Wild Encounter (7 page)

Paralyzed, she stared after him, myriad emotions pelting her.

Oh, God. What was she thinking
—

But no, her brain had had so little to do with it. That was one hundred percent her body at work. And her body she could deal with later.

With a jerk, she snapped out of it as urgency—and opportunity—drove everything else from her mind.

She sacrificed precious seconds listening at the door, making sure he’d actually left the house, before hurrying to the base of the bed, shoving it aside with her hip and hoisting the floorboard up. She pulled out the syringe with shaking hands, fit a sterile needle from the pack, and kept her ears tuned to the hallway. Grabbing one of the two vials she stabbed the hypodermic through the seal into the liquid within. Her eyes darted to the door while she sucked the sedative into the syringe.

Come on… Come on…

She wouldn’t have time for two. She flicked the air bubbles out of the syringe, recapped the hypodermic and eased everything back into its hiding place.

Diving back onto the bed she lay down, heart pounding, the picture of compliance should he return.

Only then did she let herself remember the kiss.

Pressing her palm to the residual ache between her legs she concentrated on banishing the inexcusable feelings. She’d never felt like this. So raw. So hungry.

So…fertile.

Sleeping with her ex had never come close. Craig had taunted her about their lack of chemistry at the end of their relationship—and blamed her, of course—but he was right about how beige they’d been together.

But this… She blew out a steadying breath.

She was still throbbing, and the only trace of Alpha left in the room was his smell on her skin. That was turning her on, too. Her body reacted to him in total defiance of her mind. As if it knew something she didn’t. She should have been shuddering with revulsion at his hands on her skin, not with pleasure. He was a criminal—dangerous and soul-dead—and yet her hairs vibrated at his closeness and the cloying darkness that consumed her captivity lifted in the moments they were together. Just as her body had known what kind of a man Craig really was below the flashy veneer, it was shouting secrets about Alpha. Branded in living Braille on her hyper-sensitive flesh.

About the man he really was, below the uncivilized, unforgiving exterior.

Something wasn’t right about him. He walked, talked, spat, and swore just like the other men, but he wasn’t made of the same cloth as them. Her skin knew that, even as her brain struggled to puzzle out what he was doing here, how he’d become mixed up in illegal wildlife trafficking.

No matter how wrong her logic told her he was in that picture, there was something intrinsically
not wrong
about him. Down deep, where it counted most.

And for her, that made him twice as dangerous.

Chapter Five

“When?” Simon sat across from the African in the dilapidated kitchen, idly spinning his knife by its blade tip in the ancient timber of the table. Two dozen matching holes pocked the surface.

“Tonight or tomorrow night. In Mazabuka,” Mbuutu said in his thick accent.

“That’s a day’s drive away,” he calculated. And a day’s drive back. The thought of Clare bound and locked away for forty-eight hours was unthinkable. Especially after what had happened between them yesterday. “One of us has to stay.”

“No. We’ll all go. In case there’s trouble.” Sergeant pushed away from the kitchen counter and loomed over them all. But even seated, Mbuutu was almost taller than the bald man.

“We’re not taking her,” Dyson stated, tossing his head in the direction of the bathroom.

“I’ll stay,” Corby was quick to offer.

“You’ll go!” Simon barked.

Mbuutu’s eyes narrowed suspiciously before Corby asked “Then who?”

Simon plunged his knife into virgin wood on the table and recommenced his spinning.

Dyson rolled his eyes. “Surprise, surprise.”

“You four go in the bakkie today,” Simon improvised. “And Sergeant can come back for me and the girl. We’ll head out in the morning, dump her in Lake Kariba, and we’re free and clear.”

“Or we could do it right now and dump her on the way.”

The flat nothing in Dyson’s voice… As though they were just talking about who had to fuel up the bakkie. Simon’s heart hammered. “You ever had a corpse on your lap when those sphincters start to give way, Dyson? Besides—” he took a breath for effect “—I’m not done with her yet. I’d love to see what she’s capable of when she thinks it might literally save her life.”

Voicing the words degraded her. And shamed him.

Then Corby spoke, stupidly, one conversation behind. “We could put her in the back?”

Dyson threw Corby a seething look. “Yes, because that would look good to the Republic Police, wouldn’t it? Five men, with a corpse bouncing around in the tray?”

“Fuck you, Dyson.”

“I’d fuck her first,” he sneered.

That’s it boys, fight each other
. Whatever it took to keep the focus off Clare.

“Four go. One return for you.” Mbuutu’s accented voice cut through the bickering. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke everyone listened. He looked hard at Simon. “You kill her. You dump her. You bear the consequences of not being there if the transfer is tonight.”

He hoped to hell the transfer would not be tonight. He needed to be there for it. But he was too relieved to have bought Clare a twenty-four hour reprieve.

Twenty-four hours to work out how the hell he was going to save her life, his cover, and this whole freaking fiasco.

…

“What do you mean they’re going?” Clare took one look at the color of Alpha’s face and the furrow of his brow and knew something was up. “Where?” Her sudden uneasiness was palpable in her voice.

“It’s nothing. They have some work to do. They’ll be gone for a while.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“All of them?” The thought of a day without them, without their threatening presence was so welcome, but that meant the bakkie would go with them. And that vehicle was her ticket out of here.

He misread her stifled gasp. “Don’t get excited, Clare, this is not good news for you.”

She swallowed, thinking it best to say nothing. He roamed the room, seemingly struggling with something. Finally, he spun back. “You have until the morning.
I
have
until the morning…”

A day and a night without them! That felt close enough to freedom to make her smile. Surely she could persuade him to let her go? Work on the soft streak in him? Her excitement grew. This time tomorrow she could be free.

“Why are you smiling?” He was angry now. “Do you not understand? Clare, they want to kill you. They want
me
to kill you.”

She had no idea why those words didn’t strike fear into her soul, but they didn’t. He looked so wretched it melted her heart. “But you won’t.”

He took a long time to answer. When he did it was barely a whisper. “You’re risking a lot counting on that.”

She stepped closer. Needed to be closer to him. “I know you.”

His lip curled and he stepped away from her. “You don’t know me. You know nothing.
Nothing
.”

He stalked out of the room, leaving her unbound, but locking her in. She glanced at the floorboard. Waited a full minute to be sure.

Just as she started toward it, footsteps outside the door stilled her. She sank onto the bed. Someone was out there, pacing the halls. It wasn’t Alpha—his footfalls were measured and heavy, and after what had just happened, she wasn’t expecting him back any time soon. These sounded light and uncertain, like a rabbit’s heartbeat. Had someone been told to stand guard while he was away?

Her skin prickled at the sudden silence outside the door.

She held her breath, praying the footsteps would start up again.

A sharp
crack
sent her rolling sideways off the bed. A second sharp
whack
had her backing into the corner, desperation slamming through her with the noise.

The lock!

She hated that lock with a passion, but right now it was her best friend. It was all that stood between her and whatever danger was out there. Or it had been…until this moment. The door inched open but no one entered. Her muscles closed ranks around her most vital organs, tightening painfully in her chest and abdomen. She forced herself to breathe.

Not Zimbabwe…please
…

It was only in that moment that Clare realized she’d mentally given herself a fighting chance against any of the other men. But not the brick wall, Zimbabwe. And she would fight, just as Alpha had taught her. She’d kick. Scream. Scratch. She’d use whatever defenses she possessed, as long as she possibly could.

Boots slipped into the room like an eel, closing the door behind him. She turned her lips up in a snarl.

“Now what kind of welcome is that?” He crossed the room, stepping around the bed even as she slunk along the far wall, away from him.

His hands were clenched by his sides, his movements unnaturally stiff as he followed. She didn’t need his body language to tell her he was taking a massive risk crossing Alpha.

And there was only one thing he’d be taking that kind of chance for.

“Haven’t you heard? We’re leaving. We may not have another opportunity.”

Just what she wanted. A chance to be alone with the filth.

She assessed her situation. She was close to the hidden cache of sedatives, but he was closer to her. If she dived for the floorboards he’d be on her in a flash.

Never take your eye off a predator.

She held his feral stare and did the math. Even if she could reach her stash before Boots reached her, using a syringe now would reveal her escape plan. She’d have to follow through with all four of the other men, and she wasn’t confident she had enough sedative for all of them.

“That’s better, sweetheart. It’s better not to fight me. This is really all about your boyfriend, anyway. No way I’m leaving here without taking what’s his.”

Clare swallowed back a trace of vomit and crouched against the wall.

Second rule of the wild: Never run.

If you ran, you were dead.

Boots shook with sick excitement, and a bulge strained hard against his pants. The sight very nearly broke her. Her whole being wanted to snatch the syringe and shove it deep into his body, over and over. Wanted to hurt him. Then she heard Alpha’s calming voice in her head.
Whatever gets you the advantage
.

It was like a caress of strength through the chaos of her fear.

Sturdy. Focused.

Dredging up the courage from somewhere deep inside, she took a fortifying breath and lunged straight at Boots. With a wild scream, she slammed into the stink of his body, swiping at him with all she had.

He countered with a sideways slam and they went down in a violent tangle onto the bed.

She screamed again as he slapped her across the eyes, immobilizing her under his weight. Yanking her hands over her head, he pinned them, but she kept lashing out furiously, and it took all his attention to keep her nails from ripping into his face. She wouldn’t give up. Every second she kept up her attack was one more precious second he couldn’t fulfill his disgusting intent.

“You know what he just didn’t get?
Finders keepers
. You were mine the moment I got into that truck,” he said with a sadistic grin.

He pressed against her thigh, angry and erect. She struggled harder.

He dropped one of his hands, sacrificing a whole bunch of skin cells to her nails. Reaching down, he pulled a deadly steel hunting blade from a holster near his ankle and held it, cold and sharp, against her heaving throat. He leaned his weight into it in warning.

She stilled immediately.

“There we go,” he said with a leer, fumbling at his pants, his eyes fixed on hers, clearly gorging his perversion on the fear in them. “That’s more like it.”

She squeezed them closed, her courage and hope shriveling down into the same place her soul went for safekeeping. He yanked at the zip of her cargos.

Maybe it had always just been a question of when…

All at once, the weight pressing her down lifted, and Boots flew backwards across the room, the knife spinning free and clattering in the corner. A giant, angry shape launched itself at his throat.

Alpha
.

Clare rolled off the bed to crouch on the floor, trembling. She knew with sudden certainty this nightmare was not going to end well for her. If not Boots, then Zimbabwe. And if not him, then Baldy. And then she would die.

Layer after layer of danger she couldn’t even begin to negotiate whirled through her mind. And her only hope was the conditional compassion of a criminal who barely tolerated her.

Alpha slammed Boots into the far wall and the bastard’s breath retched out of him. Every time he opened his mouth to curse, Alpha’s fist found it, until he was gargling in his own blood. Something deep inside Clare, primal and female, stretched up closer to the sun, triumphant, every time fist met flesh. The smaller man scratched and twisted against her rescuer’s strong hold and finally scrambled free and staggered to the door. Alpha caught up and pursued him out of the house, Boots’ now-flaccid penis flapping like a distress flag.

The door to Clare’s holding room hung wide open but she was too shaken to move, let alone summon the strength to run. Besides, with three more of them out there, what was the point?

Really, what was the point in any of it?

…

By unspoken agreement the four other men departed early, a bloodied and half-conscious Corby dumped onto the backseat of the bakkie. Simon had wanted to go on plowing his fists into that soft, weak parasite out in the dirt in front of the farmhouse. Just a pity Dyson had intervened and called a halt to the thrashing. Every cell in his body still burned to tear Corby apart.

Now he watched the billowing trail of dust following their vehicle up the long track, making sure they were really gone. An impala skipped out its displeasure at their passing, flinging itself across the track behind them, legs jerking. The strong afternoon sun baked the side of his face the way British light never could. It soaked down to the cold fury he harbored inside but couldn’t begin to thaw it.

He turned back to the house.

Ten Hours.

He had ten hours before Sergeant came back for him.

Ten short hours.

Though it was a lifetime for Clare. Literally.

He found her still in the room, arms wrapped around her torso, huddled on the side of the bed. It was impossible to say what damage Corby had done, physical or otherwise, but he’d seen the knife cutting into her skin. He’d repaid that offense with the harshest interest.

He left the bedroom door open to the empty house and sat next to her on the mattress. She flinched, and his heart sank. But then she groped out blindly with one hand, found his, and grabbed it like a lifeline. Trembles wracked her body and tiny sounds of grief came from deep in her throat. He threaded his fingers through hers and turned as she pressed herself into his arms. Close. Trying to burrow clear under his skin.

She curled her wrists around his neck and clung to him, her face buried in his neck. Like she was never letting go.

His gut churned with rabid guilt that he’d let such harm come to her. That he hadn’t done more. She’d seen enough violence here for a lifetime. He rested his cheek on top of her chocolate locks and wrapped his arm around her waist. She nestled down further under his touch, exactly like a child, and he was lost. His hand softly dug into her hair, stroking and dissecting the tresses, trying to offset the horrors of minutes before. He glanced down to where her cargos splayed open. What the hell else had Corby done to her? Not as much as he’d intended, he was sure.