Free Hold by Zannie Adams Page A

toss you out to be torn apart?”
    “What am I supposed to think?” All the suppressed frustration of constantly being on edge for the last month was finally boiling over. Her voice was hoarse with emotion 64
    Hold
    too fiery and thick to control. “That’s our arrangement. You protect me. I please you.
    We’ve never said it out loud but both of us know it. I’m sure as hell not going to dis please you.”
    His eyes cut into her like a blade. “You think I’m that kind of an animal?”
    “Of course, you’re that kind of animal. We all are. Look around you!” She made a sweeping gesture, taking in the Hold, the dirty chaos around them, the primitive way all the prisoners lived in this cage. “We eat and fuck and try to survive. That’s what we’ve been turned into. What the fuck do you expect me to do to?” Her voice faltered suddenly, overcome with a terror so deep it almost swallowed her. She might have killed herself here—by finally expressing what she thought. Lashing out at the one man who was capable of keeping her safe. She made a choking sound and looked at the ground. “I’m just trying to survive.”
    Cain was silent. But she could feel the shuddering tension in his hard, muscular body, even though he wasn’t touching her. She could also hear him breathe. Loud, fast, wet, thick sounds of inhalation and exhalation.
    She finally darted her eyes up to his face as she tried to keep her hands from trembling.
    She’d never seen Cain truly angry before.
    But he was angry now.
    He was smoldering with it. Shaking with it. Like a volcano about to erupt.
    And he was angry with her .
    Cain took a loud ragged breath and turned on his heel, away from her. He didn’t move. Instead he stood with his back to her and simmered, as if he were struggling to get himself under control.
    Riana stared at his broad back, the rippling muscles of his shoulders and arms, the way his t-shirt stuck to his damp skin, the distinct curve of his scalp.
    And her terror almost swallowed her up.
    65
    Zannie Adams
    What if, because of her own stupidity, she’d lost Cain for good?
    She could hardly breathe and she suddenly needed to get away. Back to the cell, where she felt safe.
    With a muffled sound, she turned back toward their cell and stumbled away. She wasn’t thinking rationally. It was pure instinct driving her to escape. Had she been thinking, she would have remembered that the cell was locked and she didn’t have a key.
    Despite her emotional state, she never once believed she was seriously in danger of being assaulted. Everyone knew she was Cain’s woman. And everyone was scared or intimidated by Cain. Just last week, when a man had tried to cop a quick feel during their morning run, Cain had beaten the man unconscious—in the presence of the entire Hold.
    Even apart from him, she still considered herself under his protection.
    Which is why she was completely unprepared when someone suddenly grabbed her and pulled her into a dim cell without bars.
    It happened so quickly she could barely process it. One moment she was stumbling toward her cell and the next she was being thrown violently against a wall.
    The impact hurt. It winded and jarred her so much she was too dizzy to react. Her assailant didn’t waste any time. He hauled her up roughly from the floor and then pushed her forward, forcing her to bend over the edge of a metal table. It was the same kind of table as the one in Cain’s cell—small and attached to the wall.
    The attack was so fast and brutal that Riana couldn’t even tell who the man was. A forceful hand closed around the back of her neck, holding her in place on the table with so strong a grip she could barely even breathe.
    She tried to scream but no sound came out. Either fear or the strangling grip on her neck made any noise impossible. She tried to struggle but she was helpless in this position, folded and pinned over the edge of the table.
    66
    Hold
    Her consciousness glazed over in a blur of