Page 8 of Addiction

“Please.” Her grasp on the bottle tightened. “I’m tired, sir, and scared. Where are we, and how can we expect to get out of here without any means of communication with the outside world?”

“Always so many questions…” His expression softened as he took a step toward her. “You think too much, little girl.”

“Do I?” It wasn’t an accusation she’d heard before. In fact, her mother had spent many of her teenage years persuading her to think a little more.

“Yes.” He took the bottle from her and sipped from the contents, though his focus never left her. “Leave that to me.”

“Do you think I’m not smart enough to cope, sir?” Her brows knitted as she contemplated his thinly veiled insult. “Because I might be smarter than you think.”

Her heart beat faster as she wrestled with her disgruntled feelings. They’d been getting on well since they’d last fucked, but that didn’t mean she’d accept every generalized gender-stereotype he decided to throw her way. Just because she was a blonde woman didn’t mean she couldn’t think. It was just that up until meeting Tucker, she hadn’t really had to…

“That’s not what I mean.” He closed the distance between them, effectively immobilizing her against the tree trunk. “I don’t doubt your intelligence, little girl. I only mean that having you freak out won’t help us. We need to—”

His sentence abruptly ended, his head rising to fix somewhere in the forest behind her.

“Sir?” She trained to turn and follow his stare, but his hips held her in place with frustrating ease. “What is—”

Her question was silenced as one of his hands rose, and a long finger was pressed to her lips.

“Quiet!” he whispered, and even though the deed had riled her, something about the urgency in his tone told her to comply.

Oh God.

She pressed herself into the bark, wishing she could calm her racing heart as Tucker’s glare remained fixed on some distant point between the trees.

“Someone’s out there.” His voice was barely a whisper as he nodded in the direction he meant, and as he withdrew his finger, he allowed her to turn toward it. “Can you hear them?”

Straining her senses, she listened. At first, all she could hear was the thundering of her heart, her irritation, confusion, and compelling attraction to the man clouding her senses, but as she tuned into the noises of the surrounding forest, the telltale sounds of other people out among the trees were suddenly audible.

From somewhere beyond the relative sanctuary of the trunk she was propped up against came the sounds of hard footwear marching against the ground, and as she peered back at Tucker, she was sure she could make out the occasional shout of a male voice.

“Oh, shit!” She mouthed the words. “Alexander?”

“Almost certainly.” The flash of anger in his eyes might have worried her more had she not been so concerned about the impending march of her father and his mercenaries.

In her mind’s eye, she imagined the snarling faces of the men and the types of evil-looking weapons they brandished. By the time she’d turned back to Tucker, her mind was made up. They had to run.

“We have to go!” She slipped past him, scanning the trees as though a signpost indicating which way she should go had suddenly appeared in the forest. Panic exploded, filtering through her senses in waves as she gasped for breath.

“Wait!” he hissed, catching her wrist and forcing the bottle back into her other hand. “We. Stay. Together.”

She nodded at his punctuated tone, her breaths ragged as he lowered to collect the pack and throw it back over his shoulder.

“This way.” He dragged her away from the incoming threat, his long strides meaning she had to jog to keep up with his pace.

“Do you think they heard us, too?” Suddenly, her greatest fear seemed to be being found in the forest by Alexander. He could be odious enough at the best of times, but with a band of men under his control, he’d be a nightmare. She decided then and there that she couldn’t let that happen.

Tucker had been a dick to her at times, but he’d offered her pleasure at others and the strangest sense of solace. Even when he’d been trying to win her over, Alexander hadn’t managed either of those emotions, and after being offered by him to pay for his debt, she couldn’t conceive of any future where he did. As far as Ella was concerned, she’d be happy to never see her father again.

“No,” came his reply, although the anxious glance over his shoulder conveyed a different meaning. “They’re talking among themselves, but we’d still do better to get out of here.”

“How far do we still have to go?” She heaved in air, trying to keep her voice lowered as they darted through the trees.

“Ella.” The hand that had led her by the wrist lowered so their fingers enmeshed. “Keep it down.”

Running for the next enormous tree, Tucker maneuvered her behind the trunk before he peered around to check if the coast was clear.

Long seconds protracted into agonizing minutes where the only noise was the insistent drumming of her apprehensive heart, but she dared not speak or move an inch to see anything for herself.

---