Chapter 9

"Wake up, bitch!" The words were followed immediately by a splash of cold water from a bucket that sat close by. Mia screeched and sputtered, lifting her head to glare at the man standing before her with the bucket. He was laughing at her, watching the water drip from her chin down to her naked breasts and off her nipples hardened by the combination of cold water and the night air.

"She sure sounds like a woman." He grinned at the man with hm.

Mia shook the water from her face, wiping off the rest against her shoulder. "What do you want?"

Mark tsked at the tone of her voice. "Do you really want me to tell Stephan how incredibly rude and uncompromising you're being, little Miara?"

Mia refused to speak. She twisted her wrists against the roughness of the rope, pulling futilely to try and free herself. "You want to see compromising, you asshole? Come over here where I can reach you and I'll show you just how fucking compromising I can be." She groaned, knowing she should have just kept her mouth shut.

"Ahh, so we can add foul-mouthed to that list as well." He smiled, moving closer to her. His hands shot out and he grabbed her nipples, twisting them until she closed her eyes against the pain. She refused to make a sound and didn't move anything but her arms, longing to be free more than almost anything else in the world.

"Oh, I forgot, Stephan told me that you respond better to soft touches and sweet words. Is that true, little Miara? Do you want me to whisper sweet nothings in your ears?"

Mia fought to keep herself from becoming sick. He was the third man today that had played with her and she wasn't going to give him anything. Not pleasure, or fun, or satisfaction of any kind. She was done playing their games. As Mark came closer to her, she grasped the poles that held her hostage. Then she jumped up, her legs finding purchase around his neck. Crossing her ankles, she slowly began to suffocate the now struggling man.

"How does that make you feel? Am I giving you pleasure? Do you want more? Maybe I should fake an orgasm or two to make you feel manly?" She gritted the words between clenched teeth and tightened her hold. Off to the side of the tent, she could see the two men who'd been quietly working in this office/tent since she arrived. They were arguing fiercely between themselves. Finally one threw up his hands and the other raced out of the tent. She now was on limited time. Her grasp tightened even more despite the fingers that clawed at her legs or beat at the outside of her thighs.

He dug them into her thighs, leaving marks that she knew would bruise, but she couldn't care. She wanted him dead, she wanted them all dead. Then she wanted to find Aidan and make love to him until she could forget this hell hole and its sick inhabitants.

"Let him go, bitch!"

Mia barely glanced up as Stephan came roaring into the tent. He swung his fist, catching her on the chin hard enough to knock her head backward. Her legs loosened as she lost her grip on consciousness and she sagged against the ropes that held her upright.

Mark clutched at his throat, hissing in sweet, precious air. Then he stood in front of her and slammed his fist against her face again, cursing in his native tongue. He only calmed when his General, Stephan, reached out and took his arm to keep him from hitting her again. "You will kill her, Mark. At least wait until she knows she is being punished before beating her. Come, let the camp doctor examine your throat. The bitch will be out for a while."

"What of the other one?" Mark's voice was raspy and hoarse and he cleared it, trying to ease the pain.

"She seemed uncommonly fond of him. Perhaps we should bring him into the tent and wait until she wakes before we torture him. I think she will want to protect him more than she would herself."

"Yes, General. I bow to your knowledge of human nature. I shall have him moved." He bowed his head and then followed Stephan from the tent, only stopping once to talk to a guard that stood at the doorway of the tent. Then he followed Stephan to the camp physician and then to the dinner tent as his orders were followed in his absence.

Mia's eyes opened slowly. She kept her body loose, unwilling to let anyone know that she was awake. Her jaw felt as if it was on fire and it thudded in time to the quickening beat of her heart. She wanted to moan, to try and move her jaw, to see if it was broken or only bruised, but she dared not. Not yet, not until she knew if she were alone or not.

"Mia. God I thought you'd never wake up. Are you okay?"

Her head popped up quickly, a movement that she regretted as the pain began to howl in her face. "Aidan?"

"God, Mia, your jaw..."

She could almost smile at the horror in his voice. "So it looks as bad as it feels?"

"You're alive, it will heal. We've got to get out of here. The ass-hat that brought me here was a little too happy when he was talking about what he was going to do to you."

Mia met his golden gaze, feeling the heat of it, the urgency he was feeling. She glanced around the tent, seeing the two clerks that were sitting at their desks again, studiously ignoring them. "My boot, I've still got my knife."

She could see him measuring distances and wriggling his arms that were as tightly bound as her own. "Now you see the problem."

"Can you kick your foot up near my mouth?" He glanced over at the two men at the desks as well. She could see his eyes as he did the numbers to figure out how long they had before one of the two would try to stop them.

"They don't seem to have any love for the general, Aidan." She grabbed hold of the poles once more and took a deep breath. It felt as if her energy was slowly being sapped and the thought of trying to get her ankle to Aidan's mouth seemed almost impossible. But she forced herself to take another breath and then kicked her foot up, doing her best to not kick him.

She felt so heavy; she knew she wouldn't be able to hold her foot there for long, even resting it against Aidan's shoulder. "Hurry."

Aidan's eyes quickly found the knife handle and he grasped it with his teeth, tugging it slowly out of her boot. The knife was a Marine K-bar, which made it incredibly sharp and equally as lethal. When it was out of her boot, she sighed and let her leg drop. "Now what?"

The knife was in Aidan's mouth and instead of trying to answer around it, he tossed it with a flick of his head, catching it nimbly with his hand. A quick sawing motion had that hand free and he quickly finished, freeing his other hand before going to Mia. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

"Take us... ?"

It was one of the two men that had been working at the desks. "He'll kill us if he finds you gone and thinks we helped you escape."

Aidan didn't pause, he was taking off his shirt and slipping it over Mia's shoulders, hiding the abuse that she'd been dealt while he'd been unconscious. "We can get you out of the encampment, but we don't know if our people have left or if they are looking for us."

"We would know if anyone tried to leave. That is what he has us here doing. We decrypt any transmissions that come through."

Mia buttoned up Aidan's shirt, giving him a look that relayed her gratitude. "They might be worth taking back. Think of what knowledge they might be able to transmit."

"Yes," the man said. "But you must rescue our wives too. They would be killed if we were to disappear."

"Absolutely not." Aidan's voice was firm, his eyes hard. "It would be a suicide mission."

"When has that stopped us before, Aidan?" Mia finally took the time to wiggle her jaw and to use her fingers to feel the damage. What she felt made her cringe. Her entire jaw was swollen and it hurt. "We got payback to deal, Aidan. If it had been me, you wouldn't care if there were eighty men between us, you'd go in anyway."

Aidan handed her back her knife. "Why the hell do you always have to do this, Mia? Do you have a death wish? Do you want to see me have a heart attack before I'm thirty?"

Mia snorted. "Exaggerate much? Oh wait, you're Aidan. Of course you exaggerate." She rolled her eyes.

"You're damn lucky I don't want to hurt you. Otherwise I'd show you exaggeration. We are going to do this smart or we aren't doing it at all." He stared down at Mia, not saying another word until she nodded her agreement. "Okay, what would Demon do?"

"Reconnaissance, Mia. Don't get your ass ahead of your head."

Aidan chuckled quietly. He'd heard Demon say those exact words to Mia more than once. "Then that's what we're going to do." He looked back toward one of the two men. "Which way?"

"To the left as you leave the tent. But how are we going to get past the guards?"

"Mia?" She bent and pulled her knife, going to the back of the tent and quickly cutting a slit along the bottom of the tent. She kept hold of her knife and crawled through the slit on her belly, her eyes searching everywhere she could see. Then she bent and waved for Aidan to send the men through. They shimmied out, doing their best not to rip the hole she'd made. It would be hidden behind desks and stacks of papers and boxes of books.

Aidan was last out. He stood, his hand going to Mia's shoulder. "You up for this?"

"I'm five by five, Romeo. " She lifted up her hand, running fingers over the bruise that was stark and easily visible against his tanned skin. "What about you? This looks painful."

"It's nothing, baby. I want to get you back to the pick-up point and get us back in the good ole US of A. I think I remember a promise to come home with me." It was his turn to run gentle fingers over the swelling in her jaw. "But I think we might want to put that off so you can go to medical. You know Demon is going to demand it."

"Demon and his demands can go fly a kite as far as I'm concerned." She took another small step toward him. "The only thing that has gotten me through so far is the thought of sleeping in your arms when we get home. I'll get it looked at but then you are taking me home. And I want your promise that you'll make love with me until we have to go back to work."

Aidan's smile was warmly beautiful to her. Her own lips quirked and then spread into a wide grin. The swelling on her face gave the smile a strange look and felt a bit strange but it didn't change the look in his eyes. This was his Mia, his tough as nails, stubborn as hell, sexy as sin, wildcat. She would never be anything else to him. "We'll see what the doctor says."

She sighed and shook her head, rolling her eyes at him. "Pussy."

"You think so, huh?"

"You're being more of a mother hen then Demon. I'm fine, Aidan. I'm five by five. I'm full of piss and fire and I'm ready to fight. I want my payback for this and for the humiliation that they heaped on me. You know me, have you ever seen me sit back and take shit from anyone?" She let her hands drift down to the heavy muscles on his chest, rubbing them over the pale beige of the tank top he'd worn under his shirt. "I'm going to do this, so how about we get to it and go home."

He nodded and lifted one of her slender hands, dropping a kiss on her fingers. "Let's get this done and go home." He agreed whole heartedly.

She took the step away that had her hands dropping off of him. With one last quick glimpse of his golden eyes, she moved to the edge of the tent and peeked around it. Then she was off like a light, racing to the back of the next tent and then the next one after that. After a few minutes, she waved at Aidan and he sent the first of the two men racing across the back of the tents. Aidan glanced around the edge of the tent and then sent the next man over as well. A few moments later, he stepped around her and then glanced over at the next couple of tents. "Which one?"