Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (84 page)

The warm Saturday evening air stroked Sasha’s face as she walked through downtown Louisville toward the side street where she had parked her car. Her skirt fluttered around her knees, moving with the rhythm of her meandering stride. She adjusted the canvas shopping bag with asparagus, purple potatoes, scallops, and fresh herbs she’d just bought from a gourmet market. Tonight, she would make Damien dinner, pour her love for him into a homemade meal he would never forget. With a quick nod of acknowledgment, she moved to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid bumping into a couple strolling arm in arm and eating ice cream cones.

It had been almost a week since one of the most incredible nights of Sasha’s life. She could barely believe how her life had turned around. Damien loved her. Everything in her life was perfect. Supporters had come out of the woodwork after all the suspicion about the doping cleared away. She was looking for a new apartment now that she was able to keep her paychecks again. And best of all, Damien loved her. A smile flashed across her face.

In the last week, she’d been breaking out into spontaneous smiles all over the place. At work. In the middle of the line at the supermarket. Sitting at a table in the coffee shop. In the shower while the soapy loofah ran over her skin, rough and invigorating like Damien’s kisses. She was filled to bursting with happiness and it felt incredible.

As she turned off the main street to find her car, she looked down to open her purse and pull out her car keys. Someone bumped into her from behind and she looked up sharply. It was a man. He appeared suddenly in front of her, his face hard and cold. Something about him was familiar. Her eyes widened as she recognized him. Anthony Barnes. The trainer from McGreevy Stables.

“Sasha Cormick?” He asked her the question of her name as if he already knew the answer. Of course he knew her. He had tried to hire her on at McGreevy nearly a year ago.

She backed away, staring at him in suspicion with the keys grasped in her hand. Her heart began a frantic beat in her chest. Her adrenaline surged. She was poised to spin and run the other way back to the main street.

But he grabbed her arm, slapped a hand over her mouth. It was musty, dirty, and smelled of rope, horse, and liniment. Her belly tightened with fear. Her throat locked up in panic. She screamed but the sound was muffled. She kicked. Fought. Screamed again. But he only grabbed her off her feet, using his stocky and powerful body to full advantage and wrestled her into a nearby white van that already had the side door open.

In the van, he slapped a damp cloth over her mouth and nose. A sharp, sweet smell filled her nose. She drew a deep breath scream again but immediately felt her vision start to dim. Her ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton balls. Then everything went gray. Black.

Sasha swam slowly to the surface of consciousness. Her world rocked from side to side as she gradually opened her eyes. The van. She was in the van. She blinked at the white ceiling as her vision cleared. Her arms and legs tingled, prickled, as she came back to herself. Anthony Barnes!

A startled gasp left her throat. She felt tape across her mouth, her skin pulling as she tried in vain to cry out. She opened her eyes wide, trying to pierce the darkness of the van. But she could see nothing. Light from passing cars and from streetlights slipped in then out of the vehicle as they drove. Her heart pounded with fear. She tried to move, but couldn’t. Her hands were tied together behind her back. Her ankles were roped together, the cords chafing her bare skin.

She twisted around, rolling her entire body across the dirty floor of the van that was littered with pieces of hay and bits of dirt. The smell of horses, hay, and sweat was strong around her. A pungent reminder of a barn. Sasha frantically looked around as her senses returned to her, the numbness in her arms and legs going away, her hearing returning to normal. She slid across the van floor, slammed into the side, as it made a turn. Within a few minutes, they stopped. Her pulse pounded in her throat as she waited for whatever would come next. Her palms were damp, sweating in her anxiety and fear as she twisted her wrists against the ropes.

Oh God! What’s happening?

The door of the van abruptly burst open. She flinched at the sudden bright light of a flashlight in her eyes. The spark of the overhead light. Anthony Barnes appeared in the opening like a beast from one of her nightmares. He was eerily composed. Every strand of his salt and pepper hair in place, the sleeves of his dark blue checkered shirt rolled up on his brawny forearms, the faded jeans belted and loosely fitted on his body.

Even in the dark, she could tell that his left forearm had been badly burned. The scars rippled over his skin and up into the sleeve of his shirt. The left side of his neck and the lower part of his far were also marked by that old fire. Except for the scars, he didn’t look like a maniac. And that scared her more than if he had come at her foaming at the mouth and threatening to beat her to death.

She slid backwards in the van away from him. But it was no use. He reached in as if she was nothing more than a stubborn horse and jerked her out by her arms. She cried out at the pain in the shoulder, the ropes chafing her wrists even more.

“Come, Ms. Cormick,” Barnes said. “I don’t have all day to train you properly.”

She stumbled when he dragged her out of the van. Her ankle twisted painfully despite the low-heeled sandals on her feet. Sasha gasped in pain, struggled to keep her feet even as Barnes dragged at her arm. She looked around, shocked to see that she was on the property of Taylor Stables, just down the hill from the burnt out old barn.

Barnes was merciless as he dragged her through the darkness, the bobbing shaft of light that was his flashlight illuminating their way through the darkness. He yanked her toward the old barn. The building reared up, frightening and charred, in the darkness; its days of usefulness long gone.

Why is he taking me there? What is he doing?

Fear knocked against her chest from the inside out. Her breath came in ragged gasps from her throat. Sasha fought him. She dropped to the ground, gasping as her tailbone hit the hard-packed dirt and grass. She tried to roll away from him but he stopped her, dropped to his knees and grabbed her, pinning her against the ground. He breathed heavily on top of her.

“If you force me to knock you out again, I will.” His voice rasped in her ear, rough and dangerous.

Then, before she could respond to his threat, he hefted her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour. Barnes walked quickly with her into the barn, between the charred stalls, and under the roof that was half gone, pieces of it eaten away by the fire, snaggled teeth of burnt wood thrusting up into the night sky. Barnes dropped her into a pile of musty hay. Her teeth snapped together. She grunted and curled into herself as pain shot through her hip from her abrupt contact with the ground. He tied her to the remnants of a stall, lashing her against the blackened wood.

Then Barnes made a dismissive noise and turned away from her. He took a cell phone from his pocket. Dialed a number.

The moon above them was bright and thick, its substantial half disc pouring light down into the barn. It showed Barnes on the phone with the cell held to his ear, the light from the screen illuminating his face.

“Good evening. Anthony Barnes here.” He stopped speaking for a moment, listening to whoever it was on the other end of the phone. “Are you sure you don’t want to hear what I have to say? I have your little slut with me.” He paused again, a cold smile moving across his face. “Yes. That one.” Now, an actual laugh tumbled from him, joyful and truly amused. “This is not a ransom demand. I just want you to know that I have her. I’m going to fuck her.”

Sasha shivered at his cold tone. The terror ratcheting higher in her throat.

“I’m going to fuck her hard until this place runs red with her blood. Then I’m going to burn her alive just like your family burned me.” Barnes strolled toward Sasha and she cowered back against the stall where he had tied her, shivering and crying in her fear, her body swarmed in alternating waves of heat and cold. She was terrified.

“But she won’t be saved like I was. She’ll die here in this place and your happiness will be over.” His eyes burned down at Sasha. “Then you’ll know the kind of hell I’ve been in all these years since you threw me out.” Barnes knelt down on the ground next to Sasha. Before she could twist away from him, he grabbed her face, snapping his fingers tight around her cheeks and mouth.

“You can call the cops, Taylor. You can call all the powerful contacts you have in your entire self-serving universe, but by the time you find your little slut, she’ll be a melted and ruined mess you won’t even recognize.” A frantic voice burst from the other end of the line. Damien calling Sasha’s name. Barnes laughed and hung up the phone. He released Sasha’s face.

She sobbed behind the tape sealing her mouth shut. Barnes only looked down at her, moonlight and the sharp illumination from the flashlight bringing his face into painful focus.

“You shouldn’t blame him for failing to find you,” he said as if trying to soothe her. “Taylor isn’t smart enough to figure out where you are in time. That’s not the kind of game we’re playing here. If you blame him for anything, blame him for fucking up my life so that now I have to take it out on you.” He abruptly stood up. Looked over her body, at her legs and most of her thighs revealed in the dress that had ridden up in her struggle.

“You’re a hot little piece, aren’t you? Trust him to get the best of everything, even in the desperate bitches who end up panting after him.”

He dropped down beside her again, squatting next to her prone body as she tried to squirm away from him. The burned slat he had tied her to creaked as she twisted and yanked at the ropes.

“It would ruin him if he knew his name was the last thing you screamed before you die.” The pale moon washed the color from Barnes’s face as he smiled grimly down at her. So certain in what he was about to do. Sasha clenched her teeth to prevent a whimper of fear from escaping. But she trembled and her teeth chattered. The smell of the barn was seared into her senses. Old hay, the mustiness of time, damp wood, insects making their lives in the building that had been lain low by the elements, rain, fire, sun, revenge.

Barnes grabbed at the front of her dress, ripped it. Reached up and yanked the tape from over her mouth. “Scream his name for me, you little bitch.” He pinched the tops of her breasts revealed by the ripped clothing. “Scream it.”

“Fuck off, you psycho piece of shit!” Sasha yanked her arms against the wood, against the ropes, her desperation and anger giving her a strength she never knew she had. She reared up, butting him in the head.

Barnes howled in pain and anger, jerking back from her. Then just as suddenly, that flare of emotion dampened and he only knelt over her, staring coldly at her bared breasts, at her eyes staring up at him in hatred and fear.

“Is that how you want to play it?” He ripped a piece of her dress and grabbed her face, squeezing the hinge of her jaw to force her mouth open. Then he stuffed the piece of cloth into her mouth. When he let her go, she stared up at him with all the hatred she could muster.

“You’re a fighter,” he said with an amused laugh. “I like that. You can fight me all you want in here. I’m going to enjoy this way more than you ever will.”

He got to his feet, grabbed the flashlight and stalked from the burned ruins of the barn. Left shrouded in darkness, swamped by her own fear, Sasha could only pant in fright. But she wasn’t about to give up. She had finally found someone in the world who loved her, who wanted the best for her and was willing to fight for her. She would fight for their life together. She would fight for Damien’s happiness and for her very life.

Sasha jerked her arms until it felt like they would jolt out of their sockets, yanking hard and grunting around the cloth stuffed in her mouth. Finally, her persistence was rewarded. The wood cracked. She froze, unable to believe it. But the sound of Barnes returning to the barn spurred her into action. She pulled her arms back experimentally. She had broken through the wood and was no longer imprisoned to the stall. Sasha wriggled to a sitting position, forcing her breath to be quiet.

She heard the sound of splashing, like water. Then smelled gasoline. She froze.

No! Her eyes widened in realization of what he was doing. Barnes walked in with a red gas can in one hand, a lamp in the other. He knelt a few feet from her, plugged in the lamp into one of the walls that had barely sustained any damage. She stared at him, wondering if he was crazy enough to think that electricity was still connected to the old building after all these years. He turned on the lamp and light flooded the barn. Kneeling over the lamp, the light flared up from under him, creating a monster out of his face.

Her panicked breath rushed around the cloth in her mouth. For a moment, spots danced in front of her eyes. A ringing sounded in her ears.

You will not pass out. You will not!

Sasha blinked. Forced herself to take calming and slow breaths as best as she could. The ringing faded. She blinked away the spots in time to see Barnes stand up with the gas can in his hand. With an almost playful look in her direction, he splashed gasoline on the walls all around them, on the wood that had escaped the first fire, the resilient hay, and the unscarred walls. Then he walked toward her.

“You’re going to burn screaming his name.” He splashed the gas on her.