Siren Unleashed Read online

  Siren Unleashed

  Texas Sirens, Book 7

  Lexi Blake

  writing as

  Sophie Oak

  Siren Unleashed

  Texas Sirens Book 7

  Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Copyright 2018 DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Edited by Chloe Vale

  ISBN: 978-1-942297-15-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Enchanted by Lexi Blake

  Lost in You by Lexi Blake

  About Lexi Blake

  Other Books by Lexi Blake

  Dedication

  In the end this book is about being brave enough to care about someone. Too often in our lives we give up because friendship seems like such a dangerous prospect, but we lose so many good voices when we allow the negative ones to win.

  Dedication 2019

  I’ve met a few people over the years who’ve stuck with me. This book is for my author and publishing friends who even years later are standing by.

  To Liz

  To Jillian

  To Kori and Sara

  To my Dolls

  To Mari and Lila

  To Shelley

  To Lee

  To Rebecca

  Thank you for the sisterhood I’ve found.

  Prologue

  Houston, TX

  Nat groaned as the pain flared and wondered why her head was so heavy. It felt like it weighed twenty pounds.

  “Shhh. Keep it down.” A harsh voice bit through the darkness.

  Who the hell was talking? She didn’t recognize the voice.

  Damn it. She had to open her eyes. Why did it feel like she had weights drawing the lids down? Party. She remembered a party. Right? No. Not really a party. She’d been at the club. Haven. She liked Haven. It was where she’d met Tony. She wasn’t madly in love with Tony, but they had fun.

  Until he’d wanted her to sign a contract and take a collar. Why did guys want to move so fast?

  And why the fuck was her head swimming?

  How much had she had to drink? She never drank more than two when she played. One vodka tonic before. One after. It was her night to indulge and unwind, but she wouldn’t let herself go crazy. She’d had her one drink before. Tony had gotten it for her. What had come after that?

  She forced her eyes open. She blinked once and then again, not quite understanding what was happening. It was still so damn dark. Where the hell was she? Through the haze of headache and nausea, she thought back to the last moment she could remember.

  Tony had been standing over her, smiling down, but it had been such a weird smile. He’d placed her in handcuffs. That hadn’t been a surprise. It had been part of their negotiated scene, but he hadn’t said the words she would have thought he would say. He’d talked about someone.

  Master Hawk.

  She didn’t like Master Hawk. He was a douchebag pretender sadist who didn’t give anything back. And his two subs were sheep.

  Nat was a sub, but she wasn’t a sheep. She’d never signed a full contract. Doubted she ever would. She enjoyed submitting for play and to relax. Otherwise, she kind of wanted to punch any dude who told her what to do, but after the day was done, yeah, it was a way to unwind.

  Why couldn’t Tony see that?

  “Keep quiet. Maybe he won’t come in.”

  Who the fuck kept talking?

  “So who won’t come in? Someone turn the fucking light on.” Was this some weird sort of sensory deprivation scene?

  “Shut up. Do you want to get your ass whipped? If you don’t tone it down, you’re going to get all of us in trouble.” The words sounded hissed through angry lips.

  She tried to stretch, but her hands met cold metal bars.

  Bars? Panic started to thrum through her system.

  “Please try to be nice,” a new voice said. “She’s new here. She doesn’t know the rules yet.”

  She recognized that voice. What was her name? Kat? She’d seen her around the club. The kind of sub that made Nat’s skin crawl. She would call herself “i,” never thinking to capitalize because she wasn’t worthy of a capital letter. Kitty? She was with Master Hawk, a pale shadow of an actual woman. She was pretty in a particularly bland way since she never showed an emotion and referred to herself in the third person.

  She was a true slave. Nat didn’t want to have anything to do with that. The whole term “slave” was what had forced her hand with Tony. The minute he’d called her slave instead of sub, she’d known the relationship was just about over.

  She’d just wanted some fun, a little stress relief. Why had he tried to force her to be a slave?

  “Where am I?” This time she kept her voice low. She wanted to shout and scream and rattle the fucking cage, but she needed to assess the situation first.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to shut the fuck up?”

  Nat really didn’t like that nasally voice. What was Hawk’s other slave called? She barely registered in Nat’s brain except that the slightly older woman seemed to shoot daggers the younger one’s way every time she thought no one was looking.

  The softer voice responded, and a warm hand covered her shoulder. “You’re here. And that’s all that matters.”

  Here? “Where is here?”

  Miss Nose Breather snorted. “Welcome to Hell. Try not to get the rest of us killed.”

  Killed? Nat forced herself to take a long, deep breath. Her head was pounding. She was in the dark. The last thing she could remember was Tony grinning down at her as he held her hand out toward another man. He’d had to hold it because she hadn’t had any strength to hold it herself.

  Oh, god, she’d been drugged. And now she was in a dark, metally place. A cage. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She was in a cage.

  “Where am I?” She reached out and grabbed the bars of the cage and pulled. She tried to stand, but her head met hard metal.

  “Shhh. It’s our nighttime cage. It’s sleepy time.” Kitten. Her name was Kitten.

  “I want out.” She couldn’t be stuck in a cage. She had to work. She had a full client list tomorrow. Her rent was due, and if she didn’t get that check to Lars, he really would pack her shit up and toss it out in the garbage bin.

  She couldn’t be stuck in a cage.

  Nasally Whine started in again. “There’s no way out. So shut the fuck up or one of us is going to get killed. Probably me. It’s always fucking me. He’s going to kill me now that he has a younger slave.”

  A choked sob cut through the silence. The older slave was crying.

  The door opened, and Kitten’s hand slid over Nat’s. “Don’t worry. The pain won’t last forever.”

  The cage opened and Nat was pulled out.

  The other girl was right.

  This was Hell.

  Chapter One

  Four years later

  Willow Fork, TX

  Natalie Buchanan hated dead bodies, but they just kept turning up. Although when she thought about it, two didn’t seem like such a big number, unless one was talking about corpses. The good news was she hadn’t been the direct cause of this one.

  “How long until the ambulance is here?” Nat asked. The room she spent so much time in now seemed way too small. She needed to get out, but she couldn’t force herself to move. If she moved, even an inch, she might run, and that would be a mistake. She was a professional. She could handle this.

  Cody Linwood sighed, looking down at the body. “It might be a while. The hospital told me there was a bad traffic accident out on the highway, and living bodies take precedence over corpses.” He turned his green eyes toward her. “Are you all right?”

  She was definitely not all right. Her hands were shaking, her gut in complete turmoil. It was surreal, and more than once in the last twenty minutes, she tried to wake herself up.

  Stan Kirkman lay on her massage table, his eyes wide open and glassy, nothing left to animate his big body. He’d been the self-proclaimed low-priced Furniture King of East Texas, his commerci
als running on local stations late at night. He’d been coming to her once a week since the Willow Fork Tranquility Spa had opened.

  Why, oh why did he have to have a heart attack now? She wasn’t at all surprised that the man had up and died. He looked perfectly fit, but he talked about food a lot and she worried about how much bacon was in the dude’s diet.

  “I called the cops, too. It’s procedure. Melissa is in the lobby, keeping everyone out.” Melissa was the receptionist. She was also a terrible gossip. She would be on the phone the whole time she watched the door, letting everyone know what had happened. Cody took her hand. “Gaby’s on her way. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  She felt her eyes widen. “No. Why?”

  Cody was the second-in-command to Gabrielle Reed, who ran the whole resort that the spa was attached to. One of his main jobs was handling employee relations. He was a good supervisor. Nat was beginning to wonder if he would still be her supervisor in a few minutes. He was looking at her with deep sympathy in his eyes.

  Could they fire her for this?

  “Cody, when I left him, he was perfectly fine. I didn’t do anything unusual. It was exactly the same massage I’ve been giving him since he started coming here. Deep tissue. He liked it a little rough.” Shit. That sounded bad.

  His lips turned down. “Sweetie, I can smell the sex in this room.”

  Nat took a deep whiff and sure enough, there it was. “Eww. Damn it. I should have known he wasn’t taking a freaking nap.” She strode out the door and into the tiny hallway. Lit with serene lights, one whole wall was a rock waterfall. Soft, melodic music played. None of it soothed her right now. She forced oxygen into her lungs.

  Cody followed her out. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Stan pays for double the time, but the last hour, I lock him in and let him sleep. He claims it’s the only way he can relax.” Claimed. She had to use the past tense because he was dead. Stan could relax forever now. “He was alive when I left him. I came to wake him up and he was like this.”

  He’d been lying there, his eyes open and vacant. She’d managed to not scream.

  “Nat, who saw you in the last hour?”

  Who saw her? Holy crap. Was he asking for an alibi? “He had a heart attack. I didn’t magically give him a heart attack.”

  “I’m not saying you did, and we can’t know he had a heart attack. I am saying that a prominent member of this deeply closed-minded community is lying dead on your table, and he seems to have had some form of sex before he died. I’m worried about you.”

  Gaby Reed rounded the corner, out of breath and slightly disheveled. Gaby was in the latter half of her thirties, a pretty woman with light brown hair and gray-green eyes. Those intelligent eyes were wide as she stopped. “What the hell is going on? I got a 911 text to come here. Nat, are you okay?”

  “We’ve had a problem with Kirkman. Nat found him like that when she came back to check on him. He passed away.” Cody pointed to room number three. Gaby walked in, her shoulders squared like she was going into battle.

  “So you think the people around here are going to think I was doing Stan the Furniture Man?” She hated those commercials. They were loud, so much louder than the rest of the shows on at three in the morning. Sadly, she watched TV at three in the morning because she didn’t sleep much. She cringed every time Stan started yelling about low prices, but the man had tipped well.

  And now that she thought about it, he did have like five kids. Maybe this was the only place he could jerk off. But she shouldn’t be punished for it.

  Cody sighed. “You’re practically a nun, sweetie. I know that. I also know you’re lonely. Loneliness can cause even smart people to do stupid things.”

  Her skin crawled at the thought of climbing on the table with Stan, though Cody was right about the lonely part. “I didn’t sleep with Stan.”

  Leaning against the non-watery wall, Cody sighed. “Okay. But you need to understand that there will be rumors. This town runs on them. Of course, I don’t know that it will affect you. It’s not like you spend a ton of time in town.”

  She preferred the resort and her apartment here. She had nice strong locks on her doors. She’d installed them herself, not trusting the ones the resort had installed.

  She didn’t go to bars. Ever. She didn’t hang out with friends. She took the occasional babysitting job out at the Barnes-Fleetwood ranch, but that was the extent of her social life. She spent her free time with a seven-year-old and an overly possessive four-year-old. She did her job and she went home.

  What the hell would she do if she got fired?

  She would have to move. She would have to find another job. An apartment. Probably a way less safe place. Tears filled her eyes. She didn’t want to move. She was finally starting to find some normalcy.

  Pressure started to build, old needs rising like a snake uncoiling. God. She didn’t want to go there again. She’d been so good, so calm for months. She couldn’t go back to that dark place.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Cody gave her a hug. This, too, was something she’d finally gotten used to again. Touching. Affection. It was easy to take it from Cody. He was gay and happily settled down with a former hockey player and the beautiful little girl they’d adopted. She could handle Cody touching her.

  But lately she’d been wondering if she couldn’t handle an actual straight guy touching her, too.

  It certainly wouldn’t have been Stan.

  Gaby walked back out, her face a grim mask. She pocketed her phone. “The police are on their way up. I called Cal, too. He’ll be here in a minute. He had to wait for Nita to come watch the kids.”

  Callum Reed was Gaby’s husband and a regular in the dungeon. He was also a lawyer. When she’d started the day, she’d never imagined she would need Cal’s professional services, but here she was.

  “Tell me everything,” Gaby ordered, though her voice was soft and sympathetic.

  Nat went over the last two hours again. She had the feeling she would be telling this completely boring—except for the dead body—story over and over again all day long. When she finished, Gaby nodded.

  “I’ll need you to pull his file and any notes you have on him. I’ll call the business office. We have to inform the insurance carrier.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.” Chaos. It was what she dreaded. Nat’s deepest fear was being out of control again. She was going to lose her job, and she couldn’t think of a way to fix it.

  “I have to tell them,” Gaby explained. “Even if he had a heart attack, we’re probably looking at some sort of lawsuit. People love to sue hotels and spas. Calm down. We’ve got great insurance.”

  Nat forced herself to chill. She wasn’t thinking straight. Panic bubbled under her surface, threatening to take over. She’d been a massage therapist for years. She’d always carried insurance because Gaby was right. Clients liked to sue. It was the cost of doing business. Would she be placed on leave while they investigated?

  “The good news is we don’t have a long list of clients this afternoon. Only you and Gretchen are on the schedule,” Gaby said. “I’ve had Melissa cancel the rest of the appointments. We can reopen tomorrow. And I’ve got a call in to Julian Lodge.”

  There was a long sigh. “You don’t have to call that guy, do you?” A paunchy, middle-aged man strode into the hall. He was dressed in a khaki uniform and looked completely incongruous given the elegant, Asian lines of the spa. He stared at the waterfall wall. “What the hell is this place?”

  “It’s a spa, Sheriff,” Gaby replied. “It’s supposed to be soothing.”

  He frowned. “I guess. Where’s the stiff? And seriously, we don’t need to call in that Lodge guy. Did this pretty thing here kill the man?”

  “No. I didn’t touch him. Well, I touched him. I massaged him. Not like in some weird, kinky way. In a therapeutic way. His traps are always like solid rock. I swear I work his shoulders for most of the time we’re in there.” She sounded like an idiot. She was babbling on about muscles and pressure points and the sheriff looked more and more confused.