Seduced in the Dark (47 page)

“It depends,” he says through gritted teeth.
He stands still for a moment, thinking something over. When he
returns from his thoughts he looks at me and I see regret in his
eyes. My heart almost stops.

“There isn’t going to be a trial,” Reed
says. He starts pacing again, a fist at the nape of his neck. “I
knew it could go down this way. I didn’t want to believe it, but I
knew. I’ve been arguing with my boss for the last few hours.
There’s just….” Reed seems at a loss. “There’ll be plenty of
arrests, I’m sure. The people meant to be auctioned will
undoubtedly be given sanctuary, but…there won’t be any justice. Not
the kind those victims deserve.”

“How can that be?” I sob. “How can you let
that happen?”

“Rafiq is a high level military officer in
the Pakistan Army, Livvie. His government isn’t going to allow a
scandal to get out. They’ve agreed to let our government be a part
of the raid in exchange for keeping their people out of it. When
the dust settles, they’re the ones to decide who was there and who
wasn’t, that’s how international politics work.”

I feel like someone has hit me in the chest
with a battering ram. For the second time in my life, I understand
Caleb’s thirst for vengeance. I could kill. I’ve done it before and
I don’t feel bad about it. Some people deserve to die.

Tears are running from my eyes without
ceasing, I’m soaked through with them. I’m not sad, though. I’m
filled with rage and I have no way to let it out. There’s no one to
kill, nothing to hit, and nowhere to go.

“Reed,” I sob, “I have to tell you
something. Please, please try to understand. I need your help.” My
hands are clasped together and I’m holding them so tightly to my
chest I can feel my thumb leaving a bruise.

Reed scrubs his hands over his face, “Please
don’t tell me something incriminating, Miss Ruiz. There’s nothing I
can do right now and if I have to put you back under arrest, it’s
going to seriously put a shitty end to an already shitty day. All I
have is my integrity. Don’t make me choose between it and you.”

“Please, Reed! I have to tell you the rest
of my story,” I plead. It’s the most important part, the part I’ve
been saving until I knew I could trust Reed. I just hope I’m not
too late.

“I’ve heard all I need to know. My job was
to investigate the border incident. You’ve been cleared of charges.
My job was to locate the auction – done. I did my job. I came here
to tell you you’re free to go and I was willing to listen to the
rest of your story if it would give you closure, but if you’re just
going to incriminate yourself, I don’t want to hear it. If I hear
it, I’ll act on it. Do you understand?”

Reed is angry, but I don’t care. Caleb is
too important. He’s sacrificed so much for me, even to the point of
protecting me from myself. I would have followed him anywhere, done
anything he asked of me, but he’d cared enough not to let me. For
all I knew, he would be at the auction, trying to kill Vladek and
getting himself killed in the process. It was my turn to save
him.

“Please,” I beg, “you have to help him. If
you arrest him, I know he’ll live. There’s no telling what will
happen to him if he’s in Pakistan. You said it yourself, Rafiq has
a lot of power over there. Please! Please, Reed! Help him.”

Reed stands deadly still, but his chest
rises and falls harshly with each breath. “Are you telling me Caleb
is alive?” Reed hisses.

My heart is racing. “No. Not yet. But if he
were? Could you help him?”

“Goddamn it, Livvie!” Reed kicks the chair,
“You lied to me!”

“
Maybe!
Maybe, I did,” I plead. I
don’t know if wording things hypothetically changes anything, but I
have to try. I have to know if Reed can help me. I have to know if
he will. “I needed time and you weren’t giving me any,” I sob, “You
came in here, asking me all kinds of questions and calling me a
fucking terrorist. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to tell me the truth!
That was the deal. You tell me the truth and I help you,” Reed says
and resumes pacing.

“I did tell you the truth! I told you
everything you needed to know. I helped you find the auction, but
here you are – telling me there’s no justice! So who’s the liar,
Reed?” I cry.

Reed turns and glares at me. He looks a lot
of things: angry, exhausted, and sad. Finally, he looks away and
collapses into the chair.

“Reed?” I hedge closer.

“There’s nothing I can do, Livvie. The team
is already on its way and the FIA is calling the shots,” he
says.

His words play in a loop in my head until
they’re reduced to their true meaning: I’ll never see Caleb again.
I feel dead inside. Empty. Hollow. Vivisected.

“There…has to be something,” I croak.

Reed shakes his head.

In my head, I can hear myself screaming. I
can see myself clawing at my skin and tearing at my hair. In
reality, I’m motionless, no tears, no screams, no flesh being torn
from my bones.

Reed is silent. He can’t help me. No one
can.

My thoughts turn to Caleb and the last days
we spent together.

***

Caleb had been gone for hours. I sat on the
floor, next to his gun, waiting for something to happen, anything
to happen. Several times, I thought about leaving the room and
searching for him, but kept talking myself out of it. Caleb had
said to wait. I waited.

A feeling of dread began to settle over me
when I saw light peeking in around the curtains. The sun was coming
up and Caleb still hadn’t returned. I wondered if Celia might come
back, but I doubted it. Our bridge was well and truly burned. My
only solace was in knowing she would keep Felipe from hurting
me.

Suddenly, there was a hard thump on the
door, then another. My heart felt like it had leapt up into my
throat, but then I remembered Caleb had said he would knock twice.
I reached for the gun, just in case.

I watched as the handle turned and when the
door swung open I could barely process what I saw. Caleb stood in
the doorway. He was covered in dirt. He was smeared with blood.

“Caleb?” I managed to whisper, but still
couldn’t move.

He wouldn’t move from the doorway. He just
stood there, his eyes fixed on some distant point. He looked like
he’d been crying. His blue eyes were ringed with red and swollen.
He had a cut on his forehead and blood dripped onto his eye. He
didn’t blink.

Instantly, I was in tears. Something
terrible had happened. Something awful! Slowly, I stood up. I
grabbed the shirt Caleb had left and pulled it on over my head. We
had to go and it was going to be up to me to get us out. I
scrambled for a pair of pants and found a pair of Caleb’s boxers
instead.

Caleb never moved.

“Caleb?” I whispered and came a little
closer. His mouth turned down briefly, like he’d been about to cry,
but then his face returned to a catatonic state. “You’re scaring
me, Caleb. Please, say something,” I sobbed.

Tears fell from his open eyes.

It was more than I could bear to see him in
so much pain and not know why. I rushed forward and wrapped my arms
around him. “Please, Caleb! Wake the fuck up!”

His weight collapsed on top of me and we
fell. As I lay flat on my back, Caleb pulled me close and released
an agonized wail into my chest. The sound terrified me and I
wrapped my arms around him, holding him as tight as he held me. It
was all I could do. His entire body trembled and shook with the
force of his gut wrenching sobs. I felt like a knife was buried in
my intestines and someone kept turning the blade. The only thing I
could do to keep from screaming was hold him.

My hand shook as I stroked his hair, “Shh,
Caleb. Shh. It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.” I sobbed when he
pulled me tighter and tried to bury himself deeper into my
chest.

His hair was stiff and brittle – gritty with
sand.

He’s been digging. He’s covered in
blood.

“Shh, baby,” I whispered and kept stroking
Caleb’s hair. He was barely allowing me to breathe, he gripped me
so tightly. “Whose blood is this?”

I felt him shaking his head, fast, angry. He
accidentally nudged my chin and I winced. “Okay. It’s okay. I don’t
need to know.”

I was at a loss for how to reach him. The
man in my arms wasn’t Caleb, he was a shell of a human being.
Primal and stripped bare. I had my suspicions about whose blood
Caleb wore, but I didn’t dare say it out loud.

He killed his only friend. For me.

My chest shook with the force of the sobs I
kept trapped in my chest. Caleb needed me and I couldn’t help him
by falling apart. “We have to go, Caleb,” I whispered. “It’s not
safe for us here.”

Caleb moved fast. He lifted himself off my
chest and caged me in with his body. He looked predatory and I knew
instinctively, not to scream. His eyes raked over me, moving
quickly from my eyes, to my mouth, to my neck, all the way down to
my feet. I wasn’t sure he even knew who I was.

My fingers hurt after being ripped away from
his hair so abruptly. There were several strands intertwined with
my fingers. Without moving, I let my eyes cut to my hand. Caleb
followed my eyes and when I slowly lifted my hand, he watched it
intently. I put my fingers to the wound on his head, wiping away
the blood. He needed stitches. Caleb closed his eyes and let me
touch him.

“We have to go. Please…let’s go,” I
repeated. Caleb’s eyes flew open and narrowed on my face. For
several seconds all he did was stare.

“Mine,” he whispered.

“Yours,” I said.

Caleb brought his mouth down on mine with
such ferocity I almost pushed him away. The timing was terrible.
Our lives were in danger. But Caleb needed me. He needed to be
close and I owed it to him to give him what he needed.

I put my fear aside and opened my mouth to
him, letting his tongue invade my mouth. He groaned when I wrapped
my arms around him and pulled him down on top of me. I pulled at
the filth covered shirt he wore and broke our kiss just long enough
to pull it over his head. Sand and, I was sure, blood, fell onto my
face, but I brushed in away with the back of my hand and went back
to kissing Caleb.

His hands seemed to be everywhere at once,
touching my hair, pulling me close, squeezing my breasts. His knee
planted itself between my knees, prying them apart. I opened my
legs and let Caleb’s lower belly press against me. I could feel his
cock, trapped inside his jeans, against my inner thigh.

As we pawed at one another, some of Caleb’s
primal behavior seeped its way into me and before I knew it, I was
pushing him off of me and to the side. He grabbed hold of my shirt
and made a sound I took as a warning.

“Yours, Caleb. I promise,” I said. I grabbed
the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head, exposing my breasts
to Caleb. His mouth latched on, forcing me to cry out and hold him
to my breast. I straddled his hips, grinding against him through
the fabric of our clothes.

For all of Caleb’s animalistic intensity, he
wasn’t hurting me. He might have, if I’d given him a reason, but I
was as open to him, as water to a pebble. When his mouth pulled
away from one nipple, I fed him the other.

“I love you,” I said and stroked his hair.
He whimpered.

Caleb would never regret the sacrifices he
had made for me. I would make sure of it. For the rest of my life,
I would dedicate myself to giving Caleb every ounce of love I had
in me to share. I was his and he was mine and it was
everything.

I pushed at Caleb’s shoulder, urging him
back toward the floor. I followed him down, resting my weight on
him. His hands found the waistband of the shorts I wore and shoved.
I reached back and together, we pushed the fabric down and off my
legs.

I hated the feel of Caleb’s dirty jeans
against my bare skin. “Take these off,” I said. I helped him push
his pants down to his ankles. His feet were bare and caked in dirt,
but I was more preoccupied with getting as close to Caleb as I
possibly could.

Caleb’s cock sprang up between us like a
living thing. We reached for it at the same time, his hand over
mine and guided it between my legs. I was sore, but wet, and
Caleb’s cock slid into me with minimal effort. Caleb gripped my
hips, pulling me down as he thrust.

“Oh, god,” I cried out. My fingernails dug
into his chest, scoring his skin, but Caleb only groaned and thrust
into me again. And again. And again.

I fell forward, my hands bracing me above
Caleb’s head. I was adrift in a sea of pleasure and all-consuming
lust. Arching my back, I teased Caleb’s mouth with my nipple and he
pulled it into his hungry mouth. I felt my pussy getting tighter
around his cock. I whimpered as my orgasm approached and Caleb
fucked me harder, sucked me deeper into his mouth. I didn’t have
the breath to make a sound. I froze on top of him, letting him keep
fucking me as I came.

His mouth pulled away from my breast with a
loud pop and then Caleb’s sounds filled the room as his come filled
my pussy. Pulse after pulse of hot come flooded my insides and I
couldn’t get enough. I wanted Caleb inside me forever. I collapsed
on top of him, loving the way my body rose and fell with each of
his breaths.

“Livvie?” he whispered.

I forced myself up on my elbow and stroked
his face with my other hand. “Yes,” I said. My tears made him
blurry, but I could tell he was back now, from wherever he had
been.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?!” He sounded
frantic.

“I’m fine, Caleb. I’m fine. I’m more worried
about you,” I said. I bent down and kissed his lips. When I pulled
back, my heart ached to see him turn his face away from me.

“Don’t look at me, Livvie,” he
whispered.

“Caleb, no.” I tried to make him look at me,
but all at once he sat up and put my head on his shoulder where I
couldn’t see him. I could feel him sliding out of me, his come
aiding in the effort.