Page 59 of Captured

“You’re my wife, or you will be. You need to start acting like it.”

Lauren couldn’t help it—she curled her lip. Henry laughed at her expression. “You’ll learn soon enough. I think your first lesson should be now.”

“No.” As Henry pulled the gun out of his waistband, Lauren rushed forward, pushing his arm to the side. He smacked her, hard, the force of the blow cracking against her cheek, and she faltered. Then an unearthly roar of rage erupted from the far edge of the garden.

“Lauren!”

Forty

Dimitri was done with waiting. Turning to the side, ignoring the pain in his left shoulder, he cracked his right elbow down hard against the throat of the soldier standing next to him, driving him to his knees. With another roundhouse punch, he leveled the demigod flat. Then he turned and bounded toward Lauren and Smithson.

The two of them were in a battle for Smithson’s gun. Lauren, in her ridiculous shift, torn and hanging from her shoulder, was fighting the man as fiercely as anyone he’d ever seen. But Smithson was clearly no stranger to a fight. With another resounding crack, he struck Lauren in a body blow that caught her across the shoulder, and she went flying as he whipped around. He stopped Dimitri cold with his raised pistol.

Dimitri raised his hands, his attention torn between Lauren and Smithson. “Take it easy, Mr. Smithson,” he bit out. “This is a misunderstanding.”

“Yes, it is. Yours.” Smithson drew himself up. “This is how it’s going to work. You’re going to die like the good little bodyguard that you are, and I’m going to collect my fiancée and return to my yacht. I’ll express my condolences to the king and queen,maybe settle a nice cash amount on your family—assuming you have a family—and wash my hands of the whole affair.”

Lauren was pulling herself to her feet, and Smithson flicked a glance to her. “I didn’t strike her that hard, and my doctors will pronounce her fit and competent. And, fortunately, you won’t be around long enough to complain.”

She wobbled a little, and Dimitri fought to keep himself from clenching his hands into fists. His standing orders from the Crown were good ones, solid ones. He couldn’t kill Smithson, had to take him alive or not at all. He sure as hell wasn’t planning to die by the idiot’s hand either, of course, but Lauren didn’t know that apparently.

“Henry—no,” she said, her voice so ravaged and broken, it distracted both Dimitri and Smithson. Slowly, as they watched, she dropped to her knees, her hands up in supplication.

She was begging. This woman, this proud, defiant, spoiled woman who had every advantage handed to her and never needed anything in her life, was begging for his life.

“Don’t kill him, Henry,” she said, knowing instinctively not to give Dimitri a name, a face. “He’s nothing to you, the merest inconvenience. His words don’t have the weight of yours—or of mine. And I will be your wife, your Echidna, dedicated to you in all things.”

Hiswhat? Dimitri’s lip curled as he glared at Smithson. The fact that Lauren even knew the name of Typhon’s consort, that Smithson clearly had assigned it to her as some sort of term of endearment, still didn’t give them solid proof that Typhon gave one shit about this scumball. But it definitely gave the Crown plenty of reason to interrogate Smithson within an inch of his life. Even if he might be roughed up a bit by the time Dimitri delivered him for questioning.

But Lauren kept going. “I will do whatever you want, be whatever you want. All for this one favor. Don’t take a life as we set forth to embark on ours.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Smithson’s gun never wavered, but he seemed transfixed by Lauren, marveling at her. Her torn clothing and disheveled hair somehow didn’t stack up to the strength of her face, her eyes. The rigidity of her body as she kept kneeling in a position of devout prayer. Beseeching Smithson, who appeared to be enjoying being beseeched.Bastard.

“Because you have everything, Henry. You don’t need to add an insignificant death to the ledger. You more than anyone know the value of having someone be in your debt. I will be in your debt, for this as in so many things. I will owe you so much more than I can ever repay. I will be yours, without murmur, without opposition. What you want, I’ll want. What you crave, I’ll give you. Give you or find for you. And I will never leave you.”

Henry’s focus sharpened. Something seemed off about that, and Dimitri thought again about the documents on Smithson’s boat. The marriage contracts, binding and final. Why was he so fixated on securing Lauren Grant to him, forever and always? It couldn’t be her money. He had that in spades. So what...?

Lauren wobbled, fell, scrambling up to her knees again as Smithson watched her struggle, a smile playing over his lips. “He may not live the night anyway, Henry. Look at his shoulder. That’s a lot of blood. Why do the work of nature if that’s what’s in store for him?”

She pulled herself upright then and edged closer, and Dimitri blinked. She wasn’t moving toward Smithson; she was moving in a direct line—toward him. Not toward him precisely, butbetweenSmithson and him. As if despite everything, she could still regain control of the situation somehow.

“And if he does live, who would take the word of a critically injured man against yours?” Lauren continued. “He’ll have no supporters alive. But if you kill him, he’s a martyr.”

That seemed to get Smithson’s attention, and Dimitri fought another surge of outrage at Lauren’s intervention. She was playing a dangerous game here. No, he wasn’t planning on taking a bullet from Smithson’s gun—one wound was enough for tonight—but he could tell by everything in Lauren’s body, her words, the tone of her voice that she’d already made up her mind to take that bullet for him. As if that would change anything, as if that wasn’t the dumbest damned thing he’d ever heard in his life.

As if that didn’t make his heart want to stop, right there in the middle of the clearing.

“Threaten him, Henry,” Lauren said quietly. She’d almost dragged herself into the direct line of sight between the two men, but she stopped, smart enough to know that capturing Smithson’s attention alone was better than having that attention split between two focal points. But she was speaking so softly now that Dimitri had to strain to hear her. “You have the power of the world in your hands. You know that. You’ve always known that. Because it’s true. Tell him now what will happen to him if he tries to cross you. Make him understand.”

Smithson’s lips twisted, but his expression was supremely smug. “That’s the Lauren Grant I have come to know and love,” he said, waving the gun at her. “You tell him.” He watched her hungrily as Lauren pivoted, reaching out to Dimitri, her face resolute.

“If you do leave this place alive, you must never go after Henry. He will always win.” Her words were deliberately cold. She didn’t look at Dimitri. Couldn’t look at him, he realized, whether to protect him from Smithson or because she would falter, he didn’t know.

But he found he yearned for the feel of her gaze upon him once more. Wanted nothing more than to drink in her beautiful eyes, her smile.

She continued in a wooden tone. “Whatever your weak point is, he’ll find it. Your childhood friends you had lost complete contact with, until a pattern forms that you can’t ignore. Former lovers. Current lovers. Family members. Coworkers. Pets. Your bank accounts. Your treasures. Your mementos. Things you didn’t know you cared about desperately, until they were taken away from you. He applies the right pressure, and he applies it quickly and assuredly, so that he doesn’t have to reapply the pressure again. Because with the first touch, he’s already broken you.”

“You’re making me seem quite frightening,” Smithson drawled, clearly enjoying the moment.