His chest was also impressive, but like his stomach and sides there were a number of scars of varying sizes and shapes. Part of his story was in those scars, and I’ll admit I wanted to know the tales – no matter how horrible they may be. Whether he’d actually tell me or not only time would tell. My eyes shifted to the bandage covering the stitches I’d done up for him; a hint of blood had managed to creep through. I’d have to re-dress them when he woke up.
I know it’s an odd thing to fancy, but one of my favourite features on a man is his shoulders. I love thick, powerful shoulders. To me, powerful shoulders represent a man who is honest and hard-working.
I snorted and my eyes wandered further up to his face. Sleeping, I saw in him what I’d seen at the nightclub. He was attractive. Everything from his strong jaw to his high cheekbones to his soft lips appealed to me. Sleeping like this, he reminded me of the image of St Michael – handsome and powerful and angelic. How many women fell for his looks and charms only to realize, when it was too late, that the devil lay beneath his angelic features?
The devil can take on many forms and faces. He uses beauty and charm to lure you in. Be very careful, baby girl. Father’s voice rang out in my head.
But I could take comfort there wouldn’t be any more. As long as I kept him happy, he’d keep me and no one else had to leave their families. No other young women would be hurt. This certainly wasn’t the future I’d hoped for, but I was starting to see how it could be God’s plan for me. I’d spent years being trained to obey, to be respectful, to be the perfect woman to her man. I was starting to see how we could fit together and that the training and values instilled in me could be put to good use. My father had even prepared me for the lashings. My role in life was falling neatly into place whether I liked it or not.
My eyes lowered again to his chest and then over to his arm where I’d slashed him. Yes, it was making perfect sense to me. I just had to do my absolute best to make sure he never wanted to sell me. I would mold myself into what he needed and wanted and no one else would ever be hurt. I was willing to make that sacrifice. I just wished there was some way I could save Victoria. Maybe I could strike some sort of deal for her freedom? The problem was he already had what he wanted from me. I had no chips to bargain with.
“What’re you doing, slave?”
My eyes immediately lifted to meet his. His expression was unreadable. I forced a little smile onto my lips. Gotta be a good little slave. I gotta make sure he’s happy. I’d made him happy last night and he’d given me a shirt to wear, so he wasn’t completely without kindness in him. “I’m looking at you, Master.”
He was silent for a moment, lacing his fingers behind his head and staring up at me. “Why?”
My eyes swept the length of him again. “Your body is beautiful, Master.” I touched one of his scars. “And I’m wondering about your scars. And about you.”
“About me? What about me?”
I looked up to meet his gaze wondering how much he’d tell me. “Why you do what you do.”
“Because I can.”
His answer took me by surprise and I was rendered speechless for a moment. “I don’t understand, Master.”
Tanner sat up and slid from the bed. He walked across the room, pulled open the top drawer of his dresser and took out the key to my cuffs. Coming over to me, he undid the cuffs and set them, along with the key, on the nightstand.
“Thank you, Master.”
He shrugged and then flopped back onto the bed, stretching out beside me as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “What don’t you understand? By all means, I’m giving you permission to speak freely about anything you want. It’s not an invitation you’ll get often, if ever again, but I had a lot of fun last night and you pleased me, so I’ll permit it.”
Again, he left me unsure how to respond. What about last night could have possibly been fun?
“Come on, now.” He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear that had fallen over my eye. I didn’t cringe like I normally would. I had a sense we were on good terms at the moment and he seemed to ooze the calm charm he had that night at the club. It was almost relaxing. Admittedly, the fact that I was covered and my body wasn’t on display like it normally was also helped. “Let’s talk. If you’re going to be staying with me, then we’re going to be spending lots of time together, so we might as well get to know each other better.”
“What about last night was fun for you? My cutting your arm open? That’s perverse.”
He nodded, a grin forming on his lips. “I know.” He turned to his side, placing his head on his hand, and caught my gaze. “I don’t do this for the money, Emily. I have lots of money. I do this for the excitement. I responded by saying I do it because I can, and that’s the thrill. I don’t feel bad or remorseful for what I do. The only thing standing in my way of doing whatever I want is getting caught and locked up. I don’t experience much in the way of emotions, so when I take someone, when I train them, I feel the power of my control over another person. And that thrill is like a drug. So when you scream, when you cry, I don’t feel bad. If anything it gives me a rush, because I was able to provoke those things from you.”
“That’s messed up.” What he was saying… I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it. How could he not feel bad – for anything? It made no sense. And to feel good when someone else was hurt - it was sick.
“It is,” he confirmed.
There were so many questions, thoughts, emotions racing through me that I didn’t know where to start. “What made you like this?”
“You mean, growing up? What tragedy made me this way?”
I nodded. I guessed that was what I meant. I wasn’t sure, to be honest.
His smiling face went dark, sorrow filling his eyes and etched in his expression. “My father was abusive.” He motioned to his torso, littered with scars. “He beat me and my mother relentlessly. Violence is all I know. But my mother murdered him in his sleep and then attempted to kill me. She wanted us all to die together. She went crazy. I’ve been fucked in the head ever since.”
My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open… How does someone respond to that?
After a moment he rolled onto his back and burst into laughter. I just stared at him. He laughed for a full minute as I watched, flabbergasted, and when he turned back onto his side to face me, he had to wipe a tear from his eye with the back of his hand.
“I’m fucking with you, Emily. That never happened. But everyone needs a story when they come across someone like me. They need a way to justify what I am and how I think, so they assume I must have had some traumatic childhood. I guess it’s easier to accept that I was made this way by society than to think God would create someone like me. But that’s not the case, not at all.”
“Then what? What was your childhood like?”
He shrugged. “It was good. I’m from a wealthy family from San Francisco. My father was a venture capitalist – a real shark. He was like me, but he took out his…tendencies in business. The rush he got from fucking people over in business was much like I get from the abduction and training process.”
I frowned but didn’t say anything.
“My mother was a psychologist.” He gave me a wink. “Believe it or not.”
If he had a reason to lie, I’d have guessed not. But he didn’t and so far he’d never lied to me – aside from the night at the club – so I tended to believe him.
“She knew what I was before I did, although she never said it in so many words. She also knew what my father was and did her best to direct his tendencies into less destructive endeavours. She’d have long conversations with me, digging into my mind and thought processes. She loved experimenting with me – she even took me into a couple of labs and monitored my brain waves as I reacted to situations. Stuff like that.” He shrugged. “My father refused to be treated like a lab rat, but I was fine with it. She’d always offer incentives. After a weekend of tests and experiments I came home on
my sixteenth birthday to a car sitting in the driveway.” He smiled, his eyes taking on a far-off look. “A Ford Mustang. I’ve driven a Mustang more or less ever since.”
“That’s horrible.”
He shrugged. “Not really. She’s like everyone else who doesn’t understand people like me. She tried to understand and ‘fix’ me, but Emily, I’m not broken. If anything I’m superior to other people, a brilliant genetic mutation, because I don’t have anything holding me back. I’m not saying this to sound conceited, but everything about me is superior, from my IQ to my ability to charm people into doing what I want, to being able to read people, to not having to be held back by useless emotions.”
“So what are you, some sort of sociopath?”
He frowned, annoyance etched in his expression. “I’m not a sociopath and I resent being called something like that. I’ve told you already what I am. Were you not listening the first time?”
My heart rate accelerated. He was pissed. I had to fix this before our chat session ended and I was thrown back into my room. Because, no matter how much he scared me, I much preferred his company even when he was acting all psychotic than having the shirt taken away from me and being thrown into my cage and left for days.
“I’m sorry, Master.”
He nodded, his expression relaxing. “It was an ignorant assumption, but I realize it’s not your fault.”
I think that was an insult, but I let it go. Not like I could pitch a fit and he’d care either way. “Then I don’t understand.”
He sighed and actually rolled his eyes at me. “A sociopath is a person who is largely a product of their environment, whereas a psychopath is a product of genetics,” he explained as if he were talking to a child. “Sociopaths can feel love, but they’ve just gotten fucked up along the way. They’re impulsive and sloppy. They’re intellectually inferior. Most can’t adapt to normal society like people like me can.”
I didn’t see how one was better than the other. What was even more bemusing was the fact that he seemed to wear the term psychopath like a badge of honour.
“People like me can live normal lives – if we choose. Had I not taken you that night at the club, I could have easily dated you, pretended to fall in love, married you…and you’d never have known what I really thought or felt.” He smiled at me, a cold, callous smile, sending a shiver of fear rushing through me. “If I chose I could be that dream husband. If I chose to be… I can be anything I need to be – they can’t. And just a little factoid for you, sweetie; it’s estimated that roughly three percent of the population are just. Like. Me.”
“Then why don’t you? You know, assimilate…”
“Why should I? So I can work some shit job, hating every second of it, to come home to a nagging wife and maybe some kids, all the while aching to either slit my own throat or butcher my family just for the thrill of it?”
I couldn’t see my face, but by the grin that formed on his lips, apparently the shock of his words was evident on my face as I stared at him.
He gave my shoulder a playful swat. “I’m being melodramatic, Emily. I wouldn’t kill my family, if I had one now. I’m not completely heartless. I was quite fond of my parents and I felt a loss when they died. It wasn’t the heartbreaking loss most people would feel, I imagine, but they served a purpose in my life, and life became uncomfortable for a while when they were gone.”
“Did you…” I couldn’t even end the sentence.
Chapter 12
Tanner
She was so damned cute, the way her face paled and her dark eyes grew wide as she tried to analyze and make sense of what I was telling her. It was priceless. Fucking priceless. I could almost see the wheels turning in that pretty little head of hers as she sorted through the endless number of questions she had for me.
“Did I what, sweetheart?” I reached out and twirled a lock of her hair around my index finger. The satiny strand swirled around my finger and then dropped away. She didn’t move away from my touch. I liked that. I knew what she meant but loved playing with her, seeing if she’d actually have the guts to ask what she was thinking outright.
She was definitely something special and I supposed part of that specialness was how green and naïve she was. Certainly too special to sell off to some asshole who wouldn’t appreciate her. It was like having a bottle of fine unopened aged wine in your possession. You didn’t give that shit away or sell it to just anyone. You stored it, kept it safe and indulged in it when you had an urge…until it no longer satisfied you.
“Kill them.”
Despite being amused by the assumption, I scowled at her just to see her reaction. She cringed and lowered her eyes. “Do you think I’d kill my own parents? I was only seventeen when they died.”
She slowly lifted her gaze, opened her mouth as if to answer and then snapped it shut again. I could see the indecision in her eyes. She thought I would, and she would be right, although I hadn’t.
“If the circumstances suited you, yes.”
I smiled. She was learning. “Well, I didn’t. They were killed in an auto accident.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “People die. It’s life. Just like the man who was in the other car.”
“So everyone died.”
“The other driver didn’t. Right away. It was determined to be an accident with my parents at fault, so the other driver got away with it. Which was perfect for me, because I didn’t want him to rot in jail – he needed to pay for what he’d done, pay for what he’d taken from me. On my eighteenth birthday I went to the man’s house, broke in and slit his throat. He was my first kill. A birthday present to myself.”
I watched her intently, waiting for the gasp and look of disbelief and horror to appear on her face, but it never came. I have to say it was kinda disappointing. Instead she cocked her head to the side and eyed me, taking her lower lip between her teeth and nibbling lightly.
“Why did you kill him? I mean, if you didn’t love your parents. Why seek revenge? Revenge is usually an action brought on by the pain of loss – right?”
“I think you’re reaching with that assumption.”
She shrugged. “If you say so, Master.”
Well, now she’s getting snarky. I clucked my tongue off the roof of my mouth and gave my head a shake.
“I think it’s time for me to ask a question.”
She hesitated. “Okay.”
“Why are you so calm with me right now?” I could see in her eyes that she was considering lying. “Remember, no lying.” I tapped her lightly on the tip of her nose and smiled.
“Because I want to make you happy so you’ll keep me. And if you keep me, you said you wouldn’t take any more girls.” Her eyes lifted and our gazes held.
“Ahh, so you’ve decided to martyr yourself for the future of some random women you’ll never meet and I have yet to decide on.”
“Yes. And I don’t want to be shipped away.”
“I see.” To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what I’d expected to hear. I should have been happy she wasn’t scared of my touch, considering I’d slammed her head into a mirror, threated her family and chased her through the house. That being said, she’d stabbed me, so I’d say we were even. “And it’s God’s plan? Right?” I could hear the sarcasm dripping from my tone and didn’t give a damn.
She nodded, her face flushing She was learning how much I hated talk of religion. She lowered her gaze, her eyes scanning the length of my body. She looked everywhere but directly into my eyes.
The conversation was beginning to bore me. Slipping a hand into her hair, I fisted her locks and gave a rough tug, forcing her eyes to meet mine. She didn’t so much as whimper, but I did detect a soft moan escaping her lips as I forced her onto her back and my lips came crashing down on hers, kissing her hard. She didn’t protest or attempt to fight me. Her lips parted, inviting me in. Her body seemed to melt beneath mine, molding itself against me.
Releasing her hair, I gra
bbed her hand and lowered it to my crotch. She grasped my hardening shaft and immediately tightened her grip and began to stroke me. My hand slid over to her mound, and for a brief second her body froze, but as I spread her pussy lips and began stroking her clit, her body began to move against me, bucking against my hand as she grew increasingly wet.
For a brief moment I forgot she was a virgin and I was waiting to fuck her. Lifting my lips from hers, I slid onto her, settling between her legs while continuing to tease her, occasionally dipping a finger into her core and being rewarded with a soft whimper from her. She continued to stroke me, turning my cock rock-solid in her inexperienced hand as I knelt between her legs.
I groaned inwardly and lowered my forehead to her shoulder, biting into the soft flesh, not hard enough to break the flesh but enough to cause a dent in her pale skin. She cried out but didn’t move away. I looked up into her eyes. “So you’re really willing to do anything I want, be anything I want, for some stranger?”
“Yes, Master.” I don’t know why her answer angered me, but it did. She’d only been with me for a couple of weeks, hardly enough time to grow a dependence on me, but still… I wanted it. Normally patience was my strong suit, but not at that moment. I wanted her begging me to fuck her or screaming for me to stop, but she was doing neither – she was just going along with it. It pissed me off.
Rolling off her, I grabbed her by the hair and pushed her down my body. “Then suck me off, slave. Earn your keep.” Maybe it wasn’t the best way to go about what I wanted to do, but then again I was pretty fucking confused about what I was attempting to do anyhow, so I might as well get some relief until I made up my mind.
“Yes, Master.” I did love how the word ‘Master’ rolled off of her tongue, so soft and sensual even though that surely wasn’t her intention.
Faith (A Dark Romance Novel) Page 10
