His Indecent Secrets (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire, BDSM Erotic Romance) (4 page)

“N-no,” she whispers.

She isn’t going to tell him how Hugh fucks her every day. It would only make matters worse, though she thinks Channing already suspects.

“I need more than twelve hours,” Channing says, his voice cracking. She has never seen him look so tired.

Hugh slowly slides his hands around her neck. He gently squeezes. “No.”

“Please. I’ll give you seven fifty if you give me five days more.”

Hugh pauses. His hands around her choke her neck in a stranglehold.

“No.”

“Come on. She means nothing to you.”

“And she does to you? Well, well, it does seem my big brother’s grown a conscience after all. Or maybe it’s more than a conscience.”

She’s aware of the undercurrents. Fear, like her breath, fights to fill her lungs. She still can’t believe that Channing actually paid ransom for her.

Why?

Because he doesn’t want to see an innocent employee die?

Channing says tersely, “Whatever you thought happened in the citadel didn’t happen.”

“I may be dropped on my head as a kid but my memories are intact, thank you.” Hugh does not withdraw his hands from her neck. “It’s not the money, big brother. It’s seeing if you can keep to your commitments. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. Considering what you did to Alia.”

Channing turns pale. “I never meant to hurt her.”

Susan’s heart clenches. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, she thinks faintly.

“You have twelve hours, not a second more, not a second less. Tick tock.”

“No, please, I can’t . . . ” Channing’s hand grabs the screen but Hugh turns the laptop off.

He turns her head towards him and grins. “I guess you better start living up the next twelve hours, sweetheart.”

4

That’s it. She’s going to take matters into her own hands. She may be a submissive – sometimes forced – to two extremely alpha dominants, but there’s enough of the highly ambitious executive left in her to want to make things happen. And she’s not going to quietly sit in her prison if she’s going to die in twelve hours.

Will Hugh actually kill her? She wouldn’t put it past him. She can see it now. His mental instability. The madness behind his handsome, charming veneer. The all-encompassing hurt manifesting in rage.

Even though he is unbalanced, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t being truthful, though . . . especially about what Channing did. If Hugh is correct, then she is in love with a cold-hearted man who would think nothing of walking away from his own brother and the woman he once claimed to love. He would think nothing of letting them die for a bundle of cold hard cash. Or in this case, cold hard gold bullion.

Can she love such a person with such a past?

What does she know about him anyway? What do they all know about him?

And yet he paid two hundred and fifty million dollars for you.
Even if he’s another two hundred and fifty million short, that’s got to mean something.

So he won’t let you die. But does he mean he has any modicum of feelings for you other than a sense of responsibility?

She feels as though her mind is turned inside out and wrung dry.

The knock comes, as expected. Miguel is always solicitous, especially because she is naked. He gives her time to cover herself nicely. It is only Miguel who knocks. Hugh never does. That’s how she can tell who it is at the door.

Miguel unlocks the door and comes in with a tray of sandwiches and soup. It’s her dinner. Outside, the sun has already set and twilight has settled. It gets dark quickly here, another sign she is somewhere in the tropics.

“Miss?” He puts the tray on the desk, as though she’s a hospital patient who is at the up and about stage of recuperation.

‘Miguel? Can you please . . . sit and talk with me for a while?”

Miguel hesitates. “Sir . . . he would not like this.”

“I know, but I . . . I might not be around for much longer. So please, I just need someone to talk to.”

She looks so tearful and woebegone that he acquiesces. He seats himself on the chair while she sits on the edge of her bed. He is as uncomfortable as she is. He knows full well that she is going to die.

“Will he kill me, Miguel? Will he really kill me or do you think it’s just a bluff?”

He bows his curly head. “I not know, Miss.”

“May I ask you . . . please . . . where we are? Look,” she gestures to the iron bars on the window, “we both know I’m not going anywhere. I’d just like to know where we are before I die.”

A tad melodramatic, she knows. Her heart beats painfully in her throat and she is aware of the tensing of all her muscles.

He pauses for a long while before replying, “I cannot tell you that, Miss.”

She slumps her shoulders. “OK,” she says as she swallows the lump in her throat, “I understand. A final toast then to both of us. Will you drink with me?”

He looks at her for a while, his eyes brimming with light, and then he nods.

She pours both of them coffee from the flask on her bedside table. Her hands shake slightly as she hands him a mug and keeps one for herself. She watches him take a sip of it, and then drink it.

“It still hot,” he says.

“Yes, I know. Thank you for staying.”

“I cannot stay long. Sir . . . he be angry.”

“I know.”

They talk about inconsequential things. His family. His life. He is not from around here. His parents are from Antigua. He is twenty years old, although he looks sixteen. He will not talk about ‘sir’, other than Hugh being strict but kind to him.

She tries to keep him there with her for as long as possible, and then at the fifteen minute mark, she watches him carefully as he starts to nod off.

By the twenty minute mark, he is slumped upon the desk, face down in her food. Coffee laced with ten strong doses of sleeping pills will do that to you. Sleeping pills which she has kept under her mattress and not taken. Not even once.

She has no time to waste.

She needs clothes. So the first thing she does is to undress Miguel. He may be a man, but he is slight of build and roughly her size. She buttons up his thin cotton shirt, zips up his jeans and appropriates his shoes. She has to do something about her hair, and so she ties it in a bun and tucks in inside her collar. She finds a handkerchief in her jeans pocket and fashions it into a scarf to wrap around her head.

Miguel has no cellphone on him for her to make a call to Channing.

Damn.

She lets herself out of the room and locks the door behind her quietly. The corridor outside is dark and empty of people. Blood rushes through her ears, but she tells herself to be steady – she has nothing to lose. She has no real plan other than to get out of this place as fast as possible and escape into the city, or countryside, or wherever she is. Maybe she can find the police or some good Samaritan to help her. Then she would make a call to Channing.

She delves down the passageway. As she approaches a flight of stairs leading down, she hears voices. The shadows of men coming up the stairs flit across the wall of the landing.

She freezes and darts into a room. It is empty, thank goodness. She gently closes the door behind her and flattens herself against the wall. The footsteps come closer as the men continue to talk. She does not recognize their tongue. The voices become extremely audible just outside her door. Her pulse is drumming so hard in her ears that she thinks everyone in the world can hear it.

The footsteps and voices recede, bypassing her door. She heaves a sigh of relief.

She waits for ten seconds, cocking her ears for other sounds. When there are none, she bolts out of the door. There is no one on the stairway, and so she takes a tentative step down, looking over the bannister for a sign of another human being. Seeing none, she runs down.

She descends two flights of stairs and reaches ground level. Footsteps approach from behind her. In panic, she turns to see a woman pushing a pail and mopping up the wooden floor before her. The woman does not look up.

Act cool
.

She bunches her fists so hard that her knuckles bleed white, and walks slowly down the passage, trying not to attract as much attention as possible. Her breath is frozen in her expanded lungs. She lets it out in a protracted whoosh. Outside, the windows display night. The outside is lit up with only occasional garden lamps. She wonders if there is a wall around the perimeter of the house.

She arrives at an entryway and pauses. The hall is occupied by several men in their shirtsleeves. They are seated around a square table, playing cards. Music blares from a pair of speakers connected to an iPod. The men are laughing and speaking in the same tongue she heard from upstairs. Their skin is olive, and they look more Middle Eastern than Latin American.

Where is she? From the atmosphere and the balmy weather, she had assumed they were in the Caribbean. Now she isn’t so sure.

She darts away before they can see her. Not a good idea to waltz out of the front door like that.

She traverses the passageway again, avoiding the woman with the mop. She sees a window that is half-open, and she makes a swift decision. Making sure no one sees her, she slides it open fully and vaults out of it.

She lands on the hard soil outside. The humid sea air hits her nostrils, and she can smell its acrid salt tang. She is on a beachfront somewhere. From a distance, she can hear the barking of dogs.

She hopes no one is going to set those dogs on her.

She begins to stride forcefully away from the house. Looking back, she sees that it is some sort of hacienda-style mansion. The colors are bleached by the night, but several windows are lighted. The wind sweeps across, scattering dried leaves. Silhouettes of dark trees regard her like watchful sentinels.

Footsteps alight on her right, and she darts behind a tree. A guard with a rifle sticking out of his back walks slowly down a cemented path. He whistles a tune. OK, so no one is looking for her yet. This puts her in a good position. So far.

She waits until he has walked out of her sight, and then she scampers away. Out, out into the night, always away from the house. The wind blows wetly in from the sea, and she can hear the crashing of waves against the murky shore.

She arrives at a beach. The roaring waves are dark and tipped with foam, pretty much like how the blood in her veins feels like now. She strains her eyes for the lights of a nearby town or village she can aim for, but the only yellow glow in the night is from the mansion.

She walks down the beach line, unable to shrug off the feeling that she is being watched. But hey, she tells herself, she’s going to be killed anyway tonight, so might as well go out with a bang. Her adrenaline is running too high for her to be truly scared. Her steps get larger, and pretty soon, she’s running down the beach as fast as she can, glad for all the gym workouts she made herself go through.

The beach curves as she loses sight of the house. It curves even more. There’s a pier of sorts and she dashes past that, wondering if it is patrolled.

She must have been running for half an hour before everything begins to look familiar again. Did she pass that funny looking clump of trees before? She’s going around in circles, but how can she possibly be doing this when she’s merely following the beach?

She wanders a bit more, and now she’s ninety-nine percent sure she has been down this stretch before. There’s that funny bush with the rabbit ears over there. And there’s the –

(her feet stop completely in their tracks)

• pier again.
  

She is on an island. An island with possibly only one house on it.

A private island.

No wonder they are so lax about security. They know there is nowhere for her to go.

In the near distance, she hears a commotion. Men’s voices are raised. Dogs are barking. Lights are coming on all over the house.

They have discovered she is missing.

Oh God.

5

The baying of the dogs gets closer and she begins to run. She’s running for her life now. The dogs will tear her from limb to limb. Maybe it will beat whatever horrible death Hugh has cooked up for her.

But this is an island. Where can she go?

Anything would be better than being torn to shreds, and so – with her heart falling out of her throat – she dashes into the sea. The breakers slash into her legs. She didn’t think their impact would be so great, but she trudges ahead. The water is cold, but not as cold as it would have been had it not been subtropical.

The dogs get closer. Their excited squeals and barks punctuate the humid air. She hopes they wouldn’t scent her in the water. She begins to swim outwards, away from the island. She knows she cannot continue this indefinitely. There seems to be no land mass nearby, no second island she can seek respite in. The ocean is ruthless and infinite. She would not be surprised if she is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.