Surrender A Section 8 Novel

Chapter Five





Grace Powell was dancing in her garden in the middle of the goddamned New Orleans bayou summer night in the rain.

Dare watched her, alternately fascinated and pissed that he was fascinated at the way her dress clung to her, molding to her breasts in a way that made him want to sink to his knees and howl at the moon.

Or lower her to the wet ground and take the dress off.

He wanted her with a longing so deep and dark he didn’t think he’d ever fill it, even if he took her over and over in the hot rain scalding his skin.

So f*cking inappropriate. His body was strung too tight for this kind of seductive dance. It took everything he had to stay in place.

Her feet were bare, her long brown hair had coppery highlights and was pulled back in a single braid that shone with water droplets . . . and she was smiling.

Take her now.

After all, why did she deserve to be happy, despite what Avery had tried to tell him earlier? Avery, whom he’d left behind in town to connect with an old friend, only partially because he didn’t want her to take part in this kidnapping.

He’d assumed that when Darius said, Go home . . . you’ll find grace there, he’d been talking in a more spiritual sense. Instead, he’d found Grace Powell’s address in the safe at the house Darius kept on the bayou, written in Darius’s handwriting.

Grace Powell.

Dare and Avery had researched Richard Powell, what little there was on him. There was less on his daughter. From what Dare could gather, Grace had been “missing” for the last six years, and somehow, S8 had discovered where she was staying. Might’ve been dumb luck since she’d ended up living in the same bayou parish, but Dare suspected there was more to the story. Because Powell’s daughter was a powerful tool in the S8 arsenal.

Using Powell’s daughter was a brilliant plan on paper. In the flesh, harder than Dare had thought. He’d done worse things in his career—many of them—but this felt right and wrong all at once.

Grace Powell could be his salvation or his undoing. Or both.

No matter. Moving forward was the only option. He slopped through the mud and went to her, knowing his father would hate him for doing this. But for the first time in his life, he didn’t give a damn about what Darius would think.

And while she struggled, she didn’t seem all that surprised.

He grabbed her from behind, pulled her tight against him. A hand over her mouth, another around her waist, and she fought as he carried her to his truck.

She wouldn’t stop fighting.

The garden. She smelled like gardenias long after they’d left her garden. He nearly buried his nose in her hair because the smell drove him crazy, over the edge, out of control.

Goddamn, this had been a mistake. He’d let himself go too long without a woman. This was simple lust.

Keep lying to yourself.

She wore a small cross-body bag, as if she’d been expecting to go somewhere. She shifted against the bindings he’d purposely made tight so she’d hate him. So she’d spit on him, stop staring at him like . . .

Like he was more than her captor.

“What’s your name?” he asked, even though he knew.

She eyed him coolly, and when she spoke, her voice was laden with both honey and steel. “You should just call me leverage.”


* * *

The man who’d approached her had fire in his eyes and looked at her like she was prey. Right before he’d put her in the car, Grace had spoken one final time.

“I don’t know anything about my father’s business,” she lied carefully, because he’d know.

“You are your father’s business. That’s enough for me.”

“What did he do to you?”

His eyes had glittered. “He tried to kill me.”

She’d wanted to say, Me too, but she didn’t have the strength. Dare wouldn’t believe her anyway.

She’d spent the day helping one woman gather the strength to press charges against her abusive husband. By the time she’d convinced her, helped her get into the car with Marnie to go to the police station, the tension headache had gotten worse. She’d popped several Motrin and kept going, processing another intake on a woman who needed Marnie’s help.

By the time she’d gotten home, she hadn’t wanted to go into the house, the one she’d built so lovingly—her sanctuary.

It was ultimately what would ruin her, her own fault. And so she’d stayed outside in the garden, until the rain came and the pain in her head receded.

Until Dare came and grabbed her.

White knight or black king . . . it was too early to tell. What wasn’t too early to tell was that she wouldn’t be able to live in her house again.

She’d miss her garden the most, didn’t believe for a second she’d be allowed to go back and tend to it. No, she’d been found and she’d have to let the house, and everything in it, go.

The garden was brimming—August was the time to start picking and freezing the herbs before they withered in the brutal heat and humidity that oppressed everything it touched.

She had been studying this forever, learned a kind of practical magic from her mother. It was a way to keep her close, since she’d left the private island when Grace was twelve. Grace’s last memory was of the helicopter rising above the house.

She’d had no idea that the last time she saw her mother would be the last time.

Don’t go there, she warned herself harshly. This wasn’t a time to show weakness, despite how very weak she felt at the moment. Soaked to the skin, she tried not to shiver, bit down fiercely on the inside of her cheeks to stop her teeth from chattering as Dare led her from the truck into the house she knew as Darius’s.

The last time she’d been here, it had been on another hot summer’s day and she’d been reluctantly saying good-bye to Darius and Adele. Excited to start her new life, hating the fact that it would include moving around the country every six months for her own safety . . . and yet, two years had passed since that day and she was still here, in the Louisiana bayou, hoping the destruction and natural wildness of the place would shield her from evil.

Had it? Dare didn’t look evil—but he also looked nothing like his father, so she was having trouble reading him. It had taken her a year to really believe Darius’s intentions—and to someone who had a psychic gift, that it had taken so long had been almost embarrassing. It was a defective, infuriating gift, damaged and in hiding from years of abuse of her pushing it down and away, denying its existence for her own safety.

If she couldn’t see the future, she’d be no good for Rip. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want her back anyway.

Dare O’Rourke had plans for her too, and she could feel those as surely as if he’d already spoken to her out loud.

She should not feel a flutter deep inside her belly while pressed against the man taking her hostage, but it was undeniable. She fought not to lean in and smell his skin. She detected the scent of the jungle on him.

He’d tied her wrists together, tight behind her back, as if deliberately trying to scare her.

She could pretend, but why bother? She’d always known this day would come, was as resigned to it as she was to her gift eventually returning. But there was a part of her that was afraid of her reaction to this man . . . afraid of what he would do to her.

Her arms ached. This man would hurt her if it meant getting a rise out of her stepfather.

She’d always known it was one of the risks. Had lived the past six years as though the enemy was coming for her at any moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept with the lights off. She could fire a gun, knew every self-defense technique and was still on edge. Angry, if she thought about it enough, more than fearful. A good emotion to have behind her, she supposed, but she was tired of being on guard all the time.

If she was lucky, at times she could go a full twenty-four hours without thinking about it. Her house was old, a work in progress, and she’d known from her first moments here that the bayou was a place of magic and a place of lost souls. One could easily get lost.

It was perfect for her. Except she wondered if she’d ever find something to anchor her. Longed for it, but decided it was too much to ask.

In order to escape her father, she’d had to make certain sacrifices. This was much better than living in a house on one of the small islands off Grand Cayman, where she’d been a prisoner for most of her years growing up.

Still, people were always looking for her—both good and bad. She’d been told as much by Darius and Adele. And Grace felt the relentless press of horseman’s hooves at her back now more than ever.

Six years of relative freedom was all that she would be granted, it seemed. It was more than she’d ever thought she’d have.

It wasn’t enough.