Page 4 of Taking

“Sick fuck!” I spat on his face and sprinted on shaky legs to the office for my purse, my pulse pounding with adrenaline, my breaths rasped. My breast still tingled with a pain/pleasure that caused my stomach to roil again.

The lawyer had left, so I grabbed my belongings and hurried back into the hallway, hovering on the verge of losing my shit. My slip-ons slapped the marble beneath them.

Lloyd still lay groaning where I’d left him outside the powder room moaning like a pussy, and I rushed past, his grunted, “You’ll be sorry!” propelling me forward. Sobs let loose to echo around the ostentatious chandelier in the vast foyer where I’d first met him and my protector who’d failed me.

The one I had failed.

Gideon.

I slammed the heavy oak door behind me, wishing to return to that brief moment five years earlier when Gideon had covered my back with warmth and hardness there on the porch. He had caused my skin to shiver in the best way possible even though I had hated my body’s unwanted response to his nearness at the time.

He’d been the only man I hadn’t shied away from when cornered…

His father had ravaged me while I lived unwillingly in his house, under his sweaty body and heavy hand.

He took my innocence. Ruined my mind and body. And now he can take everything else.

Everything legally owed to me, my inheritance. The roof over my head, the food from my table. But I would rot in hell before I bent over for his dick like I’d been forced to do for two years. All the while, Mother had accused me of being a jealous, lying bitch.

I hadn’t spoken to her in three years—and I wouldn’t miss her one goddamn bit.

She’d brought a snake into our home, and I would gladly go homeless in the Alaskan wilderness before making myself vulnerable to his abuse ever again.

2

Gideon

Jail sucked ass, and not in the good way with a little tongue action.

No pussy.

Disgusting food.

No fucking freedom.

It’d been stolen from me all for bloodying some asshole’s nose. The sheriff’s son, the one who I’d caught taking my stepsister’s first kiss. I’d enjoyed the feel of his nose crunching beneath my fist, his blood splattering across my sweatshirt. He was lucky I hadn’t completely lost my shit on his ass—or I’d have gotten locked up for murder rather than assault.

The second I’d gotten hauled off in cuffs, it seemed like I had ceased to exist for those on the outside. Not even Dad had visited or called. Good thing too, since I didn’t have to deal with attempted manipulation, empty excuses, or the sight of the princess bitch who haunted my memory even after five years behind bars.

For the first couple of months, I’d fought off the beginnings of depression on a daily basis. My mind wanted to wallow in the fucking shit of despair rather than focus on the revenge I’d promised myself while sitting in the courtroom—and I’d flagged in my determination to keep my head above water.

They’d thought I’d had anger issues as a juvenile. Fucking nothing compared to the influence of the mundane and having true criminals in close proximity.

Rage became my best friend, one I coddled deep in my soul and fed with thoughts of getting back at those who’d betrayed me. I expended my aggression and excess anger on the assholes locked up with me who needed a beating.

Halfway through year two, I got a new cell mate—fucking funny-assed twink who offered the use of his body to ease my daily morning wood, but I refused. My fist would do until my release.

His constant smile and his glass-half full attitude became my lifeline to sanity, to not losing my shit and giving in to the darkness that hovered in my periphery.

I learned to control my rage because of him. Keep it under lock and key. I took fucking pride in hiding the truth of the kind of man I was deep inside my fucked up head—same as him.

Twinkie sat in the slammer alongside me for stabbing his bastard of a father in the chest over a dozen times after years of mental and emotional abuse. How the fuck he continued to smile…I’d decided he was missing some marbles upstairs, but the guy was still smart as fuck.

He was in for life with no family but a shit ton of contacts on the outside. A hundred acre lot closer to Fairbanks was the only physical thing he had left to his name, thanks to a great uncle he’d never met.

He’d planned to live off the grid up there after the intentional murder, back down one hell of a two-mile dirt driveway in a cabin he hadn’t seen in since childhood—and wouldn’t ever lay eyes on again according to his sentence.

Twinkie and I had dreamed of escaping jail. Living out in the sticks. Studied how it was done, from snaring animals to tanning hides.

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