Siren Unleashed
Texas Sirens - 7
Sophie Oak
In the end this book is about being brave enough to care about someone. Too often in our lives we give up because friendship seems like such a dangerous prospect, but we lose so many good voices when we allow the negative ones to win. So this book is dedicated to new friends – Fiona Archer and Jayne Rylon. I don’t know where it’s going, but I am glad I met you.
Prologue
Houston, TX
Nat groaned and wondered why her head was so heavy.
“Shhh. Be quiet.” A harsh voice bit through the darkness.
Damn it. She had to open her eyes. Why did it feel like she had weights drawing the lids down? Party. She remembered a party. Right? No. Not really a party. She’d been at the club. Haven. She liked Haven. It was where she’d met Tony. She wasn’t madly in love with Tony, but they had fun.
Until he’d wanted her to sign a contract and take a collar. Why did guys want to move so fast?
And why the fuck was her head swimming?
She forced her eyes open. Well, tried. Her eyes couldn’t be open. It was still so damn dark. Where the hell was she? Through the haze of headache and nausea, she thought back to the last moment she could remember.
Tony, smiling at her, but it was a weird smile. He had her in handcuffs, part of their negotiated scene, but he hadn’t said the words she would have thought he would say. He’d talked about someone.
Master Hawk.
She didn’t like Master Hawk. She thought he was a douchebag pretender sadist who didn’t give anything back. And his two subs were sheep.
Nat was a sub, but she wasn’t a sheep. She’d never signed a full contract. Doubted she ever would. She enjoyed submitting for play and to relax. Otherwise, she kind of wanted to punch the dude who told her what to do, but after the day was done, yeah, it was a way to unwind.
Why couldn’t Tony see that?
“Keep quiet. Maybe he won’t come in.”
Who the fuck kept talking?
“So who won’t come in? Someone turn the fucking light on.” Was this some weird sort of sensory deprivation scene?
“Shut up. Do you want to get your ass whipped? If you don’t tone it down, you’re going to get all of us in trouble.” The words sounded hissed through angry lips.
She tried to stretch, but her hands met cold metal bars.
Bars? A little bit of panic started to thrum through her system.
“Please try to be nice,” a new voice said. “She’s new here. She doesn’t know the rules yet.”
She sort of kind of recognized that voice. What was her name? Kat? She’d seen her around the club. The kind of sub that made Nat’s skin crawl. She would call herself “i,” never thinking to capitalize because she wasn’t worthy of a capital letter. Kitty? She was with Master Hawk, a pale shadow of an actual woman. She was pretty in a particularly bland way since she never showed an emotion and referred to herself in the third person.
She was a true slave. Nat didn’t want to have anything to do with that. The whole term “slave” was what had forced her hand with Tony. The minute he’d called her slave instead of sub, she’d known the relationship was just about over.
She’d just wanted a little fun, a little stress relief. Why had he tried to force her to be a slave?
“Where am I?” This time she kept her voice low. She wanted to shout and scream and rattle the fucking cage, but she needed to assess the situation first.
“How many times do I have to tell you to shut the fuck up?”
Nat really didn’t like that nasally voice. What was Hawk’s other slave called? She barely registered in Nat’s brain except that the slightly older woman seemed to shoot daggers the younger one’s way every time she thought no one was looking.
The softer voice responded, and a warm hand covered her shoulder. “You’re here. And that’s all that matters.”
Here? “Where is here?”
Miss Nose Breather snorted. “Welcome to Hell. Try not to get the rest of us killed.”
Killed? Nat forced herself to take a long, deep breath. Her head was pounding. She was in the dark. The last thing she could remember was Tony grinning down at her as he held her hand out toward another man.
Oh, god, she’d been drugged. And now she was in a dark, metally place. A cage. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She was in a cage.
“Where the fuck am I?” She reached out and grabbed the bars of the cage and pulled. She tried to stand, but her head met hard metal.
“Shhh. It’s our nighttime cage. It’s sleepy time.” Kitten. Her name was Kitten.
“I want out.” She couldn’t be stuck in a cage. She had to work. She had a full client list tomorrow. Her rent was due, and if she didn’t get that check to Lars, he really would pack her shit up and toss it out in the garbage bin.
She couldn’t be stuck in a cage.
Nasally Whine started in again. “There’s no way out. So shut the fuck up or one of us is going to get killed. Probably me. It’s always fucking me. He’s going to kill me now that he has a younger slave.”
A choked sob cut through the silence. The older slave was crying.
The door opened, and Kitten’s hand slid over Nat’s. “Don’t worry. The pain won’t last forever.”
The cage opened and Nat was pulled out.
The other girl was right.
This was Hell.
Chapter One
Four years later
Willow Fork, TX
Natalie Buchanan hated dead bodies. Yet they just kept turning up. At least she hadn’t been the direct cause of this one.
“How long until the ambulance is here?” Nat asked. She needed to get out of the small room, but she couldn’t force herself to move. If she moved, even an inch, she just might run, and she couldn’t do that. She was a professional. She could handle this.
Chris Linwood sighed, looking down at the body briefly. “It might be a while. The hospital told me there was a bad traffic accident out on the highway, and living bodies take precedence over corpses.” He turned his green eyes toward her. “Are you all right?”
Her hands were shaking. Her gut was in complete turmoil. Stan Kirkman was lying on her massage table, his eyes wide open and glassy, nothing left to animate his big body. He’d been the self-proclaimed low-priced Furniture King of East Texas, his commercials running on local stations late at night. He’d been coming to her once a week since the Willow Fork Tranquility Spa had opened.
Why, oh why did he have to have a heart attack now? She wasn’t at all surprised that the man had up and died. He looked perfectly fit, but she’d seen how much bacon was in the dude’s diet.
“I called the cops, too. It’s procedure. Melissa is out in the lobby, keeping everyone out.” Melissa was the receptionist. She was also a terrible gossip. She would be on the phone to everyone while she watched the door. Chris took her hand. “Gaby’s on her way. Is there something you want to tell me?”
She felt her eyes widen. “No. Why?”
Chris was the second-in-command to his boss, Gabrielle Reed. One of his main jobs was handling employee relations. He was a good supervisor. Nat was beginning to wonder if he would still be her supervisor in a few minutes. He was looking at her with deep sympathy in his eyes.
“Chris, when I left him, he was perfectly fine. I didn’t do anything unusual. It was exactly the same massage I’ve been giving him for over a year. Deep tissue. He liked it a little rough.” Shit. That sounded bad.
His lips turned down. “Sweetie, I can smell the sex in this room.”