Clark, Rachel - Nothing on Earth (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  “Little shower,” he said with a smile as he made three full circles in the air with his finger. Three minutes.

  “Got it,” she said smiling. “Three minute, little shower.” She was so happy that they finally seemed to understand each other that she didn’t really care why she had to have a quick shower. Locked in this little room, the one thing they did seem to have in abundance was time.

  Unwilling to think any harder on anything other than her upcoming three-minute shower, Tara rummaged through the bag, no longer surprised to find her own towels, deodorant, and toiletries on the bottom. John seemed to be a very thorough man. Unfortunately, considering her current circumstances, that probably wasn’t a good thing.

  No. No thinking. Shower.

  She moved into the small tiled room, careful to close the door over but not actually shut it. She quickly stripped off her clothes, uncertain whether her three minutes began when she entered the room or stepped into the shower but unwilling to waste a moment. The water was hot almost instantly, and she tilted her head forward so that the water ran over neck and shoulders.

  She hadn’t realized just how cramped the muscles were until she tried to loosen them a little, and she titled her head side to side in an effort to release the knots. She lathered shampoo into her hair, massaging her scalp quickly wishing she had more time. She hurried through her shower, hopefully rinsing away the stench of fear of the last twenty-four hours.

  “Tara,” Alec said quietly from the other side of the door.

  “Yes, finished,” she said as she turned off the running water. She wrapped the towel around her but realized with dismay that Alec had taken her clothes out of the bathroom. Securing the end of the towel she peeked around the door, hoping to be able to ask why he’d done that.

  Alec was hovering at the doorway, seeming quite anxious. When he saw her he reached for her wrist and dragged her into the main room. He closed the door firmly and turned to her with an apologetic look.

  “Not safe,” he said as he pointed at the door.

  She had no idea what he meant. The bathroom wasn’t safe? Granted, bathrooms had their dangers, but she got a feeling that he meant more than the usual household accidents.

  He gestured to her clothes sitting neatly on the bed and then turned his back and politely waited for her to get dressed. That, she didn’t need to be told twice.

  * * * *

  Alec turned his back hoping that she understood his meaning. What he really wanted to do frightened him almost as much as it would frighten her. He’d barely spent time with any female in the last ten years—actually no time in the last six living with John—but he found himself thinking of all the possibilities and comfort a man could find in a woman’s body.

  It was a ludicrous idea on several counts. She was confused and frightened, and even if she did seem receptive to his ideas, he’d never know if she gave herself to him in genuine affection or if she was just trying to appease her crazy abductors. If he was a betting man, he’d certainly pick the latter.

  Besides, it was a rather moot point. He loved John, had committed his life to him a long time ago, and there was no way he would ever betray the man’s trust. John needed him now more than ever. There was no way he would hurt him like that.

  Alec could hear Tara dressing quickly and thanked whatever deity may be watching over him. Now, if they could just find something to do for the next however many hours it took for John to return.

  “Alec,” she said quietly.

  He turned slowly just in case she wasn’t quite finished, relief pouring through him as he noticed the loose-fitting shirt and baggy jeans. He’d seen some of the clothes in her bag and by choosing these she sent a rather clear signal—she wasn’t dressing to impress, so, despite his unruly hormones, they were thinking the same way.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, using the only phrase he was completely sure of its meaning.

  She nodded, and he moved toward the small mountain of food that John had dragged in here with everything else. She walked over to stand beside him, and he felt very grateful that at least she wasn’t frightened of him like she was of John.

  His heart constricted just thinking of his lover. John had spent the last year watching over this woman, protecting her without her knowledge, probably learning everything about her. Alec knew John’s feelings for Tara were strong and extremely complex, but he also knew that John loved him and would never do anything to hurt him or Tara, even if that meant denying his own happiness.

  Alec wished a million times over that he hadn’t been so difficult to live with this past year. John had deserved so much more from him, but Alec had behaved like a spoiled brat denied his favorite toy. If he’d just bothered to learn the language, things would’ve been so much easier right now.

  Alec and Tara both grabbed some food and headed back to the bed, the only place to sit other than the floor. They sat in silence as they ate, Tara seemingly lost in her own thoughts. After several moments of fairly comfortable silence, a thought occurred to John, and he turned to Tara quickly.

  “Tara, Alec, English,” he said stiltedly.

  She looked at him like he was a puzzle to figure out. He searched for the word he wanted, but frustration crept through him as he realized he didn’t even know the word, so he had no way of remembering it. How many times had John asked him to learn English? Learn? It probably wasn’t the word he needed, but maybe Tara could decipher his meaning. He tried again.

  “Tara learn Alec English.”

  “Alec learn English? Tara teach Alec?” she said with a number of hand movements, touching her mouth and pointing between the two of them.

  “Teach,” he said slowly, nodding his head, and hoping that was the word he needed. She smiled softly and leaned over to grab his hand. She pointed to his hand, touching all the fingers and his palm.

  “Hand,” she said watching him intently. He dutifully repeated the word, flexing the appendage as he said it. She nodded and pointed to his fingers one at a time. “Finger, finger, finger, finger, thumb.”

  He smiled at the musical lilt to her voice as she taught him her language. Hopefully they could both get something out of this—English language skills for him and a distraction from the reality of their current situation for her.

  * * * *

  John drove as fast as he dared. It had seemed to take forever to track down what he needed, but he’d finally gathered the raw materials and tools he would need to build a portable dampening field. He still hadn’t figured a way to create a false signal, so he was hoping that if he kept the field small—only big enough to surround Tara—that it would attract less attention from their scans. A little blind spot was far more common than a big blind spot, and if Tara restricted her movements to a small area, she should be safe until he could create the false signal.

  He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He still had a lot of work to do, and he couldn’t afford to lose concentration. As much as he disliked the taste of coffee, he actually looked forward to its effects, and as soon as he got back to the house, he planned to brew a big pot.

  Lost in his thoughts, he almost didn’t notice the markings and registration plates of the car in front of him. Adrenaline and fear coursed through him when he realized the familiar vehicle was heading to the safe house.

  One eye on the road, John checked his pistol. He had no wish to kill anyone, but there was no way in hell he would let them take Tara.

  Chapter Seven

  Tara giggled at Alec’s attempt to pronounce “abdomen.” She supposed it was a rather peculiar word, and his comical attempt probably explained why children were taught belly and tummy rather than the medical terms.

  She shook her head and smiled as he tried again. “No, how about belly,” she said, patting her middle. They’d managed to work their way through most of the nouns in the room, but Tara had no idea how to teach John other words. She’d never learned a second language herself, so she really had no clue what to teach him next.


  Deep in thought, she yelped in surprise when the door flew open. Two police officers leveled their guns at Alec as they called her name. “Tara Wilson?” one of them inquired. Relief washed through her, but Alec pushed her behind him and stood to confront the two men.

  He started to speak rapidly in his own language, and she tried to move around him, tried to reassure him that it would be okay. These were the good guys, but maybe Alec’s loyalty to John made it difficult for him to understand that.

  She tried to explain to him, but he cut her off. “No, Tara. Not safe.”

  “Yes, I am,” she shouted loudly. She wriggled against his grip, but he held her tightly behind him. Desperate to be rescued, Tara wriggled against his hold, calling for the police officers’ assistance. Alec seemed like a great guy, but if he was going to support John in this terrifying situation, she sure as hell wanted away from him, too.

  “Release her,” one of the officers yelled.

  Terrified that they were going to shoot Alec, Tara called out, “He doesn’t speak English.”

  Alec continued to yell in his own language, and Tara cringed in fright. The situation was getting crazier by the moment, and she truly feared the only possible end would be when someone got shot.

  She kicked and screamed and made it near impossible for Alec to hold on to her. He squeezed her hands harder, pulling her arms around him so that she essentially hugged him around the waist.

  “Tara, not safe.” He grunted as she kicked him harder.

  “Let me go,” she screamed, her voice getting louder, her tone more hysterical.

  The sound of a single bullet was deafening in the small room, and Tara screamed as she felt part of Alec’s massive weight fall onto her. She twisted, finally managing to pull her arms free. He fell to his knees and grabbed for her ankle as she flew past, adrenaline making her movements exaggerated and bouncy.

  One of the officers grabbed her, and she clung to him gratefully as Alec called to her in his own language. He yelled at her, his words rapid, his tone desperate, pleading. The officer who held her laughed at the same time that his partner replied to Alec in what seemed to be his own language.

  Tara screamed as the gun fired twice more, and Alec fell to the ground, his blood staining the carpet in this small room. Tara struggled out of the officer’s hold, terror pulsing through her at their actions. Alec had no longer been a threat, but they’d executed him. Blindly, she ran, laughter loud behind her.

  She made it to the front door, but her hair was grabbed in a cruel fist, and she fell backwards, barely managing to get her hands underneath her so that she didn’t land flat on her back. The police officers face hovered in her dimming vision as he spewed malevolent words that sounded like Alec’s language.

  The man laughed sadistically as he grabbed the front of her shirt and ripped the material with a single pull. She screamed, thrashing frantically as his fingers hooked into the front of her bra.

  But his fingers went lax, and he fell forward his large body pressing painfully against her for a moment before he moved sideways. She barely had time to register the third person in the room before he moved passed her toward the doorway to the hidden room. She wanted to call his name, she wanted to throw her arms around him, and she wanted to apologize in every language known to man for not trusting him.

  John pointed a strange device and activated it just as the second man dressed like a police officer came through the doorway. The man’s smile faltered as he saw John, but his body crumpled a moment later.

  John merely stepped over the man’s prone form and entered the room where Alec lay dying, if he wasn’t already dead.

  “Tara,” John called urgently, “I need your help. Get in here!”

  Tara glanced at the front door as self-preservation warred with human decency. Alec had tried to protect her, and he’d been shot for his trouble. Like it or not, she was the reason the man lay dying. She hurried into the small room that only minutes ago had been her terrifying prison.

  John had moved Alec onto his back and currently held his hands pressed against the wounds in Alec’s chest. “Tara, grab the green duffle bag in the corner.”

  She moved immediately to do as he ordered. “Where’s the phone? I’ll call an ambulance,” she said as she placed the bag beside him and moved close to Alec’s head. Alec’s neck was at an awkward angle, but she knew little about medicine, so even though she wanted to make him more comfortable, she had no idea if she should. Held helpless by her lack of knowledge, she stood by as John zipped open the bag and pulled out more strange gadgets.

  “They used human weapons,” he said to her urgently. “I have to get the bullets out before I can close the wounds.”

  He broke open a small package and dragged on latex gloves. He unwrapped another item, a tool that looked like a strange version of needle-nose pliers, and then pressed his finger deep into one of the wounds and slid the pliers in beside it. Alec grunted from the pain, and Tara hoped that was a good sign.

  “Sorry, baby,” John said quickly. “This’ll just take a moment.”

  True to his word, John pulled the pliers out and dropped a misshaped piece of metal onto the ground. He repeated the action for a second bullet, but as he checked the third wound, Tara’s thought processes finally cleared enough for speech.

  “It went straight through,” she said urgently.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I was behind him.”

  * * * *

  John had already figured out by the blood spatter covering Tara’s face and hair that she’d been quite close when Alec had been shot, and even though it was a relief to know that she hadn’t been injured, his blood ran cold at just how close he’d gone to losing them both.

  He grabbed the small medical unit he’d been able to smuggle off the ship and started to seal the wounds in Alec’s shoulder, chest, and abdomen. The instrument would knit the flesh back together with a mixture of technology and accelerated healing, but he would need to put in a drain so that any blood that had poured into the abdominal cavity would be removed before it caused a problem. It would also give him a chance to monitor if the bowel had been punctured. He sure didn’t need that complication, but he had to take precautions. At least being shot by a bullet didn’t introduce the same contaminants as a knife wound could, so infection seemed unlikely.

  Alec’s eyes fluttered but didn’t open as John pushed the drain into place and sealed the flesh around it. “John,” he said through blood-spattered lips.

  “Yes, baby. You’re going to be fine. Just rest while I get things organized. We need to leave here before they send more agents. Tara, go have a quick shower. Dump the clothes. We don’t have time to wash them, and I don’t want to be on the road with a bagful of bloodstained garments.”

  She nodded her head, wide-eyed as his meaning apparently sank in. She glanced down at her arms, finally noticing the blood covering her upper body, and for a moment he thought she might give in to hysteria.

  “Baby,” he said to her in a soft yet commanding voice, “don’t look in the mirror. Just strip off, get into the shower, and wash everything. Okay?”

  She nodded her understanding, seeming to shake herself into action, but she moved stiffly, awkwardly. For a moment he worried that she’d been injured by the man who’d attacked her in the foyer, but she moved quickly to do as he asked.

  “John,” Alec whispered, his voice sounding raw and weak.

  “It’s okay, baby. As soon as Tara is finished, you and I are going to have a hot shower together.”

  Alec smiled just a little. “Figures,” he said. “We finally get a chance to shower together, and I’m too tired to take advantage of you.”

  John released the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. It would be a few weeks before Alec fully recovered from his injuries, but at least now John had a reasonable belief that his lover would be okay. He’d been very worried that Alec had lost too much blood, but at the moment it seemed he w
ould recover without needing a transfusion. John really hoped that didn’t change.

  Tara came out of the bathroom, a large towel wrapped around her, and headed straight to her bag. She rummaged for clothes as John lifted Alec into his arms and carried him into the bathroom. Carefully, he sat the injured man on the side of the tub and held him upright as he pulled Alec’s blood-soaked clothes away from his skin. Awkwardly, John pushed Alec’s jeans down his legs, but after several moments of frustration, he ripped the material and pulled the tattered denim away.

  Finally, he had Alec stripped, and he carefully lowered him onto the floor of the shower stall and then stepped back to tear off his own clothes. He angled the water away from Alec as he adjusted the temperature and then stepped in to quickly wash himself down. He then lathered shampoo into Alec’s hair as a brief pang of loss caught him unawares. When was the last time he and Alec had been this close? Not just physically but in an emotional sense. They spent most of the last year either fighting or ignoring each other. Hell, he hadn’t taken very good care of his lover in months, and he resolved to do much better in the future. He’d almost lost Alec today, and he was going to make sure that he didn’t waste another moment of their time together.

  John lifted Alec onto his feet and held him tightly as the water rinsed the shampoo from his hair and the blood off his back. A soft sigh escaped Alec’s lips, and John couldn’t help but press a kiss to his lover’s forehead.

  “Can I help with anything?” Tara asked through the slightly open door. He was relieved to hear her voice. A small part of him had expected her to take off while he was distracted. He’d be able to locate her fairly quickly, but it was far more convenient not to have to.

  “We’re almost done,” he said as he twisted off the taps. “Would you mind dressing Alec while I hold him steady?”

  He was probably asking a lot here, but even though she was traumatized and terrified, he still needed help to get Alec into his clothes without hurting him. Having Tara’s assistance would make it much easier.