by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
Oh no. What repulsive thing was she dreaming up? He locked his knees, waited.
Without looking away, she dabbed the tissue between her legs. Blotting? Was that how women wiped? Not that he was really watching, but his periphery caught it.
She flicked the flusher and stood. With a forearm over her chest, she reached back, unclasped her bra, and jerked it off without removing the coverage of her arm. What? No seduction or vulgar teasing? What was her game?
The red satin garment dangled from a finger at her side and dropped. On the floor. Where his eyes and knees should’ve been. Craaaaap.
He balled his fists and lowered to his knees. Crap, crap, crap.
I’ll feed you…if you follow the eight requirements you’ve been given.
Pressing his lips together, he wouldn’t make excuses or beg for food. Dammit.
He blinked at the bare feet beneath his bowed head. She could raise a knee and knock out a tooth. Or kick one of her deceptive little toes into his groin. He loosened his shoulders. He could take it.
Fingers touched his chin, lifting his head. “Raise your eyes.”
Following the hourglass curves of her waist, the cuts of her narrow torso, his breath caught when he reached the rounded undersides of her breasts. Not too full, they seemed to defy gravity, sloping upward, reaching toward the…cutting slits of her glare.
“Next time I tell you to raise your eyes, I’ll be more specific.” Her fingers walked from his jaw to his temple and dragged along his scalp. “I’m surprised a big boy like you isn’t more focused on the next meal.”
Of course he was frigging hungry. As a linebacker, he consumed 5,000 calories a day. But apparently his sexual appetite was running things.
She patted his head. “I’ll reevaluate your progress at dinnertime.”
What mealtime was it now? Lunch? She certainly hadn’t fed him breakfast when he woke in the rubber bag. Straining to keep his jaw from locking in a murderous clench, he remained still and stoic.
She held out a bottle of bath wash and stepped under the spray of water. Sitting on his heels, he started with her feet and lathered soap up her shins. The set of his jaw loosened as he reached her thighs, his palms gliding over taut satiny skin and lean muscle, his erection an eternal aggravation.
Her legs tightened and relaxed beneath his hands, her calves outrageously defined for a girl. Maybe she ran marathons when she wasn’t trafficking humans. Or maybe she kicked kittens. Into end zones painted with the blood from dead puppies.
“What are you thinking about? Look at me.”
He snapped his eyes up, caught in the rich chocolate of hers. His stomach growled.
“I asked you a question.”
Permission to talk? Thank you, oh hateful one. “Kittens and puppies, Mistress.”
Her gaze froze over. “Do not fuck with me, boy.”
Not a chance, girl. Holding her eyes, he leaned up, his chest against the flat expanse of her belly, and ran soapy hands up her calves. “Mistress, I was debating whether your leg strength came from running or kicking small animals.”
The fierce point of her chin softened, the icy cut of her eyes melted into liquid brown, and pink stained her cheeks. Absolutely stunning. But nothing on Earth compared to the mystic beauty of her lips as they curved up, stretching with abandon. Her smile was jewellike in its discovery, sparkling and precious. And for a fleeting heartbeat, it was his to treasure.
Then it was gone, replaced with a scowl and an invisible wall. “I did not give you permission to stop washing.”
Sliding his hands up her backside, firm cheeks filling his palms, the spirit of her smile fluttered inside him. He’d found her. Behind perversion and tyranny was a girl who could enjoy the humor in being teased.
Still on his knees, he lowered his eyes and met her breastbone, paralyzed by a hammering need to press his lips there. He fought the impulse and continued his ministrations up and over her slender hips.
“I run.”
His hands faltered on her waist. He hadn’t expected a response but wasn’t surprised by the answer.
The angle of the shower head immersed them both in the warm spray. The tile floor dug into his knees, but it was nothing like the aches endured on the farm or during practice. He quickly shoved those thoughts away and collected more soap from the bottle. Angling his face away from the spray, he lathered suds over her ribs. Yeah, his attention skipped the body parts that guaranteed awkwardness and discomfort. Maybe she wouldn’t notice.
A sigh drifted down with the torrent of water, swirling around his ears. “I’m giving you back your voice. Use it wisely.”
Why would she do that? Because he made her smile? Because she was lonely? Please God, don’t let him mess this up. “What makes you happy, Mistress?”
Her back turned to stone against his splayed hands. “Why?”
Suspicion edged her voice. Not surprising given her line of work. If she kept company with genuine friends, they were probably as cautious with their feelings as she was. “Mistress, I love your smile. If I could free it once a day, it might make the next ten weeks bearable. Would smiling cause a conflict in your job?”
Her chest rose and fell with steady breaths. Would she punish him with silence or respond with something foul and shut him down? Or would she try out an honest answer and keep the conversation open? The way she stared over his shoulder, her brown eyes turning inward, he suspected those questions warred in her head, too.
She glanced down at him, studying his face. “Freefalling.”
Freefalling? Like spiraling into hell? Or leaping from a cliff for sport?
“Enjoy the fall, or nothing at all.” Her lips remained parted on the all, expression vacant. She must have recognized the confusion in his, because she shook her head. “Nothing seduces happiness like throwing yourself from a plane.”
Fascinating. And positively unhelpful. It had been a safe answer, since he didn’t have a plane to seduce her happiness. But he didn’t think it was a lie, either. Skydiving was sporty and dangerous. It fit her.
His knees slid over the floor as he shifted around her, washing her arms, neck, and hair with an effortless reach. If he were on his feet, the top of her head would stop at his chest, a reminder that he could crush her with his size alone. Perhaps that was why she preferred him on his knees. “What about singing, Mistress?”
She regarded him, and the molten depths of her eyes rippled, then stilled. “At first glance, you come across as a pretentious wannabe-psychoanalyst.”
Uncertainty pelleted his nerves. He nudged her chin, angling her head under the water to rinse. He’d never attempted to befriend someone so misguided, and he’d definitely never washed a woman’s hair. A breathtaking woman. A naked woman. With dips and mounds that molded to his hands.
Stop with the lusting, pervert.
“You’re not asking the usual questions, boy. Like what’s going to happen to you? How badly am I going to hurt you? Who am I selling you to?” She stared at his lips, beads of water clinging to her thick brown lashes. “I think you know those answers won’t help you. When you’re able to think beyond your hard dick, you’re focused on your Jesus-saves-all mission. Which I admit is more appealing than fatalistic whimpering. But Jesus isn’t going to save you from washing the two areas you’ve been avoiding.”
He bit back a groan. Apparently, ignoring her privates wasn’t going to make them go away.
“Eyes down. Mouth shut. Hands busy.”
Her commands hovered between them, protecting her like a raised gun. This girl required a lot of patience. And prayers. A megachurch full of prayers. He soaped up his hands. Knees quivering on the tile floor, insides tightening, he looked at her chest, really let himself behold her for the first time.
Symmetrical, round, heavy on the bottoms, and tipped with pale-pink nipples, they outclassed every pair he’d seen on screen or in magazines. They weren’t airbrushed or oversized or marred with tan lines. And because of his much taller height a
nd kneeling as he was, her breasts were right at eye-level, waiting to be washed.
He started with circular patterns, both hands painting lather around and around the outsides. They were firm yet soft. Springy when he rounded the sides too fast. Heavy when he slid along the creases underneath. His heart rate kicked up, pushing his breaths faster.
He avoided the hard peaks, because did nipples really need to be cleaned? How dirty could they get? He pressed a little harder against the supple curves, tightened the circles, brushed the taut beads. Once, twice… Ugh. Where the hell was his will power?
“Are you washing them or checking for lumps?”
Wow, was he that awful at this? It wasn’t like he was trying to pleasure her. He clutched her waist and shifted her chest under the water.
“How often did you beat off?” Her voice sliced like a scalpel, dissecting.
“Once a day, Mistress.” At night, alone and dreaming of girls half as pretty as she was.
“I bet you think about touching titties when you stroke yourself. When you’re worked up enough, you fantasize about banging a pussy with your finger. Then you replace it with your cock. Probably missionary position. Hard, fast humping. You take her without guilt, because it’s only a dream, a fleeting thought that vanishes when you come.”
She only had it partially right. He didn’t want to take a girl. He wanted to give himself to her. He wanted to watch his touch soften her eyes, hear it in her breathy exhales, and feel it shudder over her body as she arched against him. The fantasy of a sated smile on a pretty face was what sent him spinning over the edge every time.
An inferno raged in his body, and his hands clenched on her waist. It was Liv’s face he’d imagined just now. It was her smile that made him tremble and harden. So very, very hard. Were his fantasies forever changed? The need to look into her eyes, to put a sated smile on her face, had his molars sawing together and his muscles straining to hold her.
He pushed his chin to his chest and focused on his breathing. Our Father who art in heaven…
“You used up all the hot water.” Her voice was soft, distant, then she seemed to snap out of it and rubbed a soapy hand between her legs. That done, she pivoted to rinse and twisted the lever. The shower stopped, and she breezed past him.
The sheen of water on his skin chilled. With his body flushed and battling arousal, he hadn’t noticed the change in water temperature.
She returned to his side with a rope of chain. “Well, you’re horny enough.” She snapped the ends on his wrist cuffs. “On your feet. Van is waiting.”
Chapter Sixteen
Liv led the boy into the outer chamber and inhaled the intangible fume of rage seeping from Van’s fists-on-hips stance by the door. She steered the boy around him, her defensive hackles shooting her shoulders to her ears.
Anything could’ve set him off. She’d sneaked from his bed the previous night. She’d made him wait too long for her to emerge from her room, and she’d come out without clothes on. Or it could’ve simply been one of his cruel-for-the-hell-of-it days.
She could handle Van’s venom when it was directed at her, but the way he glared at the boy made her stomach knot. Granted, he was as uncertain as she was on how to convert a straight boy into a woman-hating sex slave, but she still expected him to be better than this. She needed to defuse him before they began the planned training session.
Across the room, the girl knelt on the cot naked, chin tucked to her chest and hands secured to the wall behind her. She seemed invisible to Van at the moment, and in two weeks, she would be out of his reach completely. Thinking of the man waiting to buy her wrung an entirely different wrack of tension in Liv’s shoulders.
She was a fool to dwell on it. After the delivery, the girl would be dead to her. Just like the others.
Angling her back to Van, she shackled the boy’s wrists to the chains hanging from the apex of the room. He must’ve sensed Van’s volatility, because his muscles contracted against his skin, and his eyes bore a fiery path over her shoulder. Dammit, there was only one place his eyes should’ve been.
The simplest commands seemed to be the hardest for him to remember. Van would expect her to whip the boy for it, and of course, the sadistic buyer anticipated a battered body. But there would be enough of that after lunch.
A dull pound ignited in her skull. Her logic didn’t even make sense in her own head. If she were honest, she was putting off whipping him. She dreaded it down to the marrow of her icy core. This boy was fucking with her detachment.
Using her body as a barrier between him and Van, she tapped the boy’s steel jaw and whispered, “Eyes and knees down.”
With slack in the chain, he descended to the floor, his exhales a hot caress on her chest. She knew he was in self-preservation mode, but the way he leaned toward her, as if trying to enfold her in the limited cage of his restraints, breathed an irrational warmth through the hole inside her.
All of the slaves had become protective of her at some point during their captivity. The captor-captive bond was just one of the many ways the mind dealt with trauma. But this boy hadn’t been under duress long enough to develop that kind of psychological response.
His calm focus and rugged linebacker build was so unlike the mold of previous slaves. He looked at her like he thought he could save her. Maybe he could.
Except he was supposed to despise her. The hammering in her head increased. What a hopeful, romantic idiot she was.
When she shifted to meet the eyes burning into her back, Van flung a sleeveless sheath dress at her face, the most demure outfit from her costume closet. She kept her casual wear in a trunk in her room, but her frayed jeans and printed t-shirts endowed her with human qualities and expressions she couldn’t possess in that house.
She stepped into the black nylon sheath and rolled it over her hips and ribs, tucking her breasts in the top. It wrapped her from nipples to upper-thighs and clung to every dip and bend of her body, revealing more than it covered.
Van crossed his arms over his chest, his lips in a flat line. His unusual reticence meant he was holding in something particularly unsavory. The sharpness of his eyes matched his razored tone. “Let’s get started.”
The knot in her belly intensified with the pressure in her head. To soothe it, she hummed the woeful melody of “Pretender” by Sarah Jeffe, the lyrics reinforcing the roles they were playing. Van was supposed to be a passive bystander, but his foul mood tainted the already unbreathable air. So she left the boy on his knees with his wrists padlocked to the chains in the ceiling and paced to the outer door. “I’m hungry.”
Van’s footfalls chased her down the stairs. She did her best to outrun them, which was stupid. She’d left the room to confront him, but she wasn’t ready. Was she ever ready for him?
He caught her in the kitchen, an arm around her waist, a hand around her throat, and lips pressed against her ear. “Why are you running?”
The beat of her heart drummed against the collar of his hand. He wasn’t choking her, but the promise was there. Thankfully, years of practice had taught her how to manage him, and keeping her cool was a vital response. She relaxed her stance and leaned her back against the granite surface of his chest. “Why are you chasing me?”
“Because you’re mine.”
His hand cinched tighter with that heated oath. She coaxed her pulse to match a gentle tune in her head and waited. Finally, he released her and strode to the kitchen sink.
The turbulence rolling off him clotted the small room as he stared out the window. She rushed through sandwich preparations and blamed the lump in her throat on Van’s pending tantrum, not on the fact that she’d returned the fourth plate to the cabinet because the boy wouldn’t be eating with them.
Unable to meet Van’s eyes, she kept her back to him under the guise of arranging potato chips on three plates. She cleared her throat. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t like him.”
Her hand flexed, crinkling the foil bag in
her grip. Apparently, his jealousy had reached a new degree of crazy. He never liked the male slaves, but this was the first time he’d vocalized it.
“I want him gone.” His sharp tone punched her in the back.
Objections amassed in her throat. They wouldn’t find a replacement slave in time. And they couldn’t just send the boy back. He knew where they lived, had seen their faces. Van’s gone meant one thing, an unthinkable alternative he’d never suggested before. Somehow, she mustered an exasperated sigh and a bored tone. “Why?”
“His parents are all over the fucking news.” His voice grew louder, more guttural. “Their whole goddamned town is searching for him.”
This wasn’t about jealousy? She shivered as he paced behind her, the air frosting with each pass, sending ice through her lungs. “He’s not like the others, Van. We knew he’d be missed.”
She didn’t have to turn on the news to know what love and desperation looked like. Haunting images stabbed the backs of her eyes. She squeezed them shut to trap the remembered videos of Mom grieving alone and the god-awful need to reach through the screen and hug her.
His fingers bit into her bicep, spinning her so violently her hip slammed into the counter’s edge. “Why did you choose him?” He shook her shoulder, his grip punishing. “Answer me,” he shouted, his fury a hot mist in her face.
She blinked rapidly, grasping at the most logical answer. “He fit what the buyer wanted.” She dragged her gaze to his and flinched at the feral expression twisting his features.
“Bullshit.” He captured her jaw in a steel grip, lifting her chin until she stretched on tiptoes. “A hundred other fuckers would’ve met the requirements. This one fit what you wanted.”
The truth of his words paralyzed her, shriveling all of her justifications for choosing Joshua Carter. The real reason made her throat tighten. He represented purity, beauty, family, all of the things that had been taken from her. He was a glimmer of goodness in her dark fucking world, a warm spark she could hold, if only for a fleeting span of time.
