Captive Heart (Club Risqué Book 6)

Chapter 3

Crawling out from beneath the haphazard pile of cardboard boxes, blankets, and the tarpaulin in the defunct goods recess, she felt her stomach cramp and gurgle noisily.

She was still lethargic from a lack of proper food and her joints had become stiff and achy from sleeping outside in the cold. She was almost tempted to try to find a refuge or women”s shelter, except that those would surely be the first places Master would look.

He knew she had nowhere else to go.

Besides, how would she ever go about finding one? She had no idea where she was or what direction to go to find anything.

After two nights on foot, she had come to the end of the agricultural belt she’d been wandering through and had found this building on the other side of the trees. That had been three days ago.

She hadn”t planned to stay here, but the ankle of her injured foot had become so swollen that she could barely walk, and she knew she finally had to rest it. Plus, now that things had become more built up, it was difficult to remain inconspicuous. She couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself with her painful limp and homeless appearance.

This warehouse on the edge of the woods had caught her eye because of the people she’d seen coming in and out. It hadn’t taken long to work out it was some kind of kink club and she had felt oddly at home glimpsing the odd little bit of fetish wear worn by the few who weren”t completely bundled up in their cosy winter coats.

She”d spied the recessed doorway, protected from view by a solid, high fence, as she”d been crouched in the woods, considering her next move. It had seemed like divine intervention when she realised that the doors were unused, with the added bonus that the area leading to them was undercover, sheltered, and shadowed, as well as little used. Almost too good to be true.

Certainly, too good to overlook.

The big man came out once a day with trash for recycling, and occasionally, a couple of other people. But she could sleep the night in relative safety and obscurity in the deep alcove, and she”d also found a glass in which she could catch rainwater to drink.

There was even a beautifully soft blanket that had been thrown out, which she snuggled into at night. It just had the tiniest hole and it smelled so lovely.

Plus, there was always a plentiful supply of boxes to keep her warm, and she”d even found a couple of half-eaten bars of chocolate while she”d been searching through the bins.

She had slowly sucked each and every piece. It had been like tasting a little slice of heaven. She couldn”t remember the last time she”d had any; it had been years since she”d deserved a treat like that.

As her stomach cramped up again, enough to make her wince and groan, she wondered if there was maybe some more, since last night had been a business night.

She decided she would look first, before she crept over to the baked goods factory that she had discovered a few units down. They often threw away overdone or stale pastries, but she thought something there might have been bad, because she had thrown up last night and her stomach still felt decidedly delicate.

Or maybe that was just because she was starving. She”d known hunger before, but never as bad as this.

She needed water first, though. She knew enough to guess she was dehydrated since she hadn”t had to pee for a long time, but it had been raining, so her glass should be full this morning.

She tried to sip at it, but the desire to gulp was too great despite the slightly weird taste the water had. She was already used to that, but it only seemed to make the gurgling and cramping in her stomach worse this time, so that even the thought of the fairly short walk to the bakery warehouse was just too much right now.

Yes, better to try her luck here, instead, and see what she could find.

Her movements were sluggish, and the feeling of nausea quadrupled now that she”d moved.

It seemed to take all of her strength to lift the huge bin lid and she was aware her arms were trembling.

Her barely focusing eyes fixated on a chocolate bar wrapper with a tell-tale bulge that hinted at leftovers, and she snatched at it. Well, in her mind, she snatched at it; the reality was somewhat more listless, but hoping the sugar would do something to combat her sluggish lethargy, she nibbled hungrily at it before she even closed the lid.

Maybe that’s why she missed the rapid footsteps or didn”t key into the sixth sense that usually warned her of danger.

Or maybe it was just the sickness and light-headedness she felt. She was normally so alert!

She had to be.

It was the shout that made her almost jump out of her skin and kicked up her heart rate to the level of sheer terror.

She dropped the heavy lid in her abrupt shock, and the edge crashed into the fleshy part of her arm just below her elbow, tearing a pained howl from her lips even as she instinctively dragged her hand out, grazing and lacerating the rest of her forearm as she did so.

The inherent impulse to flee had her whirling around and heading for the woods before her lucid brain kicked in, but sickness and injury caught up with her in those terrifying moments and she tripped over her own feet in the bulky, oversized wellington boots.

The flurry of movement sent her stomach rebelling, and she retched as she tried to run, choking with the effort to keep going. The strain on her injured foot sent shards of pain shooting up her leg and caused her to stumble.

Tears streaked down her face and a wail resembling the cry of a wounded animal was ripped from her throat as her hazy brain chastised herself at being caught.

That was the last thing she remembered before blessed blackness swept through her last vestige of consciousness.