The restraints were just preliminary, to prime her for the punishment she would receive when he returned. The rope prevented her from standing and leaping to her death, but she could lie down. Which was a mercy because she would be there awhile.
He left her with a lingering kiss and adjusted his tie on the way to the front door. A sudden thought veered his path toward the kitchen counter, to the doll she’d left there. He picked it up and lifted the gown, pressing his thumbs against the seams in the leather torso.
“Stomp on it.” Her voice drifted down from the loft.
He spun and met her gentle eyes peering through the railing overhead. When she gave him an encouraging nod, he set the doll on the floor and slammed his loafer into the soft belly. The limbs bounced but remained attached. He cocked his head, heart thundering. With an unsteady hand, he scooped it up and raised the gown. No holes. Every stitch intact.
The tingling started in his hands and spread out through his entire body in a warm feeling of weightlessness. “You did it,” he whispered then raised his voice. “You fucking did it.”
When he looked up, her gorgeous, teary smile lifted him on his toes. He wanted to tell her that she had to come with him, that he needed her because he loved her, that she found him and released him with a fixable doll, and maybe, just maybe, she could fix him, too.
But the warmth that nuzzled every tattered shred of his being didn’t come from some doll. It was brought to life by her unfathomable understanding. She could have called him a creeper and spit on his collection. Instead, she supported it by devoting thought and effort to make it better, not for herself but for him.
He wanted to tell her this, wanted her to know how much her actions moved him. But as she sat back and pulled her bound wrists to her chest, her smile soft, her lashes lowered, she seemed to already know. So he settled on a thickly uttered “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He placed the doll in a paper bag and tucked it under his arm. With one last glance at Amber, he squared his shoulders and hardened his expression. “I’m whipping your ass when I get home.”
She nodded, her eyes gleaming with an inner light. “I know. Just come home.”
Fuck, he loved her so much it hurt. If anything happened to him, if he wasn’t able to return, would she die of starvation? He shoved a hand through his hair, his fingers clenching. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 28
Van stepped into the thick black foyer of the Curie Lounge in downtown Austin. Pockets of dim light flickered above the tables. Every chair in the house was filled, maybe a hundred or more live-music enthusiasts sitting back, enjoying a drink and a sexy voice. They wouldn’t be disappointed in the latter.
Humming through the speakers was the sound that had haunted him for years. There were no instruments. Just the terraced rippling of her voice, reverberating seductive notes along a man’s cock, reaching deep inside him, the only warning she gave before she ate his soul and spit it out. He shivered.
She stood beneath a spotlight in the corner of the large room, eyes closed and sheathed tits to feet in a black gown as she sang a bluesy melody with a sultry sway of her hips.
Remarkable how he didn’t entertain a single obsessive thought for the woman. Amber had truly cured his fever.
Pinching the paper bag between his arm and side, he scanned the lounge for her clunkier half and his gaze collided with Joshua Carter’s wide eyes at the far end. The man shot from his chair, all six-foot-two of him, his expression shifting from shock to fury. The burly linebacker glanced at Liv, ten feet away, and back again.
Joshua wasn’t a bad looking guy. Age twenty-two or twenty-three with black hair, he had that chiseled jaw women loved and green eyes, which were really narrowed and pissed right now. But even so, Van would’ve gladly fucked him if he didn’t have something better waiting for him at home.
And that something was tied to his banister, waiting for his cock. Damn, he needed to speed this along.
As Joshua strode toward him, choosing a path that blocked his view of Liv, he let his gaze rest on those furious flames of green sparking in the dim light. A year ago, he’d been Joshua’s captor. He hadn’t fucked him, but there’d been some non-consensual kissing and dick stroking. A friendly greeting was probably too much to ask.
Because of the money he’d wired Liv, Joshua knew he’d survived the gunshot wound. Beyond that, did his former slave assume he was still trafficking slaves? What were the chances they’d even hear him out?
He slid a toothpick between his lips and closed the distance. This should be fun.
CHAPTER 29
As Van approached the charging ex-football player, it reminded him of a game of chicken. Who would yield first? Or the worst possible outcome, neither of them. Amidst a crowded bar of patrons, the confrontation needed to be handled delicately, which wasn’t a strength he’d mastered.
At the center of the room, Joshua’s hand landed on his shoulder in a hard grip, those tightly pinned lips lowering to his ear. The voice he’d heard groaning orgasmically through his mics for six months was now harsh and clipped. “What do you want?”
Van leaned back, deliberately removed the toothpick, and glared at the hand on his shoulder until it dropped. “What, no hello kiss? Afraid my tongue might make you come again?”
A sharp inhale. “Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Right now.”
So much anger in those eyes. He didn’t remember wrangling that much of a reaction when the man
