Collared By Four Ruthless Men

Chapter 3

They gave me a perimeter.

That was the word Rook used when he explained it the next morning. Not a cage, not a restriction. A perimeter. Like that made it something reasonable. I could move through the main floor, the kitchen, the back yard within the fence line. Upstairs was limited to my room and the bathroom at the end of the hall. Everything else was off limits without an escort.

I smiled and said okay and spent the next two days learning every inch of what they'd given me.

The compound had a rhythm to it. That was the first thing I noticed. It wasn't random noise and movement, it was structured. Mornings were quiet, just one or two men moving through, coffee being made, low conversations. By mid-morning the garage was running, bikes going in and out, a rotation of men I was starting to recognise by build and gait even when I couldn't see their faces. Afternoons brought meetings, doors closing, voices that didn't carry.

And the four of them. I watched how they moved around each other without thinking about it, the way people do when they've been in close quarters long enough that they've stopped noticing. Rook talked the most, to everyone, easy and constant. Dax drifted in and out like he operated on his own schedule that nobody questioned. Colt was just there, solid and silent in whatever room he chose to occupy. And Zane held the centre of all of it without appearing to try. Men checked in with him. Conversations stopped when he walked in, not from fear exactly, more like instinct.

I filed it all away and kept my expression neutral and waited.

It was the third afternoon when Dax found me in the kitchen.

I was making tea because it gave me something to do with my hands and I'd discovered that having something to do with my hands helped me think. I heard him come in but I didn't turn around. Footsteps too light for Colt, too deliberate for Rook.

"You know," he said, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table, "most people in your situation would be crying by now."

"I'm not most people."

"No." I could hear the smile in it. "You're really not."

I turned around with my mug and leaned against the counter and looked at him. Up close, Dax had one of those faces that was always a half second away from amusement. Sharp green eyes that didn't miss much. The relaxed posture of someone who had never once been uncomfortable in a room.

I didn't trust it.

"Something I can help you with?" I asked.

"Just keeping you company, duchess."

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?" He tilted his head. Genuinely curious, or performing it well. "You hold your chin up like you're used to better than this. It suits you."

"It doesn't suit me. I have a name."

"Sloane." He said it like he was testing the weight of it. "I know. Duchess is more fun."

I turned back to my tea. I was not going to let him bait me. I was calm. I was collected. I had decided two days ago that I was going to be the most boring captive these men had ever encountered until I found my way out and I was sticking to that.

"You've been watching us," Dax said behind me. Conversational, like he was commenting on the weather.

My hand stilled on the mug.

"Don't look so surprised. You're subtle. But you're looking for something and you've got that expression people get when they're counting things." He paused. "What are you counting, duchess?"

I turned around again. "Stop calling me that."

"There it is." He grinned. Wide and real and deeply irritating. "I was wondering how long that would take."

"What?"

"The actual you. Not the version that's been walking around here for two days being very quiet and very agreeable." He leaned forward on the table, elbows down, chin on his hand, watching me like I was entertainment he'd been waiting on. "That's not you, is it. You're just letting us think it is."

The problem with him was that he was right and I really did not want him to be right.

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you're not scared anymore. Maybe that first night. But not now." He stood up, unhurried, and moved to the counter beside me, close enough that I had to actively choose not to step back. "Now you're just annoyed. Which is so much more interesting."

"Back up."

"Make me."

It came out before I could stop it. "You're incredibly irritating, you know that? You walk around here like everything's a game and everyone's just a piece on your board and some of us are actually dealing with a real situation that you helped create so maybe, just maybe, wind your neck in for five seconds."

Dead silence.

Dax stared at me. Then, slowly, he smiled. Not the lazy grin from before. Something more genuine and a little bit startled.

"There she is," he said quietly.

My face was hot. I turned away and set my mug down harder than I meant to and stared at the counter and concentrated on not saying anything else.

"For what it's worth," Dax said, "I'm sorry. About the situation."

"Don't call it that."

A beat. "What?"

"A situation." I didn't look at him. "That's what Zane called it. On the phone. I'm a situation that's been handled." I picked the mug back up. "It's a dehumanising word."

Dax said nothing to that. Which was somehow more surprising than anything else he'd done.

A sound at the kitchen doorway made me look up.

Colt.

He was standing in the frame with his arms crossed, watching me. Not Dax. Me. I had no idea how long he'd been there. His expression was completely unreadable, not cold exactly, just closed in a way that gave away nothing at all.

I held his gaze because looking away felt like losing something.

He looked for another moment. Then he turned and walked away without a single word.

I stood there in the kitchen with my tea going cold and that big, quiet man's eyes still sitting somewhere behind my sternum like a splinter I couldn't locate.

Dax, for once, didn't say anything either.