by J. L. Beck
“Don’t move.” Kneeling in front of me, he helps me into a pair of panties, leggings, and socks. Pushing himself off the floor, he continues helping me with the bra and shirt. His touch is gentle, almost careful, as if he is scared, he is going to break me on contact. It’s strange to see such a big man that you know is capable of great violence and destruction be kind. I’ve seen his worst. Am I now seeing his best?
When I’m dressed, he slides his arms under my body and tucks me against his chest. Instinctively, I throw my arms around his neck, clinging to him. He cradles me to his chest as we walk downstairs, and I can’t help but hug him even closer.
The scent of soap and man wafts into my nose, and I inhale a little deeper. I shouldn’t enjoy his scent or let it calm me, but I do.
Letting my head rest on his shoulder, I nuzzle my face into his chest, reminding myself he is only treating me like this because I’m injured. And I’m only acting like this because I hit my head. I don’t want him, and he doesn’t want me.
Whatever twisted attraction this is between us, it can only end one way… with me leaving him. As soon as I find what I need, I will leave and never see him again.
16
Markus
Every time I look at her, I feel a little more guilty than I did before. If it wasn’t for me rushing her, trying to get her into the basement faster, she wouldn’t have fallen.
Granted, she pissed me off with her defiant behavior, thinking she could tell me no—like she had a fucking choice. She made me want to take her against the shower wall without care, but I didn’t have to act out.
What if she had fallen and actually cracked her head open?
Yesterday she kissed me and now this. She finds a way to push me to my limits daily without even knowing it. Keeping her is starting to be more trouble than it’s worth.
“No shoes?” she asks as I carry her outside.
I did that on purpose. No shoes and she is less likely to make a run for it. Plus, it’s not as if I’m planning on letting her out of the car.
“You don’t need shoes. You’re going to keep your ass planted on the passenger seat the entire time we’re out, got it?”
“Got it,” she murmurs into my shirt.
Her slender arms are slung around me like I’m her life preserver. In a way, I guess I am. It’s fucked up, but I’m what’s keeping her alive. If anyone else had bought her…
I quickly shove the thought down before it has the chance to manifest into blinding rage. No one else touches her. Fallon is mine to touch and mine alone. I’ll kill anyone that touches her or tries to hurt her.
I deposit her into the passenger seat and watch her buckle up before closing the door and walking around the car. I keep my eyes trained on her the entire time, just in case she gets the crazy idea of taking off. It would be stupid on her part. She won’t get far, but if she did, she would only be hurting herself more.
Getting behind the driver’s seat, I turn on the car and start to pull out of the long and winding driveway. Fallon stays quiet, folding her hands in her lap, she leans her head back against the headrest. The last time she was in a car with me was the night I brought her here. That night seems forever ago.
Glancing from the windshield and over at her, I watch her eyes flutter shut.
“Don’t go to sleep. You need to stay awake for now. That’s the whole reason I brought you along.”
“I’ll try.” She yawns and sits up straight.
Tightening my grip on the steering wheel, I drive us through the countryside, periodically glancing away from the road and over at her. I don’t want her to get the wrong idea, to actually think I care about her on any other level than keeping her around for sex.
I won’t let this become something more than that. I’m not a good man, and I’m not capable of giving a woman anything but the darkness inside of me. The good in me died the day she did, and no one, not even Fallon, can reach that part of me.
We drive for a short while, entering a town with one gas station, a grocery store, and a McDonalds. Without looking at Fallon, I already know that she is going to ask me something. She’s too curious for her own good. Most would shut up and enjoy the ride. Fallon isn’t like that, and I’m positive that’s why I’m partially drawn to her.
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just sit there and be quiet.”
“I thought you said I couldn’t go to sleep,” she grumbles under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know if I can sit and be quiet without falling asleep. Can we talk about something else then?”
“No,” I growl, my impatience shredding with each word I speak. “I didn’t bring you to talk.”
“No, you brought me to make sure that I don’t fall asleep and never wake up. You brought me because you don’t want your sex toy to die before you can get your full use out of her.”
“Drop the fucking attitude and shut up.”
I hate how angry I sound, but she has a way of pushing every single one of my fucking buttons, and it’s hard enough keeping myself in check, making sure I don’t show her too much emotion or say something that she might twist and turn around on me.
Her lips press into a thin line, and I’d bet all the money I have in my bank account that she wants to say something. She knows I’m not messing around, though. If she pushes me too far, who knows what I’ll do. Not even I know where my limit is when it comes to her.
Pulling into the first fast-food joint we pass, I head for the drive-thru.
“I hope I don’t have to tell you what’s going to happen if you say or do something stupid.”
“You’re going to kill me?” she says, almost as if she is bored of my threats.
“No,” I shake my head, “not you. I’m going to kill everyone inside this restaurant, and I’m going to make you watch while I do it.”
The blood drains from her face, making her look ghostly pale. I can see her delicate throat working as she swallows whatever she was about to say down.
She doesn’t make a single sound or even look toward the drive-thru window as I order us each a coffee and sandwich. Once we have our food, I park the car in the back of the parking lot, so we can both eat, and hand Fallon her burger. She takes it but doesn’t unwrap it.
Pinning her with an icy glare, I say, “Eat.”
She tenses. “I’m not really hungry. I just want to sleep.”
“Well, you can’t. You need to eat something, and then I can give you some Ibuprofen.”
“Yes.” She sighs. “I know. I just don’t have an appetite right now. I’ll try, though.”
I eat my own burger quickly and sip at my coffee since it’s scalding hot, and I don’t feel like burning my lips off. Fallon nibbles on her sandwich, taking little bites as if she’s a bird. I check the time on my phone.
Lucca said I needed to be at a certain house by a certain time, so if we’re going to be on time, we need to leave within five minutes.
Fallon continues to pick at the burger, staring at it like it’s poison. “My head hurts, and I’m tired, and I get pretty cranky when I’m tired.” She looks over at me with a tiny smile on her lips.
I hate the way her smile makes me feel. Like fucking joy and happiness. I don’t know how she can even manage to smile in this situation. Tears would be more acceptable.
She continues, “I’m grateful that you brought me with you… and for lunch.”
I know where this is going, and I’m going to pump the breaks on it right the fuck now.
“Stop,” I snap, “I’m not the good fucking guy in this story. Just because I didn’t leave you on the bathroom floor and gave you food doesn’t mean I’m a decent person. You’re still alive because you’re a good fuck, and nothing more. Don’t twist things. I’m not the knight in this story. I’m the fucking villain, and if you don’t stop with the bullshit, I’ll show you just how dark things can get.”
Her brows furrow, and where I thought fear would fil
l her eyes, I instead find confusion and maybe even a little anger. “I wasn’t saying you were good. I was saying I’m thankful for your help and for feeding me. It sounds to me like you’re the one twisting things.”
I don’t even think, all I do is react when I reach out and wrap my hand around her throat. She jumps, a startled gasp escaping her lips, and her sandwich falls to the floor. My hold is tight but not hurtful, which is surprising since I feel like strangling her right now.
Her pulse hums beneath my fingers.
“I’m not going to take your talking back anymore.” I give her delicate little throat a warning squeeze. It would be so easy to finish her off, to end this before it can become something bigger, but I can’t do it. I’m not even sure I could if I wanted to. The idea of seeing her eyes vacant, her body unmoving. It squeezes the life out of my fucking heart. I’m cruel, and I’ve done some bad shit but killing an innocent for nothing. That’s not me.
“When I release your throat, you’re going to shut up and sit there. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you. Understand?” I sound like I’ve swallowed a bucket of gravel.
The warning hits where it should, and she nods, shifting her gaze down fearfully. I release her throat and pull my hand away. Fallon shifts in her seat, but only slightly, and remains staring at the floor as if she’s been punished. Hopefully, she takes my warning as a promise and keeps her mouth shut the rest of the ride. For whatever reason, she acts as if she has less reason to fear me, and I can’t have that. I need her to understand who is running the show.
Putting the car in reverse, I pull out of the parking spot and back onto the road. I follow the GPS directions, and thirty minutes later, we arrive.
I park exactly where Lucca instructed me to. I check the time again and realize I’ve barely made it. Lucca was very specific about me being here at four-o-clock sharp.
“What are we—” I glare at Fallon, cutting her off mid-sentence. She presses her lips together and flares his nostrils like a bull. If she’s smart, she’ll keep her mouth shut.
Looking away from her, I drag my gaze back to the road.
A few minutes later, a school bus pulls up right in front of the street corner I’m supposed to watch. Great, now I can’t see a fucking thing. It’s always something, I swear.
Luckily, the bus swiftly takes off again. That’s when I see her. Red hair, gray jacket, slender figure, petite—just how Lucca described her.
But that can’t possibly be her? This girl is just a kid, no more than maybe fifteen or sixteen-years-old. What the fuck?
Lucca doesn’t have a sister, at least not that I know of. They don’t look like they are related at all, not with her fiery red hair. So why the fuck is he watching her? My stomach churns at the thought. Lucca is a good guy, by mob standards, that is.
We’ve done some fucked up shit in our line of work, but we don’t deal in underage girls. We don’t recruit from the streets as young as some others do. Some families shove guns into ten-year-old boys’ hands and have them do their dirty work. Julian won’t stand for shit like that, and neither do I.
Fucking up kids’ lives, that’s a whole other kind of evil, an evil that I’m not okay with.
Lucca has some explaining to do. Whatever is going on with this girl better not be what I’m thinking. I let the girl walk down the sidewalk a few feet before I put the car in drive and start following her slowly while keeping my distance. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. She doesn’t seem to notice me, and when I get closer, I can see why. She has earbuds in her ears, probably blasting so loud, she can’t hear a thing.
The girl turns into the front yard of the house Lucca told me she would go to. So far, everything he has said lines up. I stop the car once more, watching her pull a key from her jacket pocket and unlock the door.
“Oh my god, you’re going to kidnap her,” Fallon shrieks. “Y-you can’t! She’s just a kid. I’m not… I’m not letting that happen—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Y-you… you…” She looks like she is struggling to breathe, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Is she having a fucking panic attack? I need to diffuse the situation before it explodes in my face.
“Calm down, I’m not kidnapping anyone,” I tell her, but it’s like the words don’t reach her at all. Her chest is heaving, her eyes are wild, and I’m pretty sure she is hyperventilating. Shit.
Grabbing her shoulders, I turn her to face me. “Look at me. You need to snap out of it.” Her eyes are so wide they are almost round. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, but her eyes slowly focus on me again. “Take deep breaths.”
I start to show her how to do it. Sucking air in through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. She copies me, matching each breath until her breathing returns to normal.
“There you go, just keep breathing like that. No reason to freak out.”
“I thought… I thought you were going to kidnap her,” she admits.
“I gathered that much.” I let go of her shoulders and twist away from her, so I’m looking out of the windshield. “I might be a monster, but even I have limits. I won’t touch a kid, and I’ll kill anyone who does.”
“Then, why are we here? Who is the girl?”
“That I don’t know yet,” I say through clenched teeth, irritated by the way she doesn’t believe me and angry by Lucca sending me here in the first place.
As I pull out of the neighborhood, I keep glancing at Fallon, who is looking out of the window in silence. At least she is not freaking out anymore. It’s not until we are back on the highway that I see her head loll to the side.
“Hey,” I shake her arm, “no sleeping.”
“I know, I know. I’m trying.”
“Tell me about your family,” I urge. I know this is a terrible idea, but I’ve got to keep her awake.
“Um, my mom and dad own a little store in the town I grew up in. I worked there before I went to college.”
“You liked working there?” I ask, surprising myself by how genuinely interested I am in the answer.
“I guess.” She shrugs. “It was fine. My sister always hated it.” I don’t miss the way her voice takes on a sad note.
“Why did your sister hate it?”
“She thought it was boring, maybe even a little beneath her,” Fallon says, a smile on her face like she is laughing about some inside joke. “She was always the wild child. Adventurous, never sitting still, and always up for anything. She left as soon as she turned eighteen.”
“Where did she go?”
“Europe. She went to France to study but dropped out and moved in with her boyfriend she met there. I don’t think she was ever planning on coming back. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I miss her…” She looks out into the distance. I get the feeling that there is something more about her sister that she isn’t telling me, probably a falling out with the parents given the situation.
“I’m sure you’ll see her again soon,” I say without even thinking about the meaning of those words. Shit. I should have kept my mouth shut because she won’t see her sister soon; she might not see her sister again at all.
Not if I have my way, which has always been the plan.
17
Fallon
Three days pass in a blur, and we slowly fall into a weirdly normal routine. The tether of trust between us seems to grow. I’m pretty sure it has everything to do with the other night. Ever since he talked me off the edge of a panic attack, and we just talked like humans, things have been different, better.
I saw something in him that day in the car. It was like for the first time, he allowed a small sliver of who he was to shine through all the broken, dark pieces of who he made himself out to be. After that day, it made maintaining the hate I had for him hard.
I’ve never been the type to hold onto negativity, but it is hard not to hate him with the way he treats me sometimes. I often wonder if this is all a front, if Markus said and did things to keep me in place.
Part of me stupidly thinks he would never hurt me, mainly because every threat he has made has been an idle one.
He’s all over the place, some days hot and other days cold, which is frustrating as hell. I can’t gauge his mood because I never know which way it’s going to go.
Every night we have sex, and of course, he makes sure I climax.
It makes me feel incredibly guilty that my body is drawn to him, that when he is inside me, I forget what we are to each other and where we are. I crave his touch, even though admitting it makes me hate myself a little bit. He’s my captor, the man who paid a million dollars to fuck me. However, he wants. I’m not supposed to want him.
Except I do. When he’s inside of me, he’s a different person, and I forget about all the shitty things he’s said and done. It gives me hope that maybe everything he’s said is a lie, that there is a kinder person beneath the grumpy, angry, violent exterior he shows to others.
Nothing has changed in our nightly routine. He ties my hands together, securing them in front of me, and tucks me into his side each night, wrapping an arm over me that resembles a thick steel band. Even if my hands weren’t tied, it would be a huge risk to try to escape his hold.
Each night I fall asleep, I feel a little more guilty for nuzzling into his chest and inhaling his scent, but he holds me in his arms, encouraging me.
I do everything he asks of me, cleaning the kitchen after meals and helping with the laundry. I don’t get to go anywhere in the house alone, but at least he doesn’t tie me to the bed and only come and see me when he wants to fuck me.
Staring into my cup of tea, I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He sits at the small kitchen table, working on his laptop. It’s ridiculous how normal he makes this all feel.
It’s as if we’re a real-life couple without technically being one, minus the fact he paid a million dollars for me.
Somehow, I need him to trust me enough to take me to his place because I don’t think I’ll find what I’m looking for here. This isn’t even his house. Ugh. Somehow, I need to make him trust me enough to take me to his home.
