He crouched down next to her, cupped her chin in his hand, and leaned in. It was the moment she had been waiting for. He felt a motion, and then a sensation like a hard punch to his thigh.
She was gone, a flash of panicked flesh flying up the stairs which wound around the hole. There were three hundred stairs. He counted them every day. She had no chance of reaching the top or finding freedom before the upper vault door closed. But she tried anyway. He could feel blood oozing gently from his thigh as her rasping gasped breaths echoed up and down the hole.
“Well played," he murmured to himself even as he pressed the button on his phone which sealed the vault doors, sealing them both inside the darkness for a brief second, the light of the night sky blocked out as they were both cast into obsidian shadows. The press of a second button flooded the hole with light from the top to the bottom. It was a harsh light, one which illuminated every crevice of the hole. He used it to examine his wound. Glass. She must have found some old glass somewhere, perhaps buried in the dirt floor. She’d fashioned a little handle on it with a scrap of fabric cut from the back of her top.
It was very inventive. Indigo was massively impressed. Every moment he’d spent with this girl had further convinced him that she was something special. People usually described those like her as survivors. But she was more than a mere survivor. She was a little predator in her own right. She just didn’t know it yet.
“Let me go!” Daisy screamed from halfway up the wall, clinging to steps which would never lead to salvation.
“No.”
“Then I’ll kill you!” She screamed the threat in spite of the fact that her very actions belied her words. She hadn’t tried to kill him. She’d just tried to wound him.
“You won’t kill me, silly girl.”
He was impressed by her bravery. She had played him. She had allowed him to toy with her, arched herself to his fingers and asked wide-eyed questions. She had played the perfectly adoring captive with Stockholm syndrome pre-installed. But she had been scheming, alone in the dark. Those innocent eyes must hide a myriad of plans and pains.
Indigo had never felt so intensely attracted to anyone the way he now felt attracted to her. She'd lied, with every inch of her being. She had understood his plan, and his motives. She had marked him as an enemy worthy of destruction — and she had tried her best to carry out the action that conclusion warranted. In time, she would be quite an extraordinary agent. For now, she was a frightened, wayward brat who had earned herself a hell of a punishment.
Chasing her was painful. Every step felt like the glass was working itself deeper into his body, but the expression of horror on her features when she realized that wounding him had only made him even more dangerous was worth it.
One. Step. At. A. Time.
He worked toward his prey. She was trapped on the narrow staircase. There was no going up, and down, well, he was down there. So she held fast to the bars, her knuckles white, her breathing coming in shorter, sharper gasps the closer he got.
“No!”
She cried out as he reached her from below, and dragged her toward him, his fingers clenched around her slim calf, then thigh, then her waist. He first tipped her out over oblivion, then caught her over his shoulder.
Her shrieks echoed up and down the hole, surrounding the pair of them in a great mist of fear as he carried her back down toward rock bottom.
“No! Please!”
“If only you hadn’t stabbed me, pretty one,” he growled. “I would be at less risk of dropping you.”
“It’s not me you have a problem with! I haven’t even met the man you’re angry at!”
These were all good and valid reasons for him to let her go. But good and valid had no play down here in Indigo’s hole.
He dropped her down onto the mattress at the base of it all, the padded mass which had become her home and would now become the scene of her final conquest.
He’d forgotten his plans. He’d forgotten everything besides the spark of lust which drew him to her inexorably, desire flooding his senses, mind, and memory until there was nothing but the need to claim.
She lay beneath him, legs already parted. He’d allowed her to remain clothed, thinking that it would make her trust him more, and show her that he did not mean her too much in the way of harm. But it hadn’t. And now he wanted her bare. He wanted to see all of her. Every fucking inch of her. He wanted her to be his completely.