Page 4 of Reaper & Ruin
He was all muscle and broadness, shoulders tense under a dirty black T-shirt, one thick wrist chained to the wall just like mine. Even hunched over, I could tell he was taller than both my men, stronger too, like a damn NFL player or something. His hair was long enough to touch his collar, a deep brown tangled at the ends, and his handsome face was marked up with bruises and scars that didn’t look fresh. Tattoos ran down both arms, dark lines and shapes half hidden by shadows. He looked like he’d been here a long time and had stopped caring about it, even if his bright green eyes still seemed unnaturally light despite the current situation.
He watched me for a beat before I blurted out, “You look like shit.” My cheeks burned. “I didn’t mean that in a rude way. You’re handsome or whatever. I just meant you look like someone’s been playing with you like you’re a pinata.”
“That’s usually what happens when you’re chained up in a dungeon.” He shifted slightly, the chain clinking against the wall. “There ain’t no southern hospitality down here.”
I pulled at my own again, trying my best not to shiver in my very inappropriate clothing to be kidnapped in. “Where the hell are we?”
He shrugged, the movement slow. “Some kind of bunker.”
“Cool. Love that. Always wanted to wake up in someone’s kidnap dungeon.” I scanned the room again, still seeing nothing but dirt, heart hammering under my ribs. “Last thing I remember, I was having a great nap. Then, some nutjob broke into our cabin and did a Taken with me.”
He lifted his head, watching me. I appreciated the fact that he kept his eyes on my face, and not my body, which was thoroughly visible in my fishnets and underwear. It wasn’t like I was shy, and I was more than used to being stared at. But I’d dressed this way for my men, not a new dungeon roomie, and I preferred him being polite.
It saved me from getting my wraith to pluck his eyeballs out.
I checked my arms and legs again, dragging the chain just far enough that I could double check for injuries. My knees were dusty from the floor. But I had no bruises. No blood. Whoever grabbed me had been careful enough not to hurt me, and you would have thought that would have made me feel better, but it did not.
I presumed they just wanted me awake to hurt. Like I had with Reaper.
For a few minutes the silence pressed in, too heavy for me not to want to scream. After a very long internal discussion of things I was going to share with my therapist, I looked back at the stranger.
“How long have you been down here?”
He glanced at the ceiling. “Last thing I remember before this place was the week before Christmas. Had a terrible date. She drugged me over dessert.” He leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half open. “I woke up chained here.”
“That’s one way to end a date.” I frowned as I crossed my legs and bit the inside of my cheek. “So, you’ve been here since then? It’s like February now.”
He blinked at me a few times, no reaction bar that about the length of time he’d been chained up.
I swallowed hard as I looked toward the steel door again, pulse ticking faster. “What does she want? I presume she’s the same lady who took me. I remember it being a woman.” A woman who had literally dodged bullets, which definitely wasn’t nerve-wracking at all.
He shrugged. “She likes to play with people.”
“Oh, cool.” I exhaled, pulse spiking. “That sounds rapey as fuck.”
He shook his head, softening his voice. “Not like that. She plays games with them. With us.”
“Oh.” I blinked, because that somehow wasn’t comforting either, and my mouth went running on its own. “Well, good news. I’m great at games. Monopoly, Scrabble, and a little poker. I’ll hold my own.”
That earned me nothing—just another unreadable look. He didn’t even seem to notice how sarcastic I was being. Clearly, his imprisonment had made him… empty. A poor little empty man. No sense of humor left.
I wanted to cry, but hot girls didn’t cry when in danger. They figured shit out and ran away.
Thencried.
“So,” I said after a second of being unable to sit in silence with all the voices in my head panicking, “do we get fed? BecauseI like food. You don’t look starved, and you must have had water if you’re not dead yet, so…”
“Twice a day,” he grunted. “Water too, yeah. Then bathroom breaks when she feels generous.”
“Great,” my heart slowed down a little, but not enough to make me able to relax against the dirt like he was. “Gourmet living. Love that for us.”
He said nothing. Just stayed there, hanging like a sad puppet nobody wanted to play with anymore.
I twisted the cuff around my wrist again and watched him. “You got a name?”
He shook his head.
“Fine.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You look like a Brick. Big, quiet, bland. Brick suits you.”
