“The sun will be up soon,” Landon said. “So we’ll have light if we take the plywood off a few windows. But only the ones facing the alley. No need to broadcast our being here to the whole neighborhood. I hope neither of you is afraid of the dark.”
Not the dark, just the darkness.
Mitch shut the door, locking it with a multitude of chains and deadlocks, closing them off from the outside world. “You always take me to the nicest places, Landon. Did you come here a lot before it was shut down?”
“You were right about needing a ball-gag, Eden,” Landon said.
They wandered around the downstairs. Even before the raid, the brothel must have been a sad place, not a romantic one. They all went upstairs together, Mitch’s sarcastic commentary and the noises from the street the only things they heard.
“Pick a room, any room,” Landon said, opening various doors as they came to them. “Except for you, Turner. You get the kinky one.”
Mitch watched her move in front of him. In the limited light, all he could see was her shape which, frankly, was beyond enticing. And the way she’d fought… If he hadn’t caught the Taser dart with his back, she might’ve been able to dodge it. Or deflect it with one of those handy safety pins.
Things would be easier if it weren’t so damn hard to look at her from any other position than behind. Confidence radiated from her, so different than what he remembered. Except that wasn’t exactly true, now was it? He’d already seen two sides of Eden—the first unsure, sassy-but-sweet, able to deal with him, compete with him, even though she was soft, kind.
But then when they’d really been together, put aside all their bullshit and really been together, he knew Eden was different. Different than anyone he’d ever known. Different than the woman he’d thought she was.
His belief started to slip. Like his grip wasn’t strong enough and the facts were tugging against him. Hard. He shook his head, trying to reclaim his surety that she couldn’t possibly be the same person. She’d definitely changed, but…he trusted her. He’d never be able to trust Chastity like that. Fuck it all. He just didn’t know.
He inhaled sharply when she stepped into one of the rooms, disappearing from his view. He rushed to the doorway, holding onto the walls, wanting—no, needing—to see her.
And he did—only her. Her head turning from side to side as she examined the room. Her hand running along the surface of the low furniture. Her foot nudging the futon. With her touch, she brought each object in the room into focus, made them real.
The room had been designed to look Japanese…ish—futon on a low wooden slat frame, dirty rug made from some weed-looking things. A cheap decal of Mt. Fuji stuck on the window allowed the only light inside. Next to Mt. Fuji was a sharp point of light—probably from a streetlamp directly outside the window.
“Go find your own room. This one’s mine.” Her words were sharp, but quiet, subdued. Like she was telling him to leave her alone, but didn’t want him to listen.
“Yeah.” He backed away slowly, equally unsure. “Night.” This time he left because she’d asked. The emotional shit just gets in the way. Focus on the goal, not the woman. Unable to come up with another method of avoidance, he went to his room. His cage. A BDSM-themed room for people who wanted to pretend to know what being confined felt like. They had no fucking idea.
When a cage is your only choice, it isn’t hot. It isn’t kinky. It isn’t sexy.
It’s pain. Sharper than the strike of a fancy flogger, than a furry paddle, or padded cuffs.
External pain was only a minor nuisance to Mitch. It was the stuff on the inside that scarred, wounded, destroyed. If the Doms and Subs who’d ‘played’ in this room had any idea what it was truly like, they’d shed tears. From a place their ‘play’ would never, ever touch.
A few feet in front of the open cage-door was a throne, upholstered with red velvet fabric. Presumably where the Dom sat, watching her captive-submissive. Mitch turned the thing around so it faced away from the cage and sat down. He was in no rush.
Was he like the submissive? Trusting someone enough to let them lock him up? No. It wasn’t a choice for him. It was a necessity for Hyde. But he trusted Landon. He had to. Because if he let the doubt in—the fear that the cop would never let him out, that he’d be caged for the rest of his life because those he trusted betrayed him… Well, he’d be broken. Even more than he was now.
How many mistakes had led up to this moment? Could he even count that high? Trusting the wrong people, letting himself believe in them when he shouldn’t have. Until they killed his sister. Allowing someone who had loved and accepted him, knowing all the evil he was, out of his sight. Allowing them to take her away from him.
And then it had happened again—with Eden. What the fuck was wrong with him? Couldn’t he learn the fucking lesson?
He felt his shame become anger.
His anger become rage.
His rage become inhuman.
“Landon!” he screamed, rushing to the cage and throwing himself inside. “Landon, I need you! Now!”
Landon came running in. With one look of ‘Oh, shit!’ he slammed the door, looking around for something to bar it closed with.
“Something we should have thought about sooner,” Mitch growled. What the hell was strong enough to hold Hyde inside?
Landon scrambled to the chair and pushed it towards the cage.
“That’s not going to work.”
Then she ran in and slid to a stop just inside the door. “Did you bring what I gave you?” she asked Landon.
“The serum?”
First she nodded, then he did.
“I’m not taking it,” Mitch said.
“Your pride is going to kill you.” She didn’t make eye-contact as she crossed the room and slid that stupid-ass pin into the lock. When she started wiggling it, she stared at the ceiling, concentrating on what she felt instead of what she saw.
When it clicked, she stepped back and looked at Mitch. After a deep breath, she shook her head and let out a sigh of relief. “You can stay in there for as long as you want to, but you won’t change. Not tonight anyway.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“I can feel it. I can feel him.” She set the pin down on the throne, and calmly left the room, leaving the two men glancing between each other and the lock she’d just fastened.
Hyde was humming, encouraged by Mitch’s weakness. He wasn’t pushing to get out, though. His activity more like a reminder of who he was and what he could do. Mitch didn’t need the reminder.
“Is she right?” Landon asked.
“I don’t know if she can ‘feel’ him, but he’s mellowed.” Damn it, how could she possibly know Hyde better than he did? “Probably just a lucky guess. But just in case…”
“Yeah. Just in case.”
Mitch took a deep breath and shook the door. The bars were far weaker than his cage at home, used as a toy versus a prison. But the door didn’t open. The lock didn’t give.
“Think it’ll hold him back?” Landon asked.
“Not without a chemical back-up. How much narcotic did you bring?”
“This is all there was.” Landon reached into his pocket, pulling out two syringes. One was bigger, less familiar, filled with cloudy white serum. The other was the kind he usually used, containing the poison he usually used. It was almost full, which meant that he might be able to squeeze two doses out of it, unless Hyde was truly determined to get free.
“Fuck! In all the excitement, I forgot to go shopping. Any chance you brought my cell phone?” Although his supplier’s was probably his most frequently-called number, he’d never thought to memorize it. But it wasn’t technology’s fault, it was his own stupidity’s.
After Landon shook his head, Mitch said, “Plan B. Can you hit me hard enough to make me unconscious but not brain-dead.”
“I’d love to try, but it won’t be effective in the long run.” How long of a run did they have? “I should be able to g
et something on the street.”
Mitch ran his hands over his face. Landon used to have morals, but somehow Mitch had been able to wipe them away in only a few weeks. Sending an ex-cop to go score drugs for him had to be some kind of criminal coup de grâce. “I’m sorry, man. I’d go myself, but—”
“Hey, what’s a little drug-dealing between friends? Whatever I find may not be of the same quality, but…”
It’ll do. Anything would do. And if it came with a nice arsenic filler, well… What more damage could that do?
“Are you okay now or should I stay?”
Mitch shook his body. It was buzzing. But how much of that was because of the Taser, and how much was because of Hyde? He reached a hand through the bars, turning his arm, judging how much room he had to maneuver. The space between each bar was slightly wider than his cage at home. “Pull the chair a little closer. Then leave the key and the syringe on it.”
Landon had a question in his eyes as he dragged the throne towards the cage.
“Closer.”
At last the question overwhelmed him, and he asked, “Why am I doing this?”
“Because I want to be able to get at them if I need them. What if I have to go to the little boy’s room? I’m not going to piss in the corner of my cage.” Like an animal.
Realization hit Landon’s face a second later. “Oh. You sure Hyde’s arm is too big to fit through?”
“You’ve seen him. You tell me.”
Landon bunched his lips together and then nodded. “You sure you don’t want me to pull a mattress in here and—”
“Back off, Landon! I’m a grown man. And I don’t want to fucking spoon with you.” He dropped the volume of his voice. “Again.” A good laugh now and then was all he could ask for. He needed it. And from the look on Landon’s face, he needed it too.
“Yeah, well…I wouldn’t get any sleep anyway, what with your snoring.” He set the morphine and the make-shift key on the throne and tucked the other syringe into his pocket. “Sleep tight, darlin’. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
§ § §
Mitch spent the next hour or so pacing, the irony not lost on him. Caged and pacing like a fucking lion, driving himself more and more insane with every about-face. When exhaustion set up house, he grabbed the morphine. He couldn’t use all of it and he couldn’t waste a drop, just in case Landon couldn’t get any more. So, shakily, he shoved the needle into his arm.
He watched the plunger go down, bit by bit, eyeing the fifty percent mark ahead. 100-90-80. At fifty, he should pull out. But what if he didn’t? What would happen if he just kept pressing? His thumb twitched, teasing, daring him to do it. Give in. Dump the whole damn thing into his vein and end this.
Eden could go on her merry way, doing whatever the hell she wanted. Landon could go get himself killed. They didn’t need him. He was a liability. Can’t go too far if you’re always on the look-out for a cage for your compadre. Can’t just run for it if you have to wait for the motherfucker to turn back into himself.
And if what she’d said was true, Mitch’s time was limited anyway. Should he just finish it? End Hyde with the same dose he ended himself. Maybe he should’ve asked Landon to leave the other syringe. If it really was the serum, he’d be able to control Hyde, or at least not worry that the bastard would explode out of him at any moment. And if it was poison, no one would ever have to worry about Hyde again. Or about him.
Mitch didn’t believe in suicide. He’d fucked up enough times to deserve to live forever. To pay for his sins by being who he was and having to live with himself. Plus, offing himself would be an insult to the memory of his sister, Shelly. After all she’d done to keep him alive—including dying.
But he also believed that killers should be stopped—in whatever way possible. He hadn’t killed anyone…yet. But it would happen. It was an inevitability. His body—the cage confining Hyde—was failing. He was failing. Nothing new.
He took a deep breath, wondering what the last thing he wanted to remember was. With one more moment of life, what did he want? His bucket list was empty, had always been empty. He never made any plans beyond today.
He took one more look around the room. And he saw the bars.
No. He did not want to die in a cage. No fucking way would he die being a captive. If his death brought freedom, he wanted his life to end with it. And if—when—he woke up in hell, at least he’d know peace.
His breathing was slow, his heartbeat barely a whisper. He pulled the needle out of his arm, capped it, and set it back on the throne, grabbing the make-shift key. By the time he’d even gotten the damn thing into the slot, he was irritable, all the calm of knowing how it was going to end gone.
How the hell did she make it look so fucking easy? With that thought, her image appeared in his mind. Her confidence, her beauty. Shit. Not the way he wanted to go out—bitching about a key and thinking of her.
Damn it. He already had too much shit to regret. Did he really need to add to the fire? What was I thinking? He couldn’t off himself before he’d done what he needed to do. And he couldn’t take their stupid serum either. As much as he hated Hyde, he knew the bastard was an evil of the necessary kind. Hyde was as pure as they came—focused on one thing and one thing only. And it sure as hell wasn’t butterflies, daffodils, or apple pie.
It was hate. Hyde was a destroyer with no human emotions to fuck things up.
Mitch hated himself almost as much as he hated Hyde. But the creature inside of him, constantly pulsing with anger, was useful. To tear apart their enemies and keep her safe. Mitch owed Eden that much. And more. And then he could die happy. Possible in a pool of his own blood as Hyde ripped his way out. It didn’t matter. All he had to do was hold on until then.
Down, boy. If you behave, you might just get a cookie. He needed to keep it together for just a little longer. A few deep, cleansing breaths would calm him down. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s not working! Even with the dose of narcotic he had running through his system, he just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe if he could stretch his legs, walk more than five feet in each direction, he could relax.
Okay. It was worth a try. In through the nose, out through the mouth, asshole. So with slow, deep, cleansing breaths, he closed his motherfucking eyes like she had and tried to coax the stupid-ass make-shift key into opening the goddamned door. Not working! It…it…it wor—
Just as it clicked, he saw something move. The door to his room creaked. Even if Landon had been able to score some narcotic on the brothel’s doorstep, he wasn’t the type to come through a door quietly. He was more of a cow-bell-and-cymbals kind of guy.
Mitch’s pulse was doing double-duty, counteracting the effects of the small dose of morphine. Pushing the cage door open, he prayed the metal wouldn’t catch, wouldn’t scrape, the sound giving him away. He slowly crept towards the door with a fist ready, not knowing what to expect. Because, let’s face it, he seemed to be nothing but wrong about all of it, anyway.
As the door opened, he drew back his arm.
They both inhaled when they saw each other, but neither of them flinched. Nor did they move. Or exhale.
CHAPTER XIX
“What are you doing here?” Mitch asked, his voice gruff and irritable.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright.” Eden tried to relax her shoulders, quell the intense fight-not-flight reaction she had when he’d surprised her by being so close to the door. But she knew it was just Mitch. Hyde’s presence was gone. Earlier, she’d felt him yank her into the room, like he’d had a chain around her neck. When the pull disappeared, she knew Mitch had regained control. For now.
“I’m fine.” He turned his back on her and walked away, giving wide berth to the cage.
She understood why he hated it, feared it. Who wants to be out of control? Like an addiction that no twelve-step program can fix. She understood because she remembered it. Had lived it. But no longer. Even though there were still moments, reactions sh
e couldn’t control, thoughts she wished wouldn’t appear in her mind—namely lustful ones—she finally felt like she knew the skin she was in. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And she knew she could deal with Chastity, if she accepted all of herself.
But being so close to him, not seeing a happy ending in their future—at least not until he understood who she was now—it was painful.
What if she just pretended? Pretended to be the girl she used to be, who he fell for, who he remembered. Would that be enough for him? Would it be enough for her? Short-term—maybe. But lying is tough work. Being someone you’re not is even harder. Especially when you don’t like the person you’re pretending to be. When, inside, you know that you’re better than that.
“What do you want?” he grumbled, pacing a few feet away from the cage. Each pass was exactly the length of one of its walls, like he didn’t realize he wasn’t locked up.
“I wanted to make sure you were feeling better. And I wanted to tell you something.” She stopped herself from picking at the seam of her dress—that was something the old-her would do. Then she glanced at the syringe on the throne. “Of course, the perfect time would be while Landon was somewhere else, you were coherent, and there were bars between us, but how often is that going to happen?” She laughed alone. “One out of three isn’t bad.”
“Two out of three. I didn’t have time to shoot up.”
She flinched, just like he’d probably known she would, like he’d probably wanted her to.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not turning into your mom. ‘Cause aside from the whole mom-thing sounding truly awful, I’ve got no plans to OD. Or to leave you alone.”
“I’d be easier to believe you if you looked at me while you spoke.”
“What do you want from me?” He flipped towards her angrily, but kept his gaze on the floor in front of her, avoiding her eyes. “Did you come here to yell at me again? Go for it. I’m ready.”
She shook her head and then realized he probably wouldn’t see the movement. “No. I wanted to explain how I’m feeling. You don’t have to believe me, but I need to tell you. So, if you want, you can turn off your hearing. If you want…” Damn it. She really wanted her voice to sound tougher. But there were so many things that she just couldn’t articulate, feelings and wants and needs that he wouldn’t understand. So any words she might use seemed weak, pointless. “Never mind.”