Taken by the Enemy Read online

  Taken by the Enemy

  By

  Jennifer Bene

  ©2016 by Blushing Books® and Jennifer Bene

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Bene, Jennifer

  Taken by the Enemy

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-520-6

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Table of Contents:

  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

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Ebook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  About Blushing Books

  Chapter One

  The decision was made.

  It was practically done – but before she could slip out the window, that bright smile caught her eye and guilt twisted in her gut like a knife. With a sigh, Emeline eased back from the windowsill and took the few, short steps to her desk. Bright blue eyes. Always so stunning, always the talk of every party. Nothing like Emmie’s own hazel eyes that couldn’t bother themselves enough to be interesting. The dark hair in the photograph shined, her own barely behaved. There was the beautiful girl in the photograph, and above it in the mirror… the runner-up, the second thought.

  She had been a poor replacement anyway.

  Lifting the frame in shaking hands, her thumb traced the face for the last time. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and the splash of a tear across the glass shook her from her trance.

  Apologies get you nowhere, action takes you everywhere.

  Emmie brushed the tears from her cheeks and put the picture back down, but the idea of losing it was suddenly intolerable. She could leave everything, she was leaving everything, but this piece she would keep. In a clumsy rush, she flipped the frame over and tore the back off, trying her best to stifle the harsh breaths pistoning inside her chest before she second-guessed herself for the millionth time. She folded the picture over once and shoved it into the back of her pants, and then she was back at the window.

  This time she didn’t look back. She couldn’t. There was no point.

  Turning to her stomach, Emmie slid out of the window slowly until she had the frame under her fingers and her feet sought purchase on the bricks below it. How many times had she done this with effortless confidence in earlier years? Where was that sense of invulnerability when she needed it more than ever? Rolling her eyes at her own reticence, she took a deep breath – and let go.

  The short drop felt much longer than she remembered, and her heart leapt into her throat before her shoes slammed into the small awning above the door on the ground floor. Her landing on the narrow space was messy, and she had to stifle a scream when the weight of her backpack almost sent her tumbling backwards onto the pavestones. Emmie threw her body forward and she pressed herself against the house that had been her home for twenty years. Raising her eyes, she saw the soft gray bricks extending up another two floors, past the room that had been hers since she was a toddler, and above that? Only sky. Dark, inky night speckled with a thousand stars, smudged with random clouds that floated silently across it. Free.

  Free like she was about to be.

  She swallowed and sat down on the awning, pushing off to land with a huff of breath on the stones below. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky, and it left plenty of shadows on the property as she raced towards the wall. An orange tree had always been the easiest route over, and it still was. It was only a matter of moments before she was walking with a forced calm through the narrow streets.

  She had a fifteen-minute window. Fifteen minutes for a chance at a real life.

  Even though it was important for her not to look hurried, to not draw attention, she picked up the pace. She kept her head down, let her hair fall into her face as she adjusted the pack on her back, and she wal
ked steadily to the outer walls of the city. It was shocking when she found the guard post empty. Some part of her had expected her weeks of reconnaissance to fail her at the last minute, to prevent her escape, but there it was – empty.

  The skin across her shoulders prickled with the urge to turn and look back even though she knew the house wouldn’t be visible. She was too far from that area of the city, just like she’d planned, but the need to turn around still rushed her. Instead, she climbed the ladder to the tower, hand over hand, her fingers wrapping around the cool metal until the wind whipped her hair as she reached the top. Removing the rope ladder from the tower’s emergency kit was too easy, as was attaching it to the wall and climbing down. No alarms, no shouts, no one coming to stop her at the last possible moment. When her foot touched the soft earth, a voice inside begged her to climb back up, to rush across the city, to sneak back into bed before dawn – but she had decided.

  The decision was made.

  And when Emeline Anne Daniau turned around to see the forest laid out before her like some fairy tale landscape, there were no more questions inside her. The forest was lovely, dark, and deep – and she had promises to break.

  Chapter Two

  For another night Emmie dreamed of empty hallways, of someone calling her name in the darkness, too far away to find – but still she hurried around more corners, seeking them, shouting apologies that remained unheard.

  Then something jerked her from her fitful sleep and she groaned inwardly as she stretched stiff muscles against the hard ground. She missed her soft bed, her smooth sheets – she missed baths. The grunting, snuffling sound that had woken her came again, closer, along with the crunching of leaves and the shifting of a bush. Instinct made her sit up fast as her heart started to pound. As soon as her eyes focused in the early dawn light, she had to clap her hand across her mouth to prevent the scream from escaping, barely succeeding in muffling it into a whimper of sheer panic.

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  Barely ten feet away from where she lay was a massive boar, covered in thick, bristly hair. It was rooting around in the ground beneath a bush, its snout pressed to the dirt with long, yellow tusks sticking up on either side. Tusks perfect for killing humans stupid enough to be this close to it. Slipping out from under her blanket, she tried to move silently backward, but her hand landed on a twig and it snapped – and the boar’s snuffling ceased. Dark, shining eyes lifted and a preternatural fear she had never felt before poured like ice down her spine.

  I’m going to die.

  The thought crystallized somewhere inside her, but instead of freezing her in place, it was like a giant warning bell – and she ran.

  As branches whipped her face and arms, she ran faster than she ever had before, and over the roar of her own breath in her ears she could hear the stampeding rush of hooves crushing the leaves into the forest floor as the beast chased her. She tripped and almost fell, but caught herself against a tree and used it to turn sharply to the left. The boar’s pace barely changed as it shifted directions to continue after her. It made a constant, low, growling grunt as it chased her and Emmie fought to ignore the burning in her lungs as she raced through the forest. Dawn was turning the canopy a verdant green, and the dull brown of the leaves on the ground was a dangerous blanket threatening with every step to hide a hole, or a root, or some other catastrophe that would send her to her knees – and she knew with every fiber of her being that if she fell, the animal would gore her to death for no other reason than she had dared to sleep where it wanted to forage for food.

  Just as she was sure she was going to falter, that her body was going to give out, she saw a low hanging branch ahead. Charging straight for it, she reached up and grabbed on, swinging herself up like she had as a child and as she tucked her legs up, she watched the boar race beneath her. It had been mere steps behind her. Nausea swept through her as she let out a shout of effort and threw her leg up and over the branch so she could straddle it and place her back against the trunk of the tree. The beast returned a second later, snuffling and grunting in its frustration at having lost its victim. A terrible noise rose out of it and Emmie finally let the fear take her. Tears filled her eyes, and she brushed them away as the animal stomped circles beneath her, breathing as harshly as she was.

  No weapons.

  She had nothing to deter the thing away. As thin as the branch was, there was a chance it may not even hold her for long, it was a blessing it hadn’t snapped when she’d grabbed onto it in the first place. Her pack was somewhere in the forest, filled with the last of the food she had packed, her water, a change of clothes, and the little knife she had stolen from the kitchen. Not like that short blade would do anything against the boar underneath her. It would kill her with those tusks before she got close enough to swing at it. A scream of frustration rose out of her and this time she didn’t stifle it, she let it rip out of her and echo across the forest until she dissolved into pointless tears and hiccups as the sobs took her.

  There had been so much planning, so much hurried research to prepare her for her naïve little adventure into the woods surrounding the city. She had memorized the looks and names of plants and berries that were edible, she had even made herself a ‘salad’ just the day before. It had tasted terrible, but she had identified the plants correctly because she wasn’t dead. The wildlife in the forest had been an inconsequential footnote in her mind, things she might observe from a distance and carefully avoid.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Emmie groaned to herself. “Did you really think you’d never run into something, Emmie? Something like a boar? Well, you know what?” She leaned forward slightly and screamed, “Fuck you, boar!”

  The animal stopped its stamping as she ranted at it, likely as surprised as she was by her outburst.

  “That’s right! FUCK YOU. I’ve been out here four days. By myself! There’s not a person that would have believed I was capable of that. I’ve been sleeping in the dirt, fending for myself, and YOU—” She laughed hysterically to herself, letting the laughter erase the tears from her eyes as she slammed her hand against the rough bark of the tree. “YOU WANT TO KILL ME? FOR SLEEPING?”

  Emmie wasn’t sure what she expected in response, but it wasn’t the strange whooping sound that suddenly filled the forest. Her rant sputtered to a stop, and then a long spear sprouted from the boar and a terrible squealing noise erupted from it. It writhed and twisted and kicked and turned to face the roughly dressed man who emerged from the trees. Her mouth dropped open as the man grinned wildly at the beast just as it lowered its head to charge, those yellow tusks aimed at his belly. She reached out to warn him, as if she could do anything, but then another spear hit it and it shrieked again, turning in place to face the next man. It charged, but the man leapt out of the way, rolling across the ground and popping up a few feet away. Then there were three more, thrusting spears into the beast as it attempted stumbling charges towards them, but it was waning. It wavered on its hooves; two spears sticking out of it like some grotesque pincushion, as the other spears pierced it again and again.

  From above, safely out of its reach, Emmie had to admire its strength, its determination to live, to escape. She had felt that kind of desperation, a suffocation that made one hopeless enough to attempt the impossible – but it eventually stumbled, grunting, down onto one leg, then another, and then fell to its side. The men were all breathing hard beneath her, spears poised to strike, watching as the beast took its last shuddering breath.

  Then, as if they were of one mind, their eyes shifted up – to her.

  One of the men slapped another on the back, handing him a long, crude knife, before looking up at her again. “Hello there, little bird. Care to come down from your perch?”

  Quiet laughs shuffled through the others.

  She swallowed, well aware that while they had saved her from the boar, she was still very much in danger. These were the raiders. The banished ones beyond the walls. The enemies of the city.
Yes, she knew about them too, and she had hoped never to encounter them, which left her just one answer. “Like hell.”

  The man’s eyes widened a moment, almost gray in color in the light of dawn, and then the edge of his mouth curled up. “Last chance, little bird. Come down on your own, or I’ll bring you down.”

  Emmie’s stomach dropped and she pressed herself harder back against the trunk as the man stepped closer, raising an arm to wrap one hand around the branch she straddled. The shirt he wore was thin and she could see the outline of a strong body beneath it, the muscles in his chest and arms stretching with each breath he took. The grin that had lit his face with such a ferocious glee when he’d first rushed out of the forest was gone, and what was left was an overly serious expression. His gray eyes were intense as they met hers, and on some level she was surprised by how handsome he was. She had always imagined the raiders to be filthy, scarred, deformed. Starving mad men. He looked healthy, light hair falling to his temples, with only a thin shadow of a beard across his cheeks, highlighting high cheekbones that drew her attention back to his gaze.

  His head tilted and then his grip on the branch tightened and he shook it hard. She yelped as the movement almost unseated her.

  “I don’t think that bird is going to come down, Lucian.” One of the men spoke up, crossing his arms across a broad chest as a younger man knelt to start the bloody work of gutting the boar. The copper smell of death rose up and she fought the urge to gag.

  “I think you’re right.” Lucian glanced back at the men for an instant, then those eyes were back on hers, and he wrapped his other hand around the branch.

  CRACK.