The Stranger I Know (Dark Romance)

by Isan, Amy

  Even though she's the one who leaked them and got Michael to try and pick me up. Both of them — idiots.

  I open my laptop that's nestled between my bed and the wall and access my work email. I don't even have to go into work for this little chore. I find Stacie's email and find her signature. Her phone number is clearly displayed; both her work and cell.

  I dial the number and shove my phone against my cheek The towel tries to fall off my head, but I correct it.

  "Hello?" she answers, leaving out a title and everything she's supposed to say, as if she doesn't work for a company but instead works at a fast food restaurant.

  "This is Marcy," I begin, making my voice hard as iron and just as jagged. Her tone changes from curious to something that is a mockery of my own. She's bad at it. It's like crushed clay beneath my feet.

  "What do you want?"

  "I need those pictures."

  "Why would I give you that?" she quips. I'm already exhausted of her.

  "If you don't email me the pictures right now, I'll make sure you and Michael are both brought up on sexual harassment charges. Not through HR either. I've done it before — and I'll do it again in a heartbeat. You aren't the first handful of idiots to try and screw me. Don't fuck with me."

  She moves the phone and the speaker goes to static for a bit. Rubbing against her clothes, I'm sure. Indistinct chatter. I press my ear harder to try and hear, but it's no use.

  "Fine." She hangs up the phone.

  Even with the line now disconnected, I can't help but snap back. "That's what I thought."

  I drop the phone onto the bed before climbing off and going to my closet to get dressed.

  This will work. It has to. If not, I can go to more extreme lengths. I can get his work address and start mailing him all sorts of things. A real doll, dildos, anything that'll get his mail office and his understaff raising their eyebrows. He'll play it off as a joke at first, that's his attitude, but he'll start to crack eventually, especially as things become more and more obnoxious and overbearing. And when he cracks, that's the perfect time to drown him. Just like he tried to drown me.

  Maybe he thought, when he met me as the Stranger so long ago, that he was dealing with a weakling. That he was dealing with someone weaker than himself. Someone who he could overpower: mentally and physically.

  I'll give him a seed that'll sprout into doubt. A kind of doubt over himself and his ego. One that'll flourish and grow to create huge cracks into his foundation with its roots. Devastation is all he'll have left.

  A man who has the ability to keep up a charade like that, while simultaneously antagonizing me from both sides of my life, has a fucked up heart. I might be wrong, he could be more... everything... than me, but I have to find out.

  I stare at my laptop's screen as Stacie's emails pop into my inbox. Not my work email, that would be stupid. I review them again, the bright screen straining my eyes.

  In one photo, my mouth is agape as he pulls on my wrists, my hands bound together by his strong fingers. Looking at them now, it feels overwhelmingly obvious that James is the Stranger. That cocky posture, the way he would run his hands over my back when he's fucking me. How he grabs my hips.

  I close the pictures before deleting them. My blackmail idea won't work.

  He isn't stupid. He isn't someone that would fall for something like that. Besides, I don't want to spend years trying to crack open his business-office exterior with stupid pranks. Not when I have a much more intimate way of getting under his guard.

  The Stranger I know.

  ***

  My phone sits in my lap, dumb and dying from my neglect. I dial the last number the Stranger gave me and wait for who I now realize is James' voice to answer.

  "I thought you had lost interest," he answers. It is James, but he's putting on an accent or something. I don't know how I couldn't connect those dots before. I hear what I want to. And I definitely didn't want to hear James' voice.

  I exhale away from the microphone as I compose myself. "Of course not, I was just... surprised."

  Which is putting it lightly. I was fucking shocked when he kissed me. The line is silent, he has no reply. I have to keep going. "Can we meet again?"

  He breathes a little into the receiver and I hear his stubble scratch the line. That damn stubble. Should've been my first hint. "Yes. Tonight. Eight."

  I slide into my sub voice. "Yes, sir. Of course."

  He hangs up the line. Perfect. Eight is the perfect time, nothing out of the ordinary. I'll show up sooner than he does, for once. Then we'll do everything like normal.

  Until I tip my hand, and at the same time, swipe away his.

  Chapter 11

  The clock is silently blinking, the red letters glaring from its plastic frame. The hotel lobby let me check in, the receptionist recognized me from before. I played it off, and selected the room myself.

  She smiled and let me by as if I was a normal patron. Not a woman who checks in every single week. Who finds pleasure in a Stranger's touch. Who lets him do whatever he wants with her, just to feel real again. To feel like she can be that woman again.

  I uncross my legs and drop my purse from my elbow. There's no point in hiding it out in my car now. It leans against the nightstand in an ugly pile. I stare at the door, my ears bristling and the air almost too loud for me to hear any footsteps.

  I got here early. It's fifteen until eight and he's usually here when I show up. He's always instructed me to show up right on time and never earlier, so this will already be... interesting.

  The card slides into the lock and the latch clicks open. It's him. I lower my head to my chest and shield my eyes from looking as he steps inside. I can feel his presence across the room. The ten or so feet separating us feels like a chasm full of rushing white waters. I can only see a small edge of his shined shoes.

  "You're early," he says, trying to play it off. I can tell though, maybe only because of James, that he's a little shaken from seeing me. I'm playing the game. My head turned away and my eyes covered with my hand. I'm sure he isn't wearing his mask.

  I fake shame and a stammer. "S-sorry, sir. I showed up early and didn't want to wait in the car. It's been getting colder. I made sure I wouldn't compromise your identity though."

  He sucks in air and holds it in for what feels like forever. My hand wavers, my forehead is sticky with sweat. A loose strand of hair is sandwiched between my fingers and skin. Just that much is irritating.

  "I understand. This can't happen again." He ruffles around in his bag for a few moments and by the time I figure out what he's doing, he's speaking again. "You may lower your hand."

  I drop it into my lap and look up. James stands before me, his mask obscuring the top half of his face. I can see his eyes through the small openings. They're steel colored and guarded. Even now, I feel a completely different energy coming from him, but it's just a shade. He's James, and always has been.

  And that's what so frustrating. It isn't like I wanted to know.

  He crosses the roaring chasm as if it doesn't exist and places his hands on my shoulders. I look up at him, channeling the last time we met, when he was still just an anonymous figure. I looked at him expectantly.

  "Are you ready to please your Master?"

  "Always," I insist. One of his hands slides up from my shoulder, brushes my neck, and cups my cheek. He presses his thumb against my chin and tilts my face toward his crotch.

  "Good. Unbuckle it."

  I undo the buckle and pull the belt free from his slacks. The same belt, the same slacks, as when I was with James. I should have known. But I never examined his clothes that closely... did I? I was too distracted by what was hiding underneath them. Everyone else gets the whole treatment, a dress down and judgement, but I already decided who James Pierce was before I ever met him.

  I feel him growing hard. I unzip his pants and yank them down to his knees with a stunning amount of strength. He almost loses balance, but steadies himself. "Try an
d be less eager about it," he says. Is he mocking me?

  His boxers are easy. I pull them down just enough to free his cock. It springs forward and nearly touches the tip of my nose. I glance at it, then up at him.

  "What are you waiting for?" he says, "Suck my cock."

  "Yes, sir. If you feel like I deserve the honor."

  "Oh?" His voice raises, and I have a feeling if he didn't have a mask on, his eyebrows would be raised. "Do you need to be punished tonight? Have you been exceptionally wretched these last couple nights?"

  "Very much," I admit, somewhat truthfully. "Very much so."

  "Then, this won't do. This is a reward for a well-behaved woman, not just a tramp who decides she wants it when she wants it. Stand up." Is he talking to me as the Stranger or as James? It's hard to tell the difference.

  Face to face with him, I try and peer into the shadows of the masks' eyes. A gleam of James' blue flecks appear, but only when he moves his head a certain way and the light catches it. My hands are shaking and my heart is trying to swim to safety. The air is buzzing.

  I sweat. The moment doesn't seem to end. Like he lost his words and can't find them again. I know that isn't it though. We've gone through this game before. He sets up a reason to punish me, and executes a plan. After we're through with the choking and spanking, he fucks me as a favor.

  I break eye contact from the mask and look over his shoulder at one of the windows. "Should we close those?" I point.

  He looks over his shoulder and nods. "Yes. Go do it."

  I step past him, feeling his arm hairs bristle with static desperation as I pass. I pull the curtains closed and make sure there aren't any spying cameras watching this time.

  As I turn toward him again, I shake my head absentmindedly. "Master?"

  "Yes?" His voice is harsh in a disappointed way. Like I'm not meeting some standard. Normally I'd want nothing more than to ease that, but right now, I'm kind of enjoying it.

  I flush with real embarrassment. That isn't an act. Until tonight, I needed him to have control, even if he thought it was the other way around.

  He nods and beckons me closer. Despite the winter chill outside, the room is a furnace. My skin is sweaty and I'm clammy. He grips my shoulders and pushes me down onto the bed. I let him. He rips open my pants and tears them halfway down my legs, exposing my ass and the back of my thighs. I'm stunned beyond words.

  He runs his hands, feverish and excited, up and down my skin. Less brushing it and more stroking. He seizes the edge of his hand against my crotch and nearly lifts me up. The sensation of helplessness hits me and I let out a long sigh while he teases me. My clit hurts already, but he's relentless.

  "You like this? Forcing me to tear your clothes to make you listen?" He breathes hard, but not from exhaustion. Far from it. It's from the same feeling I have. That excited euphoria that comes with extreme anticipation.

  I clench the bedding and look over my shoulder. "Yes, sir."

  "No, the answer is no!" He lifts his hand and spanks me with the back of his hand. I fall forward and stuff my face into a pillow to stop from wailing out. I'm starting to disintegrate, but I can't let myself forget why I'm doing this. It isn't about me this time, it's about him. I have to... make... him...

  He spanks me again, and again. Each twhack of his hand against my bare ass pushes me forward and stings with a heat that only he could produce. He falls to his knees with a thud and starts ripping at the rest of my pants, the sound of fabric being shredded is loud. He lifts my knees to shred the rest of the denim down to my ankles until I'm totally naked except for my panties.

  "Shut your eyes, keep your head buried in that pillow," he demands. I do, but not because he tells me. But because I'm biting the pillow to keep myself from breaking the moment. From uttering the one word that'll stop him cold. Will it?

  Will it stop him? I feel the harsh plastic of his mask rub my ass as he grazes my thighs with his face and lips. His touch is making me shiver. A cold breeze. A choking gale. What if he ignores it? Too fired up to listen to me?

  He can't. He might be demonic, but he isn't a monster.

  Just a little longer... Marcy... I tell myself. It has to be the right moment.

  He stands again and spanks me again. I howl into the pillow and muffle the wail. He chuckles, a dark laugh that starts in his throat and only blooms into a black flower.

  "Another couple of spankings, then maybe we'll pull the leather cuffs out and really take care of business."

  "Yes, sir." Perfect is what I'm thinking.

  He spanks me again until I'm sure my ass is chapped and red. I don't know how he manages such force, but I've never buckled under it.

  He pushes my hips down to the bed and holds his hand against my lower back for a few moments. "Stay here. Don't move."

  I nod into the pillow I haven't let go of. He ruffles through his bag and I hear the clink of some metal links. The leather cuffs are a bit different, but only because of the sound they make. That satisfying stretch of leather.

  "Turn over," he says. I release my white-knuckled grip from the pillow and turn onto my back. Sweat sticks to the bedding and my ass is burning. He gathers one of my ankles and wraps a cuff around it. "We'll begin with these fussy things."

  He pulls my leg toward the nearest corner of the bed and latches it to the bed post. He repeats this until all of my limbs are extended diagonally. Helpless.

  Gazing down my body with what little mobility I have left, I see him undressing further. He's naked now, and climbing on top of the bed.

  He stops when his hands are on either side of my hips and he smacks my lower belly. Not my clit, but dangerously close. I squeeze down a howl, but yank on all four chains at once. The repeated echo of the restraints stopping me follows, and I suddenly feel claustrophobic.

  He inhales deeply. "You're so primed. All of this has been making you wet, hasn't it?"

  I nod, "Yes."

  He grabs my thigh and runs his hand up to my hip. Now. Right now, Marcy. My inner voice screams.

  My mouth won't listen. He breaks contact with my waist and begins to move in to stroke my pussy, I let out a small yelp. He growls in satisfaction. This only urges me forward. He strokes my clit.

  "Medusa."

  He stops immediately. Like I froze him in time. His hand is still hovering above my pussy and his other is still holding me down, but with significantly less pressure. His voice changes, maybe from surprise. "What's wrong?"

  "I'm just... a little claustrophobic."

  He stands and loosens the restraints a little, giving me a little more reach with my limbs. "Better?"

  "I think so."

  He leans back down and resumes his position before. His hands slides against my labia and splits me. I'm soaking the sheets, I don't know how I couldn't be. It isn't so much from the spanking and restraints, but from the last ten seconds of him bowing before me. How easily I controlled him. I froze him solid with one word.

  I bite back euphoria. I've always had that power. Arousing me, I relish it. I hold it like a jewel.

  He's touching me, but I don't feel it. All I feel is the power I wield over him. Not only do I know his true identity, but I have complete power right now. I'm the one chained to the bed, but he's the one chained to one single word. All I have to do is say it. His focus is concentrated on my pussy. Mine isn't.

  "Medusa."

  He stops again and rises up from admiring my pussy to look at me. He frowns. He's growing annoyed.

  "What's wrong?"

  "This strap is a little too tight," I say and wiggle my left hand. That worry in his voice. It's absolutely... bliss. Not because of his actual feelings of empathy, but because it rips away his Dom mask off him. He's vulnerable, uneasy, and annoyed. He's also hard, aroused, and getting harder, and I have all night.

  All night.

  He loosens the strap a little and I agree that it is fine.

  "Master, haven't I been punished enough?" Dropping Master into my sentence cu
es him to resume his character. "Can I taste your cock yet?"

  He thinks for a moment and scratches his chin. His head is tilted away from me. Lost in thought. "I suppose you can have a taste, but nothing more. You haven't earned more than a taste."

  I nod. He climbs over my body and pins my chest between his knees. His cock is close enough I can feel the heat coming off it. He's solid as marble and dripping with excitement. I lean my head forward, to the best of my mobility from the chains, and drag my tongue along the shaft. I watch his hands carefully.

  He starts reaching for his cock to stop me, and before he can, I withdraw my tongue and say one word: "Medusa."

  He freezes solid again, and I resist laughing. I keep my eyes locked on his, and before he has a chance to ask me if something is wrong, I lick his cock again.

  He immediately stands up and leaps off the bed. His feet plant silently on the carpet and he turns to me. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm playing."

  His tone has transformed from worry to irritation. At some point between my restrained laugh and my tongue, he changed. I can feel it. "Don't. You don't get to play with that word. You don't want to be the sub who cried wolf."

  "Bullshit," I call him out. "You can't ignore the safe word... I mean, unless you want a potential murder on your hands."

  "How is sucking my cock going to murder you?"

  It isn't obvious to him? "This is just the beginning. What if you're fucking me later and choking me out, I say the word and you ignore me? I die, you're fucked."

  I pretend his face is as pale as his mask now. Of course he knows that. He's trying to make me trip over my own words. I won't do such a thing.

  "You're not right tonight, you're fucking with me."

  I sigh and shake the chains. "No, I'm not. I'm making sure you are in control." Of yourself, I want to add. "It's a bond... sir."

  "Yes," he says, regaining his composure. There is a bit of a cough on the tail end of his one word reply. His cock is still full of excitement.