Page 54 of Black Sheep

Finnan steps away with a smile. One I haven’t seen in a while. One that says his power has been restored. My heart quakes at what that means for me. When Axel makes tracks for the door, it leaves me free to probe deeper into Finnan’s expression.

What will it cost me to leave here tonight with Axel?

The question burns on my tongue but I dare not ask. Not in front of the man responsible for putting my mother where she is. Finnan stares back at me, offering me nothing while his smile grows.

I open my mouth, prepared to damn myself by asking, no, pleading, for my mother. “Finnan—?”

A hand captures my nape and my personal space is once again filled with Axel. “Do not speak to him. And stop fucking looking at him!” he hisses with fire and ice.

His hand stays on me until we reach the open front door. Then he sweeps me clean off my feet in one smooth move. Powerful arms hold me tight against his body effortlessly, as if I weigh nothing, as he walks swiftly down the steps. As we near his car, the door slides upward. He puts me in the seat, slots in my belt, and slams the door back down. He rounds the hood as if the devil himself is snapping at his heels.

Two seconds later, Axel Rutherford is accelerating down the driveway. Speeding me away from one hellish prison to another.

Chapter Fourteen

LEWD CONDUCT

The time on the dash reads 3:47 a.m.

Forty-two minutes since I was passed from one captor to another. For most of that time, Axel hasn’t spoken. Outside, the landscape whips past in the predawn gloom. He stuck to I-95 when we left Greenwich until five minutes ago when he veered off the highway. Now, with only the occasional property flashing past, I have no idea where we are.

His T-shirt covers my thighs and knees, but my bare legs and feet remind me of my truly vulnerable state. I clutch the phone tighter between my hands. It’s my only connection to my mother’s doctors. My only means of help should I need it.

The idea is laughable. I have the phone only because Axel wishes it but I’m still grateful. Images of my body being found in a forest wearing his T-shirt or heaven forbid, nothing, flash through my mind.

I look around and see nothing but dark trees whizzing past. A shiver courses through me.

“You’re not cold,” he states from beside me, drawing my attention to him.

The hand controlling the wheel is relaxed now, his other arm propped against the door. He’s a lot less tense than he was when we left Greenwich but I don’t fool myself into thinking all is calm.

Instead I concentrate on his statement. “I’m not cold.” The buttery-soft seat is warm, the temperature in the sports car pleasantly ambient.

“You must be shivering for another reason then.”

The statement, softly voiced, nevertheless holds steel and demands an answer.

He’s not getting the contents of my darkest fear. “It’s not every day I’m kidnapped from my home and flung into a car wearing nothing but a borrowed T-shirt. I’m allowed some sort of reaction, aren’t I?”

His mouth twitches for a nanosecond. “The T-shirt is yours to keep.”

“And the kidnapping? Are we going to address that?”

“What’s to address? You’re mine now. End of story.”

“Axel—”

“And if you stare at that phone one more time, it’s going out the fucking window. You even think about calling him, I will crush you so hard you’ll cease to exist. Is that understood?”

The stark words rob me of breath. This time my shudder originates from fear rather than the macabre conjuring of my brain.

“Answer me, Cleo. And for fuck’s sake, stop shivering!”

“Yes. I…I understand.” My voice is little more than a whisper.

I feel his gaze slant to me. Probe me.

“Motherfucker!” He wrenches the car down a dark road and floors the gas for half a mile before he brakes sharply before a semicircle of red maple trees. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” he demands after he kills the engine.

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