Chapter 7 #2
“Have you finished crying, madame?”
She jumped, letting out a little squeak of dismay. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the shadows, and she could see him now, stretched across the big bed. In the darkness, she couldn’t see him as clearly, and his French accent was unfamiliar, and she could almost think he wasn’t her husband.
In which case she’d be in even worse trouble. “I wasn’t crying,” she said defiantly, her rusty voice refuting it.
“You were sobbing your heart out—there are no doors to the bathroom, remember. You don’t need to worry. All you have to do is behave yourself and do what I tell you.”
She wanted to call him by his name, but she wisely decided not to. “Are you going to kill me?”
He didn’t answer right away, and fear spiked through her. “I don’t know,” he said finally, and she recognized the truth in his foreign voice.
She should say something sassy, to defuse the tension, like “please, don’t” or “I’d rather you didn’t.” Instead, she was silent.
“Go to bed, madame,” he said wearily. “Things won’t seem as bad in the daylight.”
She looked at his figure in the dark and knew the most powerful need to climb on that big bed with him and feel his arms around her. But he wasn’t Bastien, at least, not now, and the sooner she accepted that, the better.
“But I…” she began but he ruthlessly interrupted her.
“Go to bed. If you’re looking for sex, I’ll oblige you, but it won’t make you any safer. I’ve killed people I’ve fucked, and I’m likely to do so again. So, either strip off that ridiculous dress or go to your room.”
Without another word, she went to the small, adjoining room.
It was clearly made for a prisoner of sorts.
Everything else on the inside of the derelict farmhouse was comfortable and new.
The old iron cot in this room was narrow, the mattress thin and lumpy, the covers threadbare.
She moved as silently as she could, climbing into the bed and listening to it squeak loudly.
She would have to lie very still—she didn’t want to wake him up with her tossing and turning and she was certain this Bastien slept lightly.
If he came in here and made good his threat, it might break her heart, which was already on its way to being decimated.
It was a terrible bed, but it didn’t matter.
For a short time, she was out of sight on her captors, if not out of hearing, and she needed to regather her defenses.
She needed to sleep, not think about the man in the bed so close to her.
She snuggled down further, listening to the creak of springs, and closed her eyes.
Unbidden, the memory of Bastien came to her, holding her, and she could feel the tears gather in her eyes once more.
Enough! she told herself, as new determination rushed through her. It was time to stop mourning but figure out how she was going to get out of this death trap, with or without Bastien. It was time to come up with a plan to save her life.
Bastien would have to fend for himself.
Jean-Marc could hear the stray shudders rack her body as she fell asleep.
She was a pitiful sight, with her bruised face and red eyes, hardly the elegant companion he needed for the gala.
He was going to have to make sure Flambeau kept his hands off her—he needed her cleaned up and beautiful.
And she would be beautiful—he could see that beneath the bruising.
And her body was the way he liked them, with a great ass and fine breasts. And he still needed a woman.
There was no hurry, he reminded himself.
He needed to take her to bed, to assure her compliance at the gala.
He was also irritatingly randy, and her presence had only made it worse.
He usually maintained celibacy before a big job, unless the job required a partner. He wasn’t sure this job really did.
And she was hardly ready to be his partner. She wasn’t convinced he wasn’t her husband, which was stupid on her part. He might look like the man, but there was no way they could be that alike. If her husband treated her like he did, then she was better off without him.
But he knew enough about women to be able to use her.
Common sense told him he should kill her afterward, just to clean things up, but he was never the kind of man who killed unnecessarily, not unless he was paid for it.
She didn’t know their real names, or anything about them, and this old farmhouse was so secluded that she’d never be able to find it again.
If he played his cards right, she wouldn’t think of betraying him afterward. She would think she was in love with him, she would wait for him to come back to her, and by the time the sexual thrall wore off, it would be too late
Sexual thrall. He liked that idea. He’d liked the smell of her when she emerged from the shower, all soap and shampoo and clean skin.
He should have started his seduction tonight.
But then, it was going to be ridiculously easy.
She was still in love with her husband, and she was vulnerable and confused.
He wondered if he should climb off his bed and go in search of her, get this over with.
No, there was no hurry. He’d take care of himself tonight, thinking of her, and if she walked back in, she could deal with it.
He unzipped his pants, reaching for his swollen length.
She’d done that to him. He wasn’t concerned.
He’d indulged himself, let it happen, and he stroked himself, thinking of her warm brown eyes that looked at him with such betrayal, her honey-streaked brown hair, her tremulous mouth.
He wanted that mouth on him. Maybe he was a hurry after all.
“Get up!”
Chloe’s eyes flew open at the harsh voice, and she sat up, listening to the cot creak, to face Flambeau’s florid face. It was daylight, and somehow she’d managed to sleep like the dead, only to be yanked from her dreams by her worst enemy.
Swinging her legs to the side of the bed, she rose quickly, not wanting to give him any ideas. “What do you want?” she said sulkily, then winced as his arm reached out to strike her.
But something stopped him. “We need breakfast. You’re cooking.”
“I can’t cook,” she lied.
“You’d better hope you can. If you can’t earn your place here, then there’s no need to keep you around.”
She considered refusing. After all, the man said he had a use for her, and he could find a cook anywhere.
“I need the bathroom,” she said sullenly.
She knew he wanted to refuse, but something or someone had put a leash on his behavior. “Hurry up.”
The house looked just as cozy as it had last night, but only fitful daylight came through, with some of the windows deliberately boarded up despite the glass that remained in them.
It was all part of the camouflage, and she wondered how bad it looked outside.
She had barely been able to see it the night before; she only knew they were miles from civilization.
Bastien was sitting on the sofa, cleaning a rifle, and she hesitated, suddenly afraid. He looked up at her from his dark eyes, an unholy amusement in them.
“No, I’m not going to shoot you, chérie,” he said. “At least, not before breakfast.”
“Very funny,” she grumbled, and Flambeau slapped her across the back of her head.
“Leave her alone!” All Bastien’s amusement left him.
Flambeau backed off, sulky. “She ought to show respect,” he mumbled.
“She’s an American. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
Flambeau clamped his hand on her arm, albeit not as heavily as before. “Get in the kitchen.”
She went.
She could cook—it was one of her favorite things to do—but part of her resisted the idea of waiting on her captors.
But any more defiance might not go well for her, and for the time being, she needed to be relatively docile.
Flambeau was a loose cannon, and Bastien an assassin. Only Luc was relatively safe.
Coffee was first, and the lazy bastards hadn’t even run the new-age coffee machine that adorned one counter.
After looking at it, she understood why—it looked more like a rocket launcher than a kitchen appliance.
Ignoring it, she found an old-fashioned glass carafe and filters and set the water on to boil.