by Zoe Blake
He knew exactly what she wanted even though she couldn’t articulate it—she wanted him to hang up before she fell apart. She didn’t want the son of a bitch on the other end of the line to hear her come for him.
Not a chance, princess.
With confident movements, he built her higher and higher, her hips twitching, her breaths increasing with soft murmurs of pleasure, those blue eyes clenching tight as she angled her head back to expose the tender column of her throat. It was a beautiful sight, her body stretched out and vulnerable, covered in his marks. Whether she hated it or not, her hips started to lift for him, matching each stroke of his fingers, hands balling into fists as she got closer and closer.
Then the first sweet moan slipped from around the gag. She bit down on it, her jaw muscle twitching as she sealed her lips to it, drawing in a hiss of air through her nose.
His eyes drifted to the phone screen, each second of the call ticking away. Sinclair was still listening, still watching, and Adam was going to make sure he understood exactly who was in charge, and what happened when he didn’t follow the rules.
Rebecca started to shake her head from side to side, her hips rolling in a constant rhythm, and as much as he wanted to take her—in this moment he wanted to break her more. To break them both. Picking up the pace, Adam forced her to the edge, dragging her there with each devious stroke of his fingers, and before he could stop himself, his other hand found its way into her hair to hold her down to the thin mattress. He hovered above her, mesmerized by the struggle painted across her face.
Mine, his mind purred and he forced his fingers deeper, stretching her.
As he tightened the grip in her blonde tresses, she suddenly came, a loud moan escaping as she arched hard off the fabric. Her hips jerked, bucked, trying to pull away from his touch but he followed her and dragged it out, ignored her whining pleas for him to stop. A moment later she screamed louder, her body shuddering into another orgasm, and there was nothing he could do in that moment but stare.
So. Fucking. Perfect.
Slowing his touch, he pumped his fingers inside her, amazed by the pool of wetness forming under her. Rebecca went limp, only a soft whine leaving her on an exhale, her muscles involuntarily shivering. With a hint of regret, Adam withdrew, releasing her hair, and unlocked the gag before he grabbed the little phone. The call was still going as he stood, and he looked up at the camera, grateful the mask hid his expression, before he abruptly pressed the end button. Tucking it away in a pocket, he forced himself to walk out of the room. Away from the all-too-feminine form on the floor, chained, open and waiting for him.
So wet. She’d been so wet.
As Adam pulled the door closed, he flipped the lock and then leaned back against it before he ripped off the mask. In a moment of weakness, he brought his fingers to his lips and tasted her. Even better than how she smelled, better than how she moaned—she tasted like heaven.
“Get a fucking hold of yourself,” he hissed and wiped his hand off on his pants. With a quick adjustment of the bulge behind his zipper, he moved towards the office, steadily reassuring himself. “Sinclair says he signed the papers. It worked. She’s a means to an end. That’s it. A privileged little whore.”
He slammed the door, putting one more barrier between him and the girl. Plugging in the phone, he double-checked that the routing program had operated perfectly. Still hidden, still safely tucked away in the little dungeon he had built just for this. A quick check of his email confirmed receipt of the package. Yes. It was finally happening. Digital scans of the contracts would be next, and then everyone would follow his explicit instructions to start destroying the man. Scattering his wealth across the world.
In the meantime, he had new orders for Daniel Sinclair. It was all ready, a new email with a new to-do list, and with the click of a button, he sent it off.
A new timeline that Adam had a feeling Sinclair would take much more seriously this time.
Drumming his fingers on the desk, he tried to distract himself, avoiding the cameras as much as he could, only glancing at her form once to ensure she’d spit the gag out.
The way she’d screamed…
Groaning low, he grabbed himself through the front of his pants. He wanted to fuck her, to bury himself between her thighs and feel her arch against him the way she’d bowed into the air. But he couldn’t, not yet. Switching to the video he’d put together for the first email, he hit play and watched it again. The loft apartment, in black and white, with Rebecca curled up on the couch. His eyes devoured the images on the screen, her surprise as he pulled her off the couch. The first reveal of her long legs. He could still remember her pleas, playing in his mind at top volume, and the moment she ran his cock pulsed, so hard it hurt. She had fought, she had been strong—but he was stronger. It had taken so little effort to bend her over the couch, cut her underwear away, and take her.
Unzipping his pants, he shoved his boxers out of the way to grip the steel of his shaft. He could remember the silken wetness of her pussy on his fingertips, remember the way she’d clenched his cock as she’d come, the way she was lying on that mattress now, bound in cuffs and at his mercy. His strokes grew rougher, faster, building as he remembered her soft voice, her muffled sobs behind the gag, the way she screamed when the belt snapped against her skin. With a barking shout, he came, ruining his pants, his heart pounding in his chest—but on the screens in front of him was only further torment that the orgasm had barely ebbed.
On one screen she was lying limp over the couch, her hands in cuffs, her legs spread. On the other she was on her back, chained down, crying almost silently. The occasional hitched breath was all that the microphones could pick up.
Fuck.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel... what am I going to do with you?
Chapter Six
It had been hours of lying on the mattress with her thighs wide, her body aching with welts, cheeks chapped from her tears, before he’d finally returned. The man wore his anger like a dark halo, somehow invisible and obvious, but the slamming of the door and the rapid rise and fall of his chest had been more than enough warning.
Her father had missed another deadline.
There had been no phone call that time, no belt, no teasing touches, just him as he’d climbed between her thighs, torn his zipper open and thrust deep. She had begged, cried out, and he’d fucked her so hard she’d come.
Again.
And then again as he’d continued to move inside her. As if her mind had no power over her body. As if she had no rights to control it anymore.
Another video.
Another set of her screams and pleas recorded.
Where was her father now? Where was his concerned voice demanding her release? She knew the board had power, but her father ran the company. He rarely asked permission before acting, and it was that attitude that had infuriated stakeholders in the past. In meetings and on calls where he got into shouting matches, his voice echoing through their loft apartment even through the closed door. That man wouldn’t let this happen to her, would he?
Unless he was angry with her? Furious that she had let herself be taken? Did he see this as some sort of suitable punishment?
Did she deserve this?
Doubt spiraled like razor-winged butterflies through her mind. Torturing her and tormenting her.
Slowly, inexorably, breaking her down.
The lock on the door made her exhausted muscles tense, but she knew better than to pull on the cuffs now. Bruised and aching, re-tethered on her stomach, her wrists and ankles had to be a multi-colored mess under the leather. “Oh, Rapunzel, you lucky girl…”
Rebecca didn’t speak, didn’t react, it only seemed to entertain him when she begged. He ripped her head back by her hair anyway, straining her neck as she tried to brace her elbows against the floor.
“Still in there, princess? Because we’re just getting started.” A low, dark laugh rumbled behind the mask as he dropped her back to the mattress. She wai
ted for him to hurt her, to bring out some new torment, but instead she felt him working at the cuff on her ankle. “Daddy dearest just sold his controlling shares in Dargen Technologies, and that’s one less tax shelter.”
Recognition bloomed inside her at the name. A relatively small company, they made hardware. What exactly did they make? She couldn’t remember. Somewhere inside the mess her mind had become she tried to connect dots, but then her other leg was uncuffed and he flipped her effortlessly. Intense eyes stared out from the mask, wild in the excitement of his fresh success.
“Tell me, do you think he’s finally decided you’re important enough to protect?” He brushed her cheek and she turned away from him, refusing to answer as he started to uncuff her hands. Those fingers brushed her arm just below the last cuff. “Or do you think he’s enjoying the videos?”
“He’s going to find you.” The words were rough, her throat too dry, but he’d heard her. A huff of a laugh escaped him, and then she was free from the chains. The man didn’t even try to stop her as she rushed to get away from him, scrambling for the wall to curl up against it while her body rang with reminders of pain.
Humming to himself, he gathered the chains slowly, but Rebecca had no doubt as his hungry gaze crawled over her bruised skin that he would take great joy in punishing her, taking her again if her father didn’t jump through whatever hoops he had concocted next. He paused at the door, holding it open like a taunt. “Just one more question. Don’t you think if he could find me, he would have already come for you?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but he was gone, and she wasn’t sure what to say anyway. As soon as the grinding sound of the lock confirmed he wasn’t coming back, she dragged the mattress into the far corner and curled up where it felt safest.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She wasn’t safe. One thing the man had made very clear was that nothing could protect her. Nothing could stop him. If he wanted her chained, he chained her. If he wanted to touch her, he did. If he wanted her to scream, or beg, or cry, or come—she did.
And he proved it again and again as time passed in fits and bursts.
Dragging in his absence, with no clock and no change in the strange lighting to signal it—and then there would be another sandwich. A paper plate of lunch meat. Meals that seemed to come at no set interval, but how was she supposed to tell how many hours passed? How long had she even been in this room? How long had it been since he’d come to The Tower, to her apartment, and taken her?
Days? A week?
A hysterical giggle erupted from her lips and she pulled her legs tighter to her chest, her long hair draped in waves over her shoulders. The golden strands fanning out beside her as she spread them on the mattress.
If only she really were Rapunzel up in a tower, able to weave the useless tresses into a rope. A way to escape her prison. But her hair wasn’t going to do shit for her against a thick, metal door, and there was definitely no prince to hear her if she called out.
Her gaze rolled upwards as she wondered if anyone was concerned about her absence, if her father was counting how long she’d been gone. Was there even a point to time anymore with that neutral ambient glow on the gray ceiling? Neither morning, nor noon, nor night.
It was nothing.
The room was nothing—and she was dissolving inside it.
There were fuzzy things in her brain, as if each thought was covered in dust that blurred the ideas and made it difficult to brush clean. Sound filtered into her head and she realized she was humming again, a few strands of her hair wrapped around her fingers as she braided, unbraided, and braided them again.
‘I’m losing my mind…’ she thought, and the pulse of need between her thighs only confirmed it. He was horrible. A nightmare wrapped in a beautiful package, but some twisted part of her craved him. Some tingling place at the base of her spine woke up when she remembered the crop, the belt, the way he overpowered her when he came for her. Over and over.
That part of her was evil.
She had to fight it.
Swallowing, Rebecca leaned forward and picked up the plastic cup, sipping water carefully before she set it back down. One, two, three, five, eight lights. Eight cameras. Eight like the number of legs on a spider, and this was the web. This room a cocoon of silk he’d wrapped her in so he could devour her slowly. Bit by bit. Destroying her at his leisure.
And, worse, she was letting him.
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself, a harsh growl. Where was the girl who walked into meetings with her head up? Where was the woman who had presented her Bachelor’s thesis to a bunch of smug professors who had doubted her, who had taken one look at her and sneered? The same woman who had then impressed them with her discussion of Titian, and Caravaggio, and Gentileschi? She was still that person.
Even naked and bruised and welted and violated.
She could still be smart, could still be strong.
The memory of the year she had spent on her thesis came out of the fog in her brain. Paintings flooded her mind, vivid and dark at the same time, and she fixated on one she’d referenced several times in her thesis. Judith Slaying Holofernes. An ancient story of a woman taking revenge on the man who raped her. Beheading him in the most brutal of fashions. The way Gentileschi had painted the blood with abandon, the horror of the blade slicing skin as Judith and her servant had held the man down—it had been powerful. Breathtaking.
Even Caravaggio had not pulled back from the violence of it, although he’d painted Judith more timid, more serene in the slaughter. Caravaggio had done it well, but Gentileschi had done it better. She had not softened the image, she hadn’t hidden the horror of it. She had reveled in it. She had understood what it was like to be a woman up against a man.
Whether fierce or elegant, Judith was a symbol of vengeance. Bloody vengeance.
A testament to the unbreakable spirit inside all women.
Water splashed into Rebecca’s stomach with a force that made her sit up, pressing her spine into the concrete wall. A tiny flicker of strength surfaced in the dimness of her thoughts, the color of Titian red. It brushed across the inside of her mind, called her forward to claim her strength. To be brave. To be unbreakable. To seek vengeance.
She could be like Judith if she tried. She would be.
She would not be a damsel in distress, a princess trapped in a tower. She would change the story.
Staring at the door, Rebecca thought of her own Holofernes. The mask, the hard body, the hard— With a shake of her head, she took a deep breath, and drew strength from some unknown well inside her. She had to act or she was going to dissolve in this cocoon.
“Hey!” she shouted, glancing up at one of the cameras with a kind of reckless abandon that on some level only further confirmed her loose grip on sanity.
Why are you summoning the monster back?
“I want to know what you want! What are you doing? What do you want my father to do?” As she rattled off questions, emptying her brain of the twisted cloud of thoughts, the camera lights started to tick off one by one. Her muscles tensed, fear zipping up her spine, but the tingle was there too. A warm, buzzing, hungry sensation in her lower belly.
Stop it. You don’t want him. You just want answers.
No more red eyes staring down, cameras off, but the lights at least stayed on.
It was only a moment later when the grating sound of the metal lock filled the room, and then he was there. No shirt, no gloves, no pants, no shoes. He was in black boxer briefs, molded to him so closely he may as well have left them behind, and—of course—the damnable mask. Every tanned inch of him was power, and she stared as he leaned his head against the doorframe. “You called, princess?”
“What—” She jerked back because there was a warm, rumbling slur to his voice. “What the fuck? Are you drunk?”
“I’m celebrating.” He stepped into the room, a large bottle of some dark liquor in his other hand. The door snapped shut beside him, but he bare
ly twitched.
“Celebrating what?”
“Your father is finally taking me seriously, and I am pruning the tree of his empire branch by branch.” Raising one hand, he mimed scissors cutting through the air. “Snip, snip, snip.”
“What do you mean?”
The man had let his gaze drift to the side, but he looked back at her when she spoke. He shrugged. “I’m taking everything. Just like I promised.”
“You’re not making any sense,” she whispered and he walked towards her with slow steps, his bare feet padding across the floor, the muscles in his legs and abs shifting in time with his movements. She fought the urge to run, driving her nails into her palms to stay seated.
No more games.
“You are beautiful.” He stopped close to her and set the bottle down on the floor, lowering into a crouch. “Even more so than you are on TV. I think it’s the fire inside you. You always look like a lifeless doll on television. But… you’re not.”
“Not what?” She dodged his hand as he reached out to touch her cheek.
“A lifeless doll,” he answered flatly. A low laugh rumbled in his chest as he moved and sat on the other end of the thin mattress. “I thought you would be.”
“A doll?”
“Empty.” His words made her forehead crease, her brows drawing closer together, but her eyes stayed on the bottle.
Keep him talking.
“Why would I be empty?”
“Because of him. I don’t know how you exist at all. You shouldn’t exist.” He shook his head slowly and shuffled backwards until his shoulders met the wall.
“I don’t understand.” Rebecca watched as his eyes closed through the holes in the mask, and she carefully inched forward.
“Of course you don’t, princess. Rapunzel. You’re so blind. So blonde. All that hair.” The words were slurring more, and she reached for the bottle just in front of his feet, her hands closing around the neck of it, still warm from his touch.
“It’s just hair,” she mumbled softly, trying not to alert him to her movements as she lifted the bottle silently from the floor and moved to her knees.
