Wrong Way Home - Taken (Criminal Delights 1)

He only moved, following a strong shove to his back. Panic was an ice-cold presence inside him, and he glanced at Taron, feeling his teeth clatter. “Wait. You will need help with that wound, right? I’m a doctor.”

Taron’s lips curled, but he didn’t look away, calculating. It seemed like progress until Taron shoved at Colin’s back, pointing at the steep concrete stairs leading under the floor.

Swallowing air, Colin wouldn’t let his gaze stray from Taron, terrified that if he went a step farther, no one would ever see him again. “Please, my parents need me.”

But Taron was merciless. He pushed Colin hard enough to cause a fall, but instead of letting him break his neck, he grabbed Colin by the back of the collar and wordlessly urged him to descend on his own.

Any choices Colin might have had earlier were now gone, and he moved down the stairs, wary of the threat of falling while in bondage. The stairs were narrow and the steps lacking the width to accommodate the entire length of his feet, but in the end he entered a sparsely lit interior containing shelving units full of dried goods, jams, cans, and even a collection of magazines stacked by a worn armchair.

And a cage.

A cage large enough to accommodate a crouching man.

Taron urged Colin on with a shove. Had he lived here on his own long enough to forget how to communicate with other human beings?

Colin licked his lips and stumbled toward the seat rather than the cage. Who the fuck kept something like this in their house? But before his mind could produce a scenario in which something like this made any sense, his gaze swiped over a magazines stacked in the chair, and he found himself as close to fainting as when he’d seen a cadaver for the first time.

Two men faced one another in the photo, fondling each other’s cocks while glancing at the viewer. Gay porn.

Gay porn.

Cage.

Dead guy in the woods.

He was in the hands of a serial predator!

When he turned to face Taron, the man let out a snarl worthy of a wolf and shoved Colin at the open cage. Colin couldn’t even blink anymore, too afraid to lose Taron from his sight for even a second.

No. This wouldn’t be his fate! He did not waste his life studying only to die before he got to live!

He charged at Taron with his mind blank, but it was like hitting a brick wall with no weaknesses, despite a crack in the plaster. Taron hauled Colin off the floor, where he’d slid to following the collision, and hurled him into the cage. Colin’s head hit one of the bars, and the tremor it caused made him bite his tongue. The tang of blood filled his mouth when he looked at the metal ceiling of his prison, but with Taron kicking at him, there was no chance at winning this fight. As soon as all of Colin was inside, the door shut, and the clunk of a large padlock closing might as well have been a death sentence.

Taron gasped for air and slid down the wall, holding his side around where the knife stuck out of it. At least seeing him in pain gave Colin a degree of satisfaction.

They stared at one another through the thick bars in complete silence.

Chapter Three

Taron couldn’t believe this shit.

There was a boy in his bunker. Nothing about tonight had gone according to plan. What he’d wanted was a quiet evening—check the traps around the perimeter of his property and chop some wood, since even in late spring, the nights were cool.

Instead, he found himself with a dead body, two stolen cars, a knife in his flesh, and a boy locked up in his bunker.

Fuck.

The boy crawled farther inside the cage before curling his legs to his chest. He wasn’t a teen—his narrow, angular features were too sharp for a man under twenty, but the huge eyes staring Taron’s way as if he were a grizzly bear seemed deceptively innocent.

His city-boy looks wouldn’t fool Taron again.

They stared at each other while Taron took his time to calm down after the unexpected attack. Little fucker claimed to be a doctor. Like hell. It was yet another lie to try to stab the knife deeper. Taron should lock the bunker so that if he bled out the boy would just starve to death for what he’d done.

Then again, wouldn’t Taron have done the same in his place? It wasn’t the guy’s fault that he’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, Taron had no patience for intruders.

Even if they claimed they were sorry.

If he hadn’t acknowledged his mistake, the boy would had been dead already, but Taron’s mom had taught him to respect an apology.

The boy took a shaky breath, his body becoming tenser, as if he were hesitating, but then he stretched and kneeled inside the cage. He wore the kind of tight jeans that would constrict his movements and sneakers that would soak through in the woods within seconds. When he crawled that bit forward, like a dog mistrusting its new owner, the light caught the color of the soft curls on his head. They were a dusky gold, just a few shades lighter than the eyes below. Pretty, even if the whole face was intriguing rather than handsome in the most obvious sense.