Stolen Lust

by Charmaine Pauls

  I want to say it’s already morning, but I don’t want to drag attention to the time. If he has deadlier plans for me, I don’t want to remind him time is running out. Shit. I don’t want to think about the fact that I just let my kidnapper fuck me. I can’t rationalize it.

  When he straightens, my gaze slips to his still erect cock.

  “What’s the verdict on that bath?” he asks, getting rid of the condom and discarding it in a trash bag on the floor.

  Without the heat of his body and his lips with their twisted promise on my skin, the haze of my lust evaporates and reality seeps in. Cold and sinister. He’s had his way with me. He can do anything to me now.

  I sit up, not bothering to close my legs. Despite the fact that death is a very possible outcome in my cards, I’m a pervert like that.

  He watches. He can’t help it.

  I soak it up. I can’t help it either.

  “Baby doll.” He tears his gaze from my sex to my face. His voice sounds pained. “You’re not making this easy for me.” Coming to some kind of decision, his expression hardens. “Bath. Yes or no? You have one second to make up your mind.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  The question is loaded. To live or to die. He holds the power. My life is in his hands.

  “Leaving,” he says, almost gritting out the word.

  My stomach flips over. Hope makes me breathe harder. I close my legs. Can I trust him?

  He adjusts his jeans and zips up. Then he waits.

  “I’m fine,” I say, holding my breath as I test if he’s as good as his word.

  He doesn’t argue, but there’s tension in his shoulders when he picks up my jeans from the floor and hands them to me.

  I shimmy into them as I keep him in my vision. Guys don’t get emotional about sex. He can still slit my throat and dump my body in the bushes. Just because I let him inside me doesn’t mean he’ll have mercy.

  “If you’re hungry for something more appetizing,” he says, “I can concoct some chili.”

  I shake my head.

  A second ticks past. Something balances on that second, something I can’t read. The tension mounts as he makes up his mind and the scale tips.

  “Come,” he says, leading the way to the lounge.

  I follow because I don’t have a choice.

  My jacket and my bag lie on the sofa. He takes the jacket and holds it open. I slip into it and let him help me fit the sleeves.

  Gripping my shoulders, he turns me back to face him. Our eyes lock when he zips up the jacket. He holds onto the puller as he runs out of zipper. A reluctant moment passes before he lets me go.

  “Sit,” he says.

  Swallowing, I obey. He goes back to the kitchen. I listen with my heart thumping in my chest to his footsteps sounding down the hallway. I eye my bag. The steps come to a stop. Silence. I have precious seconds.

  Grabbing the bag, I zip it open and dig through it. It’s an idle hope, but maybe he’s put back my phone. Maybe he only deactivated the geotracking.

  The footsteps pick up again. My heart threatens to burst out of my chest as I brush makeup and tissue packets aside. Shit. The beat of his boots on the concrete is getting closer. Too late. I drop the bag next to me, cross my arms, and try to school my features.

  “I destroyed it,” he says from the doorframe.

  I clear my throat and feign innocence. “What?”

  “I had to destroy your phone. I didn’t want your pussy date to use it to trace us.”

  “Did you blow it up with your truck?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s nothing to say. Denying I was looking for it will only sound like the lie it is. My gaze slips to his hands. My shoes are dangling from the one hand, and in the other he’s clutching disinfectant wipes.

  He crosses the floor in silence. Crouching down in front of me, he drops the shoes and takes my right foot in his hands. He places my heel on his thigh and uses the wipes to clean my foot until all the black from the dirty floor is gone. Then he fits my heel and fastens the strap around my ankle.

  When he’s done the same with the other foot, he straightens and offers me a hand. I place my fingers in his palm, letting him pull me up. He takes a T-shirt from a bag behind the sofa and pulls it over his head.

  A cock crows somewhere.

  There’s life around, a nearby smallholding or settlement maybe.

  “Cold?” he asks.

  As if provoked by magic, an involuntary shiver runs over me. “No.”

  He grabs his leather jacket from the back of the sofa and drapes it over my shoulders. The chivalrous act baffles me, but I don’t let it give me hope. Cruelty and kindness often run together. Sometimes they run into each other, making a gray portrait of black and white.

  Leaving me there, he goes back to the kitchen and returns with the gun. My stomach drops. Trepidations fills me as he ushers me outside and locks up.

  Instead of taking the Porsche, he pulls a camouflage cover from a truck parked next to the house. It’s a Land Rover, not old but not new either. It’s the kind many of the guys from town and the surrounding farms drive. Inconspicuous, it will blend into the traffic on the roads.

  Like last night, or rather early this morning, he seats me, fits my safety belt, and closes the door before taking the wheel. He slips the gun under his seat, far out of my reach, and drops my bag on the backseat.

  The horizon is dark purple, the night barely diluted with day. It’s the worst time for me, a time when I usually lie awake and my thoughts are silent enough for guilt to gnaw at my conscience. I get that same blues, that strange sensation of nostalgia and loss, as he starts the engine and follows the dirt track to the road.

  Instead of following the big road to Rustenburg, he goes off on the smaller one. The potholes make for a bumpy ride.

  When the engine has warmed up, he switches on the heater and adjusts the blowers to send the warm air my way. The smell of early morning wood fires from the informal settlements behind the hill carries on the toasty air that blows inside. He’s a good driver, easily navigating the gravel road, and I can’t help but admire his skill. His hands aren’t clenched on the wheel, but his grip is firm. He’s at ease and in control.

  When we’ve passed the worst part of the road and the tires are quieter on the gravel again, he says, “The police are going to ask questions.”

  I sag in my seat. My breath catches, but I don’t let him hear my sob of relief. He’s not going to kill me. He’s going to keep his word.

  “You don’t know my name, and you don’t know where I took you.” He waits for the instructions to sink in. “I blindfolded you and drove for a long time. You tried to count, but you lost track.” He glances at me. “Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I tied you up and kept you for the night, then I drove you to town and let you go. You didn’t see or hear anything. You hardly got a look at my face. If they ask you for a description, you can’t remember. It was dark. The lights of the truck were in your eyes. You were too stressed. You can say any of those things. No one will hold it against you.”

  “Okay.” I nod to emphasize my compliance, anything if he’ll let me go.

  “Good.” He smiles, but the gesture is tight. The same strain from earlier hangs in the air.

  That strain isn’t because he’s worried about trusting me not to spill the beans. He knows he can make me comply. He can stalk or terrorize me. He can come back for revenge. His worry is about something different, but I can’t make sense of it.

  The drive takes more than an hour. It’s after six-thirty when he crosses the railway tracks and enters Rustenburg.

  I sit up straighter. Mint must’ve gotten home by now. Hopefully. The police will be looking for Ian. There may be roadblocks, or maybe he’s already used some app to check where they’ve closed the roads.

  That early morning guilt condition I suffer from crashes head-on into me. I’ve fucked the man who hijacked us, and Mint may be dead some
where on the road. Mint never crossed my mind, not while Ian was inside me, not for a second. Does that make me a despicable human being?

  He takes a detour to the Kloof and returns via the hilly side to the center. He doesn’t ask for directions or where I live. He doesn’t have to. He saw my address in my ID book. It’s disconcerting that he knows, and my stomach clenches with the realization. He parks a block away at the back of my apartment building and cuts the engine.

  This is the moment. He can still change his mind. I’m tense all over again. The fear stomps over everything else in my chest. It won’t settle, not yet.

  I can’t look away from his face. I can’t stop searching his eyes for a joke or a lie as he takes my bag from the back and pushes it into my hand. It’s too easy. Life has taught me to never trust anything that comes too easily.

  My breath catches on a quiet hitch when he grabs my face in his big hand, splaying his fingers over one cheek and digging his thumb into the other.

  His voice is hot and sinister. “You don’t have to be afraid, pretty doll. Nothing is going to happen to you if you’ll be a good girl for me, but you know what has to happen to bad girls. Right?” He drags me so close his breath steals inside my parted lips, feeding me his air. “Don’t think for one second I won’t come after you.” He seals the promise with a kiss so tender it’s nothing more than a brush of his lips and adds in a soft tone, “I know where you live.”

  My insides freeze over while my skin burns up. He disarms me with a touch, possesses me with dominance, and terrifies me with tenderness.

  He motions toward my block with a flick of his head, making that messy fringe fall over his eyes, and says in a deep and unwavering voice, “Walk.”

  Walk.

  A single command.

  He’s setting me free. He’s letting me go.

  Is it a false promise? Is it going to be like in that movie where the abductor tells his captive he’s letting her go, that she has to walk away without looking back, and then he shoots her?

  I swallow.

  He leans over me and opens the door. “Walk, baby doll.”

  I get out on shaky legs. I don’t look back. I walk.

  Every step I take feels like I’m walking a tightrope. When I get to the corner, the engine revs. I’m shaking. Before I’ve rounded the corner, I hear him pull off. He’s driving slowly behind me, following me, and when I take the path that cuts through the back garden, the truck idles on the curb.

  Tears stream over my face. They’re from built-up tension, relief, and stress. It’s not over until I’m inside. My hand shakes as I punch in my code at the back entrance, counting the seconds until the click sounds and the door springs open.

  Tires squeal. The truck takes off. The door shuts behind me, blocking out the noise from outside. The familiar smell of terracotta tile polish infiltrates my nose. I’m inside. I’ve made it.

  I sag against the mailboxes, my legs giving out. A sob escapes as I slide to the floor. I stay there, sucking in air and trying to control the dry heaves that won’t let me breathe.

  Inside. I have to get to my apartment.

  Somehow, I manage to get a grip and climb back onto my feet. I miraculously stay on my impractical heels as I cross the lobby and go up the flight of stairs. I’m trembling so badly I’m battling to fit my key. It drops with a clank on the landing, sounding deafening in the early morning silence. Most people aren’t up yet.

  The door next to mine opens just as I finally get the key to turn.

  Mrs. Steyn sticks her head around the frame. Her hair is in curlers. She scrunches up her face as she takes me in. “Shame on you, sneaking back here in the same clothes you left in last night. He won’t marry you if you slept with him. Men don’t buy the milk if they can get the cow for free.”

  Too drained for this argument, I push inside my apartment.

  “The police were here,” she calls, shuffling outside in her slippers and pulling together the edges of a carnation-pink bathrobe. “They came asking for you.”

  I still. Mint. Thank, God. He made it. “What did they say?”

  “Not much. Just to call them when you get home. It’s drugs, isn’t it? I knew you were mixed up with the wrong people.”

  I look left and right over the rail of the balcony, but the street below is empty of cars.

  “You going to call them?” she asks loud enough to wake up the whole building.

  “Yes,” I say, hoping it will shut her up.

  “I don’t appreciate being woken up at the crack of dawn by cops banging down my door.”

  “Sorry about that.” Before she can complain more, I shut the door and lock it.

  Leaning against the wood, I drop my bag on the small table in the entrance and cover my mouth with a hand. The jacket I’m still wearing smells of tobacco and leather. The sting between my legs is an accusing reminder of what I’ve done. But what floors me most is the soft promise that tailed me like an ominous shadow and followed me inside my safe haven.

  I wiggle my shoulders, letting the jacket fall to the floor as if the leather isn’t butter-soft and warm against my skin. It takes me a moment to gather myself.

  Just go through the motions, Cas.

  In times of doubt or duress, I stick to the routine. It helps me cope. When I’m steadier, I take off my heels, pick up the jacket, and look around the apartment for a hiding place.

  No, I can’t keep it here. I’ll have to dump the jacket somewhere later. For now, I leave it in a heap on the sofa. I can’t believe Ian took the risk of leaving me with his jacket. He must’ve known I’d be tempted to hand it over to the police, but then his warning rings in my head, those dark words he’d pressed to my lips with a kiss.

  Shaking off the disturbing thought, I head for the bathroom. I need to wash this night away. I need to let the warm water soothe me so I can think.

  Just as I reach my bedroom, a loud knock falls on the door.

  “Police. Open up.”

  Chapter 5

  Cas

  The man on my doorstep has blond hair and green eyes. He’s well-built and on the tall side. The one behind him is willowy and dark.

  “Detective Wolfe,” the one with the green eyes says, holding up his badge. “We had a report of a hijacking.” He scrutinizes me, taking in my hair, face, clothes, and bare feet. “I need you to come down to the station and answer a few questions.”

  Shit. I break out in a cold sweat. “Of course. I just need to have a quick shower. I’ll come down straight after.”

  A smile that looks a lot like a challenge flickers across Wolfe’s face. “Under the circumstances, I’d say a shower can wait.”

  I grip the edge of the door, hysteria morphing into anger. “I’ve been held hostage all night. I’d say you’d want a shower too, if you’d been in my shoes.”

  “A criminal is on the loose, Ms. Joubert.” His tone is condescending. “Every minute we waste is a minute our chances of catching him diminishes.” He drops his gaze to my feet. “I suggest you get some shoes. We’ll drive you.”

  “We can just question you here,” the lanky man says, giving his colleague an uncertain look. “We know you’ve been through a lot.”

  Detective Wolfe clenches his jaw. For a second, it looks as if he’s going to step inside. Double shit. Ian’s jacket lies in plain view on my sofa.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Just give me a minute.”

  Not wanting them to follow me inside, I grab my sneakers from the coat closet and fit them without socks. Taking my bag from the table, I say, “I’m ready.”

  They wait for me to lock up and escort me downstairs under Mrs. Steyn’s scrutiny, who nods as if she’s happy I’m being taken away by two detectives.

  Detective Wolfe bundles me into the back of an unmarked car, a white Toyota. On the basic end of the scale, it says a lot about the government’s carpool budget.

  “You all right back there?” the lanky one asks, turning in his seat to smile at me as Detective Wolfe
takes the wheel.

  I fold my arms around myself in an effort to dispel the chill I feel all the way to my bones. “Yes, thanks.”

  My breathing is shallow and my heart racing, making my palms sweat, but I keep a straight face and pretend to look through the window as the detective stares at me in the rearview mirror.

  Thankfully, the drive to the station is short. Rustenburg is a small town. We enter the redbrick building with Detective Wolfe clutching my elbow as if I’m going to run away.

  The reception area only has four chairs, all of them occupied. A man pressing a paper towel to his bleeding cheek sits in one. A woman with a toddler in her lap sits next to him, leaning as far away as she can without falling from the chair. On the opposite side, an old woman sobs while the young man next to her is trying to console her.

  The receptionist looks up when we approach the desk. She offers the detective a strained smile. Tilting her head toward the door on the side, she says, “They’re just about done.”

  As if on cue, the door opens. A female detective wearing civilian clothes and a badge on her belt steps out. My step falters when Mint follows on her footsteps. His shoulders are hunched and his head bowed. When he lifts his gaze as they make to pass, his eyes grow large. His lips part, but the sound of my name as his mouth forms the word is silent.

  The woman pauses when she notices the male detectives. “A word, please.” She pulls them aside.

  Mint and I stand facing each other, the atmosphere brittle and uncomfortable with guilt. He left me, but I fucked our hijacker after stitching said hijacker up. If that comes out, it’s not going to look good for me. A rivulet of cold sweat runs between my shoulder blades.

  “Cas,” he finally says, coming to his senses first. “You’re alive.”

  The minute he’s said it, he averts his eyes, staring at a spot on the floor. He didn’t expect me to make it out in one piece. Neither did I.

  “How?” He licks his lips and dares a glance at me. “Did he…? Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” My chest contracts. I don’t want to talk about what happened.