Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Iscream and kick at him the entire way back to the house.
My palms are burning and aching, and I can see blood seeping through the bandages, as the cut on my upper arm protests with sharp twinges of pain.
With his arm like a steel band around my calves, kicking out at Deacon quickly becomes a fond memory.
Instead, all I can do is shove up, away from his shoulder, though I never make it far before I lose my balance and slam back down.
It doesn’t take an idiot to realize I’m only tiring myself out, but the spike of fear and adrenaline keeps me going, and I shriek in his ear every chance I get. Fox is gone, though I don’t know where to, and when the back door opens, Deacon turns so fast I nearly bang my head on the doorframe.
“Fucking watch it!” I gasp, barely managing not to give myself a concussion.
“Poor thing.” There’s no pity in his voice, and his hand runs up my leg, stroking my thigh, before moving right back down to cage my legs against him before I can take advantage of his movement.
His steps on the floor are quiet, way quieter than they should be, and I wonder why I hadn’t heard him come up to the shed outside, or noticed him following me.
Trying to kick out again, I shrug off the worry.
That he’s practiced in the art of stalking is not a train of thought that’s going to help me at the moment.
Instead, I lunge outward with both arms, my hands gripping the doorframe and digging my fingers in.
Deacon slows, then comes to a stop when he feels the resistance from my desperate grip.
A sigh leaves his chest, long-suffering and frustrated, and his hand once again wanders up my thighs.
“Let go, pretty rabbit,” he warns quietly.
“Now. Your hands are already torn up enough as it is, and we both know that grip isn’t saving you from anything. ”
“No.” My fingers scrabble for a better purchase, and I manage to hook my fingers around the latch on the side of the frame. “No. If you don’t—”
“Suit yourself.” He jerks forward, ripping my hands free and pulling a yelp from my throat. I cry out at the sudden pain in my hand and pull it to my chest as it throbs.
“Fuck you!” I snarl. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
He snorts. “I warned you. And I’m too tired to put up with your escape attempts and whatever else this is supposed to be.” A door opens, and I hear the click of a light before he moves again, though this time he’s going down a flight of stairs instead of staying on the main level of the house.
My heart suddenly races and I grab at his shirt; the pain in my finger from whatever I did on the doorframe shoots up to my brain.
“N-no, wait!” I can’t help but flash back to the last basement I was in, and I’m suddenly terrified of ending up in another auto shop-turned-slaughterhouse.
“No, please! Jus-just wait! Don’t take me downstairs, please! ”
He pauses on the stairs, and I can almost feel him contemplating.
His hand on my calves soothes along them, almost like he’s trying to reassure me, before Deacon lets out a quick huff.
“Sorry, Sadie-Rae.” Fuck, he doesn’t sound sorry at all.
“You had your chance to behave.” His steps pick up again, though they’re silent under my howls of fear that echo in the claustrophobic space.
Finally he hits level ground, and while it feels like we were descending forever, when I manage to look up from his shoulder, I see that it’s only a normal staircase with a red door open at the top, and a bulb swaying from the ceiling, unreliably illuminating the wooden steps.
There’s no smell of blood or decay, thank goodness, and when he turns, I’m able to see what looks like a mostly normal basement.
“Pearl!” I gasp, my hands reaching outward toward her. “Pearl!” Surely she can help me. She did it before. She helped me kill a man.
She gets to her paws, her short fur standing on end as she growls a low warning. My heart lifts as I watch her trot over to us, and for a moment, I think that my prayers have been answered.
At least until she hits the edge of the chain she’s on and is forced to retreat a few steps, with a frustrated whine in her throat. It’s only then that I see bandages wrapped around one front leg and her neck, along with the white cream coating her ear.
Did they help her?
“Can you not rile her up?” A door opens amidst Deacon’s sigh. “I’d like her to eat and get more rest. She got pretty banged up at that auto shop, you know.”
“She…was?” How had I missed that? Sure, I saw the torn ear and the blood around her ruff, but she seemed fine otherwise. “Because of me?” The words spill out before I can stop them, along with a dreadful sense of guilt that sits heavy in my chest.
“No.” Deacon’s tone is decisive. “Not unless you kicked her hard enough to crack a few ribs.”
“Fuck.” I’m quiet for a few moments, at least until another door opens.
“Hey! Where—” I lash out, grabbing for the doorframe, kicking once again, but Deacon isn’t having it.
With his foot, he kicks the door shut, eliciting a yelp of surprise from me, then sets me down quickly enough that I stumble and fall to my knees on the rug covering the concrete floor.
With a jerk of my head, I look up at him, watching Deacon step closer.
There’s an expression of curiosity on his face, mixed with something I can’t identify, and as I watch, he reaches out to run a hand through my hair.
“You’re disgusting,” he tells me sweetly.
“Absolutely fucking filthy. You could’ve had a shower by now.
You could’ve slept and maybe even had something to eat.
All you had to do was stay in bed like a good girl. ”
I jerk away from him with a sneer on my face. “Don’t touch me,” I hiss. “Don’t—” But he kneels suddenly in front of me, no longer looking at my face. “What are you doing?”
“You really just can’t keep these clean, can you?
” Deacon frowns and lifts one of my hands in his.
The bandage is bloody and half torn off the rubbed-raw skin of my palm.
“This is the last time I’m bandaging these for you, babe,” he informs me with a roll of his eyes.
“Because it’s starting to feel like you’re ungrateful. ”
Ungrateful?
“I will show you ungrateful, you fucking—” My words are cut off by a yelp when Deacon presses a finger against the worst of the cuts on my palm, his blue eyes finding mine and looking rather unamused with my half-finished threat.
“Oh, yeah,” he deadpans. “Yeah, I’m terrified.
Petrified, even. You done?” When I don’t do anything else, Deacon takes my other hand in his as well and pulls the bandage off of it.
As I watch, he moves to the corner of the room nearest the door to toss them in the little trashcan there, and opens a tackle box on top of a dresser that looks more like a fishing accessory than a medical one.
“Do you umm…get a lot of practice bandaging up the people you kidnap?” I ask, half sarcastic and half curious, though I’m not sure I really want the answer to the question.
Deacon rolls his eyes before pinning me with his gaze and returns with a dark bottle and more bandages.
“You’re funny. Adorable, even.” With quick, efficient movements, he grabs my hand and upturns the bottle, spraying out clear liquid that burns the small wounds and makes me gasp in surprise.
Bubbles fizz on the still-bleeding scabs, but when I try to jerk my hand back, Deacon won’t let me.
He just gestures for my other palm, and I hesitantly lift it up for him to dump peroxide on it.
This time, I manage not to make a sound. I stare at the fizzing antiseptic, my hands shaking from exhaustion and fear, though I will never admit to the second part.
“Am I wrong?” I force myself to ask. I don’t want to seem weak. Or for him to think I’m so easily frightened. Warily, I watch him, not bothering to look at the rest of the room while the threat is right in front of me.
That brings a smirk to his lips, and Deacon chuckles. “Yeah,” he says. With easy movements, he wipes up the peroxide with a clean bandage, then uses the others to re-wrap my hands. Only when he’s done does he let go, and I immediately pull my doorframe-injured hand to my face.
Well, at least it’s only a hangnail. Absently I grip the now-shredded nail piece between my teeth, and when I jerk it free from the bed, I flinch at the pain.
“You are definitely wrong.” Without giving me another option, Deacon pulls my hand away from my mouth, holding it up between us to watch the blood well to the surface where the nail had been more attached than I expected.
But he doesn’t clean it. As I watch, Deacon brings my hand to his mouth, and his tongue flicks out to taste the drop of blood before it can fall.
“Don’t—” I try to pull away, but his grip tightens, becoming impossible to break free from. With his eyes on mine, Deacon laps at my finger, and he only lets go after delivering a quick, almost teasing bite to the pad.
“Oh, Sadie-Rae.” He breathes my name like it’s more than that and settles back on his heels. “What are we going to do with you?”
His words send a shiver down my spine and I move back slightly, putting a few inches of space between us for my peace of mind. “I just want to go home,” I whisper. “Please. Just let me take Pearl—”
“Pearl belongs in Wolf Lake just as much as Fox and I do,” Deacon argues, clicking his tongue in disapproval. “She was born here. Grew up here, for better or worse.”
“She’s my friend.”
And I don’t want to be alone.
“Yeah.” He tilts his head to the side. Studying me.
“It is rather strange, if I’m being honest. She doesn’t like strangers.
Never has. But you?” He reaches out to tug a lock of hair free from the loose, messy bun I’m trying and failing to keep it in.
“She took a real liking to you. It’s strange.
Maybe she sees something in you we don’t, pretty rabbit. ”
“Stop calling me that.”
“What?” His grin turns wolfish. “A rabbit?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Your heart races like one. It races so hard I worry it’s going to burst and you’re going to end up dead on my floor with blood runnin’ from your nose.
That would be a real shame, wouldn’t it?
” I hate the way he fucking purrs at me, and I despise his easy, graceful movements that are bringing him closer to me.
“I’m not a fucking rabbit.”
“Oh, yeah?” Without warning, he lunges, never actually getting to his feet but closing the distance between him and me so fast that all I can do is throw myself backwards on the rug.
I keep going when he does, not wanting to get pinned down by Deacon, and it isn’t until my hands hit something cool and metallic that I hesitate.
But Deacon doesn’t let me. He grabs me, his hand fisted in my t-shirt, and shoves me back despite my struggles and my shrieking.
Anytime I kick out at him, it doesn’t work.
He doesn’t even seem to notice. But he thrusts me backward, up and over the lip of something, until my hands find a plastic tray that’s loud when I’m shoved onto it.
“Then why is it so easy to get you in my snare, hmm?” With one last shove, Deacon pushes me further into the kennel, and before I can do more than lurch forward, the door is shut, latched, and locked.
“You…” I pant, sliding to my knees and hooking my fingers between the wires to try to grab for him as my heart pounds in desperation and fear. “You can’t—”
“Oh, I can.” Smoothly, Deacon gets to his feet, brandishing the key with that shitty fucking grin on his face that’s full of arrogance and satisfaction. “I just did. Think about where you’d rather be, Sadie-Rae. In a cage, in the basement, alone, or…” He gazes upward pointedly.
“Let me out!” My heart is hammering, beating too fast, and my fingers ache as I try to free myself, too desperate and terrified to work with logic instead of panic. “LET ME OUT!” My voice echoes off the walls, bouncing back to me, making everything worse.
“Maybe later.” His blue eyes watch me, cataloging every movement, before he steps away with a dismissive click of his tongue. “Maybe when you’re ready to listen.”
“No!” I hit the bars of the cage as he turns, my panic hitting a new level. “No! Don’t—” He closes the door behind him and the light goes out a second later. “Please don’t leave me alone,” I whisper into the surrounding darkness.
But of course, in the silence of the concrete room and the isolation of the dog kennel, no one answers. Not even Pearl.