“Depends,” she murmured. “Who is throwing who to the mat?”
Blake didn’t hesitate. “You’re going to throw me down.”
“Really? And here I was, ready to accuse you of sexism for making me cover up while you strut around like an aquatic sex god.”
“If I threw you down, Autumn, we wouldn’t make it home without fucking.”
“Explain?” she breathed. “In detail.”
Glad they were standing on the outskirts of the group, Blake slid a hand into the back of Autumn’s leggings. He found her lace-covered pussy, giving her clit a two-fingered massage. “You were built to be thrown down. And I was built to throw you the fuck down. I’m not talking about physically—I’m talking about those dirty damn needs of yours and mine.” Speaking directly into her ear, Blake eased the lace to one side and sunk his middle finger inside her, not stopping until he’d given her the whole thing and the sides of her face were fire-red. “If I used my strength on you, you wouldn’t be able to hold it together. Your thighs would pop open like goddamn cash registers and everyone would know you want my cock between them. Isn’t that the truth?”
Her answer was barely more than a whimper. “Yes.”
Blake twisted his finger until the pad brushed her G-spot. He began a slow rub and earned a low sob from Autumn. “Knowing how little I care about strangers, apart from you, apparently, what would I give cute, little begging Autumn if I finally had her on her back?”
“You…” Her hips twisted on his hand, like she couldn’t help it. “You’d have sex with me in front of everyone.”
“No, I would fuck my pretty Blondie while everyone took notes and envied me.”
Her flesh tightened up around his finger and she shook through an exhale. She could have come, just like that. Getting fingered in public. But the instructor chose that moment to blow his whistle and Autumn jolted away from him, pressing both hands to her flushed face. “Um. What?”
He steadied her when she swayed toward him. “Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. What are we supposed to do?”
Recalling the bare bones of the demonstration, he turned her around and brought her back up against his front. It was a good thing she blocked his lap from view, because his cock was filling out the right leg of his sweatpants—fucking aching for her. And he had no choice but to rest it on the sweet curve of her ass, grinding down and tugging her hips back at the same time. He brought his arm up around her neck, holding her in a loose chokehold. Across the room, they locked eyes in the mirror, visible proof of how he dwarfed her, his pecs tensed above her blonde head, his widened stance putting his thighs on either side of hers.
“This is a rear naked chokehold,” said the instructor.
“I wish,” Autumn muttered.
“If you find yourself in this position, the most important thing to remember is not to lean back,” the instructor called out. “If you do, it’s much easier for your attacker to bring you to the ground. Focus your weight forward.”
Autumn followed instructions, the move pushing her backside more firmly up against his dick, sending even more blood rushing south.
“Now take hold of your attacker’s arm at the elbow, get low and twist. Rotate their shoulder and hopefully they’ll lose their balance or at the very least, be thrown off center.”
As he and Autumn continued to stare at one another in the mirror, Blake wasn’t sure what was happening to him. Undeniable lust pooled in his belly, but there was…affection, too. Maybe it was the reflection showing his arms around her, Autumn leaning back in a show of trust. He didn’t know. But the urge to encourage her joined his lust and made it even more poignant. It turned them into the only two people in the room.
“Go ahead, Fun-Size,” he muttered in her ear. “Make me your bitch.”
He only caught a brief glimpse of her exhilarated smile—and his subsequent hypnotized expression—before she grabbed his elbow, spun in a blur and actually knocked him off balance. Not enough to hit the mat, exactly. But hit the mat he did, even manufacturing a grimace when he landed. “Nice job.”
A couple of the other students gave Autumn a round of applause and Blake rested on his elbows, watching her soak it in with pleasure. He waited until the other beginners had gone back to their own exercise before extending a hand. “Help me up?”
“I mean, it’s the least I can do after—”
Blake curled a hand around Autumn’s wrist and pulled, bringing her down on him. Without pausing, he reversed their positions, rolling Autumn beneath him on the mat, not bothering to support his weight. Just as he’d warned her would happen—just as he’d been fucking craving—her thighs opened automatically for his hips. Her hands flew up above her head, as if seeking an anchor. A rope. A headboard. She went pliant, her breath coming and going through a straw.
“I’m proud of you.” He rasped near her mouth. “You were incredible.”
“What?” Her mouth opened and closed. “I-I…thank you.”
“I think you could do anything, Autumn. You’re…”
God, this lust-affection one-two punch was murder. He wasn’t even sure he liked the damn feeling, but he would have ended anyone who tried to take it away. “You’re a fighter, you understand? Even though I’m about to take away your will and laugh at your attempts to get free, I know that will is there. Deep down. All right?”
“Okay,” she breathed, her eyebrows drawing together. “Thank you.”
Blake angled his hips on top of her clit and punched them forward, listening to the rattle in her throat. “Now nod your head if you’re a good, little beggar who does what she’s told.”
Autumn nodded, her pupils dilating, thighs restless. It was in the back of his mind that they were being watched, but he was growing more and more doomed not to care about a damn thing, except for the trembling girl beneath him.
“I warned you, Blondie. I throw you down, we don’t leave the building without fucking. But you had to go dragging your ass all over my cock, didn’t you?”
Blake stared at her throat a moment, so she’d know he was thinking about locking a hand around it. “Stay in the woman’s locker room until I come and get you. Have your panties off under these bullshit leggings. Understand?”
CHAPTER 11
Autumn stood in the sweltering locker room, trying to peel her leggings down her thighs. The tight material wasn’t going willingly and it didn’t help that her skin was slick and her hands were shaking. She and Blake were finally going to have sex. The truth of that fact had her vibrating beneath her skin, inside her bones. She tried to control her breathing, savor the anticipation, but all she wanted was for the show to start. She pulled her panties down her legs and her skin prickled with goosebumps. She was excited, too goddamn excited.
It’s just fucking, she reminded herself. What are you so worked up about?
A memory rose; being fifteen years old, her parents away for the weekend. She’d read the Wikipedia entries for abduction movies and gotten so turned on she’d saturated her underwear. Then she’d gone to the shed, taken a length of her dad’s orange multipurpose rope and tied her own wrists together. In the face of this overwhelming fantasy, her usual teenage fumblings had honed on one thing—being owned. A farmer, broad and faceless, found her trespassing on his land. He tied her up and kept her in his stable like an animal, coming outside to use her whenever the need arose in him.
Autumn had already known what she liked at that age, but the farmer fantasy had been more vivid than any she’d dreamt up before. It came to life behind her eyes, allowing her to feel the scratch of the rope, the farmer’s rough hands on her hips. Alone in her bed, she’d given into the fantasy, slipped inside it like a thread through a needle’s eye, but afterward, she’d been so ashamed she’d burned the rope, vowing to never think such gross things ever again. It was wrong to want what other girls had no choice but to endure. It meant she wasn’t good, wasn’t smart, wasn’t the kid her parents needed her to be.
Twenty-six
-year-old Autumn met her gaze in the dusty locker room mirror and saw her teenage fears reborn. I’m wrong. I’m broken. I shouldn’t be allowed to do this. Anyone who would want to do this is wrong, too. It’ll hurt. Blake will hurt me and then he’ll think I’m disgusting.
In that moment, panic seemed imminent. Then she remembered how she’d felt punching the bag, purging frustrations she hadn’t even known were rising in her; Ian’s message, her mother’s unrelenting demands to come home, the growing feeling that her life wasn’t hers, that she’d let everyone else decide for her. She’d hit harder and harder, and while it hadn’t given her any solutions, it had felt so fucking good. Blake had given her that. And now, if she let him, he would give her more. He would give her a fantasy turned flesh. Real fear and real satisfaction. The question was, was she ready?
Autumn turned and looked at soft pink marks imbedded in her shoulders. Souvenirs from the mat Blake had pinned her on. She replayed the memory of his weight bearing down on her, the rush of heat that swelled between her legs as he’d done it. She hadn’t been scared, not even a little bit—she’d been on fire. She let the truth of that soothe her, encourage her to take deeper breaths.
“No one knows what you want like he does,” she told her mirror-self. “He’ll take care of us and he definitely won’t think we’re gross.”
She smiled and her reflection smiled back, looking genuinely relieved. For so long, she’d been alone in her fantasies. Now someone had joined her, it was a little overwhelming. When she and Blake had sex in a way that mimicked her secret fantasies, it would be like losing her virginity all over again.
Smiling a little at the idea, Autumn successfully rolled off her leggings and removed her lace panties. They were as wet as they’d been the night she’d first tied herself up, the warm sweet smell making it clear that while her mind was conflicted, her body had no such qualms. It wanted Blake and it wanted the fantasy. Now. She tugged her leggings back up her thighs, adjusting them so they lay flat against her skin. Her mind was now full of memories of Blake without a shirt on, broad and gleaming and almost offensively male. He’d seemed so surprised that she’d been perving on him, as though he couldn’t believe she found him attractive. In hindsight, she wished she hadn’t teased him about his body, that she’d told him sincerely how beautiful he was. He seemed like a guy who’d be embarrassed, but remember her words forever.
Devoid of anything else to do now that her panties were off, Autumn wandered around the locker room. It wasn’t a nice one by any means, just a couple of wooden benches and cracked mirrors surrounded by discarded exercise equipment; bench bars and weight racks and clunky elliptical machines. Maybe the place had been a mainstream gym before it was converted into a Krav Maga one? She had just hauled herself onto a dusty pull-up bar, when she heard footsteps approaching the door.
She released the bar, falling onto her feet. He was here. The fantasy was about to begin. She waited with baited breath, but the door didn’t burst open the way she’d been expecting. Instead, the footsteps halted outside the ladies’ room. Autumn was sure she could hear Blake breathing behind the wood. Deep breaths like a bull bracing itself to charge. Her heart pulsed hard against her chest, the beat echoing between her legs where her now-bare pussy was pulling in on itself, craving what it knew Blake could give her. She looked sideways and saw her reflection was that of a human deer, all bright eyes and an anxious twitching mouth. “Is…is someone there?”
The door creaked open, the noise as exhilarating as it was in horror movies. The reveal was much better though—a bare-chested Blake, hairy and enormous, cold glinting in his pale eyes. “Evening, Blondie.”
There was a beat in which Autumn couldn’t remember what was meant to come next. Then she swallowed. “The men’s room is on the other side of the hall.”
“I know where the men’s room is.”
“Then why don’t you go there? Please?” Autumn loved how she sounded, all frightened and girlish. She’d never been much of an actor but she wasn’t entirely acting. Blake looked so big, so mean, so other, it was impossible not to feel fear, even if excitement bubbled beneath it.
“I didn’t come here to talk.” Blake closed the door behind him and dragged the bolt across.
The dull rasp made Autumn’s heart rate treble. “No, you can’t—”
“Shh.” He walked toward her. His weight on the dusty floorboards caused the entire room to quake. He eyed her over, his expression lazy, as though they’d agreed to meet in the women’s change room for a date. “Seen you around here a few times.”
“I—”
“Shh.” Blake picked up an old medicine ball from a shelf and tossed it into the air like it was a balloon, a casual display of strength made all the more sinister by his placid smile. “Once I saw you, I couldn’t stop seeing you. But you know all about that, don’t you, Blondie?”
“N-no. I promise I don’t.”
“Yeah, you would say that, wouldn’t you? I know your type. You play the good girl, laughing and smiling so no one can call you what you are—a cocktease.”
“No—”
“I said quiet.” Blake dropped the medicine ball. It made a noise like cannon fire, shaking the floor beneath her feet. Autumn wondered if she could lift it if she tried, wondered if she was meant to run. Excitement was a lump in her chest, she couldn’t digest it and she couldn’t bring it up. She needed to trust Blake to make the next move, even if she didn’t trust the man he was pretending to be. He moved closer, his gaze firmly on her tits. “What bra size do you wear, princess?”
“T-that’s none of your business.” She shifted her body to the right and he shifted with her, pressing her backward with the invisible force field emanating from his height and bulk.
“Please,” she whispered. “Can I go?”
He chuckled softly. “Begging already, are we? Funny, I’d say you were begging when you decided to go walking around this gym in your paper-thin leggings, showing off your bare stomach and making every man in here put his sweat towel over his cock.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking another step backward. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I think you did. I think you liked getting us hard, knowing there was no way in hell you’d ever let us slide our dirty pricks in you. That why you picked this gym, Uptown Girl? Why you come here? Cheap thrills with the underclass?”
As he talked, Autumn felt herself sinking into the scene he was painting. She was from nothing and Blake was wealthy but in this scenario she could be rich. Why not? Maybe she was a Park Avenue princess, a brat who slummed it at a blue-collar gym because making rough-looking men like Blake hot gave her pleasure like nothing else. She held up her hands. “I’m sorry about my outfits. I’ll find a new place to work out.”
Blake’s mouth curled in an imitation of a smile. “Too little, too late, Blondie.”
Autumn inhaled sharply, her hands and feet tingling with nerves. “What about if I…if I write you a check for two thousand dollars? No questions asked.”
Blake didn’t laugh, but his light brown eyes glittered with obvious amusement. “A negotiator, huh? That’s good to know. You and I are going to make all kinds of deals over the next few days.”
“Like, wh-what?”
“Like what you’ll do to me in exchange for a crust of bread, a little water, an hour’s sleep. Those kinds of deals.”
Autumn’s whole body was now shaking, the way it had when she was fifteen and reading the Wikipedia entry for Taken. She took another step backward and found herself pressed against the chin up bar. She was cornered.
Finally, something inside her whispered. Finally.
Blake reached out and touched a gentle hand to her hair. “You’re mine now. The sooner you start accepting that, the better.”
“Please,” she whispered, the bar cold against her bare lower back. “Please, I’ll give you anything. Ten thousand dollars, my car, my apartment…”
“Unnecessary. I’ve got everything I
want, except you.” He twisted one of her curls around his finger. “Still, it’s nice to hear you beg. You got any more rich-girl offers for me, Blondie?”
Some part of Autumn not utterly consumed with arousal knew what he was saying; ‘speak “gold leaf” now or it’s fucking on.’ She made her lower lip quiver. “Please let me go, sir?”
A lupine smile. “Not a chance. I’m gonna take you home soon, wrap you in my coat so no one sees you go in the trunk of my car. But before that, I think I’m gonna fuck you here, right in the place you put on these skintight clothes. That’ll show you, huh?”
“P-please—”
“Shh.” He ran a thumb down the line of her sports bra. “Your nipples are always so fucking hard.”
Autumn batted his hand away. “I just got out of a self-defense class.”
Blake laughed, a short hard bark. “I know, I watched you. Not that it’ll do any good. You’ve got fire, Blondie, but it’s the kind of fire that’ll make you a hellcat in the sack. When it comes to protecting yourself, you’re lacking something very important.”
“What’s that?” Autumn asked, as she slid her sneakered sole to her left.
He leaned in close, his nose centimeters from hers. “A body to back it up. What you’ve got is good for nothing but getting a man hard.”
It was then that Autumn made her move, darting to the left, intending to make a break for the door. Blake picked her up by her waist and hoisted her into the air as easily as he’d lifted the medicine ball. He laughed as she kicked and struggled. “See? Couldn’t get away if you tried. Not that your tight little body’s useless, Blondie. In fact, I think there’s a whole lot it could do for me.”
Autumn wasn’t sure how much noise she was allowed to make, but in that moment, she was so pent-up she couldn’t help herself. She screamed, needing the release regardless of whether any of the gym members were still kicking around.
Captivated Page 16
