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“Who are you talking about?” She had a feeling that she knew the answer.
“I was going to let that be a surprise,” he managed a strained smile.
“Oh, puh-lease.” She was too tired for games.
“We’re finished with the debriefing, Ms. Ryan, so I really just wanted to give you this,” he handed her a package. “Your passport and a ticket home, some cash. Should be everything you need until you’re stateside. I also send along a grateful thanks from your superiors; your service to the company has been exemplary.”
She took the envelope, her hand shaking for god knows what reason, since this was what she’d been waiting for since her rescue. “Thank you…I guess,” she said with some hesitation. She looked him in the eye.
“What you do from now on is up to you, but I’d suggest a quick trip back to the States.”
“I want nothing more than that.”
“So, I’ll send up your visitor.”
Before she could wring the visitor’s name from Pierre’s tight lips, he’d disappeared into the nearby elevator.
Petit Maison was a small French Hotel in Vienna, three floors and Shelby’s room was on the second floor. It would only take a few steps before the visitor was at her door, and yet, by the time she heard the knock, her anxiety had already risen. When she opened the door she was still wearing the bathrobe since she hadn’t had time to change. Her wavy hair was pleasantly disheveled, and she hadn’t a lick of make-up on her face. Yet despite her apparent sleepy state, she looked terribly sexy to her visitor in such a pleasing state of disarray.
One look at the man and her eyes opened wide with shock.
“Ohmygod!” The breath was practically knocked from her body.
Before her stood her handsome Padraig – not the man she expected.
“Padraig! Oh, my god!” With her body suddenly functioning again, she jumped into his arms, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Aye, lass, you look like the prettiest rose on the vine.”
Then at last, the reality of the man, the muscles, the brawn, the Irish in his voice, and her head began to clear. She finally pulled back enough to see his strong and placid face. Nothing had changed about that. She set her feet back to the floor and pulled him inside the room, closing the door behind them.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“What? That you were missing…? Christine called me when you didn’t arrive in Vienna. I contacted the State department…the last few weeks have been a nightmare…”
“Oh, my, how you must have worried!”
“Yes. Worried like I have never been in my life.”
“But how did you get to Vienna?”
He laughed. “A plane. I hardly had the wings to fly.”
“But, I thought you didn’t have any…you know…money…” she was reluctant to even mention this.
“I borrowed the fare from a friend, no worry, my girl. You think when you were missin’, when we thought you were dead that I’d miss the chance to see you are alive an’ well?”
“You have no idea?” she shook her head.
“You, doan need to say a word, Shelby. I’m just here to hold you.”
That was what he did for a good long while – simply hold her in his arms until it was clear to her that there was no going back to the brothel, or Jessup or the cruelty of her last months’ captivity.
***
Why did it disturb her that Padraig was there to take her home? Perhaps because there was so little she wanted to tell him about her incarceration. She could sense how much the kind of cruelty she suffered would hurt him. What would he think if she told him she’d fucked dozens of men in a whorehouse, or was brutally whipped, or had been the center of vicious gang rapes? What would an Irish Catholic boy think of that? Worse, what would an Irish Catholic boy think of her response to the work of sadists? Could he even fathom that, being a natural masochist – something of which he was unaware – that she could walk away relatively unscathed by the rough treatment?
No, unscathed was not exactly the word to describe her response to her ordeal. She’d been brutally abused, her body marked; her pussy had seen too many cocks, and what’s to say those cocks were clean and she wasn’t taking home some sexual disease? The doctors seemed to think that she was fine. But what about her soul? Had they been able to inspect that, would they have seen the wounds there? So what if she’d been an unknowing party to the take down of a massive slave and porn ring. Small comfort that was, when the tight hold on her psyche that kept her emotions in check finally began to give way. The real truth of her mortal fright surfaced, disturbing any sense of peace she’d managed to cling to. Even as bad as it was with the man who’d trained her at nineteen to be a submissive sex slave, she’d never felt so unsafe and insane as she had been in Col. Jessup’s detention facility. She had been condemned by her own desires at the same time she was saved by them.
