Chapter 4
EMME
He freed my ankles and took me from the trunk, steadying me when I almost fell. That, and how he then checked my hands and wrists, as if worried about damage, swayed the needle toward me believing he was Charity’s friend.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anymore.
The hard grip on my upper arm was unpleasant and didn’t leave room for argument. Damn, his hands were big—then again, my pussy was well aware of the size of his fingers.
The lights were on, and I gained vague impressions of the building as he half dragged me through a door, along a corridor, into a room where he did something, then out again.
We went down some stairs. There was no noise that indicated other people lived here.
Was it a large private home? He was rich enough to own a nice, new-model car. And why was I bothering profiling him?
A light came on in the room we’d ended up in. The door was shut. He stopped me a few steps in.
He bound my wrists in front of me with something that felt like rope, then undid the cloth bondage. The rope was a hell of a lot more comfortable. Suddenly my arms were hoisted above my head and secured there to something that swayed a little when I moved.
I should have fought while I’d had the chance, but I’d been so busy trying to be clever and figure out what he was doing that I sort of…forgot.
By then, I needed to pee. Damned coffee. And that café was a world away.
The grit under my feet said maybe concrete. Cold. But it wouldn’t kill me.
Unlike this guy?
The green shopping bag over my head was untied at the neck then abruptly removed, revealing a low-lit room with a stack of chairs and a few suitcases, and a man. He unwrapped the tape from my mouth.
As I worked my jaw and licked my sore lips, he stared down at me. He walked to the stacked chairs and perched his hip on them.
A black duffel bag with semicircular handles lay at his feet.
A toy bag?
Maybe he was the dominant I’d arranged, after all.
The thrill and adrenaline ebbed a bit. Which was ridiculous. Of course I didn’t want this to be some creepy stranger! Not for real…
“I need to pee.” I said it to gauge his reaction, to get a conversation going.
“Shut up.” Just pure assertion. No threats, just a deep assured voice and a glint of the devil in those brooding eyes. I already knew he liked hurting me and scaring me. The man was a sadist.
Good. I swallowed, wondering what he planned, felt my pussy clench.
Damn. I smiled to myself. A genuine abduction would’ve freaked me out.
This was Him. His real face. Black hair fell over his temples in mild waves, just enough to be a little wild, whereas the sides were shaven.
The stubble I’d already noticed. He was tall, but didn’t seem like a huge, muscular guy, but as he stripped off his coat and dropped it to the floor, I knew why he’d easily pinned me down.
His biceps swelled out those shirt sleeves.
He partially unbuttoned the front then hauled the shirt over his head.
Revealing a very nice body. I let my gaze wander down the muscle delineations until they disappeared below the waistband. The belt he’d probably used on my ankles was back in place at his waist but not buckled.
“Whatever your name was, you’re now Mr. Scott’s Toy. Say thank you, Mr. Scott.”
Ugh. Dom stuff. I wrinkled my nose. Orders like that made this feel like a normal scene. Every stereotypical Dom thing he did reduced my excitement by a notch.
He pulled the belt from the loops on his pants. Holding it by the buckle end, he let it swing free, loose to the floor, raising one eyebrow as he paced forward, approaching me.
“What did I say?”
I squinted, pressing my lips together, feeling the thrill of daring a man to do something to make me obey him. I swiveled, keeping him in sight. My throat was stuck between saying Beam me up, Scottie, or blowing a raspberry.
Neither came out.
I’d done worse to uppity asshole Doms, but maybe I should be wary of provoking this one?
Do it, my primeval stupid brain told me.
I opened my mouth.
He switched the belt so the end of it snapped but came nowhere near me.
“Let me explain, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you want to pee, eat, drink, or see sun now and then, you’ll do what I say.
If not, a few days of hunger and suffering, and being forced to do a thousand degrading things will convince you. Your call.”
My mouth had stayed open.
“Tick, tick…”
When he put it that way…I had given permission for anything.
Anything that would not damage me permanently.
Fuck it. This wasn’t a hill I needed to die on.
The belt hung there, an implied threat in his hand. Was he insinuating he’d start with giving me a hard beating if I refused?
I swallowed and met his eyes, all too aware of how exposed I was standing with my hands tied above my head.
“Thank you, Mr. Scott.”
“Tell me why you aren’t afraid of me.”
Did it show that much? Truthfully, though, I was a little afraid. I still wasn’t sure this was Charity’s friend.
“I’ve had worse than that.” I shrugged and studied the belt. “Besides…”
“Besides?”
He wanted it out in the open? I wriggled where I hung, glad I could stand flatfooted. My feet were freezing. “We both know this is consensual nonconsent. You’re Charity’s friend.” I smiled. “I almost wish we weren’t laying all of our cards on the table. I know, I know, I—”
“Who the fuck is Charity?”
My mouth refused to work.
What?
Oh…he was fucking with me.
“Ha ha. Very funny. Charity vetted you or I wouldn’t be here.”
His lip curled but it was hard to tell if it was humor or contempt. “Is that why you didn’t fight very hard? You think this was all arranged, and that I’m a friend of your friend?”
I stared at him. Was he fucking with me, or…?
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” His pleasant smile didn’t match the malice in his gaze.
“There was a code word you were supposed to know, to make sure you were the right guy,” I said, voice shaking.
“And what was your plan if a stranger abducted you instead? Ah, yes—kicking off your shoes as I threw you into my trunk. Foolproof.” He tsked. “You knew I wasn’t the man you were expecting, even then.”
“You know what the code word is,” I accused, glaring at him.
He chuckled. “Believe whatever you need to.”
“You only get a week with me,” I said, trying not to sound terrified despite the thickening hot lump of dread in my throat. “After that you have to let me go.”
He must be joking.
“Or what? No one knows where you are, Emme.”
“See? You know my name!”
“I have your purse, silly girl. The barista also said it in the café, and so did your friend. I was sitting behind you for a while. Was that Charity?”
“You know it was.”
“Did she give you any indication that she even noticed me, let alone knew me? Was she making subtle eye contact with me when you weren’t paying attention?”
Had she? She would’ve needed to see around a corner, wouldn’t she?
The booth dividers were tall. I tried to think, but I only remembered being surprised that he was there at all.
If he was someone she knew, she would have let on.
I think? She wasn’t very sneaky. It was everything I could do to keep her from telling me the name of the guy.
I chewed my lip. “You’re too attractive to be a real kidnapper.” Dumb thing to say. I knew it even as I said it.
His brows rose. He grabbed the neckline of my dress and reeled me in.
A knife I hadn’t noticed was in his other hand, and he slashed the fabric open, drawing the blade down with practiced ease.
I gasped with the speed of his movement, and the fact that there’d been no warning.
My bra was next, and my breasts spilled out. He made a sound like a predator’s purr.
“You should probably stay still.” He grabbed a handful of my hair and ran the blade over my skin, making my chest break out in goose bumps. “The way a man looks doesn’t have much to do with what makes his dick hard, Emme. It’s not only your pussy I want, it’s this. Power.”
The blade slid downward to slip under and part the fabric of my panties, until they fell away. His lazy gaze followed the knife, and I held very still.
“Pretty girls are easy to get. But ones like you? No one even knows you’re missing.”
I swallowed. Put like that… Would he cut me? Would he stab me to death?
With money like he seemed to have, he probably could make me disappear, and if this wasn’t Charity’s friend…
But he hadn’t mentioned killing me. Maybe he’d just keep me. Maybe this was Charity’s friend, and he just had a knack for acting creepy.
Except I was pretty sure this guy wasn’t acting.
It was like an episode of Criminal Minds, but there was no team of crack experts doing a voice-over to tell me what was happening.
I tried to think back to the one-day kidnapping and assault course I’d taken with my friend in high school. It had been hard to concentrate because I’d kept fantasizing.
The knife disappeared between my thighs, as he reversed it in his hand.
“What are you doing?” My ragged breathing shook the words.
“Whatever I want.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I just got you. Why would I kill you already? That seems wasteful.”
“Maybe you’ve done this before,” I fished. “Maybe you do this all the time?”
“I’ve never kidnapped a willing victim before. It never occurred to me that there might be such an animal.”
“I’m not an animal, I’m a person.”
He arched a brow. “Maybe you were a person at some point, but now you’re just a toy.
” The knife handle nudged at me, parting my labia.
Slowly, he coaxed it up into me. I whined and shook—the handle was thick and rigid and uncomfortable, and I could feel my own slickness as my body accepted the invasion.
He fucked it into me, and I tried my damnedest to stay still, but I found myself tilting my hips to accommodate the angle and stop it from hurting.
Thank god there was a metal bar separating the handle from the blade, because it meant he had to stop before he cut me.
The end of his thumb brushed my clit, and I sobbed in distress, ashamed at my reaction to this rude game.
“Such a dirty girl, creaming all over my knife handle. Do you need to come?”
God, I did. I was whimpering despite trying not to make a sound.
As though reading my mind, he leaned in to bite my nipple. I gasped at the touch of his mouth, but soon his teeth made me scream, as he sucked and chewed. His mouth was hot on my feverish flesh. The orgasm he’d denied me earlier trembled through my body as it grew, aching.
“Don’t you dare come, Emme,” he warned. “You won’t enjoy what happens if you—”
My muscles tensed and eyes rolled back before he could even finish his threat.
I tried to stop—tried even to keep my mouth closed, but my orgasm was wild and overwhelming, throbbing through me with animalistic intensity.
I think I screamed, but I couldn’t even muster a last-minute ounce of shame to cut it off.
The pain in my nipples and the shame of my pussy squeezing his come from earlier out of my body prolonged things.
He pulled the knife handle from me, and I came down from the high of my orgasm, my skin buzzing with endorphins as his dark eyes narrowed in displeasure. My thigh muscles trembled.
Damn, he was hot.
Shame showed up later than was useful, but it only kept the aftershocks of my orgasm going longer.
Why did I have to be wired so weird? Why couldn’t I enjoy flowers and a romantic dinner, like a normal woman?
“Did I or did I not forbid you to come?”
“It was too late. I couldn’t stop.”
“Stupid, horny little toy.” He walked behind me, and the cold blade of his knife touched my nape.
“Don’t fucking move.”
He cut my dress from neck to shoulder on both sides until my dress slipped down to puddle on the floor. It was warm from my body, and I shifted to stand on the fabric, my feet blessing the barrier between my soles and the concrete.
“What are you going to do?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I screeched at the first lash of his belt, then again at the second, third, and fourth. By the fifth I was sobbing, my back and ass aflame with searing licks of pain.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to.”
“You’re not sorry yet, but you will be.”
The punishment went on until I wondered if he’d ever stop—lash after lash of the leather. I was sweating and writhing, mewling for mercy. I had to pee so bad, and it was taking all of my control not to just let go.
Eventually, he stopped, but probably only because his arm was tired—or maybe because I had stopped reacting.
I hung by my wrists, brain numb, body burning.
This man? He wasn’t a Dom. He was a fucking monster.
He knew bondage, he never asked what CNC means. He knew knots and had a bag of kinky gear. He knew mindfucks.
Serial killers would know and have most of those.
He moved around to where I could see him and stood there, watching me, breathing a little heavier.
“Are you going to remember to obey me, Emme?”
Fumbling, I regained my feet, gasping, eyeing him, sweaty browed. My back and ass were a wicked jigsaw of pain. The hurts throbbed through me, converting to that strange, twisted pleasure. There was beauty in pain.
He tapped my chin with a loop of the belt, then traced below my mouth.
Gentle this time. The touch of the belt elicited tingles, made my mouth feel full, sexual, especially with him studying me.
“I wonder why Charity’s friend never showed up. Maybe he saw me take you. Maybe he even called the police—or maybe the coward just watched and jerked off.”
I sucked on my bottom lip, not sure what was true. If this was Charity’s friend, he was the king of mindfucks. If he wasn’t…
“Such a pretty, pouty mouth.” His hand went behind me and wrapped around my neck. My favorite hold. My eyelids fluttered. “You’re mine forever. Or until I dispose of you.” He leaned in and kissed me.
Dispose of me?
His other hand cupped my breast, slipped upward and found my sore nipple, and crushed it.
The splintering pain, my keening into his mouth, and the kiss shattered all my thoughts into a thousand pieces.