Chapter Five – Chelsea
I flopped down on to the bed, brushing off the pile of takeout containers that I had left sitting there since the day before. I wasn’t hungry anymore, and that was something. The red, angry welt around my wrist was already starting to ease up a little bit, too. But I was still very much stuck in this place, and I didn’t want to have to deal with that any longer.
I had never done well with walls penning me in. In the week or so I had been here, I felt like I had been losing it. Even when I was a kid, I used to kick and scream whenever my dad dropped me off at school during the first grade, knowing I was going to have to abide by all their rules for the next six hours or so. It took me weeks to settle in, and even then, I resented the hell out of the school for putting limits on me and what I could do.
I had fallen into the same routine, every day. He would wake me early and bring me to the bathroom while leaning outside the door. I half-expected him to watch me, but he gave me my privacy, at least.
After, he’d feed me; it was one of the few moments I got outside of the room each day, and I savored every second of it. We’d sit at the table beside the fridge, and he’d watch me as I ravenously devoured the toast and peanut butter he’d pulled out for me as he sipped his coffee.
One morning, a few days after I arrived, he caught sight of me eyeing his cup of pitch-black coffee and cocked an eyebrow.
“You want one?” he asked me. I hesitated for a moment. Could I ask him for anything? Would he just laugh in my face?
“Yeah,” I confessed. What did I have to lose?
He rose to his feet and, wordlessly, set about making me a coffee—he asked me how I liked it.
“Just as black as you had it…”
He poured me a cup and pressed it into my hand without a word. I inhaled the deliciously bitter scent and lifted it to my lips, slightly thrown by his quiet kindness.
And that was exactly what was getting to me about being trapped in here. I knew, now, at least, that he wasn’t going to harm me physically. If he wanted to do that, he would have done it already. He’d had plenty of opportunity, and instead, he’d brought me food and water and broken the tie around my wrist. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was just using me as a means to an end. And if I could figure out exactly what that was, maybe there was a chance I could give him what he wanted and get myself out of here in one piece.
When he’d brought me my food the night before, I had noticed how he seemed to soften slightly when I brought up his brother. I didn’t know what had happened to him exactly, but I was doing my best to piece everything together. Something to do with the Dogs. Was he involved with that Lombardi guy, the guy who had been causing trouble for the club for so long? Or was he just some random low-level criminal who’d been unlucky enough to cross paths with them at the wrong time and pay for it with his life? I had no idea. But it was enough for him to pull something as crazy as this, even despite the danger he must have known he was putting himself in.
Zane. That was his name, Zane. I’d asked for it the day before, and he had given it to me. I had no reason to think he was lying about it, either. I could read people pretty well, and I doubted he would have misled me about something as simple as that. I had given him my real name, too. What was the harm in it? He already had me trapped here. I didn’t know what he could do with my name that he hadn’t done already.
I rose to my feet and scrubbed at the window a little, trying to remove some of the dirt and grime that had accumulated there with my top. I was still in the jeans and sweater I had worn to the bar that evening, and I hadn’t been able to so much as have a shower yet. I felt grody as hell, but I wasn’t going to push my luck with him. I got the feeling I was lucky to be fed and watered right now, and I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I pissed him off any more.
I was on the top floor of what seemed to be an old apartment block by the looks of what I could see outside. He’d told me there was nobody else here, and judging by how little I had heard since I had woken up here, I guessed he was telling the truth. I had lived in shitty apartments for long enough to know that you could hear the neighbors through the walls pretty much whenever they so much as breathed wrong, and this place had been dead silent.
Which meant it was just us. Just the two of us.
Fuck. I didn’t know why, but there was a part of me that tingled with excitement when I thought about that. Which was totally and utterly crazy. He had kidnapped me, for God’s sake, and I had no idea who he was, where he was keeping me, if I was ever going to see the outside world again.
But he was hot. God, he was hot. And there was something about the way he spoke to me, that harshness in his voice that hid a softer side I could sense underneath, that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Ridiculous, right? Just crazy. I should have known better than to let my mind even edge in that direction. Maybe this was Stockholm syndrome, maybe I was losing my mind, or maybe...
Maybe I could use my attraction to him to my advantage.
I didn’t have a whole lot of power here. But I could flirt. I was good at flirting. That’s what my friends at college had told me, anyway. I had always just felt like I was honest about my attraction to guys, and that seemed to be enough to get them hot and bothered. I never had trouble picking up men, though it rarely went further than a make-out session at the bar.
And the few times it did... God, it was always such a letdown. I would convince myself it was what I wanted, go to bed with them, and find myself utterly bored out of my mind by the sex. They always acted like they were in charge, like they knew just how to call the shots, talking a big game until they got me into bed and then... what? It was just boring. No edge, no excitement, no danger, no passion, just going through the motions of what they thought would get me off, whether or not it actually did.
I had tried hooking up with a few different guys, but I had found myself let down in just the same way over and over again. And, yes, I should probably not even have been entertaining the thought of letting myself get anywhere close to someone like Zane, not after everything he had done to me, but yet...
I couldn’t deny the fact that he was sexy to me. And maybe being tied to his bed wasn’t going to be quite as bad as it might have first seemed.
I heard footsteps outside the door, and my ears perked up at once. I thought about calling out to him, but I didn’t need him to think I was too keen. I had to play my cards right. Be careful with this thing.
The lock slid back, and the door opened, and I quickly pasted a smile on to my face, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see through it for the lie that it was. I needed to keep my cool.
“Hey,” I greeted him, tipping my head to the side flirtatiously. He was carrying with him a bottle of water, and he frowned when he saw me looking at him like that.
“Hi. You want this?”
“Sure.” I leaned across the bed and took it from him, making sure to allow our fingers to graze for just the barest moment. I knew I probably shouldn’t have been playing this so dangerously flirtatious. Hell, I had no idea what he would do if he got the idea that I was into this. But at the same time, I didn’t want to stop. Maybe it was a way of pulling some of the control back into my court.
He turned to leave the room again, but I quickly shifted so that I was a little closer to him and patted the bed next to me.
“You don’t have to go so soon, if you don’t want,” I told him, flashing him a grin. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at me.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’?”
“Why are you being so... friendly?” he demanded. Shit. I guessed I wasn’t as subtle as I’d thought. I pouted at him, changing my approach.
“Well, if I’m going to be stuck here with no contact with the outside world, I figured I should at least try to get to know you,” I protested. “Is that so wrong?”
He didn’t move.
“Come on, Zane,” I complained to him. “I’ve been in here all alone this whole time. I feel like I’m losing it. Cabin fever or something. Can you just... can we just hang out?”
The words came out more desperate than I intended. Fuck, I wasn’t doing a good job at this. Was I making it obvious that I was trying to get closer to him? That I intended to figure out what was going on under the surface? I could tell myself as much as I wanted that this was purely a practical endeavor, but there was another part of me that wanted... wanted something entirely less practical.
He sat down on the bed. We were just a couple of feet apart, and I couldn’t help but notice the way his hand rested on the sheet a few inches from me. He had tattoos on his knuckles, and before I could stop myself, I reached out to touch them.
“What does this mean?” I asked, flipping his hand over and tracing my finger across his knuckles. I expected him to pull back, but to my surprise, he didn’t. From this angle, I could get a better look at his tattoo. It was a series of numbers, 1987.
“It’s when I was born,” he replied. I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were so...”
I trailed off before I could finish what I was saying, but he had already clocked on to it.
“Old?” he finished up for me, a slight smile quirking up the corners of his lips. Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. He didn’t seem that much older than me, but in reality, he was nearly 15 years my senior. Which meant, of course, that he had a lot of experience on me...
“No, I didn’t mean old,” I replied, shifting a little closer to him. I could smell his scent—motor oil and tobacco—clinging to his skin. From this angle, I could see that he hadn’t shaved for a little while, and there was a dark smattering of stubble on his jaw. I could almost imagine how it would have felt underneath my fingertips, which seemed to itch with eagerness to lay hands on him.
“So what did you mean?” he asked, his voice dropping slightly, his eyes locking on to mine. We were so close to each other now, all it would have taken was one little motion, and I could have been kissing him. Even though I should have been focused on talking more than kissing, my mind couldn’t help but wander.
“I guess I meant...” I breathed, my eyes drawn down to his mouth for a moment. Fuck. What the hell was going on right now? I knew he could feel it, too. I could see it written all over his face.
I shifted slightly, moving closer to him, and that seemed to break the spell. Suddenly, he pulled away from me, yanking his hand out from under mine and getting to his feet.
“I just came to give you water,” he told me gruffly as he headed for the door. “Not for...” He trailed off. He didn’t need to say what was on his mind. We both knew, no matter how much I wished I could deny it. Fuck!
“I know, I’m...” I blurted out. Shit, was I about to apologize to him? To the man who had kidnapped me? No, no way. No way was I going to allow myself to apologize to him, not after everything he had done to me. Shit, I felt like I was losing it.
He headed out of the room before I could say another word, and the moment I heard the lock slide back into place, I let out a frustrated groan and flopped back on to the bed again. Dammit, I didn’t know what had come over me. I had forgotten where I was, what I was doing here, why I had come to this place in the first place, and allowed myself to be taken in by the sheer intensity of my attraction to him.
But I wasn’t going to let myself get distracted. Not when I needed to be focused on my freedom. I knew my father would be frantic with worry by now, and there was no way in hell I was going to allow him to deal with that alone. No, he had taught me better than that. I knew how to stand up for myself, and I was going to do everything I could to free myself.
And not to let this flirtation be anything other than the pure function it was supposed to be.