Chapter 17

Ari

One advantage to liking bondage so much was that I understood ropes on a visceral level. The guy who had tied us up wasn't going to win any awards for shibari anytime soon. I was able to free one hand, then the other, then to loosen and shimmy out of the ropes wrapped around me entirely.

"You'd better not wriggle out of anything I wrap you up in like this," Samson said as I slipped around to tug the ropes around him free.

It was the wrong time for a joke, but the glint in his eyes as he gazed up at me, then the rush of incongruous lust as he swept my scantily clad body with a quick look had me laughing.

"Unlike a certain dumbass guard," I said, crouching to untie the rope around Samson's ankles, "you actually know how to show a guy a good time."

I pulled the useless cord away as Samson shrugged out of the bit around his torso, then stood.

"I dunno," Samson said, still with that totally inappropriate spark of arousal that we absolutely did not have time for. "You look like you're up for a good time, dressed like that."

The crackling, giddy mood between us popped and I started to shake as everything that had happened to me in the last few hours rushed back on me, especially the reasons I was dressed the way I was.

Samson clearly felt my shift in emotion.

"Hey, hey," he said, stepping forward and sweeping me into his arms as he did. "It's okay. I'm here now. I've got you."

There wasn't time for any of it, I knew, but I was so grateful when Samson lifted me and carried me over to the desk. He sat me on the desktop, then stood between my spread legs and leaned in to kiss me hard.

It wasn't a prelude to fooling around, even though his kiss was blatantly sexual. It was raw and possessive. Samson was a powerful alpha claiming his omega in no uncertain terms. He invaded my mouth, leaving me breathless, and gripped his hands on my bare thighs, digging his fingertips in.

It was exactly what I needed. As much as I wanted to be a strong, independent omega, in that moment, after Clyve's slimy pawing and the threat of impending death Mr. Ingraham had tossed to casually at us before leaving, I needed to feel like I belonged to Samson. I needed the reassurance that my alpha would stop at nothing to keep me safe and protect me. Having someone like Samson suddenly care about me enough to make me feel this way was a revelation. It was like I'd been waiting my whole life to understand who I really was and what my purpose in life might be.

I was breathless when he broke our kiss, resting his forehead against mine and closing his eyes for a moment. "I will get you out of this," he growled with a level of determination that had me shivering. "We are going to survive this, and we are going to bring this baby into the world and raise him or her, along with their siblings, to be happy and healthy people."

My eyes widened and I sucked in a breath. "You know?" I asked, heart beating faster.

Samson leaned back with an almost predatory smile and cupped a hand over the side of my face. "Baby, I knew the second life took hold. I could feel it in here."

He pressed his other hand to his solar plexus.

I made a strangled sound. "Yeah, ‘baby' is not going to work as a pet name after today," I said, feeling vaguely sick at the memory of Clyve calling me that.

Samson blinked. "Right. How about ‘sweet-ass' instead?" he asked.

I laughed, feeling confident and hopeful again. "I like it."

"I like you dressed like this," Samson said, slipping his hands under me to grab my mostly exposed ass. "But it's not exactly going to help us get out of here in a hurry."

That reminder that we had a limited time to get the fuck out of the mess we'd fallen into sobered me up a lot.

"Maybe there are spare clothes around here somewhere," I said, pushing off the desk and looking around.

"We don't have time to look," Samson said, moving to what looked like a closet door anyhow. "I know how these things go. Time is absolutely of the essence right now. We need to get out of here, get back to my place, and call the local authorities ASAP."

I agreed, but hearing that brought me back to thoughts I'd had earlier.

"We need to gather as much evidence to implicate Clyve, Mr. Ingraham, Mayor Keller, and this Remmington mob boss as we can," I said, searching the top of the desk instead of the closet.

The only thing even close to clothing that Samson found in the closet was someone's coat. He brought that out anyhow, striding back to the desk to throw it over my shoulders.

"There isn't time to pore through all this," he said. "We need to get you out of here and to safety more than we need to crack what's probably one of the biggest drug cartels on the East Coast."

I shook my head as I spotted a backpack by the side of the desk and grabbed that. "If we don't make sure all of these people go down, we won't last a week, even if we manage to escape," I said. "You know they'll come after us."

Samson grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face. I could tell he knew the truth of how people like this worked, probably even more than I did.

"Okay," he said. "But make it really quick. I'm going to search for guns."

I had developed a serious hatred for guns in the last few hours, but I was glad he'd said that and that he actually found a pistol in one of the desk drawers. If we did manage to get out of here and avoided being offed by the mob within the next week or so, I never wanted to see another gun as long as I lived.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but I knew enough to shove the two laptops that sat open on the desktop into the backpack. I prayed there was enough incriminating evidence on those two computers to cover our asses and put the important people away for a long time. I grabbed a few flash drives I found in the desk drawers as well, and a few notebooks. I even found a cell phone in one drawer, although it had no power and was seriously outdated.

Samson's hiss of, "Shit," from behind me ended my search, though. I turned to find him removing one of the wood panels from the wall.

I frowned in confusion as I tugged the coat he'd found for me tighter, and zipped it up, but then I recognized the soft, grey blocks that were behind the paneling and gasped.

"Is that what I think it is or do people only line their walls with C4 in movies?" I asked as I grabbed the backpack.

Samson answered with a grim, "We need to get out of here now."

I swallowed sickly as I settled the backpack around my shoulders. I looked ridiculous with a workman's coat and a backpack, my legs and feet bare, the feeling of synthetic silk against my skin and a thong wedged in my still-sore ass crack. I'd worry about how I looked later, though.

Samson strode over to grab my hand, then tugged me toward the stairs leading up. "Keep quiet and make yourself as small as possible," he whispered as we reached the door at the top, which had been closed when the guards left. "We have no idea how many of them are still around the house, but if they're here, they'll be armed."

He didn't have to tell me twice. I nodded, squeezing his hand, and sending what I hoped would feel to him like my complete willingness to do whatever he said through the bond.

With the gun he'd found held tightly in his right hand, Samson turned the basement door handle and cracked it enough to see through to the hallway. We stood there in absolute silence for a moment, listening for any of the guards. All I heard was the frantic pounding of my heart, though.

Samson nodded once, then pushed the door open the rest of the way. He stepped carefully into the hall, letting go of my hand so he could steady his gun as he surveyed the area. I had to admit, I was impressed with his calm and professionalism as he silently checked the rooms on either side of the hall, then drew me into the kitchen. He'd definitely done things like this before.

The kitchen was exactly the way I'd left it when Samson had been dragged into the house by Bruno's guards. The expensive scotch was still on the table, and the glasses I'd almost dropped sat beside it. Everything was silent, only the hum of the refrigerator breaking the stillness.

Samson walked without making a sound across the room, me right behind him, to a door that, by the look of it, led out onto the porch. Night had fallen completely, but the porch lights were on.

"Stay down," Samson whispered as he reached for the doorknob. "Someone's out there somewhere. The house has floodlights, and we have to assume they're motion-activated."

My brow inched up. That was a smart assumption to make. As much as I didn't like the idea of running through the forest in the dark, I would rather have done that than deal with trying to sneak out of the house with floodlights all around.

Like he had with the basement door, Samson opened the kitchen door silently, although it creaked a little as he did. He moved so slowly it set my teeth on edge as he inched outside, where he would have a more complete view of the surrounding area. When he finally nodded to me that it was safe to step out onto the porch, I nearly sobbed with relief.

That relief died a second later once we were both on the porch. The lights felt impossibly bright, which left me feeling way more exposed than I wanted to be. Samson could evidently feel the risk and rushed me ahead of him, to the small set of back stairs that led down into the dirt yard.

I only felt marginally better off the whitewashed porch. The first problem we ran into was my bare feet. The dirt wasn't as soft as I would have thought it was, and since the house was new construction, I was instantly afraid of stepping on nails or bits of broken glass. I did step on a particularly sharp woodchip that forced me to bite my lip to stop from crying out.

I felt rather than heard Samson's growl of "Shit," as he realized the handicap I represented. It wasn't like we'd had time to scour the house to find the shoes I'd come in with, and even those hadn't fit all that well.

"This way," Samson whispered, grabbing my hand and leading me around the back of the house.

I wasn't sure which direction we needed to go in, but I was alarmed by the way Samson led me all the way around the house to the far side instead of just shooting out into the forest with me so we could get away. Of course, as soon as we reached the other side, near where the porch ended, I figured it out. Samson handed me the gun he'd found in the basement before crouching and almost miraculously pulling one of the assault rifles and another pistol from the shadows right next to the house.

I could only assume he'd planted those there earlier. My hatred of guns was suspended, and I was just fucking relieved he had something to protect us with.

It turned out we needed that protection.

"What's going on over there?" the voice of one of the guards who had tied us up sounded from the drive in front of the house.

I heard the crunch of boots on the gravel a moment later. My eyes were still adjusting to the weird contrast of night-dark forest and the floodlight-lit yard around the house, but I was able to make out Bruno marching back toward the house from the path that led to the shipping containers.

"Remmington wants reassurances," Bruno grumbled, marching ever closer.

"What does that mean?" the guard asked.

Bruno didn't answer. He reached the porch, gripping his rifle tightly, and stomped up the stairs and into the house.

"Move, move," Samson hissed suddenly, tugging the sleeve of my coat.

The sudden alarm radiating from him was enough for me to ignore the soreness of my feet and to follow him as he darted straight for the darkness of the forest closest to us. I had the sense that it didn't matter whether we were moving in the right direction or not. All that mattered was that we were concealed in the darkness as fast as possible.

I could guess what was going on. Somehow, someone had told Remmington that Samson and I were prisoners in the basement. For whatever reason, either Remmington or Mr. Ingraham or someone else had decided we were too much of a risk. My money was on Bruno being sent to kill us immediately to make Remmington feel reassured about the deal going down.

They would freak out when Bruno discovered us missing.

They would freak out, and then they would come looking for us.

"We have to get out of here," I whispered in the night, grabbing hold of Samson's shirt as he charged ahead so that I wouldn't lose him.

"Yeah," Samson said, as if that were the understatement of the decade.

Samson moved with purpose and certainty, the guns he'd retrieved from the side of the house held confidently in front of him. I stumbled and flailed as my bare feet seemed to find every stick and rock on the forest floor. I was so afraid that I would accidentally fire the gun I'd been given that I didn't put my finger anywhere near the trigger.

"Ow! Fuck! Shit!" I hissed as I stepped on something that punctured the sole of my left foot.

I tried to move on despite the pain and instinctual fear I'd step on something else, but I started to limp, which made me panic.

Samson stopped immediately and turned to me. He didn't growl or curse me out or even make a sound, he just set his rifle and pistol down, scooped me into his arms, and crouched low. Silently, he felt for my feet, brushing away the debris that was sticking to them.

I flinched and hissed when he found where I was cut. I could feel myself bleeding, which wasn't going to help our escape one bit. I didn't even want to think about how dirty my feet were or what sort of infections might set in.

Then again, I wouldn't have to worry about infections from a cut on my foot if I ended up with a bullet hole in my head.

Indistinct shouts from the direction we'd come jerked me out of my small annoyances and filled me with a bigger fear. We were too far from the house to hear what was being shouted, thank God, but the purpose of the shouts was clear. They'd discovered we were missing and sounded the alarm.

"What do we do?" I whispered, my voice shaky.

"Get away from here," Samson answered pragmatically.

Seemingly contradicting that, he sat back and pulled his t-shirt up over his head. I gaped at him in the dark, no idea what he was doing. I mean, the big, alpha heroes in action movies always seemed to have their shirts off and their pecs glistening with sweat and grime in the final, climactic scenes, but Samson wasn't that type.

A moment later, after he tore his t-shirt in two, I understood what he was doing. He quickly wrapped the halves of his t-shirt around my feet and tied them to protect my feet.

I could have told him at once that it wasn't going to work, but for the moment, it was better than nothing. Maybe the cloth would hold until we were far enough away that it didn't matter how many guards with guns had just been sent after us.

Samson looped the rifle over his shoulder by its strap, picked up his pistol, and stood, lifting me to my feet with him before tugging me forward again. Once again, I moved with him, doing my best to keep up. My feet felt better, but definitely not secure. We had a few minutes at most before I would have to stop and adjust the fabric around my feet.

We didn't have those few minutes. More shouts echoed behind us, and I swore I could hear the menacing drone of one of the ATVs firing up as well. That was bad enough, but when I glanced over my shoulder as Samson changed direction, presumably to take us closer to his house, I saw the arcs of flashlight beams cutting through the darkness off to one side.

Samson made a low sound of frustration and switched directions again. I stumbled as I tried to keep up with him, which caused the fabric around my feet to shift and loosen. It wasn't good. None of it was good.

"Freeze!" a booming voice shouted far to our left, nearer to the area of the house.

A second later, the night lit up with ear-splitting sound as shots were fired from a rifle.

Louder, angry shouting followed, and several of the flashlight beams turned to head toward the location of the scuffle.

I felt a brief sense of satisfaction from Samson. I smirked a little at whatever guard had thought he'd seen us and fired, too. But I also worried everyone would be doubly on edge now, especially when they realized we weren't there and hadn't been shot.

It turned out my worry was justified. Too quickly, the flashlights turned out again. Worse still, as Samson and I moved, I heard rustling in the undergrowth far too close to us.

It dawned on me that not every one of the armed guards who had been sent after us would have flashlights to help with their search just as a thick-set alpha in a black suit stepped right in front of us. He gasped in surprise, but that didn't stop him from raising his gun and snapping, "Don't move!"