Chapter 17
Daniel
Whatever Michael was about to say to me, the thought dies on his lips the moment one of my security guards comes crashing through the back doors. The guard is newer than the rest, and until now I had never seen him spooked.
Michael and I are up on our feet in half a second. Something is wrong, very wrong, and I automatically reach for a gun that isn’t even on my person. Muscle memory.
“Boss, you have to come quick,” he says breathlessly.
“What? What happened?” I need him to speak plainly and as fast as possible so that I can decide how I’m going to handle whatever threat is about to come my way. Instantly, my mind starts to race.
“She’s escaped,” he breathes, and I know instantly who he means. It seems totally impossible that she could have gotten out of that room. I thought she would figure out a way to liberate herself from the handcuffs one way or another, but I never imagined that she would make it through the bedroom door. After I find her and put her back in there, I’m going to make sure she can never get out again.
I pull out my phone and access the security cameras to her room, and she sure enough isn’t in there. A window is open, however. How the hell did she manage to get a window open? It doesn’t make any kind of sense, but at least I know what direction she went in.
“You have guys still posted at the gates?” I ask. She can’t have made it that far undetected. There’s just no way. I can’t waste time watching the feeds right now when I need to find her and tan her ass for daring to disobey me.
“Of course.”
“Find. Her,” I seethe. She has to be back here somewhere. The path from that side of the house leads out to the gardens, so that’s where Michael and I head. The house is more than well-protected, and she doesn’t even know that it’s here, so it’s unlikely that she would stumble upon it by accident. The guards would stop her before then.
I vault over the low hedges separating the pool from the gardens, and Michael does the same, landing on the damp grass beside me. In the moonlight, it’s hard to see much out here, but at least I know what shadows are supposed to be here and which ones are not.
We move slowly in a practiced military fashion. We don’t have to speak to one another to effectively communicate anymore. It’s one of the many reasons that he is my most trusted man. I signal for him to take the far end while I search this side. She better hope that I am the one to find her.
It takes some searching, but eventually I hear a rustling coming from some nearby hedges. I follow the sound only to find a raccoon scurrying about. The sound gets louder, the rustling sounds are moving faster, and I realize almost too late in the darkness that it’s coming from behind me. I turn just in time to see Helena standing behind me with a small garden shovel raised up over her head with both hands. Her face is contorted into a mask of fury as she starts to bring the thing down on me with a silent but feral expression.
I raise my arm to block the thing, and it glances off my forearm and scratches my cheek just under my eye. I hiss in pain and knock the rock out of her hands and as far away from the pair of us as possible. The hell is she thinking? I see red. I shoot upward and snatch her by the wrist and start to yank her down. She manages to slap me and land a glancing blow with her elbow off of my jaw.
At least she’s not stupid enough to scream. Then it would bring every security guard on my property charging this way instantly. She grunts in frustration beneath me as she pushes and shoves at my chest trying to liberate herself. I find it almost funny how desperately she’s fighting to get away from me when she was fighting just as hard to get me inside of her earlier.
Oh, if only Michael wasn’t going to come check on me in just a moment, I would have her right now. I would pin her to the ground this very moment and fill her over and over again. I would paint her in white until she had sufficiently learned her place once more. I’m getting hard just thinking about it.
Something that I know she feels because her squirming stops. That look of hate and lust mixing on her face right now is partly why I haven’t killed her. I should have spared myself the trouble. I press myself more firmly between her legs, and she turns her head away from me while pushing at my shoulders. “Why do you fight what you want?” I chuckle and push her face into the earth with my palm. “Did you just want to get caught? I see you helped yourself to the presents I left for you.” I slide my hand up the crop top that she found until I fit her breast into my palm. “If you had only behaved… I could have given you so much more.”
I push off of her and she lays there, curled up on the ground. Her wet blonde hair is now muddy-colored from the dirt. It shouldn’t be appealing, but it is. I want her so badly. She’s the single most intoxicating creature I have ever encountered. I hope she never loses that fire. A part of me hopes that she will fight until the very end.
“I should make you crawl all of the way back to your room as punishment. If you want to act like a bitch, then you will be treated accordingly,” I say affectionately. “However, as this is only your first offense, I will be lenient with my pretty new pet. Are you going to walk, or do you want me to drag you back to your kennel?”
She deliberates for a moment, pretending to weigh her options but finally she slams her fists down into the soil in frustration. Then she rolls over and pushes herself to her feet.
“Did you really jump out of a window to free yourself?” I say with a hint of amusement.
She glances over her shoulder in surprise. “How did you?—”
“I have cameras everywhere, sweet thing. You should have expected that. Now march or don’t. I would love to have a reason to punish you.”
I stay only two feet behind her. My body courses with adrenaline. I almost want her to run just so that I can have the thrill of chasing her.
She walks with an awkward gait when she starts moving back in the direction that she came from. I text Michael that I have found her and that I am returning her to her pen, so they can call off the search for her. At first, I think that she’s just stalling for time by walking slow, but then it becomes increasingly obvious that she’s favoring one leg, then full-out limping. I hear a soft hiss of pain escape her lops where she’s biting her own tongue to keep from making any noise.
“You’re hurt,” I say. It’s not a question, but rather a statement. “You hurt your ankle when you fell, didn’t you?”
She stops walking and nods slowly. The gesture is so small that I almost don’t see it in the darkness.
“If you had done what I told you, then you wouldn’t be hurt. Isn’t that right?” I walk around to the front of her, but my resolve wavers when I see the tracks her tears have cut down her dirty face. My jaw clenches, and I deliberate for only a second before I carefully scoop her up into my arms and carry her the rest of the way back to the house.
Helena’s struggling to muffle her tears. I can hear her soft sniffles as she attempts to keep her attention anywhere but my face. It seems that the fight has finally left her. She no longer struggles to get out of my arms.
“If you had listened, you wouldn’t be in pain right now,” I say evenly. I have to swallow back the knee-jerk retort that would not have been so kind. If she hadn’t stubbornly attempted to run away from me, then she wouldn’t have gotten any more injured. Now I will have to punish her once her ankle has been tended to.
I refuse to admit to myself that I might have been afraid. Not even for a moment. If I admit it to myself, if I admit that I was worried about her wellbeing, then it’s going to be more difficult to punish her.
One of the guards from my security team opens the front door to the house that I’m keeping Helena in. I pause only to give him a warning glance.
“I want security on this house doubled. If she manages to pull a moronic stunt like this again, I will be very angry. Do you understand me? Have the bedroom and the rest of the floor searched for anything that she can use to pick locks and have it removed in the next thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir. Right away,” he says quickly and moves into action right after he closes the door behind us. I can hear the heavy, automated locks click into place with a heavy thud that makes Helena flinch in my arms. I wonder what sort of nefarious things her mind is tormenting her with. What does she imagine I’m going to spend the next half hour doing to her, I wonder?
As much as I hate to admit it, there’s a part of me that’s almost proud she took the jump from the second-floor window in her desperation to get away. Not many people would have had the courage to do it. I know her survival instincts are strong, but I did not think that they were that strong. A part of me admires her.
I carry her back through the bedroom door and into the ensuite bathroom. At least she’s not foolish enough to try to run away from me when I set her on the edge of the bathtub. She curls her hands slowly around the lip of the tub, and I catch her wincing out of the corner of my eye. She lifts her leg gingerly as if she’s going to place it on the tub beside her and quickly thinks better of it.
I walk around her to turn on the faucet and dip my fingers beneath the stream of water once it’s warm. I knock a bath bomb from the edge of the tub into the water and watch as the bubbles start to fill up the space. A soft, floral fragrance wafts on the air, but the silence hangs heavy between us. I shouldn’t bother getting her clean after her behavior. I shouldn’t care. If I do what is expected of me, I’m just going to end up killing her anyway. The very thought of it makes a knot form in my throat.
I move back to Helena and start to pull the small shirt up and over her body. I can’t deny how surprised I am when she lifts her arms and allows me to pull the garment free. I toss it aside and help her up onto her good leg. She wobbles a bit but grabs my shoulders to keep herself steady. Even such subtle contact is enough to have my imagination stirring once more.
I undo the button to her jean shorts. My thumbs sweep over the expanse of her skin slowly, savoring the feel of her. It’s impossible to fathom that this might be the last time I get to see her like this. Who knows what Nikolai is planning on doing with her once he has his hands on her again…
Helena shudders at the contact, and I doubt it was voluntary. Her fingers tighten on my shoulder as I slide her shorts down and off her once more. I can see the evidence of her arousal on the shorts and her inner thighs. She liked struggling in the woods just as much as I did. Though the mud clinging to her bare legs is drying now and starting to chip off, making a mess of the floor around us, I can’t bring myself to care. Something in the air is shifting between us and I know that we both feel it.
My hands slide back up along her waist, knocking more dried mud to the ground as I go. Her clothes had hidden away so very little of her. I grasp her firmly by the ribs and turn her slowly until her feet sink into the warm, soapy water. She doesn’t say anything as I help her lower into the water so that no weight has to go onto her injured ankle. The tension seems to melt right out of her as the heat soothes her muscles. She looks up at me standing over her silently as I start to scoop water up and over her skin. Mud and grass slide freely into the water. I wait for the questions to start. I wait for her to ask what her punishment will be or what might be coming for her next, but she never speaks. Maybe she’s decided to accept her fate after all. I don’t think I would mind that. If only it didn’t make my job so much harder.
Once she’s clean, I drain the water and pull the shower head attachment down to run the water over her skin. Every part of her smells like lilac and orchids now. It takes just about every ounce of my self-restraint to keep from climbing right into the tub with her. I force myself to go and fetch one of the towels so that I don’t succumb to my desires. While it would be nice, it would hardly reinforce the punishment that will be coming for her soon. No rewards until she’s earned them.
Now that she’s clean, I help her from the tub and let her sit on the edge of the bath again. I cross over to the counter and place my hand onto a biosensor on the counter beside the sink, and a panel opens to reveal a small number of first aid supplies.
Behind me, Helena hisses bitterly, and I can’t help but smirk. Of course, she didn’t find anything in here. It isn’t coded for her use.
“When you’ve earned it, if you get to live that long, you will be able to access some of these as well,” I tease. I pick a couple of items from the cabinet, and it slides closed behind me. I sink to one knee in front of her and pat my knee for her ankle. It only takes one stern look for her to comply.
“Good girl,” I chuckle and take a couple of the alcohol wipes and open them with my teeth. I clean the skin of her leg carefully, but when I reach the swollen part of her ankle she hisses in pain. “I know it hurts, but you have to be still for just a moment.”
This isn’t the sort of pain I want her in.
I press and prod against the swollen skin to ensure that nothing feels broken.
“You can wiggle your toes? Can you rotate it, even if it hurts?” I keep my gaze trained on her foot as she experimentally tests out the motions. Good. That means that I don’t need to summon a doctor. That would have complicated things way more than I’m comfortable with. I uncap a small tub of pain-relieving ointment and glance up to the security camera mounted in the corner of the bathroom.
“Ice please, boys,” I request. A small chime in the distance marks that the twins are watching carefully now. I hadn’t thought that they needed to be keyed into these cameras. That’s a mistake that I will not be making again. I slowly start to massage the cream into the soft skin of her ankle.
“Why bother?” She asks finally in a small voice.
I don’t have a good answer for that yet, so I don’t answer right away. My finger brushes a painful spot already starting to turn purple near the heel of her foot and she hisses, attempting to jerk her foot away from me.
I grasp her calf firmly and put it right back where I had it. I shoot her a cross look of warning. She won’t move again if she knows what’s good for her.
“Why bother even attempting to make it feel better?! I’m just going to try to escape again!” Helena nearly shouts, but something in her voice breaks.
I can keep telling myself that I need her alive. I can keep lying to myself and saying it is because I want to prolong her suffering or that I might be able to somehow use her as a bargaining chip against Nikolai… but I know that it’s more than that. I’m just not ready to tell her.
I need more information from her. That part is true enough. There’s a large piece of the puzzle still missing when it comes to her. I’ve only just learned that she has a brother, that he’s alive. Leverage is everything in the world we live in.
It’s also pointless to deny the fact that there’s something about her that draws me in. I can accept the fact that Helena isn’t someone I can keep, but I still want more of her to myself.
I can’t just kill her.
My thumb brushes over the back of her calf as I fight to keep my face expressionless and my attention on her ankle. I already want her again. I don’t know if I’m ever going to stop wanting her, which puts me in a very difficult situation.
I wrap the bandage around her ankle a little too firmly.
When I finish and rise to stand, she doesn’t look up at me right away.
“It sucks, doesn’t it?” Helena’s stormy eyes roll up to mine slowly, and I can’t quite read the emotion on her face. “When you want something you’re not allowed to have.”
I can tell she’s talking about so much more than sex, but before I can question her further, she lifts her hand to ask for help standing up from the tub. I take her hand without thinking. Once she’s on her feet, she presses her fingers between mine. I think it’s to stop her from falling, nothing more, but it feels more intimate than that.
“Well… thanks anyway,” Helena whispers, and I know that she means it.
There’s more to her than just an icy murderess with a heart of stone, and I’m almost afraid that we won’t have enough time together to learn the real her.
The realization that I actually care enough about her to want to know scares me more than I thought it would.
With my arm firmly around Helena’s waist to assist her, we walk silently to the bedroom. A knock on the door precedes my man entering and bringing me a towel wrapped around some ice. He leaves quickly and I set it on the bed. If she wasn’t so clearly exhausted, I might have handled the rest of it sooner.
When she’s propped up on the bed, the ice carefully lain on her ankle, it’s the only time I allow myself to look her in the eye.
“I will be back in the morning.”
“I’ll… be here waiting,” she whispers so softly I almost don’t hear it on my way out of the room.