibly have beaten me here?

  He wouldn’t, Julius wouldn’t. I peer into the shadows. Suck in a breath of perfumed air.

  A form moves in the shadows—large, male and looming.

  In all these years I’ve been at his mercy there’s one thing that’s never happened. There’s one thing I’ve never feared.

  My door remains unlocked. I sleep in peace. My threshold has never been breached, never violated. In some ways this is the safest I’ve ever been.

  Nothing could happen to me here that Julius didn’t allow.

  But time is running out, and I know what comes next. Things are changing. They won’t stay the same. My heart squeezes and pushes the limits of my chest cavity. I take the next of the steps halfway to my door.

  A face comes into focus, younger, gentler than the one I expected. It’s Stupid. I release air from my lungs and take the final step. He needs a new nickname because stupid doesn’t even beg
in to cut it.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Ash,” I say, and walk past him to the door.

  He steps up right behind me. “Why?”

  My teeth snap together. I turn and face him. Not easy since his face is a hell of a lot higher up than mine. Once upon a time, I may have been intimidated by a man like Ash. Tall, the evidence of his perfect mix of testosterone and physical fitness straining his shirtsleeves. His bulk undeniable even in the faint moonlight. Twice the man of any who worked for my dad.

  “Because Julius wouldn’t like it.”

  Ash might be big, but his eyes, even though they’re hard to see right now, they’re soft. Big and brown and soft. They don’t make me shiver like Julius’s—they draw me in.

  The sound of his breathing fills the veranda. What does he want? What could he want from me?

  “You need to go,” I add, then turn back to the door.

  He reaches past me and grabs the door handle. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Don’t do this, Ash.” I place my hand over his. Warmth seeps from his skin. I can’t remember the last time I touched someone on purpose. “Don’t be dumb. Whatever you think you might get from me, you won’t.”

  I stare straight ahead, close my fingers over his and dig in my nails, shift his hand off the door, then drop it. “Come near me again and I’ll tell Julius.”

  I turn the handle, open the door, step inside my room, then slam the door closed and turn the lock. My forehead rests against the smooth panel. Silence lingers on the other side of the door.

  Then steps shuffle away and pound down the stairs.

  I turn, sagging against the door. Memories dredge through my mind. Fuzzy, muddy memories, but one is clear.

  The one that keeps me strong.

  A memory filled with secrets and promises.

  Please, please, please—please hurry.

  I can’t take the wait much longer.

  Chapter Three

  I stare at the CD player, at the disc going around and around and around. The song resonates around me. The vibration a gentle buzz beneath my legs. My blood seems to pulse with the beat. I’ve listened to this song a million times and each time I feel it differently.