Not Quite Juliet: A Club Imperial Novel (Silver Soul Book 1) (35 page)

“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t want it.” I could feel the jelly oozing through my hair.

“Liar!” He was right in my ear. “Liar!” Taylor backed off and sat down in front of his cream cheese and jelly sandwich and started eating like there was nothing wrong with this picture at all. “Trust is a key, Mistress. You know that.”

“Stop calling me Mistress.” I was trying to grab a napkin to wipe my face.

He pulled them out of reach. “But that’s what I wanted. I want you to be my mistress.”

“You know, for a self-confessed submissive, you suck at this.” He threw the soda in my face.

This was fucking great. Covered in a sandwich and soda. I was turning into a Goddamn picnic. “You don’t get it. At all. I didn’t want the responsibility of being your mistress. I didn’t want your whole life in my hands. You were looking for way more than a bedroom arrangement and I wasn’t. I didn’t want that kind of arrangement at all. So you going all apeshit on Nadine was all you. Just like that prison sentence.”

He picked up the other glass of soda and prepared to toss it in my face. “You don’t get it. I
loved
you! I wanted everything with you!”

“Go ahead, you shit. Throw more soda. It’s going to get you nowhere. I don’t want it, I didn’t want it and I had
nothing
to do with you losing your fucking mind and trying to kill my best friend.”

This time he stood and walked over. He tipped the bottle over my head and poured it over me. I crushed my eyes shut and was just a little bit grateful—it washed the jelly out. Before I could open my eyes and see what was going on, though, the whole world tipped and tilted around me. I crashed hard on to the tiles, landing square on my shoulder. I screeched. I couldn’t help it.

I didn’t have time to get my bearings. Taylor grabbed my leg and dragged me into the bedroom, all the way over to the bed. He reached down and grabbed my bound hands, yanking me to my feet only to drop me on to the bed. He grabbed my feet and held them together while pulling out a zip tie from who the fuck knew where.

I was going down like Ana Steele in a hardware store. Great. “What are you doing?”

“Solving my problems.”

“Which means what? Killing me? Killing Lisa and my sister?”

“If that’s what it’s going to take.”

Cracked. Totally bonkers. “So how does murdering me solve this?”

“Oh, I’m not going to murder you.” He considered me a moment. “Fires can be such indiscriminate killers. It’s a shame your sister and roomie couldn’t get out either.”

Oh, God. “Taylor, don’t...”

“Don’t what?” It was an angry snap. “You left me, you sided with that bitch friend of yours. You can’t see the good we would have been. You let them put me in jail, Mistress. I am a sub by nature, and they all saw that. All of them. Cellmates. Guards. All of them took advantage of me.” He leaned in close and punched the shoulder I landed on, sending waves of nauseating pain through me. “And the worst part? I loved it. I loved it every time they took me. But I thought only of you, Morgan. Only of my lovely mistress, taking me to those places in my mind. Every time they used me, it was you.” He stroked his thumb over my cheek. “Beautiful Mistress, doing everything I needed.”

Holy fucking Jesus crap on a raft up shit’s creek. This maniac was going to burn me and my friend and sister to death and he didn’t care how many other people he took out. “You used Lisa.”

Taylor stood and laughed. “Of course I did!” He walked over and tapped on the door. “That was all bonus. Building up her self-worth and tearing it down. Just like you did to me.” He smiled, and it was the grin of the insane. “Now you wait right there, Mistress. I have to go start the fire. You really should’ve warned your roomie about smoking in bed.”

As soon as he was out of the room, I threw my feet over the edge of the bed and then threw myself on the floor. I literally rolled across the floor to the bathroom door and kicked the chair out from under the knob.

It flew open and Nicole burst out. “Oh shit, Morgan!”

A gunshot echoed through the apartment. I looked at Nicole. “Out the balcony. Go! Go! Get help!” She was hesitating. She wanted to untie me. “Go! Goddamn it, Nicki! Go!”

Nicole finally kicked into gear and tore across the room. She yanked open the balcony door as Taylor came around the corner and tried to aim. Nicole screamed and threw herself off the balcony. Taylor paused and walked over to me. He kicked me in the shoulder, and I felt my collar bone crack. He clicked back the hammer on his gun and held it to my head. “Cut it out, bitch. You’re only getting what you deserve.”

I was quietly hoping and praying that someone, anyone had heard the first gun shot and Nicole’s scream. Taylor grabbed my hair and dragged me back to the bed.

“I was going to let you stay on the bed.” He had more zip ties in his hands. “Now you can stay on the fucking floor and die.”

“Taylor, please,
please
.” I was begging for my life.

The zip tie clicked into place. “There’s no please. You can just go ahead and die. Once you’re done, I can get over you and move on.”

Taylor opened the closet and grabbed Lisa by the hair, pulling her out and forcing her to her knees. He had a thing for hair, apparently. He forced her wrists together and zip-tied them there. He pushed her back in and slammed the door, locking it and shoving the chair under the knob again. He walked over to the balcony and slammed the door shut, locking it.

He walked out. I heard him in Lisa’s bedroom, and I choked on my sob. I’d thought I’d never see this guy again. Lisa didn’t know; she’d never met him and I never told her his name. I was trying to put that all behind me when we started rooming together. Now Lisa was locked in my closet, going to die with me because this guy was a psychopath and thought he could tell his would-be Domme what to do.

Taylor’s head poked back in. “That should take about five minutes to really catch. And let me tell you, mattresses are very flammable. Once it gets going... well. As a bonus, there’s going to be lots of nasty smoke. Perhaps that will do the job long before the flames. Mistress, I’m sorry this didn’t work out. Now I can move on with your death.” He pulled away from the door frame and his feet beat a hasty retreat towards the front door.

“I’m gonna haunt you, motherfucker!” I yanked hard on the zip ties. “I’m gonna come back from the grave and fuck you up!”

The door slammed shut.

Fuck.

––––––––

I
could hear Lisa sobbing in the closet. I yanked on the ties again; not budging. Me and my stupid love for brass beds. There was no way I was going to be able to get loose or free.

This wasn’t happening. It just wasn’t.

“Lisa!” I screamed. “Lisa! Break the door knob!”

“What?” her voice was muffled.

“Break the door knob! Use the fucking karate classes! Find the screwdriver set in there, and take the knob out. Do something! I don’t care! Break the knob!”

“Help me!” she yelled.

“I can’t! Please, just break the knob.”

There was a pause then I heard the rustling in the closet. A moment later Lisa yelled under the door. “There’s a crowbar in here. Will that work?”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Not really.”

“Good. Here’s how. Take the pointy end and smash it through the wood by the handle.”

“Are you sure?”

“Lisa, he set the fucking apartment on fire! Smash the goddamn door!” I yanked hard on the bed and it jerked away from the wall. I was starting to smell the smoke. I put my feet on the floor and pulled on the bed again, hard. Too hard. The pain shot through my arm and into my collar bone. I screamed and fell back to floor.

I could hear Lisa trying to hit the door, but she didn’t really have room to get a good swing in with her hands zip tied together. I had too many clothes. I wasn’t sure she could get enough of them to get out of the way.

Goddamn it, I didn’t want to die this way. There had to be something I could do. I tried pushing the bed toward the windows, but my collar bone screamed again and I nearly threw up from the pain. I looked at the dresser across from me. Too far. I looked at the night stand; I couldn’t get the bed to move that way.

“Lisa!” I yelled. “Pry it open from the bottom!”

“It’s not working! I can’t do it!”

Christ, we were so fucked. I didn’t know which way Nicole had run, or if she was even all right after her jump off the balcony. I just didn’t want her to die, too.

There was smoke starting to roll across the ceiling in the living room where I could see it. The nauseating smell of fire was curling through the room already. I didn’t know what else I could do. And in the middle of all this, I heard Nick’s ring tone from the phone in the kitchen. Taylor pulled them off both of us when we were shoved into the apartment.

This wasn’t happening. It just couldn’t. Not now. Not so close to finding the life I wanted. Not when I could see the judgeship happening, not when I was this close to helping Brandon, and now my sister. Not when I had a guy who finally loved me for me.

I pulled a few more times on the ties. I always imagined I’d be able to get out of just about any situation. Being zip-tied to a brass bed by a psychopath wasn’t in those situations. I couldn’t pull hard enough to break the tie because my collarbone was broken. I couldn’t reach anything I could use to cut it.

The smoke filled the ceiling and started to roil over the lintel into the bedroom, and fucking hell, it was dark and evil and vile. It rolled like a perverse tide into the room, quickly starting to fill the ceiling. I could hear the fire starting to roar—only a fire roared like that—and I just didn’t know what to do.

I thrashed the bed against the wall as hard as I could. “Help!” I screamed. “HELP US! FIRE!” I started screaming at the very top of my lungs. I wasn’t going down quietly. I tossed myself against the bed, not even caring I was probably doing way more damage to my collarbone. I’d rather not be able to use the arm than be dead. “Fire!
Fire!”

For a moment I imagined I heard someone banging back, and I hoped I wasn’t going to lose my sanity in my last minutes of life. I kept banging on the wall, but my enthusiasm was waning. I didn’t want to go.

I heard the banging again. Could someone have heard me? I banged a few more times on the wall, and then I heard the most wonderful sound.

Sirens.

The banging got louder. It went from someone banging on the door to someone body-slamming the door. The banging was nearly constant once it ramped up, and I started rattling the bed against the wall again. “Help us! Help!” The banging was coming from the kitchen, from near the front door. Dear God, there was someone trying to kick the door in. “In the bedroom! Help!”

The door cracked loudly and on the next bang, the whole thing exploded into the room.

“Morgan!!”

It was Nick.

I burst into tears. “Nick! Oh, God, Nick! We’re in the bedroom!”

Nick flew into the room below the smoke, but just barely. Sal and Van were right behind him. I slammed the bed against the wall. “Get me the fuck out of here!” Nick ran back out to the kitchen to grab a knife.

“Where’s Lisa?” Sal looked around frantically.

“Closet!”

Van spun and yanked it open. Lisa was on the floor, curled up in the back among my shoes. Sal dove in to pull her out as Nick ran back in. In two swift movements he had my hands free and a second later I felt the ties pop on my ankles. Van took the knife, and quickly freed Lisa’s hands. Sal scooped her up; I could see she was in shock.

Nick yanked me to my feet and I screamed from the jerk in my shoulder. I also managed to get moving at the same time and they pulled us through the living room to get to the kitchen. I looked at Lisa’s bedroom and I could see the flames starting to lick through the floor and feeding along the ceiling.

We tumbled through the door into the hallway and to my horror, the flames had eaten through the wall and were dancing into the hall. I realized I couldn’t hear anything because of the alarms going off. “Nick! What about everyone else?”

He pulled me down the hall. “Don’t worry!”

“But...”

He yanked me forward into his arms. “Morgan. The alarms are going off. Nadine and Jose are banging on doors. We have to get you out of here.”

I nodded and let him pull me through the corridor. People were now pouring out of their apartments. Nick tucked me against him and headed for the stairs. We pushed down them through the sudden press of people fleeing the building, and burst out the front door into the parking lot.

“
Morgan
!” Nicole tumbled over to us and pulled me and Nick into a giant hug. She was limping.

“Move!” The officer screamed at us for standing in the door, and blocking the way. Nick pulled me and my sister away from the exit and over to his car, parked just out of the fire zone. I turned and looked at the building.

The flames were shooting out of mine and Lisa’s balcony windows. They flew up to join the ones on the floor above ours, and I realized there were at least four apartments on fire. I grabbed Nick’s shirt. “Taylor. It was Taylor...”

The black crashed around me, and pulled me under.

~*~*~

I
bounced, but didn’t bounce. Voices swirled around me. I didn’t really comprehend what was going on, and I needed to know. I forced my eyes open, to see the ceiling of an ambulance. What the hell was I doing in an ambulance?

Oh, that’s
riiiight
.

I looked to my left, and found Nicole and Nick sitting there on the bench. I wanted to jerk straight up, but I was tied down. I gasped, sucking in my breath. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it. “Where’s Lisa?!”

“Oh, God, Morgan.” Nick grabbed my hand.

“Lisa!”

“She’s fine, she’s fine.” Nicole pressed her hand against my arm, carefully avoiding the pain I felt in my collar bone.

“Did they catch him?”

“You’ve only been out for about twenty minutes.” Nick laughed, teasing me. “Who is Taylor? What’s his last name?”

“Taylor Sherman,” I said. “Why isn’t Lisa telling you this?”