Chapter Four #2
He smiled at Amani. It was a warm smile, a grandfatherly smile, and it was one of the most frightening things Amani had ever seen because it was completely genuine. This man believed what he was saying. He believed he had purchased a mate.
"Now, if you don't mind," the man continued, still smiling, "please untie him. My poor little cub is probably hungry and thirsty after such a long journey."
Little cub.
Amani's skin crawled.
"Mr. Grainger, I know you said you wanted him loose, but I think you should reconsider," the driver said.
He was standing by the van with his arms crossed, watching Amani with the wary assessment of someone who knew what a lion could do when it was angry.
"This one isn't very calm. He might take a while to break in. "
Mr. Grainger, the crane, laughed softly. It was a gentle sound, like wind through dry grass. "He'll be fine. Won't you, my little cub?"
Amani nodded. Quickly, emphatically. Whatever got the ropes off. Whatever got his hands free. Freed him of the silver collar, and his mouth ungagged. He wanted his body back under his own control. He could figure out the rest once he could move.
The plan was simple. Play compliant. Let the sharks leave. Get the collar off. Then find a car, a phone, a road, anything, and get the hell out.
The ropes came off. He pulled the gag from his mouth himself, the cloth soaked through with his own saliva, and dropped it on the ground. His jaw ached. His wrists were raw and marked with rope burn. He flexed his fingers, felt the blood rush back into them, and took his first full breath in hours.
His hand went to his throat. The collar was smooth under his fingers, thin enough to sit close against his skin, thick enough that he couldn't bend it.
There was no visible clasp, no hinge, no seam he could feel.
Just a continuous band of silver that burned where it touched him and kept burning.
It was worse than touching a hot skillet.
"Thank you," he said to Mr. Grainger.
It cost him something to say it. A small piece of pride, swallowed and held down.
But he knew where to lay his gratitude right now, and it wasn't with the sharks.
If anyone was going to give him an opening, it was the old man who wanted him untied and comfortable.
The old man who believed Amani could be tamed with kindness instead of ropes.
Mr. Grainger beamed. "Besides," the crane continued brightly, gesturing at the landscape around them, "there's nothing around for miles. He'd have no chance of survival without my help."
Amani looked.
He scanned in every direction, a full slow turn, and what he saw killed half his plan as efficiently as a bullet. The collar had already killed the other half.
Nothing. Flat scrub brush in every direction, stretching out to a horizon that shimmered with heat.
No buildings. No roads visible. No power lines.
No landmarks. Just the ranch house behind Grainger, massive and Spanish-styled, red tile roof, white arches, beautiful and completely, terrifyingly isolated, and the vast beige emptiness of the Mojave in every other direction.
Far in the distance, to the west, something moved. Amani shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted. A herd of horses running in a loose formation across the scrub. They were the only sign of life besides the people standing in this driveway.
"Are those horses?" he asked. It came out small. Smaller than he meant it to.
Mr. Grainger chuckled. "They are. I've had that herd on my land for years. They run through whenever they please and no one can say anything about it. Do you like horses? If you wanted one, I'd get it for you."
Amani thought the horses were beautiful and unreachable and completely useless to a lion shifter whose scent would scatter them in seconds. "I'm a lion. Prey animals don't generally like me near them."
Grainger took his hand. The grip was gentle but the fingers were stronger than they looked, and Amani let himself be led because there was nowhere else to go.
They walked toward the house, and behind them the van doors slammed, the engine started.
Then there was a crunch of gravel as the sharks drove away.
The sound of the van's engine fading into the distance was the loneliest thing he had ever heard. Amani never dreamed he’d want to be near sharks. That missing them could be a real thing.
"Come along, little cub," Grainger said. "Let's get you fed and cleaned up. Then you'll read to me by the fire for a few hours until you make us both dinner."
Amani let himself be led. His eyes swept the house as they entered, seven bedrooms at least, massive, money that didn't announce itself because it didn't need to.
Tile floors, high ceilings, rooms that opened onto rooms. He cataloged all of it: doorways, windows, the direction they were walking, the layout of the halls.
Survival information. The submission training that had kept him still in the cage was keeping him strategic on his feet. Comply. Observe. Wait for the opening.
"Can you cook?" Grainger asked as they entered a kitchen that was larger than Amani's entire apartment. Marble countertops, professional-grade appliances, a breakfast bar with fresh flowers in a vase. Someone had prepared this house for a guest. The flowers were recent.
Amani almost laughed. The absurdity of the question, asked in a cheerful voice, as if this were a first date and not a kidnapping, was so enormous that for a second his brain couldn't process it.
Can you cook? He'd been drugged and caged and driven into the desert and sold to a stranger and now the stranger wanted to know if he could cook.
"Um. I can make cereal. And a grilled cheese sandwich if I really have to."
Grainger moved his hand from Amani's up to his shoulder. The fingers pressed in with a casual strength that reminded Amani, again, that this man was not as frail as he appeared. "It's time to learn then."
They stood like that for a moment, Grainger's hand on his shoulder, the kitchen bright and warm around them, the silence of the desert pressing in from every window, and then Grainger leaned toward him.
Not fast. Slowly, with the unhurried certainty of someone who expected to be met halfway. He was going to kiss him.
Amani pulled away. "I'm not your mate."
He said it clearly, with his chin up, in the voice he used behind the bar when someone crossed a line.
It was the voice of someone who had always been able to enforce his own boundaries.
Who had always had a community and a safe word and a mother with gorillas on payroll to back him up if a boundary wasn't respected.
He had none of that now.
Grainger's hand tightened on his shoulder.
The grip that had been gentle became a vise, sudden, shocking, with a strength that had no business belonging to those twisted, ancient fingers.
Amani's knees buckled not because the pain was unbearable but because the surprise of it unmade something in him, some assumption about how this was going to go, some belief that this frail old man could be managed and outwitted and eventually escaped.
Grainger held him there. Standing over him. Still smiling.
"No, you're not my mate right now," he said. His voice hadn't changed. It was still warm, still grandfatherly, still as calm as the desert outside. "At least not in your mind. But that'll change in time. I know it will."
He released Amani's shoulder. Amani stayed on his knees. Not because he was told to. Because his legs wouldn't hold him. Because the fear that had been manageable in the van and on the driveway had just become something else entirely, something animal and consuming and very, very real.
His mother didn't know where he was. His sister didn't know. No one knew. He was in a house in the desert with a man who had bought him, a silver collar burning into his throat, and the closest thing to help was a herd of horses that would run from his scent.
He felt like crying. And he never cried.
Grainger ran his hand over Amani's hair. Softly. The way you'd pet a cat. "Now. Let's see about getting you cleaned up. I've laid out some clothes for you in the bathroom. Go shower and change, and when you come out we'll have something to eat."
Amani nodded. He didn't trust his voice.
"The bathroom is through that door on the left. Take your time. I'm not going anywhere." Grainger chuckled at his own joke. "And neither are you."
Amani rose. His legs were unsteady but they held.
He stumbled to the bathroom without looking back, because looking back would have meant seeing Grainger's face, and Grainger's face was smiling, and the smile was the worst part.
The absolute worst part. Not cruelty, not rage, not the cold calculation of someone who knew what they were doing was wrong.
Just warmth. Just genuine, delusional, terrifying warmth.
The bathroom was spotless. White tile, a walk-in shower, thick towels folded on a rack.
On the counter, laid out with care, were clothes: a soft linen shirt, loose cotton pants, both in cream.
Not Amani's style. Not Amani's choice. More like his mother’s Chosen for him by someone who was already deciding what he would wear, what he would eat, what he would read aloud, what his life would look like in this house in the desert where no one could hear him and no one was coming.
Amani reached for the door to close it.
"Leave it open, please." Grainger's voice came from the hallway, pleasant and conversational. "I want to be able to hear you. In case you need anything."
Amani's hand stopped on the door. He stood there for a beat, two beats, three, his fingers on the wood, and then he let go. He left it open. There was no version of this where closing it didn't lead to those hands on his shoulder again, and the memory of that grip was enough.