Trace of Fever - Lori Foster [92]
Cooing to him, Helene said, “I know you’ll try.” She closed and locked the door. “But not before I’ve had my way with every inch of your delicious body.”
He slumped back to the wall and slowly slid down to the carpeted floor.
“Don’t worry, baby.” Watching him, Helene peeled off her jacket and dropped it over a chair. “You’re going to be wide-awake and very aware of everything I do to you, every kiss and touch, every lick and suck, everything. It’s only for a half hour or so that you’re going to be helpless and I need that time to get you all secured and situated.” She stepped over him.
Trace made one last feeble attempt to retrieve his cell phone from his pocket.
She laughed. “Now who do you think to call?”
More succinctly than she’d expected, he said, “No one.”
And he closed the phone.
Smiling, feeling indulgent with his continued refusal to accept his fate—the fate she’d give him—Helene took the phone and put it out of his reach. “Oh, Trace.” She touched his jaw. “This is going to be so much fun. For me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE HORROR OF WHAT they’d just overheard left Jackson and Priss staring at each other. It was Priss who reacted first.
“Why are you standing there?” She shoved Jackson hard. “You heard everything. That bitch is going to molest him!”
Looking a little sick, Jackson whispered, “Yeah.” He looked away. “Or worse.”
Her stomach cramped and her eyes burned. She covered her mouth. “God only knows what she’s capable of.”
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Jackson closed the now-dead phone and knotted his fingers in his hair. “And I shouldn’t have put him on speaker phone.”
“I wouldn’t have given the phone back to you otherwise!” Trace had called with instructions for Jackson to do a check on an old factory. He wanted a blueprint to the building, and he wanted to know how long it had been out of operation and who owned it now. From what she’d heard, Jackson would leave much of that research to Dare, who would likely leave it to Chris. Little by little, she was learning the chain of command, and how they worked together as a minimal unit to accomplish so much.
After the business discussion, Trace had also asked about her, and when he found out she was fine and dandy— Jackson didn’t mention his cavalier treatment of the shower incident—he’d wanted to speak with her.
Priss was hoping that he’d come to her, that they could continue what he’d started. But before much was said, someone joined him. The conversation was muffled, but when Priss realized he was talking to Helene she’d known something was wrong. She’d asked Jackson how to put the cell phone on speaker so he could hear, too.
Jackson looked almost comically lost, so Priss shoved him again. “You have to go help him.”
Shaking his head in the negative, Jackson said, “If he’d wanted help, he’d have said so.”
“He couldn’t!”
“Baloney. Trace is cagey. He’d have gotten a message through, but instead he ended the call. You heard him, Priss. She asked him who he was calling, and he said no one. And that was the message.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know that he wants me to stay right on top of you.”
“Idiot!” She wasn’t the one currently in trouble.
He frowned at her. “You know what I mean. In the figurative sense. If Trace had wanted me there, he could have said something…but he didn’t.”
He wasn’t going to go help Trace? “Are you out of your mind?”
“He didn’t, Priss.” Jackson paced away, looking almost as tortured as she felt. “Jesus. I know Trace. He’s slick. If he thought he couldn’t handle it—”
Handle Helene raping him? Oh, sure, he could maybe handle that.
But she couldn’t. And besides, who knew where Helene would draw the line? She could disfigure Trace with her warped idea of lust. And thinking that almost made her scream.
Unwilling to wait for Jackson to come to his senses, Priss spun around on her heel and headed for the door. “I’m going to him.”
“What? No, wait.” He caught her before she’d taken two full steps. “You don’t have a car.”
“I can grab a cab.”
Harassed, he shook her. “You don’t have any money.