by Loki Renard
“Please, Dante, let me out,” I whimper. “I won’t try and run again. I promise I won’t.”
“Oh I know you won’t,” he growls down at me. “I’m done playing with you, girl.”
“Dante!” My voice rises to a shrieking pitch as he turns and takes a step away. “Please! I’m begging you. I’m seriously begging you. Just let me out now, and I won’t run, I won’t do anything bad. I’ll pack all the drugs you want me to pack. I’ll be your best worker.”
“You should have done all those things anyway,” he says over his shoulder. “I bailed you out of jail yesterday, baby, but now I’m thinking you need some bars in your life.”
“Dante!” I’ve never said his name so much before.
He was walking out of the room, but he pauses just before he goes. “Oh,” he says. “I forgot to tell you. Your moms called this morning before you woke up.”
“Oh my god, did you talk to her?”
“Sure. I told her you were at a church camp. You’ll call her later and tell her the same.”
“Will you let me out of the cage if I do?”
He doesn’t answer that question. He just walks out of the room and leaves me there in the all too small space. I try to get comfortable, and find that I can sit down leaning against one wall, my legs out in front of me, my ass pressed against the cold, hard ground, which does not feel great considering what he did to me earlier.
It would be easy to panic, but I force myself to stay calm. I close my eyes to block out the cage, and try to focus.
Dante is demented. I don’t deserve this. And even if I do deserve it, I don’t like it, which is the same as not deserving it. I think. Or at least, that’s how I used to think. I’m not so sure anymore.
I want to hate him, but there’s a part of me that knows this isn’t as bad as it could be. If he really wanted to hurt me, he could fucking destroy me. One punch, one open handed slap even, it would decimate me. But he’s not doing that. He’s not using any of his real power, the kind that would harm me. I wonder if he will, if I push him far enough, and I wonder what too far is.
It doesn’t matter anymore really. I am stuck in this cage with no food, no water, and no way out. If he just leaves me here… I’m dead. Oh god. I’m fucking dead.
“Don’t panic,” I lecture myself out loud.
He’s not going to leave me here to die. He’s just trying to get me to take him seriously. I can guess that intellectually, but the emotional reality of being this vulnerable makes it hard to feel anything but fear and the kind of embarrassment that goes so deep it gets into your bones.
Why should I feel shame? He’s a criminal. He’s running illegal drug operations. He kidnaps college girls. Dante isn’t exactly a pillar of society, so why should I feel this deep, hot shame at having displeased him? Am I really just some animal who can be made to follow the whims of a stronger figure?
“Fuck that. Imma Shawshank my way out of here,” I mutter to myself - until I realize that the guy in the movie at least had a rock hammer. I have nothing.
“Or I’l just wait,” I tell myself. “I can wait. I once waited ten hours with Steffy to buy shoes she had to have and then in the end she didn’t even like them.”
Talking to myself passes the time and relieves some tension.
“Hey, at least I’m not doing illegal things, like helping a drug lord move his filthy product,” I tell myself. “I’m doing brave things. Like, uhm, fighting the power.”
It’s a long day.
A really fucking long day.
And by long day, I mean it is about an hour or so until Dante returns. Long enough for my panic to have settled and resignation start to take over.
He crouches down. I see a pan in his hand. I have no idea what is happening until he opens the lock, then the door, and slides the pan in. It is filled with water. I guess he realized he didn’t want me getting dehydrated.
“Drink up, puppy.”
He’s literally going to keep me as an animal? No. Hell no. The door is open right now, and that’s all I need. I surge forward, tipping the pan over in a big splash of water.
Dante is much bigger than I am, and far stronger, but he’s off balance. I see the look of shock on his face as he falls backward and I go scrambling over him, using him as a path to freedom.
“Hell no,” he growls and grabs my ankle, pulling me back.
I kick him right in the… somewhere. I can’t see where.
“Settle down,” Dante grunts with the impact.
“No! You’re going to put me in the cage!”
“Damn right I am.”
“No you’re not!” I grab hold of him like a spider money. He can do this, but I’m not going to make it easy for him. That’s been my mantra since this started. He can be a huge criminal asshole, but I don’t have to be a compliant captive.
“Goddamit, Candi!”
He stands up with me still wrapped around him. This position puts us crotch to crotch, our bodies tense with friction and anger, our intimate regions burning with mutual frustration.
We are glaring into each other’s eyes. I see him staring at me, pupils wide but lids narrowed. He has the most extraordinary eyes. They’re dark brown, nothing special in terms of color alone, but the character they hold makes me tremble to my very core. He’s a man capable of anything.
He doesn’t know why I’m fighting him. I can tell people don’t usually fight him, but he doesn’t usually deal with people who have the one thing I was given in my upbringing. Not money. Hope. He can’t break me. Not with belts and not with cages, because I know that life is good and people are good. Not him. But others.
He lets out a growl, and then his lips are on mine, and I forget how much I hate him because the passion between us is flaring into something incandescent and all-consuming.
His hands are on my ass, cupping it, rubbing the earlier ache and sting into my flesh. My jeans are an obstacle between us, and he will not tolerate that, not for long. We are caught in passion. Senseless, mindless, animal passion that doesn’t belong between two people like us. I should be repelled by him. He should find me tepid and basic. But I’m kissing him back. My hips are grinding against his. The thick fabric between us is a barrier neither one of us will tolerate for long.
He pushes me back against a wall, disentangles my legs from around his waist long enough to push my jeans off my legs, and slams his cock inside me. His love making is rough and it is urgent and it is not about me. It is about him. His command. His control. His demand for me to give him everything without reservation, including the softness of my sex which swells and becomes slicker and wetter with every thrust.
That is how we start, but soon position follows position. I am thrown about as if I am nothing more than meat made for his satisfaction, my hips lifted, my face pressed down against the ground, my tender hole stretched with pounding thrusts punctuated by the slapping of his hips against my already stretched pussy.
It is only a matter of minutes before his cum is pasted across my skin, leaving a bright sheen across my body. For a second time, he has defiled me with his bare skin surging inside me. For a second time, we have taken the risk we should not have taken.
“I need the morning after pill,” I moan, lying sweaty and messy on the concrete floor, my thighs still spread, my pussy pulsing from another unforgettable orgasm.
“That’s what you’re thinking about now?” He teases with that brilliant smile which emerges from him every now and then.
“Yes, because I’m responsible,” I say, reaching down to push some of his potent seed away from my sex. It’s far too late. He ejaculated deep inside me, he made sure I was as completely fully of him as I could be. He obviously doesn’t care if I end up with his illegitimate captive-bred lovechild, but I do.
“I’ll get you your pill,” he says.
“Now,” I insist.
“In a bit,” he replies. “There’s something we have to do first.”
“What? What else
could we possibly have to do less safe than what we just did? Do you have a gang war we can attend or something?”
He pulls my phone out of his pocket. “We’re going to call your mom.”
Now? Now when I am still aching inside and out from his rough love? Now when I am flooded with his semen? I reach down between my thighs to cup my pussy and I feel his seed leaking from me, so fresh and so lewd.
“We can’t call her now!”
“Sure we can. You just got out of bible study,” he smirks at me, thumbing over my mother’s number. I can’t stop him. He’s already pressed the screen and the phone is dialing and oh god I have to compose myself.
“This is torture,” I hiss at him. “This is inhumane. This is… oh hi, mom!”
“Hi Candi, sweetie, how are you!?” My mom sounds so upbeat and happy to hear from me it brings tears springing instantly to my eyes. I want to babble out everything that has happened, but I know it would just freak her out and there would be nothing she could do.
“I… I’m good, mom.”
“The nice young man I spoke to earlier told me you were at a bible camp. I never thought you’d go back to one of those after what happened in sixth grade, remember we had to pick you up?”
“I remember,” I say. I remember because my mother loves telling me this story every time she gets a chance. I really don’t want to hear it again right now, especially because Dante has the phone on speaker and he can hear literally everything that is being said.
“You were in so much trouble!” My mother laughs. “We had to buy new clothes for everybody who had been in your cabin.”
“I know, mom. I won’t do that again.”
“Maybe I should tell that nice man I talked to earlier not to let you handle any of the laundry. You put black dye in with everybody’s clothes!” My mother sounds scandalized and amused at the same time.
“I was going through a Goth phase,” I say, as much to my mother as I am explaining to Dante. He’s giving me a look which tells me he’s not surprised. I know he already thinks I’m reckless.
“What camp did you go to? Is it Camp Narahoe? Your father and I went there before we had you, and it was so nice. We went with Justine. Was it Justine? No. It was Jenny and her husband Mike, they were married at the time, and…”
I tune out as my mother starts to tell me a story about her glowing youth. She likes to tell stories and usually I’m impatient but right now it’s just nice to hear her voice and be reminded that the outside world still exists.
After a minute or two, Dante makes a winding motion with his finger, like he wants me to hurry up. I put my mother on mute and shake my head at him. “This woman likes to talk, and if I don’t let her talk, then she’ll know something’s wrong.”
“… so anyway, we said, what fish!?” My mother laughs.
Dante takes the phone from me and I watch helplessly as this crude gangster proceeds to interact with the nicest woman I know
“Mrs. Smith?”
I don’t even recognize his voice. He’s talking in well, a parody of the way I speak, I guess, all formal sounding and nice.
“Oh hello, it’s you!”
“Yes, sorry, Candice just had to go to the bathroom, and we’re off to do a prayer circle in just a minute here. Candice is going to lead the session tonight. She has a passage picked out from Corinthians already. Very inspirational.”
Who the fuck is this man on the phone? It’s not just his voice that’s different. His entire demeanor, the way he’s standing, his expressions, they’re all completely different and entirely alien. It’s almost creepy, and the oddest sensation runs down my spine as I watch him completely bullshit my mother.
“It would be so lovely to meet you some time,” my mother is saying. “What was your name again?”
“Daniel,” he says. “Daniel White.”
“Oh Daniel, that’s right! Yes, perhaps Candi could bring you to tea when camp is over?”
“That would be my pleasure, ma’am,” Dante says in that bizarre voice. “We’ll talk with you soon, okay?”
“Of course. Bye now, Daniel! Give my love to Candi.”
“Oh I certainly will,” he says flickering me a dirty wink.
Jesus. I do not believe this. My parents live hours away from college. Taking him to tea means driving out there and probably staying overnight, and neither of those things are going to happen if I have anything to say about it.
“Your moms likes me,” he smirks, dropping back into his customary drawl once he’s disconnected the call.
“She doesn’t like you. My mother has no idea who you are.”
“Neither do you, babygirl, neither do you,” he snorts, tucking my phone away into his pocket.
I don’t like that he’s managed to turn my family into pawns. If my mother knew what this man really was, she’d be calling the police. But I can’t exactly tell her, can I? Not without outing my own little litany of sins, anyway.
“Good for you,” I say. “But it’s never going to work in person. She’s going to see that neck tattoo and…”
“Love it,” he smirks.
“Not love it. She’s going to disapprove.”
“Mhm. Nothing the ladies like more than a reformed bad boy.”
“Oh God!” I let out a laugh. I can’t with this guy. As much as I want to be mad at him for his manipulative bullshit, there’s something about the sheer nerve he has, and the self-awareness it takes to be able to present himself in a completely different way which is something of a reluctant turn-on.
“Besides, there’s always turtlenecks.”
“Well that act might work on my mother, but it won’t on my father.”
He just smirks and shakes his head at me, giving me an almost pitying look, as if I’m too stupid to understand what’s really going on. He can be so condescending without opening his mouth.
“Don’t worry, baby,” Dante says, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “Your parents are going to love me.”
“I’m not worried, you lunatic! I’m trying to tell you that this act won’t work. You won’t get away with this. You’d better let me go soon, before I start missing assessments and then my grades tank and…”
“Have you forgotten the part where you steal cars and shoot guys now?” He interrupts me roughly.
“First of all, I don’t do those things unless seriously provoked, and secondly, that doesn’t mean I want to fail Ancient Greek Architecture.”
“So did you go out of your way to pick the most useless degree possible?”
Now he sounds like those STEM douchebags. “It’s not useless!”
He makes a dismissive sound.
“We’ll go see your parents on the weekend.”
I’m about to say hell no, we aren’t ever going to see them, then I realize that he can’t show me to my parents inside an iron box, so this plan has that going for it. But that’s all it has. I don’t want Dante anywhere near my family home. It’s a nice place, where nice people live. It’s not the sort of place for the likes of him.
But… it does mean getting out of here. I pull my panties up over the mess he made of my most intimate regions, wearing his seed underneath my clothes. I probably smell of him. His cologne. His sweat. His sexual essence. He’s marked me.
My hair is messy, the lipstick I put on this morning is smeared. Anyone who takes more than a cursory glance at me is going to see what just happen written all over my fully clothed body. I was fucked. Long and hard and by way of teaching me a lesson I refuse to learn.
“Why do you even want to see my parents?” I ask the question when we are very, very far away from anything that resembles a cage.
He just smiles at me.
Whatever. He’ll get tired of this game eventually. I am sure Dante has more going on in his life than tormenting the relatives of girls he barely knows, even if those girls do owe him money. Even if those girls are just one girl. Me.
What does he really want with me? He fucked me. That sho
uld have been enough, but it hasn’t been. Why is he so obsessed with me? I don’t get him. I don’t think I ever will.
Chapter 9
It has been a quiet few days. After the debacle at the factory where he packages his products, Dante didn’t try to take me to work again. Instead, he’s taken to driving me to college every morning and picking me up after my last class, even though he thinks they're useless.
“The rules are simple,” he told me. “You go to your classes, and in between, you go to the library and study, or the cafeteria to eat. You go nowhere else. You don’t go back to your old place, you don’t look up your old friends…”
“You mean my friends. I don’t have old friends.”
“You do now, babygirl,” he drawled. “A lot has changed.”
When he said that, I thought he was crazy. Nothing had changed. It had only been a day or two since I’d last been, but once I got to school, I realized he was right.
The moment I met Dante, my entire world started to transform. Now places that felt safe and pedestrian feel and even look different. I see things I used to not even notice. Like, the people around me. I used to notice hot guys and other pretty girls. Now I find myself looking at everyone, trying to work out who they are. I don’t know if it’s because I’m scared, or if Dante has opened my eyes to more than my little superficial world. I don’t like to think of myself as having been shallow, but I guess I was.
My life was easy. I thought it was hard, but it wasn’t. I had my friends around me and we formed an insulated little bubble against the rest of the world. It didn’t matter what other people were doing, unless they were rich or jocks or friends of the family. Now I see the people who clear the trays away in the cafeteria, who serve me my food. Before Dante, they were almost like props.
The worst thing he has ever called me is spoiled, but it’s worse than that. I was shallow. I probably still am shallow. And part of me knows that’s bad, but part of me wants to go back to being that way, because that way felt so easy and so safe. I knew who I was. I was Candi and I had my girlfriends and that was it.
