She didn’t know how much time passed before Cole removed the restraints from her ankles and wrists and lowered her to the bed. He unhooked the sling from the frame and dropped it on the floor. He disappeared into an adjoining room, and she heard water running. After returning with a washcloth, he gently cleaned her up, then gathered her into his arms.
The night flew by in a tangle of warm lips and sweaty limbs, dirty words and tender touches. Her mouth worked his cock until he jetted his release on her breasts, and he rubbed it into her skin, marking her. She’d fall asleep only to be woken with his tongue between her thighs or his cock entering her from behind. They couldn’t get enough of each other, hungry and frantic to possess and claim, their bodies speaking words neither could say.
But in her head, as he brought her to the peak of another climax, three little words repeated over and over again. And when he snored in the crook of her arm, she finally allowed herself to whisper, “I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
IT WAS ALMOST over.
By now, the money filled the coffers of some of the scariest sons of bitches in Eastern Europe, which meant his debt would be erased. Soon he’d have his reward.
He wasn’t going to let them stop him. They could kill him, but his wife and children were untouchable. At least the Italian mafia lived by a code, but those Russian fuckers would murder their own mother in her sleep to prove a point.
They had no honor.
By tomorrow, Danielle would join him for a brief stay in his cabin. He’d finally have a woman who could withstand his torture and quench his thirst for blood and pain. Then she’d vanish like all the other whores.
Tonight he’d have to make do with the slut he’d tied up in the extra bedroom. It meant having to dig another grave, but what was one more when there had been so many he could barely remember what each of them had smelled like as their lives drained from their eyes?
This one was a screamer. He’d kept her doped and drunk for days, but tonight, he’d sobered her up in time for the party to start.
He opened his kit, laying the needles beside the defibrillator’s paddles. When everything was set, he grabbed his knife, and with a shallow cut to her cheek, woke his prey from her drug-induced slumber.
Her hazy eyes instantly cleared as they focused on the blade in his hand. She screamed, her emaciated body fighting against the restraints keeping her locked in place on the mattress.
She was nothing but an appetizer.
By later tonight, no matter what it took, he’d have his main dish.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
HOLDING UP HER cable-knit sweater that Cole had given her to wear, Danielle stood still as Agent Miller wired her. He’d already inserted a tiny GPS tracker into her locket.
“You’re certain the GPS will work?” Cole asked Agent Miller, who’d dressed up as a doctor again.
This morning, they’d spread the rumor to the trainees that Cole had nearly died from an allergic reaction to an unknown substance and was recovering in his residence. No one would blink at a physician coming to check on him. Also Gracie had announced that she was taking Danielle for a night out with the girls to cheer her up. They hoped the information would spread to the dungeon monitors and then to Rinaldi, letting him know that Danielle would be unguarded tonight.
Agent Miller finished taping the wire to her skin and pulled her sweater back down. “I doubt Rinaldi will suspect a thing, but we’ll only be a couple blocks away from Danielle at all times, just in case. Don’t worry, we’ve done this plenty of times. Danielle will be perfectly safe.”
“Were you able to figure out where he hid the money?” she asked.
The agent shook his head. “We’re working on it.”
Logan got up from the couch. “Rinaldi transferred the funds using CHAPS to another UK bank and converted the money into Bitcoins. Then he wagered the entire lot of them on a hand of poker on a Darknet gambling website and lost. It will take some time to trace from there. Not impossible, but I’ll need some special software for it. I’ve got my contacts out west on it, but it will be at least twenty-four hours before they can hack into the gambling site and access the block chain, then follow the network map.”
Agent Miller’s jaw dropped as if he was shocked, but he quickly recovered, even going so far as to grin. “Hacking? I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Logan had mentioned he was into computers, but from the sound of it, he could do things that the FBI couldn’t.
“Are we almost ready to go?” Gracie asked. “The girls are expecting us in a half hour.”
She nodded. “Just give me a minute alone with Cole.”