Grievous (Wanted Men Book 5) Read online

  Small bolts of alarm were shooting through her, leaving her with a blank mind and a skiff of ice on her skin from her scalp to her feet. She took a step back and brought a hand to her throat to calm her slamming pulse. She wasn’t sure what was worse at this point; his story or how he’d told it. The tale itself was hair-raising, but his nonchalance in telling it was horrifying.

  “That’s…you’re not…you can’t do this.”

  He made a face of impatience. “It is already done. Now come. Let us get inside. You must be cold and in need of a restroom after your long rest.”

  Her bladder was about to burst, but no way was she entering that place. Settled, she turned and walked away. Fuck him. Fuck all of this in a huge way. She ignored her name being called and headed around the circular drive. She’d rather freeze to death or get eaten by a pack of Romanian wolves than stay with this psycho.

  “The lane is not long by my standards,” he called. “But there are armed men at the electronic gate that should take you the better part of an hour to reach in those shoes. They will not allow you to leave, and there is no one around for miles if you think to stand there and shout for help.”

  She ignored him.

  “Fine. If you insist we go here; I will have them shoot you on sight if you attempt to leave me.”

  That had her spinning. She stalked back to stand before him, her heels slipping in the snow. “Are you fucking insane?” she hissed.

  “Possibly.”

  “You just threatened to kill me!”

  He lazily stroked his knuckles up and down her arm. “It is out of character for me, but rest assured, it was an empty threat.”

  She swatted his hand away. “How can you be so matter-of-fact about this? You know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t care. You will bring me back to the airport yourself. Right now.” The firm note she’d forced into her voice failed to do its job when a tremble overpowered it.

  “No. I will not.”

  “Yes, you will,” she insisted. “I can’t stay here with you. I don’t even know why you did this.”

  “Because I wish to lose myself in you, Yasmeen. I need out of my head, and being inside you will get me there.”

  She wanted to laugh again, but the sudden fear crawling all over her wouldn’t allow it. The heat snaking its way through her, she simply ignored. “Please stop this. It isn’t funny. I want to go home.”

  “I am not trying to be funny. And you are not going home. You will relax once we are comfortable inside.”

  Squeezing the leather of her purse, she felt her phone bite into her palm. She walked away again, digging it out as she went, and was relieved to see it was still over fifty percent charged. And go figure, she had service in the middle of Transyl-goddamn-vania. She called up her best friend’s name but realized something before she engaged the call. Yes, Miranda was her go-to, but Kristen was closer. Her other college roommate had left NYU after her first year to move to Paris. Romania and France were nearer each other than Romania and the United States. Fucking Romania. Was this for real? she thought as she hit Kristen’s number before bringing the phone to her ear with a shaking hand.

  Nothing happened.

  She brought it down and looked at the screen to see the call wasn’t going through.

  “You can listen to music and amuse yourself with the few apps you have,” Lucian informed her. “But your sim card has been removed to ensure you do not get in touch with any distractions that might show up to annoy me.”

  She fumbled the useless piece of technology and nearly dropped it. When she turned, she saw Sorin coming down the massive stone steps. As usual, his demeanor didn’t welcome any sort of interaction, but she rushed over to him anyway.

  “Sorin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you take me to the airport, please?”

  He exchanged a dark look with Lucian over her head. “I am afraid I cannot.”

  “Why?” Her voice came out sounding small, and that bugged her.

  “My boss will not allow it.”

  “So you’re a part of him kidnapping me and holding me here against my will?” How absurd did that sound?

  “Yes.”

  She was flabbergasted by his lack of concern. He appeared irritated, but not overly bothered.

  She jumped when she felt Lucian at her back, and then stiffened when his hand came around to settle between her hip bones. “You just attempted to go over my head,” he said at her ear. He drew her back until her ass tucked into his groin. “Do not do it again. You will soon learn there is no over my head, Yasmeen. From now on, if you need something, you come to me, and I will provide for you. No one else.”

  “Then take me home.” She turned and grabbed his expensive suit jacket by the lapels—a different one than he’d been wearing at the funeral. “Please, Lucian. I have to work tomorrow. Or is it today? Whatever. I have a large show—”

  “A replacement has been arranged to cover for you while you are away. It has already been cleared with your boss. Mr. Granville arrived this morning and will be available until you return.”

  Her bag fell to the snowy ground when her hands tented over her mouth. She shook her head as her future flashed before her eyes. “What are you doing?” She felt like an idiot repeating the same thing over and over, but she couldn’t understand how he thought it was in his rights to do this to her. “Why are you doing this? That’s my job. My whole life. You can’t do this. Why would you do this to me?”

  Another quiet sigh came from him as he bent to retrieve her bag. “I already told you,” he said as he straightened, brushing the snow off the synthetic material, “and I will not do so again after this, so listen well.” He leaned in close enough her for to smell him. The moment his scent registered, she flew back in time and was once again in his bed, fascinated by what he was doing to her. “Because this. Is where. I want you.”

  “So?”

  Sorin made a gruff sound before moving around them to get a duffel out of the trunk of the car. A duffel that should have been in Yasmeen’s closet at home. One she would bet a year’s salary was full of her things.

  She stared at it in disbelief. “For what? What do you want me here for?”

  Lucian ignored the inquiry and motioned her toward the steps.

  Snow crunched underfoot as two men walked by, both of them with guns slung over their shoulders in plain view. They nodded first at Lucian, and then at Sorin, who was now hovering a few feet behind her. They didn’t even look at her as they kept on. Security.

  “Yasmeen?”

  Hearing the thread of impatience in Lucian’s voice had her wanting to scream at him to stop this right now. She wanted to knee him in the balls and throw the worst fucking hissy fit he’d ever seen in his privileged, moneyed life. She wanted to scratch his rich asshole eyes out and insist he bring her home.

  “People will miss me,” she murmured, thinking of friends. “For all you know, my big meathead boyfriend could be on his way to find me right now. He could be worried because I didn’t come home yesterday. What will you do when he arrives and punches your spoiled face for taking me away from him?” Considering who was standing behind her and what his job was, she must have sounded ridiculous. Didn’t care. She needed to keep talking.

  Lucian’s eyebrow quirked, and he looked over her head to exchange a brief look with his own meathead. “There is no boyfriend, Yasmeen.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because if he existed, he would have been taken care of long before now.”

  She shivered as that and the cold air seeped into her bones. “What does that mean?”

  His jaw rolled. “This is becoming tedious. I had hoped you would come to heel without a fight, but I see now that hope was in vain.”

  Tears tried to climb her throat as she stared at his silk tie. Had he really thought she’d roll over and spread her legs without questioning this madness?

  Well, considering her track record with him, she supposed his
assumption was warranted.

  Denying her girly emotions their right, she swallowed hard and glowered at the self-indulgent psychopath. “I’m calling the police the second I spot a phone. I will not let you get away with this I-own-the-world bullshit just because you’re in a bad place right now.”

  He held her eyes for a moment, then, totally throwing her, made two complete circles around her, looking her up and down. It was a demonstration meant to intimidate. She didn’t let it.

  “I understand it may take you a few minutes to process the turn of events, Yasmeen. But in the future, I recommend you refrain from threatening me. I am not in the mood to deal with tantrums, but if I must, I am fully prepared to take you over my knee and spank your beautiful ass into submission. If there are witnesses to that event, all the better. Maybe then you will think twice about trying to assert your will where it is not welcome.”

  Okay. She was intimidated. The lump rising in her throat got bigger as her lack of options grew smaller. She stood there, holding her useless phone and her cheap leather bag, but rather than fall apart, as was her right, she forced herself to think. She took a slow breath, relaxed her twitching muscles, and brought rational thought into the equation. Fine. He wasn’t in his right mind. She knew that. His brother’s death had fucked him up. She would go along with this for an hour or so, excuse herself to use the restroom, find the goddamn phone, and not tell him she was calling the police. He couldn’t spank her, and when the authorities arrived at his door, she and her furious ass would be taken into the nearest town and away from—

  “Oh, and I should warn you,” he added conversationally. “If you do not settle into your role right this minute, I will send you home.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and bent slightly at the waist. “But before you arrive on U. S. soil, you will be blacklisted in the art world. I will make it so not even your local graffiti artists will want to associate with you.”

  All hope of escape died right there. Predictably, he’d targeted her vulnerability. Her passion. Her life. He’d gone for the one thing he knew was important to her, because that was how he operated. Men like him didn’t fuck around with weak or-elses. They threatened the very thing their prey would do anything to protect.

  How could she have felt sympathy for this man? How could she have thought she liked him?

  She took a split second to seriously consider tossing her pride away and falling to her knees at his feet. She would beg him not to destroy what had taken her so long to build. Respectability. A career she loved and felt proud of. One that brought her self-worth because it was the beginning of a stable, comfortable living that she was solely responsible for. Where some used the words as an expression, in her case, they were nothing but the truth; her job was her life. Aside from her few friends, she had nothing else—

  “Loki!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! Lucian, I have to get home.”

  “The feline my staff found in your apartment is being taken care of.”

  Possessive flames flared in her belly. “By who?”

  “My staff.”

  “No. He’s mine. I take care of him. No one else. Why? Because he’s mine.” If she was possessive of her job, she was obsessive about her rescue kitty. Her god of mischief loved her almost as much as she loved him. Or, at least that’s what she chose to believe. “What was your staff doing in my home? Going through my things,” she spat, pointing at the bag in Sorin’s hand. She didn’t have anything to hide, but those strangers had invaded her private sanctuary! “Who the hell do you think you are to steamroll into my life after two years and take over without so much as—?”

  Her words choked off, and she stumbled back when he stepped into her with a dark, hungry expression swallowing everything else on his face. He caught her by the elbow before she could totally humiliate herself by falling on her ass.

  “I cannot decide which I find more attractive; how possessive you are of what you consider yours or your lack of fear as you gear up to tell me off.”

  She clenched her fists and jerked her arm away. “Neither are meant to be attractive. They just are.”

  “Yes, draga. They are.”

  She cringed as he misunderstood. “I meant, they exist.”

  “This greed over what belongs to you; where does it come from?”

  She sealed her lips, not about to share that she’d grown up with nothing so the few things she had now meant everything.

  “Does it extend to all your things?”

  “I don’t have many things.” Her tone combined with the disparaging glance at the goth monstrosity behind him let him know her views on overindulgences.

  His fingers burned the skin at the base of her throat when he lifted the pendant she put on when she was going for a sedate look. With a lazy yank, he snapped the chain and slipped her jewelry into his pants pocket. Like a dolt, her mouth fell open, and she brought her hand up to feel around her neck as though checking to make sure she’d just witnessed that. Empty.

  She didn’t even know what to say. Or if she should bother. “How dare you?” she settled on because it usually encompassed pretty much anything.

  A low sound came from deep in his chest. It was distinctly sexual in nature, and it slithered hotly around her erogenous zones in a way it shouldn’t. “Come into the house. And save that look for when I do something that warrants it. Believe me, over the coming weeks you will have plenty of opportunity to use it.” He turned on his heel and ascended the stone steps to enter the castle through an arched door. He was already shrugging out of his overcoat.

  The coming weeks? She saw her future go up in a wisp of smoke and wanted to…to…she didn’t know what. She wasn’t sure how to keep straight the reactions she was having to this nightmare. In fifteen minutes, she’d raced through being terrified, angry, helpless, worried, insulted, furious, turned on.

  “He will not harm you,” Sorin said at her back.

  She wasn’t sure she believed him. “But I’m here.” She was embarrassed when her eyes filled with tears, but she couldn’t stop them. She had to get back to New York. She hadn’t worked her ass off, sacrificing so much, right down to her pride and morals, to get where she was today just so some grieving rich guy could comfort himself by kidnapping and spending a couple of weeks forcing her to have sex with him.

  She made a quiet sound that sadly lacked fear and affront. She ignored the reason for it and continued to blame the wetness she could feel between her legs on her need to use the restroom.

  “He will bring you back to your life when he has this disease under control. For now, since you are here, you will help him. Consider it a vacation.”

  She turned. Up close, Sorin’s hooded eyes were the darkest brown she’d ever seen. Darker even than hers. “What disease?” Her stomach had just become an empty pit. “I didn’t know he was sick. Is it serious? Is he in treatment?”

  She held her breath and didn’t want to feel what she was feeling at the thought of Lucian being ill. Despite what he was doing to her, she found herself praying there was a cure he could buy.

  “No. There is no cure. He is strong enough for it not to be fatal, but it is still debilitating, and as you just witnessed, it is fucking with who he is as a person.”

  She shook her head, at a loss, and had the staggering urge to ugly cry. “Which disease are you talking about?”

  Sadness settled over him as he looked beyond her to the open door. His voice, too, came out a mere whisper. “Grief.”

  THREE

  Lucian watched Yasmeen enter his home with Sorin at her back. She took only a few steps into the foyer and stopped, her dark gaze darting around. She was clutching that handbag of hers with long, graceful fingers, the knuckles of which were white. And that was all she allowed him to see of her anxiety, which pleased him. He hadn’t brought her here to witness her emotions.

  As Sorin left them alone, she drifted closer to him. Was she aware of it? She had one eye on him, and the other on her new surroundings. It was no wonde
r he’d chosen her. Such beauty. She had lustrous hair of the darkest mahogany that fell in a thick curtain down her back, and brown eyes interspersed with streams of honey to give them the warmth he’d thought about during many a boring meeting over the last twenty-four months. Her skin was a flawless bronze and silky to the touch. And her body? Perfection. Utter. Fucking. Perfection.

  He couldn’t help it. He closed the distance between them. Moving slowly when he saw her eyelids flutter, he went down on his haunches and brushed his thumb down the side of her calf. Seeing the well-defined yet feminine muscle had him wanting to take her to his rooms right then. Feeling the warmth of her skin made the trip unnecessary. He would have her here. Now.

  She stepped to the side, just out of his reach.

  Such an unnecessary attempt at asserting ownership of something that no longer belonged to her. He let his hand fall to his knee as he admired her heels. Black patent leather. She would wear them when he had her. “I will generously allow it to pass this time because you are not yet fully accepting of your new role.” He brought his gaze up. “But do not do that again.”

  “My role? And do what?”

  He straightened, noting how he’d heard her accent more since she’d woken than he ever had before. She’d told him during the one meal they’d shared that she’d grown up in the Bronx. He was finally seeing that in the way she was slowly revealing the fighter she must be to have gotten where she was today.

  “I have already explained your role. What you will not do is reject my touch.”

  The play of emotions flitting across her face—especially the affront, which signified pride—was interesting to him in a way he found to be a bother. It was her beauty he should be concentrating on, her physical appearance and the way in which she used the body she’d been blessed with. Because in the end, nothing but that should matter. Skin deep was the safest place for someone like him.

  “And if I do, despite your warning?”