Dirk: A Stepbrother Romance(11)
She was reaching her limit. She and Pete had been together for almost a year, and while it had started out really well, it had rapidly declined into something rather sinister. Pete was a control freak. He loved making her feel inferior, and even though she was a strong woman who could see right through him, there were times when she was afraid of what he was capable of. She could hear him out in the hallway, laughing and joking with the other male partners. She was the only female partner at the firm and was regularly left out, and although she was used to it, she was still struggling to accept it. Deep down she knew it was time to move on.
Her phone rang and made her jump. “Hello?” she answered.
“Hi, Kristin,” her PA Sally said from the other end. “Did you finish with the paperwork for the Green Case?”
“Just give me five more minutes and I’ll bring it out to you,” she said with a sigh. She hated to admit it, but her work really was starting to suffer. She could never seem to keep her mind on the job.
She looked down and scanned the explosion of files on the desk in front of her and wanted to scream. She rubbed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingers.
“I need to get out of here,” she whispered.
She got to her feet and looked out across the skyline. It was almost five and the sun looked like it was already on its way down, which was impossible for summer, but she felt it all the same.
“I guess it’s always night somewhere,” she said to herself.
Her telephone rang again and she jumped. She turned around and grabbed the receiver. “Just five more minutes, Sally,” she snapped.
“No,” Sally said quietly, clearly taken aback by her boss’s tone. “It’s a call from the police department. They have someone in custody who wants to talk to you.”
“What?” she said rubbing her temples again. “Can’t it wait? We have a duty lawyer who could deal with that.”
“They asked for you specifically,” she said nervously. “The cop said his name was Dan Lockhart.”
Kristin paused for a moment, her heart rising into her throat at the sound of the name… A name she hadn’t heard for years.
“Did you say Dan Lockhart?” she repeated as she sat back down at her desk.
“That’s what the cop told me, yeah,” Sally confirmed.
“Okay,” Kristin said quietly, “Put him on.”
Click here to continue this compelling short story, and I just want to thank you for reading Leela’s story!
Preview of Taken by Alien Lords
If you enjoyed this story, here is a sample from another author in my circle. It is a slightly darker toned romance abduction story that I hope you enjoy:
The light came back. But this time it wasn’t the dull shine of the garbage truck out in the street. It was bright blue and green. Piercing and vivid inside her bedroom, shining down from the ceiling.
She rubbed her eyes as she looked up at it, convinced she was dreaming. None of it could really be happening. She was asleep. Simple as that. She looked up at the light and at how it twisted and turned above her. It made patterns on the wall and splintered, turning her room into a maze of stars.
Victoria didn’t dare breathe. Her hands were ice cold and fixed rigidly in front of her, gripping the sheets.
“Who’s there?” she whispered.
Was she awake? Could this all be real?
She felt weightless, as if suddenly the gravity had disappeared from around her. She was still in bed, but she felt herself move an inch higher, as if she were drifting towards the ceiling.
“No,” she said aloud, “No!”
She grabbed onto her pillow and tried to turn herself onto her stomach so she didn’t have to look at the light and could grasp onto the bedframe. She clamped her eyes shut, but she just couldn’t move her body. She felt paralyzed.
Within seconds she couldn’t even keep her eyes closed. They wanted to be open. They needed to see what was happening. Even though she was trying with every fiber of her being to close them and shut it all out, they defied her and stayed wide open and alert. She was glaring at the ceiling and the shards of light. Strobes of it shone down around her and a hole slowly appeared as if the ceiling was cracking away above her. But instead of the upstairs apartment coming into view, it was a clear sky with a trillion stars.
I’m dreaming, she thought. Wake up, Victoria, wake up.
Her skin prickled with cold and she felt smooth, wet hands gliding over her. She screamed and tried to kick out, but she couldn’t move. The weightlessness became more pronounced and before she had chance to process what was happening, she was drifting up towards the hole in the ceiling, up through the light. She could feel the tingle of fingers running all up her back and combing through her hair. She screamed but no sound came out. She was tearing her throat into pieces but the air around her remained silent. There was no sound anywhere. She had never heard a silence like it, and as she drifted upward, the ice suddenly turned to heat. She was drifting out of consciousness. It was if she was lying on the beach under the blazing sun and her skin felt dewy and glistening. It was beautiful. She felt euphoric. She was warmed inside and out and the sensation was so intense and calming that she felt her eyes finally close as she crossed over into a blissful sleep.
The heat rumbled through her and kept her calm. She was still aware of it as she slept and the silence turned slowly to the familiar sounds of the birds singing in the morning sun. When she woke, she was still in her room. She had been dreaming but it had felt so real. She breathed out a sigh of relief and for the first time in days felt calm and relaxed as she sat up in bed and woke softly. It would have been a perfect morning--the apartment was warm and the sun shone brightly through the the blinds--but suddenly something struck her like a ton of bricks. She looked down at her wrists and they were bound to the bedframe with a silver wire that made them impossible to move, and she quickly realized her ankles were the same. As she looked up, the door to her bedroom seemed to melt in front of her, as did the rest of the room around her. As the features of wallpaper and photo frames slipped into a sludge on the ground before evaporating entirely, she was aware of someone else in the room with her. It was the man from the bar. The tall, slender man with the black eyes and the white blonde hair. He was standing in front of her and watching. All behind him a white, empty room was coming into view, and she realized that she was in it, tethered to a white table.