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

by Cari Silverwood

  “Bastard,” she added quietly.

  “Mmm.” I vowed to keep stirring her a while in bed, until we slept. Punishment as well as fun.

  Then I steered her to bed, still naked, still wanting me, and laid her over the edge.

  “Bastard?” I spanked her a few times, firmly and pointed to the middle of this creaky bed.

  She climbed in and glowered at me.

  “Go to sleep now.” I touched foreheads while inserting my fingers in that dirty mouth. Slowly I withdrew them. Her tongue flicked at them, curled.

  Could not resist. I shoved her onto her back, straddled her, and fucking teased her clit with my mouth until she cried and whimpered, and tried to lock me there with her thighs. I bit her thigh and slapped her away.

  “No coming for you. Sleep.”

  Leaving her wanting and unfucked was now on my list of favorites. Funny, how it almost seemed as if she liked it too. There was a sweet smile on her lips as she squirmed in place before she snuggled into the sheets.

  * * * * *

  In the parking garage, Joe leaned on the side of the car with his finger hovering over the send button. “Should I, boys? Ryan?” His youngest nodded, then Jack nodded too. “Okay. You’re right. I should’ve thanked that man more than I did. Let’s see if this helps us find him.”

  He hit the button and the video Mrs. Hendriks had caught of Ryan’s rescue was sent. A few more shares, and it was loose on the internet, on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. He reread the text and nodded. This would do it.

  Help me find this man, he saved my son’s life today and I was too shocked to really thank him. #superhero #goodSamaritan #shareThispost #ourLifesaver #whoIsHe

  As an afterthought, he added a description of the car the man and his girlfriend were driving. He only had a partial rego, but it might jog someone’s memory.

  “Now we wait, guys.”

  He hugged his sons to his side then wiped his eyes. Since his wife had passed away, he was theirs, and they were his responsibility in every way. His sons were his life. That man had saved him in so many ways.

  CHAPTER 16

  RED

  When we collected him, the dog leaped all over Isak. I crouched down and called to him, and he finally noticed me and ran over, knocking me backward with his enthusiasm. I wasn’t sure if I should be miffed that he chose to greet Isak first. I wasn’t sure why we were keeping a dog that might belong to another.

  However, I saw potential here. If Isak could bond with a dog and feel affection, we were getting closer to that goal of his.

  To my shock, Isak grabbed my hand with the one unoccupied by dog leash. Hand in hand we strolled to the front glass door like a married couple. Why did I feel as though this was a new strategy of his and not a blossoming friendship? The usual reason. Everything he ever did to me, the murders, the sadism.

  “Pill’s due,” I said when we were outside on the footpath.

  He gave me a glance then popped one from the foil-backed sheet he took from a pocket and swallowed it down with a slug of water. Matter of fact. As if I could truly tell him what to do. We both knew he could refuse.

  And what was this with the whole pill? The last time I noticed the dose it had been less. Clearly, he was testing the effect with different doses. An idea surfaced. It was probably a bad idea.

  What if I managed to get him to OD? We’d been there before, though. Years ago, I had tried slipping some to him without his knowledge. I’d added some ground-up Keppra to his wine, and as punishment he had fucked me on the table on broken glass. Then he’d stapled me together.

  That was Isak when he was off the drug, in vicious sadist mode.

  How easily this routine could slip. If he threw it up or ran out when we were hours of travel from a chemist, or if I forgot to remind him.

  I wasn’t Cassandra from the Greek legends or Dr. Strange. I couldn’t predict or alter the future. I could only do my best not to screw up.

  I took a few measured breaths then trotted after Isak and Banjo.

  For once Isak drove. In the vet’s white ute, we headed for the town of Yellert, ever nearer the middle of Australia though nowhere close to it. The country was enormous. Another day or two and I guess we might be in the center. I wasn’t googling it, considering my lack of the internet or a cellphone. Somehow my imagination made it more a fantasy. This could be the land that went on forever.

  Fantasy was good. It let me imagine Isak as a man who could become better than a monster. A smaller monster would also be an improvement.

  Yesterday he had closely resembled a hero.

  I looked over my shoulder at Banjo and where he lay on the back seat. He panted and laughed at me, with his long pink tongue hanging out so far he might never get it rolled back inside. I was pretty sure this dog thought Isak was his hero.

  Weren’t dogs supposed to be good judges of character?

  * * * * *

  Yellert was smaller than Bormage or whatever was the name of that other one. The names were a blur. Isak exited and found the widow who lived here.

  While Isak met with the same lady who’d given him the bronze pick-up. Banjo stuck his head out the wound-down window.

  I leaned on the car and gave him pats. Six or seven black crows cawed accusingly at us from a large tree. I didn’t blame them.

  The weathered concrete footpath lay beside her small but neat house – corrugated iron roof, timber walls, a small patio, and some neighbors who looked at us curiously. Isak had her phone number and with one call he’d verified where she was and told her to hand over the keys and whatever he needed to find the property she owned once we arrived.

  I barely took in her appearance. It was a safety mechanism for me. I could consign all these people to oblivion when we left. They became ghosts to me. Gone. It made my head hurt less.

  But… she had gray hair and a frail figure. This was the widow. She chose to stay here, in town, but owned a small farm that had been left to itself. I hoped she was living here for the neighbors and that they were her friends. That made me feel better.

  Maybe she would sell the farm one day, assuming Isak let her, move to the Bahamas and make more friends? I could dream for others.

  Today, the place was his, and for however long he wanted it.

  “Let’s go.” He turned from her and stalked back to the car. I unleaned myself from it, stretched muscles that felt frozen from the long drive.

  I pitied her, though. Perhaps she was losing less than most who came into Isak’s sphere of influence.

  The roads leading to the property deteriorated as we drew closer. The sky was pale, hazy, and blue with few clouds. The surface became potholed dirt after we entered through a steel and wire gate. Luckily the ute had big tires and a high clearance.

  “It’s a small place, she told me. Those cows are here on what’s called agistment.” He pointed out the windshield at a scattering of brown beasts behind a fence, on the slope beside us. The grass was pale like everything else, but the cows munched on it placidly.

  “Agistment?” It was a new word.

  “Means somebody pays to leave their cows here to get good grass. I gather it’s drier where they came from. We don’t have to do anything to them, unless they escape the fences. Someone will check them every so often.”

  He kept driving, rolling the wheel to avoid the bigger holes in the road, jarring my teeth, and churning up dust, but not too much as we had slowed.

  An excitement stirred in me though I’d never yearned for a country life. Isak seemed more laidback – the cows’ attitude must be infectious. This place all by its lonesome felt different to where I’d lived in the cities and towns. The water came from a tank, though the property had power and not a generator. The ride back to town would take nearly half an hour.

  “There it is.” He raised a finger to the house that had appeared as the road topped a rise.

  It seemed a quintessential Aussie outback house – biggish with a verandah all the way around, a windmi
ll on the skyline, and one wandering cow. The roof was red, and everything looked battered, old, and mildly neglected.

  It felt like a home, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  A small plane flew overhead, the engine making a distant muted whir. It was low enough to make me think it was landing soon.

  “A crop duster uses the place as a fuel and storage depot. An air strip is over the hill.”

  I nodded. We were not as alone here as I imagined.

  We pulled up beside the house then drove into the double garage which had only two walls. The front and a side were open to the elements.

  “Let’s get unpacked.” Isak exited along with the dog that took advantage of his open door. He began pulling cases off the back. We had accumulated a few things on the way here – boxes of food, new clothes and riding boots, even a rifle. I guess even Isak could not mind control a cow or a dingo. No bears, pumas, or large predators lived in Oz though, barring men and the sharks in the sea. And there was Isak.

  I entered the primitive kitchen, where almost everything had a layer of dust, as well as chips, scratches, and pieces falling off – the benches, the oven, the chairs, everything was a mess. To my utter shock, a bunch of fresh red flowers popped against the bleakness, in a vase on a rectangular table.

  “For you.” Then he pulled me to a chair and sat me facing him, on his lap with my legs to either side, and… he kissed me.

  No sadism, no cruelty, nothing but the most earnest of kisses… okay it did turn into hair pulling and neck biting as well as kissing. I was clutching at the chair back at first, then at his shoulders, digging my fingers into those delicious muscles, and kissing him back.

  Kissing made such intimate and private sounds – the breathing, the small moans, the nudge of lips to lips…the creaks as our weight shifted the chair. Man, this always felt like a betrayal of myself to respond like this.

  When the snarl of a motorbike split the air and grew abruptly louder, pulling to a crackling halt somewhere nearby, he stopped and let me regain my feet.

  Flustered, I brushed at my mouth, backing away but recognizing that delicious hypersensitivity in my lips. The mouth could be so sexual. He sat on the chair, manspreading his legs, with an eyebrow kinked upward as he saw how I studied him. I had, however, not felt his mesmer power.

  “Why?” I asked, voice betraying my confusion.

  “The flowers? I thought you’d like them. This is a new start, remember. I’m finding myself and my humanity.” Grandiosely, he opened his arms.

  “You mean the list I gave you?”

  Good deeds and helping others had been on it, not gentle, normal-ish kissing and bouquets.

  “That too, as well as other things. Be kind to others, especially your loved ones – that has to include kissing and flowers?”

  Loved ones. Why did this feel like the opening of the jaws of a trap?

  Someone knocked on the front door.

  “Hello! Am I disturbing anything? Thought I should say hi!”

  That was a woman. A young woman.

  I recognized the predatory interest infiltrating Isak’s eyes, and I turned and hurried to the door.

  When I opened it there was a woman in her mid-twenties on the verandah.

  “Hi. I was flying by so…”

  I scanned her. Curiously young for a pilot. Dusty jeans and red T-shirt, and with her ponytail drawn back the exquisite lines of her jaw and neck were obvious. She filled out that shirt well too.

  “Mrs. Vincent phoned and said she had people coming here, and I was doing some work on a place nearby.” She waved a hand. “Thought I’d drop by and check everything was okay?”

  I shrugged. The girl was suspicious of us. I’d let Isak handle this. I had to, really. “You have a motorbike on a plane?”

  The red trail bike sat propped on a stand a few meters away, engine ticking from the heat.

  “Oh that. Ha! It’s not mine.” Absentmindedly, she flipped her ponytail from shoulder to behind her back. “Belongs here, but I use it to get from the strip to wherever when I’m here. I refuel. Restock from drums. Used to visit the Vincents when they were living here. Her hubs passed away, sadly. Hi there!”

  Isak moved out past me, and she backed away a step.

  He held out his hand. Warily she shook it.

  I thought I saw some recognition pass across her face, but it was gone quickly. Had he done something?

  It angered me beyond the usual. I was used to him mindfucking people, but not her. If he dared to… I ran down. A useless threat.

  “Mrs. Vincent said she was letting you live here for a while. Long as you wanted to, really?” She scratched her head, legs planted like a man’s would be. This was a self-confident woman, like I was, once upon a time.

  My heart sank. Please, not her.

  “Yes. She did say that.” And he smiled at her, let go of her hand.

  Only then did I realize he’d been still holding her hand for an extended length of time. I frowned.

  Was he sneaking in his hooks? Fuck him if he was.

  “I’m Georgia West.”

  “Isak here, and this is Red.” He came to me and slipped his arm about my waist, all casual-like.

  It was as if we were instantly man and wife. I leaned into him. Fuck, I was a weathercock, going back and forth.

  “Uh-huh. Nice to meet you both.”

  I smiled at her. “Brave of you to fly small planes.”

  “Oh, my dad did it too. Taught me from when I was a teenager. He still flies. We’re a small company in these parts.”

  Banjo galloped up from wherever he’d vanished to and stuck his nose in her crotch.

  What with her giggles and kneeling to pat the tail-wagging newcomer, things somehow calmed.

  Isak no longer seemed about to bite.

  We invited her in for a cup of something hot and cookies, or rather they were biscuits as they called cookies here – confusing as hell, some of the Aussie slang. I knew we had tea and coffee because we had bought some along the way. Luckily, we also had working faucets and a saucepan to boil the water. Though the water came with bonus brownness. Milk and the tea or coffee helped disguise the hue and the tang. I prayed the fridge worked or we would be throwing out a lot of food.

  We sat on the rickety timber chairs and an old musty sofa, and we talked.

  It was so, so strange.

  So normal.

  “You need a kettle for the tea.” She gulped another swallow, grimaced but took another. “And other stuff. Say, come down to the pub in Yellert on this coming Friday arvo and I will introduce you to the locals, buy you a beer. They’ll get a kick out of having two Americans here.”

  Isak wasn’t American. I let the words wash over me and decided that arvo must mean afternoon.

  The conversation seemed dreamlike, and every now and then I spotted the flash of interest in her eyes that said she was stripping him of his shirt, at least. Hormones, and Isak was attractive.

  When she tipped the leftovers from her mug into the kitchen sink, his gaze fell to considering the roundness of her pert ass. I could see it clear as day.

  She had no idea what and who she was toying with.

  A knot of anxiety unraveled in my belly when she left. I waved to her as she roared off on the bike, with Isak beside me.

  “You didn’t do anything to her?” I bit my lip, frowned up at him, aware of how close I might come to annoying him.

  “No. I was good. Choice, remember? Good people choose to do the right thing. I chose not to do anything to her.”

  Again, he had quoted my words to me.

  He brushed his fingers along my jaw, holding my attention.

  “I missed getting married in Cuba, by a slip of fate. Instead, I was given these mesmer powers. Each day, I learn more about how to control them. I’m glad the wedding fell through, because instead I found you. Why would I need her?”

  Because. Always because. I knew how he worked.

  He wouldn’t have me so
on, unless that was a Freudian slip?

  It must be. The truth was in those words.

  It wasn’t a great surprise.

  I focused past him and saw the one thing left unloaded from the back of the ute. The big suitcase. It was partially covered. That thing was steeped in my terror.

  I could never trust him. Not really, really trust him. Isak was a loaded weapon, even with the drug in his system. And yet, coming here had revealed something to me that I had never realized before. It was something I should have seen coming.

  This new Isak with his attempt to fit into society in the best way he could – I liked him. I liked some of him. The bits he let me see that were not purely villainous had their allure.

  I needed to see a psychiatrist. Stockholm syndrome had nothing on this.

  CHAPTER 17

  RED

  By Friday arvo – I was getting the hang of this slang – we had the farmhouse well organized regarding food and functioning electrical things such as fridges, hot water, fans, and even the internet. Though for some reason, Isak was keeping use of that to a minimum. Did he fear me revealing something? How could I? I was forever in his mesmer thrall.

  And so that Friday we visited the pub, just as Georgia had suggested. We waded through the hubbub of locals raising beers and snacking on hot chips aka fries, and pub meals, until we found her and her friends. Stockmen, pilots, workers off the various properties and farms, I supposed. Only one other woman, and she talked offhandedly about cattle and horses, same as the men, and Georgia.

  The introductions went well. Isak could charm most, even the rare females he couldn’t reach as a mesmer.

  And Georgia? She kept the men enraptured with the swing of her hair, with her smirks and her nudges at the jokers who teased her, with a bump of her shoulder or cutting remark. I think her almost manly assumption of dominance broke them a little – made them want to take her down a peg, in their beds. For Isak that would be a simple thing to do – to break her.

  I had to wonder if I was actually jealous. Was my weird mind wanting a future with Isak?