Kalista
I don’t open my eyes at first.
I just lay there, basking in the soft silk beneath me. The smell of bacon, crepes, coffee, and Nutella fills my nose.
I stir from sleep with a satisfied smile. I’m in love with how thick the air is with the scent of breakfast, which is unusual for the hotel.
Someone is singing from the next room. My security guard never sings—he’s horrible at it. Then, it hits me.
I’m not in my hotel anymore.
The memory of the fight, of the strange men—it all comes back to me, along with the throbbing—no, pounding—headache. It drums against my temples, pulsing the memories through my mind.
I open my mouth to speak—to cry out—then I feel the gag on my lips and the ties around my wrists. Both are strangely made of silk, and as I move my hand, I have about three inches before the ties stop me.
I didn’t realize that kidnappers can be the gentle sort.
I open my eyes, blinking until the sunshine from beyond the window is no longer blinding. I’m not in my hotel room anymore—rather, I’m in someone’s apartment. I crane my neck forward, trying to see past the antique four poster bed.
I kick some of the hangings out of the way with my unbound foot, yet I see nothing of importance.
What I do see is an open archway, a man’s suit pants hanging over the back of a chair, and my shoes next to a particularly ornate Oriental rug. Art and trinkets are carefully positioned around the room.
Whoever owns this place has good taste.
This isn’t the holding cell of a kidnapper…so what happened?
Is this some kind of surprise stripper prank? One where you go to the stripper instead of them coming to you?
I wrestle with the wrist ties once again, but—unsurprisingly—this stripper is good with knots. I slump back against the headboard, and put on the best angry, pouting face that I can—with a gag in my mouth that is.
The sounds of cooking stop. The singing becomes louder and louder. I furrow my brows further, straightening my back and trying my best to look dignified.
“Oh, come on now, love, you look like a smacked arse,” one of the most gorgeous men in the world says.
He’s tall, dark-haired and, holy fuck, he’s handsome—not to mention shirtless—but something about him feels familiar.
“Right, we’ve got tea, coffee, orange juice, and some nice Dom Pérignon from the party last night.”
His British accent rolls over the words so smoothly, and it stirs something inside me—as does the tray of pancakes he’s carrying.
But he’s also my kidnapper.
I can’t tell whether I want to marry him or if I want to murder him.
Actually, if I murdered him, I could still have that breakfast.
“Let me go!” I say through the gag, which means it sounded more like ‘lehme goh!’
I bet my friends are pissing themselves with laughter right now.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asks, sitting at the edge of the bed.
He sets the tray over my lap, almost as though he’s adding another obstacle to keep me to the bed.
“Because if I untie you, you’re going to scream, and we can’t have that, can we?”
“Fuck you.” I say through the gag.
The stranger laughs and shakes his head. I’m glad someone thinks this is funny.
“Maybe later, yeah? I mean it though, you shouldn’t scream. Or try to escape.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“If you scream, then I’ll just tie you up again, and I’ll eat all this breakfast right off your lap,” he smiles, and I falter briefly in my sulking. “Then, I’ll crack open that Pérignon and wash it all down. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Then—to torture me further—he pinches a piece of bacon between two fingers and takes a bite. My stomach growls its answer before I can open my lips and comply. Indignantly, I huff, looking up at this stranger through my eyelashes.
Silently, I ask him, what the fuck are you waiting for?
His fingers linger at the corner of my mouth, pausing for one teasing moment before he unties the gag. I breathe in the sweet, breakfast air and his scent—which is an intoxicating mix of ginger, maninka fruit, and lavender—as he leans into my personal space to release my wrists.
“There you go,” he says as he sits back and looks at me. “Doesn’t that feel better?”
I’m reluctant to say that it does, but he already knows.
“So, tea, coffee or champagne?”
“Champagne,” I perhaps say a little too hastily.
The strange man laughs at me again. But I’m too busy pulling the plate of crepes towards me to care all that much what he thinks. Are these stuffed with bananas, too?
He leaves for a few moments, and comes back with a bottle and two glasses of champagne. I could watch him come and go all day.
“I put on some coffee, too. I feel like you’re the kind of girl who needs both right now.”
My mouth is filled with crepes, chocolate, and strawberries. But I don’t disagree with him. This guy really has to be one of the nicest guys that I’ve ever been kidnapped by. But given that it’s a list of one, he’s also the worst.
“So, you’re the guy who kidnapped me?” I ask, and he almost spills the champagne.
“Me? What? No!”
He looks at me as though I’ve just said something unbelievably stupid.
“I rescued you from a kidnapping. Surely that’s got to mean something to Mummy and Dad-dums?”
He hands me a glass of the Pérignon and takes a sip from the bottle.
“Then, who are you?”
“I told you, the guy who rescued you,” he smiles charmingly like some kind of dashing prince. But I’m not in the mood to be a princess.
“I’m Griff, or Griffin, if you’re nasty.”
“I’m Kalista—”
“Von Knopf,” Griff interrupts before I have a chance to finish. “Yes, I’m quite aware who you are, love. Like I said, that was quite the party you threw last night.”
“You were at the party,” I realize, sipping at my champagne. “I remember seeing you, but I don’t remember you on the guest list.”
Now I remember this man. And the Ace of hearts up his sleeve.
“That’s because I wasn’t invited,” Griff says calmly, pinching a strawberry from the tray. “I was there to take some treasures.”
Then, he gets up from the bed, disappearing through the archway as I hear the coffee machine finish its cycle.
“You were there to get laid?”
“Well, it wouldn’t have hurt to try,” he answers as he walks back into the room with a cup of coffee in each hand.
“But I’m not sure how lucky I got, ultimately,” Griffin adds with a shrug as he places both cups down on the tray.
It takes everything I have not to choke on the banana.
“So why did you kidnap me instead?”
“Yes please, scream it louder,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “It’s been so long since I brought a woman here. No doubt the neighbors have been concerned for my wellbeing.”
My heart begins beating hard in my chest.
I know I was drunk, but my mind can’t put the pieces of the night together. How could anyone else have gotten close to kidnapping me? Security was only in the next room.
My mind races as I try to make sense of the last twenty-four hours.
Do my parents know where I am? Do any of my friends?
“Careful, love, you think any harder and you might end up with an aneurysm,” Griffin interrupts my train of thought, and I look back toward him, still confused.
“Finish your breakfast first, then you can freak out. Alright?”
He’s right. I can’t get anything done on an empty stomach.
I finish my glass of champagne, and Griff happily fills it up again. The pancakes are divine, each bite bursting with sweetness and fresh fruit. When my stomach can’t take any more, I slump back against the headboard.
“Why would anyone want to kidnap me?”
“Money, probably. Infamy? I don’t know, love, you’d have to ask them.”
He takes a sip of the coffee, and I take my own cup with two hands. I cradle it for warmth, for reassurance.
“But no one will find you here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Actually, I hadn’t even thought about it.”
“Well,” Griffin laughs into his coffee. “No one’s going to find you here.”
Griffin is so innately charming, yet disarming. His goddamn smile is infectious, and I can’t help myself as he grins at me, “Look, Kali, let’s get you in the bath.”
I sit up at his words, eager to get out of last night’s clothes. My eagerness must have shown in my face, because he then laughs at me again.
“When you’re clean, you can figure out what you wanna do next.”
Griffin smiles and carries the silver tray out of the room.
“After all, you can’t stay here forever!”