Hunted: A Criminal Deeds Novel Read online

  My room.

  Then I shut the door behind us.

  My plan is to grab my handcuffs and secure her to the bed to put an end to this evening. However, she throws me off entirely when she shoves me the best she can against the door and smashes her mouth to mine.

  She tries to push her tongue between my lips, but in my shock, I do the shoving this time. I push her away with a little too much force. She stumbles back and her ass hits the hardwood of my bedroom floor. Hissing out a breath, she flinches and grabs her arm.

  “What the fuck?” I throw at her, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  She scrunches her face, staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What do you mean? I asked you to take me home.”

  “Woman, you didn’t ask me to do anything,” I growl. Then I shake my head and put my hands on my hips before remembering exactly what she didn’t ask me.

  Fuck. This is what she meant by taking her home.

  She wants me to fuck her.

  And maybe she doesn’t know who I am to her. What I’m supposed to do with her.

  She rises to her feet in slow movements. Then she dusts her yoga pants off, rights the bag on her shoulder, and pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down. “I don’t want to ask. I want to take,” she tells me, an electrical current running through her words.

  It’s only now that I notice what she’s trying to hide: her fear.

  She’s trying to be confident and in control. But that bruise around her eye tells me she got a little of what was coming to her for what she did. And the way she’s holding her right arm means she might have gotten a little more.

  That could ruin how much of a fight she’s willing to put up now, but I’ll take what I can get.

  If that includes actually taking this woman, then so be it. My boss said that she’s a little whore. I might as well see if it’s true. And if that’s what she wants from me, we’ve got some time.

  I hope she likes it rough.

  Holding my arms out to my sides, I say, “Then take.”

  4

  Willow

  I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know this man’s name.

  And that’s the way I like it.

  I knew where I was with Adam. I knew what I was doing, and I definitely knew his name. Look at where that got me. Beaten, broken, and on the run.

  Fuck that. It’s my time now.

  Time to take control.

  So I go straight for his belt.

  With frantic fingers, I rip the buckle open and slip the material from the loop. Then I go for the button and the zipper of his jeans before pulling them down to the ground. The metal clank against wood should give me pause. Was that a gun? A knife?

  Fuck it. I don’t even care. If he’s going to kill me, so fucking be it. I’m gonna go out with a bang.

  He finally breaks his frozen pose by launching into motion and ripping his own shirt over his head. The moment it’s on the floor, he steps out of his pants, his erection tenting his boxers. I wasn’t sure if he was going to get into this, but there’s no doubt now. Though, when I reach to take those off, his fingers snake around my wrists and squeeze so hard that pain shoots up my arms—especially through my bad one.

  I hiss a breath in through my teeth, but he doesn’t release his death grip. When I meet his gaze, there’s so much there: pain, confusion, his own need to take control. This isn’t going to be as easy as I hoped. Maybe I picked the wrong guy in that bar.

  Or maybe not. I’m up for the challenge.

  When he finally lets me go, I slowly reach forward again. I’m determined to see this through. So as I slide his boxers down his legs, I watch him to make sure I’m not doing something that’ll get me hurt. Although, honestly, he can’t hurt me more than Adam already has. The physical abuse was one thing, but the mental anguish and the emotional torture were another. This is where it’s all led me: to a stranger’s house truly in the middle of Fuck All, Oklahoma, where no one will hear me scream.

  If I even do that. I haven’t done it in so long—I might not remember how.

  Let him kill me, then. It’ll end it all, and nothing would be sweeter than that.

  On my way back up from his feet, his thick cock bobs near my mouth. Blowjobs were never my preference with Adam, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about my preference. The only thing he gave a shit about was getting his needs met, and that usually involved choking me with his dick while he pulled my hair so hard that tears rained down my cheeks. When he was finished with me, he’d toss me away like garbage he couldn’t stand to look at any longer, my mascara running in rivers over my skin.

  I think he relished that look on me. The one that said he’d done his job of scaring me into never attempting to escape.

  Too bad he was wrong.

  For him, anyway.

  I’ve got something with the potential to be amazing staring me in the face. Literally. My heart kicks up when I think about all the difference places I could take this. Me. I can call the shots. I can order him around. I can tell him what I want and demand he do it.

  I don’t think he’ll listen, and maybe he’ll hurt me for trying, but like usual: fuck it.

  Wrapping my fingers around his dick, I ignore the jagged edges of my fingernails and focus on his smooth, hot skin. The way he sucks in a breath between clenched teeth. How his eyes close as his head lands against the door with a thud. The sound he makes when my tongue peeks out and licks his tip. The color of his eyes when they fly open and pin me in place.

  Then he grabs my wrist again and yanks me to my feet.

  So much for that control.

  But I don’t think I care. My body flares to life as he uses his force to back me up to his bed. Heat pools in places I’ve never felt it before when the backs of my knees hit the bed and he shoves me down on to it. His fiery-hot fingers aren’t gentle when they wrench under my yoga pants and rip them from my body. The sides of my panties tear with the force, and when he rises again, towering over me at the edge of the bed, fire blazes from his gaze.

  No more control. Not from me, and definitely not from him. He’s lost his, and I never had any. I’d been kidding myself into thinking I could find it here, in the one place where there’s none to be found.

  Here we go.

  I wait for the tenseness to take over. To grip me as I fear the worst of Adam’s physical torture. It never does though, so I go into backup mode: calm as I count the water spots on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom from memory. Anything to keep my focus away from what’s about to happen to me.

  I chose wrong. Of course I did. I always have, and I always will.

  With my eyes closed, I count. Eight, nine, ten. Don’t forget the one in the corner.

  But when those hot fingers land on my stomach, I’m wrenched back to the present. Those aren’t the smooth, cold, well-taken-care of hands of my tormentor. My abuser. No, those are rough hands, callused from hard work over years and years. The sandpaper pads contrast against my sore, tender skin in a way that causes a pulsing in my core. They scratch as they push my sweatshirt up, up, up.

  When my breasts are exposed, I think he’ll stop moving it. Adam never needed me naked—just unclothed enough to see what he needed to see to get off. He required the visual of all the scars he’d left on my body. All the ways he’d marked me so no one else would want me. Yet he still called me a whore as if anyone else could touch this body in a sexual way again.

  He made sure that wouldn’t happen.

  However, this man doesn’t stop. He tears my sweatshirt over my head before discarding it to the side with the rest of my clothes. I wait for him to realize what my body looks like, for him to gasp in shock and back the hell away from me.

  He doesn’t though. Not even for a second.

  Maybe he can’t see through the pain in his eyes. Maybe he’s blind to the scene before him and only focused on the outcome. It sure seems that way as he slams into me a second later, rou
ghly pounding inside my body and taking all the things I was supposed to take from him.

  I don’t even mind.

  It does give me a sense of taking. It takes me away from my pathetic, used-up life. It takes the old pain away and replaces it with something fresh.

  When he flips me over onto my stomach, I think he’ll finally find pause. This is when he’ll notice the real scars, the way Adam sliced mine into my skin as if I could ever forget who I belonged to. Even now, as this man fucks me hard from behind, I haven’t forgotten. This body is Adam’s, and this man is sullying it for when it finally goes back to its owner. This man will pay dearly for taking what’s Adam’s.

  Maybe that’s what I wanted. Someone else to take the blame for what I’ve done for a while. When Adam finds me, and I’m sure he will, he’ll find this man too. And this man is fucking me like he wants someone to take his pain away too. I can feel it with every excruciating thrust that splits me open more and more.

  Faster, he slams inside me. His scratchy fingers slide up my back, blazing paths of fire in their wake. When he reaches the edges of my uneven hair, I wait for him to grip it, wrap it up in his hot fingers, and rip my head backward to him. But he doesn’t. Instead, he slides his sandpaper pads up through my hair, over my scalp, and then presses my face into the mattress until I can barely breathe. When air hits my lungs again, I gasp, taking in the woodsy scent I noticed on him at the bar.

  He trails his hands back down. His nails dig into my skin, making their own kind of deep scars. He grips my hips and pistons into me until he can’t any longer. Then he collapses over my back, grunting into my ear with the force of his climax.

  And all I can do is throb around him, pulsing to the point of pain in my pussy.

  The good kind of pain.

  5

  Zane

  When I open my eyes again, she’s gone. And it’s bright as fuck on the other side of my bedroom window. Did I pass out? What kind of fucking spell did that woman put on me last night?

  An actual fucking spell, it seems.

  I fell right into that trap. It’s like she knew what she could do to me. Like she knew she wouldn’t get to take for long because then I would start doing the taking. And take, I did.

  I took her to my bed.

  I took her clothes off.

  I took her pussy without a fucking care in this world.

  And I took her hard.

  On her back.

  On her stomach.

  I took her until I couldn’t take it anymore. Until neither of us had anything left to give. And then I passed the fuck out.

  And now, she’s gone.

  Hopefully she didn’t get too far.

  I snatch my jeans from where we left them last night: right by the door. I remember stepping out of them after she licked the tip of my cock and my switch flipped from let her take it to it’s my turn. After that, I don’t remember seeing or hearing. Just feeling and touching and fucking. I have no idea if she moaned or cried out. I can’t even picture what she looked like.

  But the feel of her skin—soft in places and rougher in others—has been etched into my fingertips already. I flex those fingers against the denim of my jeans and try to erase her silky smoothness from my memory. That has no home in my head. None whatsoever. Especially not because of this thief.

  As I rush through the door, pulling my pants up my legs, I realize my hearing has returned. Something that sounds like a dish clanking in the sink catches my ears and I pause. A moment later, the water runs and I know I’m not hallucinating.

  She’s still here. She didn’t leave.

  I can still deliver her to my boss and collect my money.

  I can still get the fuck out of this.

  After I’ve jogged down the stairs, I enter the kitchen, the hardwood under my feet creaking with each step. Sure, I’ve got one hundred pounds on her at the very least, but it had to have sounded when she was walking on it too. How the fuck did I sleep so hard and long?

  “Oh,” she quietly says as she dries the dish in her hand with my kitchen towel. “I hope it’s okay that I ate.” She pokes her thumb toward the fridge. “I would have made you something, but…” Hiding her eyes, she sets the towel down. Then she puts the dish back where she found it. “Sorry. I’m sure I woke you. I’ll just—” She starts to head past me, but I cut her off.

  With a hand around her arm, I stop her. When she flinches, something in my chest squeezes. It can’t be my heart because I lost that a long time ago. I haven’t had one in years. You can’t in my business of finding people and sending them to their death. A heart has no place in this shit.

  But something just happened in my body.

  No, I don’t usually do this with women. Usually, my targets are male.

  And more than usually—as in always—I never fuck them.

  So what the fuck was that?

  “It was just a slice of toast!” On the last soft plea, her voice cracks. Then her throat works as she swallows hard. “Do whatever you have to do,” she whispers, her voice a rasp.

  It confuses me. Maybe she does know who I am and what I’ve been tasked to do. Maybe she’s succumbed to her fate of heading back to my boss for whatever punishment he’ll dole out on her. Yet I don’t think that’s it.

  And suddenly, I don’t like the idea of turning her over.

  Whatever I thought I could do to her freezes in time as she demurely submits to my grip on her arm. This woman is beyond what my brand of torture could do, and it makes me wonder what the fuck has already happened to her. Something deranged if her reaction is anything to go by. She’d rather let a strange, strong man do whatever he has to do to her than fight?

  What happened to the assertive woman last night? The one who didn’t hesitate before ripping my pants down my legs even after I tried to stop her? The one who took me by the collar and made her demand? Where’s that woman now?

  In the light of day, our secrets can’t be hidden. We can’t keep those private things away from prying eyes. They come to the surface, and even this woman isn’t immune.

  Her timid behavior gives me a moment to study her. Her bed-mussed hair is loose all around her face. Her breaths come in shallow pants, but they’re controlled, like she truly is resigned to whatever is about to happen. Her sweatshirt is back in place, and those yoga pants she was wearing last night fit her snugly. The ass I had handfuls of last night barely looks the same with that material over it, but again, I didn’t get a look glimpse. Not in my rage-induced haze.

  No, I let the beast take over instead. It’d been too long since he’d come out to play and he couldn’t help himself. But it spent all of my energy, and now, here we are. At a standstill.

  What the hell do I do with a woman who doesn’t care if I have to tie her up? Bind her to a chair? Stuff a gag into her mouth? She’s willing, and that takes half of the fun out of it.

  I let my fingers fall from her arm. It must shock her that I’m not using any force now, because she peers up at me, daring to glance straight into my eyes. Only for a moment though—that’s as long as she lasts before she looks away. I don’t let her get far though. I can’t. Because what I saw there when I dared to look back into her eyes makes me question everything again.

  Last night, I saw the greenish bruise around her eye. The way she held her harm in pain. I’d thought it was what happened to thieves and liars. I’d thought she’d rightfully received those as a punishment for something she’d done.

  Now, though, I’m not so sure. Now, I’m wondering who did that to her. Why they did it.

  And for how the fuck long.

  Her reactions aren’t of a woman who’s taken a single beating for stealing. And if my boss had beaten her for taking what was his, she wouldn’t be here right now. Something isn’t adding up, and I want some fucking answers.

  “What happened?” I ask her gruffly. I didn’t mean for my voice to come out that way, but I don’t use it much out here in my middle-of-nowhere life. And I slept har
der than I’ve slept in years, so I shouldn’t be surprised. “Who did that to you?”

  She turns her head away, clearly not wanting to speak.

  But I’m not having it. We fucked last night—she can say a few words to me after that.

  I snag her wrist as she tries to spin away, and again, she flinches. But this time, it ends in her trembling. From head to toe, this woman shakes and crumbles right before my eyes. Whatever happened to my chest before happens again—worse this time. It squeezes tighter, melts some of the steel built up around the cave where my heart used to be. When a tear slips down her cheek, my thumb errantly caresses the soft skin beneath her sweatshirt.

  The contrast of the rougher, more jagged skin I rub over a second later stops me cold.

  I tighten my grip and tug her toward me. It takes nearly no effort at all, and after a small stumble, she’s right in front of me again, shaking like a leaf. When she straightens her spine, maybe intending to toughen up and hold her ground for a change, I push the cuff of her sweatshirt up her arm.

  And what I see all over her skin makes rage flood through me all over again.

  “Who the fuck did this to you?” I growl at her, my fury barely contained. If she hesitates again before answering me, I might not be able to stop myself from lashing out.

  She tests my boundaries though, flinching and staying quiet.

  “Woman!” I roar it at her, spittle flying out of my mouth and landing on the silvery lines running up and down her skin—the lines that look so familiar in a way I can’t explain. Then I repeat myself one more time. “Tell me right now: Who the fuck gave you all of these scars?”

  Trembling in my grasp, she squeezes her eyes shut. I’m about to go nuclear, the wrath building up within me to a boiling point. But then she finally speaks.

  “M-my husband,” she stutters out. “He did this.” After a shuddering breath out, she sucks a deep one in, and her voice vibrates over her next words, which turn me straight to ice: “Adam did this.”