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Hesitantly, I glanced up at the man standing in front of me, but instead of finding his hateful, soulless blue eyes staring back, I discovered that he wasn’t looking at me at all. His narrowed gaze was fixed solely on something across the room.
My head fell suddenly as he released my hair and lifted his hand in a salute. The rustling sound that spread throughout the room suggested that everyone else was doing the same. Holstering his weapon, the boss greeted their visitor with surprise in his voice and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a tinge of fear.
Turning my head as slowly as possible, I glanced over my shoulder and felt my heart plummet into the acidic wasteland of my stomach.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
It was him. He was standing in the open doorway, a silhouette backlit by the summer sun, but I would know the shape of him anywhere. The width of his shoulders, the hard line of his jaw, the soft flips of his hair—a little too long to be a military cut—the slight stoop of his posture. To anyone else, his stance might look casual, relaxed even, but I knew that he was favoring his left side.
Because beneath that shirt and jacket, there was a gaping bullet wound.
And as soon as these people discovered that he spoke English instead of Russian, they were going to put a few more in him.
As relieved as I was to see him, as devastating grateful as I was to him for coming to find me, all I wanted to do was scream at him to run. He was outnumbered twelve to one, injured, hungry, and impersonating a Naval officer. There was no sense in both of us dying. But all I could do was watch in absolute horror as the door closed behind him, caging him in.
As he stalked into the room, the fluorescent lights sharpened his cheekbones, hollowed out his eyes, and accentuated the wrath beneath their smoky surface. That gray gaze connected with mine for no more than a heartbeat before darting to the face of the man standing with his cock out before me.
Then, he opened his mouth, and my heart stopped beating completely.
Perfect Russian poured from his sculpted lips, as brash and eloquent as that of a seasoned leader. He spoke with his chin high, eyes narrowed, hands gesturing in slices and thrusts—violent motions that punctuated the simmering anger in his velvety voice. And with every step he took forward, I felt the men in the room shrink back.
The day before, when he’d spoken to me in English, each word and sentence had seemed so effortful, but here he was, commanding a room full of Russian militants like it was second nature.
Because it is, I realized.
His gaze met mine again, but this time, it felt as if I were looking into the eyes of a stranger. An imposter. A heartless, murderous liar who would do or say anything to save his own neck.
He’d earned my trust. He let me believe that he was Irish. He held me while I cried about the family he’d killed. And the second he felt strong enough, the second I left him unattended, what did he do? He’d abandoned me and marched straight back to them.
My instincts had been right all along. He was just a figment of my imagination. A hologram of comfort projected onto the source of all my pain. And from the way he was looking at me, I knew he was about to prove just how delusional I’d been.
Those silvery eyes slid down the length of my naked body as he unfastened his leather belt in the span of one smooth, confident stride. I held his cold stare as he unzipped his trousers, wanting him to see the betrayal on my face. The hatred in my eyes and the hardening of my soul. But my body betrayed me, too, spilling a single tear down my freshly bruised cheek before I jerked my head away in shame.
I’d been wrong about these men.
They could break my heart.
A hush fell over the room as his warmth drew closer. I remembered the way it had felt just that morning, the heat of his body lulling me into a sleepy stupor of imaginary safety. But now that heat felt more like the roar of an approaching wildfire.
And I was tied to a tree.
Shoving my heel out backward with a grunt, I managed to kick his shin, but he easily sidestepped my next attempt and stood with his feet spread, bracketing my tightly closed legs. The most I could have done from that position was try to step on his boot-covered feet.
He’d won. He’d taken advantage of me in every way a man could. The actual act was just a formality.
I could feel my heartbeat in my face as I stared down at the blood dripping from my bound wrists onto the floor.
“I should have let you die,” I sneered, pushing the words out through clenched teeth as I pictured his blood, pooling on the cave floor just a few days ago.
Tears blurred my vision as I realized how true that statement was. How pathetic. He’d been wearing a Russian officer’s uniform, for Christ’s sake. How could I have been so blind?
But deeper than my shame, than my anger and self-blame, was a place that whispered what hurt the most. What I’d always known but had been too afraid to admit.
That I was completely and utterly unlovable.
If saving a person’s life wasn’t enough to make them care about me or at least see me as a human being, then maybe this was all that I was.
A sex object. A servant girl. A dog to kick at the end of a hard day.
