Captive, Mine Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  About This Book

  By Trent Evans

  By Natasha Knight

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Other Books By Trent Evans

  Other Books By Natasha Knight

  From The Authors

  Captive, Mine

  Natasha Knight

  Trent Evans

  About This Book

  The day my father agreed to testify against Terrence Randall, one of the most ruthless drug traffickers in North America, was the day I became the target of the drug lord’s enraged vengeance. I was the one thing that stood in the way of Daddy’s testimony, and the one thing that could save Randall. The man would stop at nothing to get his hands on me.

  I was prepared for what was coming — as prepared as one could be when vanishing into the U.S. Marshal’s Witness Protection Program.

  I just wasn’t prepared for him.

  For ex-Navy SEAL turned mercenary Lake Freeman, escorting Lily Cross into the Witness Protection Program was just another job — until a better offer came along. Lake couldn’t have cared less about the life he’d been hired to protect. After all, she was a part of the very organization that had cost him so much already.

  At least he never expected to care.

  But when forced into a decision he never thought he’d have to make, the mission became one of survival for himself and his beautiful charge. Lake knew that in order to protect her, he’d need to bring the feisty and unpredictable Lily to heel — he couldn't keep her safe if he couldn't keep her under control.

  But that protective urge quickly turned into something else, something dark ... and his need to conquer, to claim, overrode all else.

  He would keep her safe. He would keep her protected. But he would make her his, as well.

  Now, all he had to do was figure out how to keep them both alive long enough to do it...

  Publisher's Warning: Intended for mature readers. 18 and over only!

  This is a MF BDSM romantic suspense. Themes include: graphic sexuality, pervasive D/s, exhibitionism, spanking, bondage, anal play and other BDSM activities. If such content might offend you, please do not purchase this book.

  Word count: 66,328 words

  Page Count: 200 pages

  * * * *

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  By Trent Evans

  Published by Shadow Moon Press

  A Message of Love

  Maintenance Night

  What She’s Looking For

  The Chronicles of Muurland Series:

  The Fall of Lady Westwood

  The Dominion Trust Series:

  Becoming Theirs

  Her Troika — The Complete Story

  Expecting Surrender

  Published By Stormy Night Publications

  The Doctor and The Naughty Girl

  What The Doctor Ordered (Box set)

  By Natasha Knight

  Published by Stormy Night Publications

  Taught To Kneel

  Taming Emma

  Captive’s Desire

  Aching To Submit

  Her Rogue Knight

  Taken By The Beast

  Claimed By The Beast

  Taming Megan

  Dangerous Defiance

  The Firefighter’s Girl

  Taming Naia

  Given To The Savage

  Amy’s Strict Doctor

  Protective Custody

  Collections

  What The Doctor Ordered

  Published by Cobblestone Press

  Pierced

  Other Collections

  Sci Spanks 2014: A Collection of Spanking Science Fiction Romance Stories (Seasonal Spankings)

  The Disciplinarian: A Collection of Short Spanking Stories

  Copyright © 2015 by Natasha Knight and Trent Evans

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Rachel A Olson (www.nosweatgraphics.weebly.com)

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and as such, any similarity to existing persons, places or events must be considered purely coincidental.

  This book contains content that is not suitable for readers aged 17 and under.

  For mature readers only.

  Published in the United States by Shadow Moon Press, Washington.

  First Shadow Moon Press Electronic Edition: February 2015

  Prologue

  I always knew I was different. Knew I lived a different sort of life. I just didn’t expect to end up here — like this.

  For weeks I’d felt it. I’d known someone had been watching me. But I’d ignored it.

  Looking back, I could think of a hundred ways I could have avoided this, avoided him. He’d said one thing and, like a fool, I had believed him. Useless words. Stolen words.

  Tucking my knees into my chest, I pulled the worn blanket up over my body. He’d stripped me bare before bringing me here, before binding my wrists together so tightly they felt raw. I shivered in the cold, damp room knowing he was going to teach me a lesson. I’d been to this room before. I knew what had to happen here.

  Tears again, stupid tears. He had no right to keep me captive. His captive.

  “Let me out!” I screamed for the hundredth time, my voice hoarse, my throat too dry.

  This time, though, there was an answer: the sound of his footsteps approaching, the almost imperceptible sound of the key sliding into the lock, turning it.

  I pressed my back harder into the wall, fisting the blanket with sweaty hands.

  I was going to be punished and it was going to be bad. I knew it. He’d promised it and he always kept his promises.

  Chapter 1

  It had happened, the cops had finally caught up with him.

  Emanuel J. Cross, drug dealer to the wealthy, privileged addicts of high society, my father, had been arrested. And that wasn’t the worst of it.

  “Christ!” I said, watching the spectacle on TV. Daddy in handcuffs, walking between two men, the entire block cordoned off, reporters pouring over the yellow police tape to get a close-up of him in this, his grandest hour.

  But they didn’t know the half of it.

  “Ma’am, we need to go.”

  I turned to the door. “Get out,” I snapped. I wasn’t even going to try to be sweet. My father had arranged things neatly for himself, and, apparently, for me. The arrest would be very public, we knew that. Couldn’t exactly take one half of the two-man force that kept the entirety of the East Coast supplied with their drug of choice without some noise. But I found out yesterday that Daddy had made a deal with the feds months ago when they’d first caught up with him. Testify against Randall, his business partner and the one they wanted badly enough to make a deal with the likes of my father, enter into the Witness Protection Program, and live out his days in quiet suburbia in the middle of nowhere. Become a nobody. It was a differ
ent sort of prison really. Although I suppose federal prison would be worse. But what I was most pissed about was that I, too, had been given fifteen minutes to pack my essentials and leave my New York City apartment — my beloved apartment — with exactly one suitcase, and disappear right along with my father!

  Yes, of course I understood what could happen to me if I was to refuse protection. Randall would do anything he could to keep my father quiet, and what surer way than through his one weakness: me.

  “Ma’am.” The man ducked his head into my room again and it took all I had not to kick the door shut right on his stubby, red nose.

  “How do you expect me to pack up my life in fifteen minutes? Get out!” I turned my back on him.

  “That’s no way to speak to the officer, Ms. Cross.”

  I stilled instantly, a chill running along my spine.

  “I got this. We’ll be ready to go in one minute,” the same man said.

  I faced him as he closed my bedroom door.

  I have to admit, it took me a minute to recover myself. This guy was tall. I’m not short, just average at 5’5”, so he must have been 6’5” at least, with dark hair and darker eyes, eyes that made me pause. Under any other circumstances, I would have reacted differently, but not today. Not when my life was falling apart around me.

  I cleared my throat. “Who the hell are you?”

  He smiled and made no secret of looking me over from head to toe. I narrowed my eyes and did the same. At this point, most men would have tripped over themselves with some stupid comment, but he didn’t. Instead, when I met his gaze again, he looked at me straight on, one side of his mouth curling upwards into a tiny smirk.

  “I’m Lake Freeman. Your father hired me to look after you. I’ll be your personal bodyguard until we get you settled and safe.”

  “I don’t need a personal bodyguard,” I said, my tone ice. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got a room full of assholes out there who think they’re my personal bodyguards.”

  “I’d appreciate if you could watch your language, Ms. Cross. It’s no way for a young lady to speak.”

  My mouth fell open. I had no comeback. Really, he was offended by my language?

  Lake glanced at the half-packed suitcase on the bed and walked over to it, his boots heavy on the hardwood floor. He pushed the lid down and zipped it up.

  “Hey, I wasn’t done packing.” I took a step toward it, realizing I still held a blouse in my hand.

  “Yes, you were,” he said, his tone final.

  I reached to unzip it but he grabbed hold of my wrist. And he wasn’t gentle. “Get your hands off me! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m saving your ass, princess,” he said, his expression deadly serious. He picked up the suitcase while keeping hold of my wrist. “Let’s go.”

  “Just a minute,” I protested, pulling back.

  He paused and turned toward me, making a show of checking his watch.

  “How do I know you work for my father anyway?”

  “Good girl,” he said, releasing my wrist and smiling. “He said you might ask. It’s Velveteen Rabbit, your safe code.”

  I stared at him. How long had it been since I’d heard my dad read me that story?

  My mom had run out on us when I wasn’t even a year old. I had no memory of her. My dad and I had been close all my life, so with all this crap that was happening, as tough as I tried to act, I was scared. I was scared for him and for me. And I guess he and I both knew all along that something like this could happen.

  Ever since I was little, my dad and I had a secret code and that was it: The Velveteen Rabbit. It was my favorite book. He’d read it to me every night for a year and I still had my well-worn copy of it. I knew if ever someone said they’d been sent by my dad, they’d know those words. It hadn’t come up before, and I didn’t expect it to at twenty-four years old either. But there it was. My dad was still taking care of me from wherever he happened to be at the moment.

  “We have to go,” Lake said, this time he sounded almost nice.

  I nodded once and looked away. I didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes and I didn’t want him to know I was scared.

  * * *

  The pictures didn’t do her justice. Not one bit.

  He’d memorized them, of course, until he knew every line of her delicate face, the large brown eyes, the long, wavy black hair, the rich olive tone of her skin. He remembered lingering over the shot taken of her outside on the front stoop of her brownstone, the steam wafting up from her coffee in the chill morning air. The low angle of the morning light seemed to render the white gown she wore diaphanous, revealing far more of her figure than he knew she’d have liked.

  He’d taken special care to memorize that photo.

  Now, as the truck bounced over the pothole-ridden streets of the city, he watched her again. It made her uneasy, his gaze upon her. He found he liked that. Her eyes, like doe’s eyes, darted to him frequently, as if by keeping him in her sight she was reassuring herself all was well.

  It certainly wasn’t, but she didn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

  “You forgot something,” he said, nodding toward her.

  “Probably forgot all kinds of things.” She glared at him, her eyes squinting against the sunshine pouring through the windshield. “Which wouldn’t have been an issue had you let me, I don’t know, pack.”

  Ah, yes, beautiful she may be — but that mouth.

  “Try again, Ms. Cross.”

  She looked out the window, jabbing a thumb at the unmarked in the next lane. “We certainly didn’t forget them. Like a goddamned motorcade. Very subtle.”

  “Seat belt.”

  “What?” Her hand reached up automatically for it, then she stopped herself. “You’re serious with this?”

  “Put it on.”

  Those big brown eyes stared back, her jaw tight. One of the tires dropped into a pothole large enough to swallow a man, her breasts moving with the jarring bounce of the truck. She winced, cursing under her breath, her gaze sliding away.

  It was shaping up to be a long trip.

  “Seatbelt, Ms. Cross.”

  “Are you my bodyguard, or my dad?”

  He scanned ahead for an open stretch of curb, finding a loading zone for a busy restaurant supply business. It would do.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lake pulled the truck to the curb, the cruisers slowing to a crawl as horns blared from the cars behind them. One of the cruisers flashed his blues, waving the cars around him even as his puzzled white face peered over at their truck.

  “Let’s get this out of the way now.” He leaned over her, and she shrank into the seat, her lips a surprised O. “I’m here to keep you safe, to get you to your new home.” His hand caught the belt, whipping it out and around, seating the latch with a loud click. She inhaled sharply as he pulled up, cinching it tight, the shoulder belt snug between her breasts. “And I can’t very well keep you safe if you die in a car wreck, can I?”

  “I don’t wear—”

  “You didn’t before, but you do now, Ms. Cross. This is a new life, a new start.” He flashed her a grin, then pulled back onto the road, squeezing the big pickup between the two waiting cruisers.

  “I can’t believe this. This is a fucking nightmare.” She flashed him a withering look. “I don’t care what you think, Mr… whoever you are.”

  “Lake.”

  She frowned. “Lake, then. I don’t wear seat belts.”

  “Never too late to start doing the right thing.”

  You could try taking your own advice, for once.

  But it was much too late for that. Much too late for anything at all.

  His earpiece crackled to life. “Everything okay in there?”

  Tucking the cord fully behind his ear, he smiled over at the cruiser next to them. “We’re good.”

  The detail had insisted on the radio, though he detested it, knowing how easy it was to pick up a signa
l from outside. It was pointless, and sloppy, but he needed to play nice for now. The two officers were more of a help than a hindrance at this point anyway, especially in getting them through the god-awful upper Manhattan traffic. Once they’d gotten closer to their destination, he’d have more options, wouldn’t be so penned in. But that was still many hours away.

  He glanced back over at her. She’d crossed her arms over those little jiggling breasts of hers, her head turned away. “Did the officers brief you on what’s going to happen today?”

  “They did all that at the sentencing for Daddy,” she muttered, still looking out the window. “Said I wouldn’t know when they were coming, but when they did, I’d have minutes to pack up. They never said anything about you though.”

  “Your father added that little detail at the last minute when there were… developments.”

  Her brown eyes turned to him then. “Developments?”

  Traffic came to a standstill, the distant sound of horns blaring somewhere up ahead. He sighed, drumming fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Well, are you going to spill what the hell you mean by ‘developments’? Nothing good, I’m sure.”

  “Your father received several threats.”

  “Nothing new there.” She grunted. “Pricks can’t get to him, and it’s killing them. He told me all about it.”

  Oh, if only you knew, Ms. Cross.

  That wasn’t his problem though. He had a job to do first. And then that was it — no more tours, no more missions, no more contracts. No more. Then he could face what life he had left.

  “This is something else. Something new.”

  The earpiece clicked on once more. “Something’s up, looks like. Let me check it.”