Felicity
Daniel licks his lips, which tremble like a nervous child’s. “I can’t . . .” He sucks in a deep breath and I can tell he’s trying to steel himself up to push me away. But this is a man—a boy, really—who has never had a woman throw herself at him before. I can see it in the way his eyes flit to his feet, to my face, to his feet again. “Are you serious?” he breathes.
“Look,” I say.
I step back from the slit and he leans forward, peering into the cell. Feeling sick, but knowing that I have to do what is necessary, I begin to dance. I dance like I did on the yacht when giving Roma a lap dance. I move my hips and spin around, shaking my ass at him.
“Oh my God,” he mutters, his voice one of disbelief. “You’re so . . .”
“Don’t you want it?” I moan. “Don’t you want it, Daniel?”
“I want it,” he admits, voice hoarse. “Yes, I want it.”
I stop dancing and return to the slit. “Then stop umming and ahhing and get in here. I’ll ride you like no woman ever has before.”
“Are you . . .” His forehead creases. “Are you a nymphomaniac?”
I stifle a laugh and look at him with complete seriousness. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m a nymphomaniac.”
“How bad do you want it?” he sighs.
“So, so, so bad,” I moan. “You’re too sexy. Please, don’t make me wait any longer.”
He nods shortly and then reaches into his pocket. “I’m hard,” he says, his voice sheepish.
I have to fight the urge to laugh a second time.
He fumbles into his pocket, pulls out the key, and drops it. “Dammit,” he says.
“Come on, baby,” I say. I sound like a fool. I sound like a wannabe porn star. I ignore the ridiculousness of it and push on. “Come on, don’t keep me waiting. I’m so wet.”
“Fuck, fuck, okay,” he breathes, voice shaking. “Okay.” He picks up the key and pushes it into the slot. It turns, clicks, and I step back as the door swings open.
Standing in full view now, I see how young he really is. I guess around eighteen, a teenager who’s never been talked to like this by a woman before. His chest rises and falls rapidly and beads of sweat drip down his forehead. I watch the gun at his hip, waiting for him to come into the cell.
He steps in on shaky legs, his eyes moving up and down my body, lingering on my legs. “I want it,” he says.
“Then come and get it,” I say, stepping back against the wall as though I want nothing more than for him to lift me off my feet and take me here. I’m amazed that this is working, that he is truly this foolish, but if there’s one thing I learned on the Russian yacht, it’s that certain types of men rarely think when it comes to women. They’re overtaken with lust and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. “Come on, baby. What’re you waiting for?”
He lets out a long sigh and then walks deep into the cell toward me. He fiddles with the buckle of his pants clumsily and I feel bile rise in my throat, acidic. He undoes the belt and loosens it and then goes for his buttons.
“Can I do it from behind?” he asks, almost on me now. “I really want to see that ass.”
“You can have it any way you like,” I say, tensing my arms, readying my body.
“Can I put it in your ass?” he says, like a boy in a toy shop. “Can I?”
“Of course,” I say.
He drops his belt to the floor and pulls his pants down around his thighs. I see with a sick feeling that he’s hard.
“Let’s get to it, then,” he says.
I open my arms. “Come here if you want it.”
He steps forward. This is my chance. If I miss, something terrible will happen. He’ll get so angry that he’ll beat me—or worse. He’ll get so angry that he’ll lose control. There are fewer things more dangerous than a man who thinks he’s entitled to a woman, than a man who feels as though he’s been lead on.
I open my arms—and close them in a clapping motion on either side of his head. “Uh,” he grunts, stepping back. He trips over his pants and stumbles toward the bed. I don’t wait. I don’t think. I pounce.
My fists fly at his face. I feel absurdly guilty about striking him, but this is survival and I won’t stop. I punch him five or six times in the face. On the last strike, his eyes flutter and fall closed, his neck goes slack, and his head droops forward, his chin resting on his chest.
I reach down and grab his gun, stuff it into my waistband. Okay, step one complete, I think. I’m about to flee from the cell when a thought occurs to me. If the next guard comes for his shift and finds the cell open and Daniel knocked out, they’ll know I’m missing. There’s no sense in letting them know any sooner than they need to. I find the key to the cell in his pocket and drop it into my own. Then I grab him under the armpits and drag him into the hallway. It’s long and thin, with cells lining it, all of which are empty. It is eerily silent. I look down one length of the hallway and see the elevator, down the other and see what looks like a storage cupboard.
Panting with the effort—Daniel’s heavier than he looks—I drag him toward the storage cupboard. I prop it open with my bum and drag him inside, laying him flat against the wall. He breathes shallowly, but he’s alive. I find that I’m glad. I want to be free, but I don’t want to kill anybody. Would you, if it came to it? a voice whispers. I swallow, surprised to find I’m not sure.
I leave the storage cupboard and close it behind me. I’ll lock the cell and hope that the next guard doesn’t bother looking inside. Hope that he just assumes I’m in there, behind the locked door. Even if he doesn’t, he might waste time looking for Daniel. What if Daniel wakes up?
I shake my head, shaking away these thoughts. One step at a time, I tell myself. Think about all of it and you’ll go crazy. One step at a time!
I’m at my cell door when the elevator beeps from down the hallway.
Dammit!
If it’s one of Mr. Black’s guards, I’m screwed. I’ll be no match with a pistol against theirs. The only defense I have is that Mr. Black wants me alive, but if these men are as hardened as they seem, they’ll have no problem shooting me in the leg, the arm, somewhere non-lethal. The elevator beeps again and I realize the doors are sliding open.
I jump into my cell and close the door behind me, but not locking it. Then I go to the other side of the cell and stand with my back against the wall, staring at the door. I need to act. I can’t think. I need to fight. If I don’t get out of here, they’ll use me as bait, and Dad will die. I won’t let Dad die because of me. I will never let that happen.
Footsteps sound from down the hallway. Clip-clip-clip-clip-clip. I swallow, my mouth so dry my tongue sticks to my teeth. Fear courses through me and I wonder if this is it, the day I die. Or worse, the day one of Mr. Black’s psychopathic goons loses control and unleashes himself upon me. I imagine the man walking down the hallway, all the horrors he’s committed throughout his career, the women he’s killed, the women he’s . . . I won’t let that happen, I tell myself.
The steps are relentless.
Clip-clip-clip-clip . . .
And growing louder and faster.
Clipclipclipclipclipclipclipclip!
I steel myself, psyching myself up, though I don’t know what for, not yet. A fight? To kill a man? Maybe I will have to kill the guard. But won’t others hear the gunshot? Perhaps I could seduce him, just like I seduced Daniel? But I doubt that will work. Daniel is a boy; Mr. Black’s men are just that, men.
Screw it, I think, the footsteps outside of my cell now.
I take the gun from my waistband and aim it at the door, but I don’t dare touch the trigger. What if it goes off by mistake? A thousand traitorous thoughts pound into my head, spreading self-doubt throughout me like a poison. The gun shakes and no matter how hard I try to make it keep still, it won’t.
I have to kill him, I think.
Then the door swings open and my breath catches.
Roma, bruised and cut, but Roma nonetheless. Roma, unguarded. Roma, who betrayed me. Roma, the man I felt an explosion of emotion for and then a wrenching betrayal.
His mouth falls open when he sees me. I think I see pride in his eyes. Pride at my disarming the guard, I realize. He has the gall to be proud of me after what he’s done. It makes me sick. But despite that, when I look at him, I feel . . .
No, I tell myself. You don’t feel anything for him! You don’t!
“Felicity,” he says, voice oddly quiet. He takes a step into the cell.
“Don’t come any closer,” I breathe. “I’ll shoot. I swear to God, Roma, I’ll shoot you right in the fucking head.”
Rage, pain, heartache, and a desire to drop the gun and throw myself into his arms all war inside of me.
“You won’t shoot me,” he says, but he doesn’t sound certain.
He’s right, I think.
Without thinking, I swing the gun away from Roma and aim it at my own head.
“Maybe not,” I growl through gritted teeth. “But I won’t be used as bait. Come any closer and I’ll blow my own fucking brains out!”