Chapter 21
ANNIE
I walked down the sidewalk with Dawn toward her car in stunned silence. The rich garlic and heavy cream from Luciano’s curdled in my stomach, battling with the sudden, sharp spike of dread.
Dawn pressed her keys, unlocking her hatchback with a sharp chirp. “He didn’t even bother coming in to give notice face to face. Just an email to HR. Done and gone.”
A teasing smile pulled at her mouth. “Just how hard did you turn Finley down at Hunter’s party, Annie? You must have absolutely crushed the poor guy’s ego.”
I tried to give her a smile back even as I felt sick. Because Cipher didn’t do proportional responses. He did executions. I knew the exact sound his violence made—the wet crunch of bone, the sickening thud of a body dropping to the floor.
He had threatened to take off Finley’s hands just for touching me, only offering a reprieve if he managed to make me wet and he definitely hadn’t. Had he tracked Finley down after I fled the penthouse? Did he slaughter the man just for looking at me?
“Did anyone actually check on him?” My tone came out too sharp, too frantic for a casual conversation about a flaky date. “Did anyone go to his apartment?”
Dawn gave me a bewildered, slightly concerned look.
“Darren—the one who works up in the weapons exhibit—messaged him right after the email went out. Finley texted back and said he couldn’t take the constant collateral damage in Chroma Bay anymore.
He headed out to take a lead researcher spot out in Argentina. ”
I stared at her, my fingers digging into the emerald silk of my slip dress at my thighs. “Argentina?”
“Yeah,” Dawn said, rolling her eyes. “He’d go on and on about it if you let him. It was his ultimate dream job. I guess the opening finally came through and he just jumped at it.”
The suffocating pressure in my chest evaporated and I exhaled a shaky breath. Cipher hadn’t butchered the man. Finley had genuinely just packed up and left to dig up old pottery.
Annoyance quickly replaced my panic.
He’d talked about stability and the women he dated not having their lives together and being too emotional. Then he pulls this random, impulsive crap and just up and leaves.
“You seriously need a vacation, Annie,” Dawn said and gave me a tight squeeze. The scent of garlic knots and her jasmine perfume enveloped me. It was the smell of normalcy.
“I know,” I sighed. “Once this assignment is over. I promise.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Dawn said, pointing a finger at me. Her expression was stern, but her eyes were warm.
I forced a laugh. It was pathetic how easily she’d bought my lies over dinner.
I had told her the truth, technically. I was on a special assignment.
I would be busy for the foreseeable future.
I just hadn’t mentioned that the assignment didn’t require me to not be at home, or that my “work” would likely consist of being edged until I passed out.
“I’m serious, Annie,” Dawn continued. “You work too hard. You need to get laid, get drunk, and forget about Supers for a while.”
My stomach gave a little flip. If only she knew.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I murmured.
She hugged me one last time and drove off. Her taillights faded around the corner, leaving me alone on the curb. I turned to face my ride. My escort.
Four black SUVs idled in a line outside Luciano’s. Their tinted windows gave nothing away but I knew exactly what sat behind that impenetrable glass. More than a dozen of Cipher’s henchmen were crammed into the lead and trailing vehicles, playing the role of my personal security detail.
It was ridiculous overkill since I possessed a perfectly functional driver’s license. But Cipher didn’t care about my capabilities. He cared about control. He insisted on the motorcade for one specific reason: I wasn’t permitted to know the location of the Labyrinth.
When I climbed in the vehicle, a henchman extended a blindfold to me. I snatched it, my jaw tight. I hated this part. I hated the sensory deprivation and the surrender of my awareness. I tied the silk behind my head, plunging myself into darkness.
The engine purred and the SUV rocked subtly as it pulled away from the curb. Eventually, the ambient noise outside the vehicle changed. The hum of city traffic vanished and we rolled to a stop.
“We’ve arrived, Ms. Bishop,” the henchman said.
I ripped the blindfold off, blinking against the white fluorescent lights of the Labyrinth’s underground garage.
Instead of pointing toward the dormitory elevators, the henchman gestured to a set of reinforced steel doors. “Follow me.”
We bypassed the familiar sections of the facility, pushing deeper into the complex and the temperature dropped.
The henchman stopped abruptly and reached into his jacket, pulling out a familiar object. My phone. He held it out. “Have a good evening, Ms. Bishop.”
I grabbed the device with a rush of excitement. I could check my emails. I could verify Dawn made it home safely.
The screen illuminated, but my excitement transformed into immediate irritation.
The messaging app and contacts list were grayed out. I swiped furiously, trying to access anything that might let me contact someone but even my social media apps were grayed out. Cipher had done something to it so that it was little better than a paperweight.
I glared at the useless phone in my hand then looked around the corridor to see where the hell I’d been brought. There were no visible doors. No signs. I stood alone in an unfamiliar part of the Labyrinth, with absolutely no idea where I was, or why I’d been left here.
I jumped and nearly dropped my phone when it vibrated against my palm.
Tech Support
Do you want to play?
My pulse kicked into overdrive. Play? I stared at the screen, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard.
I thought you were at the League event
Three dots appeared. Then:
It was a fucking yes or no question, Annie.
I swallowed hard. I was terrified to say yes. I knew exactly what he was capable of, what kind of violence lived beneath his skin. But I was infinitely more terrified of saying no, of what that denial would cost me when he finally cornered me.
Yes
The reply was instantaneous.
Run.
I frowned at the screen. Where? I was in the middle of a windowless, unmarked corridor.
At the far end of the hall, the light went out. Then the next light went out. Then the next. The darkness was marching toward me, a solid wall of pitch black eating the corridor at a steady pace.
I kicked off my heels and bolted. I sprinted away from the encroaching dark, my breath tearing through my lungs and the fabric of my dress whipping around my thighs.
The blue lights along the baseboard flickered before they snapped to a blood-soaked red and I shrieked. The crimson glow bathed the featureless walls in a hellish light. I kept running, my arms pumping.
“Annie.”
Oh, fuck. His voice echoed through the corridor, a low, dark croon that seemed to bleed from the walls themselves.
He hadn’t been kidding. When he told me he knew my browser history, when he promised he was tired of holding back, he meant every single word. I never would have thought he’d actually hunt me through his own lair like this.
Part of me didn’t want this terrifying, adrenaline-soaked chase to end. I wanted to see how far I could push it, how fast I could run. But the darker part of me wanted to be caught so bad.
I rounded a corner, my bare feet skidding on the floor.
I didn’t even see him.
He had killed the glowing lines of his suit so that he was camouflaged against the black walls. He was simply a shadow that detached itself from the wall and lunged.
I screamed as he caught my waist, his momentum taking us both down to the ground in a crash that rattled my teeth and sealed my fate.
He absorbed the brunt of the impact before he rolled, flipping us so my back slammed against the ground. I thrashed beneath him, striking out with my fists and driving my knee upward in a vicious arc.
In the darkest corners of my browser history, the prey never just surrendered. The struggle was the entire point of the game. The Villain didn’t want a compliant, willing participant. He wanted a conquest. The resistance is what made the surrender all the sweeter.
I clawed at his shoulders, my nails scraping uselessly against his suit.
He caught my wrists and wrenched my arms above my head, pinning them to the floor with a single hand.
Pain flared in my shoulders, already sore from being tied up the night before.
I bucked my hips, twisting and trying to unseat him.
He countered by pressing his full weight against me. He was an indestructible monolith of engineered muscle and I was just soft, human flesh trapped underneath him.
“Keep fighting, little Keeper. It just makes me want to tear you apart.” He ground his hips down.
The hard, unforgiving ridge of his erection pressed against my pussy through the layers of our clothing.
“You are so fucking desperate for this. Dripping wet in my hallway, playing the terrified victim while your pussy aches for my cock.”
I lunged forward, closing the narrow distance between our faces, and sank my teeth into his lower lip.
I bit down hard, channeling every ounce of my frustration and twisted desire into the attack.
I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tear his flesh and taste iron.
But his skin remained flawless, an impenetrable barrier of invulnerability disguised as human softness.
Cipher let out a low groan and smiled against my mouth. His silver eyes looked terrifying in the hellish red light of the corridor.
“You want me to bleed, Annie?” he murmured. He clamped his own teeth down on his lower lip and a bead of dark blood welled up from the self-inflicted wound.
He captured my mouth, forcing my lips apart. The metallic taste of his blood was shocking against my tongue. I deepened the kiss trying to draw more from the already closed wound. I gasped when cold metal snapped around my wrists.
While I’d been blinded by the haze of adrenaline and arousal, he had cuffed me.
“Get these off me,” I snarled, thrashing wildly beneath him.
He captured my hands between us and pulled out a length of black material. I tried to fight against him, but it was useless as he wrapped it tightly over my eyes, knotting it at the base of my skull. The hellish red light vanished, plunging me back into darkness.
“I’m taking you somewhere special, Annie.
” He hauled me up and tossed me over his shoulder.
“A place deep within the Labyrinth only I can access.” His hand clamped down on the back of my thigh, his fingers biting into my flesh just below the hem of my dress.
“No one but me will hear you scream down here. And I will make you scream.”
I heard the soft hum of machinery, followed by the smooth slide of doors opening. The elevator. He stepped inside, and my stomach lurched as it started moving.
“Put me down,” I wheezed, wiggling against his shoulder.
He didn’t answer.
The elevator stopped and he carried me out, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic. A door hissed open and he walked a few more paces before dumping me.
I hit the floor hard and I scrambled to sit up. My first instinct was to get the blindfold off. But as I reached up, trying to snag the fabric, there was a tug on the chain of my cuffs.
“Ah-ah,” he tutted.
I yelped as he dragged me backward over the floor.
“Cipher, stop!”
He ignored me.
He hauled me to my feet by the wrists, yanking them far above my head. I heard a metallic clack above me, then the distinct sound of a lock engaging.
He let go but my arms remained up. My cuffs were attached to something hanging from the ceiling.
The chain was short, just long enough that I could stand flat-footed if I kept my posture absolutely perfect.
If I slumped, if my knees buckled, the metal would bite into my wrists and wrench my shoulders.
I was strung up. Exposed and blind.
“Comfortable?” his voice came from behind me.
“Fuck you.” It was a weak retort, lacking the bite I wanted it to have. My arms were already starting to ache, the muscles in my shoulders pulling tight as I tried to keep my feet flat on the floor.
I turned my head blindly, straining to hear him over the pounding of my own pulse.
The thud of his boots circled me before stopping directly behind me.
I held my breath, every nerve ending in my body screaming, waiting for what he might do. The air shifted against my back, a sudden wave of warmth. He was close. So close that the fine hairs on my arms stood up. But he didn’t touch me.
“You have no idea,” his voice came from right beside my ear, low and rough, “how long I have waited to have you like this.”
I flinched away from the sound, but there was nowhere to go. The cuffs held me fast.
“Helpless,” he continued. “Bound. Mine.”
He moved again, the heat of his body sliding along my side without making contact.
“Cipher,” I warned, though I didn’t know what I was warning him against. I felt the warmth of his breath against the side of my neck. He inhaled deeply.
“You smell like expensive perfume and fear,” he murmured. “And underneath that... You smell wet.”
My thighs clenched together which only made the ache between my legs sharper, a hollow pang that demanded to be filled.
“I’m going to enjoy breaking you, Annie,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, becoming something dark and jagged. “I’m going to take you apart until you don’t know where you end and I begin. You’re going to shatter for me beautifully, aren’t you?”
Truce.
The word was sitting right there on the tip of my tongue, a safety line that would stop the freefall. I could stop this and go back to being Keeper Bishop, the woman who organized files and managed egos.
But I was tired of being the one who held everything together. I was exhausted from being the structural integrity of everyone else’s lives. I wanted to break and fall apart, knowing that this monster, this terrifying force of nature, was the only thing strong enough to catch the pieces.
But I was terrified to take that final step.
“Cipher,” I whispered. My voice shook, betraying everything I was trying to hide.
For a second, the silence was absolute. Warm fingers brushed against my jaw. The caress was feather-light and devastating.
His lips brushed the corner of my mouth in a soft, lingering kiss.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered against my skin.
I let go.