Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels) (32 page)

Admitting it made Deryck panic all over again. He looked up from Shayla’s dirty, frightened face. Herryk’s feet hung out of the shrinking portal. The left foot twitched once and fell still. The lights on the back of the table flickered out. With a whoosh, the portal closed, leaving Deryck and Shayla in the dark. Only a handful of torches around the temple burned. They were not nearly enough to see their way out of the room and into the hall.

Shayla pulled away from him. “Deryck, I can’t see. Do you have your phone?”

He thought it was an odd request; the phone wouldn’t work this far below the surface. Deryck handed it over anyway, reaching blindly until his hand collided with her arm. “Sorry.”

“Thank you.” A moment later, the screen on the phone lit up. Shayla pressed a sequence of buttons on the screen and the dim glow brightened, creating a small square flashlight. She held the face of the phone toward the ground and walked across the dark room without a word.

Deryck caught up with her. “Shayla, you have to allow me to explain what is going on.”

She didn’t stop until she stood in the doorway between the temple and the hall. Even in the dim torchlight, he could tell she was shaking in a way having nothing to do with the temperature. “I don’t think I want to know the truth, Deryck. But you owe me one answer. Did you tell Harry, Herryk, whatever his name was, where to find me?”

“Gods, no. Shayla, I was sent to you by a force far more powerful than Herryk or his father. He got suspicious when I was spending more and more time away from the compound we live in together and followed me. Somehow, he discovered who your husband had been. I didn’t tell him anything, you have to believe me.”

Shayla hugged herself awkwardly, favoring her left shoulder. “Why were you sent to me?”

Deryck’s mouth was as dry as a desert. He licked his lips, willing his brain to cough up an explanation that wouldn’t upset her any more. In the end, he opted for the blunt truth. “You’re my only chance to live as a free man.”

“Excuse me?”

“You saw the same tattoos I have on Herryk’s arms. We’re not friends by any means, so why would we have the same mark? I’m an incubus, a demi-god created by a union between a fertility god and a human woman. The tattoos are part of a binding spell—one that forces me to sleep with women in their dreams. As an incubus, there is only one way for me to gain my freedom, and it requires the assistance of a woman who has given birth to another incubus.”

Shayla held up a hand. “I can’t listen to any more of this. If you do have power like you’ve claimed, take me home. I just want to curl up on my couch for a week and forget all about gods, incubuses, and the awful things that have happened in my life because I stupidly fell in love with the wrong men.”

Deryck’s heart thumped against his rib cage. No way could he have missed her choice of words—men, not just her marriage to Eros, she was referring to him as well. “I will need to hold your hand in order to take you with me.”

She nodded and held out her hand. “Okay.”

He took her hand between his, forcing himself to focus on his powers and not the fact that this would be the last time he was allowed to touch her. “Try to relax, it’ll make the trip easier on you.”

“There’s no way I can relax here. Just do it.” Shayla closed her eyes. Her hand tightened on his.

Deryck coaxed his powers to their full extent and transported them across the Earth. He honed in on Shayla’s home, aiming to land in the entryway where there were no windows for neighbors to witness their bizarre arrival. The world solidified around them again. He took a deep breath to steady the exhausted trembling in his entire body. He needed to sleep and recover, but first, he needed to make sure Shayla was okay.

She swayed on her feet for a moment, then pulled away and made good on her desire to curl up on her couch. Shayla grimaced, carefully maneuvering into her corner. His heart broke watching her attempt to brush the dirt and blood from her legs before giving up and curling them under her backside. Somehow, she took up less than a foot of couch space.

“You should see a doctor. I can take you.”

“And tell them what, exactly? That I was kidnapped by a power hungry demi-god who beat me until I performed a ritual that required a blood sacrifice—all so his misogynist ass could take over the world?” Her green eyes cut a glare his way. “I can set my shoulder myself and patch the cuts. If anything needs stitches, I can always fake a kitchen accident.”

He admired the strength in her voice. Inside the temple, he was certain she’d break. But she never gave up fighting, even when she’d been forced to accept his help. Deryck watched her, appalled with the horrors he’d forced on her in order to get one step closer to obtaining his freedom.

“I’ll leave you be. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, Shayla.” Deryck slipped a thin silver chain out of his pocket. A charm hung from the end, a silver replica of the portion of his tattoo unique to him. It was one of three charms in existence capable of summoning only him. He set the charm on the coffee table in front of her. “This is the only way to reach me from now on. If you want to see me, put the necklace under your pillow when you go to sleep.”

Shayla’s eyes fell on the charm. She didn’t move to pick it up or speak. He didn’t need her to say anything. Her silence spoke volumes.

Deryck walked to the front door and opened it, making sure to turn the lock on the back of the knob. “Goodbye, Shayla. I’m so sorry for the pain I’ve caused you.”

Denied another glimpse of her stunning eyes, Deryck left Shayla’s house for the last time.

Four weeks. It had been four weeks since Shayla last saw or spoke to Deryck. For the first week, she’d done exactly what she told him—sat on her couch, binged on movies, and hid her battered body from the world. Getting out of work hadn’t been easy. She told Mr. Tate and Kelly she’d been in a car accident. It bought her the time she needed to allow some of the damage to fade. Even then, when she went back to work, everyone had something to say about the bruises on her face. Most of the damage was gone by the end of week four. The cuts on her arm were the worst and should have gotten stitches. She kept them covered with a suit coat, despite the slowly climbing temperatures outside.

Shayla sat at her desk, clicking through an avalanche of emails that’d come in overnight from their foreign clients. Most of the messages were forwarded to others in the office. She pinned three of them to take care of after lunch and dumped the rest in Kelly’s inbox to deal with so she wouldn’t get a migraine. The entire time, her mouse hand dragged and clicked, her left twirled in tiny circles, wrapping a silver chain around her pointer finger in one direction, then the other. Deryck’s charm was always with her, with the exception of when she went to sleep. She wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him for his part in the abduction and would rather not accidentally call on him by taking the charm to bed.

The phone on Shayla’s desk rang. She picked it up, accidentally knocking the charm against the handset. Cringing, she hoped whoever was calling hadn’t heard the loud clunk on their end. “This is Tate’s Public Relations, Shayla speaking. How may I help you?”

“You aren’t answering your phone,” Faye said.

Shayla sighed and leaned back in her desk chair. “Obviously I am if we’re talking, Faye. I’ve got a lot of work to do right now. Can I—“

“Stop brushing me off, Shayla.”

“I’m not. I’ve been busy.” She couldn’t keep the defensive tone out of her voice. The last time she talked to Faye, she nearly broke down and told her everything. Her friend sensed something was off—more than the fake car accident.

“Yes, busy avoiding everyone who you don’t depend on for a job. You forced me to resort to drastic measures just to make sure you’re still alive.”

“You’re over exaggerating. I’m alive and in one piece. Call off the cadaver dogs.” Shayla switched the phone to her right ear and resumed twirling the charm around her finger.

“How do I know you’re not bleeding to death from a hundred self-inflicted paper cuts?”

Shayla shook her head. “I’m not suicidal, depressed, or anything requiring a stint in a padded room. Honestly, I just needed some time to myself.”

“And this has nothing to do with the lack of male company for the last month?”

“It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. I’m fine now.”

“Good, then you won’t mind if I come over for Girl’s Night tonight.” Faye’s tone said more than her words. She wouldn’t listen to Shayla if she told her not to come.

“I don’t know. The house is a mess and—“

Faye laughed. “Your house is never that messy, you’d have a conniption fit if it was. Whatever excuse you want to sell me is ridiculous. Besides, it wasn’t a question. I’ll meet you at your place after work. You’ve been alone for too long.” She paused, her voice going distant and muffled for a second. “Phil says he’ll give me up for the whole night if it means you have someone to talk to. I think he just wants to get rid of me before I force him to move the furniture in the living room again.”

Shayla felt a twinge in her chest. She remembered all too well the driving urge to make sure everything was perfect in the house before the baby came. Cyrus didn’t help her, though. He’d bitch and complain every time he found something “out of its damn place” and force her to put it back, even if she couldn’t get help to move heavier pieces by herself. The more she remembered of her time with him she’d suppressed, the harder it became to understand why she put up with him. Herryk’s explanation made sense; Cyrus had been a god with vast sexual appeal. The moment he stepped into her life, she was slave to his desires.

“You there, Shayla, or are you trying to hide again?”

“I’m here. Bring dinner with you and I guess I can try to be social later.”

“Oh man. I found this new Italian place a couple blocks away. They have the best lasagna known to man. One bite and you’ll forget how miserable you are and the guy that made you that way.”

“He didn’t—” It was too late. Faye had already hung up.

Shayla dropped the handset back in place. She rubbed her forehead, hoping to chase off the headache building behind her eyes. Faye meant well, she really did. However, Shayla wasn’t sure what would help her deal with the kidnapping and what happened during and after. She couldn’t talk to anyone about it. They’d think she was insane.

The phone on her desk rang again. Shayla answered and swung back into the rhythm of work, hoping it’d keep her mind in one piece until she left and was forced to cope with Faye caring too much.