Chapter 21 – ANNA
21
ANNA
I tried the patio door and the door to the side garden before moving to the windows that didn’t look like windows at all anymore.
They looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Hard gray metal everywhere there should’ve been natural light.
I banged my fist against the cold slats, making it rattle.
“Anna, stop. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
Snatching my empty glass from the kitchen, I threw it at the metal, making broken shards rain all over Carter’s expensive rug. “ Make it open .”
The bastard didn’t so much as move or even open his mouth to speak, his ocean eyes watching me warily, like a cobra ready to strike.
My phone. I could call?—
No sooner did I have it back in my hand than Carter was there snatching it from my fingers. “Face it, Anna. You’re staying. At least for now. Let me?—”
“Let you? Let you? I’m not letting you do anything, Carter. You just do whatever the fuck you want.”
I tried to get my phone back, but he held it higher than I could reach and I wouldn’t play that game with him. Spinning on my heel, I went to claw some more at the metal enclosure, sure there must be a chink in its armor I could use to get free.
“Anna, don’t ?—”
I hissed as a shard of glass bit into the bottom of my foot, burrowing itself in deep.
“ Fuck .”
“Goddamn it, Anna.”
He caught the back of my knees, swinging me up into his arms without any warning whatsoever. I yelped, reflexively grabbing around his neck.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
I pushed away from his chest.
“Anna, stop, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”
I redoubled my efforts and kicked my feet.
He gave me a dangerous look before easily maneuvering me so I was over his shoulder, the bulge of it digging into my stomach.
“ God, you are just the worst fucking…fucking…”
I couldn’t even come up with a word dirty enough or angry enough for what he was.
But as he carried me up the stairs, I felt the fight going out of me and something far worse than anger started to take root.
Because when those fucking shutters went down, I didn’t feel caged. Not really. I felt safe. Safe with him . And that was a dangerous feeling. I couldn’t feel that. Couldn’t want that. I’d just get hurt.
I knew how this ended. When he got tired of me, he’d throw me away. Just like he did six years ago.
The bit of fight I lost somewhere on the main floor reignited as we got to the top of the landing and Carter pushed into a bedroom.
I dug an elbow into his back, earning myself a pained grunt before I was unceremoniously tossed down onto a bed. The plush silk covered duvet swallowed me whole and I had to fight it to get free, the lure to stay wrapped in it and just cry so strong I almost couldn’t resist.
“Oh, no you don’t.”
Carter caught my ankle before I could clamber from the bed and tugged me back across the covers until he had me right in the middle of it. He flipped me onto my back and pressed his weight into my middle as he struggled with something on the bed.
“Stop fucking squirming,” he spat, wrenching my leg toward the edge of the bed. Something whispered over my ankle and then pulled tight.
Oh god.
“Carter? Carter, what the hell are you doing?”
He shifted over me and jerked my free leg easily to the other edge, cuffing that ankle, too.
As soon as he was off me, I was up, reaching for my ankles, but my fingers barely managed to grasp the restraints before I was thrust back, my right arm yanked high above my head, and my wrist bound.
I pulled on the restraint. It was a thick band of soft fabric with a metal lock.
What the fuck was this?
I gasped as he snatched my last free appendage and bound it in place, standing back to survey his handiwork with a growing hunger in his eyes.
“You can’t just?—”
“I already did, little siren. Nobody gets to hurt you, not even yourself.”
As if on cue, the cut in my foot throbbed painfully, and I was all too aware of the feeling of the glass trespassing beneath my skin.
I hissed in a breath and looked down, pulling on the restraints, trying to see the damage.
Carter walked from the room, and I shouted after him.
“What, are you just going to leave me like this? Carter! Carter!”
He came back before I broke sound records screaming his name, a first aid kit in his hands as he knelt at the foot of the bed.
“Just relax, would you. I need to clean this before it gets infected.”
I didn’t even want to look at him. Didn’t want him to see the hot tears pooling in my eyes. I stared at the ceiling instead, knowing that until he was good and ready nothing I said was going to convince him to untie these restraints and let me go home.
He set to cleaning the area around the cut and gently prodding my heel to ease the glass out.
I let my head fall to the right, noticing the room for the first time as he plucked the glass out, making me hiss, and started to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
It had to be Carter’s bedroom. I could see his outfit for tomorrow laid out by some household staff no doubt. His collection of watches on the nightstand. But other than his belongings, this room didn’t say Carter Cole .
There were sheer curtains framing the now-metal-gated windows, though the sound of waves crashing on the beach still managed to drift through. I focused on that sound, on the room, as the throbbing in my heel subsided.
If you’d asked me to imagine Carter’s room, I would have pictured something dark and moody. With walls that were emerald green or navy blue instead of this lime washed sand. This whole space looked like something I might’ve designed for myself, not for someone like him.
“It wasn’t very deep,” he said as he finished winding the gauze around my foot.
I could feel his eyes on me, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. A long moment passed between us before finally, he sighed.
“ Maybe I shouldn’t have hacked your phone’s audio.”
“You think?”
Another heavy sigh.
“If that’s an apology, then I’m a fucking circus clown.”
“Look at me.”
I didn’t.
“Please.”
I frowned, letting my head fall the other way. He never said please.
“I’m no good at this Anna. I don’t date. I don’t…do this with people. I’m never going to be…”
“Normal?” I supplied.
He gave me a pointed look, but responded anyway. “No. Probably not. I don’t know how to be that guy, Anna. Not anymore. This is me. But I am trying.”
I rattled my restraints. “ This is trying?”
“No, this is me not letting you hurt yourself trying to put yourself right back into the danger I just pulled you out of.”
“This is kidnapping, you know. A criminal offense.”
“You going to have me arrested?”
I snorted. “As if it would stick. I know all about your friends in high places.”
“Ah. That. Redditors really think they’re the sleuths of the interwebs.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he saw every Reddit thread I poured over about his meteoric rise to success.
“Are you angry that I looked at your history, or angry that I know you were looking for me every time you grabbed your phone at night?”
Both , I thought, but didn’t reply.
“That’s what I thought. Anna, why can’t you admit that you want this—that you want me just as fucking badly as I want you?”
His hand on my heel shifted, pushing up to my calf, his calluses against the smooth skin there making goosebumps rise all over my body.
My pulse fluttered.
I worked to shut it the fuck up, but as his hand shifted higher, I couldn’t get that canary back in the cage and felt my lips part on a breathy sigh.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
You are not going to let him do this.
“ Anna ,” he said, his voice a husky whisper that begged me to open my eyes. I squeezed them tighter.
The mattress shifted and stars exploded behind my eyelids at the anticipation.
Tell him to stop.
My traitorous lips stayed shut, forcing me to breathe heavy and fast through my nose as I felt the presence of his body hovering just above mine.
His nose brushed my cheek.
“Tell me you hate this,” he whispered in my ear.
“You’re unbelievable,” I replied, the able turning into a sharp chirp as he lowered his hips against mine.
“Do you feel how fucking hard I am for you, little siren?”
So hard, he might tear through those Brioni slacks. I tried to move, to press my thighs together, but couldn’t.
I did manage to hold in my moan, but my eyes flashed open to find him watching me intently, our faces a breath apart.
There was an edge of vulnerability to his blue eyes that disarmed me, melting away whatever was left of all that pointless rage.
“Let me make you feel good. Call it”—he flicked my nose with his—“my way of apologizing.”
“I—”
Why couldn’t I just say it?
“N-no,” I mumbled.
“Sorry, was that a ‘no’?”
He was fucking teasing me. After the shit he pulled today.
Meanwhile, out there, there could be a hundred dangerous humans trying to get their hands on me to deliver me back to Josh.
God. I didn’t want to think about that.
I didn’t want to think about any of it.
“Hey.”
I looked up at him.
“Don’t be afraid. Not of me.”
“I’m not.”
But I should be.
He grinned at that and ground his erection against my pussy in a way that made me convulse around him, unable to hold back my sounds of pleasure this time.
“There she is,” he dipped his head to the crook of my neck, kissing along the sensitive flesh there. “I’m going to fuck you now, little siren. Make you forget all the reasons you were angry.”
With every roll of his hips, I lost more and more of my sense, my greedy cunt beginning to pulse and ache with a need so strong I resolved to just lie there and let him do whatever he wanted to me.
I wanted to forget all the bad. Just for a while.
And he was going to do it anyway.
Carter wasted no time tearing my clothes off and throwing them on the floor in tattered heaps, leaving me naked in front of him.
I shivered, not from the cool air, but from the way his eyes raked over me. Devouring me.
He pressed one hand on my chest, between my breasts, keeping me flat on the bed. With the other, he tugged on my hair, pulling my head to the side so he could have total access to my neck.
He scattered hot, open-mouthed kisses across the sensitive skin until I moaned for him.
“You love it when I take what I want from you, don’t you, little siren?”
I clenched my teeth against a reply because the one word answer that shouted in my mind was yes .
Yes.
I loved it. I loved every dirty, depraved second of it. And I hated that I loved it, but soon, Carter would make me forget that, too.
“You don’t have to answer me, Anna. I already know your truth.”
He shifted from me, and I opened my eyes to find him slowly undressing beside the bed. I made no secret of watching his every movement, keeping my expression as placid as I could. I was still angry with him. He didn’t deserve to know how much his body turned me on. This was my small way of getting back at him.
Carter settled between my legs and snatched my pussy in his fist, making me hiss.
“Don’t play hard to get with me, baby.” He ground the heel of his palm over my mound, spreading my wetness in a way that felt so fucking good. “This doesn’t lie.”
He reached behind us, fiddling with the strap on my left leg, not uncuffing it, but loosening it enough that he could get the leg over his shoulder, lifting and angling my hips.
His warm hands felt so big as he reached beneath me, gripping the cheeks of my ass with a shuddering groan.
“You have the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen,” Carter said. “I think I’ve been obsessed with it since I first saw you in a swimsuit. Now, it’s mine.”
I quivered at what I thought he was implying. Planning .
Carter gathered my wetness against his fingertips and pushed it lower. I jerked as his fingers passed the wetness to a different entrance.
My cheeks flamed hot and I snapped my attention to Carter who was looking at my ass like it was the entrance to the cave of fucking wonders.
Oh god.
He repeated the motion, gathering more wetness to fully soak my other entrance, but when he pressed a digit to the tight hole, I jerked away instinctively.
“ Wait .”
“I told you, Anna. You’re mine. That means all of you. Even this ,” Carter said, punctuating the last word by slipping the tip of a digit into the warm channel. It burned and something in my stomach flipped and tightened.
“It’ll hurt a bit at first, but you’ll like it.”
“I don’t think I?—”
“Has anyone ever fucked you here before?”
“No,” I said on a breath. “I’ve never even had fingers in me there. I don’t think I’ll like it.”
I’d always been curious what other women saw in anal sex because I couldn’t see the appeal. The one time I’d been drunk enough to consider it I asked my boyfriend at the time if he wanted to try it, and he seemed genuinely grossed out by the idea. It turned me off of ever wanting to try again.
He’d made me feel ashamed for even thinking about it, but somehow this felt completely different with Carter. There was no part of me, no matter how twisted or broken, that he hadn’t embraced. He owned all of me.
That was the thing about loving someone who was fucked up. There was nothing you could ever do to scare them.
Carter moaned, sounding pleased. “Fuck. I love that. I’ll be the first one to claim your ass, too.”
He’d stolen all my other firsts. Why not this one?
He circled the ring of muscles with his fingers. It felt strange, but the more he touched me, the more I felt my body relax, arching into his touch.
“That’s it. Breathe,” Carter said. “I need you to relax.”
Reflexively, I stiffened, but his hand on my stomach settled me as he inserted the tip of his finger again. I felt my muscles clench around him, and my entire body froze, adjusting to the new sensation.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in, then one out. My muscles loosened enough to let him slide in just a bit further. Slowly, he worked his finger in while his other hand slid down my belly, his fingers tap-tapping on my clit before starting slow circles there.
My wetness eased his way, but it still felt strange and intrusive.
“Good girl,” he said when he finally worked the whole finger inside. “You’re stretching so beautifully for me.”
My body softened at the praise. Some instinctive part of me still loved pleasing him.
“I’m going to make sure this feels good for you, just like I promised.”
His fingers on my pussy stroked rhythmically, starting a slow, steady build, making me hot all over.
Unfamiliar pleasure built around the finger filling my ass. My breath quickened as I tried to make sense of where the pleasure was coming from.
He began to ease a second finger inside of me and my hands twisted in the soft duvet, my teeth clenching at the feeling of being stretched where I’d never been touched before.
“How does that feel, little siren?”
“T-too much.”
“You’re overthinking it. Just let go. Let me take care of you. I know what you can take. I need you to trust me.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. I could feel my orgasm building while Carter played with my clit. His expert fingers sent lightning flashing through my veins. I focused on that pleasure as he thrust the second finger into my ass, making my back arch off the bed.
“That’s it, Anna.”
A fiery heat raged in my core as my orgasm built around the searing pain and the delirious pleasure.
He started to pump his fingers in my ass and sped up the other ones on my pussy. The dual sensation was…was…
Fuck. It was good .
“ Yes. Chase it, baby.”
My moans came faster, heavier.
“Fuck. You’re so goddamned sexy like this, little siren. I can’t wait to get inside you. Come on, yes, that’s it, come for your king .”
He pinched my clit sharply, and the heat inside me combusted. I’d never had an orgasm like this, where it felt like my pleasure came from everywhere. My entire body shook as it bulldozed over me, and I felt a strange, increased sensation in my ass. It took me a moment to realize Carter had slipped a third finger inside me.
“Fuck,” he muttered as I hiccupped, coming down with stars still in my eyes. “Your ass looks so pretty, stretching around my fingers.”
He increased his pace, dragging his fingers back and forth through my puckered hole while his other hand stayed on my pussy, holding it like he couldn’t bear to let go.
I moaned, feeling totally overwhelmed as I clenched around his digits, the burn all but gone now.
His fingers slipped out of me, and I immediately missed them. When I lifted my heavy head, I saw him pumping his cock into his fist, coating it with my wetness.
It wasn’t going to fit.
Nope.
Not going to happen.
“Relax,” he said, smiling wickedly, reading my mind like he always did. “It’ll fit. And I’ll make you love it.”
He pulled my leg back over his shoulder, angling his cock to line it up with my ass.
My heart thudded in my ears, and I flexed against my restraints, distantly hearing them rattle as they snagged, holding me in place.
Fuck. I loved that, too.
I’d never been tied up like this, didn’t think I’d like it. But Carter always knew what I liked. How did he always know before even I did?
He pressed his broad head against the ring of muscles. I bit my lip, throwing my head back to brace for the intrusion.
Carter slowly forced the end of his cock past my entrance. I remembered Carter telling me to take deep breaths, so I closed my eyes and focused. In and out. In and out. Slowly, I felt my body adjust to the strange sensation.
“Fuck,” he moaned. “You’re taking me so well, baby. Just seven more inches.”
“ What ?” I gasped, a bolt of fear-laced dread racing through my veins.
We were only two inches in?
He licked his lips. “You doubting yourself, baby?”
“Carter, there’s n-no way?—”
“There is. I’ll show you.”
“ Oh fuck .”
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling as he slid deeper into my ass, and I held my breath.
“Hey, I need you breathing, little siren. Unclench.”
I tried to do what he said. I really did.
“There. You’re taking me so beautifully. Almost there. Four more.”
Once again, his praise was like honey to my veins. My muscles expanded to let him press in another inch. I felt so impossibly full, but somehow I did want more. I wanted to take all of him.
He stopped, letting me adjust with a grimace on his face that told me it was taking every ounce of his willpower not to split me in half.
“ More ,” I whimpered. “I want more.”
His eyes turned black.
Carter leaned down over me with my leg still hooked over his shoulder, using the leverage of his knees against the mattress to thrust deeper.
This time, he didn’t stop. His cock opened me inch by inch. I breathed hard as my muscles rearranged themselves around the intrusion.
“Ah. Oh god. Oh fuck . Fuck, Carter .”
“Almost there,” Carter said in a strained tone, bowing his head to his own pleasure as he lost control and slammed the rest of the way in. His hilt slapped against my cheeks and all the air pressed out of my lungs in a strangled cry as tears stung my eyes.
My muscles burned at the stretch, pain rippling through me, but the heat inside me had spread. The aftereffects of my orgasm were still with me, still making everything tinted in a hazy, rose-colored hue.
“Fuck, Anna,” he grunted. “ So…goddamn…tight . You’re mine. All mine.”
He brought his fingers back to my clit, stroking it as he shifted his hips back, dragging his thick cock from my hole only to slam back inside. The pain gave way to an electric heat coursing through me.
He fucked my ass, just like he promised he would. It felt like something bigger than sex.
It felt like a promise I didn’t know I was making.
His hand at my hip squeezed hard, and all my thoughts vanished as I gave into him. My entire world collapsed to the feeling of Carter’s cock driving into my most private place. There was no more pain. All I felt was an all-consuming need. I was a live wire, ready to spark at any moment.
Carter never stopped moving inside me. His thrusts came faster with each stroke, harder, until each one was more merciless than the last, and I loved every moment of it. No part of my body resisted him anymore. I was his to fuck exactly as he wanted.
“ Mine ,” he spat through his teeth.
Yours, my traitorous thoughts echoed.
“Oh my god, Carter, I’m going to come,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice for the high pitch.
He moved his fingers on my clit and I could’ve fucking smacked him, but when he stuck two digits into my soaked cunt and continued rubbing my clit with his thumb, I screamed in pleasure.
The feeling of being filled in two holes while he played with my clit was just…just too much.
Hot liquid seared down my cheeks as I shattered. I was full and empty at the same time, overwhelmed with a feeling I wasn’t sure I could survive. I closed my eyes and saw lightning, storm clouds and a full moon over the beach.
Carter cursed, and through the haze of my mind-altering pleasure I saw him bearing his teeth.
He was going to come, too.
I licked my lips, still shaking with my own aftershocks, blinking to clear my vision enough to watch him.
He pulled out at the last possible second, gripping his shaft, rubbing it viciously as he began to come. Hot ropes of come splattered over my pussy, making me hum with pride.
Carter’s expression struck me, reminding me of the boy on the beach. There he was. Disarmed. The mask dropped.
He’d been here all along.
He panted as he finished, his throat bobbing and eyelids heavy as he lowered his eyes to admire his art.
Carter’s tongue rolled over his lower lip as he reached between us, and I felt his fingers dragging over my mound. By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late. He pushed his gathered seed from where it landed into my pussy.
Shit.
I couldn’t remember if I’d taken my pill this morning.
Fuck, had I remembered yesterday?
There was just so much going on that?—
“Carter, wait, stop.”
He didn’t even look at me.
I tried to pull myself away from him but the restraints held me in place.
“Carter! I said stop. I can’t remember if I took my pill this morning.”
He froze and the look he gave me burned with the heat of a thousand suns.
“Good.”
What!?
He held my slackened leg in place, locking it over his arm as he stuffed every drop of his spend into my pussy despite my thrashing.
“Are you insane? I could get pregnant!”
“I know.”
I stopped fighting, remembering the existence of pharmacies. Of Plan B. And resolved to sit still as he finished, trying to figure out why this would turn him on.
He said he never wanted kids.
I was the one who wanted a big family. For my kids to grow up with siblings to keep each other company and stand up for one another.
It didn’t make sense.
I sighed.
“Are you done?”
He cocked his head, double checking my pussy. “I am.”
“Want to explain?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. I want to tie myself to you in every way. In the ways that can’t be broken.”
Carter studied the frown on my face and set my leg down on the mattress, coming to lie next to me.
We lay together a long time in silence.
After a while, Carter untied me and gathered me into his arms. I was only distantly aware as he lifted me and carried me from the room, too spent to think anymore. He set me down on a plush chair and covered me with a blanket in an excessively large bathroom as he filled an equally obnoxiously sized tub.
He helped me into the water when it was ready and settled himself onto the rim. The bubbles smelled like ylang-ylang and vanilla. As if he’d known one day, somehow, I would be here in his house. In his tub.
I sighed, giving myself to the comforting warmth of the water. So, so tired.
“Stay the night,” he said, swirling his fingers in the water.
I didn’t reply.
“Please.”
His stormy eyes searched mine, and I felt myself let go.
“I’ll stay.”
His lips tugged up triumphantly.
“But tomorrow you’re taking me home. That’s the deal. I won’t trade one cage for another, Carter.”
He recoiled as if slapped, thinking.
“Alright. But your cell stays with you at all times.”