What was the question? Sweet mother, make it stop. “Y-yes, Sir.” She licked cracked lips. “Yes, I fucked him.” She didn’t even try to hide the self-loathing in her voice.
The cane clattered to the floor, and he plowed into her vagina, fierce and punishing. Pound after pound, he took from her. Flesh. Blood. Tears. It was disgusting. She was disgusting. Why did he want her? Why?
He grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, shooting pain down her back. “Your body was created for my pleasure.”
She shuddered. Had she asked that out loud?
“No one bends to my cane or takes my dick like you do. No one feels as good as you do. I own you.”
Tears clogged her throat, and he shoved her head away. Minutes blurred into hours. He violated every orifice, over and over without pause, and somewhere in the haze of anguish she panicked over his possible use of Viagra. He could go for hours on that horrible pill.
When her armor eventually crumbled, she tried to crawl away from her body, tried to project her mind and all its nerve endings to the corners of the room where the darkness stood still.
He spanked and caned, licked and bit, and spared no surface. Then he fucked her again.
Her breath wheezed through a parched throat. Dried stripes of tears burned her cheeks. When the blaze from his penetration dulled, she sunk into a listless fog of acceptance. The shadows crept in from the walls and guttered the lights until there was nothing. Nothing but the echo of his painful smile and the promise it imparted.
I’ll go easy on you tonight.
Chapter Seven
‡
Daybreak glowed through the expansive room. Mounds of bedding cradled Charlee’s bruises and welts, and she buried her face in the foam mattress. The acidic stench of cologne scorched her nose.
Sixty floors up. Down a long corridor. Last door on the right. Roy’s bedroom.
She’d dreamt of Noah. He’d busted into Roy’s bedroom with guns drawn and nothing standing between him and Roy but a few dozen bullets. But she knew better. Dreams were dangerous in this place. She wiped it from her mind.
Quiet mantled the hollow space, but the atmosphere churned. He was near.
Beside her, the bed was empty, but a man-size indentation remained. A muscle quivered in her lower lip. She bit down on it and shoved away the connecting thoughts.
“Charlee.”
She flinched, a full body spasm, and tried to downplay it by stretching her arms and steadying her breath. Then she turned her head.
He stood before the dresser mirror, chin raised, knotting a blood-red tie. “I have meetings all morning, some things I couldn’t cancel. I cleared my schedule for the remainder of the week.”
The nerves beneath her skin rioted as he approached. He perched beside her hip, grabbed her throat, and used it to roll her body to face him.
Violet eyes sparked in the sunlight. “My beautiful girl. My bed. Perfection.” He petted her hair, his gaze clinging to her face, fixated with obsessive longing. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Let me go,” she said, quietly, swallowing against his fist.
He smiled, and it illuminated his eyes. “Never.”
“Why do you hurt me?” His fingers dug in, pinching her esophagus. Where had her voice come from? Even when he wasn’t choking her, she’d never had the guts to question him. But that was then. She’d grown a lot in four years. “Did someone hurt you?”
He chuckled. “Hurt me? No. My father was exceedingly wealthy and powerful. No one would dream of touching his son.” He sighed wistfully, and the hand around her throat loosened. “He beat my mother regularly. Even she loathed to defy him.” His eyes glazed over, faraway and heavy-lidded. “My father only needed to walk into a room and he owned it, its walls, and its occupants. He was a magnificent mentor.”
His father had erected the cartel that was Oxford Industries. She shivered, grateful there was only one Oxford left to stain the world. As for Roy, the placidness of his current mood didn’t delude her. Spoiled little rich boys could exhibit moments of good behavior. As soon as things didn’t go their way, the tantrums ensued.
“I slept inside you all night.” His whisper was a thousand crawly things skittering up her spine. “Your hot, tight cunt clung to me like a vacuum.”
Delusional pervert. Thank God her weakened body had put her in a dead-like sleep. “Yes, Sir.”
He reached around to her nape and pulled her face to his. The pain from the previous night was too fresh. If she fought him, it would only invite more. So she thawed her joints, molded against him, and tangled her tongue with the slug in his mouth. Cold and rigid inside, she gave him the silent, yielding response he expected. Whatever was needed to expedite his departure.
The door creaked. “Sir. Your car waits.”
Their lips separated, and his eyes imprisoned hers. “Thank you, Salvador.” His mouth, so close and pinched in a line, was a sanguine gash against the pale background of his face. Black hair and eyebrows intensified his complexion. He personified a macabre portrait of beauty and would look much the same frozen in death. The thought gave her strength, as did the lurch of the mattress and his parting words. “I’ll be a while.”
The door closed behind him, and she released a shuddering exhale. The tears in her rectum caught fire as she threw off the quilts. She flinched, froze. No clothes, but that wasn’t what sent ice through her veins. It was the felt-lined shackle around her ankle. She twisted it, found the locking mechanism, and knew the key had just walked out the door.
She followed the attached chain, which was light-weight and wrapped in a tube of silk, down to the coiled pile on the floor. From there, it led to a steel ring bolted to the hardwoods beneath the bed. No sense in yanking it. He would’ve made certain it bolted securely to the floor joist.
Bruises speckled her hip bones and wrists. The welts on her legs tightened with each step toward the closet, and the chain unraveled to crawl behind her.
Nothing had changed in her absence. The spartan dresser at one end. Her easel, desk, and drawing boards at the other. A flat screen facing the foot of the bed was the only fixture on the wall.
The eyes in the ceiling followed her. The movement of tiny cameras wired in the recessed lighting might’ve gone unnoticed, but she’d had two years in her previous captivity to assimilate the room’s every detail.
At the threshold of the closet, the chain jerked her leg mid-stride. All her old clothes hung in tidy rows beside his and out of reach. Twisted prick.
She limped toward his dresser. Half-way there, the chain strained again. Trapped and naked. Dammit. Her drawing supplies were twice as far. A classic Roy Oxford tactic. Nothing was carte blanche. Her favored pastime, her clothes, all of it kept in the room and out of reach as a visual reminder that everything had to be earned.
Four doors divided up the monotony of blank walls. The corridor, the closet, the bathroom, and the sliding panels that would open to his office. The exterior wall glared with floor to ceiling windows and a vista of the Golden Gate Bridge. The street below had a daunting view of Roy’s fortress of mirrored glass. A view she had never experienced.
She walked the circle of the tether, her stiff muscles and sore bottom stinging with each step. Only the windows, the bed, and the bathroom were in reach. She emptied her bladder, used the toothbrush—the single item in the drawer-less, cabinet-less room—and skipped the shower. No toothpaste. No soap. No towels.
A tray of assorted pastries, berries, a pitcher of milk, and bottled water sat on the round table beside the bed. But it was the bowl of oatmeal squares at the center that made her heart skip a beat.
Dance with me at our wedding.
Roy wouldn’t have known about the note Noah left the prior morning, but he did know what her favorite cereal was. Too bad he’d offered it so freely. She didn’t want it, couldn’t imagine ever enjoying it again.
She curled beneath the bedding and broke the seal on the water bottle. No sedatives in the water to era
se the stockroom, the ride to the airport, the kick to the head. The gun shot. She rubbed her breastbone and breathed through the stinging in her nose. Not knowing was worse than the truth. Would the murder of a St. Louis detective make national news?
Every action supervised. Every. Single. Breath.
She glared at the ceiling. “Turn on the television.”
Seconds later, the TV powered on. The screen showed a skinny woman huddled in a large bed, her spiky hair the color of L’Oreal Platinum #105. She’d worn the color for over a year, but she didn’t recognize the woman beneath the disguise. Bit by bit, she was losing herself.
She tugged the duvet tighter around her nudity and raised a palm to the side of the room. On screen, her face disappeared behind the hand. “A news station. Please?”
She dropped her hand, steadied her breath, and waited.
Nothing.
“Turn it off.”
The screen went black. The damned remote was another privilege to earn. Until then, she would let a fragment of her brain hold onto a still breathing, smiling, waiting Noah.
Over a selection of blackberries and miniature rolls, she rewrote the prior night. She replaced it with a dance, bodies entwined, a sway in their steps. The fantasy tormented her, burning her eyes and twisting things inside her.
Dread slithered over her and she shook it off, steeled her backbone. She would not let Roy break her. She needed to keep a measure of herself locked away from his keen eyes so when she did escape, she would have something left to help her mend.
But what did she have that he hadn’t already taken?
She had a memory of a man with back full of scars. Beneath the superficial damage was a devotion to survival, an instinct to dominate his future. Most probably didn’t see that when they looked at him, but she hadn’t just recognized it, she’d felt it and wanted it.
She would lock his strength deep inside her, would mimic his steel undercarriage and make it her own. She recalled the unrefined charm in his retorts, the raw beauty of his expressions, and the way he looked at her when she turned to leave. As she replayed their hour together over and over, the pain dimmed, the bedroom bled away, and her eyelids sagged.
Chapter Eight
‡
Charlee woke to the Craig’s voice.
“Get up.” He ripped off the covers. “Mr. Oxford is back, and you are requested in his office.”
She wrapped her arms around her nudity. “Now?”
“Shower first.” He wrenched the chain attached to her leg, and she tumbled to the floor.
“Dick.”
The air hissed and a strike hit her back, ricocheting from her tailbone to her knees. She gasped. Fuck, her body would never hold up at this rate. She twisted her head and found him flexing over her and swinging a section of the chain folded in half.
He could go to hell. She pulled in her legs as if to stand, then reared back and shot a foot into his groin.
A grunt pushed past his lips, but rather than dropping the chain, he raised it for another strike.
“Hurt me again and I will beg Mr. Oxford to remove the rest of your ear.” She matched his death glare with one of her own.
He worked his jaw and flared his nostrils as if sniffing for a bluff. Begging Roy would come with a high price, one she wasn’t sure she’d be willing to pay.
The chain lowered. Sure, he was afraid of Roy, but he was more fearful of losing his grand salary, his swanky penthouse living, and the power that came with being the right-hand to one of the world’s wealthiest men.
She hobbled to the bathroom, the twinge in her back adding to her frustration. In the brightly lit room, she found everything she needed to prepare for his summoning. Towels, shampoo, soap, lotion, toothpaste…a tactical folding knife to conceal in her ass? Well, almost everything.
The Craig leaned outside the door-less shower stall with the end of the chain handcuffed to his wrist. She turned her back to him under the spray of water and rubbed in shampoo. Even the follicles of her hair hurt.
Footfalls approached behind her. The steady, confident pace sent a shiver down her spine.
“Drop your hands.”
Dread surged in her chest and ruptured into a struggle for breath. She lowered her hands, and her neck sank into her shoulders, unable to force her legs to turn. She didn’t want to look in his eyes and see what was coming.
Water pelted her head, and the air thickened and charged around her. His chest slid over her back and his hands cupped her breasts, shifting lower and slipping through her slit. She held her breath. Maybe if she held it long enough, she would pass out.
He bit her shoulder, his teeth digging into bone, and a cry fled her mouth.
“Oh Charlee.” He stroked his fingers between her legs, entering her. “I give you exactly what you need.”
He didn’t give her anything. He took. She shuffled toward the tile wall, wishing she could crawl inside it.
A smack scorched her ass, and his body wrapped around her, crushing her against the cold tile. “You like the pain. You need it, and I want to give it. See how perfectly matched we are?”
Hot acid hit the back of her throat. Fuck him. She twisted and swung her fist at his face.
He caught it and slammed her arm against the wall. “Salvador,” he said softly, his tone at odds with the hard glass of his amethyst eyes.
The chain tugged at her ankle as the Craig gathered it and prowled to the shower stall. “Yes, Mr. Oxford?” His eyes wandered over her body.
“Hold her,” Roy said, his voice relaxed, chilling. His stuffy suits tended to camouflage his physique, but it was in moments like this, when his naked body bore down on hers, that she was reminded just how strong and muscular he was.
And now it was two against one. She closed her eyes. Their weight alone quadrupled hers. But she had strength. Jay’s strength. She gathered it from within and took refuge in the company of his scars, his pain. He would guide her, show her how to survive.
The Craig pinned her arms above her head and steam from the spray saturated his black pants and shirt, the chain swaying from one hand.
Roy lowered to a crouch, shoved her legs apart and traced her folds. His exploration followed the sensitive skin past her vaginal opening.
She clenched her butt. Oh, please, no. Not there. The ripped tissues in her rectum flared, throbbing. As if reading her mind, he shoved two fingers in the sore hole. The sting fired spasms through her insides, lifting her on tiptoes.
“No, please. It’s too much. Please, stop.” Her eyes burned, and she writhed against the hands trapping her arms against the wall.
Roy gripped her thigh, worked more fingers in her ass, and clamped his teeth around her clit. She gasped, shuddered.
The invasion pushed deeper and she cried out, tears mixing with water. “Please, no more. No more.” She sobbed and bucked uselessly.
“Your sweet pleading makes me so fucking hard. Ask for an orgasm. Beg me.” He licked her clit and stretched her ass.
The agony of his pumping fingers eddied with a despicable surge of arousal. Her body remembered his ruthless touches, the way he could force her to orgasm. How could she come for Roy and not for Noah? She got off on brutality and not on tenderness? She was damaged. So fucking broken.
She pinned her lips and bottled the scream in her throat. She didn’t want this. She didn’t…Oh God, the sensations built in her groin and the stimulation from his tongue rushed the terrible desire higher and higher. Her body trembled, betraying her, and her eyes caught fire with the outpouring of her weak fucking tears.
Twisting her hands in the grip of the Craig’s, she bowed her hips back, tried to escape Roy’s mouth. All of it ineffectual. Her orgasm broke free, flooded every nerve in her body, ripping away her will and buckling her knees.
He removed the pressure of his fingers from her backside and cradled her pathetic body along the length of his. “That’s a good girl. Your boyfriend couldn’t give you that.” He shoved her chin upwa
rd, his gaze boring into hers. “No, he couldn’t make you come, but I can. You’re fortunate I took you back. Don’t worry, beautiful girl. I’ll give you want you need.”
Grief squeezed her throat with invisible straps. His mouth covered hers, and she yanked her head back, smashing it against the tile. The grip around her hands vanished, and the Craig slinked out of the shower. She flattened her palms against the clammy flesh of Roy’s chest and pushed with no success.
He circled his fingers around her throat and pressed his weight into her hands. “I’ve tried with others. Four years of fucking trying. They’re weak. All of them blubber and pass out from the lightest strikes. Their minds shatter within hours, and they never come.” He stroked her face, and a sob dammed her throat. “I control you, dominate you, and your eyes spark for more as your juices run down your legs. You fight me because you know I love it.”
She would not accept that, refused to consider his delusional psychobabble. Gathering the saliva pooling in her mouth, she spit it in his face and raised her chin above the collar of his hand.
A laugh burst from him. “Point made.” His tongue darted out and caught the spittle sliding down his cheek.
Defeated, she slumped against the wall as he conditioned her hair and soaped her body. That done, he held his hand outside the stall. “Razor, Salvador.”
Her spine stiffened. Could she wrestle it away and flay his pretty face?
He returned with a feminine razor, the blades shielded by pink plastic and moisturizing strips. Fuck. Impossible to do any damage with that wimpy thing, let alone gather enough courage to overpower him long enough to use it.
The Craig once again held her hands above her head as Roy shaved her underarms, pussy, and legs. Her skin crawled everywhere the razor touched. She fixated on a tile square, no longer able to watch.
She retreated into her head, marveling at how much she’d changed between captivities. She’d become Wendy, Tess, Sarah, always someone else and always acting. Her act had been a sticking point in her relationship with Noah. He never knew her.
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 114
