Page 328 of Hell Hath No Fury
“Everything?” Cooper asked, voice steady.
Good, I thought. That was good. For I wasn’t worried about myself. It was him. Cooper Owens was as dependable, charming, and upstanding as they came.
And he was all mine.
We were water and fire. He was steadfast in his convictions, pure and respected, and I was the unpredictable girl with leaves in her hair, my laces forever half-tied, and often curious to my own detriment. It’d landed us in many awkward and dangerous situations growing up when I’d dragged Cooper with me on adventures that would end with us lost, hurt, or late for dinner.
He might have grumbled, but he’d be by my side every time while doing so. No matter how many times he’d hurt himself or been in trouble, he never let me roam anywhere alone.
“Everything,” the man said, sounding distracted.
I felt a sharp jolt at the mere idea of getting naked before this stranger.
We knew better than to argue, yet we still didn’t move.
Then I heard Cooper’s shoes scuff over the hard ground, perhaps concrete, and I sucked in a deep lungful of damp tasting air before removing mine, too.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. My father never shared what he’d had to do in order to join Nightingale and neither had Cooper’s. Jackelyn told me she was asked to seduce and then rob a priest in New York. Though she never did tell us what it was she’d been asked to steal, she’d hinted at it belonging to Nightingale and not the church.
I kicked my combat boots aside and peeled off my socks.
The ground was rough and cold so definitely concrete. My toes curled over it as I removed my black plaid skirt and felt it slide down my legs to puddle over my feet. My leather jacket was next, and as I unbuttoned my cream ruffled blouse, I thought about what Cooper and I should’ve been doing right now before we’d been taken from the empty parking lot in the market square.
We’d been in the back of his truck, the windows half-shrouded from our excited breaths, when a harsh knock against the window had Cooper taking his mouth from my breast and opening the door.
We had no need to fuck in cars. We could’ve just waited until my dad was out or his parents had fallen asleep, but we’d been together for two years, and that got old real quick. So we visited the woods at midnight, the local cemetery when we were drunk, and had even found ourselves in a back alley in the marketsquare, fog crawling over Cooper’s ankles—his boxer briefs and jeans bunched around them—as he drilled into me against an unyielding, moss-infested brick wall.
Silence dripped like a half-turned faucet as the crisp autumn air hit my chest, my blouse dropping to the floor. I’d buttoned it in a rush and grabbed my jacket as Cooper had been pulled out of the truck, my bra and panties still on the back seat.
“Come forward,” the voice said. “Don’t be shy, pretty Rose.”
That voice. Rich like old wine and dark enough to fit between the stars. I recognized it like I did a face I’d seen before the age of five—with the vague fogginess of something you once knew but couldn’t quite recollect.
“Rose, I’m here. It’s okay.”
Always so sweet, my Cooper. I adored that he thought I needed it when he very well knew I did not.
Cooper was already on the mattress, judging by the short distance his graveled voice had traveled. “Who are you?” I asked of the other man, all the while knowing it was pointless, and I probably wouldn’t get an answer. “Have we met before?”
“Once or twice,” he said with a splash of amusement. “But it matters not. Are you going to come willingly, or do I need to collect you?”
His question felt like a touch, velvet and teasing. I licked my lips, a faint ringing entering my ears as I placed one bare foot forward and then another.
Two steps later, my toe hit the mattress.
I swallowed thickly, barely able to imagine what might be about to happen. Masked and blindfolded and completely naked, I crawled onto it with thoughts of torture—of being raped in front of my boyfriend or of having my boyfriend raped in front of me.
Every thought evaporated when the man said, “Blindfolds stay on. You remove them, you fail. We clear?”
I nodded as Cooper said, “Clear.”
Silence arrived once more, and Cooper nudged me. “Oh, yeah. Clear.”
“Try to keep the masks on, too. As always, they’re watching.” He didn’t wait for affirmation before he said, “Lie down, Rose.”
With my heartbeat growing faster, I stretched my hands out to make sure I wouldn’t meet the hard ground, then crawled across it.
My back had just hit the mattress when the next question arrived. “Are you hard, Cooper?”
