Captor Mine (Base Branch Series Book 13) Page 7

  He used her hair as puppet strings and tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck. His lower lip skimmed along the exposed flesh back to her ear. “I could torture the information out of you.” The hard edge of his teeth nipped at her lobe and scraped along her jaw.

  A whimper breached Kat’s throat. This man knew about torture; the sexual kind and the terrifying kind too. He could probably do either on her if he needed to. Still, she kept quiet.

  “The hard way it is, then.”

  Kat’s hands took over where her brain shorted out. They roved up his sides to his chest. Through the thin cotton, her fingers toyed with the gnarly old scar too close to his heart and then slipped up his neck.

  “The hard way for whom, I don’t know.” His lips slid across hers. She stretched to meet them more fully, but again, he held her at bay.

  Hot breaths heaved, and the pulse between Kat’s legs grew deeper. The threads of control unraveled in her fingers. Her palms slicked, and she gripped the fabric of his gown as fiercely as she could, searching for something. Balance? Relief? She couldn’t be sure.

  Hunter sucked her lower lip into his mouth and then pulled back. His gaze thinned on hers. “You’re in there, Kat. I feel you dying to get out.”

  She hated that Hunter saw right through to the pitiful existence she’d maintained. Yeah, she had accolades and degrees, but she didn’t have friends. She didn’t have a family. All she had was her job.

  What was she doing with her life? She’d been with this stranger longer than anyone in her life. Kat was a loner. Her father had raised her that way, or better yet, she’d raised herself, alone.

  Behind her, the main door into the room rattled.

  All the desire she experienced a moment ago, a breath ago, vanished in a monsoon of fear. “No.” Everything inside her froze. Everything outside too. She held a death grip on Hunter’s gown and stared blankly into the eyes of this man she’d practically begged to make out with her.

  “It’s fine, Kat. Move.” His hand slid from her hair and pushed her back a step. He rolled back onto the bed and pulled the covers up to his chest. “Deep breaths and let them out slowly.” He did as he ordered her to do. In no time at all, the rapid rise and fall of his chest regulated to easy, shallow breaths.

  Hers still jostled her boobs like a run on the treadmill without a sports bra.

  Hunter’s eyes closed a second before the door opened and Aron strolled inside. Kat didn’t want to face him, but the will to live and to protect Hunter overtook the fear. She stalked to the other side of the room, heading for the couch where she’d taken most of her meals.

  “About time you showed up with my breakfast. I’m starving.” She layered on the dramatics, tossing herself onto the firm surface, folding her arms, and pointing her chin at him.

  His hands were empty. The smile on the guard’s face held more than an IV bag full of malice. A chill pooled in the center of Kat’s chest.

  “There’s no way you talk to him that much.” Aron stepped toward Hunter.

  “Don’t you dare touch my patient.” Kat jumped from the couch and ran. She stopped only when she’d positioned herself between the two men.

  “You didn’t learn your lesson the first time, did you?” Aron grabbed her wrist so hard the blood flow ceased immediately. Tingles rushed up her arm and into her fingers. Before she could contest, he yanked her out of his way.

  Kat flew sideways, head first toward the crash cart. An involuntary grunt escaped her lips as she smashed shoulder first into the series of metal drawers. The cart tilted and crashed like a collection of cymbals to the ground. Medicine, suction tubing, and a blood pressure cuff skittered this way and that. She rolled over the fallen defibrillator and came to a stop on her hands and knees.

  Aron smirked at her and stepped toward Hunter.

  Rage boiled back to life. It’d been distilled by time, captivity, and abuse. She stood with the clunky defibrillator in hand, reared back, and launched it at the sadistic man.

  The machine caught his right shoulder and spun him toward her. Triumph glitter bombed her brain for a second before she realized what a mess she’d created.

  “Be glad your daddy gets back today. It means I can’t leave any more bruises, but it doesn’t mean I can’t hurt—”

  Hunter launched himself from the bed. His fist swung, powered like a chugging locomotive, and connected perfectly with the side of Aron’s head. The man’s body went slack and melted into a puddle of asshole next to the bed.

  Relief didn’t visit long. Her knight in a hospital gown sailed through the air in a fast descent. He didn’t even try to catch himself on his one leg. His broad back absorbed the impact.

  “Are you hurt?”

  They asked the question in unison with about as much gusto as someone who’d just gotten the shit kicked out of them.

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “I hurt like the devil shoved his pitchfork up my ass, but I’ll live if we get moving.” Hunter army crawled himself to the edge of the bed and pulled up.

  “Where are we going to go?”

  “Somewhere we’re safe.”

  Hunter fell before Kat realized what was happening. Aron held Hunter’s foot until he hit the ground. Kat lurched forward and jumped onto the bastard’s prone back.

  “Kat, no,” Hunter hollered, but it was too late. She straddled the enemy with vicious intent. A feeling she’d never experienced rushed through her, warm and charring. Her goal was to maim and dismember.

  She should have started with a person who couldn’t take a punch from Hunter and live to tell about it, much less flip her off like she was a bug. The world tilted, and she slid onto the floor and rolled to her side away from Hunter. Aron stood, grabbed his favorite wrist, and yanked her to stand. He whirled her around to face Hunter.

  “You have a thing for the cripple?” Aron jerked her hair back and made her look at Hunter as he scrambled to a sitting position near the bed. “Well, I’m going to kill him and let you watch.”

  “No!” The scream that catapulted itself from her body shook the room and her world.

  “Yes,” Aron growled.

  “It’s okay, Kat.” Hunter’s voice was calm, almost resigned in the face of his impending doom.

  She couldn’t understand why.

  “No.” Her head shook, indiscriminately, even with so many strands of her hair tangled in Aron’s fingers. She couldn’t allow Hunter to die, not after she’d spent so long saving his life. Neither could she stop it from happening. Aron outweighed her by her body weight or more.

  “Kat, look at me. It’s going to be okay,” Hunter’s deep voice crooned.

  “Yeah, Kat. Look, but it’s going to be far from okay. As soon as I’m done with him, I’ll deal with you. And you won’t like it.” Aron jerked her by the hair.

  Her teeth chattered hard. A headache formed, swift and nearly debilitating.

  “Nothing left but to quit running your mouth and give the cripple a go.” Hunter shrugged and grinned.

  Why was he antagonizing the man threatening his life and her well-being? She hoped he knew something she didn’t. How to kill with his bare hands with a newly amputated leg would be a nice step in the right direction.

  “Let her go.” Relief flooded Kat at the familiar voice.

  13

  Difficult to fucking impossible. Great.

  Tor Royan stood in the doorway of Hunter’s makeshift hospital room. The man who’d mutilated Oliver ordered the overgrown meathead to release Kat. The man whose sadistic plans had severely injured Tyler, his other dear friend, didn’t come alone. Three heavily armed guards stood in the hallway, jockeying for a look inside. The man who’d ordered the kidnapping and enslavement of so many women stared at the man who’d attacked Kat at least twice and quickly retreated from her side. Tor Royan, the man who stole his leg and life as he’d known it, lifted the barrel of a sleek silver pistol.

  Murder and mayhem consumed Hunter’s brain.

 
“Thank you.” Kat coddled her left wrist in her other hand but had yet to look up. The fear he’d seen pouring from her eyes like tears had vanished in a near instant as Royan had ordered her released. Little did she know that they’d jumped from the flames into the motherfucking lava pit.

  He willed her to look at him. He willed his leg to grow back and AKs to appear in his hands. Too bad the big guy was busy with people better and worse than he was.

  When Kat finally looked up, a sweet smile spread her lips. She hurried to his side. If he grabbed her and dove for cover, he could save her until they’d killed him. Then what would happen to her?

  “You told me it would be okay,” she whispered.

  His chest caved in on itself. He’d promised something he couldn’t make good on.

  “I should have listened to you.” Kat’s smile grew.

  “No, you have to escape now,” he growled. “He will hurt you, Kat, worse than your darkest fears.”

  “Aron? He won’t hurt me now.”

  “No, the man at the door, Tor Royan.” He put as much emotion into his features as he could without his face exploding from his skull.

  The color drained from Kat’s face. Maybe she’d heard of the man. The CIA and FBI had, not that he was near the top of the most wanted list. As numbers went, this guy was small potatoes. The expression on her face said she knew the name.

  “I’ll create a diversion. You run. Do whatever it takes, Kat. Kill if you have to, but get out,” Hunter ordered.

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me.” He was gone the moment he disregarded his partner’s words and went after Royan on his own. He’d just been gifted a few days with a beautiful, caring woman. Not a bad way to go.

  “I don’t understand.” Fat, brimming tears collected in her bright blue eyes.

  “Katrin Sara Royan, get off the ground.” Tor’s words ricocheted through Hunter’s brain like a cancer that moved at the speed of light.

  No. No. No.

  There was no way his doc was related to that sadist.

  His gaze searched Kat’s. The truth sat right on the surface. He wished she could lie convincingly, just this once.

  Maybe they were distant relatives. Cousins, three times removed? The only doctor in the family and he needed an off-the-books job done. All the files said he had one child, a son, name unknown.

  Tor shoved Aron toward the other guards with his hands cuffed behind his back. The gun Tor had been holding no longer filled his hands. “Take him.” The regal, psychotic man shooed Aron away like day-old trash. Hunter knew the man wouldn’t live to see next week just as he wouldn’t. “Katrin, I asked you to save his life, not coddle him.” He turned to the one guard left. “Bowdin, lift him onto the bed.”

  Kat blinked away her welling tears and turned. “If he’s not moved properly, his artery can rupture, and it will kill him within a minute.”

  It sounded like bullshit to Hunter, but maybe this was her angle. Hunter rolled with it, acting the part of a weakling, which wasn’t far off the mark. Dammit.

  “Nonsense,” Royan insisted and scooted the guard forward with a wave.

  “Father!” Kat stood between Hunter and a guard for the third time. That didn’t much register. The guy could have raised his gun and fired a shot between Hunter’s eyes, and it would have shocked him less. Royan was her father.

  His ears rang. Red blurred his vision.

  “You paid for my medical school, so trust me to prove it wasn’t a waste.” Kat addressed her father, the very deadly Tor Royan.

  “Fine but wear gloves.” Tor’s nose turned up to the ceiling. “I don’t want the foul man contaminating you.”

  Kat looked at Hunter. Sorrow filled her eyes, but her posture remained rigid and determined. He expected her to argue. Well, Tyler had a saying about assumptions, something about possums and asses, and too often it proved true. Today he could have done without the I-told-you-so. She moved toward the fallen crash cart and reached for the box of gloves.

  Hunter wasn’t contaminated. Sure, he’d fucked a lot of women but always with protection. What’s more, he got checked routinely. More than that, he didn’t want Tor to dictate her actions. His rage reached a new level. Disgust. If she’d really wanted to take care of him, she’d have gotten him a phone at the very least, and the hell out of here at the most.

  He didn’t want her to touch him. If either of them was contaminated, she was. The blood of her depraved father coursed through her veins. Hunter scooted, grabbed the bed’s frame, and hoisted himself up onto the edge of the mattress.

  “Leave the gloves, Katrin, and come with me. He needs no further assistance.” Tor had yet to look Hunter in the eyes. That would come later when his daughter wasn’t around to see the demon her father hid behind suits and a haughty attitude.

  As before, she chose her blood. When she skirted past him to her dad, she didn’t meet Hunter’s gaze either. The door shut behind them, and its WTF echoed in Hunter’s ears.

  14

  Silence fell over the room. Even her heartbeat paused to see which man she would choose.

  In Kat’s world, two plus two equaled four, good men served others, and bad men lived behind bars. Suddenly, nothing added up. Her father had said Hunter was bad, yet Hunter believed the same of her father.

  She turned toward her father and walked like a well-beaten dog, knowing no good would come from her master’s hand, yet still loyal to a fault.

  Her gaze refused to meet Hunter’s. She studied the tips of her ugly shoes, trying to make sense from the senseless. His disgust for her had been evident from the moment he’d realized that Tor Royan was her father. While she’d never been thrilled with the way her father expressed his affection for her, she’d accepted him long ago. If the things that Hunter had said about him were true, Hunter would never want to speak to her again, and she couldn’t blame him. She also couldn’t protect him without answers.

  “Don’t ever take that long to obey me again, Katrin.” Her father turned and strode down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  Behind her, a new guard closed and locked the door. The beep of the barred door punched her in the gut. She hunched. Her arms wrapped around her middle as she stared at the door she’d been on the other side of for so long.

  “You won’t want to keep Mr. Royan waiting.” The guard motioned her away from the room.

  Standing at the opposite end of such a grand corridor, her father seemed a small man. She used that image to bolster herself. He was only what she allowed him to be.

  Kat stiffened her spine and hurried to catch him before he disappeared around the corner. The new guard followed at a leisurely pace, which forced her feet to move faster. She didn’t need another run-in with one of her father’s hired guns. Her worry abated near the end of the space. The guard turned down another hallway, and she finally reached her father’s side.

  “Where’s Aron?” The large dining hall they stepped into swallowed her question whole.

  “He’ll be dealt with.” Her father’s sleek wingtips glided over the floor, leaving only a whisper of sound in the expansive room.

  “What does that mean?” Kat slapped her hands to her sides and stomped along in her ugly medical clogs. The frantic clops sounded as though she were a two-ton bull with friends ready to stampede.

  On the other side of the room, a dining table equipped to seat half the country—the rich half—stood with a butler and two servers. They averted their gazes and schooled their expressions so much they looked like vacant mannequins displayed in the window treatment at the rent-a-servant store.

  “It means no one puts their hands on my family without consequences.” His voice maintained a low, almost melodic volume and tempo despite the ruckus she’d created.

  “Consequences like…?” She leaned in to better hear an answer that didn’t come. When he didn’t fill in the blank, she tried a different tactic. “Firing him?”

  The butler met her father at the head
of the table and pulled a high-backed oak chair in perfect time for him to sit. “I apologize, sir. I didn’t know you had company.” He waved two fingers in the air, and the rent-a-servants sprang into action. One fetched a silver platter filled with a perfectly polished place setting while the other disappeared through a swinging door into what she suspected was the kitchen.

  Kat stood back, watching the exchange in awe. The house she’d grown up in had been nice, but nothing compared to the opulence of carved, gold-leafed ceilings or the servants. It seemed that her father had become quite accustomed to luxury.

  When the butler rounded the corner in her direction, she looked at him for the first time…because he stared at her like she was yesterday’s garbage. Tarred and leathered skin pulled around light blue eyes. His sneer revealed teeth better suited for denture commercials than chewing food. “Allow me, miss.” He pulled the chair from the side of the table and motioned her in with his annoying two-finger gesture.

  She wanted to tell him to shove those two fingers up his ass. These were the people who fed her during her imprisonment and did nothing about it. “I’ll stand.”

  “Not sitting. Not dining?” He posed it as a question, but it came across as an edict.

  “Not caring at the moment,” Kat spat and sidestepped the man.

  The servant stopped in the middle of laying the place setting out. Her wide gaze toggled back and forth between her and the butler.

  “As you wish.” A nod of his gray hair and the servant gathered the finery in one scoop and retreated.

  Butler didn’t use the two-finger gesture, and the small win bolstered Kat’s resolve. She planted both hands on the table. Their slap pinged off the crystal flute of champagne—a mite early for celebration—and the empty china. Her feet spread, bracing for the blowback of her crass actions and determination to get answers.

  Her father’s eyes snapped to hers for the first time since leaving her prison. “Aron is not your concern. He’ll never touch you again.”