His Captive Kitten (Owned and Protected Book 4)

by Measha Stone

  Standing on the front porch, she nudged her chin at him. “What’s that?”

  “This,” he lifted the strap of the bag and repositioned it, “is a small toy bag. If you’re good, and I mean really good, when we get a little further out, I’ll give you that distraction you’re looking for. Now scoot.” He gave her a lighthearted shove.

  “Oh, well, you should have led with that when you came into the living room.” She threw him what she hoped was a flirtatious grin over her shoulder and hopped off the stairs.

  He laced his fingers with hers and led her through the gates and down a path into the wooded surroundings. She listened to birds fluttering around the fall limbs of the trees. It had been a long time since she’d walked through real nature. The forest preserves back home were nice, and natural enough she supposed, but nothing beat the unfiltered, nearly untouched woodlands on private property.

  “You haven’t told me anything about your family. I heard you talking with someone at your cabin, a sister?”

  His fingers tightened around hers briefly. “Yeah. Younger sister. She’s on her own; her dick of an ex hasn’t been around to help with my niece. I was just checking in on her.”

  “Ah.” Julie nodded. “Absentee father. A well-known subject.” She tugged on his hand to get his attention and threw on a smile. “Is your niece okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old?” she pressed on; the further they walked the more she worried the cell wouldn’t ring if her mom called. She needed to focus on something else. He wouldn’t take them too far; he’d said so and she needed to trust him.

  “Five. Cute as hell. She’s going to be as much trouble as you, I think. Well, at least as much trouble as her mother was.”

  “Tomboy sister?” Julie laughed.

  “Yeah. Headstrong as all hell. Thinks she can take on the damn world all by herself, even when she can’t. Kinda like someone else I know.” He leaned down to the right and bumped her with his shoulder.

  She quickly righted her footing and gave him a quick glare. “I’m not that headstrong. And I can take on the world, and I’m sure your sister can, too.”

  “True. You’re a lot alike in that way, too. Both strong and independent. But for different reasons, I imagine. She’s always had the support of a family, my parents and me. You had to go all adult too early.”

  It was true. She had been mother and father to herself most of her life. But it’s all she knew. She never sat around pitying herself for it, and she wouldn’t let him do it either.

  “It’s not like my mom just left me in some crack house with no food or water. I had a roof over my head and food in the fridge almost all the time.” She let go of his hand and pulled out the phone from her back pocket. Still no call.

  “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.”

  “She was sober when I was younger. She really started to get into drinking and partying when I was in high school.”

  “Did something happen around then?” he asked, veering off the path and beckoning her to follow.

  “Not that I know of. A little after my fifteenth birthday, she just started drinking a lot at night. And then it started to creep in during the day, then the drugs, and well, it just got worse.”

  “Out of nowhere? When did this happen?” he asked, holding out his hand to help her over a thick fallen log.

  “Well, I’m twenty-seven, so twelve years ago. Why?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just seems weird if nothing happened why all of a sudden she would start using.”

  “Well, I was only fifteen. Maybe something did but she didn’t want me to know. She was a single mom, maybe all the stress just got too much. I never knew my dad; he left her when she was pregnant with me.”

  John stopped walking near a maple tree and dropped the bag.

  “Maybe.” The word suggested he agreed, but the distant look in his eyes told another story. He suspected something.

  “Why are we stopping here?” she asked, not wanting to delve down memory lane anymore. Whatever theories twirling around his head could stay locked up there. He’d promised a distraction, and she would make him deliver.

  “Because this tree looks pretty damn sturdy.” He unzipped the bag and pulled out three coiled hemp rope bundles. “You should take off your clothes unless you want me rip them off.” He started to unravel one of the sets.

  “Is that your foreplay?” She laughed and stepped over a small pile of twigs and leaves to a small clearing at the base of the tree.

  “Nope. Just a fair warning if you wanted to keep your shirt intact.”

  “It’s kind of cold to be naked.” She played with the hem of her shirt.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be warm pretty soon.” He smiled after delivering his promise.

  She pulled the cell from her pocket and placed it next to his bag, making sure the ringer was on. “If it rings, you’ll answer?”

  “I said we’d answer if she called. Yes.” He nodded and lifted his eyebrows. “Now, either get stripping or get ready.”

  Tempting as it was to run off and make him chase her, she couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t turn what promised to be fun into some sort of disciplinary session. Learning another lesson at the moment held no interest.

  She stripped out of the shirt and jeans, folded each item, and piled them on top of her shoes.

  He pushed her against the tree trunk, the rough bark rubbing into her back. She must have grimaced at the act because he lessened the pressure. “I’m going to bind you to the trunk and do whatever the hell I want with you. You good with that?” he asked, already working the rope into the starting position against her torso.

  “Yeah. I’m good with it.” She smiled at him.

  He grunted in response and went to work. It had been a long time since she’d had rope work done on her. Jimmy was more of a handcuff and quick binding sort of player. He didn’t take the time rope required. But it didn’t surprise her John would be so meticulous. He showed special care with her injured arm, taking an extra moment to inspect it.

  “This is actually healing faster than I would think. Is it still hurting?” he asked.

  “No, not really. But I doubt having rope over it would feel good.”

  “I’ll avoid it,” he promised and went back to work.

  She glanced at her phone a few times while he passed around her, tugging her body toward the tree. Her ass ground against the bark and she hissed.

  “Your ass is too sore for any more impact back there,” he said, but he didn’t look at her while he spoke. He probably was talking to himself. “Forget the phone, kitten. If it rings, I’ll get it. For now, just focus on the sensations. Feel the rope burn against your skin as I pull it. Feel the tightness of your body restrained to the tree. Think about how your tits are completely exposed. How your legs aren’t bound. Think of how I’m going to fuck you hard against this tree and you’re going to bear the marks on your back from it for days.”

  As a foreplay attempt, much better.

  By the time he tied off the last of the rope, she had her mind focused on him, watching him, feeling him, wanting him.

  He went to the bag and pulled out a flogger. Swinging it in front of him, he stepped up to her. “Your tits aren’t covered,” he remarked and brought the falls of the flogger down on them. Not hard enough to hurt, but with enough intensity to snap her mind out of thinking about anything else.

  He didn’t stand still. He walked from side to side, making little flicks of his wrist. The tips of the flogger caught her stomach, her nipples, her thighs. He’d bound her by the chest only, crisscrossing the ropes so her breasts hung free, her stomach and legs completely exposed. Her arms weren’t bound, but she wouldn’t raise them up.

  He would stop if she got in his way. And that would be the ultimate torture.

  Quickly, any chill she felt from the fall air dissipated, letting the warmth of the flogger take over against her flesh. Her nipples peaked, not from cold but from ar
ousal. Complete, unadulterated arousal.

  “It’s like painting a masterpiece with you in front of me like this,” he remarked, cracking the flogger over the fronts of her thighs. She squealed and he rolled his eyes upward. “A fucking musical masterpiece, too.”

  “John. Please.” She wiggled her body within the ropes. The burn of the hemp, the scratch of the bark coupled with the sting of the flogger made every fiber of her body scream out for attention. She needed soothing. The only sort he could give her.

  He dropped the flogger into the bag and pulled out a Wartenberg wheel.

  “No. Not that.” She wiggled harder, but the ropes had no give. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Is that your safeword?” he asked, hovering the wheel over her right breast.

  She could. She could call ‘arrest me’ and he’d stop.

  “Two seconds,” he warned, bringing the tips of the spiked wheel closer to her skin. Her already sensitive, swollen, wanting skin.

  “That’s my kitten.” He rolled the wheel up over her nipple, then back down.

  She cried out, her throat burning from the strain. Birds flew off from a nearby tree. But then there was silence.

  “Oh, I think you can do better than that.” He grinned, locking his gaze with hers and rolling the wheel again, harder, and covering more area.

  She screamed. Flicking his wrist, he dug the spikes in, quickly rolling them, leaving her breathless and full of sensations.

  “Better.” He kissed her cheek. “Now the other one.”

  “John,” she said on a breath. Her voice gone, her desire the only focus of her mind. She needed him inside of her.

  “Not yet, kitten.” Promise weighed down his words. “I don’t want you being lopsided.” He moved a few inches to the right and rolled the wheel over her nipple. He waited for her to cry out, then rolled again, harder and longer, just as he did the first. Only once he seemed appeased by her screams did he toss the wheel to the bag. “Tell me what you want,” he ordered, his hands already unzipping his jeans.

  “Fuck me.” She wiggled her feet, working her legs apart.

  “Soft? You want me to fuck you soft?” He shoved his jeans and boxers down, freeing his cock. Hoisting her up, her legs wrapped around his hips, his thick, bulbous head poised at her entrance.

  “Fuck, no. Hard. Fuck me hard.”

  “Good kitten,” he said and plowed straight into her.

  She screamed again, and again with each thrust of his hips, each deep plunge of his cock, she cried out. The bark scratched across her back, her leg muscles strained from being spread how he had her, and her breasts burned from his treatment. She didn’t want it to end.

  “Fuck. Fuck.” She lifted her arms, pulling him closer to her, kissing him. “Fuck,” she murmured into his mouth.

  “Come, kitten. Come for me.” He deepened the kiss, pressing her head against the tree, his teeth biting down on her lower lip.

  As though she’d been waiting for his direction, as soon as he’d given his permission her body sparked. He plowed harder, his thrusts matching each shockwave of her orgasm until he joined her yells into the woods with his own release.

  Small animals of the forest danced through the dried-up leaves on the ground. Birds squawked overhead as they flew in formation. But all Julie knew, all she could process at that moment, was the man in front of her. The man still kissing her, still holding her and matching his breathing with hers. She could feel his heart pounding, not hear, but feel it. She could feel him, not just his physical form, but everything that embodied him. His heart, his soul, it all became palpable.

  All the goodness she thought a man couldn’t possess, had been packaged up in John and hand delivered to her. He wasn’t just a quick fuck.

  He wasn’t just the guy who could help her find her mom.

  He wasn’t just a guy for now.

  He was the real thing.

  The happily ever after dream.

  He’d already claimed her, and she’d accepted.

  But she didn’t know at the time, she didn’t realize. She couldn’t have even thought her heart could swell just hearing his breathing. Just feeling his thick lips press against hers.

  Except her life didn’t come with a happily ever after.

  Her life came with a drug-addicted mom.

  A missing drug-addicted mom.

  How could he possibly want her after all the adventure was gone? When the thrill of being chased and catching the bad guys wore away.

  Would he still want her?

  John pulled away from her, giving her one last kiss. When his eyes locked on hers, his brow furrowed together. So much for hiding her feelings.

  “What’s—” His question was cut off by her cell phone blaring next to his bag.

  Her mom had impeccable timing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “She didn’t call.” Julie dropped her head into her hands. John pulled his car door shut and took the phone from her lap.

  “We’ll find her. Chris has a strong lead on where Tommy is staying. As soon as we get to the city we’ll meet up with him and figure out what to do tonight.” His hand rested on her back. “Julie, it’s going to be okay.”

  “But she didn’t call. She said she would.” Julie threw her head back and took in a deep breath. The telemarketer calling while she had been bound to the tree probably had a bit of shock at Julie’s reaction to the call. John hadn’t chastised her for cursing out the unsuspecting agent, though. He had untied her, helped her dress, and had taken her back to the house for a bath and a long nap.

  “They may have only let her call the time before because they wanted our location.” John started up the car again. “Let’s just get to Chris’s house and get a plan together, okay? His place is just a few blocks away.” He pulled away from the gas pump and out into traffic.

  The sun was already close to setting. The drive from the house back to Chicago had been quick. Jimmy would expect her at eleven; it was already close to five.

  Julie hadn’t given him any trouble while she waited for them to leave the cabin in the woods. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the telemarketer called after their fun in the woods.

  Before meeting Julie, finding a woman meant finding a playmate, someone to share some time with and have fun. But now, now it meant more. He meant what he said when he claimed her. She was his and he would do anything and everything to protect her.

  “Here we are.” John pulled down an alley, looking for the distinctive purple siding of Chris’s garage.

  “Kinda sticks out, doesn’t it?” Julie snorted.

  John laughed. “Yeah. A bit.” Throwing the car in park, he turned to face her, picking up a piece of her hair. “I know this is hard for you, I know you’re scared. But I swear, Chris is one of the best private investigators I know. If he says he has a good lead, he does. So, I need you to listen to his plan, really listen and not go off and do whatever you think will work. I need you to tame that wild spirit, just for a day. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll do my best,” she offered.

  He tugged harder on her hair. “Hmm.”

  She pulled her hair from his grip. “I swear it. I just want her home safe. Once she’s home I can maybe get her into a program. I didn’t have the money before. But I’ve saved since I moved out on my own. I can help her better this time.”

  He wouldn’t point out that it wasn’t her responsibility. That she wasn’t supposed to be the one providing for her mother.

  “We’ll deal with that once we get her home,” he promised.

  The gate opened from the back yard and Chris came walking out and up to the car.

  “Hey, John.” He opened the door for John and shook his hand as he climbed out.

  “Chris. This is Julie.”

  Chris nodded in her direction and waved at the gate. “Let’s go inside.”

  John rounded the back of the car, taking up Julie’s hand once it was in reach. Chris kept a tidy yard. His grass
was trimmed and the bushes along his narrow property line were cut back, ready for the winter months.

  The back door of the house flew open and a woman carrying two large duffle bags stomped down the steps.

  “Babe?” Chris called after her. She paused to shoot an angry glare at all three of them and continued marching out of the yard. Her hair, John noticed, was all twisted up in a massive curly bun, her jeans too tight, and her shirt too short.

  “Trouble?” Julie asked with a tilt to her eyebrows.

  “No, trouble just left,” Chris chuckled.

  “She looked barely legal,” John chastised as they climbed the back porch steps.

  “She was legal.” Chris nodded and opened the screen door for them. “Barely, but she was legal.”

  Julie didn’t comment, but John could see her mind working. She wanted to give Chris hell, and he would’ve let her, too except they needed to get down to work.

  “Still chasing school skirts, I see.” John couldn’t help giving the knock to Chris. “What’s your sister think about that?”

  “She thinks it’s not her business.” Chris led them into the kitchen, where he had papers scattered across the table. “Okay, now. I have some good news and bad news.”

  “Good news,” Julie ordered and sank into one of the kitchen chairs, her eyes already poring over the documents in front of her.

  “Your mom is safe. I got a call about an hour ago confirming she’s safe and being kept in a house three miles north of here. She’s not being mistreated and looks to be in perfect health.” Chris pulled a piece of paper out from the bottom pile and placed it in front of Julie. John leaned over her, to look at the document with her.

  “What’s this?” She picked it up.

  “Your birth certificate. That’s the bad news.” Chris caught John’s stare and held onto it while Julie looked over the document. A little shake of his head told John not to push yet, to let her look it over and soak in whatever the news was.

  “This can’t be right. I have my birth certificate. The father field is blank. This is wrong.” She flung the paper across the table back at Chris.