Handcuffed by Her Hero (12 page)

There was a ripping sound. Those
magical fingers moved over her head, dabbing at the gouge at the back of her
head. That spot had always been sensitive. It burned now, matching the stinging
heat behind her eyes.

Hey, you’re safe
now.

She needed to tell him she
believed him. The encroaching tears stopped her. She needed to thank him. She
needed to—

Are you hurt?
Can you stand? I can carry you, if you need. I just want to help, okay? My name
is Zeke. What’s yours?

“Oh my God.”

The next second, sirens blared
through the tunnel. Red and blue lights flashed into the gloom. Flashlight
beams joined them, swords of illumination around Ava’s silhouette. Her cousin
led the way for a handful of cops, now bellowing orders to each other.

Ray! Are you all
right?

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Thanks to
him. Oh God, Ava! He was amazing! He…”  Her voice trailed when her cousin
frowned. She spun, throat clutching when all she saw were the dents in the dirt
from where he’d hunkered next to her.

“Rayna, you need to come back now.”

She opened her eyes at Sally’s
firm command. Her vision was still hazy with tears.

“What is it?” Sally reached for
her hand. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

For a long moment, she could only
shake her head. Emotions rained on her brain, her heart. Shock. Joy. Confusion.
Delirium. Absurdity. Clarity.

“No wonder,” she whispered.

“What?” Sally pressed.

“No wonder it’s different with Z.
No wonder I’ve felt this way.”

Sally stroked the back of her
hand. “Do you need to talk about it?”

She nodded. The action came
slowly at first. But by the time she shoved out of the chair, determination
powered the move. “Yeah. I
do
need to talk about it.” She grabbed her
purse. “And I know with whom.”

Sally rose, as well. “Rayna,
listen. I know you’re excited about this, but sometimes letting these
revelations rest a while—”

“I think fifteen years is a
pretty good while, Sal.” She beamed a full smile at the woman before pulling
her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for not giving up on the
hypnosis. Now go home to your man.”

Sally’s answering look was pinched.
“Though ‘home’ isn’t on your mind, is it?”

Her smile grew. “Not by a long
shot.”

*
* * * *

A little under an hour later,
after some tenacious web searching, she stood in front of a building in the
warehouse labyrinth beyond South Spokane Street. The structure’s few windows were
shrouded by black drapes. The door was painted the same color. A faint but
steady bass line drifted into the night. The melody behind it was beautiful but
did nothing to stop the nerves chasing each other down her spine.

No doubt about it. The
determination that had gotten her here was disappearing fast as the stars behind
the night mist. If “here” was even the right
here.
She checked the
address on her phone again, not that the warehouse had any corresponding number
on it. Yet the GPS pin rested directly on top of the spot in which she stood.

In short, she was either walking
into the Bastille, one of Seattle’s naughtiest BDSM dungeons, or a kickin’ rave
party with God-knew-what spiked in the punch bowls. In either case, she’d look
like an alien and feel even weirder.

Oh, goodie.

She took a deep breath. An
expression popped off her lips that she and Sage usually saved for patients
with rolling blood veins.

“Suck it up, bang on the sucker, then
plunge in, Sergeant.”

She knocked on the big steel
door.

Her greeting was answered faster
than she thought. Her breath hitched and her nerves stood on end with the
expectation of beholding an Igor-type character in the portal, raking her over
with bulbous eyes and a lascivious grin.

No sign of Igor. Not by a really
long shot.

Her greeter was like a huge slab
of granite, only carved more beautifully. The skull-close cut of his black hair
cleared the way for her gaze to magnetize to his eyes, their color giving new
meaning to the phrase
piercing blue.
And the grin? That’s where the
guy’s inner Igor showed itself. Lascivious only skimmed the look he slid over
her.

“Well, hello there.”

“Hi.” Rayna cleared her throat
and tried to smile. “I’m sorry to bother you—”

“Let’s make something clear,
Little Red Riding Hood.
You
are no bother at all.”

The man knew how to pick imagery.
He opened the door wider with a confidence that was one-hundred-percent Big Bad
Wolf. Rayna stood where she was. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to remember the
ending of that fairy tale. “I’m, ummm, looking for a place called the Bastille.”

Wolf Man inclined his head.
“You’re not looking for it anymore.” He crisscrossed the air with his finger.
“X marks the spot, beautiful. Why don’t you come inside? It’s getting cold—”

She shrugged off the hand he
cupped on her shoulder. “Who are you?”

The guy laughed. Damn, that made
his eyes more gorgeous. And could his dimples get any deeper? “Shit,” he
mumbled, “where are my manners?” He pulled one of her hands into both of his
and dipped his lips over it. “Max Brickham. Bastille is my castle and I am your
servant. Perhaps you’ll return the pleasure of knowing your name now, Miss—”

“In the wrong place.” She
swallowed and tried to slide free from his grip. Her resolve deepened when a long
male moan punched the air from somewhere in the club. She couldn’t tell if the
instigation was pleasure or pain. Did it matter? “Uh, yeah,” she stammered.
“That’s me. Wrong place.
Really
wrong time. I’m so sorry.”

What had she been thinking?
Hadn’t Zeke reminded her yesterday, in damn clear terms, what he did with his
Saturday nights? Had she really gotten all the way inside the door of this
place before that memory slapped her like one of the paddles mounted on the lobby’s
wall? Each of the boards had a number on it, along with club members’
signatures that relayed its correspondence to another year the Bastille had
been open. There were seven paddles in all. It was weirdly sweet. She wondered
if Max put up a Christmas tree each year too, decorated with kinked-out
customizations of Hallmark collectibles.

The man chuckled as if the nonsensical
image hit him as well. “It’s not that bad, Red. You haven’t dropped your
basket…yet.”

Great. Wolfie was on an innuendo
roll. Rayna tried pulling from him again. No dice. Though the man’s hands were as
big as paws, his hold was that of a practiced paladin. He clamped her fingers
tight but stroked her palm with a thumb that was all feathery seduction.

“Th-thank you for your time, Mr.
Brickham. It’s been nice to meet you, but I think I’ll just—”

“Tell me your name?” He tugged in
his bottom lip with the grin this time. He knew the boyish charm angle, too?
She wondered why there wasn’t a woman or ten draped on his arm.

Despite her nerves, Rayna
laughed. “Good heavens.”

“We can certainly make time for
that. But I need to know your name first.”

“Rayna!”

Max dropped her hand like he’d
gotten caught in the cookie jar. The voice clearly wasn’t new for him. It sure
as hell wasn’t for Rayna. For a year of her life, when the world was nothing
but African jungles and the tribes who would enslave her there, her only friend
was the diminutive blond who stopped in her tracks about six feet away, rocking
a pair of black stilt heels, pink fishnet stockings, and a rose-hued mini dress
with black corset ties up the back. Her face, framed by her glamorously-curled
hair, was frozen in a gape.

“Well, well, well.” Max folded
his arms as those ocean blues danced with amusement. “You’re a friend of Sage,
huh?”

“She’s my
best
friend, Brick.”
Sage broke from her stunned shitless trance and rushed forward. “I’m just
wondering what the hell she’s doing here.”

Rayna seized the opportunity to
scoot back. “Zeke,” she blurted. “I was looking—well, I was hoping—”

“Zeke?” Max’s brows jumped with
new interest. “You know
him,
too?”

Rayna disregarded that. She
looked to Sage. Just saying Z’s name again, along with her friend’s arrival,
re-ignited the determination that had gotten her here to begin with. “I need to
talk to him, Sage. He’s here, right?”

Sage took her hand. “He is,” she
gently confirmed. “But this may not be the right time—”

“Then I’ll wait until it
is
right.” When her friend winced, she persisted, “Do you know what it took for me
to find this place, let alone the personal psych-out just to knock on the door?
So do you think I’m here just to ask him about catching the
Star Wars
marathon downtown next week?”

Max’s jaw dropped. “There’s a
Star
Wars
marathon? And
you’re
going?”

Sage rolled her eyes. “Don’t get
her started, Brickham. Do you know how many times I’ve had to listen to the ‘Han
gets frozen in carbonite’ scene, word for word?”

Max dropped to a knee and took
her hand again. “Marry me.”

Sage rolled her eyes. After yanking
Rayna from him, Sage gathered both her hands up. “Listen…Ray…” Her eyes,
normally bright as spring, were a somber celadon. “Z could be a while.”

“Because he’s with a submissive?”
She smiled a little when Sage gaped. “I know all about it. And I’m still choosing
to wait.”

Max growled while getting back to
his feet. “Damn that fucker! Back in the country less than three days and he
has a waiting line.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Sage pulled her
deeper into the club, past a red velvet curtain and into a shallow alcove. “I
love you,” she said, “so I say this
with
love. You don’t want to see Z
tonight, Ray. It’s complicated for him right now, and—”

“Sage!”

The bellow came from fifteen feet
down the same hallway. Rayna turned with her friend as a familiar face emerged from
the shadows: the golden, chiseled features of Garrett Hawkins. “Shit!” Sage
exclaimed before rushing to her towering, black-clad fiancé. With equal
alacrity, she bowed her head into his chest.

“Sorry, my Sir. I was on my way
to get Z’s beer, and—”

“Screw the beer,” Garrett
interjected. “That’s why I came to find you. I’ve never seen him like this.
He’s gonna need something stronger.”

Rayna swallowed, unable to move
again. Garrett’s syllables were rolled in gravel and finished with doom. She’d
never heard him sound that way before. Or any of the guys on the squad. They didn’t
talk to each other or about each other like that.

An anvil dropped in her stomach.
Garrett was
worried?
About Zeke?

She mentally peeled the glue off
her feet and stepped out. “What is it?” she demanded from Garrett. “What’s
wrong with Z?”

The guy’s tawny brows descended
over his eyes. “Fuck.” He glowered at Sage. “What the hell?”

“Don’t look at me! I only went
for beer.”

Garrett hissed and raked a hand
through his hair. “Rayna, this isn’t a great time for—”

“She wants to wait,” Sage cut in.

“You can’t wait.” Garrett’s lips
flattened. “You don’t want to wait. Rayna—
Rayna
!”

His yell consumed the hall, even
making her ears ring, but she almost told the guy to save his breath. Vocalizing
her resolve, then hearing it reiterated from Sage, fused new girders into her
resolve to see Zeke, no matter how long it took. What she’d learned in the
session with Sally…it was remarkable. Uncontainable. In a way, it was perfect
that she was here to tell him about it. This dungeon was no less foreign and
daunting than the cave where he’d been her hero for the first time. The thought
poured cement into her drive.

Funny thing about cement, though.
The stuff took time to harden. And in that period, images were pressed into it
that would last a lifetime.

 Like the indelible moment of
seeing Zeke again.

She turned the corner and came
across an area with couches that were centered on a sprawling fireplace. There
were a lot of plush blankets and big velvet pillows. If a few bowls of popcorn
got thrown into the scene, it would’ve been an idyllic slumber party setting.

With the exception of the naked
woman who got carried into the area by Tait Bommer.

They were followed by a person who
vaguely reminded her of Zeke—if she could use the term “person” for him right
now. The shirtless, sweat-covered creature in front of her was someone that looked
like him but barely seemed
him
at all. His steps were bestial tromps,
his breaths were harsh heaves, his body punched forward on giant lunges. He
didn’t just occupy the air. He wrestled it from the Universe and claimed it—and
wasn’t nice about it, either.

Rayna couldn’t take her eyes off
him.