Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart (61 page)

Chapter
Seven

Cindy realized she shouldn't have
drunk the entire bottle of water so quickly because now she really had to pee.
Jack had been gone for several hours already, so she was hungry again, too.
Body functions had to come first, and she wasn't about to wet herself because
Jack had thoughtlessly left her down here. It was like being torn between the
idea of humiliating herself, or risking Jack's wrath.

The risk of his anger won out. She
didn't want to wet herself like a child. Cindy slapped her palm on the concrete
wall and yelled his name.

It took a few seconds, but
eventually there was a response. He came running down the stairs, his feet
banging on the steps the entire way. He could sometimes be as graceful and
silent as a cat, and other times it was like he was like a wild horse kicking
around in a
Swarovski
shop.

His blue eyes were wide when he
burst through the open door and looked at her, then he scanned the rest of the
room, as if he were expecting a monster to pop out at him. Considering his line
of work, maybe he did.

"What?" he demanded when
it was obvious that nothing was there.

She stared back at him. He was
completely disheveled, hair messed up and his shirt was wide open, exposing his
perfect chest.

She'd forgotten about that little
line of hair that went down from his flat navel to his pubic hair, which, if
his loose jeans had ridden any lower, she'd definitely be able to see a lot
more of right about now.

Her blood was starting to feel warm
in her veins, and it had nothing to do with her powers. She felt her clit
respond as her nipples hardened. She completely forgot about needing the
bathroom.

Jack's fingers snapping in front of
her face pulled her out of all the bad thoughts she'd just been having.

"Hey, are you okay? What's
wrong with you?" he asked, though he was quickly buttoning up his shirt,
which suggested he had an idea of what her issue was.

Cindy frowned but really, all she
felt was humiliation that her body could betray her like that when Jack had her
in chains.

"I have to pee," she
said. "And I'm hungry again."

Jack ran his hands through his
hair. The act messed up the strands and made them stick out at odd angles,
which made him look even more handsome.

He wasn't even trying to look good.
It was just how it was. How the hell was he doing that?

"Alright, I'll be back down
with a bucket and some more food. Guess I didn't give you a whole lot the last
time."

Cindy hardly paid attention to the
food comment. All she heard was
bucket
. "You can't be serious."

Jack stared at her. "What?"

She couldn't believe it. "A
bucket Jack? Are you serious? That isn't even humane."

"Well, to be perfectly fair,
you're not a human, so it doesn't matter."

That hurt so much it was like he'd
physically slapped her. Again.

It must have shown on her face
because Jack didn't say anything. His entire body was tense as he stared at
her.

Cindy shook her head and turned
away from him. "Fine! Whatever, it doesn't matter! Go get the damned
bucket!"

She couldn't look up at him. She
was shaking with the helpless fury that consumed her. Her eyes burned as she
sniffed and rubbed at her eyes.

It wasn't actually crying if she
wiped the tears away before they could fall, right?

Jack quietly left her little
prison, his footsteps light this time as they disappeared up the stairs.

He was gone for a little while. The
worst part was that she now had to go even more, and the idea of humiliating
herself and going right there made her all kinds of anxious, and made her
situation seem that much worse. Yeah, she was definitely crying a little now.

Jack returned, and she still didn't
look up at him. She didn't want to look up at him and see the bucket in his
hands.

He knelt down next to her, but he
barely touched her as he grabbed onto her chains and did something to them.
there was a metal clicking noise.

She finally looked at him, and was
stunned to realize he had keys in his hands, which he was using on the locks
that kept her chained to the wall.

The chains themselves fell away,
but the shackles stayed in place with their enchantments still working their
magic over her.

She didn't understand. Her first
thought was that the collectors had come for her. "What are you doing?"

That was when he pulled a whole
different set of chains out from where they'd been hanging on his belt. They
were thinner, but still metal and looked just as strong.

Right. Of course he wasn't actually
taking her chains off. He was just putting her into a whole new set of them.

He clipped and locked one side of
the chains onto one of her shackles, and the other side around his own wrist so
they were chained together. "This chain is longer and lighter than those
ones," he said, nodding down to the heavy things on the floor. "It'll
be easier for you to walk around the house with."

"I...walk around?"

"Don't get any ideas,"
Jack said. "You're still chained to me, and if you try something I will
have to act. Now come on, I'll take you to the bathroom."

"Thank God," Cindy said,
and she immediately pushed herself to her feet.

Jack didn't seem overly worried
about how she was running up the stairs, probably because she was forced to
stop halfway and stare down at him when he yanked on the chain.

He just gave her a look when she
glared at him. "I said it was longer, but not by that much."

"Well, I wasn't joking when I
said I needed to go, and I need to go right
now
," Cindy replied.

Jack jogged up the stairs, and
Cindy was still keeping pace with him. Every step he took was one more step
until she could get to the bathroom.

"It's the second door on the
left. Just don't get any ideas in there. I already cleared it out of all my
razors, and anything else you might think of using as a weapon."

The last thing Cindy's as thinking
about was escaping when her bladder was about to explode. "Yeah, great,
whatever, just stay here," she said, and she tried to slam the door on
him, but of course, the stupid chain prevented that.

Whatever, it was mostly closed, the
door wasn't slowly opening on her. She had her toilet that was relatively close
to the door, and she could still keep it from opening back up with her foot.
Cindy got to work doing what needed to be done and felt so much better after.
She sighed and washed her hands when she finished. She stared down hatefully at
the shackles on her wrists, and she really hoped she would get them all rusty
just to spite the man outside.

"You almost done in there?"
Jack asked.

She looked at the door, which was
open just a crack thanks to the small chain that was in the way, leading to
him.

"Almost," she said, and
then she wet her face, her hair, and scrubbed her arms in the sink, trying to
clean up as much as possible without taking her clothes off and sponge bathing
herself.

She grabbed one of his towels
beneath the sink and dried herself off. She then sniffed under her arms. At
least she didn't stink anymore.

"Hurry up in there," Jack
said, but he wasn't barging in to check on her.

"Asshole," Cindy
muttered, and because she wanted to annoy him, she took another minute as she
wet her hair just enough to get rid of some of the frizz.

Because she was curious, she also
very carefully opened one of the drawers, as silently as she could, just to see
what was inside of it. She found an electric shaver, some cotton swabs, spare
hand towels and so on. In the drawer below that, there was the odd bottle of
cologne, some body wash, and a few other necessities that a man would need for
his morning routine.

He hadn't been lying, however.
There wasn't a real razor in sight. There wasn't even a hand mirror that she
could steal and break for later on. She really was stuck.

Jack knocked on the wall, probably
because he knew that if he knocked on the door, it would open. Maybe the only
reason why he didn't do just that was because he worried about seeing her on
the toilet or something. "Cindy? You okay?"

She sighed. Of course she wasn't
okay. The man she'd loved was going to ship her off to a lab the second the
collectors came to pick her up. She was utterly and totally screwed.

But then she looked herself in the
mirror.
Really
looked this time, instead of just staring ahead in a
daze.

"What are you doing in there,
Cindy?" Jack asked.

"I'm, uh, brushing my teeth,"
she said, and then clenched her eyes shut. That was dumb. She quickly went
looking through Jack's drawer again, sure that she'd seen a toothbrush
somewhere.

"You're brushing your teeth?"
Jack asked.

"Yeah, I found one of your
toothbrushes," she said, and then sighed when she found them. He must've
stocked up from Costco or whatever because there were extra unopened
toothbrushes inside, and she quickly opened one and reached for the toothpaste.

"Oh," Jack said. "Sorry,
I didn't think about giving you one."

What was he sorry for? He was going
to sell her. Not giving her a toothbrush seemed pretty low on the list of
things that were insulting in comparison to that.

She started brushing her teeth,
because she really did need to clean her mouth out once she realized it.

Then a thought came on to her, that
same one that had been brewing as she stared at her reflection, and it built
and built until, within seconds, she had a solid plan.

Despite getting kidnapped and
locked into a hunter box for the night, she didn't look half bad. Her hair was
now wild and all over the place, despite her attempts to tame it, but that had
its own sexy sort of appeal, especially when it was as damp as it was. Her
eyeliner was a little smudged from sleeping while wearing it, but her expensive
brand of mascara hadn't run, even when she'd cried, and that gave her a
smoky-eye sort of look she'd always tried and failed to get on her own.

She looked pretty damn good, all
things considered. Jack had loved her at one time, and he'd often complimented
her on her looks. He'd loved her wild red hair, the heart shape of her face and
her lips, and he'd touched both every chance he got. He hadn't even minded the
freckles that dotted her cheeks and shoulders.

The fact that he'd fed her, let her
out of the box so it would be easier to breathe, and then brought her upstairs
to use the bathroom instead of giving her a pee bucket meant he didn't
completely see her as an animal. There was some sympathy inside of him for her.
She could use that.

No, she was
going
to use
that. This was her way out.

She finished brushing her teeth and
rinsed her mouth with his mouthwash. She even pinched her cheeks and bit down
on her lips for some added color. She thought she saw that Jack had some hair
gel as well. She could use some of that to keep the wet effect in her
red-orange mess on her head.

Everything had to be perfect for
this to work.

Jack had taken her power away from
her, but she still held a very strong power over him. Herself. She wasn't going
to the labs, and she was getting out of here, no matter what she had to do to
accomplish that.

She'd even seduce a man who hated
her.

Chapter
Eight

Jamie turned off his phone
immediately after checking for messages. He wasn't ready to ditch it just yet,
but it was tempting to take the SIM card out and just squash the thing so he
couldn't be traced.

She must have been picked up. She
didn't show up last night and she wasn’t answering his calls, or the emails he
was sending to her private account. He didn't expect her to just blindly text
him either. They had little codes for each other that they used in every
message, to prove they were who they said they were, and that no one was
coercing them into writing or saying anything.

Jamie was really hoping this was
just a mistake, that her phone was lost or dead and that she was just inexplicably
unable to contact him, not because of hunters, but that was so damned unlikely
that he felt like yanking his hair out.

She was caught. The hunters had
caught up with her and she'd probably been hauled off to a compound somewhere
for study hours ago.

The thought of the collectors being
rough with her, and handlers grabbing at her, taking her clothes away and
pushing her every which way they wanted her to go before a scientist stuck her
with needles, made it difficult for him to breathe.

He could feel his temperature
rising and he could barely see or hear the people who were walking past him on
the sidewalk. He needed to get away from them. He felt eyes on him from all
angles and it itched him all over in a way he couldn't scratch.

Jamie inhaled deeply. He did it
again, and then again. It got easier when he focused. He was going to be hauled
in, too, if he didn't cut it out and calm down. He'd already sucked the power
out of an entire city block when he checked his phone for the fourteenth time
since waking up early that morning. Now he was buzzing with electricity, and it
would be too easy for him to lose control and draw even more unwanted
attention.

It couldn't be helped. He'd just
been too pissed. His best friend was gone, and there was nothing he could do
about it.

All the electricity that had been
coursing through air conditioners, televisions, and even the phones and iPods
from people walking around on the streets, had been tapped. It flowed right
into his body as if it had nowhere else to go. Jamie was still jumpy and
jittery, like he was on a sugar high. Tiny blue sparks danced out from his
fingers. He probably had another white patch in his hair. Thank god he was such
a pale blond, almost platinum, that it was hard to notice, but the way his hair
stuck up was more noticeable.

He'd gotten out of Dodge when he
realized what was happening, as everyone around him yelled and searched around
for the source of the disruption.

Running helped. Physical exercise
always succeeded in working some of the energy out. The rest he'd need to put
back into the ground, once he found a safe place.

On the other hand, taking off like
a bat out of hell probably hadn't been such a great idea. Nothing screamed "pay
attention to me!" like someone running away from the scene when something
weird was happening.

Hunters had probably been called
already, which meant he needed to get his ass home
now
so he could hide
out.

But if Cindy
had
been picked
up, and they tortured information out of her, he was going to have to move out
of the city before she spoke and the roads shut down. He had to do it before
the sun set today. He trusted Cindy, but there was no telling what would happen
to her if she didn't comply in the labs.

"Jamie? What are you doing
here?"

He jumped at the voice, but then he
sighed as he turned around, glad for someone he knew. "Ethan, hey, I was
just—" Jamie stopped abruptly.

Ethan stared at him, patiently
waiting for an answer, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Jamie could hardly look at him. The
second his eyes noticed the light that glimmered off of the gold badge at his
hip, not a cop's badge either, the one that had a hawk in flight, Jamie stepped
back.

"I didn't know you were a
hunter," he said.

"Yeah, I was going to mention
it eventually, I guess," Ethan said, rubbing his hand over his trimmed
beard. His dark eyes moved back up to Jamie's face, glinting with suspicion. "What
are you doing here?"

"Just hanging out."

"In an alley?"

"What?" Jamie looked
around. There were bricks and trash and dumpsters lining the space he found
himself in. Fuck. He was in an alley.

"Yeah, in an alley. What are
you doing here?" Jamie asked. "This isn't exactly a place to be
social."

Ethan stared at him hard for a good
solid minute, and then took a step toward him. "Are you selling something?"

"What? No," Jamie said.
Hunters weren't cops, but in most cases, they had more power than cops did.
Ethan could easily fuck up Jamie's day even more if he suspected Jamie was
dealing something.

"Are you buying something?"
Ethan asked, his voice level, but still suspicious..

"No!"

Jamie snapped his mouth shut. Fuck.
It might've been better if he'd just admitted to wanting to buy something.
Wanting to get high by drinking the blood of paranormals, or smoking some of
their hairs, would've been a hell of a lot easier for Jamie to deal with than
having Ethan looking at him like he was now, regardless of the questions he'd
have to answer.

Shit, what if Ethan was in the area
because of the power outage Jamie had caused? Ethan could be hunting Jamie and
not even be aware of it.

Adrenaline surged through Jamie's
blood, and his whole body visibly trembled with the struggle to hold everything
back. He crossed his arms, damn near sticking his hands under his armpits just
to hide the little bolts of blue electricity. He needed to make an excuse and
get the hell out of here, right now.

It was too late. Ethan's eyes were
locked on. He knew he was here for Jamie, and he was getting ready to spring.

Jamie's heart ached. He bit his
lips as he stared at the man in front of him. "Why did you have to be a
hunter?"

He didn't give Ethan the chance to
respond. Jamie launched a blue rocket of electricity and didn't wait to see if
he hit his target or not. He didn't want to see that. All he heard was Ethan's
pained, and very angry, shout.

"I'm
sorry!" Jamie yelled behind him, and he ran for his damned life.

* * *

Jack's leg was twitching with
antsy energy as he waited for Cindy to finish. He'd been suspicious when the
ten minute mark passed, but he didn't just want to barge in on a woman in the
bathroom.

Even when they were dating, they
hadn't done the married couple thing where he would be on the toilet while she
was in the shower.

For that reason, he had no idea why
he was so shocked when she finally came out of the bathroom. The little dress
she was still wearing from the night before was hiked up higher on her amazing
thighs, her hair just a little neater, and perfect heart shaped lips almost
looked puckered. Her eyes were half-lidded, and was he wrong, or did that have
that "come and get it" sort of look he'd seen on her before… back
when they were together and she wanted to be playful.

"What are you—"

"I'm still starving. Do you
have anything to eat up here?" Cindy asked. She stretched her body just
enough to make her breasts stick out, and her stomach appear firmer and
slimmer. Not that she needed any help with that

She rubbed her hands up and down
her hips and sides, then scratched her nails through her hair, which made her
look like she'd just finished rolling around in bed.

The
I just had sex and enjoyed
it
look was so fucking sexy on a woman. The fact that Cindy was wearing
last night's dress helped her to pull it off even more, but he knew she hadn't
had sex last night because he certainly hadn't touched her.

Her thighs were so incredibly
creamy. They appeared smooth to the touch, and his fingers itched to move
forward and feel for himself. Cindy cocked her hip as he put most of her weight
on one leg.

"Jack?"

"I...what?" Jack asked.
He moved his eyes away from her body, but he had trouble keeping them on her
face.

"You said you would get me
some more food. Since you didn't leave me much before?"

Cindy's mouth and eyes might've
been telling him to throw her down on the nearest surface and fuck her, but
that sentence right there was spoken with perfect clarity.

In fact, when he blinked and looked
up at her again, it was like he'd dreamed up his last image of her because,
aside from her skirt being hiked up, she was giving him an odd stare.

"Jack?" she asked.

He pinched the bridge of his nose
with his thumb and forefinger. He needed to think, to get clear-headed. "Yeah,
here, I'll take you into the kitchen. There should be some Chinese leftovers
from last night."

"Did you get my favorite on
purpose or did you just not have time to cook because you picked me up?"

The fact that she had a playful
smile on her lips told him something. Were they darker than before? Her mouth
was swollen, like she'd just been thoroughly kissed. "Something like that.
Not having time, I mean. Let's go," he said.

Jack led her down the hall. His
house wasn't exactly big. It was only a bungalow, and he'd added the basement
himself.

It was a perfect set up for someone
who lived alone, without many visitors.

But the narrow halls and chain
between them made it incredibly easy to see the gentle sway in Cindy's hips.
Just the thing she used to do when she wanted to his attention. He just wanted
to keep his eyes on her, and now he could barely look away from her ass.

When he looked up again and realized
she'd caught him staring, his entire body tensed up. He'd thought she would
shake her head and be disgusted, but instead her kissable lips pulled up in a
tiny, flirtatious smile.

Holy shit. She was trying to seduce
him. She was actually trying to make him lose his cool.

Son of a bitch.

He opened the fridge, grabbed the
Chinese and put the containers and boxes on the counter; the chain linking
their two bodies clinked just a little as he moved around. The kitchen was a
small space, but he was still able to get to the drawers and grab a fork.

Jack stopped himself before he
could lift it out. He stared at it, along with the many knives that were in
there. He looked over his shoulder to see what Cindy was doing. She was leaning
on her elbows on the island counter, back stretched and leaning on one leg in a
way that made the swell of her ass stick out.

She was pretending not to notice
what she was doing as she stared down at the take out boxes, waiting for him to
get her a utensil. Then her purple eyes turned toward him, as if she'd sensed
his eyes on her. There was so much curly red hair framing her face, and her
lips looked kissably swollen, and red.

Fuck, she was too damned sexy.
Jack's blood warmed and moved down to fill his cock. Why was this working? He
knew what she was doing so there was no logical reason for his body to react
this way.

"What?" she asked.

Jack cleared his throat. He was the
worst. After all this time, and after what she'd done, he couldn't stop
imagining just grabbing her by the hips, tossing all the food off of the
counter and throwing her down on it so that he could spread her legs, settle
between them, and put his mouth on her wet folds. Would she taste the same as
she used to? Would she moan and keen and grab at his hair when he put his cock
inside of her?

It made him angry just thinking
about it.

His cock was already hard, and he
turned back around, breaking eye contact with her, and grabbed a spoon. Please
God, don't let her notice that her actions were working.

He handed her the spoon before
standing on the side of the counter island, using it to hide the lower half of
his body without being too obvious about it.

She held up the spoon and gave him
a quizzical look.

"I'm not about to give you
something you can stab me with," he said.

He expected some snarky response,
but instead she shrugged and opened up the boxes. "Can you plate any of
this? Do you have a microwave?"

"Just eat what's in front of
you or don't eat anything at all." He was already angry enough at himself
for wanting her. The way she was leaning now meant he could perfectly see the
swell of her supple breasts. They were practically popping out of the dress.

He shouldn't stare, that was making
it worse, but he couldn't look away either.

Cindy turned away from him and
shrugged again, like she didn't care if he made her eat off the floor.

"That's fine," she said
as she opened some more of the containers, pulling out red sauce and dribbling
it over her rice and those chicken ball things.