Chapter 17 Cassie
CASSIE
My nerves had calmed by the time we left my apartment. It had felt weird leading them into my private space. No man but Bram — and Otis when he’d snuck in to see Daisy back when she’d stayed with me — had ever been inside my apartment.
But nothing terrible had happened. Hawk had stood still as a stone in my kitchen, taking it all in from afar like… well, like a hawk surveying the forest from a nest high in the trees.
Jagger had walked around my apartment, carefully picking things up, studying the spines of my books, his expression concentrated, while the one named Vigo had wandered through the place like a gremlin on meth, opening closet doors, laying on my couch (checking to see if it was a good nap couch?), even opening leftover containers in the fridge for god’s sake.
Still, I’d been relieved to get them out of there, dogged by the feeling that if we stayed too long, some deep dark secret would be revealed even though I didn’t have any deep dark secrets, unless you counted the fact that I wanted someone dead, which the Hawks already knew.
Back in the orange G-Wagon, we headed down Main, but instead of turning for one of the residential streets that circled the town in a grid, we kept going toward the mountain.
Then I got nervous again.
Because I’d lost the Hunt fair and square and was prepared to do my time, but being alone with the Hawks in the tunnels in town or in my apartment somehow felt a lot safer than driving off in a car with them to god knew where.
And I still hadn’t texted Daisy — or anyone — to tell them where I was.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Jagger looked over from his spot next to me in the back seat. “Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Just outside of town. Don’t worry, you’re safe.” He reached over and squeezed my knee and a jolt of electricity traveled between my thighs.
I wondered if this was part of being a virgin, if being deprived of sexual touch made every brush of someone’s hand, every bump of their knee, feel sexual.
Maybe it would pass after I had sex. I hoped so, because it was more than a little uncomfortable to be in a state of heightened sexual tension at a time when I was also terrified.
Because let’s face it, it was going to take a lot more than Jagger’s reassurances to make me feel safe.
I thought maybe we were headed up the mountain. Daisy lived there with Jace, Otis, Wolf, and the baby in the old house she’d inherited from her mom, but we passed Old Mountain Road and kept going, toward the outskirts of Blackwell Falls.
Now we were in the wooded area around town, before the landscape changed from forest to fields, thick stands of trees giving way to farms and wide-open spaces, the craggy cliffs of the Blackwell Preserve rising all around like granite sentries.
We were about ten minutes outside of town when Vigo eased off the gas to turn into a wooded, tree-lined driveway.
I resisted the urge to make a comment about serial killers and the woods. I was feeling superstitious, like if I voiced my deepest fears I might will them into existence.
We drove for another minute and emerged into a paved clearing in front of a huge Craftsman-style house, nestled into the trees so carefully, it looked like it had been there as long as the trees.
“This is your house?”
Vigo laughed. “You’re going to have to stop doing that or I’m going to get a complex.”
“Doing what?”
He caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Sounding surprised.”
I couldn’t help it. The house was huge but in the subtle way of well-designed things, something I’d learned from Daisy, who was super into that kind of stuff.
Surrounded on all sides by leafy trees, the house was painted a deep blue, so dark it almost looked black.
The warm wooden trim gave it an earthy feel, but the architecture was what Daisy would have called Craftsman, the roofline more subtly varied than her Victorian mansion with its sharp peaks and soaring fireplaces.
It was… interesting. It made me want to look more closely, see how it all fit together, and I realized it was perfect for the men who called themselves the Hawks.
Jagger opened the door and stepped out of the car. “I can’t fucking wait to take a shower.”
“Same,” Vigo said.
I got out and reached for my bag, but Jagger already had a hand on it. “I got you.”
He pulled it out of the car before I could object and I walked around to join him. Of all the Hawks, he was the quietest, his presence a soothing balm compared to Vigo’s erratic wildness and Hawk’s silent appraisal.
Vigo followed Hawk up a stone pathway leading to a wide front porch.
He looked over his shoulder, his sage-green eyes sparkling with excitement that made me more than a little nervous. “Come on, mouse. We’ll show you around.”
I followed them up the stone stairs and looked around while Hawk punched the code into the keypad on the door. The porch was nice, shaded by a deep roof and the surrounding trees, although the utilitarian decor (two chairs and a small bench) made me wonder if they spent any time out there at all.
Hawk stepped inside, disabled the alarm on the wall, and then stood back to let me enter the house.
A wood bench sat on one wall, an array of shoes and boots lined up neatly under it, an empty wooden peg rack mounted to the wall over it.
Rich wood floors stretched into the rest of the house, separated from the entry by a half wall topped with wooden slats that provided just a glimpse of a sitting area beyond.
Hawk started pulling off his boots. “Take off your shoes.”
I kicked off my sneakers and set them under the bench.
“Let’s get you settled,” Jagger said, stepping into the house.
Cognitive dissonance twanged through my brain like a discordant note at the sight of them — shirtless, huge, and covered in tattoos — without shoes, Jagger and Hawk in socks, Vigo barefoot.
Jagger carried my bag as I followed them past two chairs and a small table, separated from a sitting area with two sofas facing each other, a fireplace on the wall at one end, and a wall of windows that looked out over the porch and surrounding trees.
The house was obviously old, with warm wood trim around windows and doors, the ceilings accented with beams in the same golden finish.
It was minimal and surprisingly modern for an old house. The architecture was almost entirely square, without the turned posts and carved flourishes of Daisy’s Victorian, but somehow all the wood kept it from being cold.
A wide doorway in the sitting area led to a cozy dining area and a large kitchen with deep green cabinets, dark slate countertops, and an enormous island lined with tall leather chairs.
Hawk walked to the wood-framed glass doors lining one wall and slid them open to a bluestone terrace with a long teak table and chairs, plus a terra-cotta fireplace complete with a chimney.
“Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” Jagger said, “and feel free to add anything you need to the grocery list. I’ll add you to Cozi.”
“Cozi?” My head was spinning.
“It’s an app we use for grocery lists and household shit,” Vigo said, opening one of the cabinets.
He removed a sleeve of Oreos and started breaking them into a large plastic cup.
Hawk had disappeared up a wide staircase to the second floor.
“We have someone who cleans once a week,” Jagger said. “Technically she makes food too, but you won’t want to eat it.”
“She makes food that we aren’t supposed to eat?” I asked.
“It’s not that you’re not supposed to,” Vigo said, pouring milk over the huge cup filled with broken Oreos. “It’s just that you might die if you do.”
My head was spinning as Vigo started eating the Oreos with a spoon.
“Is she trying to poison you?”
“Nah,” Vigo said. “She’s just a terrible cook.”
I shook my head, feeling like I’d landed on another planet instead of a house just a few minutes outside the town where I’d lived my entire life. “Then why do you pay her to cook?”
Vigo looks almost offended by the question. “She needs the money.”
Right. Okay then. What the actual fuck was happening here?
“Just don’t tell her we don’t eat the food,” Jagger said. “Like tell her the last thing she made was great or whatever. And wait until she leaves to throw everything away.”
“So don’t eat the food but don’t tell…”
“Reva,” Vigo supplied, his mouth full of Oreos.
“Don’t tell Reva we don’t eat the food. In fact, tell Reva the food was delicious, but then throw it away, but only when she’s not around.”
“Exactly," Vigo said.
I was really confused but maybe it was because my entire system was crashing. It was almost 8 a.m. and other than my brief nap when I’d been hanging on the wall of the tunnel, I hadn’t slept at all since the night before the Hunt, and my stomach had started twisting with hunger.
I just wanted to shower, eat, then sleep for a year.
“I’ll show you to your room so you can shower,” Jagger said. “Then I can make you something to eat so you can crash.”
I followed him up past a larger living area with a huge TV and two big sofas, then started up a staircase to the second floor.
“This is such a pretty house,” I said, running my hand along the polished wood banister. Like the rest of the molding and trim in the house, it was minimal but obviously old, the banisters square and sturdy. “Have you lived here long?”
It was probably weird to make small talk with a man who’d chained me — naked — in an underground tunnel, one who’d been fondling my bare tit just a couple hours before, but what else was I supposed to do?
“About three years,” Jagger said, stepping onto the second-floor landing.
I must have been even more tired than I’d realized, my defenses dangerously low, because I couldn’t stop staring at his muscular back, the images so densely tattooed on his skin that I could hardly make them out individually.
His shoulders rippled as he walked, and I couldn’t help noticing that his waist tapered over his jeans, slung low on his hips, the waistband of his underwear somehow tantalizing for what it hid.
The upstairs wasn’t organized like a normal house, with one long hall and bedrooms on either side.
The second-floor landing looked out over the main living room below, then narrowed into a hall with three bedrooms. After that, it widened again, revealing a larger sitting area with shelves of books, a window seat overlooking the woods surrounding the house, a large sofa, and a couple of overstuffed leather chairs.
The house was bigger than it looked, the rooms more contained than most of the modern houses I’d been in, and we passed through the second sitting area and entered another hall, two doors closed on either side.
“This should work,” he said, reaching for the second closed door on the left. “But if it doesn’t, just let us know and we can move you.”
I looked at the other three closed doors. “Who’s in there?”
“We are,” he said like it was obvious. And then, just when I was starting to think that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, that maybe we’d just be like… I don’t know, roommates or something, his gaze darkened. “We need you close for all the things we’re going to do to you, mouse.”
My stomach twisted.
But that wasn’t all: I got wet too. Because now I knew what it felt like to be held captive by the Hawks, to have their mouths and hands on my body.
I couldn’t even bring myself to object to the nickname, because that was how I felt: like a mouse snagged in the talons of three giant predators, carried off to a nest where I would be devoured whole.
He stepped into the room ahead of me and crossed to an open door, then glanced inside before returning his attention to me. “Towels and everything are in the bathroom.”
“Thanks.” I looked around but only managed to get a series of first impressions — a large room with woodland wallpaper on one wall, a picture window that looked out over the forest, and a king-size bed — before he spoke again.
“Give me your phone.”
“My… what?”
“Hand me your phone,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’ll answer this question, but it would be best for you to accept that why isn’t going to matter for you here.
We’re going to tell you to do things, and you’re going to do them.
” He said it simply, like he was dictating the terms of a new job I’d already accepted.
“I need your phone to add you to the household app. That way you can add things you might need from the store.”
I hesitated, then handed him my phone. “Will I be able to go to the store myself if I want?”
“I meant it when I said you weren’t a prisoner.” He spoke without looking at me as he typed on my phone. “But you will do what we say here, especially when we fuck.”
His directness made me flinch, but it also made my pussy throb with desire.
His phone dinged from the pocket of his jeans and he reached for it, looked at the screen, and slipped it back in his pocket.
“I’ll send you a link to the app.” He handed me back my phone. “Do you need anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
He headed for the door. “Any food allergies? Anything you don’t like?”
“I’m allergic to peanuts actually.” I was surprised he’d asked. “I keep an EpiPen in my bag.”
I hadn’t brought it to the Hunt because I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat, but I had it now, plus an extra as backup.
He stopped moving and frowned. “Good to know. I’ll tell the guys.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll make you something to eat while you shower.”
I didn’t have time to say thank you again before he disappeared into the hall.
I shut the door behind him and turned to look at the room.
It was beautiful and well appointed, the headboard tufted in deep green velvet, the mattress covered with a lilac-colored comforter. The furniture was solid and warm without being heavy, and there was a deep window seat that would be perfect for reading.
The strangeness of it wasn’t lost on me. I was standing in a bedroom that would have fit in at an expensive and restful retreat but only because I’d been captured by three masked men known as the Hawks who’d made it clear they owned me for the next three months.
And who’d made it equally clear they planned to exercise that ownership.
I’d been relieved to step out into the sun after the Hunt, relieved that I’d made it through. Now I realized that it hadn’t been the end of the Hunt but the beginning of something else.
Something much more dangerous.