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

by Cari Silverwood

  Not missing this time. I grunted in the last microsecond of the swing.

  The pen and my fist smacked into him. He had thrown up his hand and the pen had pierced his palm. It sank in. Half an inch deep. I let go, breathless, awed. The pen stayed there, embedded, until he plucked it out with his teeth.

  Freeze.

  That was a command.

  Breathless was nothing. I lost the ability to breathe for a while, until he relented.

  Seconds only, and maybe I would’ve overcome that fatal command. Maybe. Else he’d be using it on random assholes.

  I gasped in air, chest heaving, with the rest of me fastened to the upholstery.

  His command made me a statue in my seat, while he slowed, and exited and drove somewhere. I’d known. Of course I couldn’t kill him, no matter how much I wanted to. I’d still needed to try, for my own sanity and indignant morality.

  Laughable how dumb us humans can be.

  The car had stopped and ahead were trees.

  “Get out.” The car door opened, and I was able to unbuckle the seatbelt and climb out. He stood there, assessing me, the rigid lines of his jaw the main physical clue to his rage. I could feel it though – we connected enough for the backwash to scare me.

  “You do not get to accuse me of fucking kids. Ever!” He spat the last word as he slammed the door. His nostrils flared and he flicked his gaze down me as if I were goop scraped from the bottom of his shoe.

  “Strip then walk there.” His fingers flicked open toward a large white gum tree with its bark peeling off it like paper. “Be glad I’m not fucking burying you.”

  He’d said fuck, twice. That alone rang alarms.

  I undressed, trembling, tripping on my panties as I drew them off. With my clothing laid in a lonely pile among the sprigs of grass on the mostly bare red earth, it did seem as if I was about to be shot and buried. I was aware of the traffic noises, but they were distant. I hoped we were concealed. Turning my head to check that proved impossible. He wouldn’t want us arrested though, would he?

  He’s not killing me but… what have I done?

  I ended up with my back to the wide trunk, with bark scraping at my skin. Drooping branches and leaves framed the sky and an angry Isak. He hauled off his T-shirt, revealing his torso and the ripple of muscles that I had zero doubt were about to be used to hurt me. That V of stomach ridges taunted me, luring the eye downward, into his pants… I shook, partly in fear, partly in desire, and felt the rise and scrunch of my nipples as he observed me.

  That familiar shiver of soft heat down my front, seeping into my flesh and hastening my breaths, making my pussy swell and making me yearn for him…

  If I spread my thighs, maybe it would make him change his mind?

  I shut my eyes in a futile attempt to gain serenity, yet still I trembled.

  Fucked up beyond all recognition – this was my normal.

  “What did you do wrong, Red?” Oh my, that growly voice and those piercing eyes – they reached inside me and messed me up, bigtime.

  I swallowed, listened to my heart for all of five beats. Where is my courage?

  I made myself focus on his face. “I said… I suggested you were a pedo.”

  “You did. And you will never do that again. Say it.”

  “I won’t.” I sucked on my bottom lip and poked at with my tongue. “I promise, I won’t.” In actual fact, his extreme reaction had reassured me. “Why then?”

  “Her? She was our only chance. What do I do with you?” He cocked his head slightly and began to draw his belt from the loops of his pants. The slither of that was always snakelike to my mind – full of the ominous promise of pain and lust and mindfucks.

  “Say, please.” He smiled his flat smile.

  “Please,” I croaked, tongue-swiped my lips.

  “Good.”

  The first flick of the belt was a shock as it swatted across my breast, my nipple, smacking in, flaring pain, and then… then making me moan. The flood of heat then that first hint of wetness between my legs.

  Already, he slew me. Hating my reaction was old. My feet shifted, crunching on the dry leaves. An ant crawled over my hip. I still hated this.

  “I truly need to punish you. Not orgasms, not the seesaw of joy and hurt, just fucking with you and hurting you. How much you have angered me. How. Fucking. Much.” The belt flicked and lashed at me, forced more pain through my flesh. More strikes, more, harder ones on my thighs. I squealed and dearly wished to run away, but I could not.

  Then I managed a sway to the right.

  “Don’t move away.”

  I dug my hands into the bark on either side of me and cursed on the next strike.

  Isak chuckled. “That’s it. Show me how much this hurts.” The bass-deep tone of his words stirred me even as he goaded.

  “Spread your legs.”

  I did so.

  He whacked the belt onto my pussy, once, twice.

  Fuck. I gasped and writhed like a mouse stuck in a trap. My scuffling feet cleared a space in the dirt underfoot.

  I cried out in whispers then croaky shouts that pained my throat. Tears wove down my face. Then… finally, he stopped, and I saw him through my tears, red-faced, panting, with his teeth showing.

  The blood from the wound on his palm had curled to his fingertips. That same hand gripped the belt. The end of the belt coiled on the ground and the blood fell in small drops to the dirt beside it – no doubt the wound had reopened due to the effort he’d employed to whip me.

  Karma. Fucking karma.

  Panting, sobbing, I felt the fire throb across my stomach, breasts, and thighs.

  “This is what happens when I lose it. Do not do this again.”

  I blinked, shook my head.

  His eyes were fixed on me. “I’m not done.”

  Fear renewed as he stepped in and tied my wrists at my front with his shirt then hoisted them higher so he could use my dress to rope them to a branch above me. He turned me to face the tree.

  “Not done.” He ground out the words as if extinguishing a cigarette butt on my body, then he stepped backward with a slow, deliberate tread – one, two, three.

  I blinked away tears, leaned my forehead on the tree.

  When several smacks from the belt landed on my back then on my rear, I jerked at each and every blow.

  A long pause followed.

  I sneaked a glance over my shoulder and saw him squatting with his hands threaded through his hair, and he was staring at me. Only this time I didn’t feel I was goop from his shoe. An alien pet? A possession he couldn’t recall buying? Yeah, I didn’t know his precise thoughts, only that he’d left me pining for him. And that he desired me and was confused.

  Isak, confused?

  Over and over, he made me want this, despite the punishment. It was demeaning and inevitable, and I really should be used to it.

  I sagged into the bindings on my wrists and let the ties take some of my weight – not a good move, since it made the cloth tighten.

  CHAPTER 13

  ISAK

  Eddie Izzard: ‘What do you do in life? What do you create, what do you make, what do you add to the human existence? That is what matters.’

  Funny how a book can say something, and yet the meaning doesn’t hit you for hours.

  Unlike my belt – Red knew when I hit her with that, instantly. Her back and ass were crisscrossed with long welts. I released my hands from my hair and slowly stood.

  As a mesmer, I just wanted to hurt her and make her do my bidding, and to gratify myself.

  And as a man?

  My anger had died away and been mixed up with different sorts of angers and feelings – feelings I hadn’t known until now. I’d been angry that Red had assumed I was a pedophile.

  Mostly I was angry because it was her saying it.

  Which meant I valued her opinion? My lip curled.

  And now… I was annoyed. A few weeks ago, her attitude would have amused me, then I’d have fucked with he
r just because I was a mesmer. Who cared what the little people thought? Fuck them all.

  Red was excruciatingly different.

  I still wanted to punish that sweet ass, although the fact that she wanted to come right now made me smile. I could detect serious want thriving inside her – and how her legs trembled as I amped the volume.

  Everything I had done to her had trained her into this cutely female response.

  Purposefully, I dripped more desire upon her psyche, giving her libido a big, hot, luscious lick, then I walked in and cupped first her bare ass then the front of her pussy. My fingers slicked through a copious amount of female wetness where it had leaked from her slit.

  I probed her. I played with her, and oh the wriggles she gave me, the small soft noises, the whimpers as I stuck and plunged my two fingers into her cunt and then sucked them out. Her hands twined and shifted in the cloth rope above.

  How much did I love a trapped and needy Red? More than the world itself.

  “You’ve got no escape – not from the belt, and not from me.” I jerked my hand and raised her higher, off her feet, making her an ornament perched on my hand. I snaked my arm about her waist. “And I don’t think I’ll let you come.”

  She wriggled and gave a shocked gasp. As a reward for her thinking me worse than I truly was, I fingered her in earnest. With my thumb, I circled her little erect clit, toying with it with my other hand clamped on her hip and pulling her into me. I ground my dick into her, made her sway and throw her head back as the pleasure from my probing, squeezing fingers enticed her onward, to the very peak of an orgasm.

  “Want to come?”

  “Mmm. Yes?”

  “That was a yes?” I stuck my fingers in her again, pretended to fuck her ass and held her there in limbo, helpless, impaled and locked between the bar of my arm, my fingers in her cunt, and my very hard dick.

  “Oh.” A sharp intake of air. “Yes. Yes, yes. Please, yes.”

  “Even though I belted you so hard the strikes have left these beautiful…” I leaned away and admired the marks on her back. “Bruises and red stripes. These welts…”

  I bit her shoulder, squeezed her poor abused butt. She yelped but recovered after a spate of panting.

  Red nodded, wildly.

  “Bad luck.”

  I pushed away, backed off and left her teetering for a few seconds, until she recovered her footing.

  Red leaned into the tree and said soft words I could not understand.

  “What?”

  “Please?”

  “Not today. Not. Today.”

  “Isak?”

  “No. Hell, no.”

  “Fuck.”

  What matters is what you create in this life. Got it.

  I was creating something wonderful. Then, I hesitated.

  I wanted to whip her again, to make her cry and whine for dick, then I would fuck her stupid and watch the splatters of come run down her welted skin.

  Something… stopped me.

  I was messed up as to why I was doing what I had done to her, wasn’t I? I frowned at myself.

  The medication had derailed me. Creating a fucked-up Red could not have been my main aim today? I mean, I had already done that, in spades, so many, many times.

  I let her stay there while I admired this disheveled, panting female.

  A piece of art, even so, in my opinion. Worthy of being hung in an art gallery. One day I must do that.

  Red, swinging nude, tied up, and red from my welts, in an art gallery.

  Goals.

  I untied her and let her down gently, laid her on her back on the pile of her clothes. I spread her wide and shoved myself into her, listening to the music in that drawn-out muffled groan as I slid in and stayed there, balls squashed to cunt. I fucked her face to face, driving in hard, knowing I was going soft on her.

  Too gentle. This was almost shameful, except that I liked this. The flutter of her eyelashes. The huff of her breath as she took me. The jiggle of all her soft bits as I rammed in.

  How her lips felt and gave beneath mine.

  The feel of her body accepting my presence inside her.

  Sex made us one thing, one creature, one panting sliding, grunting animal.

  The whole time I fucked her, I was aware of the pain I caused with every thrust as her back and ass were driven, back and forth, across the ground and the cloth.

  Before I came, I held her throat and pinned her wrists in the vice of my grip. I stared into her half-closed eyes, with her spine curving hard and her heels scrabbling for a hold on the earth. She wanted release; she wasn’t getting it.

  Her last bit of penance.

  “No,” I grunted, before I speared into her one last time and crested that explosive wave of ecstasy.

  Her clenched internal muscles seemed to suck more come from me than was possible, but I pulled out and jetted the last spurts onto her belly, watched it pool and run off her as she frowned up at me, whining and searching within herself for that elusive orgasm.

  “No.” I smiled then thrust into her again. She wasn’t going anywhere until I was fully done with her.

  CHAPTER 14

  RED

  “Where are we going?” I asked this as casually as was possible, considering the hurts he had inflicted earlier, in tandem with memories of the unreached joy. Blue balls? I had a blue pussy, and even now I ached.

  While I gripped the wheel, I wriggled and shifted my sore ass on the seat.

  One cannot be without the other. Not with him.

  There were bruises, he had told me.

  Not surprised.

  After the punishment, he had left me churning with unrequited need, but he’d also taken the time to help cleanse me of all the icky mess. I might still need a shower, but he’d seemed to care for my wellbeing.

  He was more unpredictable than ever.

  His aim of learning how to be human felt flimsier by the hour. The longer I was unmuted, in the real world, the more my thoughts repeated a chant – you need to get away from him.

  “Why?” He stretched his arm between the seats and caressed the dog.

  Banjo had nudged his way forward. That big, boofy head seemed characteristic of these Aussie cattle dogs – maybe they head-butted the cows that trotted the wrong way.

  “I need a plan.” Daring of me to say so, I guess. Though his attitude was still as scary as a Chucky doll on Valium, I was getting used to the new, medicated Isak.

  He could be talked to… with, so long as I didn’t accuse him of being a child molester.

  The murder and torture of adults was apparently fine and dandy. Go figure.

  “A plan.” His parroting of the word gave me nothing. “Why?”

  “This…” I gestured through the windshield at the road. “Is aimless and likely to find trouble. Truthfully, I just feel we are going about this the wrong way.” I’d mildly stressed the we to remind him I was supposed to be his helper and not his piñata toy. “We’re leaves on the wind, as Wash said in Firefly. People need roots. If I am to show you anything, we should find a place to stop so you can learn to ummm empathize?”

  That was reasonable? My ass and tits begged to differ, reminding me of his tendency to reach for a belt when we had differences.

  He grunted, let the car run on for ages with the tires quietly eating road.

  For most, that last incident would have made them a little terrified. Me? He’d held back from his worst. There had been a moment when I had felt the swing of his intent from sadistic to… whatever this new Isak had within.

  And the fucking at the end had been nice too. Dayum.

  A pity that masturbating never worked without him allowing me to go all the way.

  Even so, I reminded myself, I should be terrified.

  I should be terrified.

  I turned that over and over and knew it to be true. The logic was there. Anyone normal would be wondering if they could survive being with him after that flogging. And yes, I did sometimes think that
too, but I was not terrified.

  What had he made of me?

  I shook off those morbid thoughts.

  This vehicle had belonged to the lady vet. I massaged the wheel, thinking on that instead. Casual stealing was a part of this road trip. No one else could do this. He could convince a government he was something he was not, given time, opportunity, and access to the right women in bureaucracy. Convince people he was a legal citizen of Australia and get it documented. Computers were driven by people and data propagated once you had a fact altered.

  If I wanted to be free of him, I must do this – whatever it was he wished for.

  “The woman who was heading west…” Finally he spoke. “The widow. She had a property I can get from her. We can stop there. First though, we go look at that.” He pointed at a huge billboard we were approaching.

  It flashed by but I had read it.

  “Carnarvon Gorge?” The next exit led there.

  “Yes. See some of the country? Isn’t that what normals do?”

  “It is.” Tourism, here we come. Ordinary. I’d wanted that. This was certainly ordinary.

  The scenery on the billboard had looked made for goats. The mountains off to the side of the highway, poking at the sky, reinforced that notion.

  And there was swimming. More billboards filled in the blanks. A gorge, surprise, surprise. Walking paths. Camping.

  We left the dog at a small kennel in a town that catered for tourists traveling with pets. The rehoming idea seemed to have been shelved, because next door was the local council’s refuge for strays and unwanted pets, and Isak ignored that.

  He held the dog’s leash as we filled in forms with fake names and fake addresses, then paid in advance for the dog’s stay. A toddler with his mother and father emerged from the door that led to the boarding area with the cages and kennels. He sucked his thumb and made googly-eyes at Banjo as the dog sat laughing – wearing a doggy grin – and with his tail swishing to and fro. The family straggled by with their cat in a cage, heading for the front doors. The toddler managed to trail his hand over Banjo’s back.