Keep Me

Chapter 1

1

Julian

There are days when the urge to hurt, to kill, is too strong to be denied. Days when the thin cloak of civilization threatens to slip at the least provocation, revealing the monster inside.

Today is not one of those days.

Today I have her with me.

We’re in the car on the way to the airport. She’s sitting pressed against my side, her slim arms wrapped around me and her face buried in the crook of my neck.

Cradling her with one arm, I stroke her dark hair, delighting in its silky texture. It’s long now, reaching all the way down to her narrow waist. She hasn’t cut her hair in nineteen months.

Not since I kidnapped her for the first time.

Inhaling, I draw in her scent—light and flowery, deliciously feminine. It’s a combination of some shampoo and her unique body chemistry, and it makes my mouth water. I want to strip her bare and follow that scent everywhere, to explore every curve and hollow of her body.

My c**k twitches, and I remind myself that I just f****d her. It doesn’t matter, though. My lust for her is constant. It used to bother me, this obsessive craving, but now I’m used to it. I’ve accepted my own madness.

She seems calm, content even. I like that. I like to feel her cuddled against me, all soft and trusting. She knows my true nature, yet she still feels safe with me. I have trained her to feel that way.

I have made her love me.

After a couple of minutes, she stirs in my arms, lifting her head to look at me. “Where are we going?” she asks, blinking, her long black lashes sweeping up and down like fans. She has the kind of eyes that could bring a man to his knees—soft, dark eyes that make me think of tangled sheets and naked flesh.

I force myself to focus. Those eyes f**k with my concentration like nothing else. “We’re going to my home in Colombia,” I say, answering her question. “The place where I grew up.”

I haven’t been there for years—not since my parents were murdered. However, my father’s compound is a fortress, and that’s precisely what we need right now. In the past few weeks, I’ve implemented additional security measures, making the place virtually impregnable. Nobody will take Nora from me again—I’ve made sure of that.

“Are you going to be there with me?” I can hear the hopeful note in her voice, and I nod, smiling.

“Yes, my pet, I’ll be there.” Now that I have her back, the compulsion to keep her near is too strong to deny. The island had once been the safest place for her, but no longer. Now they know of her existence—and they know she’s my Achilles’ heel. I need to have her with me, where I can protect her.

She licks her lips, and my eyes follow the path of her delicate pink tongue. I want to wrap her thick hair around my fist and force her head down to my lap, but I resist the urge. There will be plenty of time for that later, when we’re in a more secure—and less public—location.

“Are you going to send my parents another million dollars?” Her eyes are wide and guileless as she looks at me, but I can hear the subtle challenge in her voice. She’s testing me—testing the bounds of this new stage of our relationship.

My smile broadens, and I reach over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you want me to send it to them, my pet?”

She stares at me without blinking. “Not really,” she says softly. “I would much rather call them instead.”

I hold her gaze. “All right. You can call them once we get there.”

Her eyes widen, and I see that I surprised her. She was expecting that I would keep her captive again, cut off from the outside world. What she doesn’t realize is that it’s no longer necessary.

I’ve succeeded in what I set out to do.

I’ve made her completely mine.

“Okay,” she says slowly, “I’ll do that.”

She’s looking at me like she can’t quite figure me out—like I’m some exotic animal she’s never seen before. She often looks at me like that, with a mixture of wariness and fascination. She’s drawn to me—she’s been drawn to me from the very beginning—yet she’s still afraid of me on some level.

The predator in me likes that. Her fear, her reluctance—they add a certain edge to the whole thing. It makes it that much sweeter to possess her, to feel her curled up in my arms every night.

“Tell me about your time at home,” I murmur, settling her more comfortably against my shoulder. Brushing back her hair with my fingers, I look down at her upturned face. “What have you been up to all these months?”

Her soft lips curve in a self-deprecating smile. “You mean, besides missing you?”

A warm sensation spreads through my chest. I don’t want to acknowledge it. I don’t want it to matter. I want her to love me because I have a sick compulsion to own all of her—not because I feel anything in return. “Yes, besides that,” I say quietly, thinking of the many ways I’m going to f**k her when I get her alone again.

“Well, I met with some of my friends,” she begins, and I listen as she gives me a general overview of her life over the past four months. I already know much of this, since Lucas had taken the initiative to put a discreet security detail on Nora while I had been in a coma. As soon as I woke up, he gave me a thorough report on everything, including Nora’s daily activities.

I owe him for that—and for saving my life. Over the past few years, Lucas Kent has become an invaluable part of my organization. Few others would’ve had the balls to step up like that. Even without knowing the full truth about Nora, he had been smart enough to infer that she means something to me and take steps to ensure her safety.

Of course, the one thing he didn’t do was restrict her activities in any way. “So did you see him?” I ask casually, lifting my hand to play with her earlobe. “Jake, I mean?”

Her body turns into stone in my arms. I can feel the rigid tension in each muscle. “I ran into him briefly, after dinner with my friend Leah,” she says evenly, looking up at me. “We had some coffee together, the three of us, and that was the only time I saw him.”

I hold her gaze for a second, then nod, satisfied. She didn’t lie to me. The reports had mentioned that particular incident. When I first read about it, I wanted to kill the boy with my bare hands.

I still might do that, if he approaches Nora ever again.

The thought of another man near her fills me with white-hot fury. According to the reports, she didn’t date during our time apart—with one notable exception. “How about that lawyer?” I ask softly, doing my best to control the rage boiling inside me. “Did the two of you have a good time?”

Her face turns pale underneath her golden skin tone. “I didn’t do anything with him,” she says, and I can hear the apprehension in her voice. “I went out that night because I was missing you, because I was tired of being alone, but nothing happened. I had a couple of drinks, but I still couldn’t go through with it.”

“No?” Much of the anger drains out of me. I can read her well enough to know when she’s lying—and right now she’s telling the truth. Still, I make a mental note to have this investigated further. If the lawyer touched her in any way, he’ll pay.

She looks at me, and I can feel her own tension dissipating. She can discern my moods like no one else. It’s as if she’s attuned to me on some level. It’s been that way with her from the very beginning. Unlike most women, she’s always been able to sense the real me.

“No.” Her mouth tightens. “I couldn’t let him touch me. I’m too f****d up to be with a normal man now.”

I lift my eyebrows, amused despite myself. She’s no longer the frightened girl I brought to the island. Somewhere along the way, my little pet grew some sharp claws and was starting to learn how to use them.

“That’s good.” I run my fingers playfully across her cheek, then bend my head to inhale her sweet scent. “Nobody is allowed to touch you, baby. Nobody but me.”

She doesn’t respond, just continues looking at me. She doesn’t need to say anything. We understand each other perfectly. I know I will kill any man who lays a finger on her, and she knows it too.

It’s strange, but I’ve never felt possessive about a woman before. This is new territory for me. Before Nora, women were all interchangeable in my mind—just soft, pretty creatures passing through my life. They came to me willingly, wanting to be f****d, to be hurt, and I indulged them, satisfying my own physical needs in the process.

I f****d my first woman when I was fourteen, shortly after Maria’s death. She was one of my father’s whores; he sent her to me after I dispatched two of the men who murdered Maria by castrating them in their own homes. I think my father was hoping the lure of s*x would be enough to distract me from my path of vengeance.

Needless to say, his plan didn’t work out.

She came into my room wearing a tight black dress, her makeup perfectly done and her lush, full mouth painted a glossy red. When she began to strip in front of me, I reacted just like any teenage boy would—with instant, violent lust. But I wasn’t any teenage boy at that point. I was a killer; I had been one since I was eight.

I took the w***e roughly that night, partly because I was too inexperienced to control myself, partly because I wanted to lash out at her, at my father, at the whole f*****g world. I took my frustrations out on her flesh, leaving behind bruises and bite marks—and she came back for more the next night, this time without my father’s knowledge. We f****d like that for a month, with her stealing into my room every chance she got, teaching me what she liked… what she claimed many women liked. She didn’t want sweet and gentle in bed; she wanted pain and force. She wanted someone to make her feel alive.

And I found that I liked that. I liked hearing her scream and beg as I hurt her and made her come. The violence crawling under my skin had found another outlet, and it was one I used every chance I got.

It wasn’t enough, of course. The rage dwelling deep within me couldn’t be pacified so easily. Maria’s death changed something inside me. She had been the only pure, beautiful thing in my life, and she was gone. Her death accomplished more than my father’s training ever could: it killed any remaining conscience I might’ve possessed. I was no longer a boy reluctantly following in my father’s footsteps; I was a predator who craved blood and vengeance. Ignoring my father’s orders to let the matter drop, I hunted down Maria’s killers one by one and made them pay, drinking in their screams of agony, their pleas for mercy and for quicker death.

After that, there were retaliations and counter-retaliations. People died. My father’s men. His rival’s men. The violence kept escalating until my father decided to pacify his associates by removing me from the business. I was sent away, to Europe and Asia… and there I found dozens more women like the one who had introduced me to s*x. Beautiful, willing women whose proclivities mirrored my own. I gave them their dark fantasies, and they gave me momentary pleasure—an arrangement that suited my life perfectly, especially after I came back to take up the reins of my father’s organization.

It wasn’t until nineteen months ago, during a business trip to Chicago, that I found her.

Nora.

My Maria reincarnated.

The girl I intend to keep forever.