Page 4 of Capture (Primal #3)

W hile the high-pitched screeches of women faking orgasms and the grunt of men finishing off float along the hallways, not a single sound came from Riley’s room.

My ass was turning numb from sitting on the hard wooden floor, so I stood to stretch my limbs, then pressed my ear against her door to search for sound.

When I heard no sound, I unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

Mikky wanted me to stay out of her room, but I had a good excuse.

Her dark head looked up from the pillow, cheeks stained with tears, body in the fetal position.

She reached for her glasses resting on the second pillow, and my heart exploded.

I was supposed to hate her. I was supposed to plot her death for betraying us, but as she chewed her bottom lip, as hopelessness lurked behind her eyes, my resentment vanished, and my attraction to her rose.

“Is there any point?” I stated coldly. “Is there any point in putting those glasses on?”

She frowned in confusion as I approached her and reached for her face. She gasped desperately as I snatched her glasses from her. Then, as I had done before, I held them up to peer through the lenses, only to discover that they were just glass.

“These are fake?” I pointed out, then tossed them onto the bed. “Drop the bullshit, Riley. Or should I call you by your real name?”

Her eyes filled with tears, but they were the wrong-colored eyes. “What do you want from me?” she protested.

“Tell me your real name,” I insisted.

She fell quiet for a few beats as if considering what to say, then, in a croaky voice, “I already have.”

“Don’t lie. I have fake glasses, fake eye color, fake hair color, fake everything.” I started pacing to work off the energy burning through my body, stirring my anger and sadness as memories of my father and Annika stormed about in my mind.

“Gunner,” she sighed, anguished. “I’m sorry that I betrayed you.”

“I’m not interested in your crocodile tears, Riley, or should I call you by your real name?” I exclaimed, even though it was making her more distressed and tearful. “Now…what is your name? It’s on the edge of my tongue.”

“Just do it,” she shouted as Annika's fiery temperament took over, replacing the tears. It’s beneath the fake surface, lingering for a fleeting moment when she dropped her guard and forgot to fake everything.

“Do what?” I enquired.

“Slit my throat. Kill me. Do it,” she challenged. “I don’t care anymore.”

“Dramatic,” I scoffed, surprised at her surrender because Annika wouldn’t give up so quickly. “Killing you had crossed my mind, but for now, we need to keep you alive.”

I folded my arms across my chest and stared her down, wrestling with my conscience. The girl I adored was crumbling before me, and I hated it. This was her own doing, and she had no one to blame but herself.

“You could’ve come to me,” I stated softly. “I would’ve helped you.”

“There was nothing you could do, Gunner,” she stressed, tormented and confused.

“And I was blindsided, too.” She dropped her face into her hands as her body trembled, and I clenched my fists to stop myself from comforting her.

When her hands fell away, her face was glistening with tears.

“I intended to come to Gotland to pursue my dream of studying marine biology, graduate, and find a job, but they had different plans.”

“They? The cops,” I questioned. She was opening up, which was good, but I needed her to say her true name. I needed those plump rose lips to say the name Annika.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“The Larsson Police Department?” I assumed that the officer who was in her room was a member of the Larsson Police force.

“Not entirely,” she claimed, sitting up and brushing her hair from her eyes.

She took her ponytail out, and her hair was wavy, curling around her pretty face. But all I could see was Annika with colored hair. Annika filled my brain and stimulated my cock, and it was harder than ever to see Riley in this girl peering at me from those wet eyes.

“What does that mean?” I enquired, standing over her. “What do you mean, not entirely? Are the police part of the Larsson Police force or not?”

“They are, but not really. I mean…” she sighed, struggling to find the words, or maybe she was about to lie again. “They are part of the Larsson Police Department, but on the edge of it. Like they seem to have their own rules.”

“Dirty cops?” I questioned, unsurprised.

She nodded. “I think so. They…she…actually, I’m unsure how many people are involved in this…whatever it is, but I see only two faces.”

“The blond cop,” I replied bluntly, and she flinched at the tone of my voice. “We know who she is, but how do you know her? How did you become recruited into their little schemes?”

“She bribed me,” Riley replied, picking up her glasses, playing with them between her fingers, then swinging them around mindlessly.

“With what?” I was on a roll, so I might as well keep persisting with my line of questioning.

“To take my brother away from his family,” she replied, voice cracking again, and I could tell she wasn’t faking it. This was genuine emotional stress.

“You have a brother?” I exclaimed curiously.

“I don’t remember you mentioning a brother.

” Yet I knew Annika had a brother who was about six or seven years old and was living a happy life with his adopted family.

But Riley hadn’t mentioned a brother, so had she tripped herself up, or was she going to come up with another tale off the top of her head?

She swallowed again, hesitating. “Yes. A younger brother. They threatened to hurt him.”

“Where is he?” I was losing patience with her storytelling, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, as perhaps she’ll lead me to the truth.

“Um, I don’t know,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes.

“Look, I don’t know if you plan to tell us the truth or not, or string us along, but we already know about your brother. And we already know where he is. The Kaiser trust protects him. Nothing is going to happen to him,” I explained.

“How do you know my brother?” she screwed her face up.

Fuck, she’s still playing along, and I exhaled to relieve the tension building in my chest. “Drop the bullshit, Riley. Or should I call you by your real name? We know who you are. I just want you to say it. Say your name. Say it.”

Fear crawled across her face as her pupils widened and her mouth parted. “I don’t know what you mean? You’re confusing me with someone else.”

“C’mon, Riley. Stop bullshitting me. This,” I drew a circle in the air, “is fake. Everything about you is fake. Now is the time to drop the facade and reveal who you are.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean,” she sobbed, and I groaned as guilt and doubt stormed my conscience.

Was I wrong about this? Or was she so stubborn and afraid that she found it difficult to relinquish her disguise? Perhaps she had been playing the role of Riley Laws for so long that she had forgotten how to be Annika.

“How do you know about my brother when I haven’t told you about him?” she asked, and again I questioned whether I was right about her.

My eyes found a spot on the ceiling as I tried to cool my jets and decided to go along with her bullshit.

“We know everything about you. I’m your stalker, remember, I did my research.

Your brother is protected and always has been, so the Larsson cops were lying to you to force you to be their mole. ”

She clammed up, lay back down, and turned on her side away from me. The room fell silent, and I considered leaving, but my feet were glued to the floor. The curve of her body lured me in like an addiction that I couldn’t beat.

I slipped my shoes off, took the empty food tray off the bed, placed it on the floor by the door, and knelt on the bed.

Her cheeks were wet with tears, and I leaned over her, wiping those streaks away with my thumb.

Then I lay beside her, nestled into her curves, her butt cheeks pressed against my crotch.

She didn’t move or try to push me away. Instead, she relaxed into me as I stroked her hair.

“I’m sorry it has come to this,” I whispered against her soft skin.

She exhaled as her body trembled, not because it was cold in here, but because she was grieving. A breathy sigh escaped her lips before she softly spoke, “I’m sorry I did this to you. You don’t deserve it. None of you deserves it.”

Pain surged through my chest, and my muscles tensed at her admission, yet I still needed her to say her name. “What does that cop want?”

“Evidence to put Mr. Kaiser back in prison again,” she replied, and I squinted because once again, she was admitting who she was, without actually saying it.

“Just say it, Riley. Say your name,” I was almost begging. I needed to hear that name drop from her lips. The name of my foster sister, the girl who lit up my world when she smiled. The girl that my parents saved from a life of hell. “Say it. Say your real name.”

My fist found her cool cheek, and I brushed over the tears that continued to stream as my heart turned to jelly. I wore a shell of black as armor to protect my soft heart from the cruelty of the world. Yet, this girl, who squeezed against me, could destroy me with one word: Say it.

A sigh escaped her lips as her fingers clasped my wrist and she pressed her lips against my palm. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a hushed tone.

My lips found the curve of her neck as she turned her face to meet my lips. “Say it,” I demand in a whisper, drilling into her green eyes that were blue underneath those contact lenses.

She raised her head, so our lips met, and that’s all it took.

One touch from this girl and I was under her spell.

Claimed. Annika could control me with one look, one smile, one flirtatious twirling of her golden hair around her finger.

Every day as a growing man and brother, I fought against my deepening feelings for her, and now she has finally returned to me, and she won’t say her name.

I peppered kisses along her bare skin as she sighed, and tears dropped onto the bed sheets. My hand rubbed along her arm, then down to her thigh.

The echoes of doors opening and closing down the hallway, frisky, sexy voices to relax and lure the client, high heels tapping on wooden floorboards, laughter, followed by silence.

Riley’s finger went to her left eyeball as she removed the green lens on the pad of her finger and placed it on the pillow. She then proceeded to do the same with her right eye.

“I have blond hair,” she told me quietly, brushing her hand along the part in her chocolate-colored hair. “I need to color it every four or five weeks.”

“To keep up the charade,” I added as my voice sounded harsher than I intended, but I couldn’t get past the pain pulsating in my chest.

She nodded as she licked her bottom lip. “I wore a mask like you did,” she sighed. “We are no different.”

I wanted to hiss back at her and say that she was wrong.

We were not the same. I wanted to tell her that I would never betray the family that saved me.

We were worlds apart. I would never put an innocent man in prison.

But I kept my mouth shut as I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Riley metamorphosing into Annika.

The scent of hair was intoxicating, mingling with our body heat. My animalistic instincts urged me to slide my hand between her thighs to turn her on, because I had an overwhelming urge to fuck her until the bed broke, but my senses knew that was a bad idea.

Apprehensively, I waited for her to say the name. Say it. She was almost there. Dangerously close to revealing to me who she was.

She turned away from me to stare at the wallpaper, and my heart sank. I lost her. I lost the moment of the butterfly's emergence. I was about to leave in a huff to smoke a joint and drink some alcohol to cure my ills because this shit was doing my head in, but her hand tightly grabbed my forearm.

Her finger traced nauseating circles on my skin as I could feel her body tense and tremble, tension building as if a levee was about to break.

“Tell me your name,” I whispered into her ear, but she ignored me as her finger moved in circles on my skin. I took a deep breath to cool my shit, because my patience was running out.

“Say it,” I insisted, still keeping my voice low and flat so I didn’t scare her. “Say your name. Say it, Riley. Say it.”

Her finger continued to burn my skin in hypnotizing circles, and a brick of frustration burdened my chest. There was only so much I could take of her messing me around.

Her finger stopped moving in circles, and an invisible line was drawn on the white of my forearm. Then, another invisible line was drawn from the top of the first line, followed by a third line, a horizontal bar between the first two lines.

My heart slammed against my ribcage. I might’ve been mistaken, but I swore that was an A. Then her finger drew an invisible N, then a second N, and then an I.

“Say it,” I whispered again. “Say the name.”

She exhaled as her body seemed to shrink in the cocoon on my body.

“Annika,” she mouthed so softly as if she didn’t want to hear it herself. But I heard the name loud and clear, like a bloodcurdling scream in my ear.

Annika.