Page 14 of Biker's Hostage

A man lunged toward me. A decade or so my senior, he threw himself in my direction, fists spinning through the air, a glancing blow landing on my jaw and sending a sparkle of stars flashing through my vision. I gripped on to the knife tight and drew it back, thrusting it rapidly into his gut. He staggered backwards, pressing his hand to the wounds that were swiftly filling with blood through his leather jacket, and he dropped to the ground with a gurgling grunt.

Two more men entered, these guys a little younger—and behind me, the door to the bathroom opened.

“Don’t fucking move, Chelsea!” I warned her. I knew she would try to run to them, but I was blocking her path right now, the bloody blade of my knife glinting in the light. The younger of the two men moved into me, pulling his own knife from his pocket, a battered sheath of metal with a dangerous serrated edge and teeth that looked ready to tear into my flesh. I locked eyes with him, refusing to let him see the fear on my face as he drew the knife back and took his shot at me.

I parried the blow, lifting my arm and catching the flat of the blade on my wrist. It crashed out of his hand and onto the floor, and before he could drop down to grab it, I kicked it away, sending it skittering into a hole in the floorboard.

Beside me, I could hear Chelsea breathing hard. I kept waiting for her to bolt past me and flee, but she didn’t. Didn’t she want to get away from me?

With no weapon, the man who’d been coming at me raised his fists and swung for me. I ducked with ease and rushed him, slamming my head into his chest and driving him back out the door and down the stairs. He tumbled backwards, letting out a helpless cry as he crashed down and came to a halt on the landing, thumping down painfully onto his back.

I swiveled back to the apartment, where the one remaining intruder was trying to coax Chelsea into moving.

“Chelsea, come on!” he yelled at her, but she seemed frozen to the spot, not moving an inch, her eyes wide and fixed, to my surprise, on me. I wasn’t going to waste time trying to make sense of it. I sprinted back in, catching the guy who had been calling to her by the waist and lifting him from his feet. He struggled against my grip, but I drove the knife into his side, feeling it pierce the leather of his jacket and his tee underneath. Not a lethal blow, but enough to stop him in his tracks.

I slammed him into the ground, a spray of blood spattering out from his fresh wound, beside the first attacker, who was mumbling something to himself on the floor. His wounds were a little more serious but nothing that couldn’t be patched up. Not that I cared.

“Chelsea, with me, now,” I ordered her as I wiped off the blood on my jeans and grabbed my jacket hanging over the chair beside us. She was still just standing there, staring at the chaos surrounding us, but I didn’t have time for that. These three, they might just have been the scouts, and when the rest of the Dogs realized that they hadn’t emerged with Chelsea in tow already, they would send in the army.

Chelsea’s gaze flicked to the knife in my hand. I wasn’t brandishing it at her, but I guessed, right now, I didn’t have to. She got the point. She took a step toward me, and I grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door, forcing her to step over the forms of her Dog allies as we went. She stumbled a little but didn’t stop. I kept waiting for her to fight me, to dig her heels in and tell me she wasn’t going anywhere, but whether it was the shock or the fear that kept her moving, she stayed right behind me.

And I refused to question it. I led her outside and down a fire escape that ran down the back of the building so we wouldn’t run into anyone who might try and get in our way. I had no doubt that there would be other Dogs here soon when they realized that their three-person mission hadn’t gone to plan. I didn’t even know how they had managed to track me down. The call, maybe? I thought they wouldn’t have been able to track it, but maybe I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.

My car was parked around the back of the building, and I pulled open the door and gestured for her to get inside. She slipped into the front seat, peering up at me with those giant green eyes, her face filled with a strange mix of emotion I couldn’t make sense of.

“What... what just happened?” she breathed to me as I climbed into the car beside her.

“It doesn’t matter,” I shot back. “You’re with me. I’ve got you. You’re—”

I almost told her she was safe, but I realized just how laughable that would have sounded the second before it came out of my mouth. I gritted my teeth and put my foot down, eyes darting this way and that as I watched for anyone who might have been hot on our tails.

There was only one place I could think of to go, one place in the whole of Atwood that I had access to right now. I didn’t exactly want to set foot in there, let alone bring her there, but I didn’t see what choice I had.

“Where are we going?” Chelsea whispered to me, her delicate features written with doubt as we drove.

“We’re going to my brother’s place,” I told her as the road stretched out in front of us.

Chapter Eleven – Chelsea

I was still shaking by the time we arrived at this new apartment. He'd said something about it being his brother’s, but I hadn’t really taken much else in. I was still too much in shock from what had happened back at the last place. Not just the actual events, what I had seen, but the way I had reacted, too.

The Dogs who had come to get me, they were younger prospects, led by Taylor, one of my father’s oldest friends and colleagues. I didn’t know what kind of state they were in, but I had to pray they were going to be alright.

I should have done more to help them, but I felt as though I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run, even when they had been calling for me. Their voices had sounded distant, as though they were coming from a million miles away.

There had been a part of me that wanted to flee to them, of course there had, the same part of me that had seen the door open when I had woken up that morning and gotten to my feet to leave. But there was another part of me… another part of me that wanted to stay right there, with Zane. And I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me.

Because he had kidnapped me. Fucking kidnapped me. I couldn’t forget that, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter what kind of connection I might have felt between the two of us, I knew better than to allow it to make my decisions for me.

He pulled the car to a halt outside a new apartment building and opened the car door, offering me a hand like he knew I might need his help. I grabbed it and clutched on hard. It was the one thing that was keeping me grounded right now. I stared at him for a moment.

“What is it?” he demanded. His voice was laced with doubt.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

What must he think of me? Was it obvious that he was totally in control right now? That I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, get out of this?

“Are you hurt?” he asked me as we stepped over the threshold. He seemed to notice how reticent I was.

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