Rampant (Condemned Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Note To Readers

  Copyright

  Titles by Gemma James

  Summary

  Dedication

  1. Back To Me

  2. Cornered

  3. My Blood

  4. Rude Awakening

  5. Ecstasy

  6. Homecoming

  7. Depleted

  8. Old Habit

  9. Always

  10. Standoff

  11. Cut

  12. Foolish

  13. Bad Idea

  14. Psychoanalysis

  15. Getaway

  16. Facing Fears

  17. Unwritten

  18. Absolution

  19. Bodyguard

  20. Uncaged

  21. Tempted

  22. Torched

  Note from the Author

  Excerpt of Freeing Lana by Kristin Elyon

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  NOTE TO READERS

  RAMPANT is a new adult dark romance with disturbing themes and explicit content, including sexual scenes and violence that may offend some. Intended for mature audiences. Part two of the CONDEMNED series. This is not a stand-alone read. Approximately 46,000 words.

  RAMPANT

  Copyright © 2014 Gemma James

  Edited by Jessica Nollkamper

  Ebook cover and interior design by Gemma James

  Cover images used under license from www.dreamstime.com

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TITLES BY GEMMA JAMES

  New adult romantic suspense

  EPIPHANY (Legacy of Payne #1)

  AWAKENING (Legacy of Payne #2 – coming late 2015)

  Dark Erotic Romance

  ULTIMATUM (The Devil's Kiss #1)

  ENSLAVED (The Devil's Kiss #2)

  RETRIBUTION (The Devil's Kiss #3)

  THE DEVIL'S KISS TRILOGY (The Devil's Kiss #1-3)

  THE DEVIL'S SALVATION: FINAL EPILOGUE (The Devil's Kiss #4)

  THE DEVIL’S KISS: COMPLETE SERIES

  TORRENT (Condemned #1)

  RAMPANT (Condemned #2)

  FERVENT (Condemned #3 – coming soon!)

  SUMMARY

  Life is twisted. Cruel. After being ripped from the safe haven of Rafe's arms, my new kidnapper is waging a sick game. Unable to make my body do his bidding, he's resorting to psychological warfare. He'll bend my mind until I break, and when I do, that just might be my saving grace.

  I'll forge through hell to get back to Rafe, body and spirit broken and bleeding, but I'm unprepared for what I find. He's done what I can't: he's erased eight years of pain and betrayal. I don't know how to bring him back to me, because bringing him back means ripping him to shreds all over again.

  To my fellow lovers of the dark side.

  Another drop of sweat crawled down my nose like a spider. In the stifling air of the trunk, I struggled to draw each breath. Perspiration pooled at my temples, irritating, flushing my cheeks with too much heat. I wiped the dampness on my sleeve. The vehicle swayed with the road, and I curled into a ball with a groan. At some point, the hum of the highway turned to gravel, then to a bumpy ride that rocked me back and forth. I shot an arm out to steady myself, and my belly protested the smothering heat and swerving motion. Chunks of what I’d eaten for dinner erupted from my mouth, souring the air. I scooted away so my cheek wouldn’t smear in it.

  Bump, bump, sway. Oh God…taking in shallow breaths didn’t help. The air was too thick, and the overwhelming odor of vomit made me heave again, but my stomach had nothing left to purge. A few minutes later the car jerked to a stop and the engine shut off. The heavy thump-thump-thump of feet on gravel pounded through ears trained to recognize and dread that purposeful gait. When Zach lifted the lid, the black night engulfed him, yet I sensed the fury seeping from his being.

  He grabbed my hair, angled my head back, and thrust a bottle against my lips. “Drink.”

  My mouth resembled the consistency of sandpaper, so I didn’t hesitate. I clutched it, both hands covering his, and sucked down every last bit. Spent of energy, I dropped my head to the bed of the trunk, right into the expelled contents of my stomach.

  “You’ve reached a new low, Lex. You’re lying in your own puke.” As I inched away from the vomit, he retreated a step. “Fuck. I’ve reached a new low. It wasn’t supposed to be like this! What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Everyone thinks you’re dead. I thought you were dead!” Hands yanking at his mussed up brown strands, he began to pace. His clothing clung to his body, as if still damp from the river.

  Rafe’s face infiltrated my mind, and I blinked to hold back the hot sting of tears. Devastation pressed on my breastbone, coiling around me and tightening until I couldn’t move or speak. I tried shaking his image from my brain, but it stuck like tar.

  I didn’t want to think or feel.

  Doing either would crush me, and I couldn’t afford to break down. Not yet. I knew I would eventually, when I could no longer hold off the anguish strangling my wind pipe. When I had no choice but to confront the truth poking my insides with the burn of a hot fireplace poker.

  Rafe was gone.

  Zach muttered something indecipherable, pulling me from the dark place in my mind, and his agitated pacing continued. A bullfrog’s call joined in, croaking through the night with the finesse of a chain-smoker. Frogs meant water was nearby, right? I followed Zach’s movement, my heart racing even faster at the perceived threat. How close were we? I visualized jumping out and running…and falling in, just like I had the night I tried to flee the island. My limbs stiffened, and I scooted further into the depths of the trunk.

  “It’s gonna be okay. Everything’s fine,” he said, more to himself than to me. He started to lower the lid.

  “Wait!” I cried, a moment away from sobbing. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Enjoy the ride.” A trace of malice tainted his sonorous tone.

  The lid slammed down with a clunk, and the darkness suffocated me. The helplessness. Letting out a hiccupping mewl, I counted the seconds before Zach started up the engine. And I kept counting, as it was the only thing keeping me from totally unraveling as the car continued its winding path. After a while, I drifted in and out of consciousness. Or maybe it was a fog. I couldn’t say if I slept or not. Part of me latched onto the hope that this night was a bad dream. But hope was dangerous. Hope made you do stupid things, all in the name of trying for a better outcome that would never come to fruition. Accepting reality was harsher but best in the long run.

  I’d been kidnapped. Twice. I’d survived the first time because my captor had harbored a sadistic streak and a conscience. My chances of getting through this were nada. Zach would never let me go. Not with the world believing I was dead. Not after he’d found me with…

  Don’t think of him.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willed my mind blank. I must have fallen asleep because I awoke to Zach lugging me from the trunk. I fell to the ground and winced, rocks and dirt gouging my knees. He hefted me up by the back of my shirt, flung my aching body over his shoulder, and stalked toward a small cabin. I squinted against the morning gray, and the cool air on my face came as a relief after the confin
es of the trunk. Rolling slopes of timber enclosed us—a mixture of Douglas fir and pine. In the distance, the snowy peak of Mt. Hood offered a point of reference. But I found the utter quiet, interrupted only by the song of birds, especially unsettling. Besides the wildlife, not a hint of existence stirred beyond those trees.

  “Home sweet home,” he said as he climbed the porch.

  I cranked my neck as he ran a hand along the doorframe. He withdrew a key, steadied me with one hand, and used the other to shove it into the knob before kicking the door open. He stomped through the main room, dim in the dawning light barely peeking through the curtains.

  “Put me down!” I kicked my feet and dug my nails into his strong back as he entered a bedroom.

  “Stop it, Lex.” He yanked my sweats down, baring my bottom, and smacked my ass hard. “Don’t try to run,” he said, letting me slide to the floor in the adjacent bathroom. “You won’t get far. No one’s around for miles.”

  As I jerked my pants up, my gaze lowered to his muddy sneakers, but he gripped my chin and forced my attention on his face. “You understand me? No one will hear your screams up here. Nobody knows we’re here, and the owner’s in Europe for the summer, so it’s just you and me.”

  Five in, hold, five out. Repeat.

  I’d lived by the ritual since the day he’d stolen my innocence. Only now I was stuck on hold. If I didn’t breathe, then I wasn’t alive. If I wasn’t alive, then I couldn’t feel.

  His gaze lowered to my filthy tee. “Take that damn thing off.”

  Air whooshed from my lungs in a rebellious rush, and my chest resumed its natural rise and fall. But I wasn’t breathing, and I didn’t know how my arms moved without a heart that pumped life through it, how my fingers grasped the bottom of the shirt that belonged to Rafe.

  His shirt. On my body.

  If I closed my eyes and pretended, I could almost feel Rafe’s arms around me, his mouth moistening my neck, his warm palms on my breasts, brushing across hardened nipples. Could almost hear the husky way he spoke to me, his tone full of command yet quiet with vulnerability. I chewed my lip to stop it from trembling, but my chest shook with the rising tide of grief.

  “Now, Lex.”

  I jerked my gaze to my brother’s hardened expression. Even after all he’d done, I couldn’t think of him differently. I still remembered him as the boy I’d latched onto when I was six, when our parents made the colossal mistake of merging our families. Reality demanded I think of him as a murderer, but that only brought me back to the fact that I wasn’t breathing. Still. Not. Breathing.

  Rafe’s not dead. Not dead. Dead, dead, dead…

  The thought fired through my synapses, on constant repeat.

  “You fucking reek of him!” Zach’s hazel eyes spit poison, as potent as the arsenic boiling in his soul. “Take it off.”

  I lifted Rafe’s shirt over my head and stared, transfixed as the soft gray cotton dropped to the hardwood. I wanted to yank it back and bury my nose in it, inhale Rafe’s essence the way lungs hungered for air. Zach pulled me from the trance by sliding my sweats down my legs. I stepped free, holding onto his shoulder to keep from tipping over.

  “Get him off of you,” he said with a rough shove into the shower stall.

  A zipper lowered, clothing rustled, and the familiar sounds shivered through me. He switched on the water, and for a few blessed seconds the chaos in my mind fell silent, immersed in the roar of the spray. I crossed my arms over my chest and clawed at my biceps, dug my nails in deep until all that penetrated was pain. Leaning my forehead on the cold tile, I welcomed the numbness that blanketed me. I knew what was coming, and I didn’t want to be present for it.

  Numb, Alex. Pay no attention to his hand slithering down your spine.

  My protective cocoon threatened to dissipate as he bent me over, his naked front pressed to my back. My palms slammed against the wall, and he wound an arm around me, his fingers dipping between my thighs. I clenched my teeth to keep from crying. I wouldn’t cry for Zach. There was only one man I wanted to spill tears for and he was…

  I gasped a breath and held, clenching my jaw as Zach’s cock pushed past my body’s rigidity. Warm droplets of water coursed down my face and shoulders, but the space between my thighs remained dry as a desert. I pressed closer to the tile, wishing I could escape him, wishing I could melt into the wall and disappear forever.

  “The hell, Lex? You’re dry as fuck.” He pulled out then shoved in so violently, I arched to my toes. My teeth tugged at my lower lip and the metallic tang of blood lingered on my tongue. “I spent years molding you,” he said with a grunt, pumping a steady, harsh rhythm that punished from the inside out. “Bastard corrupted you.”

  A whimper escaped my tight lips. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Isn’t that how you like it? Come for me.”

  It wasn’t going to happen. Icy fear doused my skin, battling the warmth of the water. How could I come if I wasn’t breathing? Wasn’t alive? I wasn’t alive.

  I’m not here. This isn’t real. I’m safe in Rafe’s arms right now, having the nightmare from hell. Wake up…

  Zach roared his release with a final plunge, ramming to the hilt and triggering sharp pain that spread outward from my cervix. The fog in my head enveloped me, and I barely noticed him rubbing my body down with soap until he turned me in the spray to rinse it away. He shut off the water, ushered me from the stall, and hauled me to the bed, dripping wet.

  “You’re gonna scream my name.” He shoved me to my back and grabbed my ankles, his fingers trapping like shackles, and dragged me to the edge of the mattress. Forcing my thighs apart, he dropped to his knees. My mind left me, floated to the island and the memory of the dark abyss that had claimed Rafe. I visualized him breaking the surface and pulling himself onto land, but the daydream fractured, and I let out a startled yelp.

  Something pinched my clit.

  Zach, on his knees with his face buried in my pussy. His teeth clamped down unbearably hard, but the pain did nothing, didn’t even ignite a spark. No feeling, no forbidden rush of adrenaline storming through me. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. I never came, never even got close, and no amount of him slapping me, pinching flesh and twisting nipples, would bring about an orgasm. Some previously dormant switch had been tripped.

  Rafe had done that in the week we'd had together, when the walls had crumbled between us and I'd learned what it was like to feel cherished.

  Possibly even loved.

  “Snap out of it!” Zach slammed his fist into my face, and I cried out as the blow echoed along my cheekbone. He’d never hit me in such a visible place. I gaped at him as his finger curled inside me, pressing the spot that usually sent me soaring. He returned my stare, eyes narrowed dangerously, waiting. “Squirt like a fucking whore.”

  “Never again,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Not for you.”

  He jerked forward, fist raised.

  “Go ahead! Hit me again. Kill me.” Please, God, let him kill me. “I’d rather die than be with you.”

  A combination of hurt and violence darkened his features. I flinched, certain his knuckles were two seconds from connecting with my cheekbone again.

  “You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice incongruent with the hard line of his jaw. “You’ll love me again. Somewhere inside you is the little girl who made me her world.”

  “That girl was your sister!”

  “I’ve never looked at you that way, Lex, and you know it. There’s no blood between us, so stop hiding behind shame. What we have is unstoppable.”

  “What we have is fucked up. For God’s sake, Zach, we grew up together.” The echo of innocence pinged through my heart, leaving me bereft. Long ago, we'd been two kids playing in the yard, building forts that stood as tall as skyscrapers to my young eyes, yet they’d barely allowed Zach to stand inside the carefully constructed walls. He'd been my big brother, someone I always counted on and looked up to.

  Until th
e day he'd wrecked me. I recalled that life-altering moment as if it happened yesterday. Only thirteen, too unsure of the change in his touch, struggling to understand what it meant. I’d sprawled stiffly beside him, incapable of moving as his fingers slipped beneath my panties. He’d smothered my fearful cry with a sweaty palm and had spread my thighs before burrowing past my innocence. Zach had taken something precious from me that night, and in turn I’d taken the freedom of the only man I'd ever love.

  I’d killed him.

  The reality of what had happened at the river was too painful and a tear crept down my cheek, as if trying to sneak past Zach's watchful gaze.

  “You never cry.” He slowly lowered his fist. “In all the years we’ve fucked,” he said, “you never cried. Not once. Why now? Because of him?” His mouth twisted into something ugly…something arrestingly terrifying. “He's your past, Lex. I'm your future, and I'll do whatever it takes to bring you back to me.”

  We slept the day away, Zach’s naked body trapping my own. Several times, I tried to extricate myself from his grasp, but his arms always tightened in warning. At some point, I’d fallen into a restless sleep where images of Rafe and the island tormented me.

  Still haunted by the echoes of convoluted dreams, I hugged my knees from my spot on the four poster bed as Zach raided the closet. “Who’s cabin is this?” I asked, glancing at the window, where bright light had filtered through the curtains before we fell asleep. Now a strip of black peeked through where the material hung open, indicating the sun had set long ago.

  “A friend’s. He comes up here in the fall to hunt.” As Zach sifted through flannel shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets, I wondered if the owner stored his rifles somewhere in the house. My gaze zoomed in on the closet, hoping to catch a glimpse of a gun.

  “You’re so transparent,” Zach said. “You won’t find a gun in this place. He doesn’t keep them here.” He removed a black wife-beater from the dresser and pulled it over his defined pecs and abs. The sweats he wore swam on his toned frame, drawstring cinched tight. My brother was all hard muscle, and obviously, the owner of this place wasn’t. He grabbed a white tee and tossed it at me. “All you need to know is we won’t be interrupted for a few weeks.” Pointing a finger in my direction, he told me to get dressed.