Chapter Eight #2
The castle itself sat in a sprawling mess of arrogant power. Up lights bounced over its battlements, kissing stonework and arches, casting shadows on giant leadlight windows, and playing on the angels and gargoyles poised to pounce and fly from the gutters.
Sharp chimney stacks punctured the fading stars, and glossy ivy climbed up one side of the castle as if determined to hide the monstrosities happening within. Gun ports and arrow slits promised death, while the spiral pinnacles looked like some sort of torture device.
I blinked in wonder, completely forgetting, for one blissful moment, why I should hate this place and why I should run.
I fell into the story of this unknown citadel.
I shivered to know its secrets.
I might love gemstones and spend every ill-advised penny on pretty rocks, but history had always been my first love.
And this place...wow.
It bristled with it.
It beckoned me forward with promises of ghosts and tragedies.
I adored my job in the gift shop in the Tower of London—not just because I was near the crown jewels and my fantasies of one day studying them—but because the fort bled with the ancient past.
We thought life wasn’t easy now, but back then? Women were burned for growing the wrong type of herb, and men were mutilated for coveting another’s wife. The ingenious imagination of torturers back then twisted my stomach far more than the threats from men playing monsters in expensive suits.
“Go on, get.” Henri pushed me, herding me down the airplane steps.
Roland eyed me as I reached the bottom. I quickly moved out of the way of Henri and his insistently bossy hand.
He didn’t say a word as I stood in the lush, thick grass of the private landing strip, struggling to tear my eyes off the castle.
He merely moved to my side, casting me in his shadow from dawn’s peach and fire tones.
Dawn.
I sighed and looked away from the walled fortress, focusing on the huge expanse of sky. The plane looked as if it didn’t belong. Like two timelines had somehow collided, blending modern with ancient.
I bit my lip as I stared at the rocky cliff edging the runway. Dangerously close to the windsock that fluttered in the faint sea breeze. Waves crashed angrily below, sea spray unable to splash up the cliffside, hinting how high we perched over the ocean.
Which ocean?
Where are we?
For all my research and poring over maps to better understand the properties of minerals and ores found on every continent, I couldn’t pinpoint where we were.
Victor joined us and smiled proudly. “Welcome to my home. Joyero.”
“Joyero?” Henri cleared his throat, his eyes round and catching dawnlight. “That’s jewelry box in Spanish.” He glanced around. “Are we in a Spanish archipelago?” The way he asked sounded as if he wasn’t happy with that idea. “Canary islands or—?”
“All you need to know is...you’re home.” Victor interrupted.
“You’re free here. You can be whoever you want to be.
” Striding forward, he nodded as the four guards who’d flown silent and mostly unnoticed down the back of the plane flanked us.
Victor fell into step with them, Roland followed, and Henri threw me a look that mirrored my own.
The moment we stepped foot through that wall, there was no coming out.
Not without permission.
I shivered as a cool breeze blew up the cliffside and whipped in my hair. My skimpy top and frilly skirt did nothing to protect me. The stress of the night and the fear of my future sent goosebumps scattering everywhere.
“Bring your jewel, Henri,” Victor said over his shoulder, not caring we’d fallen behind again. He didn’t bind me or tell his guards to train a gun on me. He acted as if I was there by my own free will.
Sickness roiled in my stomach. The urge to run electrified my feet, and I shifted in my silver boots.
Henri stiffened. He shook his head ever so slowly, his short dark hair soaking up the fading night. “Don’t be stupid. You’d get two steps before those guards on the wall lodged a bullet in your brain.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the cliff and the smashing waves below.
Could I make it before they shot me?
“You jump, you die,” he whispered. “And I want to keep you alive for as long as possible.” With a heavy sigh, his hand snaked out and latched around my wrist. “Come on.”
“No.” I leaned into his pull, fighting his momentum. My nails dug into his hold as I scratched him. “Let me go. I have to try. At least let me try to get away. I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t.”
Throwing me a black look, he gritted his teeth. Another strangled heartbeat later, he huffed, “Fine.” Unlocking his fingers, he crossed his arms. “Victor, please tell your men not to shoot.”
“Wait...y-you’re letting me go?” I blinked in shock.
He checked we were too far away to be overheard before saying tightly, “I’m proving to you that there’s nowhere to run to.
You’re far from home and have no one to save you.
” He bent over me, his height pressing me into the landing strip with painful domination.
“You’re aware I’m your only friend, and the deal between us still stands, even if it is complicated.
But...I can’t promise I’ll be able to stop whatever they’ll do to you, and the awful fucking truth is, I’m the reason you were targeted.
It’s your fault I’m going to end up as destroyed as you.
Your fault I’m struggling. But it’s also my fault that I’ve dragged you down with me, so...
if it will erase any ideas you have that you could’ve gotten free tonight and if it will ease my guilt over what I will have to do to you, then... so be it.”
Stepping even closer, he sent a wash of electricity down my back. “If I’m honest, I hope you do escape. But we both know I’ll catch you. And when I do, I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself.”
I tripped backward.
Victor tapped his patent shoes in the lush grass. He eyed both of us before a grin stretched his lips. “Playing a game of cat and mouse already? It’s a bit early, but be my guest.” Holding up his hand, he closed his fist and shouted, “Hold fire. Let’s see how this plays out.”
My pulse skyrocketed. My skin itched with terror.
Henri groaned as if he truly didn’t trust himself.
Light broke through the stone wall as a drawbridge cracked open, dropping silently on well-oiled chains, forming a wooden road over the lake-sized moat ringing the battlement.
“I’ll give you twenty seconds,” Henri muttered. “That’s more than fair.” He glanced at an old-fashioned watch with a cloudy glass screen hidden beneath his perfectly tailored cuff. The two things didn’t match. One spoke of truth, the other hid with lies.
Who the hell is this man?
“Twenty seconds is nothing.” I backed away.
“I could give you twenty minutes, and I’d still find you.”
I winced.
The tension in his voice, the aching black promise in those words.
They shouldn’t affect me, but they did. My stomach fluttered. My heart skipped. And Henri destroyed my world by whispering, “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen...”
“Wait, no, I—”
“If you’re going to run. I suggest you go. Now.” He glowered beneath his brows. “Seventeen, sixteen...”
I bolted.
I ran as if wolves sprang from the castle and snapped at my heels.
My hands fisted as I forced my legs to race faster than they ever had before. I ran and ran, charging down the airstrip, needing to peer around the corner of the walled castle.
Maybe there was a village behind it.
An entire town with normal people. Citizens who had no idea what went on in the fortress by the sea.
“Thirteen, twelve.” Henri’s voice boomed behind me, chasing me, nipping me, hunting me. “Eleven, ten...”
Go.
Fucking run, Ily!
Wind gusted past my ears as I threw everything I had into escaping. I ran for days; I ran for years, yet the size of the castle walls never shrank. My heels sank into the soft grass. My skirt flounced around my legs. My braless breasts bounced and hurt.
I forced myself to ignore every pain and shut down every terror.
I flew.
“Five, four!”
Go.
Dammit, run!
“Three, two...”
My heart almost burst in my chest.
“One.”
Threatening silence hovered in the wave-crashing air.
My neck prickled, and every instinct howled to turn around and look behind me. To find the threat. To watch him chase. But those instincts were wrong. They would get me killed.
Run.
Go.
Go!
Go!
I panted as I gave everything I was to speed.
My ears rang.
My thighs burned.
The end of the wall shimmered like a mirage, teasing me, mocking me with its impossible distance.
I felt him before he pounced.
A buffet of power.
A cold kiss of claiming.
With violent arms, he swooped me off my sprinting feet and slammed me to the ground.
So hard.
Too hard.
My lungs stuck together. I gasped for nonexistent breath.
Henri prowled around me, panting fast, his hands buried in his hair. “Fuck. Fuck.” He stalked like a beast, cursed like a pirate, and with a quick look back the way we’d run, a savage decision carved into his face.
“They’re watching.” Slamming to his knees beside me, he wrenched my legs apart with unfightable hands, then pressed his entire body over mine. “They’re watching, and I’m not going to get any further unless I finish what I started.”
The soft grass cushioned me. His heat seared me. And air finally trickled into my lungs as he thrust his trouser-clad cock against my very vulnerable core.
His teeth latched against my throat, making me buck beneath him.
“No!” I shoved my palms against his concrete chest. “Get the hell off me!”
He grunted as his hips drove dangerously hard against me. “I told you what would happen if you fought me.”
My skirt floated far too high. My torn knickers were stolen and stuffed in his pocket. I was exposed and defenceless, weak and stupid.
“I’m sorry,” he grunted, shooting me back to the moment he’d been on the brink of raping me back at the club.
An apology in the midst of an assault.
A man who knew right from wrong but chose to be bad anyway.
It hurt.
It confused.
He hurt and confused.