Chapter Seventeen
The Brink
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E XAMINING HIS HANDIWORK , Hannah was almost impressed.
Lawes had done a decent job of removing the hair from around her sex, and he hadn’t cut her once.
She had to admit it had been terrifying to watch him work.
She’d never let anyone shave her there. Hell, she’d never even considered asking them to, but Lawes had bowled back into her life and broken new territory.
It wasn’t that she minded being smooth—she actually liked it—but she balked at the fact he’d thought it acceptable to shave her without so much of a conversation about her feelings.
She glanced away as he sprayed down the lingering foam.
Of course, he hadn’t fucking asked her. He never asked her.
The irony was that Lawes’ dominant authority and obvious capability might have been sexy as hell if he’d only learned to seek her assent.
She could imagine herself yielding to a man like him through respect and communication, but he insisted on employing fear and coercion.
She blew out a breath at the incongruity. His contrariness didn’t matter. Whatever was happening in the dilapidated house wasn’t about consent, and it never had been. Lawes would force his will on her, just like he always did.
Dropping the shower head, he moved around her to switch off the faucet. By the time he was back in her line of sight, there was a worn but clean-looking towel in his hands.
“Out now.”
Folding the towel over the edge of the bath, he reached for her arms and pulled her unceremoniously to her feet. She whimpered, nearly slipping on the wet base of the bath before he lifted her out of the tub.
Not for the first time, she was overawed by his strength. Hannah wasn’t huge, but she was no waif, either, and the idea that he could haul her around like a ragdoll petrified her even more than it impressed. A man as strong as him was a downright scary foe.
He placed her down on the mat, stretching out the towel and wrapping it around her shoulders. She waited in silence, the only sounds in the room her frantic gasps for air as he worked the towel around her impassive body.
Apparently happy that she was superficially dry, he scooped up the towel and rubbed it roughly through her hair. She bit back on the wince that rose at the manhandling, wishing she could just manage the tasks herself, yet accepting that, for the time being, that desire was futile.
Lawes was back in her life, and he was going to have his way. While nothing terrible was happening, she might as well roll with it.
He returned to the open closet, producing a hairbrush.
She tensed at the sight of it, praying to all things holy that he only intended to use it on her hair and was relieved when he ran the bristles through her locks.
As painful as the experience might have been, she knew he could produce much worse hurt.
Her eyes flickered closed as she envisioned how dreadful it would be to be spanked with the hard plastic.
He’d already proven he could wield the innocuous as a weapon when he’d tormented her with the shower head in the bath.
Pulling in a breath, she remembered all too well how intense the sensation had been on her helpless clit, but standing there, she couldn’t deny the lasting legacy of its attack.
The sensitive bud still tingled, her hips rolling forward of their own accord as she imagined what it would have been like to have come at its unrelenting intensity.
“Something you want to tell me, little girl?” Lawes’ tone was wry.
Blushing, she realized he must have noticed her provocative hip roll.
“No, Mr. Lawes, sir.” She glanced down as his dark laughter bounced around the damp walls.
“Don’t lie to me. I can tell when you’re enjoying yourself.” His hand trailed along her hip, and unable to protest his point, she swallowed back her shame.
“That’s a good thing,” he assured her as he shifted to spread the towel out over the edge of the bath. “I want you wet for me.”
She loathed that she might have done anything to facilitate whatever ominous scheme he’d hatched. It was bad enough that she found his treatment so damn enticing. She didn’t have to let him know.
“You’re wonderful.” Standing at her side, he snaked one arm around her back to handle her left breast, while the other slid between her legs. “I can’t wait to be inside you.”
His fingertips slipped over her recently shaved skin, grazing her clit before they drew an invisible line across her wet lips, and there was no way she could deny it.
She was wet. Her knees buckled at his touch, but caught between his arm and his hip, she stayed upright as she fought the urge to moan aloud.
“Don’t.” She hadn’t meant to speak out loud. “Please, Mr. Lawes, sir.”
“Wrong answer.” His voice was soft, but it held that dangerous mocking quality that confirmed she was in trouble.
As though her clit recognized the tone, it throbbed urgently at its resonance.
“I know it’s been a long time, but you don’t get to tell me no, Hannah.
Especially, when you’re this fucking wet. ”
“Oh God.” She knew where the path they were tumbling down ended, having crashed along it many times in the past, and even though she wanted to fight him off, there was a growing part of her that yearned to accept the pleasure. “Please!”
“You may beg.” His tone was goading. “But not until I tell you so.”
He slapped her breast, the sharp pain temporarily drawing her focus from his fingertips, which were still teasing tiny circles around her desperate clit.
“I don’t want this,” she murmured, though the truth ricocheted much louder in her head.
I shouldn’t want this!
“If you don’t want this, then why are your pussy lips soaked?” he jeered. “And why are your hips pushing your naughty little clit toward my hand?”
Gulping, her hips snapped forward again.
She was turned on.
She did want him.
“I’m going to swap these to your front now.” Just like that, his caresses vanished, and his fingers grabbed at her cuffs to indicate his meaning.
Her head spun at the sudden change of tack.
Why get her so riled up to only leave her hanging?
It was just like the vibrator he’d tortured her with before he’d helped himself to her breasts.
The feeling as he’d inched her higher and higher had been divine, yet all too soon, he’d withdrawn the pulsing plastic and left her thrumming with unspent desire.
Which is the point. Her hands balled into fists as he stood behind her. He wants me to suffer.
“Do yourself a favor and don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” He snarled the caution into her ear as he yanked harder at the cuffs.
“I won’t, sir.” Curling her toes into the worn mat, she considered the vow.
She sensed the precarious chemistry between them had reached a promising balance, if such a thing could be said between a captor and his captive.
Upsetting that balance didn’t seem like a smart thing to do.
He hadn’t hurt her since he’d brought her to the bathroom, so, she reasoned, better that she played along as his docile victim and lulled him into a false sense of security.
If she waited for Lawes’ guard to fall, the time to strike at him would present itself. That was when she’d have the best chance to escape.
She groaned with relief when he released her wrists and guided her arms to her sides. The black cuffs hung from her left wrist, and stalking around her, he grabbed the leather and directed it into position.
“Right hand here, please.”
Opening the cuff, his expression was hard and expectant. It was as if he was testing her to see how she’d respond, and grudgingly, she realized passing the pointless assessment would irrefutably aid her coming hours.
She shifted her right hand in front of her, her brow furrowing as she forced it inside the damp leather. She hated herself for her compliance, her desire to defy him greater than even her logic or arousal, but she subdued the rising tyranny.
She needed to wait for the right moment to revolt, and standing naked in the bathroom was not that time.
Watching him tug the cuff back into place so that her wrists were bound in front of her was like moving through water. The deeds happened in slow motion, as if each was sent to offer further torment.
“Good.” His smile said he was genuinely impressed with her. “I thought you might disappoint me.”
Meeting his powerful, green eyes, she didn’t mention that she’d considered doing just that.
“I’m pleased, little girl.” Pushing his hard body against her, he ensnared her hands between them.
She flexed her fingers out of instinct, panicked that he might cut off their blood supply, then relaxing them, she inadvertently grazed over his bulging hardness. Her eyes widened at the mistake, her gaze darting to his.
“That’s right.” His tone was insufferably smug. “You excite me as well. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”
Unable to meet the light dancing in his mischievous gaze, she closed her eyes, hoping that somehow, the menace who’d returned to claim her would just disappear.
Unsurprisingly, though, she could still feel him right there with her, the sound of his laughter only the latest sign that the monster from her nightmares was there to stay.
“ Don’t you , little girl?” His body moved, and the next thing she knew, his fingertips were at her jaw.
“Y-yes, Mr. Lawes, sir.”
She did know that. She remembered how much he’d reveled in her every excruciating moment of denigration back at the surgery. Along with his partner in crime, Fuller, Lawes was the epitome of the sexual sadist.
“Look at me.”
His voice had taken on a sensual purr, and whether it was its soft reverberation or the fear lying latent in her belly that instructed her to obey, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that when she opened her eyes, his face was right there.
“I’m hard for you, and you’re wet for me.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “We were made for each other, little girl.”
She held the thought in her head as his mouth brushed over hers, the aroma of minty toothpaste wafting from him, although she hadn’t seen him brush his teeth. For some crazy reason, he was right. She shouldn’t want him, yet she did. On some primal level, she was ready to be his once more.
His fingers slid from her jaw to her mouth, his thumb ducking past her lower lip until the edge of the digit slipped inside. Locking gazes with him, she froze as his thumb inched in further, slowly moving out again before sliding back inside.
A panicked part of her brain wanted to pull away and ask what he was playing at, but deep down, she already knew the answers. The small, sensual act was the head fuck, the next sign that she was his and that he’d have any part of her, any time he chose.
Worse still, though, was the knowledge that as his thumb fucked her mouth, she imagined how good it would be if it was his cock instead, her pussy clenching as she opened to receive more of him.
It wasn’t reasonable to crave the man who’d captured her, wasn’t sensible to long for his authority, but then Lawes had never been equitable.
By the time he drew away, she was almost delirious with desire, and she knew, if he’d have asked, she’d have consented to almost any act he might have named.
“Arms above your head now.” His voice was gentle as he stepped away and urged her hands higher. “Bend them at the elbow. It’s time you were fully bared for me.”