Chapter Twenty-Nine
Red Herring
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H ANNAH’S HEART HAMMERED as the front door was rammed from the outside, the noise reverberating like a thunderbolt beyond the small hallway separating her from the intruders.
Time and time again, the shrill noise resounded, suggesting the front door was sustaining a heavy battering and wouldn’t last much longer.
She turned her face toward the kitchen, knowing that was where the back door was located and where Lawes had slipped away. Her thoughts returned to the tense minutes that had passed since she’d been crazy enough to convey her confused feelings for her captor.
‘This is how things are going to go.’ His words echoed in her head, blocking out the sounds of the splintering wood. ‘I’m going to gag you and bind you back into the dental chair before I get dressed and make my exit.’
Her head had fogged at his assertion, fear rising at his conclusion, even though she understood its logic.
She needed to be an authentic victim when the police dashed through the door, and the fastest way to express that was through the binds, but she had had a hundred questions, for herself as much as him.
Why had she asked for more time with Lawes, for God’s sake? He’d proven what little respect he had for her by taking her a second time, yet she couldn’t argue with his analysis. Things had been different since he’d bound her in the bathroom.
Better.
He was still a bastard, but there was care in his caresses, an attention to detail she didn’t remember from the first time, and she’d enjoyed that devotion as much as the highs of the orgasms he’d provoked. That version of him was enticing.
Lawes was an anomaly.
Devastatingly smart and alluring, he’d captured her in more than one way, getting into her head, as well as between her legs.
She sensed she needed to see where the growing connection between them could lead.
To watch him walk away from her in handcuffs again would mean she’d never get to find out if the fiend she’d known at the surgery could turn out to be a friend as well as a lover.
They had all the component parts of compatibility after all—attraction, intelligence, and incredible sexual alignment.
If he could learn to respect her boundaries rather than ripping through them, perhaps there was a future for their fucked-up coupling.
I must be mad.
Her lips stretched around the ball gag in her mouth as if to answer.
There was no doubt in her mind, she was mad.
That was why she’d asked for more time with her tormentor, why she’d climbed willing onto the dental chair and remained passive while he’d removed the cuffs and bound her back into the chair’s confines.
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‘Y OU LOOK FUCKING HOT .’ He’d smiled as he tugged on a pair of trousers he’d found tossed in the corner of the lounge. ‘I can’t believe I’m leaving you, but the police will take care of you until I can.’
‘You have no choice.’ She’d told him before he shoved the ball back between her teeth. ‘Don’t let them catch you.’
She shook her head at the memory. She’d actually willed her captor to go free.
‘I won’t.’ He’d pressed a gentle kiss on her crown. ‘But I promise, once all of this is over, I will find you.’
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T HAT FINAL LINE PLAYED over in her head as the hinges of the front door finally relented, and two cops burst into the room. She screeched around the gag, allowing the myriad of her pent-up emotions to be released as the female officer ran toward her.
“Jesus!” she shouted. “It’s okay, Ma’am. We have you. You’re safe.”
The cop turned back to her colleague, barking orders at the startled-looking man. “Go back to the car and get a blanket for her. And call this in. Looks like an abduction.”
Time shifted in strange pockets as the cop tugged the gag from Hannah’s lips and started work on the straps holding her limbs.
She recalled the initial moments of her liberation the first time around, those events playing out simultaneously in her head as the cop freed her.
Hannah had been so happy to see the police that day at the dental practice, but as the male officer threw a cold blanket over her, there was less relief.
She was free again, but worried about Lawes and how far he’d have got with no shoes and only his willpower.
She was suddenly faced with a new and equally disturbing reality.
The police would be full of questions about what had happened to her and how she’d ended up there, and she’d have to come up with answers.
“You’re okay,” the female officer reassured, as she helped Hannah down from the chair and removed the collar at her neck.
Hannah watched her discard the leather and attached leash, anxiety knotting in her tummy as the ensemble fell to the floor. She should have been relieved at the liberation, yet the loss of the leather tore at her insides.
“We’ve called an ambulance. Let’s sit you down before it arrives.”
She guided Hannah to the chair Lawes had once perched on, an image of her antagonist bursting into her mind as she settled on it.
Her backside was still sore from the hairbrush he’d wielded, and fidgeting on the hard seat, she realized there was no escaping his ghost. Lawes might be gone, but he was not forgotten.
She’d never forget him.
“What’s your name?” The officer was asking.
It took a moment for Hannah to tune into her words, her gaze rising to stare at the door Lawes had left through. That had been the final time she’d seen him, an image of his shirtless, muscular form burned into her psyche for, what she suspected, was all time.
“Hannah,” she croaked, the emotion rising in waves inside of her. “Hannah Bowman.”
“It’s okay, Hannah.” The cop offered her what she presumably thought was a comforting smile. “You’re safe now.”
Safe.
The word resonated.
Was that what the disturbing, empty feeling was?
“Thanks.” Hannah pushed the reply out, even though it seemed all the oxygen in the room was fast disappearing.
In the surgery, things had been easier, blacker and whiter. Lawes was the aggressor and she the innocent. That time around, he’d done more than only rule her. He’d got into her head. He’d started to tug at her heartstrings...
I can’t be falling in love with him. Her jaw tightened, tears burning in her eyes. He hurt me, held me against my will, and humiliated me. I can’t have love for him.
Yet deep down, her feelings were less certain.
Whatever had gone on in that house in the last day had shaken Hannah to her core, and as two paramedics rushed into the lounge toward her, all she could think about was the face of the man who’d pushed her right to the brink.
Lawes.
Why couldn’t she get him out of her mind?
He’d said he’d find her again, but what did that mean, and how would she survive until he did? He’d need to stay away until the business with the police was concluded, and based on her prior experiences, that could take months.
Pain echoed in her chest at the suffocating fear of not seeing him for that long.
Closing her eyes, she wished Lawes had never come back into her life, wished he’d just left her alone, yet at the same time, she acknowledged the lie.
She was glad he’d acted. Without him, she might never have realized what she needed to move forward wasn’t girls’ nights or online dating; it was the sensitive brutality that only came from his close attention.
She wanted to cry at the bleak conclusion.
Why did twisted deviancy have such a hot and salacious ring to it? Why couldn’t she fall for someone nice and normal like other women?
“Her blood pressure is high,” one of the paramedics told the other. “We should take her to the hospital.”
Hannah sighed. Maybe she did need to go to the hospital? Perhaps they had a world-class shrink she could speak to? Christ knew she needed one.
She rose on shaky legs and made her way to the gurney they’d laid on the floor.
Following their instructions, she lay out on the stretcher, gripping the blanket around her as they hoisted her from the ground.
The last time she’d been carried, it had been Lawes doing the hoisting, but he was gone, fled at her insistence, and Hannah didn’t know when, or if, she’d ever see him again.
Her brow furrowed as they carried her out into the open. He’d said he’d find her, but how could he? The only way he’d been able to track her down last time was thanks to Saul, and she’d be damned if she ever used those online dating sites again.
I shouldn’t want him to find me. She wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand. I shouldn’t want any of this.
But she did.
She wanted it all.
Lawes, his authority, the stark steel of his punishments, and the muted murmurs of his tenderness. She yearned for the whole package.
Lawes lit her up, helping her to feel more vivacious than she’d ever known, and it was too late to pretend otherwise.
Outside the shabby house, cold air assaulted her bare legs and feet, but she welcomed the chill. Until her captor came her way again, she needed the stark reminder of what it was to be alive.