“I didn’t really think it was likely.” Jaz went to our little collection of bottles and food and picked up two of the bottles.
To pick even the pickable lock I needed metal. The only metal in the room was wiring and it was screwed away behind thick plastic plates. I needed metal to pry off the plates to get the metal. I’d have risked getting electrocuted if it was possible.
I needed a fairy godmother, or a greedy cleaning lady with a conscience. My friends were true friends. We’d do anything for each other, including coming in guns blazing if they knew I was here. No one fucked with Randall, Glass, Jurgen, or me. Even if Jurgen was only a few years shy of fifty. Except they were fucking with me.
I heaved out a sigh and went to help filling up bottles. Five bottles, so ten liters. If the taps stopped working, we might last a few days before we were desperate enough to drink the toilet water.
I watched her struggle to press the stiff button to keep the water flowing while still holding the bottle in place.
“Give me that.” I took the bottle from her and stuck it under the tap.
At least she was healing well. After a week of treatment, I had no reason to paint her nude body with iodine anymore. Such a pity. Though handling her was torture for my dick and gave me blue balls for ages. Her newborn reluctance to let me kiss her, sit her on my lap, or spank her cute little ass...
An ass that was partly on display what with her kneeling to get some stray apples off the floor. I wrenched my gaze away. Yeah, not being allowed to touch her seemed a suitable penance as well as a test of willpower.
I wanted to be a good man. This was it. Even if I only lived another day or another week, it was worth it.
I’d be convinced of this, until the next time she gave me cheek. Equality just seemed wrong with Jazmine. Whenever she started up the shower, I remembered her behavior when I went all alpha male on her.
But I didn’t have the right to do that. Or the right excuse.
The cyclone hit early the next morning. I’d been through two of these big storms before, what the Americans would call hurricanes, but Jazmine hadn’t. She’d lived too far south in Australia to see them. From her wide eyes and the way she cowered at the far end of the bed when the bigger wind gusts made the building shudder, when the air was filled with so much noise we had to shout, it made me offer to take her in my arms. The relief when she swarmed up the bed to accept was immense.
First time in days. I held her so tightly she squeaked.
“Let go a little, Pieter.”
I chuckled and loosened my grip, but I smelled her skin, I felt those curves that were Jazmine, and I breathed out a slow, happy breath, then I smiled into her hair. That old saying – my heart lightened – had never seemed so real or so right as now.
Mine.
I almost didn’t care how dark it got when I had her with me.
For hours the rain and wind blasted against the wall. If the window shattered we might get showered by glass. I did the best I could while standing on tiptoe on the bottom rail of the bed. With my fingertips, I wedged one of our two pillows up against the glass in the little concrete alcove. Only a sliver, at either end of the window, wasn’t blocked. If the ceiling light failed, it’d be dark.
I jumped down.
“Will that work?” Jaz said loudly. She eyed the window, then me, while hugging herself. The constant extreme weather beating at this building had dropped the temperature to winter levels.
“It’ll do. If I could shift the bed into the middle I would.” It was bolted down. Though if the worst happened and the wall did get damaged, she could hide under there.
The rain intensified, the hard taps sounding like bullets hitting the glass. There’d been bright green leaves stuck to the outside of the window and the sky was so dark it seemed as if the apocalypse was arriving. Outside something scraped across concrete, smacked into our wall, then slapped rhythmically.
“What’s that?” She sidled closer and I took the opportunity to put my hands on her hips and nestle her into me.
“A palm tree leaf maybe. Or a deck chair. The guards probably laze about sipping piña coladas in the quadrangle on their lunch hour.”
“Hmph. Probably. This is fucking scary.”
“We just need to wait. This is probably the strongest building I’ve ever waited out one of these in.”
“Oh?”
“Come back to bed.” I ushered her to it then climbed over her to spoon. The best benefit ever. I should’ve been praying for a cyclone all along.
“You make that sound dirty.”
“True.”
I coughed as if her hair had annoyed me then smoothed it away from my face, exposing her nape with all those sweet little spirals of hair. When she snuggled back into me, I considered nibbling her there. My cock pulsed in agreement.
Don’t push. She’s coming around to letting me touch her again.
“Where else have you been during a cyclone?”
“An apartment in Port Moresby, and on an island, that was the worst. The big seas ripped up the beach. A friend who’s a pilot uses one as a waypoint for his seaplane on the way to Australia.” Illegally. I’d been stuck there for days. There were the remnants of an old ramshackle resort on the island from almost World War Two days.
“Trust me, this is far better than huddling in a decrepit hut praying that I wouldn’t get sliced up by the next bit of corrugated iron whirling past.”
At that, something slammed into the other side of the wall the bed rested against. I reached back and placed my palm on the ice-cold concrete. The winds rose in tone to a shrill whistle and a hum that vibrated the wall.
“What. The fuck. Was that?”
Gregor’s dead body, I hoped. “No idea. Maybe you should try to sleep?”
The power failed and she shivered.
“It’s okay. We don’t need it.”
Hours later, the serene eye of the storm arrived over us. The wind dropped to nothing. It was cold but all was quiet. Midday by now? We had no watch and the sun wasn’t easy to see. Blue sky showed beyond the pillow’s edges. In here was dark.
“Wow. That’s it?”
“We’re in the eye of the storm. Depending on whether we’re on the edge or in the middle it could last ten minutes or ages.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me and wriggled into a sitting position. “Then the cyclone comes back?”
“Yes.” Fascinated, I smoothed my hand up the back of her dress over her spine.
As if I’d poked her with a pin, she jumped up and went to the tap, turned it on. “It’s still working!”
“Good.”
“I’ll just get a drink.”
I sat on the mattresses’ edge. With my elbows on my knees, I watched her potter about drinking, going on tiptoes as if to look out the window, then at last she walked over and sat at the other end of the bed.
My frown arrived after a small struggle. Was she so fickle? “You’re avoiding me.”
Her eyes squeezed shut. “I just don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
My next words would be setting a trap for myself, but I said them anyway. “Which is? You’ve been in my arms for the last two or three hours. The idea I’d gotten was that you’d figured I was safe after all. A friend.”
Her sigh lasted ages and seemed to deflate her like a balloon. She covered her face with her hands. I waited, impatient, but I waited.
Being impatient was a revolutionary emotion for me but damn if this woman wasn’t frustrating.
“What you are to me is so warped I don’t know where to begin. Friend seems wrong. Don’t you see? I don’t want you to think that I like you...that way.”
That way? What the fuck did it matter? When we’d possibly die tomorrow? When we could comfort each other? “You hate me that much? As soon as the scary storm dies down you can’t stand me?”
Her green eyes looked over the top of her hands. “I...no. You’ve been kind to me. It’s me. I’m not into clo
se contact that much anyway. It’s just me.”
My hands, where I’d wrapped them together between my knees, were a safer study than her. I hung my head, but I was no coward. I looked at her, even if it was the bleakest stare I’d summoned for her, ever.
“Kind?” I’d been more than kind. My restraint had been phenomenal. “I’ve seen how you respond to me.” From what she’d once said, I was the only man who’d ever made her come.
She scoffed, but wriggled as if uncomfortable under my stare. Good.
“That’s purely physical. You don’t jump on every woman who stares at you, surely? Do you?” Her words were mocking and steeped in challenge.
I should back away. I should. And in half an hour, she’d use me as a safety blanket when the storm came back.
“No. I don’t.”
But you, girl, you’re different. Couldn’t she see the possibilities? I said a string of curses in my head. Anger was foreign to me, most days. I was seething and I wasn’t sure why she brought this out.
Being scared of me wasn’t all of it. She seemed scared of people in general, up close. Of what might happen with that next step, where she’d have to give away a piece of herself. Every step of the way she pulled backward, until forced.
I got that.
It was the possibilities that terrified her. She’d made a little safe cocoon and left to herself, she’d stay there.
I tapped my fingers on my leg.
Smirking, she shrugged at me. “See. We agree. We should do another game.”
“A game?”
“Mm.” Her movements were stiff. The girl looked brittle as glass but maybe that was me glowering.
Another place, another time, I’d have backed off. But here, now? I could let her keep doing this, keep pretending we were a pair of poeslekker aunties having a tea party, or I could do what every part of me was itching to do. What I was damn sure she needed, let alone wanted.
It almost seemed negligent to let her go on without seeing who she could be. She must have been so fucking lonely from what she’d revealed. The submissives I’d known, back in Cape Town, had often seemed to have the best of love.
And then, there were my needs...
They crawled across my skin, tugging at me, reminding me of how I’d had her, of what I’d done to her in here, not in Gregor’s dungeon, here, in this room, where she so primly sat pretending that nothing had ever happened.
“Noughts and crosses?” she asked brightly.
“Noughts and crosses.” I turned down my lip and pretended to calmly consider it. “You want a game? Do you remember the one where you kneeled for me and loved it? Have you forgotten? Me, I remember.” I nodded. “I remember your sounds when I played with your body. Your cries when I gave you pleasure. I remember, not just in my head, but in here.”
I whacked one hand on my chest. A little over dramatic but I felt like thumping something.
The flush hit her face in a rush.
“I never... I never really liked that.”
“Never?” Talk about denial. I snapped out a command. “Give me your wrist.”
The slightest sign of obedience would be enough.
As if I had her on a string, her hand came up. The stunned expression when she caught herself, halted the movement of her hand, and stared at me, unleashed a torrent of satisfaction.
I grinned at her malevolently.
“I wasn’t going to –” she began, her eyes flashing, her tone so damn indignant.
“You were.” This woman begged to be dominated.
Some things just needed doing.
I lunged sideways, grabbed her hair, and hauled her over despite her screech, pulling her onto my lap and ignoring squeals and flailing arms. I released her hair, ducking back as she swiped at me, and captured those scratching hands at the wrists. Then I held her down by pressing those wrists to her back and with my leg wrapped over her thighs.
“You are such a brat.”
She stilled, spluttering into the mattress. “Pieter! Fucking let me go.”
I ignored her. Her next attempts at squirming free were even crazier but I hung on. There wasn’t much she could do, though it took five minutes before she decided that and collapsed panting. Her dress was so short it took the smallest flick to bare her ass.
“Nice.” I murmured, cupping the lower curve in my hand. Then I smacked her once, sharply. Her angry gasp and the clench of her pussy made me smile.
“Let me go!”
“Uh-uh. The more you say that, the worse this is going to be.”
A red handprint showed a few seconds later. This ass never failed to get a rise from my cock. Spanking was not going to do it for me. Not enough. Not anywhere near enough. I wanted her to know I could do anything. I shifted her along my lap and leaned in to place a deep bite on her ass, right in the middle of one cheek. She didn’t squeal, or demand I let her go, only gasped once and whimpered. Better, I figured. I hung on. Her breathing became a whine then a rapid, coughing pant and her feet tried to drum the floor.
Eventually she went limp, only shuddering out gasps, and one pleading word. “Pleeease?”
I sat up and drew my finger around the already bluing mark. Her fingers that had been wound in tight fists relaxed.
My teeth would show there for days.
My good inner man seemed to have run away and hid, and I didn’t give one solitary fuck.
Since I seemed to have her subdued, I took the pillow with my free hand and stripped off the pillowcase with the help of my teeth. Looping it around her wrists and knotting the cloth made her squirm about then raise her head.
“No.” With a fist crunched into her hair so tight it hurt me, I took control of her head, bending back her neck. Her eyes were closed, the lines there showing the effort she put into keeping them that way.
“Look at me.” I jiggled her head. She inched them open, a tiny crease forming above. “You’re going to do what you’re told, until the storm returns, because right now you’re fucking mine.”
The tremor that shook her body lit up my eyes.
I was tempted to kiss those petulant lips but it was too nice, too intimate and she didn’t deserve it. I had a craving, now I’d let this side of me loose. I wanted to mess with her so badly.
“Ten each side. Say a word and I double it.” Then I shoved her head into the mattress and went at spanking her properly. The smacks ripped through the room. After twelve her cries began. By twenty the redness was a mixture of burgundy and pretty pink. My handprints showed on top of the bite. When I slipped my fingers down her seam I found her cunt wet and swollen.
“Ja.” I chuckled. “You like this, Miss Jazmine. Next time you want to tell me to piss off try not to get so excited when I spank you.”
Her little growl made me smirk.
“Still got fire in you? Hey?”
So I added another ten. By the end, she had the side of her face resting on the bed and her eyelids were at half-mast. The pain got to this one just like Elenor, so long as I mixed it up with dominance, I was ninety percent sure of it.
“Off and on your knees.”
When she slid off my lap at my small push, and only looked at the floor, the room shuddered and dislocated. Everything collapsed down to this instant. I had Jazmine kneeling in that rough bondage that she could have wriggled out of if she’d wanted to, and I was right. She was submitting to me.
I didn’t give a damn about tomorrow or the storm. Only her. Only me.
I could’ve drawn her in ink with my eyes shut, not because she was pretty but because I saw every line and every contour of her bowed head, every shadow of her body. Yet her mind could be so much more addictive. There, I’d not yet understood. Whatever flaws in her made her go back and forth like a bloody seesaw, I could dig them out and fix them, bind her to me...
If.
And I sucked in a breath.
I could. I could make her mine truly, make her submit for more than a temporary window of time. If only there was m
ore of that precious thing – time and life.
Where to begin? I stood and walked around her. I dared break the spell. “What are you thinking? Hmm?”
She swallowed but only gave her head a miniscule shake. I lifted her head with a hold on her jaw and made her shuffle around on her knees. “I’m remembering how you smiled when you obeyed me.”
She shut her eyes.
“Look at me.” Those green-gray irises had me in an instant. There were traces of tears but I traced slowly around her lips, refusing to soften my decision. “Do you like being where you are?”
Chapter 22
The question he was asking went straight to the heart of my problem. He wanted me to admit I liked being here, at his feet? I was on my knees, stinging from his blows, reminded of how easily he could overwhelm me, both terrified and turned on. I welcomed the pain because it was his pain.
So fucked up.
I’d fought off this weird influence he had on me. Being made to face it again was wrong. He was nothing like the paragon of virtue I’d long ago imagined my shining knight would be or the man I’d fall in love with.
I’d said yes before, to almost the same question, and he’d used it as an excuse for this. It’d be stupid to fall into the same trap.
“Answer me. With the truth. Or do I have to spank it out of you?”
I widened my eyes. “No!”
“The truth. I will know if you lie.”
He couldn’t, but with his hand under my chin, my hands tied behind me, and with him pinning me with his dark eyes, I accepted that I liked this. And I would never tell him that again. The only knight he could ever be was one in dirty armor.
He wasn’t for me. Ever.
“Answer.”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head very deliberately.
His fingers crushed in until my skin hurt where he pressed it onto my jaw and I winced.
“You’re a stubborn bitch.” Pieter straightened but brought his forefinger to the center of my forehead. “I’m not Gregor. I won’t torture you to get results.”
Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) Page 14
