Page 8 of Capture (Primal #3)

H e looms over me like a monster eyeing his prey, completely without warmth and sympathy. But I shouldn’t be surprised. He was the one who bore the brunt of my lies. Three years of his life were taken from him simply because I chose to believe the Larsson police over the family that fostered me.

“Food,” he pointed out as he placed two packets of chips and a glass bottle of water, one of those fancy brands in a wine bottle, on the side table.

“You know that feeding me will keep me alive. I thought you’d rather I waste away as punishment.” As I spoke, I refused to look up at him because that face was remarkably handsome for such an evil man. But I guess no one is perfect.

“Don’t confuse me bringing you food with kindness,” he said, then leaned against the wall in the same place as Ronan had not long ago. Far enough away so he couldn’t touch me, but close enough so he could intimidate me, then examine my expressions and movements in reaction.

“So, why do you bring me food, then?” I sighed, glancing at the chips and having a sudden desire to binge on fatty starch until I popped.

“Because rotten carcasses stink and I wouldn’t want to upset the guests in the other rooms,” he replied with a glimmer in his eyes, showing a dark sense of humor that I could appreciate.

The classic Kaiser satire that Gunner and my foster father shared, although Lars Kaiser lost his humor in the later years after he was released from prison, and cops were always on his back, constantly putting pressure on him.

I distinctly remember us walking on eggshells in the house whenever Lars Kaiser was in one of those black moods.

The moods deepened as time went on until his death.

It was almost as if he could see his death coming.

“You sure know how to make a girl feel special,” I mocked. I wouldn’t have dared to speak to him like that only a week ago, but I had nothing to lose now.

“There’s not a single thing about you that is special,” he replied bluntly, and my body flinched at the tone of his voice. Not because he was being mean, but because he seemed to be forcing a lie, as if he was making himself dislike me and treat me cruelly.

Whatever. I didn’t care. Let the Kaiser monster do his work, killing me slowly, driving me crazy due to the isolation. Death by carbohydrates and sex noises didn’t seem too bad after all.

“Do you find that funny?” he asked, bemused, and I realized that I was smiling at my stupid joke about carbohydrates.

“No,” I sighed. “Actually, it is funny. You’re keeping me locked up in a brothel serenaded by heavy grunting and sighing. It’s basically water torture without the water, as you know, it will eventually drive me nuts.”

“I thought you already were nuts,” he swiftly replied, and I realized he was cracking a joke, but he didn’t smile, so maybe it wasn’t a joke. It was so hard to tell.

I faltered for a few seconds to compose myself so I didn’t laugh some more. I glanced up under my eyelashes at him, and his gaze staggered me as my heart slammed against my ribcage at the intensity of those eyes, and I wondered what thoughts were dancing in that perfectly dark head.

“You remind me of Mr. Kaiser,” I managed to say without stuttering.

“Well…we’re related,” he exhaled and clenched his jaw.

“You’re like a younger, angrier version with curlier hair, and I think you’re a little taller too,” I explained as his eyes narrowed with every word, as his lips tightened, suppressing a smile.

Or at least I think he was suppressing a smile, maybe it was a grimace or a fuming hiss. Oh well. I might as well have fun poking the bear before I die.

“It sounds like you look at me a lot,” he stated firmly, and this time he allowed that smile to show, but only for two seconds before it disappeared again.

“Not really,” I shrugged. “Why would I look at you for? You’re not all that, you know.”

He cocked his head to the side in confusion. “What? You sound like my ex-cellmates,” he pointed out about my slang. “How old are you? The same age as Gunner, aren’t you?”

I nodded as grief invaded my chest, weighing me down. “Twenty. I have two birthdays. One for Annika that I celebrate quietly, and one for Riley that I also celebrate quietly because no one knows me here.”

“And what about the other pseudonym you have?” he asked, frowning as if amused, although it was hard to tell.

“Oh yeah, Petra Black. I forgot about her,” I smirked, then covered my mouth with my hand so that he couldn’t see it. Once I managed to drop my smirk, I added, “See, you should really hire me to work for you because I’m an expert on disguises and spying.”

He snorted and that smile stretched across his chiseled dial, eyes twinkling, expression warming and I was taken aback by my heart soaring as a quiver traveled down my spine. I made the devil smile and liked it.

“I could be just as bad as you,” I added, straightening my shoulders to seem confident.

“Bad? You think I’m bad?” he pressed. “I’m innocent. My criminal record was wiped, Annika. Because a lying little b…” he refused to say the word aloud, “Sided with the police and threw an entire family under the bus.”

“You’re never going to get over that, are you?” I hit, finding the courage to challenge him because, as I kept reminding myself, I had nothing left. “I mean…it’s been three years. It’s probably time you got over it.”

He screwed his face up in indignation as if no one had ever spoken to him like that before. “Did you just lose your head?” he spat heatedly.

I struck his trigger point, so it might be safer if I changed the subject.

“You could use me as a spy down on the floor to find out who let the rats in, even though I’m pretty sure Betty had something to do with it.

” The words fell from my lips hastily and with little effort.

As if a spell had come over me, forcing me to say whatever was on my mind, regardless of the consequence.

“I don’t know if I could trust you,” he asserted. “Once we let you out of here, the first thing you’d do is go running back to the blond cop from Larsson.”

“What have you got to lose, though? Send me down there as your mole, Mikael,” I tested him again, and he shot me a dark scowl.

“You refer to me as Mr. Kaiser,” he corrected me in a sinister tone. “We’re not friends or family, so we’re not on a first-name basis, Annika. And we have everything to lose. There’s no way in hell I’m going back to prison.”

“If you’re innocent, then you have nothing to worry about,” I argued.

The rage was all over his face, yet he kept his cool, a man in control, no matter how many buttons I pushed. “I was inn-o-cent,” he seethed, clenching his jaw.

“Oh yeah, but you’re still not the most innocent type of person, are you, I mean…” I trailed off as his frightening frame was now standing right over me. In two strides, he was here before me, thunder radiating from every pore.

He leaned down, so our faces were only an inch apart as his warm breath tickled my nose, and I saw the pattern of his iris. “Annika,” his voice was low and gritty, provoking a shiver to run across my forearms.

Without touching me, he caged me under his powerful enchantment, frozen to the spot, muscles stiffened, jaw locked, breath hitched. I couldn’t move, even if I tried.

His hand came out of nowhere and claimed my mouth, fingers and thumb pressing into my cheeks, while his palm seemed to burn my lips.

I swallowed nervously, and it occurred to me that maybe I did want to live.

Only moments ago, I didn’t care if he pulled a gun and shot me, but at this moment, every part of my body screamed at me to survive whatever he was about to do.

“I was innocent ,” his lips barely moved as he spoke, as his dark eyes drilled into my skull.

I swallowed and wrapped my hand around his wrist, touching his skin for the first time and finding him warm, not the damp, cold aura he normally exuded—the Smoldering Fall.

“O-kay,” I breathed, barely able to move my mouth due to his grip on my face.

He lifted my face upwards, forcing my gaze to meet his as my nerves coiled about in my stomach. The heat of anger and desire flashed behind those eyes as his intense stare traveled down to my lips, and his demeanor changed.

He narrowed the small space between us and pressed his lips against mine as my hand clung tighter to his wrist, holding on for life.

He loosened his grasp on my face, lowering his hand as his other hand found the back of my neck, pushing me toward him as he possessed my mouth, slipping his tongue inside as I gasped for breath.

The entire room spun about me as I tried to digest what was going on here.

I thought he hated me. A man didn’t kiss a woman like that if he hated her, unless I was mistaken.

Maybe he rose above his abhorrence of me to find out what I tasted like.

Confusion spun in dizzying circles within me as my body trembled in both terror and horniness. My panties quickly became sodden as my clit throbbed in a desperate need for those fingers to touch me down there.

His tongue continued to torture my mouth in a dangerous dance with my tongue, forcing further into my mouth as if he wanted to fuck my throat. My body melted under a heady mix of his cologne, intense body heat, and his blistering touch.

The man who had a seething hatred toward me was kissing me like I was special, wanted, and desired. It was challenging to keep my head above water as thoughts darted about in my mind, questioning and analyzing what was happening to me.

He broke the kiss, and I gasped, desperate to get air into my lungs. As he pulled away, my instant reaction was to increase my grip on his forearms to keep him here. My heart raced as sighs escaped my lips, hungry for more, but he didn’t seem to want to give me more.

That incredible body walked back to this spot against the wall in those black pants as he licked his lips where my mouth had been only a moment ago.

Silence fell.

A strange anger came over him as he seemed to be annoyed about what he had just done.

I cleared my throat, and he glanced up at me under those dark eyelashes. “I don’t have germs, I swear,” I told him, and he said nothing. “Um, that was unexpected.”

“It was a mistake,” he replied sternly. “A stupid mistake.”

“We all make mistakes,” I tried to console him while my insides were doing somersaults, so I had to hug my stomach.

“Do you still hate me? I mean…that kiss wasn’t-”

“I’ll leave you alone,” he interrupted and turned his back to open the door. Obviously, he didn’t want to discuss the kiss and preferred to pretend that it hadn’t happened. That’s how much he was disgusted by me.

“Thanks for the chips and spring water,” I called after him as he shut the door on me, and silence and loneliness followed. The silence will remain until the workers with their clients arrive to pleasure them in the rooms, and my ears would be assaulted by their sexual noises.

I leaned over to the side table and grabbed the fancy bottle of spring water, twisting the lid as the bubbles rose to the top of the water. My mouth had become dry from that kiss and needed to be hydrated and relaxed.

A dark figure loomed over me that I hadn’t noticed was in the room. He’d returned silently, or when I was distracted by the bubbling spring water, with nothing but desire and repulsion on his handsome, chiseled face.

“Oh,” I jolted, taking fright. “I didn’t realize you had returned.”

He refused to speak because words would make this real, but instead he claimed my mouth again, kissing me with more voracity than before, and I sighed into his mouth.

Then my body was forced onto the bed, and I wrapped my legs around his solid frame, while the space between my legs was wet and eager for penetration.

I pulled the sweater up over my head as the weight of his body enthralled me. Warm hands were everywhere, his mouth traveled from my mouth down to my neck, where I lurched in eagerness when the sensation of his coarse chin and soft tongue grazed along my skin.

His hands found my breasts and squeezed as I sighed, “I bet it’s been a while…” only to be promptly shushed into silence.

He didn’t want me to speak, and that’s okay.

I could handle the silence, but it bothered me that he hated me so much.

Was he imagining someone else beneath him because he was so repulsed by what I did to him?

Maybe his mind was on one of the girls who worked in these rooms, or perhaps a staff member, or possibly a sweetheart he dated in high school?

I was only a body to be used for pleasure and lust, while the mind was with someone else.

My bra was aggressively pulled down, revealing my breasts, and he lunged at them, placing his mouth over my nipple and sucking hard, drawing out a high-pitched sigh from me.

While he sucked the life out of me, my hands were squeezing his delicious butt cheeks, hoping that he’d take them off and show me what he was made of.

He pulled away, leaving me breathless and holding out my arms for him to come back to me. As he turned his back and stepped away, I dropped my arms over my naked breasts, suddenly feeling ashamed and used.

“Surrender,” I whispered to him as he was about to leave me alone again.

His feet froze. “Huh?” he exclaimed, without turning back to look at me because he was so grossed out.

“Surrender,” I repeated. He remained still for two beats before opening the door, and I added, “To me.”

The door slammed behind him, and this time, I knew he wasn’t going to return for a while.