Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2)

by Cari Silverwood

  The internal heating was kicking in though, and the room had warmed to bearable levels. Still cold though...and Mavros expected me to be naked soon.

  Yorgos collected the last of the plates and exited the room.

  I played with the long sleeves of my yellow dress then licked my lips and took another swallow from my glass.

  “Now to deal with you.” The flat line of his lips, and how he looked at me, said he had devious designs.

  I wanted to squirm on my seat.

  “What does that mean?”

  Mavros grunted. “You’ll see. Go and get ready. I want you showered and undressed and back here in ten minutes. Go.”

  Grimm was staying? “What about –”

  “No more talk.”

  Then I felt the nudge of his will and though I did try to stay seated, I soon found myself pushing back my chair and heading for the shower. If the point was to learn to resist, this was beginning on the wrong foot.

  As I soaped myself under the spray of water, I came to the conclusion that Mavros just wanted me to be his naked victim. I washed off, stepped out of the shower, and toweled myself dry. The cold air had me shivering and my nipples tightening.

  This would be...curious.

  My blood had heated. I was growing ever more turned on simply wondering what would happen, giving rise to a strange, anxious reaction in my chest. Sex. I knew it was on the menu. I was on the menu.

  I cupped my breasts while I turned before the six-foot-tall mirror on the wall. My lips were full and pouting, my face flushed. I knew I wanted him to play with me. I always did.

  “Slut,” I whispered to my reflection.

  I would run away from him, but tomorrow, or the next day. I released one breast and let that hand travel down to instead cover my mons. I did it slowly, pretending a lover was caressing my body. With my palm warming my mons, my fingers reached the front of my slit. I found exactly what I knew would be there – slick moisture welling from inside me. It was my constant welcoming sign to Mavros, when he deigned to touch me.

  “Hurry up, Zorie!” he called.

  “I’m coming,” I said quietly.

  Chapter 2

  Zorie

  I walked back into the dining room with a towel clutched around me. Not wrapped, just clutched. It wouldn’t stay there for long. My heartbeat echoed in my ears and my nipples brushed against the soft towel, making me even more aware of how aroused I was.

  Wrong to be so, but I couldn’t help myself. It seemed having Grimm there, watching, was not inhibiting my response. They were both standing, waiting for me to come closer to the table.

  Mavros beckoned. He pointed at the now-bare table. Ropes coiled at the corners. I scrunched my toes into the rug then paced forward.

  “Drop the towel.” I took a swallow then let the towel fall from my fingers, leaving me utterly naked. My breasts seemed too obvious, announcing my gender to these two men. Not that they didn’t know I was female, but... My mons was shaved except for the barest strip leading down. From the sensations, my clit was already tumescent.

  Embarrassing? Yes. No matter how many times I’d been exhibited, each time in front of more than one man was newly excruciating.

  My mind was fearful and I was only five steps into the room.

  “Here.” Mavros tapped the middle of the table. Bare timber, nothing more. It would be cold.

  Whatever was running through Grimm’s mind, I had no clue. He was a man who could rival stone for unflinching bareness when he chose. Perhaps he too thought me a slut.

  With no indication from Mavros that I should resist, I chose not to try. After the many times he’d played with my body and fucked me, whenever I knew he intended to do anything sexual to me, I responded quickly.

  After a few deep breaths, and a last glance at Mavros, I used one of the chairs to help me climb onto the table and I waited there, sitting up on my knees, though the hardness of the timber hurt me a little. When I was on hands and knees, my breasts would be even more obvious, as would my aroused pussy. I was shy about showing Grimm more, though he inevitably would see whatever Mavros chose to show off.

  I shivered, with my hands clasped in front of me, casually concealing the pubic triangle above my sex. I was an instrument thrilling to the call of the maestro, a violin waiting to be stroked. I waited, being nothing but a sex toy, and I knew it, and I didn’t care in that moment. I desired, nothing more.

  Mavros walked the few steps around the table so he was before me. Grimm was to my left, two chairs, two table settings away, if you could count places that weren’t occupied by people. An intimate dinner exhibition of female flesh. Of me.

  He placed his hands on my thighs and pushed enough that I knew he wanted them apart. Reluctantly, I opened my legs.

  “Good girl. Now...” He leaned in until his mouth was mere inches away. I ached to kiss him but knew it was forbidden. “What do you think I am to do with you?”

  With the men clothed, I was terribly aware of my vulnerability.

  “Uhhh,” I breathed, unsure what answer he wished.

  His Greek accent seemed to have thickened since he came here, as if he absorbed it from the atmosphere.

  “What do you think I will do with those? The ropes. And that?”

  Where he nodded toward, coils of hemp lay on the table, at the head where he’d sat to eat. “You said you’d tie me to the table.” I stared at them, imagining my helplessness.

  The chasm of surrender awaited. By all that I did, by every action, I was surrendering to Mavros. He no longer needed to make me do anything.

  The wrongness of that struck me.

  “Yes. And?”

  Then I saw the shining metal. Beneath the rope lay a knife. At least ten inches in length, it looked lethal, as all knives do. My stomach flip-flopped. “Use that to cut me free?” I said frivolously, dearly hoping it was true.

  “Hah. I’m going to tease you with that, to make you see your true potential. You are going to succeed tonight, where you have not before.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think we only need to up the danger.”

  Fuck. “What if you’re –”

  “Shhh.”

  Wrong.

  He’d placed his finger across my lips. I shushed, but as he pushed me down to the table, onto my stomach, and tied me there, wrist and ankle, I followed up on my earlier thought.

  What was wrong with my surrender?

  The bonds he wrapped and knotted about me were tight enough that I’d not get free without a knife being used to slash each rope, one by one. I was splayed face down, legs spread, with my arms hauled above my head. It was uncomfortable and yet, as always, he tempted me.

  I’d become mesmerized indeed. I was making this too easy, like a mouse grown used to eating the bait in the trap.

  I shouldn’t be waiting for myself to learn resistance just because the sex addled my brain.

  I shouldn’t –

  Then he sat on the edge of the table and placed his hand on the back of my neck and I sank for a time into that space where there is no time. Floating and happy to be where I was.

  “Zorie.”

  My thought completed itself as I surfaced. He has no power over me, if I run. Therefore, run. I should take no one. Not Grimm. Just go.

  Tomorrow.

  “Zorie.”

  I heard a click as an object touched the timber nearby. Then a scrape.

  My head was turned to the side and I opened my eyes and saw what he’d placed before my nose. The knife.

  “See this?”

  I nodded. The overhead lighting made it gleam, slickly.

  “I’m going to cut you with it to prove how sharp it is. Like this.”

  The intake of my breath was as sharp as the blade that had disappeared from sight.

  “On your bottom. See.”

  Horrified, I watched him lean over me, hold my ass down firmly with one hand, then...

  The knife slit my skin, searing a line where I coul
dn’t see, and I jerked and screeched.

  “Why’d you do that!”

  He brushed a finger over the stinging cut and I didn’t dare wriggle, for fear of meeting that sharpness again, by accident.

  “Because. To show you blood. It cuts you easily.”

  “Fuck. I know that!”

  “No swearing.”

  My mouth shut instantly but I glared. He hadn’t forbidden that.

  “Now I’m going to fuck you with this knife, slowly, but I can’t guarantee it won’t cut you, as it’s sharp.”

  Startled, I stared. Had I heard that right?

  Why had I been stuck in this fog for so long? If I’d left before this I’d be safe. Mavros had gone crazy.

  “You’re mad. Let me go!” I pulled on the ropes, then strained and looked up at where Grimm might be. He was seated and watching, chin on hands. “Get him to let me go! Please!”

  The frown was slow in assembling, but then he shook his head. “We’ve talked. This needs doing if you’re to have a chance, Zorie.”

  “Exactly.” Mavros was still by my side, the knife casually laid over his thigh, on his pants leg.

  “Let me loose, please.” I whispered it this time.

  “No. Listen to me, carefully. I forbid you to say stop or any other sequence of words that mean the same thing.” He paused and I felt the command sink in as softly as a rock floating through mile-deep water. Silent but heavy. “But if you want me to not fuck you with this, you have to say stop. Understand?”

  And if I couldn’t say stop, that bloody pig-sticker would cut me a whole new gash. I knew my anatomy too well. I could die if this went badly wrong. We were high in the mountains and a slashed large blood vessel, especially if an artery, could make me lose an incredible amount of blood. A helicopter might make it up here in time. Or not.

  “Understand, Zorie?” He caressed my chin, determination in every syllable. “I need you to succeed.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I can’t do this. You know that.”

  We’d tried endlessly. Resisting commands only worked if he wasn’t present or wasn’t looking at me, and even then I could barely do anything. I hadn’t improved much at all since the time I failed to shoot Reuben

  “Perhaps. I think you have it in you. You just need the right motivation.”

  I tried a different tack. “I thought this was going to be sex.” And I wiggled my butt.

  The amusement in his eyes came and went. “That’s on the menu, yes.”

  With the knife in hand, he bent over me and I felt his fingers open up my entrance, then draw a small circle there, inside, widening me. It was impossible not to react. It felt good, no matter the looming fear. I gasped and tucked my head under, trying to hide my reaction by making myself a private space. I moaned as he delved inside me, pushing aside my walls like some depraved obstetrician.

  Mavros chuckled then he thrust in even further and left his fingers in place, skewering me. “I would hate to damage this, however...”

  The however awoke me. My pussy clamped in on his fingers as he withdrew them. The slippery moisture, he wiped on the inside of one of my thighs. He patted me there. “I’m putting this on the knife. It may help, if you don’t say no fast enough.”

  Fuck. Joking, much? My wetness wouldn’t stop a knife cutting me.

  Hardness probed at me this time, though his big finger had pushed in first. Perhaps he had his finger against the cutting edge. I prayed so, desperately. Then he removed that finger and I cursed softly at the table before my eyes. In the little space, between my face and my outstretched arms, my breaths rasped loudly. This couldn’t be happening, but I knew what was coming. Say no, remember? I turned the word over in my mind and felt the roadblock that was his command.

  My legs were spread wide, roped down, I needed to be Hercules or just, plain old disobey him and say no, stop, don’t put the knife in me.

  Don’t say no...but I had to. Had to.

  The tip of the knife touched me again, pushed into me, inevitable, unstoppable.

  Speak.

  “It’s in your cunt now, to a fingernail’s depth. No blood, yet,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t tense up if I were you.”

  He could be lying. He might stop.

  I didn’t believe that.

  I didn’t dare move a muscle in my butt, my legs, anywhere. The metal sneaked into me some more.

  “An inch.” Like a man measuring the depth of a fucking well or the fathoms at sea.

  I tried not to shake and a cramp came from nowhere and made my ankle twitch. I opened my mouth and made my jaw work. Say it!

  I grunted at the same moment as “Two inches,” was said. Then, “Blood.”

  Fear made a shambles of my thoughts. Where was Grimm? And I’d thought he’d loved me. “Mavros!”

  “Yes?” I could feel the knife impaling me and the cut, feel the warm blood welling up with my own juices. His hand on my butt, the slow carve of metal...splitting me.

  “You can’t...” I coughed. Almost there! Almost said it. Hadn’t I?

  “I can’t what? The knife is moving inward as I speak. Say what you know you must!”

  His own desperation tangled up with mine and I panicked and knew for sure. The knife was in me and the man had gone insane.

  Grit was in his voice. “Five seconds, then I start fucking you with this.”

  “You can’t do that! Shit.” I cleared my throat, coughed some more, as if the word would come out like a hairball. “I... I don’t think you should do this.”

  Quiet hung in the room. Progress. Surely it was.

  “Fuck.” The man had sworn. He never swore. An instant later, my veins turned to ice as he shoved the blade in deeper than he had before. I screamed and Grimm shot out of his chair and stormed forward.

  “Stop!” Mavros snapped, turning to face him. Fascinated and struck dumb, I craned about to focus on the knife’s handle protruding from between my legs. “You know it’s blunt. Plastic. She’s not hurt. I was frustrated. I apologize, Grimm.”

  It was? Fake? It wasn’t sharp? My brain cleared and settled. It wasn’t real. “Fuck you,” I muttered into my arm, collapsing as the tension left me.

  Pain radiated from my pussy area. Even a toy knife could harm, could perforate. A few tears rolled down my cheek. Who was this man? I’d thought once that he at least cared for me more than this.

  Then, as if in reply to my baffled thought, Mavros sighed and came to lie down next to me, with his fingers at my mouth. He studied me though I was too angry to do more than seethe at first. I heard Grimm’s chair grate on the floor and the creak when he sat again.

  “I apologize, Zorie. I scared you more than I should have.”

  “Damn you.” He had. I inhaled and smelled that familiar male scent that said Mavros. His forehead touched mine and he came so close I wondered if he would...and then he did it, he leaned over my arm and he kissed me softly.

  I’d wanted this for so long, but I was also dead-set confused, even if my anger was subsiding. I pulled away a small distance until my position forced me to stop. He’d been hoping to jar me into action by using that knife.

  “Your method sucks.” The knife was still inside me. As much as I could, I assessed it. There wasn’t a sharp pain, just a painful throb. “Take it out. Please. Untie me.”

  Instead, he propped himself on his arm and spoke loudly enough for Grimm to hear. “I have good reasons for wanting this done. For wanting those mesmers killed. Number one reason.” His mouth pursed then straightened before he went on. “They took a friend, a year ago, and they killed her.”

  “Damn.” I blinked, so that explained a lot.

  “She came out of their system broken. She died by her own hand, but to me, it was murder. She was susceptible but I couldn’t tell, for some reason.”

  “You should have said.” That was Grimm. “It makes a big difference.”

  “No one ever tells everything about themselves. I’m sure you’ve not told us everything
about you.”

  It was too difficult to get my head up enough to see Grimm, so I only listened. The pause in conversation said maybe Mavros had hit a nerve. What was Grimm’s secret?

  “Maybe. Anyway, you can let her go now. If you’re not fucking around with that knife anymore, I’m off to bed.”

  He was leaving me here? But also, more telling, he’d stayed to be sure I was okay. The man was in the running for sainthood. I peered, one-eyed as he walked past. “There’s no blood,” was his last remark before he disappeared in the direction of the doorway.

  No blood. Thank god for that.

  Mavros turned back to me. “Back to business.”

  “Which is?” I croaked out.

  “Fucking you.” His gaze roamed over me, his mouth turning up in the first real smile for ages. I’d guessed he’d spotted the knife. The damn thing hadn’t fallen out. “But first I have to finish that kiss.” His eyes seemed to darken, in mere seconds. He nestled his hand over my throat and positioned himself so he was within kissing distance. “Stay still this time.”

  As if I could get away.

  “You never kiss me,” I blurted. “Why now? There’s something else you haven’t said. Another secret.”

  “You are the smart one. Yes. I’m kissing you now because I have good reason to believe this is a fast way, maybe the only way, to give a woman the mesmer bug, or whatever it is.”

  A mesmer bug, queried my logical half. Would it gain me his powers?

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It doesn’t affect women that way.”

  What did it do then?

  “Open your mouth.” Mavros released my throat, tilted my chin upward, then thumbed beneath my mouth to draw a soft line along my lower lip that seemed to take forever.

  Magical. I sighed.

  “Good girl.” He brushed my lips with his then kissed me softly. At the urging of his tongue, I parted my lips even more. Open. It was a command and besides, I wanted this.

  When at last he drew away, I gathered my tumbled thoughts.