by Theresa Papa
“Liz, that feels amazing, but I have to stop you to compose myself or it will all be over.”
She smiles up at me and slowly rises to her feet. She maintains eye contact as she unsnaps her bra, letting it fall, then she pushes down her panties. Her top teeth grab her plump pink bottom lip, and I want to bite it, too. Her face loses all seriousness, and she giggles again as she jumps up to wrap her naked thighs around my waist. I allow us both to fall backward and land on top of the bed with her straddling me. Liz is already so wet she slides herself up and down my shaft. I fill my hands with the smooth globes of her bare bottom, spreading her open. Her face shows the ecstasy she feels, and soft mewling sounds escape her throat. She can’t wait a moment longer; I can tell when she spears herself deep, and the vibrations inside her body squeeze me tight. She gracefully falls forward; the delectable soft weight of her full breasts feels like a warm silken caress on my chest.
“You’re mine, Elizabeth Pope, and I’m never letting you go!” I whisper in her ear. I can feel her face smile against my chest. I can’t hold off any longer, so I grab her petite body in my arms and flip us over. Then I drive home how I feel for my Liz while she comes apart around me. We soar to new heights together, and in my heart, I know we are both forever changed.
Chapter 25
Elizabeth Pope
As soon as the party breaks up and everyone leaves Tony and me alone, all I can think about is jumping him. We kiss out on the driveway, and I beg him to take me to the pool house. There, I really do jump him, and it’s actually life-changing. There has never been another soul in my entire life who I have shared these truly unique feelings with. The passion and unconditional love emitted from this man are what I’ve always unknowingly been in search of. Never to find true and unconditional love from anyone in my life since my aunt died has scarred my heart. The scar tissue grew to a hard shell, where all I have done with my life is seek revenge. Tony’s thoughtfulness and consideration have released my heart from the suffering its endured since my childhood. The raw emotion in his eyes as we make love melts it within my chest.
A metamorphosis has encapsulated my whole being. I am no longer an empty vessel devoid of emotional love allowing myself to be used and abused. This man, his family, and especially his mom make me feel worthy of love in a way that has been foreign to me my entire life. I can only hope and pray I can live up to the glory they have bestowed upon me.
In his arms afterward, I come to a revelation. The past cannot be changed, but I can choose to change my life and live it for a different reason. I can choose to dedicate myself to making this man as happy as he makes me. Nothing else is as important as that anymore.
“Liz, when you answered my question before, you were wrong.” He kisses me on the nose with a grin.
“Which question?” I look into his sparkling irises.
“When I asked if you knew the significance of the charms … you were wrong about the dragon.”
“Really, tell me the significance of the dragon then.” My eyes smile at him in adoration.
“My mom guessed the right reason all along, you know. When she saw the bracelet, she said she’d hoped I bought you a dragon because it would signify your last name someday soon.”
Tears fill my eyes, and my throat closes to prevent any response. He continues from there without one.
“Liz, I know we have only been back together a few days, but I have loved you almost my entire life. I can only picture my future with you in it. Whenever I fantasize about my future children, they have your emerald eyes. I want to make you happier than you’ve ever been and give you your own family. We will raise our children and grow old loving each other with the passion and fire we feel between us now. Elizabeth, would you do me the honor of becoming my Mrs. Dragonetti?”
He places a small kiss on my lips and moves back to look me in the eyes once more. I clear my throat and answer through the tears.
“Anthony Dragonetti, I am the one who is honored to accept your proposal, to love you forever, and raise a family together.”
An enormous smile crosses his face after which he rolls on top of me to show me again the passion and fire we have between us.
I awaken after dozing off in Tony’s arms for a little while. His breathing is soft and even behind my head. I unknot myself gingerly from his embrace and get up to use the bathroom as I grab my clothes on the way. As I’ve told him before, it’s disrespectful to his parents if I stay overnight in the same bed as him. I need to go back to my room for the remainder of the night. So, I dress quietly inside the bathroom and sneak out of the pool house.
The night is cloudy, and the moon plays hide and go seek at the moment. The water laps against the dock in a gentle rhythm. But there is only darkness when I look out at the lake. A small light is on over the stove in the kitchen, bringing my attention back to the house. A silhouette of a person is at the stove who looks like Lucia. Why is she up at this hour? She probably can’t sleep. I’ll go in the side door so she won’t hear me.
As soon as I stifle my internal dialogue, to my surprise another larger silhouette stalks behind her. A knife glitters from the illumination of the stove light. Her head snaps back as he grabs her from behind with it at her throat and shoves her toward the door.
Adrenaline floods my system as I recall my self-defense training. I have to help. No sooner than I pop onto the balls of my feet to run and help, a hand covers my mouth and pulls me back into a huge muscular chest. My reflexes kick in, and I elbow him in the ribs while I simultaneously pound my heel as hard as I can on his instep. He grunts but never budges, so I play dirty and give him a fist to the balls. He lets me go for a second to bend over, giving me chance to run. But my freedom is short-lived when I’m stopped in my tracks with the vision of a gagged Lucia crying as a bloody blade is held to her throat. I put my hands up in a surrender pose and freeze.
“Please don’t hurt her!” I beg.
The guy with the bruised balls grabs my hair in his fist and puts his mouth next to my ear. I can feel his disgusting breath on my skin as he conveys his demands.
“Either you come with us quietly and obediently or we slit her throat in front of you and take you anyway.”
I swallow loudly and nod my head in response.
“I’ll go with you. Just don’t hurt her. Let her go.”
I feel him nod an order to tell the brute restraining Tony’s mom to let her go. But that’s not what he does; he pushes her down the steps to the lake dressed only in her nightgown. And while the one who fists my hair now pulls my arms behind my back, Lucia is dragged to the pole on the dock. My wrists are bound with twist ties. Lucia is left there bound and gagged for the family to find her. Thank God, she’s still alive.
As the guy steps up the last step from the dock, a sufficient amount of space between him and Lucia, I open my mouth to scream. A hand covers my mouth and muffles my screams. I kick and struggle to no avail when the second guy comes to help him by seizing my ankles.
“Cut it out, we can still kill her,” he threatens.
I stop flailing, and he lets me stand again. He pushes me toward the exit gate of the rear yard of the house. I resist as much as I can with his big fat palm over my mouth and being dragged along, until shock takes over. Daryl, one of the security guards hired to protect me, is on the ground motionless. As we pass him, I can see Shaun, the other guard, in the same position next to the black SUV we head toward. As they try to pick me up to put me inside, I struggle again and kick at the guy next to us.
“What the fuck! This bitch needs to be shut down.”
I let out a muffled squeal as a handkerchief is clamped over my nose and mouth. I kick and fight once again while I try to hold my breath. The need for oxygen is too strong, and I gasp, reflexively breathing in the toxic fumes. Dizziness takes over as the house and Shaun’s body become blurred.
And then blackness.
Chapter 26
Anthony Dragonett
i
The rain pelts against the roof of the pool house and awakens me. The clock on the nightstand says 5:15 as I check next to me for Liz. The bed is cold and empty. When I bolt out of bed and into the bathroom, she’s missing from there, too. An answer to nature’s call follows, and afterward, I wash my hands and face. It comes to me that she probably went back to her room at the house. The note she left on the dresser says exactly that. Instead of staying here without her, I decide to go to my own room. I don my clothes, throw on a zip-up sweatshirt someone left on the hook by the door, and pull up the hood. Then I venture out into the pouring rain.
Thunder and lightning deepen the storms grasp on the lakeside manor. In one unusually bright electrical streak across the sky, an outline of a person sitting on the dock is illuminated.
“Who the hell sits out on the dock in the pouring rain?” I say out loud to no one.
As I head down the steep steps to the dock, I zip up the hoodie. My eyes soon adjust, and I recognize her. I run. There’s something wrong if my mother is out on the dock in the rain. When I reach her, she’s shivering to within an inch of her life. She has a rag stuffed in her mouth, and her hands are bound to the dock pole.
“Mom, what the hell happened? Who did this to you? Where are the guards?” I gently take the rag out of her mouth.
She’s crying, and she tries to swallow to be able to form words. The soaked hoodie is all I have, so I whip it around her shoulders to cover her thin cotton nightgown.
“Liz!! Took … Liz!” she manages to spit out.
I stand, shocked, then the adrenaline kicks back in as I rip my phone out of my pocket and call the guards. No answer. I call 911 and summon the police. Then I call my brothers to wake them.
“Hello,” Daniel says sleepily.
“Mom is tied to the dock, and Elizabeth has been taken! Come to the dock with something to unbind her hands from the twist ties. I could break them with my hands, but I don’t want to hurt Mom’s wrists any more than they already are.”
Daniel and Dominic both come running with Dad not far behind. Dan has his medical bag, and Dom the big warm blanket from his room. We set Mom free, and Daniel carries her up to the house after we check her vitals quickly.
I investigate the yard and front drive and find both Daryl and Shaun knocked out. As I squat next to Shaun on the driveway, the first cop car shows up. I hope I don’t regret getting them involved. I know Elizabeth’s uncle Charles wanted to keep the press from finding out about the game, but I need them to process this as a crime scene for clues.
To my dismay, they find Liz’s phone that I gave her on the patio in the yard. She must have dropped it in her struggle or the men who took her discarded it so it couldn’t be traced. Dominic walks up from inside the house.
“Hey bro, Mom is finally warm after Amelia helped her out of her wet clothes and drew a hot bath for her. She’s all covered snugly in bed, but she wants to speak to you.”
I walk with my brother beside me to the front door as the EMT personnel put Shaun into the ambulance. He’s still unconscious.
“Okay, let’s go see what she wants to tell me. Did the police question her yet?”
“No, not yet. They wanted her to go to the hospital, but she refused. They said she could answer questions later when she is more comfortable. They only had to use a butterfly bandage on the cut on her neck,” he explains.
Mom is in her bed and looks so small to me. Granted, she is only five feet three, but right now, she looks beaten and frail. I’ve never seen my mother anything less than strong and vibrant. My sister is in one of the chairs in the bedroom sitting area, and Dom takes the other. Guilt washes over me as I realize I should have never brought Liz here to hide. I stupidly put the lives of my whole family in danger.
“Mom, I’m so sorry this happened. It’s my fault! I never should have brought her here while she was still being threatened.”
She pats the bed to indicate I should sit down. Mom takes my hand.
“Sweetheart, I’m fine. Just worry about getting our Elizabeth back. Dad is in his office with the police. Dom told us they found her phone.”
“That keeps me from using the tracking device installed inside to find her. Thank God I used a backup, I just hope she still has it on. Charlie is trying to pick up the signal as we speak.”
“The bracelet!” Mom says.
“Yes, since I had it made, I used a backup tracker installed in the dragon charm. The kidnapping threats have made me so paranoid that I tried to think of everything I could to keep her safe.”
“Good thinking, son. You will find her in no time at all. Listen, have the police come to question me now while you’re here with me so you can hear what happened firsthand.”
Dominic rises from his chair to go get them. He gestures to me that he’ll go. When he returns, two officers are with him, one woman and one man. Dad comes in last. After everyone is settled, Mom describes her ordeal.
“I was brewing some tea at the stove when a large man grabbed me from behind and put a knife to my throat. He pushed me from behind through the door to the outside onto the pool deck. That’s when I saw Elizabeth was in the clutches of the other man outside. He wore a mask. She fought him, and she got him good because he doubled over. That’s when she got away and began to run toward us. She stopped short when she saw the knife at my throat, and the masked man said if she didn’t come quietly, they would kill me and still take her. That blessed child went willingly after the threat to my life. That’s when he tied me to the dock and left me there.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Dragonetti, we got it all,” the male cop says as they file out of the room.
My phone goes off, and I leave the room to take a call from Charlie.
“This is Tony. What’s happening, Charles?”
“Hey Tony, I tracked the dragon charm, and she’s back in the city. I’ll send the helicopter to get you now. It’ll bring you back here, and we can suit up to go get her.”
I say my goodbyes and head over to the airport I was dropped off at only a few days ago. So many things have changed since then. I haven’t told anyone yet that Elizabeth and I are engaged. I’m determined to have her at my side when I do.
Chapter 27
Elizabeth Pope
A deep roll of thunder vibrates the windows and rouses me from my stupor. I try to open my eyes, and a splitting headache bolts through my head. A groan escapes my dry throat around the cloth they have shoved in my mouth. When I try to remove it, my hand is jolted back by a nylon rope around my wrist secured to the bedpost. The same is true for my other three limbs, rendering me helpless. My clothing is still intact, which is a good sign so far, but when I test the ropes, the fatigue from my attempt at fighting them last night takes over. I blink a few times and try to focus on where in the hell I am. There are floor-to-ceiling windows with blackout blinds drawn on all but one. Through it, the first light of a cloudy dawn eviscerates the darkness. I can see tops of high-rise buildings, but I can’t discern where I am. I shake my cloudy head and look around the room. As the light from outside the window gets brighter, I can see there’s nothing here, but the bed I’m on and a dresser.
Tears fall down the sides of my face into and around my ears, but I can’t move to do anything about it. The more I cry, the more aggravated I am that I can’t wipe my tears. I can’t allow myself to lose it now; I have to believe Tony will come for me. I still have my bracelet on with the tracker in the dragon charm, and I know he will use it to be here any time now. It’s difficult for me to experience being tied up like this because it brings back a memory that was restored by Dr. Baxter’s hypnosis from when I was still a teen. I was given a drug along with the usual amnesia drug that Dr. Baxter called amyl nitrite, an inhaled drug used to intensify a sexual experience.
The clock on the nightstand says nine o’clock, but I can’t stay awake any longer to study calculus. When he sees that I’m less coherent, my dad comes into my room and
leads me downstairs where Richard waits for me. The funny feeling of helplessness has overtaken me; my free will is non-existent. By the time he takes me to his place, my body succumbs to the drug. The arousal overwhelms me, setting my lower region on fire, and I become something I’m not. Morals and humanity fly out the window, and I’m only consumed with the desire to have sex. Richard has suggestive music playing in his man cave made for fucking. I’m overcome with the shivers as he undresses me and ties me to the four bedposts. He stands at the foot of the bed to gape at my naked body with a lustful smile. The anticipation of what he will do to me instigates evidence of betrayal from between my thighs. My urges and secretions are no longer under my control. My agreeably traitorous body is swept away by drugs and sin.
The door to the room opens abruptly; it sucks me out of my memory and into the present.
“Oh good, you’re awake finally. Now we can get down to business.”
The same girl who tried to abduct me from the dressing room in the store stands before me. Margaretta Wilson. Her orange red hair is piled up on top of her head, her brown eyes are blackened, and she has a bandage across her nose, courtesy of yours truly. A wave of satisfaction comes over me to know I screwed up her best feature, her cute little turned up nose. She has a pile of clothes in her hands that she sets on top of the dresser and then walks over to the bed.
“You must think you’re pretty cool since you broke my nose the other day… but I will have the last laugh when we hand you over and collect the money for your ass.”
I can’t reply with the rag in my mouth, so I shrug in answer.
“Let’s get some other clothes on you. Shorts and a sleeveless top won’t be good for traveling. No fighting me or I’ll have to knock you out again. There’s no way to escape anyway. The guard outside the door is six feet three and two hundred and ninety pounds.”
She unbuttons my shorts first, then my blouse. When she unties my ankles, I contemplate kicking her, but I don’t take the chance yet. I decide to wait for a better opportunity. Consequently, I cooperate with her for now. They have to free me at some point to use the restroom. As if she read my mind, she asks, “Do you have to pee before I put the pants on you?”
