by Vonna Harper
“As Shana or a captive?”
He hadn’t spoken her name before. She would have remembered those notes if he had. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It will.”
In the future, that place she couldn’t envision. “I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. She felt not virgin-shy but new. As she waited to see if the feeling would change, she fingered the marks on her belly. Maybe she’d stay naked for as long as they lasted.
“Then come with me,” he said.
She started to walk toward him but stopped when he shook his head.
“Come in your mind.” He pointed at the bed. “You’re at the camp where your captor compelled you to stay. He has returned. He’s weary, but he isn’t ready to go to sleep. What happens between the two of you?”
Just like that, she slipped into the place where everything was primal. All around them other warriors were starting to snore. She’d long ago dismissed any thoughts of trying to flee, in part because she didn’t know where she was—but mostly because this man had changed so much of what she’d believed about herself. He’d brought her into his basic world, not so much by force but because his body was made for physical action.
And he deserved an equal.
“We reach for each other,” she told the man who’d asked the question. “I offer myself to my captor.”
“Why?”
“Because he has shown me my core, forced me to be honest with myself.”
“You weren’t honest before?”
“I didn’t know it, but I’d been denying the real me, a woman who longed to submit.”
She’d said all she could. If he didn’t understand, she didn’t know how to reach him.
“I don’t want your submission,” he said.
For a moment she thought she’d lost him. Then she noted the light in his eyes and it all came together. “Fucking partners,” she said.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
He’d told her to think of herself as a newcomer to his world, so she did just that as she climbed onto the bed. Kneeling, she fingered her collar. “This defines much of our relationship, but not all of it.” Taking her time, she traced a line from her throat all the way to her crotch. She owned her body and yet she didn’t. “This is the core of what exists between us.” She extended glistening fingers toward his cock.
“Only that?”
Don’t press me. “For now. Master, please.”
Somber, he closed the space between them and planted his hands on the bed inches from her knees. They stared at each other for a long time. Finally, she placed her hands over his.
“Please, Master,” she whispered.
He climbed onto the bed and pushed her onto her back. Moaning, she bent her knees and spread her legs. He entered the space she’d created and slid his hands under her buttocks. As he lifted her lower body off the bed, her heart hammered and her pussy dripped.
“My slave,” he muttered. “And my equal.”
Overwhelmed by what he’d thrown at her, she extended her arms toward him. Her fingers grazed his chest. Outside, the wind slammed into the side of the building with so much force that she felt the vibration throughout.
Certain she wouldn’t run, her captor had freed her from the tree she’d spent the day tethered to. He’d sat by a warming fire with the rest of his clan’s braves as they’d discussed tomorrow’s plans, but she’d paid little attention to the conversation, because she’d been kneeling beside him and he’d stroked her the whole time, preparing her for the night.
Whimpering, she shook off the image and tried to sit up on the bed. Without support behind her, she had no choice but to fall back down. She kept her arms outstretched toward him.
“Master? I need—please.”
Nodding, he took hold of her ankles and dragged her closer, keeping her spread as he did. His cock tip kissed her opening.
“Yes,” she whimpered. “Yes.”
“In all ways?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “I’m yours to—”
“Only if it’s right for you, too.”
A primitive warrior wouldn’t say that. “It is,” she told the man who shared the real world with her. Master, I beg you, I need—”
Before she could finish, he pushed into her. His heat, bulk and length filled her. Crying out, she clamped her legs around him with all her strength. He began riding her, his thrusts hard and fast. She slid over the coverlet, growling like an animal.
Master was fucking her. Using her body, rewarding it, turning them from two into one. In the past, she’d felt a measure of superiority because her lovers had to enter her, but this was different. No matter that Master groaned and even cursed, he was in charge. She bucked under him, reared and whimpered, clawed at his flesh and clenched his cock with all the strength in her core.
Thrust by thrust, she lost herself. Desire raged through her, compelling her to grip his buttocks and pull him even closer. He responded by slamming into her so hard she wondered if they’d break the bed. The hours leading to this moment swirled together in her fracturing mind until she had no idea where they were.
It didn’t matter. She and Master were having sex. At the same time, her captor was fucking her in the middle of the wilderness.
Electrically charged night air stroked her straining flesh. Knowing he was experiencing the same explosion filled her with wild joy. He was so drenched in sweat she had to struggle to hold on to him, but grip him she did, because he’d become her life.
Her world.
A glory of pulsing heat tore into her and she screamed. Her climax was a beast, hard and strong. Going on and on. Above and inside her, Master bellowed through his own release. Despite the haze of her existence, she shared his moments with him. Prayed he was doing the same.
Master. Owner. Giver of a reason to live.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He hadn’t immediately crawled off her. During those moments when his body had trapped hers, she’d gone from exhaustion to acceptance to something she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to face.
At length, he got up and walked into the bathroom, leaving her to listen to her heartbeat and the wind attacking the vegetation. He was in there so long she went from floating to asking herself if he was deliberately avoiding her.
She was a mess.
It took most of her strength to sit up. Once she had, she was sorry because she had no choice but to acknowledge her striped legs. Shaking her head in disbelief, she touched the marks on her belly. When doing that brought no answers, she did the same to her breasts. They were so sensitive she couldn’t hold back a long, low hiss. After sliding over to the side of the bed so she could lower her feet to the floor, she separated her legs and hesitantly touched her pussy.
Whatever had happened between Master and her hadn’t been fucking and it certainly hadn’t been lovemaking. She couldn’t even call it sex.
Something stirred deep inside her. She knew better than to test her resolve, but that didn’t stop her from fingering her opening. In only a few seconds, her clit hardened.
Her captor had had his way with her. When he’d finished, he’d tied her to him via rope around both their wrists. He’d fallen asleep, something she knew she couldn’t do.
After a long period of inactivity, she loosened the knots against her wrist. When she’d freed herself, she crawled away from him. Ahead of her lay the unknown—and a chance to regain her freedom. Behind her slept a man who believed he had every right to her body.
A man who’d already claimed it once tonight and would do so again when he wakened.
What should she do? Rely on her instinct for survival or surrender freedom?
“Are you all right?”
Jolted back to the real world by the unexpected question, she acknowledged the man she had to stop thinking of as her Master. She kept her fingers on her sex.
“No, I’m not.”
“You hurt—?”
“It’s not that,” she sn
apped even though her whole body ached. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this, that you’d—that I’d— Damn it, it’s too much.”
“Are you sorry?”
He hadn’t bothered putting on clothes, which she took as an unspoken announcement that he expected to fuck her again before the night was over. Even as she railed at his arrogance, she understood why he felt that way.
“I’m a lot of things,” she said as she stood. Her legs were shaky, not that she’d let him know. “Mostly, I’m a mess.”
He folded his too-big arms across his too-big chest. “Are you?”
Don’t let him see down to the truth. “I need a damn shower.” Her fingers were wet with her arousal and his cum. “My hair’s dirty. I hope there’s a brush in—”
He pointed at the bathroom door. “Do what you have to.”
“I intend to.” Head high, shoulders back and legs trembling with what she told herself was exhaustion, she walked past him.
She closed the door behind her and reached for the light switch but didn’t turn it on. She wasn’t ready to see herself. It felt strange to be alone—strange in ways she didn’t want to have to try to define.
Determined not to think about him, or anything, she reluctantly filled the room with light. She kept her back to the mirror while turning on the shower and selecting a washcloth and towel.
The warm, gently falling water felt glorious on her abused body. As she slowly soaped herself, she noted that every time soap touched a new place, it soothed. If she was going to get involved in the BDSM lifestyle she had to make sure she had some of that brand of soap.
If she got involved?
Did she want to go there?
Would her mind, her soul survive if she did?
Shampooing her hair and standing under the spray for a good five minutes brought her no closer to an answer. One thing she knew—the man in the next room scared the crap out of her.
* * * *
“You can’t make me stay.”
“That’s not what I said. There’s no way off the island until morning.”
“What if I insist they get a boat here?”
He’d seen her naked with her pussy on display, to say nothing of burying himself in her, so what the hell was so unnerving about knowing she wore nothing under the large white towel she’d wrapped around herself? She’d made a stab at brushing her hair. Unfortunately for his nervous system, she still looked untamed. While she’d been in the bathroom, he’d turned off all lights except a small lamp. As a result, shadows played with her edges.
She scared the crap out of him.
“MSDB only works with two captains, and they don’t run their boats at night.” He supposed he should add that she was safe with him, but it might’ve been a lie.
Danger went both ways.
“What about the main building? I want to wait there.”
“Do you?”
“Damn you,” she muttered before walking over to the window. The island had no outside lighting beyond the cabins, and the clouds covered the moon, which meant she was staring at darkness, the same dark he’d nearly lost himself in while she’d been in the bathroom.
“I’m not afraid of the night,” she muttered. “I often go for long walks after work. Doing so relaxes me.”
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at, if anything. Maybe if he said nothing, she’d forget he was here and—
She was right. Things had been too damn intense between them. The storm hadn’t helped. The beasts of rain, wind, thunder and lightning had both sucked him up and torn him apart. He had vague memories of doing and saying things that had probably worried her. Obviously she’d said what she had about not being afraid of the night in an attempt to reassure herself. He didn’t blame her. Hell, if he thought he could say the right things, he’d apologize for putting her through what he had—whatever that was.
At least the storm had spent itself. He was free of it.
Until the next time.
“I didn’t know it would be like that.”
“Like what?”
She whirled on him, nearly losing the towel as she did. Her gaze flickered to the cock he hadn’t bothered covering up. His blood started pumping, proof—not that he needed any—that he’d been affected by more than the island and weather. He wondered what might happen between them if they’d met in ordinary circumstances, whatever those were.
“You can’t need me to spell it out,” she snapped.
Her eyes said she wanted nothing to do with this conversation but her body said something different. Despite her sharp words, she carried herself as if she didn’t know what to do with her form. Maybe she was waiting for him to tell her, to issue an order.
No, damn it, they weren’t going down that road again.
“I thought coming here would give me the opportunity to sample the BDSM lifestyle, to see if aspects of it might appeal to me.”
She sounded as if she’d wanted to take BDSM for a test drive. Maybe he should tell her it wasn’t like that. At least, it hadn’t been that simple for him.
“What I introduced you to didn’t live up to your expectations?”
“I’m not sure what my expectations were,” she whispered.
She wrapped her arms around her middle, the gesture causing her breasts to expand under the terrycloth. He’d been wise to sit down. Otherwise he might have already thrown her onto the tangled spread.
Taken them to a place neither of them wanted.
“I didn’t know it was going to be so intense,” she continued. “That I’d…”
“That you’d what?” he prompted. He sensed they were getting to something important.
She started to extend a hand toward him, only to hug herself again. She was so damned small and vulnerable, submissive even. That was what was tearing him apart, the passive current running beneath her kick-ass exterior.
He wanted to exploit that.
Knew it would be the death of him.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said softly, “or why. But by the end of, you know, I’d stopped being Shana. I forgot all about how I could pull the plug on what was happening simply by saying the word red.”
So had he.
“I’d become the captive of a nameless savage, a warrior,” she continued. “I was utterly at his mercy and yet…”
She’d become? Shock slammed into him. It took all his self-control not to go to her.
She looked at the floor. “My captor had been gone a long time. I don’t know what he’d been doing, maybe fighting his enemies, maybe hunting. When he returned, he took me.”
“Raped you?” Saying the word made him sick to his stomach.
“No. It wasn’t that because I, ah, I needed him.”
It wouldn’t be morning for hours. How the hell was he going to get through it with her so near, so untouchable? Damn it, he should stand near the recording device that had been placed in the overhead light and tell management to come get her.
“Once he fell asleep,” she went on as he admitted he couldn’t make himself do that, “I could have run away. I should have. But I didn’t.”
Talking must have worn her out because she stumbled back and let the wall support her. When she leaned her head against the window screen, he half expected the wilderness to reach in and spirit her away.
If it had, he would have gone after her.
“I stayed because I needed him.”
“Maybe,” he tried, “you’d decided he represented less of a threat than the wilderness did.”
“No. I needed—I wanted him.”
And for a while earlier today, he’d been that savage.
It could happen again.
“It became real to you?” he asked.
In her slow nod he read not just acceptance but a kind of peace. “I know it sounds crazy. I anticipated engaging in a few hours of role playing by coming here. I never thought I’d get so carried away.”
She should see things from his perspectiv
e—except maybe she had.
“I deal with dirt, rocks and things that grow.” Her attention shifted from his face to his chest and started drifting lower. “I live in the real world, not…”
“Sometimes things change,” was the best he could come up with.
She shuddered and pulled the towel tighter over her breasts. “I don’t like that kind of change. You might be comfortable with it, but I’ll never be.” She turned slightly so she could again rest her cheek against the screen and absorb the post-storm night. “That’s why I can hardly wait to leave.”
Even though she hadn’t said it, he knew it was him she needed to separate herself from most of all.
“In the morning.” Determined not to think, he pulled back the covers and slipped naked between the sheets. “Turn off the light when you’re ready to come to bed. There’s room for both of us.”
Hadn’t he given her what he believed she needed? Why was she looking as if he’d just struck her?
“Trust me.” Hating what he was doing, he rolled onto his side, facing away from her. “I’m not going to touch you.”
“Good,” she muttered. “Good.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Warriors from several clans had come to this place by the river, because everyone was weary of fighting. An elder from each clan had presented his people’s grievances. The list of wrongs done had taken most of the day but finally the discussion had turned to how important it was to put those things behind them and move forward.
Her captor had brought her to the meeting. Other tribes had done the same and there were at least a dozen hostages. The decision had already been made not to try to determine which clan had been wronged the most. Instead of arguing whether a clan should be required to pay for the return of a captive and how much the ransom or prisoner price should be, the elders had agreed they’d never be able to satisfy everyone. Fathers didn’t want to be responsible for daughters who’d been passed around and thus had lost their value. It was better for them to stay where they were.
Her people had no use for her. After days and nights spent dreaming of freedom, she now understood that would never be. She and the other captives were considered soiled and worthless to the clans of their birth.
