Mountain Captive by Cassie Mint

Seven

Natalia

It’s late when we emerge from the bathroom, the door perfectly blended with the cabin walls. The night is inky black, with the kind of unreal quality that comes several hours after midnight. Everything feels like a dream, like another world, and when Carver bundles me up in his clothes, dressing me with care, I feel no fear. Only gooey warmth and a fierce longing that steals my breath.

It’s twisted. So messed up. But this man speaks to my soul in a way that no one has before. I understand him better with a single glance than I do with people I’ve known for my whole life. And he reads me too, parsing my moods and desires as easily as though they were written on my forehead.

There’s more to this. Carver wouldn’t wage war on my family without reason—I know that. Surer than I know my own name.

“Are you going to tie me up again?” I ask as Carver kneels and tugs a pair of thick woolen socks onto my feet. With his sweatpants double knotted at my waist and a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt swamping my arms, I’ve never felt so cozy.

Carver’s mouth twitches. He keeps his face lowered, lifting one of my feet and tugging the sock over my ankle as I lean on his shoulder for balance.

“Do you want me to?”

Mm. Yes.

I lick my lips and consider my answer. “It depends.”

His eyebrow quirks. He didn’t expect that. “On what, princess?”

“Why do you hate my family?”

He stills. Stares down at the floorboards, carved from stone, my ankle held forgotten in his hands. I pluck at his fresh t-shirt and he jerks back to life, placing my foot back down.

“It’s complicated.”

“I can keep up.”

He scowls at me, pushing to his feet. Standing like this, toe to toe, he’s so much taller than me. He’s taller and broader and sculpted with hard muscle, and damn if that doesn’t make warmth spread under my skin. Even the pissed off slant to his mouth—that heats my blood. Reminds me of the glorious stinging smack he laid on my ass a few hours ago.

Carver reads the arousal in my face. In the twin points of my nipples poking at his shirt. And for the first time since he stole me from the forest, the sight leaves him cold. He scoffs, stepping around me and crossing to his desk to fuss with the monitors. He ignores me completely, shutting me out like I’m nothing, and somehow that’s the worst thing he’s done to me so far. I glance at the knife block in the kitchen, fingers twitching, but he speaks without even turning around.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Think about what?” I snarl.

He blows out a long breath and doesn’t answer.

“Carver.”

He taps at the keyboard. No doubt tormenting my father with more threats. He clicks away at his mouse, sifting through loose papers on the desk, and god, I could scream this whole cabin down. I march toward the knife block, shoulders rigid, but he curses and lunges to meet me halfway. Carver bundles me into his arms, kicking and thrashing, and the iron bands of his arms around my chest make my stomach swoop.

“Stop it,” he grunts, dragging me towards the bed. Back to the metal bed rail and the rope and square freaking one. I fight him harder, true panic rising in my throat, but his jaw is set as he tosses me onto the mattress. He kneels over me, face in shadow, reaching for the rope, but I scramble back, my palms raised.

“Wait. Wait.”

Carver pauses. His chest heaves up and down, the only sign that this affects him at all.

I take a deep breath. Swallow around the lump in my throat. Then rest the trembling palm of my hand on his rigid cheek.

“I just want to understand,” I whisper. “I want to know why this happened to me.”

He screws his eyes shut, expression pained, and I wet my lip as I wait for him to move again. To lash me to the bed rail or to kiss me or to tell all his secrets.

Something.

Anything.

Anything but this agonizing silence.

“Do you recognize the name Ennox?” I shake my head eagerly, shuffling further back on the mattress. Carver doesn’t sit beside me like I want, but he does keep talking. Each word seems to pain him, like they slice him on the way out. “Well, you should. Our fathers were once closer than brothers.”

I blink, shocked, but now that Carver has begun to talk, he can’t seem to stop. He lets it all out in one rush: our fathers’ closeness; their early businesses together; the summers Carver spent with my family before I was born. The things he tells me, the details he knows of the Volkovs—no one knows these things. It must be true. And when his face clouds over and his words turn to fractured trust, to betrayal, to my father’s ruthless bid for control of their shared companies—that rings true, too.

I’ve always known my father is brutal. That he can be cruel.

I’ve always been slightly afraid.

He saves the worst details for last. My father’s affair with his mother; the wreckage of his parents’ marriage while my own mother carried on in denial. The Volkovs decimated Carver’s family, left them bankrupt and bitter and unable to spend five minutes in the same room. Carver’s father turned to the bottle and his mother retreated inside her own mind, and their twelve-year-old son was left all alone with the bailiffs knocking.

And Carver swore vengeance. Swore that my father would know the same pain. I listen to his story with tears sliding down my cheeks, knowing deep in my soul that not a single word is a lie.

It’s awful.

Breathtakingly cruel.

And the worst thing is, my family has left a trail of destruction ever since. If the Ennox family were early victims, in some ways they got off lightly.

The Volkovs today are ruthless. Power hungry and cold. I was raised to be proud of that fact, but hearing this story first-hand, my heart aches and guilt curdles my gut. For twenty years, I’ve looked the other way. Chosen not to look too closely at my family’s impact, and let my parents dictate every decision in my life. I may not have hurt Carver’s family, but I’m guilty too in my own way.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and Carver glances at me sharply. Irritation etches his features, and his eyes rake over my face, searching for a lie. Searching for a hint of disbelief.

He won’t find it. I believe it all.

I wet my lip. Clear my throat. “What are you going to do with me? To get revenge.”

Carver meets my eyes. “At first, I planned to hurt you.” I wince, but he keeps talking, voice steady and low. “Then once I saw you, I knew that was impossible. I could never go through with it. So I planned to stage photos. To make it look like I’d tortured you.”

I nod slowly. “Okay… Okay. We can do that. We can make it look real.”

But Carver’s already shaking his head. “No. We can’t. I can’t. I don’t want those images in my brain, princess, not even faked. I can’t—I can’t bear it.” He shudders out a sigh, rubbing his hands over his face, and he looks so defeated, so lost, that my chest throbs.

“I have an idea,” I whisper.

Carver looks at me, eyes bleak.

“You’re going to help me torment your father.”

“Yes.” I steel myself and shove at his shoulder. “Fetch your camera.” My mind is racing, my thoughts blurring together, but I know one thing that will drive my father out of his mind. That will fill him with white-hot rage, the same rage that Carver feels for him. The rage that stalked me, that terrified me, throughout my childhood, when my father prowled the halls of our home in his black moods.

No one needs to get hurt. Not really.

Not if we do this my way.

Carver clenches his jaw but pushes off the bed, striding to the desk and back. He hands me the camera without a word, and I pat the bed beside me as I prod at the buttons. It flickers to life and I pass Carver the camera as soon as he’s settled, bare feet on the floorboards.

“What are you—”

He cuts off as I slide off the mattress, down onto my knees. I crawl between his legs, nudging his knees wider, and smooth my palms up his thighs. His navy sweatpants are soft under my hands, clinging to hard, bunched muscles.

“Princess,” he rasps.

“Yes?” I breathe. My thumbs rub tiny circles over the fabric. He’s so tense beneath my touch that he’s practically vibrating, and my pulse drums so loud in my ears that I have to strain to hear him.

“Fuck. Natalia. Yes.”

I tug at the drawstring on his waistband. He lifts his hips as I work his sweatpants down, just enough to reach in and free his cock. He’s half-hard, lengthening in my grip, and he watches me with burning eyes as I weigh him in my palm. He’s heavy already, getting heavier by the second, and my pussy clenches at the thought of him pushing inside me. Stretching my walls. The steady, breathless invasion of him.

“Don’t forget.” I nod at the camera, and he hurries to get me in frame.

“Photos or video?”

I scratch my fingernails over his thigh, the sound rasping through the quiet cabin. The fire pops in the wood burner in the corner of the room. I hum, considering, sitting back on my heels to take in every inch of him. From his dark hair, still damp from the shower, to the broad shoulders stretching his white t-shirt, to the impressive length now rock-hard and heated in my grip.

My heart thuds in my chest, lunging against my rib cage like it’s trying to batter its way through to him.

Mine.

Carver is mine.

More mine than the other Volkovs have ever been. A kindred spirit, with the same hard edges. The same soft wishes and dark desires.

I wink at him. “Kidnapper’s choice.”

A long breath rushes out of him, and his grin is feral as he leans back and rests on one palm.

“Smile, princess. Time to show your daddy what you think of me.”