9. Carsyn
NINE
CARSYN
“ W hat the fuck did you do?” The chain between my cuffs is making a noise. Why is it clattering?
Fuck— are my hands are shaking?
My hands are shaking.
My entire body is trembling. I blink at my friend; the most selfless man I think I may have ever met. Liam Davis. Officer Liam Davis. He was and continues to be the lone ranger at Buffalo Trails sheriff’s department. The only one not in the pocket of Mr. Forrest Conway, who was outed to have been buying, storing and shipping human beings for profit under the guise of operating a cattle farm.
The metaphor is sickening. He is sickening. A disgusting excuse for a human being, and as my brother tells me, a true monster. He did terrible things to his daughter. To her body and her soul.
And Liam Davis rode against him. He stood for something, did what’s right and helped us in our time of need.
And Garrison Conway has him all but dead. Seemingly clinging to life. He’s covered in blood. Eyes swollen beyond recognition. Cuts. Gashes. Torn clothing. Discombobulated. And the noise I heard…
I spin on my heels to face the monster. The monster I am utterly ashamed to admit that I’ve thought about far too much.
I’m fucked in the head and I’ve got daddy issues.
God, if you’re listening, I’ll unpack all that once I’m no longer a prisoner, I promise.
“What the fuck did you do to him? Did you shoot him? Did I hear you shoot him?” I ask, attempting to stay as calm as I can so that when I do get free, I can tell the cops or the FBI or Chuck Norris himself exactly what Garrison Conway, demon seed number two , has been doing.
Garrison lifts his flannel, untucking it from his jeans, exposing gold skin and rough, dark hair. But I’m supposed to be looking at the piece tucked into his belt. The pistol. My mouth goes dry and I swallow hard, sick to my stomach at the fucked-up things going through my mind.
Liam is my friend.
He helped my family in our darkest hour.
Garrison hurt my brother.
Garrison has probably hurt a lot of people.
But now he’s hurt Liam. And he has me fucking prisoner! He drugs me like a goddamn creep.
Still.
When I get near Garrison Conway, the attraction makes me woozy. I’m lying to myself about it every day so I’m not the sick chick who loves a murderer.
No one loves the people who love the bad guys. The other people who love monsters? Society’s pariahs. How could they love someone who has taken lives? That’s what they’d say, unless they’re his mom or something.
What does it say about me, being desperately attracted to my captor? And that, when showing me his weapon—a weapon he used to hurt my friend–I see the hair dusting his belly, imagine the grate of it against my flesh, the feel of his body writhing against mine. That’s what I think about for a solid five seconds before noticing the loaded pistol and that truth speaks volumes to my mental clarity.
I don’t love him. I hardly know him.
“You hurt Liam,” I say aloud, reminding myself that I can’t.
I can’t be that girl.
I won’t be the girl who loves the bad guy. No fucking way. Liam is a good man, and Garrison isn’t. He hurt my friend, goddamn it.
Frustration burns through my veins, making me irritably hot, the back of my neck damp with self-loathing sweat. “You hurt Liam,” I repeat, needing to hear it again. Embarrassed, weak tears slide down my cheeks and I lift my imprisoned hands to my face to swipe them away. “Fuck you,” I whisper, meaning the words despite the softness in my voice. “Fuck you,” I try again, more anger this time. “Fuck you so fucking much,” I choke out, making him my whipping post. He deserves it, though. I won’t deny that.
“No one got shot,” Garrison says as I rediscover my new-found freedom, and run across the room to crouch next to Liam. Slowly, almost apprehensive of what I might discover, I lift his shirt, looking for a source of all the blood. There is so much blood.
“It’s from his head. He rolled around on the floor like a fucking wet dog and got it everywhere,” Garrison says, his tone clipped, as if my concern for Liam irritates him. How dare he be annoyed by any of this! If anyone should be annoyed, it should be the two captives in the house, not the burly cowboy with a gun in his belt and blood on his proverbial and maybe not so proverbial hands.
Electricity flashes through me when I look over my shoulder to glare at him and find his eyes full of concern, set on me.
Returning my focus to my friend, I raise my hand, cupping Liam’s face in my palm, studying his smooth lips and the blonde stubble along his jaw. It’s not and has never been romantic with Liam, but I dip down and press a kiss to his cheek nonetheless. My heart is running a million miles a minute as I pull away. Garrison’s gaze sears my neck.
“There’s blood on your stomach, Liam. Are you hurt?” I ask him, taking advantage of his eyes blinking open as he grunts and groans in pain. Perhaps agony.
“His leg,” Liam sputters, head bobbing before he eventually manages to lift it up, setting his shoulders straight against the old hearth. Wear lines his features, with dark half moons pooling beneath his eyes, but he’s trying to get his shit together and battle Garrison with me, bless him.
I twist to face Garrison, eyeing his legs. There's blood on the front of his jeans, over his calf, almost in the center. Mostly dried, but still, a sign. A symptom. A clue.
Already on my knees, I crawl across the floor to him, my cuffs dragging with me. At his feet, I rock to my knees and reach for the leg of his jeans, pulling them up over his boot, up to his knee.
Most of the damage is covered, but his skin is smeared orange and red, and the tail end of a thread is visible. I need his boot out of the way to see it all.
“He changed. After he attacked me, he changed. He was wearing steel-toed work boots before,” Liam sputters, explaining why the injury is partially hidden and perhaps explaining why he himself is hurt so badly. I swallow thickly around the tension lodged in my throat, fear and confusion keeping my pulse thumping unforgivingly hard.
“Take your foot out of the boot, Garrison,” I whisper, keeping my head down, my heart racing too fast to face him. I’m a little scared he might hit me if I look up. Would he hit me? He hasn’t yet. Maybe he wouldn’t. The more I think about it, I don’t think he would.
He removes his foot from the boot, revealing a jagged, stitched gash on his calf, partially covered by sock, blood fresh at the visible surface.
“Your good guy stabbed me, so there,” Garrison says as I analyze the stitched gash. I look up at him to find a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He adjusts his hat, and my clit throbs while nausea rolls through my stomach in reaction. Don’t do this Carsyn. You’re better than liking a fucking murderer.
“How was the first time?” he asks, my eyes flicking accidentally to the bulge between his legs . Jesus, Carsyn. Really?
But…
It was big. The entire crotch area— Carsyn.
Jesus.
He hurt your brother.
You heard him hurt Liam!
He kills people.
I mean, I think he does.
“First time? First time, what?” I ask with a hollow burning in my chest, knowing I need to go back to Liam, who is now fully conscious. But Garrison’s mossy gaze renders me captive, and yes, I realize how insane that sounds.
“First time crawling to the man you belong to.”
Jesus fuck . “I don’t belong to you.” My entire body gives a singular, unified, hungry pulse.
“You know that pretty little pussy is howlin’ right about now,” he says, the roughness of his voice vibrating through my hips. Everything he says feels like an invitation to sin, and I hate so much that I want to accept.
I hate it more that he knows it.
“Dry as the desert.” I crawl back to Liam, the man who helped my fucking family. I have to keep reminding myself that Liam is a good guy. The only good guy in the room. Why am I wasting my energy with Garrison? He is my captor.
Oh my God.
Do I have Stockholm syndrome?
No.
I’m just… tired, and horny, and I don’t know.
“Liam,” I break the exhausting banter in my brain and tend to my friend, lifting his hair to check his forehead for any cuts. “Do you hurt extra bad anywhere? Do you need medical help?”
From behind us, Garrison scoffs. “Do you need a cappuccino, too? Sweetheart, he ain’t getting any medical help. He ain’t even getting a Band Aid. What he is getting is kicked in the dick in a second if you don’t put some space between the two of you.”
I snort. God this man is fucking arrogant and self-righteous. And he is right.
I am so wet.
“You’re seriously going to punish him because I’m near him? That’s not something he can control since he is chained to a wall like a wild fucking animal. And I’m your prisoner, Garrison, not your girlfriend.” I plop down on my ass next to Liam, then scoot so near that our thighs are pressed together tightly. He barely turns to acknowledge my presence, but manages a small smile. Garrison puts his boot back on and I glare back with a snarl, dropping a hand onto Liam’s bicep.
Garrison glares at me, his nostrils flaring, chest rising a bit quicker each passing second. “Up,” he says to Liam, his pinched gaze gliding back to me. Liam doesn’t protest, and I don’t know if he’s scared or just tired, but he gets to his feet, which are cuffed at the ankle, both to one another and to the wall. Garrison moves his cuffs to match mine–in front. Still, I should know– he’s likely in pain. A little out of breath, he finally stands. Garrison’s jaw flexes, and something growly rumbles in his chest. A protest, maybe.
Without preamble, he kicks Liam in the crotch with the tip of his boot, and Liam bellows immediately in unbearable, gagging pain. He coughs and sputters, yells and screams, and all the while I whimper at his side, crying for his anguish and mine too, for the panic of this moment and the rest to come, for how guilty I feel for causing this. I look over my shoulder at Garrison, tears streaking my cheeks. “Fuck you. You’re such a shitbag.”
“He stabbed me,” Garrison defends before shoving Liam down, back to his butt on the floor. Liam tips his head back, taking a long deep breath, still in shock from the pain.
“You’re a fucking human trafficker!” I scream, scrambling to my feet, light-headed once I stand. Garrison’s body heat wafts over me as I press my finger in his chest and hurl my insults in his face. “You ruin lives for money! You hurt my brother, you hurt Colton, you mother fucker! So how fucking dare you act like being stabbed is the reason why you hurt Liam! You hurt Liam because you like hurting people! You are a fucking pig!”
My chest heaves, and my vision vignettes from my heated rage, my lips curled over my teeth. I probably look unhinged right now. I feel unhinged. Garrison rattles me like no other.
And yet I’ve never wanted to be fucked by a man so badly.
I know, I’m… fucked up.
“Calm down,” he warns, his voice deep and menacing, and I wonder if an unspoken “or else” is attached to that warning. And still, a thrill runs down my spine, and my clit blooms with excitement. “Liam is fine. Man up and tell her you just got your ass kicked, that you ain’t dyin’ of anything.”
Liam looks at me through weary eyes, his skin sallow, blood drying along his hairline. “He attacked me. He sucker-punched me,” he starts, but Garrison cuts him off.
“Are you okay, though?” he patronizes.
My heart beat erratically, arrhythmically from this entire situation.
Liam nods. “Yes.”
“Get up here, sit your ass down in that chair, and wait for your goddamn dinner,” Garrison commands, his voice echoing off the walls from sheer volume. His orders rumble beneath my feet, his root-deep timbre vibrating through me. “I am making you something to eat, and you’re gonna eat it, and fucking chill.” He moves toward me, but I scramble away from him and all the confusing things I feel for him. Garrison catches me by the hips, and yanks me against him. I cry out in anger, driving my heel into the toe of one of his boots, fighting to get away. Fighting him because I don’t know why his hands on my hips feel so good when he’s so bad.
His sweat singes my nose. “He broke in here, I defended myself, and now you’re eating.” I want to keep fighting, his mossy eyes capture mine, his hands control my body, and I calm for him.
My eyes drop to his lips for a noticeable second before we break apart. Sliding a chair out from the table in the kitchen, I sit down as instructed, but face Liam in the living room. My little act of defiance.
Garrison moves about, the burner ticking on before he begins chopping something. He’s really gonna beat a man senseless then cook a meal like a normal evening.
Chewing the worn and sore inside of my cheek, I keep my eyes on Liam. His head bobs as he swims in and out of awareness, and I say a silent prayer under my breath that none of his injuries are too serious. That he survives this.
“Did you give him sedatives, too?” I ask, almost hoping he says yes and that Liam’s battle with consciousness has nothing to do with a severe head injury.
Garrison, with a kitchen towel tossed over his shoulder, comes to stand in front of me, obstructing my view. His sprawling chest and mountainous shoulders hold my gaze, and I refuse to play his game and peer around him or meet his eyes.
He scoffs. “Not wasting paralytic on him. I beat his ass fair and square.”
I knew that was the answer, and it wasn’t the answer I wanted, yet my skin prickles with a rush of erratic desire at his response.
Garrison moves back to the meal he’s preparing, allowing me to see Liam again. He’s humped over, asleep, cuffed hands resting in his lap.
I can’t stand to see the blood on his face. Looking back to Garrison, I find him focused on a hot pan of food on the stove. Taking advantage, I slowly move toward Liam. Once I’m at his side, I use the bottom of his t-shirt to swipe at the dried blood around his eye.
A moment later, a hand is wrapping the back of my neck. “Stand.”
I obey, and chills run down my spine and I get to my feet.
“Face me.”
Again, I turn around, doing as I’m told, my heart racing, my clit irrationally pulsing.
“Do not lay another fucking finger on him.”
My mouth is so dry, my tongue sticks to the roof of it. I should just nod my head, I should just promise to obey, but standing up is the last command I’m taking from him. “Or what?”
Garrison’s eyes search mine and for a moment, he presses his lips into a thin line, like my question may go unanswered. But his eyes drop to my mouth, and he seems to find his response while studying the curve of my lips.
“Or I’ll kill him.”