AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What’s your name, love?” I break my silence to ask for her name. If I have to guess, I’d say about twenty minutes passed since she told me I talk too much, and not once has she removed her eyes from the television screen to look at me.
It’s almost as if she’s too nervous to look at me, like if she does, she might just lose that pretty head of hers.
She pretends not to hear me, so I say again, “Don’t be like that. Tell me your name. You know mine now, so I believe it’s only fair I know yours.” When she doesn’t speak, I add, “I’ll keep asking until you tell me, so you might as well save yourself the trouble and tell me your name now.”
The sigh she lets out after that is world-shattering, and the way she slowly flicks her eyes over at me tells me she’s annoyed. Annoyed and fighting an inner battle with herself, perhaps? Who could forget when she was on my lap, her lips on mine, that she kissed me back? She was more than eager about it, too.
“Thea,” she whispers with an adorable pout. “Happy? Now shut up.”
“So feisty. I have to wonder just how deep that defiance runs. Will you still act so feisty, for instance, when your body is trapped under mine with nowhere to go? Will you still gaze up at me with reckless defiance in your eyes while I’m buried inside you?” Frankly, the image is more appealing than anything I’ve imagined in a while.
Thea. Yes, I like that name.
I like her.
“Oh, my God. Do you ever shut up? Just because you helped me out doesn’t mean you get to say those kinds of things to me,” she hisses out in a huff, puffing up her reddened cheeks as she does so. She reminds me of a kitten: a creature trying to be mean and ferocious but is just too damned cute to come across as intimidating in any way.
“Why so upset, love? Tell you what, if you come sit on my lap, I’m sure we could work out all your stress. You don’t even have to untie me, if you don’t want.”
Her mouth falls open, and she blinks, as if she can’t believe I said that. And then her gaze fixates on something behind me, and she stands, abandoning the gun on the couch. Her hips sway as she walks around me to go for whatever it is, and within a moment she stands before me, the object in her hands.
Ah, more duct tape.
I lean my head back and smile. “Is that for you or for me? If I’m going to make any use of it on you, I’ll need to be cut free, first, and then the handcuffs—”
The sound of duct tape unrolling as she pulls off a piece that’ll fit right over my mouth fills the air, accompanied by a death glare I’m certain she puts all of her heart behind. Of course, I find the expression amusing and adorable in ways it shouldn’t be.
She should feel lucky I’m enjoying this, otherwise she wouldn’t like the outcome of this little kidnapping.
Thea tears the piece of tape off and moves closer to me. Before I can say another word, she slaps it over my mouth to shut me up
Oh, yes, I like this one a lot. She and I are going to have a lot of fun together.
Satisfied that I will be forced to shut up now, Thea returns to the couch and falls into it, setting the roll of tape near my gun. If I thought the sigh she let out earlier was earth-shaking, this one puts it to shame. It’s as if I already wore her thin, like she can’t handle me.
Just wait, love. Once I’m free of this chair, you’re going to get a whole lot more of me. That’s a promise.
“You know,” she speaks after a while, “I was a little hesitant at first when I found out who you are, but now? Now I’m kind of glad we’re selling you to Cormac. It’s what you deserve, honestly.”
I lift my eyebrows, wordlessly asking her how she would know what I deserve. After all, she might know my reputation, but she doesn’t know me—clearly, since she was clueless as to who I was when she first approached me and asked me to do her a favor by pretending to be her boyfriend.
Silus McLean is no one’s boyfriend. I had no reason to play along with her, and yet…
“People like you ran this city into the ground. The police are dirty, either in your pocket or Cormac’s. This place would be better off without any of you,” she rambles on, her heart behind her words.
But she’s wrong. Maybe she never put more thought into it, but if she had, she’d know that if my family disappeared, if the O’Connors vanished, a city like this wouldn’t flourish. No, others would rise up in our places. Better the evil you know than the devil you don’t.
I can’t respond to her, so I settle for watching her. Watching her and imagining all the things I’ll do to her once I’m free. Mark my words, it’ll come sooner than she expects.
Does she think no one noticed I was kidnapped? I can assume something happened to my driver, and once he realizes I’m gone, he’ll alert my brother, and once Roark knows I’m MIA, he’ll have every single man of his and mine on the case. He’ll put two and two together, it’s only a matter of time.
Still, that does leave me with some time to kill, so I let my mind wander as I watch her. She’s slender, probably a foot or so shorter than me. I could throw her around like a ragdoll easily, with little to no effort on my part. With how flustered she gets, I bet it’s easy to get under her skin—and her feistiness is only a turn on for me. The women I’ve been with were always willing to do whatever they could to please me, almost too eager. Thea would be fun. She’d be a challenge.
I like a challenge.
Thea becomes a master of ignoring me as the time wears on. I don’t have access to a clock, so I can’t see what time it is, but hours must go by. Tick, tick, tick. It’s the sound of Thea’s freedom running out.
Truthfully, I don’t know when I’ll get free, if it’ll happen before I’m unceremoniously handed over to Cormac or not. Either way, I do think I’ll take Thea with me, regardless of what happens.
