Chapter Nine #2
Something horrible had happened to her, something that could turn out to be terrible…
That much was evidenced by the fetters she couldn’t remove and her inability to properly recall how she’d ended up in the alien-looking room.
For some odd reason, though, she couldn’t seem to muster the energy to give in to her fear about the outcome.
Intellectually, she recognized her plight, but it was as if there was a disconnect between her relaxed responses and her usually sharp instincts.
“I have to get out of here,” she reasoned, keeping her gaze on the white ceiling. “Maybe I can use this calmness to help me.”
The idea resonated, urging her to follow through and see how she fared. If she could stay calm, then she could get out of there. And perhaps, if she cried out for help, someone might hear her.
“Hello?” she called out, tentatively at first. “Hello? I’m trapped. Is anyone out there?”
Not that she knew where ‘out there’ was. Another quick scan of the space still didn’t easily reveal the whereabouts of a door, but she tried not to linger on the point.
“Hello?” Her voice was louder that time, her strained timbre suggesting that the ounce of apprehension tingling inside her might have been ballooning. However perturbing her tranquility had been, the growing worry was unwelcome. “Can anyone hear me?”
She listened harder, concentrating on picking up on any extraneous noises. She had to be sensible. Even if, for some reason, she wasn’t panicking yet, she was being held. She hadn’t consented to be there, and she didn’t want to be bound. Whatever had taken place was against her will.
“Nothing.” She acknowledged the answer out loud, her brow furrowing deeper. “I’m tied naked to this fucking bed, and there’s no one out there to even hear me.”
Despondency swam in her chest, colliding with her trepidation and birthing the closest sensation she’d felt to panic so far. As it rose through her body, though, it morphed into frustrated anger, resentment bubbling hotter than any other emotion.
Someone had done this to her, and whoever was responsible, they had no fucking right.
No fucking right at all.
“Oh, come on!” Writhing in the binds, she cried out, expressing the swelling anger that rose from inside. “Someone must be able to hear me. Who’s out there?”
Protracted seconds flitted past, and in the haze of her puzzled rage, Kris thought she sensed a shift in the atmosphere, a frisson of electricity in the air that she hadn’t noticed before.
The change was subtle. A pin drop, and tugging at her fetters again, she thought the sensation was only a product of her imagination until a new booming noise splintered her concentration.
“Ah, there she is.”
She froze at the sound of his voice, her heart succumbing to the elevating stimulus and hammering faster.
Turning her head left and right, she looked around the white space for evidence of where the reply had originated from, but for the life of her, she couldn’t see who owned the deep, dulcet tone.
“Who’s there?” Her voice was a lot quieter that time, her tone hesitant. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here, Kristina.”
She threw her head in the direction of his voice, and just like that, he appeared, manifesting in front of her eyes; the guy who’d saved her on the cold street.
Recoiling against the covers in shock, she took in the look of him all over again; the same enormous man with the dazzling eyes, but that time he’d stripped down to what looked like a small towel, the fabric stretched taut around his hips, revealing the edge of defined obliques and the awe-inspiring muscular body she’d imagined when they’d met on the street.
“Oh my God.” She couldn’t quite articulate the screeching range of emotions pinballing around her, but disbelief and panic had to be two of them.
Whoever he was, he was utterly freaking gorgeous—more man than she had ever seen—yet the laws of physics told her his abrupt arrival didn’t make sense.
There was no way he could just have emerged from thin air.
“How did you…” She blinked up at him, trying to find the right words.
Had he drugged her, and that was why she was seeing things? “You just appeared and…”
She couldn’t complete her sentence, as though his presence alone demanded her silence.
Looking at him, she could believe it. Not only was he an incredible physical specimen, apparently able to defy the laws of science, but he carried an air of authority she’d never witnessed until that point.
It was the identical quiet clout he’d demonstrated on the street when he’d dealt with her aggressors, that same unspoken sense that he would take care of things.
“You are upset.” He frowned, taking a step closer, and a ball of fascinated terror knotted in her chest.
Whoever he was, he was so big and foreboding. Even though he hadn’t yet overtly harmed her since he’d appeared, she was still secured to the bed, and she couldn’t help but cower at his obvious power.
“Shhh.”
He raised an unhurried hand over her, as though he was a priest blessing his flock, and instantly, as if that single palm could command her mind, the words she’d been ready to ask evaporated from her head.