29. On the Mark
~ CAIN ~
Bridget was shaking worse than me.
Thank God I’d brought the mask. This area was industrial. No handy bushes or trees, very few doorways that weren’t gated off. No parking along the street. Way too exposed. And I’d been waiting hours when she finally came out. Thank God I’d hidden in the alley.
Thank God she was so clear with her words.
That fucking bastard broke every rule of the game.
I was proud of how she handled him, trying to break through. But he’d made up his mind and was just saying what he needed to say to justify it to himself. That wasn’t being a Dom, that was being criminal.
I don’t know what she had said or done inside that place—no doubt being her smart-ass, bratty self—but the upshot was that he’d decided he had something to prove to her.
I’d waited to make sure it wasn’t one of Bridget’s games. But when he refused to listen and took her down, I saw red. I didn’t even remember tackling him. But I came back to myself when I had him on the ground, holding him by his shirt. I almost killed him. Almost flattened the back of his skull like a ripe watermelon on that cement.
But Bridget was there, and watching, wobbling like a baby deer and…
And then she ran.
Thank God she realized it was me.
Thank God she didn’t fight, because if even one car came along while I handled her, it didn’t matter what arrangement we had, I’d be going to jail.
But none of that mattered. I’d gotten her to my car, bound her ankles and wrists in front of her and sat her gently in the passenger seat. And now we were getting the fuck out of there.
I was on the highway and considering my options, discarding each one because she was fucking sinking. I could feel it. She was losing touch with reality. I needed to bring her back without scaring her completely out of her mind.
So I kept driving until I made a decision, and nodded to myself.
It wasn’t until we were halfway there that I realized I could smell her.
I glanced at her from the side, shaking my head a little. I would have smiled if she didn’t look so out of it.
What the fuck was she doing wearing a cloak? Vigorí didn’t require that—was this her kink? When I’d first been tying her I’d wondered if she’d be naked underneath it, and my body tightened. But she wasn’t. The heavy fabric came in handy, though, because she was going into shock. She was cold and shivering, her lower lip loose, her eyes glazed and fixed in the distance.
My heart wouldn’t stop racing.
She was here. In my space.
Holy shit.
~ brIDGET ~
At some point I could breathe again.
A few minutes later I could sort-of think.
I couldn’t move much though.
Then I realized I was in a car, and I recognized the passing highway and distant city.
I made myself breathe the way the doctors told me too—long, slow breaths in through my nose, long slow breaths out through my mouth. Counting and focusing, flooding my body with oxygen.
I was shaking. I lifted one hand to pull a strand of hair off my lip that had stuck there, but both my hands came up—he’d tied my wrists.
The bonds were padded though. I could probably slip out of them if I had time, and privacy.
I swallowed as my heart rate went up another notch and I had to do the breathing exercises all over again.
“You okay?” His voice was low and husky, that gravel he used to hide his true tone from me.
I turned my head, struggling to focus. He was looking at me, but he was wearing that mesh mask again and I couldn’t see anything because the mask obscured the shape of his face, and the hood hid everything else.
He turned away first, eyes back on the road. But I saw his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath.
“Is this it?” I tried to ask, but my voice was so thin and hoarse, I had to clear my throat and swallow a couple of times to wet the roof of my mouth again. I coughed, then sighed. “Where are you taking me?” I was pretty sure he was on the way back to my house, but it was entirely possible he’d set up a lair somewhere nearby and he was taking me there. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“This was not a hunt,” he growled, shaking his head.
And I slumped with relief—then my eyes welled again. What the hell was wrong with me?
I rested my temple against the window, blinking, swallowing, working to get my body back under control. And eventually, when I could trust my voice, I spoke to him quietly.
“Thank you for… intervening.”
He grunted as if he didn’t approve, and I felt him bristle. I sighed.
“I never made an arrangement with him, Cain. You’re the only hunter I’m talking to… now.”
His head snapped towards me again, and again I wished I could see beyond that mask—read his eyes, his expression, get inside his head. But I couldn’t and I was way too tired to talk, so I let myself slump against the window, closed my eyes, and tried to breathe deeply.
Twenty minutes later when his car rolled into my driveway, I wasn’t even surprised.
I also wasn’t surprised when he used a little clicker on his visor and my garage door began to rattle up.
I was starting to feel like nothing would surprise me tonight.
Oh, how wrong I was.
As soon as the garage door was down and we couldn’t be seen from the street, Cain pushed out of the car and trotted around to pull me out of the passenger seat. He didn’t speak, just slid his hands under my knees and behind my shoulders, then turned me bodily to slip me out of the car, giving me a couple little bounces to get me balanced properly in his arms… then took me inside my own house. Still tied up.
My house looked strange to me. As if my eyes had been replaced with the eyes of someone who’d never been in here.
Suddenly I could see through the patina of middle-class wealth to the shit underneath.
The stains on the carpets.
The dust in the corners.
The lack of art or any other kind of decoration on the walls.
I wasn’t surprised when he walked confidently from the garage, straight back through the house, beelining to my bedroom.
I tried to drum up the adrenaline, the anticipation, to feel good about that. This was what I’d wanted! But my body suddenly had nothing to give.
Even when he sat me on the bed and began untying the knotted laces at my throat that helped keep the cloak in place over my shoulders, my heart barely sped up.
No. No. This wasn’t the way this was supposed to happen.
I started lifting my hands, trying to bat his away—but bound the way I was, all I did was look stupid, trying to push his big, strong hands aside when I couldn’t even move mine independently.
He huffed at me, but didn’t speak. And the moment he got the cloak off, he knelt to remove my shoes.
I sat there, gaping at him, aware of how gentle his grip was on my ankle while he pried off first one shoe, then the other.
And I didn’t miss the way he cupped his large hand under my leg and let it slide up my calf a little before he let go.
But as soon as my feet were bare and my shoes tossed aside, he straightened and lifted me again, throwing me over his shoulder this time and carrying me, ass first, into the bathroom.
I wanted to make a joke about that. But my brain wasn’t working. I couldn’t think of one.
Then he leaned down to sit me carefully on the countertop.
He stepped away for a second and I saw his head turn to the shower, then the bath, like he was trying to make a decision, and I tried to drum up some adrenaline.
He decided on the bath, figured out the faucet and got it loudly pouring into the enamel bath before turning back to me.
“You gonna get n-naked too, Cain?” I whispered through numb lips, keeping my arms bent up and against my chest because I felt cold. “You c-could untie me so I could t-trace the lines of your muscles. I p-promise n-not to touch anything I shouldn’t.”
I wished my voice sounded more alive and my teeth weren’t chattering, but Cain snorted and I tried to smile.
Then he stripped me in short, efficient tugs at my clothing. He muttered curses when the bonds made it impossible to get my clothes off, so he was forced to untie them, and hold my wrists in one hand while he stripped me with the other.
I considered fighting, but my entire body felt like a wrung out rag.
And when he had me down to my underwear, he stopped.
He was staring at me through that mask. I could tell. Though I couldn’t see his eyes.
“You gonna fight me now, Bridget?”
“Are you g-gonna k-kill me?”
“No,” he rasped firmly. “No way does that fucker get a vote in our arrangement. That’s between us.”
“I c-can’t decide if I’m f-flattered, or off-fended.”
“You aren’t offended,” he whispered, then picked me up off the counter and lowered me into the still-filling bath. “You are in shock, though. So let’s get you warmed up.”
Once I was in the bath, the water lapping around my stomach, he hesitated. Then he straightened and that masked face turned like he was meeting my eyes.
“I’m going to get you something to eat—you need sugar. And where’s your after-care kit. Can I trust you to stay here? Or do I need to tie you again?”
“You d-don’t need to tie me. And it’s in the hallway cupboard.”
He didn’t respond for a moment, just stayed there, very still. Then, as if he’d made a decision and wasn’t going to let himself examine it, he turned on his heel and marched out of the bathroom.
I considered getting out and going after him for about three seconds. Then my throat pinched and my body panged, and I just… I couldn’t.
He was probably going to steal something. Or put a camera in to watch me.
And I couldn’t drum up the energy to care.
With a heavy sigh, I let my head sink back on the edge of the tub, closed my eyes, and asked God why I still wanted to cry when it was all over and nothing bad had actually happened.
But, unsurprisingly, God didn’t answer.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the soft sounds of little plastic wrappers being opened, and found Cain, still dressed and masked, opening some of the medical supplies he’d had me buy.
“Whatcha doin’?” My lips didn’t want to move so the words were a little slurred.
“You’ve got some scrapes. I’m going to clean them.”
“I do?”
The mask bobbed up and down as he nodded, laying out bandaids, a gauze, a sticky bandage, a little bottle of disinfectant and some cotton balls in an extremely neat row on the countertop.
“Oh, God. Are you OCD?” I groaned.
He snorted again. “No.” There was a pause, then, “Drink, then eat something please. You need to get your blood-sugar up.”
I frowned, then realized he’d brought in one of the dining chairs and placed it next to the bath. There was an oven-tray sitting on the seat with a plate of cookies and a steaming mug of… something.
“Lemon honey,” he said, like he knew what I was thinking.
“Always the perfect accompaniment to cookies,” I said dryly, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I picked up one dripping hand to grab the mug by the handle and took a sip. Then another. Then a gulp.
It must have been sitting here for a little while, because it was warm, not hot. So I could drink it comfortably.
Then I grabbed one of the cookies and took a bite.
The lemon honey tasted very bitter after that, but I made myself choke it back, because it did make me feel better.
And a few minutes later, with the drink gone, and two cookies in my stomach, I could actually think.
Which was when Cain walked over to the bath, leaned over and reached in to cup the back of my calf and lift my leg out of the water.
I blinked—the gentle, cupping touch at odds with the perfunctory lift of my limb.
He hooked my knee over the side of the bath, which spread my legs and should have made me feel very vulnerable. But I was wearing black underwear, and even though he had the mask on, I could tell that he wasn’t looking at me.
All his attention was on that red, slightly swollen scrape on my knee.
When he touched it with the cotton ball, I hissed, because there was something on it that stung.
“You know, bathwater is super unhygienic. Your aftercare is for shit.”
He shrugged, still dabbing at the scrape, the stinging scent of disinfectant filling the room and making my nose wrinkle.
Then I stopped breathing as a low waft of air floated over my knee… and I realized he was blowing on it through the mesh mask.
“Are… are you—”
“Shut up,” he muttered, unwrapping one of the larger bandaids to lay it gently over the wound, his big fingers flattening it to my skin, then his palm resting over it for a moment before he moved onto the next scrape—on my elbow—and repeating the process.
“Do you feel warm now?” he asked gruffly, his voice still rough and harsh.
I nodded.
He helped me out of the bath, wrapped me in one of the towels from chest to thighs, then made me sit on the edge of the bath while he patched up the other side.
As my brain and body came alive again, it was hard to be sure I wasn’t still in shock, because it was so surreal to have his muscular bulk moving so easily in my room, in my house. I just stared at him.
Then, when he was done with patching me up, he straightened and started to clean up after himself.
For real?
As he tossed the wrappers and used gauze into the trash, then washed his hands, I remained on the side of the bath, staring at him.
Then he dried his hands on my towel—I decided I’d never wash it again—and turned to face me and went still.
I stared at that mask, wishing desperately that I could see the face behind it. Then I licked my lips, because my heart was beginning to race again.
“Is this how you lull me into a false sense of security so you can ravage me and kill me?”
He gave a spluttering little laugh. “You aren’t secure—at least, not after tonight. Tonight… tonight is a freebie.”
“But—”
“I told you, Bridget. That fucker doesn’t get one say about what happens between us. And no one gets their hands on you, except me. Remember that.”
My heart gave a painful thud and I smiled, but he was turning away like he was going to leave.
“Wait! You can’t just—” I pushed to my feet, gripping the towel so it wouldn’t fall, but hurrying after him out of the bathroom and into my bedroom—but he didn’t stop there, either.
“You’ll see me again,” he growled without looking back.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“But how soon?”
“Goodnight, Bridget. Sleep sweet. Dream of me.”
Then he slipped around the corner outside the bedroom door and was gone from sight. By the time I’d rushed into the hallway, the only hint that he’d been there was the click of the door into the garage. And even though I’d run to open it because the garage door was rattling up and he couldn’t leave for a few seconds, he was already in the car.
The engine roared as I threw the door open and tried to call after him. But he must have activated the door while he was still in the house, because it was already up, and the car tires squealed as he peeled out of my garage.
I got a vague impression of a nondescript, tan sedan—Oregon plates, but with one of those screens over it that reflected light and stopped it from being readable—before it turned, ass-end into the roadway, then roared down the street.
I stood there in the internal access door, staring at the street, heart thumping for a long time. But he didn’t come back.
And by the time I pushed the button to close the garage door and turned slowly back into the house, my heart had stopped pounding.