Page 46 of Tied

Chapter 22

Cain

“How is the little princess?” Jack asks as he marches into the room.

I get up from behind my desk, grabbing the glass carafe that’s filled with water and walk over to the Monstera plant. The plant and I drink from the same source and even though I know better, I often find myself checking the plant’s status when I’m not sure how I feel myself. If the leaves are hanging low or even showing signs of dried up and brown tips, I take that as a sign of things being in disorder in my own life—and as a nudge to take care of it, both the plant and my life. So, every time I pour water into the big flowerpot, I feel like I am regaining control of things that have gone astray.

“She’s fine,” I growl in response without looking at Jack, who planted himself in one of the chairs opposite my wooden desk. My eyes are glued to the water trickling along the strong stem of the plant as I water it. It didn’t look thirsty today, but I felt the need to do this, to take care of things.

“You’re banging her, aren’t you?” Jack snarls from the other side of the desk.

“None of your business.”

“Oh, come on!” he complains. “Not fair, man. Why do you get to screw her and we don’t?”

I turn around and walk back to my desk in slow but deliberate steps. Jack is watching my every move, waiting for a response. He’s lucky I’m not punching his face in right now because God knows I’d love to. If I didn’t need him for this operation, I would have kicked him out after that unwarranted attack against Riley.

“Didn’t you get enough when you groped her?” I inquire, pinning him down with an angry stare as I take my seat opposite him. “Or when you assaulted her alone in her room?”

“Assaulted?!” he repeats, adding an indignant huff. “You should have seen her! Fucking bitch called me a loser! She provoked me!”

I can’t stop myself from laughing at his outrage. I didn’t have to be there to know how Riley held herself up in front of him. She’s a fighter, and she is smart. I’m sure she provoked Jack because she was sure he wouldn’t touch her—because she suspected that he wasn’t allowed to do so.

And he isn’t. No one is. The thought of another man’s hands on her makes my stomach turn.

“So what?” I retort. “You know your job, Jack. You scare her, you intimidate her, you make her understand the gravity of her situation—but you never touch her!”

Jack groans while throwing his head back and another exasperated gasp leaves his lips.

“I never fucking touched her,” he insists. “Well, okay, barely! I wasn’t gonna do anything—”

“That’s right, you weren’t and you won’t,” I say. “She’s off limits.”

I’m raising a finger at him, as if I’m scolding a child, but I’m painfully aware of the fact that I can’t blame him for what happened. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t barged into the room back then, but it doesn’t really matter, because that was never part of the scenario.

Because, technically, Jack didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do that day. He was supposed to intimidate her, to make her feel small and scared, and the scene was always meant to be interrupted by me storming in to save her.

It was all part of the plan, a simple good cop-bad cop routine.

There’s just one thing I didn’t factor in when I came up with that plan: the way I would feel upon seeing Riley being subjected to a man like Jack. It was one thing to terrify the shit out of her by humiliating her as the guys dragged her down to her room, naked and covered in my cum. I looked away then and I silenced the voices inside my head screaming profanities that were born out of jealousy.

I ignored it then and I should ignore it now.

But I can’t.

I can’t forget the way she writhed beneath me. The way her eyes were partly closed but latched onto mine when she breathed my name. The way she looked at me when she vowed to help me.

Fuck, even the way she cast that cunning smile at me when she bargained for money.

I underestimated the effect she would have on me because I started to forget. It was intense then, when we met for the first time. And while I could never forget her, knowing that she could be the missing piece to a plan that I’ve been working on for years, certain memories started to fade as time moved on.

All I could think of was how perfect she was for this job. And how useful she could be for me in the future. In my mind, her worth was mostly based on the fact that she was a beautiful, brilliant and somewhat cunning programmer. Perfect conditions for what I had in mind for her.

But now…

“By the way, the air is still clear outside,” Jack informs me all of a sudden.

I regard him with a probing gaze. “What do you mean?”

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