Page 25 of Tied

Chapter 12

Cain

I find her sitting on the bed cross-legged, the duvet wrapped around her and a reproachful look on her face.

“Where is my stuff?” she inquires. “My bag, my phone, my wallet... did those guys take it all with them or just leave it on the street where they grabbed me?”

I lock the door behind me, unable to hold back an amused chuckle at her demanding list of questions. There’s nothing but fury in her eyes when I walk toward her, and I can see her tightening the duvet around her shoulders.

“You won’t need it anymore,” I simply tell her.

She doesn’t move away, but strains visibly when I sit down on the edge of the bed right next to her.

“Cain, this isn’t funny,” she insists, and the furrow between her eyebrows deepens. “Red. I know what you’re doing, and I appreciate the effort, but can we just—”

Again with that safe word. She really doesn’t get it.

“Appreciate the effort?” I interrupt her, laughing as I shake my head. “Damn, Riley, you’re really digging a deep hole for yourself if you don’t come to terms with reality soon.”

I catch her probing gaze, and for the first time since I came down here, I see a flare of fear in her expression.

“You didn’t really kidnap me,” she asserts. A question phrased as a statement, the typical move of the disbeliever.

“What if I did?” I implore. “Let’s just imagine that this is real, little Miss Riley. Imagine what I say is true.”

Her lips part slightly, but she doesn’t speak, instead only staring at me, her eyes searching for the truth in mine. It’s right there, yet she still refuses to see it.

“Then... then if... if this is real,” she begins to stutter, a helpless snicker cutting her off, while she lowers her eyes and shakes her head. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

She looks up at me, her lashes batting playfully as she bites her lower lip in a move that could be read as flirtatious under any other circumstance.

But I know that she’s playing me in a different way. She always has. Riley is a smart girl and she knows how to make people—men especially—give her what she wants.

This is exactly why she is so valuable for me.

This is why I needed to get her in my hands.

Only problem is, I’m already giving her what she wants from me—the truth. She just doesn’t believe it.

“Try,” I tell her. “Try to accept it. Because, quite frankly, it’s the only chance you have.”

She presses her lips together in a thin line, slowly shaking her head, as if that could change the facts.

“Then tell me why,” she says eventually. “Why did you come up with this whole charade for a job interview? How did you even find me? And why not just call, like a normal person?”

She sighs heavily, lowering her gaze together with her shoulders for a moment before she adds, “Why even... kidnap me?”

“Because I need you.”

She frowns at me. “For what?”

“For a very special job.”

“But... not the one I applied for?”

I nod, but before I can reply further, she fires off another question.

“If you need me for a job, why not just ask me?”

---