Taken by the Thief

by Eliza Lockhart

  Taking her through the streets of Moscow for a couple of blocks, I headed towards the van I had set up for the next abduction. It was convenient that it was nearby, and I wasn’t going to be ungrateful for such a blessing.

  As I set eyes on it, my feet slowed.

  “This is your last chance, Nadenka. If you even doubt it in the slightest, you must turn around now and leave me to sort this alone.”

  Immediately she stopped walking. “No, Kostya, I’m not abandoning you, and I’m not going to back out. If I go home I’ll be pushed and pushed to marry Vasily until he makes me his wife. And he’s already made it very clear that he will be doing far worse to me than you have been. I can do this. I want to put him off me for good and save my father. If I have to go through something painful, degrading and humiliating first, then so be it.”

  I sighed, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her in close.

  “You need to know what you’re walking into. I taught you to be silent. I’ve already pushed your capacity. I’m going to have to hurt you like I’ve never hurt another. I’m going to abuse you in ways you can’t even imagine yet, and I’m going to enjoy every moment of it. It’s going to make me feel like a God in control of the fate of a princess, and I’ll be doing it while you know your father will watch every second.”

  While I spoke, my jeans grew tighter across the crotch. For extra emphasis, I pushed it hard against her, making it clear that just the thought of breaking her was making me hot. Instead of getting cold feet, she held firm against me, circling her hips a little.

  “Then do what you need to, and when you’re done and you turn the cameras off, make love to me, and give us both what we’ll need.”

  The confidence in her eyes as she stared at me melted what little resistance I had left. Time to change, Kostya. Time to become her kidnapper. Time to show her the monster inside you. For a moment I hesitated. What if it made her run from me? What if it broke what we already had beyond repair? But another voice whispered back, What if it proves someone can love and accept all of you? What if it finally silences the monster for good?

  Growling and becoming rough, I grabbed both of her hands and forced them up behind her back. Once both were there, I gripped them with a single hand, hoping she’d fight more, but she remained willing. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled a familiar bag out. With practiced ease, I shook it out and yanked it over her head.

  This was enough to either make her panic or understand we needed to make it look real. She started to struggle and fight against me, but my grip never failed.

  Far stronger than her, I dragged her the last few feet to the van, slid open the door, and half-pushed and half-threw her into the back. She gasped, but didn’t squeal or make any noise.

  Damn it.

  I’d taught her to be silent when hurt or pleasured, partially because it allowed me to do what I wanted with her in less decent situations and places without fear she’d make a sound and give away what we were doing, and partially to make her mine, controlled and subservient. But now I’d have to push her far harder to get her to truly scream in pain and fear. Now I needed to undo every lesson I’d taught her so far, and I couldn’t afford to get it wrong.

  2:53pm

  Nadenka

  Trying not to panic, I focused on my breathing. Although I’d agreed to everything and it had been heartwarming of Kostya to check I was certain, now it was happening I was petrified. I’d only heard rumors of what he did to people. I’d never tried to imagine it, or given it much thought, my world normally full of partying and my pets.

  The black bag had been what tipped me over the edge. It wasn’t kinky or seductive. It was the tool of a kidnapper. Of someone who meant business. And Kostya clearly meant to go through with this. I’d given my permission and I had no doubt there would be no turning back.

  Shivering, I lay there with the bag on my head. When I realized I could move my hands and they weren’t tied, I could have hit myself. I’d been so scared I’d not been thinking clearly.

  Immediately I pulled the offensive item off my head, rolling a little as Kostya must have hurled the van around a corner. As soon as I stabilized, I lifted myself into a sitting position and looked around.

  I was inside a plain van, the floor dusty with some kind of sawdust and a few twigs, dried leaves and branches. I wobbled as we went around another corner, having to brace myself on one side with an arm. If I’d been tied and lying in the back, I’d have been rolled around and bumped like a can in a tombola.

  Kostya then put his foot down, accelerating off at a level that made me fall backwards. I bumped my head on the floor, seeing stars and wincing. As he continued to drive fast and bump around, I stayed lying down, arms and legs spread like a star to minimize rolling and to try to protect my body as I slid across the gritty floor.

  I was going to be a bruised mess by the time we got wherever we were going, but I had a suspicion that was the point. While I lay there, trying not to get too battered and being taken God knew where, I began to get nervous, my mind conjuring all sorts of scenarios and torture scenes. Just what was Kostya going to do? Could I handle it, or was I going to come out of this all a completely different person?

  By the time the van came to a stop I was covered in little bumps and bruises and shivering with fear. The last part of the journey had been even bumpier, and more than once I’d jolted up off the floor of the van and come down with a smack. I’d tried to move to find a way to brace myself against the worst of the movement but there had been no better way, every other position resulting in me going over sideways and bumping into something else.

  For a minute nothing happened, the sound of the front van door opening and closing the only indicator that Kostya had got out. Gingerly, wincing more than once, I tried to get into a more upright position. Before I could do more than lift myself onto my hands and knees, my hair all over the place and my skin prickling with sawdust as well as tender new bruises, the side door opened.

  A bright light flooded the van, so intense I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Raising one arm, I tried to block enough light to see what might lie beyond, but instead I just heard a harsh laugh. A moment later, rough hands were pushing me back down, tearing off my top as they did.

  The force took me by surprise, and the growl that came with it sent me into panic mode. I tried to struggle and fight, but it only served to rip the fabric quicker.

  Still unable to see anything and terrified at the sudden assault, I was powerless as he grabbed my trousers and yanked them downwards. The force was so much that my knees slipped from under me and my arms gave way at once. My torso slammed into the floor, winding me.

  Losing my clothes became secondary, my mouth gasping for air my lungs couldn’t begin to take in. By the time my system had worked out how to inhale again, I was in nothing but my underwear, shivering from both fear and extreme cold, and partially blinded by the intense light.

  Kostya seemed to pull back, a mocking laughter ringing out as a dark shadow lifted what looked like a phone and took photos. Once more I got to my hands and knees, trying to see, wanting to find my lover in the monster before me. I was never given the chance, his body launching at me again.

  “Round two,” he explained, pushing me over onto my back with such force I smacked my head again. “Time to get these tits out for me.”

  Straddling my thighs, he laughed again. The thin fabric covering my breasts tore quickly, the straps snapping against me as they gave. I hissed at the sting, too stunned to struggle.

  My panties quickly followed, bringing me back to reality. He had me naked, and for the first time with Kostya, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. Was this what it was like for the other women? Did he strip them so soon too? Had he seen all of them this exposed?

  The probable answer to those questions hurt more than all the bruises and subsequent stripping had done so far. Of course he had. This is what people had been hiring him to do for years. And he was good at it. Even knowing I�
�d agreed to this, I was terrified. I felt abducted, assaulted and, most of all, powerless to stop it.

  I heard the fake shutter sound of the camera a few more times, my eyes so blinded by the light I could do little but squirm under him and try to position my arm so it shielded my eyes enough to open them and see.

  As I was beginning to adjust, our forms coming into view, he leaned forward and wrapped something around my eyes. I tried to push at him with my hands and stop him from robbing my sight more permanently, but it only made him laugh again and bat my hands away as if they were nothing more than slightly irritating flies.

  Before I could begin to wonder what came next, he got up, and at the same time his hand clamped around my throat, gripping it tightly and half-shutting off my air supply as he lifted. My hands instinctively went to his to try and pull him off, but I might as well have been scrabbling at steel, his hand relentlessly tight as he dragged me out of the van.

  My legs hit the floor painfully enough I’d have gasped had I not been fighting for breath again. I struggled and fought, my upper half carried by the throat and my lower half dragged up some steps and into a house. The stony ground and house floor tore at my skin, but it was a background pain, the lack of air making my vision swim and my lungs ache with need.

  After hauling me through the house, he paused a moment, undoing something with a rattle. By the time he flung open a door my body was starting to shut down, limbs going heavy. I fought to stay conscious, the pain from being yanked down some hard cold steps enough to bring my mind back, but my body would no longer respond and my thoughts were distant and slow.

  Not long after we reached the bottom he swung his arm, pulling me in front of him and dropping me. Suddenly unrestricted, I sucked in air, the pain all over my body intense but secondary. While I recovered, Kostya grabbed a limb and caught it in some kind of cold, hard restraint. He then did the same to two more before I regained control and sense enough to struggle with the fourth.

  It was entirely futile. With a quick yank of something that rattled, he pulled the other three limbs out from my body. A moment later he grabbed the fourth.

  Helpless to stop him, I felt him bound me. Not long after, he fixed something equally cold around my waist, more metal rattling and clanking as he did. I shuddered, somehow feeling even more vulnerable and powerless. But there was also a strange sense of calm. For the moment, I could breathe, and I was alive. If nothing else, I knew I’d live through this. Kostya wanted me in other ways.

  While still lost in my thoughts, the pain he’d already caused me fading into the background, I didn’t notice him moving, until suddenly each of the five points I was connected to not only went tight, but lifted, until I was suspended, spreadeagled and unable to move more than a few millimeters. Exposed in a way I’d never been before, I wanted to shiver.

  Almost immediately my wrists and ankles began to hurt, followed by my neck as I tried to hold my own head up, gravity fighting against me. Gentle hands suddenly reached for my head, lifting it for me and supporting it as he pulled my hair out of my face and smoothed it back.

  The tenderness was disarming and reminded me of the Kostya I already knew, but it soon disappeared as he pulled my mouth open and pushed something inside. Something cold and metallic fitted between my teeth, holding my mouth open and lying flat over my tongue. At first I thought it was some strange form of gag, but I could still inhale through my mouth.

  The panic that had been bubbling just under the surface rose again and made me whimper. The anticipation as he set everything up and as my mind tormented me with its own twisted imaginings soon had me shaking, the metal chains clanking as it joined in.

  For ages I seemed to be left to hang, already exhausted, my head tipped back, my mouth drying from being so exposed.

  I didn’t dare make a sound, listening as he moved around me, his feet silent but the occasional rustle of his clothes or clink of metal as he knocked something together giving his position away.

  My mind tried to imagine what he was setting up, but I fought against it. The imagery would do me no good, and soon enough I’d know.

  3:41pm

  Kostya

  With both the main and backup cameras set up and ready to film, I stopped for a moment and watched Nadenka. Naked, her body was beautiful even with all the cuts and bruises she sported from the rough treatment so far. More than once before I’d had her helpless before me, but this was so different. I’d terrified her, deliberately so, and she wasn’t turned on, not the way I’d made her before.

  It was an important step in what was to come, but I’d felt like a monster doing it to her. Almost choking her to death had been so hard to do, but I knew this needed to be convincing. Anyone who saw it had to believe it was real. And that meant I had to let out the monster.

  For a moment I closed my eyes. Pushing away all our memories together, I imagined Nadenka as a stranger, just another job I was being paid incredibly well for. Someone I’d never see or meet again.

  As I opened them again, that’s exactly who she was to me, A job. Someone I had to abuse to get something else I wanted. Someone who would scream for me. Someone I would break.

  I grabbed my mask, securing it in place, and then turned both cameras on. With that done, I turned back to my victim, her body quaking just enough to be visible. Still scared. But not as much as she was about to be.

  Stepping closer and into shot, I decided to draw this out. Nadenka had been taught to be silent. Only a slow build would get me what I needed. I would start with humiliation and violation.

  After making a show of touching her as and where I wished, roughly penetrating her with my fingers and other objects, something she only flinched from out of surprise, no doubt, I paused, allowing the after-effect to sink in with whoever was viewing.

  A moment later I picked up the next type of tool of my trade and began teaching her to scream and beg for mercy.

  An hour later she finally convinced me she’d taken all the pain she could, her body limp, bloody, bruised and abused in every painful way I’d been able to think of. She’d begun screaming ten minutes in and gone hoarse only twenty minutes later. I tried not to think about it, or who she was, as I moved onto the next stage—near-death experiences.

  I walked around to her head, finally about to reveal the purpose for the mouthpiece I’d used instead of the gag. Already hard, my body turned on by what I’d been doing even if my mind was disgusted, I brought my erection to her mouth. With a ruthless shove, I began to use her, choking her from within as I pushed deeper and deeper.

  Again and again I took away her air supply, pulling back into her mouth and letting her breathe at the last minute, until I couldn’t take it anymore and pulled entirely out.

  Feeling sick to my stomach, I strode as confidently as I could to the cameras in turn and switched them back off again. For now she was done, but I knew neither of us would ever forget what I’d just put her through.

  As soon as I had the mask off the feelings of sickness overwhelmed me, and in that moment of weakness I almost took her down, wanting to wrap my arms around her and beg her for forgiveness. Instead, I walked slowly closer, careful not to touch her or walk too quietly and surprise her.

  Bringing my mouth closer to her ear, I crouched. “I’m sorry, princess, but you’re only through the first session. I wish I could get you down and it would all be over, but I’m afraid it isn’t. They always need a second round to truly convince them.”

  Without another word or giving her a chance to reply, I knew I had to walk away, but I just couldn’t. As she gently nodded, her blindfold soaked with tears, I reached forward and slowly pulled the metal ring out of her mouth, freeing her tongue and allowing her to close it.

  After kissing her forehead, I cradled her, supporting her neck and taking the pressure away.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again, barely able to do more than whisper. As a soft sigh seemed to escape her, another wave of sickness washed over me. I couldn’
t stay in there with her a moment longer.

  After lowering her head again, I grabbed the tapes I’d made and hurried away, diverting to the bathroom on my way out of the house. Throwing up more than once, I tried to push the memories of the last hour or so out of my head, but they wouldn’t go. Instead I saw her again and again, the way she’d looked at the end and the little nod she’d given me.

  I was a monster and I didn’t deserve anything more than to be hated by her.

  Knowing I’d probably lost her, and if she didn’t already want to end things between us she definitely would by the time I’d performed round two, I focused on what I needed to send to Sokolov and Vasily. It was important I got it to them quickly. With Yazov’s help, I could make it appear as if I was acting on someone’s behalf, as I’d done every time previously.

  Trying not to think about leaving Nadenka alone in the house to suffer further, I got into the van and pulled off again. I needed to go back to civilization to deliver the first message, and I could only hope that putting some distance between Nadenka and me would help me hold my alter-ego together.

  6:04pm

  This time I couldn’t be the whole messenger. They knew my face, and I wasn’t about to try a disguise when Nadenka was waiting for me. If it went wrong, they might never find her before she died of dehydration or worse.

  Instead, I packaged the two copies of the tapes up, along with an item of Nadenka’s jewelry and a torn scrap of clothing in each to make a point. I’d picked the jewelry so I could hide a small bug in each, something to ensure I could listen in to their reactions and work ahead of them. With that done, I went to the club and hung around outside, watching the exit the staff came out of.

  Right on cue, the kid from earlier walked out, dressed up warm and no doubt heading for home while his mother worked the evening shift.