The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used

by Cari Silverwood

  These powers of his were insane, fearsome when I tried to imagine what he might do. He could bring down governments, start wars. Anything. And here I was worried about myself.

  Teaching him was what he’d asked of me, and only now did I understand the burden of responsibility. The complications had been spinning through my brain for ages, and trying to go to sleep had involved much tossing and turning.

  Weirdly, his return made me feel relieved, which might be because I was afraid of what he’d been doing.

  A tank top and panties were my entire attempt at PJs, and I felt vulnerable in his presence.

  “Where have you been?” Yes, that was a dumb question. It’s what a wife asks her returning husband.

  Pfft, I raspberried my own subconscious.

  In the light leaking in through a side window, I could see I had amused him – his mouth curved the smallest amount. On anyone else that would be nothing. On him? A smile? Hallelujah.

  “I’ve been doing good deeds.” That growly rumble, I knew it so well, and it seemed as if he’d really said bad good deeds.

  I wasn’t sure what those were, but my muscles wanted to run. That voice had often heralded orgasmic sex, terrible acts, and general mayhem.

  “Your pill is due.” Overdue really. It was on his side table, along with a glass of water.

  He propped himself on his side, drank the water, and swallowed the pill without protest. Then he turned over to face me.

  Gravity, that minx, made the sheet slide to his waist, revealing a daunting array of muscles. Strands of hair fell lazily across his face, and I’d never figured out why that appealed to me, but… dayum, it did.

  My ovaries did a tango, and I gave the quietest sigh. Fear and lust, such a contradiction.

  “Good deeds? Is that the truth?”

  “Of course. I would never lie to you. Hand on heart.” He did it too – put his hand there.

  Liar. He would lie. He would definitely lie.

  His eyes drifted lower, to my chest. “Hmmm.” The purr of his voice and his scent did more wrongful things.

  “What good deeds, exactly? You wanted me to teach you how to be human. Let me judge.”

  “I did say that. How about this aphorism instead? It’s the thought that counts, right?”

  What a big word you have, sir. Once, he had let slip that he had trained as a lawyer. I could hear it in his vocabulary.

  “Look.” From somewhere unknown, he produced a flower and held it before me. His fingers slowly twirled it. The dandelion gleamed with yellow as it revolved in the headlights glancing through the window.

  A mesmer offering a flower? Again. I wondered what this gesture meant to him.

  “It is the thought that counts,” I murmured. I chose my next words with care, licked my lips. “Could this possibly mean that you did something bad, accidentally?”

  “I said it was a good deed. Maybe you shouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth?”

  “So many prover—”

  He dragged me over to him and under him.

  The kisses alone were enough to arouse me. His lips were on mine, opening me up, toying with his tongue. I loved the unusual playfulness. I was stirred, shaken, and wet, and beneath his weight and spread legs. The kisses worked their magic, then he dragged my hands upward and pinned them to the pillow. If my reaction had been some mesmer auto-response, it was no longer a surprise, and I decided I no longer cared.

  Or not right now.

  I loved it…

  His hand wrapped about my throat as I writhed beneath him, with his erection pushing at me through our clothes. And I… I acted like a whore and wrapped my legs around him and ground myself at that hardness.

  He paused, leaving me breathless and with him wearing a malevolent glare. “It’s not enough.”

  What?

  That hand tightened on my neck, and his teeth showed. He shook me, squeezed his palm across the furrow where my blood pulsed. A little more pressure and I might not be able to breathe.

  Fuck. I shivered, knowing the fear he provoked was hot too. It seemed I had a fetish for being scared the fuck to death.

  “I’m to do good deeds?”

  I nodded and tried not to make choking sounds.

  “Hmmm. You’ll stand at the wall then, panties off, shirt off…” Meticulously, he circled one areola through my top. “Naked for me.”

  For once it was not merely an order. He towed me off the bed by my wrist, drew me to the wall, and leaned over me with his forearm planted above. His finger pressed on the center of my chest.

  “Stay, little bitch.”

  Little. I panted, waiting, hoping for more of this.

  He stripped me, had me spread my legs, then gave my pussy an open-handed slap that jarred loose a startled pleasure. “Don’t touch yourself.”

  How dare he. But I was gasping as he walked away and out the door.

  Mouth open, eyes lowering, I stayed, palms on the wall, feeling where his hands had been in the lingering heat and the ghosts of lust feathering and throbbing from below. Below, where he’d slapped my pussy.

  He returned with a chain leash tinkling in his hand. At the end of the leash was a bright red collar with a price tag attached. He snapped off the tag and sent it fluttering to the floor. As he halted and studied me, his thumb ran across the blunt spikes on the red collar.

  “You stayed. Good girl.”

  His glare and the strict line of his mouth warned me to remain as I was and not to move. If his eyes had gleamed demon red, I would not have been surprised. Nervous, I slid my hands to my outer thighs.

  Though it seemed impossible they could get any more erect, my nipples tightened and began to ache.

  With a dark smile, he slid the collar around my neck, gentler than expected, turned me to face the wall, slapped my ass, once, and buckled the collar. Then he spun me again and clipped the chain leash to the front of the collar. It was left to dangle over my breasts.

  The accidental brush of the side of his hand on my nipple made me whimper. The whimper locked his gaze to mine.

  “Stay.”

  Using both hands, he explored from the collar to my breasts, cupping me there, pushing the cool chain aside so it rolled across me and jangled. With a hand on my neck, he pressed me backward. My head bumped the wall. Casually, he looped the chain into a circle about one breast, then pretended to tie it, let the knot slip free, and began again.

  Lip caught in teeth, sucking, I watched, greedily.

  My breathing deepened, becoming ragged as he played, crushing my flesh in his fist and biting that breast, pushing my chin up, so that I could see little.

  I could feel, though… I could feel, and I squirmed at his rough touches.

  Then he tightened the long chain and properly knotted it into a circle. The leather handle swung and tapped across my belly button, then slid down further, to where my clit ached. The slightest tap of it there was excruciating in how it edged me higher.

  My bound breast ached with trapped blood then began to throb.

  “Stay,” he repeated, releasing his hold on me and with a finger dragging downward and digging into my navel. “Fuck. That’s hot. Do I spank you or fuck you? Hmmm.”

  I doubted he wanted an answer, and I stayed as he backed away. His eyes never left me.

  “Both?” I ventured with a shake in my voice, half from trepidation but mostly from desire.

  His chuckle was deep. “On your knees, girl. Crawl to me.”

  He shucked his drawstring pants, kicked them aside, and I lowered myself to my knees, eyeing his erection as he fisted it. He crooked a finger.

  “Crawl, so I can see your tits coming, see that mouth coming. I need to fuck somebody tonight. You are it.”

  The word it made this demeaning.

  I inhaled shakily, swallowed. What was wrong with me? As I crawled, my upper thighs slipped wetly against each other where they brushed my pussy.

  “Open.”

  At the word, I opened my m
outh and kept on crawling, embracing how much I wanted him inside me, though not there – at the other end.

  My mouth would do for now.

  It wasn’t far to his dick, but the world had shooshed to a murmur, and each movement and sway took forever. There existed only the floor beneath my knees, the chain dragging and tinkling, Isak staring, and the invitation of his erection.

  When my mouth was almost touching him, I paused.

  From here, his cock looked enormous. A drop of wetness glistened.

  Isak grasped my hair, twisted it in his fist until I squeaked and gasped, then he hooked the leash into his other hand. My breast felt the tug and jerk of the chain. A moment later, he dragged me forward and was pushing inside my mouth. He began to fuck me, slowly at first.

  At the hiss of his pleasure, I tried to stare at him.

  There came a harder twist on my hair, and with a hand grasping chain to the side of my face, he thrust again and distracted me – cock sliding into my mouth, over teeth, over tongue, going deeper.

  Another five or six strokes and he sped up, he shoved in harder, faster, then he stayed in longer.

  I bore it all until he pulled out and growled an instruction to turn. My wetness was smeared along my slit with the side of his hand, chain taut, then cock prodded at my ass and edged in with a shocked gasp from me.

  My head was spinning with awakened desires, with pleasure coursing, solid and thumping. His hand cupped my pussy as his cock inched in further.

  “Getting ass-fucked tonight, because this is my other good deed.”

  “Oh.” Gulping, tongue prodding at my parted lips, I felt the squeeze of a cock that should be too large to fit nevertheless run in further, pushing past muscle and bodily resistance. My palms hit the floor and slid on the rug.

  “Fuck.” He tunneled inward, hit bottom, my ass against his balls, and then…

  Slid all the way out.

  The next thrust was harder, then harder again, rocking into me, rocking me forward, making me arch, spine almost cracking – or so it seemed.

  “Oh. Fuck.” I said a multitude of swear words, confused by pleasure, filled, wriggling a little, butt squirming as he left me once. Then a second later he was inside again.

  I ended up flattened to the floor, almost gone into unconscious lust. The rise and rise of that was inevitable as the rise of the sun, and the drive of him inside me.

  His come flooded into me with the spasm of muscle and my shuddering into orgasm. My mouth teething my forearm, sweat slipping belly on floor… and my tied breast awakened to the ache of pooled blood needing to be allowed out.

  He turned me over and loosened the knot on the chain, mouthed my breast and sucked, stirring me with mesmer powers and a palm between my legs, smirking as I bowed upward half-choking at the renewed climax that thundered in. I clutched at nothing, then found sweaty shoulders, his hair. He slipped away, and I squealed with eyes shut, as teeth met above my clit and hung on.

  “Fuck.” I struggled to find air.

  “Yes. Fuck.” He licked at my pussy. “You taste good.”

  I think I gurgled something at him.

  Whatever.

  Dropped there, I slept a while on the tousled bed before dawn, heard him run the shower.

  I awoke with him inside me again. He dragged me off the bed, with my hands weakly clutching at quilt, pulling some of it onto the floor where pillows waited.

  And him. I heard him chuckle, felt him kneel and straddle me.

  From behind, he thrust in.

  Pleasure bloomed. I squeaked.

  Belly down, I blinked away sleep, felt him drive in then thud full hilt inside my pussy, parting my already spread legs. He draped me over two pillows, rucking up the strayed quilt.

  I was plowed thoroughly, woken completely, and when I tried to climb to hands and knees, he squashed me floorward and kept pounding.

  The floor shifted, or I was sliding, smothered under toppling pillows and rumpled quilt. Mounted, fucked, and thumped into the floor, I keened at the forced pleasure.

  Then he was coming and was withdrawing, with the last of his come squirted onto my back.

  The wet, splattering warmth was obvious. I had barely clawed at the sheets and seen light and the room, and he flopped down near my side.

  Come covered my legs and back.

  “Ugh.” I shut my eyes. “Mess.”

  “Not yours to worry about. We will go soon. You can shower and then we’ll pack.”

  I made a harrumphing sound into the pillow gathered under my face, sighed. Then realized I tasted blood. My lip stung and seemed to be swollen. When I touched it, my finger collected blood. His rough sex had crammed my face into something too hard.

  Blood always looked appalling. As I stared at the it, he noticed and studied me, but said nothing. My ankle hurt too, and I would surely have a bruise there.

  The hardness in his expression was nothing new.

  Another day, another scene where I’d had orgasms and temporary joy. I had been a fuckdoll rather than a person. One never felt like anything more than used after a mesmer had you. Thoroughly used, but the hope for more had a habit of making my eyes sting with unexpected tears. Like now. I wiped them away.

  Hope was ever present. How did you make a man who had forgotten the meaning of right and moral figure out what good was?

  Make that figure out what it was, again. He must have once been ordinary?

  That was it. I must make him remember how to be ordinary. I stuck a bookmark on that.

  Isak, ordinary… hmmm.

  The dog barged in then – Banjo – shoving open the door with its nose. It wagged its tail madly looking from me to Isak and back, as if wondering who to go to. Or where its next meal was coming from.

  “Here, boy.” Isak beckoned to him then sat on the bed and patted the dog. He was still unreadable, but the behavior was new.

  When had I ever seen the man with a pet?

  First base in ordinary – patting a dog. Chalk up a one on my list.

  There was hope. There was always a seed of hope, wriggling up from the dark cracks in the pavement.

  CHAPTER 12

  RED

  With Banjo happily camped in the back seat, we drove off at dawn with Isak at the wheel – heading south-west at the intersection outside the town simply because he felt like going that way. The road was well-cared for with few potholes, though it narrowed to single lane here and there.

  The two of us, venturing into the unknown, except I knew him well. The reverse was also true. He knew me.

  Though I had a helluva lot more gaps in my memories.

  While I mused on this, the car rattled over bumps. A paperback slipped from the dashboard and dropped onto my legs. Having caught it before it fell into the footwell, I glanced at the cover then began to flick through the pages. Isak had been reading this. Reading used to be a thing I did. Books had been a balm, a way to escape the rude reality of the world.

  The owner of the car must have left the book. Wait, no. This had been in the car before this one? I flicked more pages, not really seeing them, and a pen rolled from the middle. I checked the cover again.

  Eddie Izzard. What an odd name. Wasn’t he a comedian? Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens. I snorted a laugh. Maybe I should read this?

  Or not.

  I dropped the book into the footwell and found the pen still balanced on my knee. Idly, I twirled it in my fingers, as if learning a cheerleading baton routine.

  That episode at Ted’s house had begun this road-trip escape.

  New memories shook into place. Ugly ones.

  His men hauling me to a sofa and stripping my underwear down to my ankles. The jolting pain as the shove of a hand in the middle of my back forced me to collapse over the arm of the sofa…

  I could remember more than I had before. My brain was making more sense of things.

  A girl had come into the room with a gun pushed to her jaw by her own delicate, slender-finge
red hands. I could see it. Her own hands.

  That.

  It was bizarre.

  I sat straighter in the seat. Her youth made her remarkable because I knew now why she had done it. I remembered words, conversations and more.

  Isak had controlled her. Of course he had. It crawled a sourness into my stomach.

  Had he really done that?

  Though my mind had been partially AWOL, I was sure. She had been a teenager at most, but likely younger than thirteen.

  The paleness of her face and smallness of the wrists on those gun-holding hands.

  “Ted’s daughter,” I whispered.

  “What?” Isak turned his head. The car kept growling along.

  “Did you hook a child with those dirty claws of yours?” Oh, now. I was being brave. Too fucking brave. Dangerously so. But that was such a dirty thing to do. Dirtier than the dirtiest acts he had forced on me. “Did you?”

  The wrinkles on his forehead deepened and stayed deep. Was that worry? Not him. Isak regarded me with robot steel in his gaze and said nothing.

  “Did you… grab a very young girl with your mesmer power? And if so, why? How many other kids have you laid hands on?” My lips pinched tight. How would I ever know what was true if he denied it?

  This riled me more than anything. Rage lit up my insides in a righteous, red-hot flare.

  Again, I waited for an answer and found my fingers wrapped around that pen, tight enough to make them whiten.

  “You don’t want to be asking me—”

  I ignored the grit in his voice, the warning there.

  “I do! Do you grab onto young girls, and I just never saw it?” Here was I, the angel of righteousness.

  He turned his attention to the road, and I could see he was waiting for me to simply forget my line of inquiry.

  My heartbeats made louder and louder lub-dubs. Wait. Wait… He has to answer. He cannot just be silent.

  He was.

  My anger climbed, tightened, coiled, wrenched in. It wasn’t just this, it was everything he had ever done to me and to the others.

  Fuck you. Fuck you, Isak. You don’t get to do this. Though I knew it wasn’t likely to succeed even as I did it, even as my right hand dived across the space between us with that pen angled to stick his eye and hopefully drive into his brain.