CAPTURED: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys(107)

She and Jack did end up going all the way that day. After she'd managed  to stop crying and the mood returned to what it had been before she'd  rudely interrupted it.

They'd lain together and talked about all the things they were going to  do, and then Jack made slow love to her again, and Cindy thought she  would die from happiness.

Cindy was trying to summon her fire now while Jack was busy upstairs.  He'd probably already called the collectors to bring her in.

No fire came. No hopeful little spark. Her skin didn't even glow or get warmer. She might as well have been normal.

She'd heard of some vampires and werewolves putting spelled cuffs on  themselves in order to go out in the daylight, or stop a transformation  during the full moon, but the difference was they kept the keys with  them at all times. Some had the cuffs fashioned into bracelets. Cindy  was stuck.

As much as she hated her powers sometimes, she felt naked without them.  It was enough to make her struggle against the shackles around her  wrists. She tried to fold in her thumb as much as possible to squeeze  the damned thing off. When that didn't work, only causing her to bleed a  little, she tried to summon a flame again.

The chains worked great though, and she still couldn't summon any fire.  Even though she had much better control of her powers now than when she  was young, nothing came. Maybe if she had some of these shackles made  into bracelets growing up she might not have been kicked out of her  parents house on her ninth birthday.

She had to keep thinking. There had to be another way to get out of  here. She was in chains inside a concrete room. Her powers were gone,  and the metal ring holding her chains to the concrete was pretty secure.  Not even the slightest wiggle.

Jack had planned for everything.

It took Cindy another few minutes to realize that there wasn't even an  air duct in the room with her. Oh God. Her heart pounded as she thought  about her oxygen depleting. She yanked on her chains some more, pulled  at the metal ring that was drilled into the wall, but still couldn't  break free, and her wrists bled some more. The pain was better than  thinking about suffocating.

Jack wouldn't let her die in here, would he?

Cindy began to hyperventilate. She balled herself up as small as she  could as the air in her lungs literally felt like it was being stolen  from her.

The door to her prison slammed open. Jack walked in.

Cindy stared up at him. She watched him, and noted how he didn't shut  the door behind him. She could breathe again. She sighed and slumped  against the wall.

Jack had a tray in his hand with food on it, and that was about when she  realized how hungry she was. How long had it been since he'd taken her?  She didn't even know how long she'd been inside of that horrible box.

"Please," she said, wincing as she remembered his no speaking rule. Too late now. "How long have I been here?"

Jack didn't just have a tray of food with him; he was also carrying a  small folding stool under one arm. He walked across the small room,  right to the other side where she wouldn't be able to reach him. "It's  almost noon," he replied, and sat down before arranging the tray on his  knees.         

     



 

He certainly looked better than the last time she'd seen him. The colour  had returned to his cheeks-though he still hadn't shaved-and he was  wearing clean clothes. Jeans with a long sleeved dark shirt. His hair  looked slightly damp. He'd showered.

"Noon," Cindy said, turning over those words in her head. Nearly  fourteen hours, and she'd had nothing to eat since before six yesterday,  nearly twenty-four hours ago.

She stared at the tray on his legs. He had a sandwich on it, something  thick with turkey and bacon, what looked like a small plastic container  of potato salad that came from the grocery store, and a bottle of water.

The sandwich was cut into fours, and Jack took one of them and bit into it. "Hungry?" he asked.

Of course she was. Cindy nodded.

Jack took another bite. "The collectors won't be here for another two or  three days. Something bigger came up," he said. "If you want to eat  while you're here then you're going to earn your food."

Cindy swallowed hard. Her mind was racing about the few ways she could earn a meal with a man who hated her guts. "Earn it how?"

Jack shrugged. He was putting a look on his face that suggested how  little he cared about this whole thing, but he was never very good about  hiding things from her. Whatever he was thinking about, it was  bothering him.

"You can start by telling me where you were going last night."

For what had to be the tenth time in just so many hours, Cindy's heart  stopped. She wasn't telling him about Jamie. No way in hell.

"I was just going out by myself," she said. "Dancing, you know?"

"Hoping to meet someone?"

"Maybe."

"Liar." Jack glared at her, and he finished off the triangle of sandwich  he was eating. "Fine, I'll figure it out eventually anyway."

"Jack-"

"Be quiet," he snapped, and his glare intensified. She almost thought he  could burn through her with a look like that, and he wasn't the one  with fire powers.

Cindy knew what he was thinking about. It wasn't the fact that she  wasn't answering him that was really bothering him. "I didn't kill your  family, Jack."

"Bull-fucking-shit," he barked, and Cindy had never seen so much hatred in those blue eyes.

"I didn't! I swear I didn't!"

Jack hurled his water bottle at her before Cindy could say another word.  She ducked her head, and luckily the bottle missed. It was just one of  the thin and cheap plastic things, but it was full of water, and with  the force that Jack had thrown it, if it had gotten her head, then it  would have hurt like crazy.

Cindy barely dared to lift her head away from the protection of her arms  to look at him. Her cheek throbbed, a reminder that Jack had already  struck her once. She was sure he would do it again.

"Fuck," Jack cursed, then shot to his feet, knocking over the rest of the sandwich, and the tray clattered to the ground.

He rubbed his hands over his face and paced in a full circle around the room before stopping in front of her.

"My house was burned to the ground, Cindy. Burned to the ground! With me  and my family inside of it, right after I told you..." He trailed off,  looked away from her, and then bit his lips before speaking again in  that dangerous tone. "Don't tell me it wasn't you."

He wasn't going to believe her. Jack's fists were clenched tight, and his body trembled. He was holding back by a thread.

She kept her mouth closed and just watched him, waiting.

The shaking in his shoulders eventually stopped, and his body relaxed  ever so slightly. Jack blew out a long breath. He ran his fingers  through his blond hair, causing the short strands to stick up in several  places. He bent over and started to pick up the ruined sandwich off the  floor, but he nudged the container of potato salad toward her. "I'll be  back later," he said, and then he left her again.

Cindy stayed where she was. She didn't move and just hugged her knees to her chest.

She stared at the little cup of potato salad, and the bottle of water  that hadn't rolled too far away. Cindy didn't want to eat anything that  had been kicked toward her, or drink something that had been thrown at  her.

Her growling stomach and dry throat eventually won over her crumbling willpower, and she reached for the water and the salad.

She consoled herself with the thought that both the water bottle and the  cup of potato salad were still sealed, so it wasn't like she would be  eating or drinking something dirty.

The only downside was that she had to pull the potato salad out of the  container with her fingers, because Jack had been too angry to think of  leaving her a fork.

Maybe he didn't trust her enough to have one.

At least he left the door open so she didn't have too worry about suffocating.

She was going to get out of here. She hadn't done anything wrong, and  she wasn't going to let Jack hurt her for something she didn't do. She  had to think and plan. Luckily it seemed she was going to have more time  for that …  as long as Jack hadn't been lying to her about the  collectors.





Chapter Six

Jack stomped around his house, slamming doors, and tried to find  something to do that wouldn't remind him of the woman downstairs. He was  too damned angry and needed a way to vent.

All this time. After two years and his dead family, she was going to try to pretend she had nothing to do with what happened?

She couldn't even respect him enough to admit to what she'd done, and  already he'd lost his composure twice by attacking her. He never lost it  around a target. Sloppy shit like that was the exact thing that made a  lot of hunters lose their licenses. Or their lives.

Jack's phone vibrated in his pocket. The sound irritated him, everything  irritated him, and he yanked the thing out. "What?" he snapped.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I guess you got it done?"

Jessica. Shit.

"Sorry," Jack said, wiping his face with his hand before pressing his  forehead against the nearest wall. "Yeah, I got her. I'm just stressed."