Chapter Six
REX FORCED HIMSELF not to slam the door to the office. He wanted to. His whole body was on fire with want, a betrayal of everything he stood for. He should not have walked upstairs with Ari. He definitely should not have puttered around in his bedroom listening to her get ready for bed. He didn’t fucking putter. And he didn’t pant after teenage girls. He sat behind his desk and didn’t even have a drink. He didn’t trust himself sober right at this moment; he certainly wasn’t going to further impair his judgment.
He’d just pulled up the statements from the last six months on the accounts that had taken the biggest hit when an alarm on his phone chirped. He frowned at it. It wasn’t a sound he was familiar with. He pulled up the screen and opened it, seeing an alert from the house security app. Tommy’s head popped in. “The perimeter has been breached.”
Rex jumped to his feet. His first thought was that someone was there to take Ari like he’d taken other girls. “Where?” he snapped.
Tommy gave him a hard look. “Your bathroom.”
Fuck. No one was coming for Ari. She was trying to escape. The little fool.
Rex stormed from the room and up the stairs. His little captive thought she wanted to escape now? He’d give her something worth escaping from. As he neared his room, he kept silent. Secrecy and stealth were as much a part of his upbringing and training as the brutality. He slid through the door of his room and into the bathroom soundlessly. The sight that met him almost made him want to laugh if it wasn’t so infuriating. Ari had made it through the window up to her hips and then her stunning curves had betrayed her. Her luscious bottom was on full display for him. Rex didn’t stop to think, he just acted.
He placed a hand on her back, holding her in place, and she shrieked. “Don’t touch me!”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to be making demands.”
“Fuck you!” she snarled at him, but she was effectively pinned. She couldn’t move forward, and his hand prevented her from moving backward. Her legs kicked out, but he was able to dodge them easily. He slipped a hand under her hips and wriggled his fingers until he could unbutton and unzip the jeans she was wearing. She was also wearing sturdy boots. Boots he had just bought her.
“Where exactly did you think you were going, little girl?”
No answer and Rex allowed himself a smile. Stubborn little brat. He used his free hand to tug hard on the jeans and he was sure they bit into her skin in a few places, but he got them down around her knees, getting them out of the way, but keeping her legs restrained.
“Get away from me! What are you doing?” she screamed as he let himself have the small indulgence of caressing her backside through her underwear. God, she was enticing. His cock was hardening just from the sight of her and the knowledge that he was going to punish her. He couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything else, but obviously, this lesson needed to be taught.
“Teaching you a lesson, little girl,” he answered smoothly.
“I’m not a little girl,” she huffed, and wriggled as he slid the underwear down so that they were around her thighs, pinning her more fully.
“Oh yes, you are a naughty little girl. Do you know what happens to naughty little girls?”
He watched her freeze for an instant, and then she increased her efforts to get away from him.
“No! Stop, you can’t! You promised not to hurt me!” she cried.
“Yes, but I also told you I couldn’t let you go. If you’re going to defy me, then I have to teach you a lesson.”
Rex didn’t give her another minute to think about it. He brought his hand back and then let it fall with a resounding smack. His dick hardened painfully in his slacks. Ugh. He was pretty sure this would be worse for him than it was for her, but he had to get his point across. He let his hand fall again and again. She shrieked and cursed and bucked, but he didn’t let up.
When her backside glowed bright red and he heard her sobbing, he finally stopped. He massaged the hot flesh. Her groan of pain had him biting his lip against his own groan, but of pleasure.
Rex was panting hard when he finally stopped. Ari’s ass was fiery red. He squeezed it hard one last time, and she whimpered in pain. Satisfied, he yanked her underwear and jeans back up over her ass, forcing another sob of pain out of her as the fabrics dragged over her abused flesh. He quickly untucked his shirt to cover his raging hard on.
He yanked Ari back through the window, none too gently. In slow, precise movements, he removed her jacket and threw it and the book bag on the floor before grabbing her wrist and yanking her to him.
“What the fuck were you doing?” he growled
Tears streamed down her face, but she met his eyes. “You don’t understand I can’t stay here.”
“It’s not optional. Out there, you’re in danger. I’m watched constantly. They would snap you back up and on the auction block in a minute. And this time I wouldn’t be allowed in to save you.”
Ari crumbled on the spot, but Rex yanked her back up. There was one more lesson she had to learn tonight. He dragged her from the room by her wrist and she stumbled along behind him. He slowed when they reached the stairs but kept an iron grip on her arm to keep her from bolting. They went all the way down into the basement. Rex passed the gym and the TV room and came to a door with a keypad entry. He forced Ari behind him and entered the code, waiting while the door slid open. A hallway opened up with four steel doors, two on each side. The light was harsh. The doors had a small window and opening at the floor level.
“You can stay here tonight, or I’ll tie you to the bed. Your choice,” he said, eyes pinning Ari to the spot.
She whimpered pitifully, “Please, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“That’s not what I asked. Do you want to stay down here, or do you want me to tie you to the bed?”
He watched her swallow hard. “The bed please, sir.”
Satisfied, he turned and closed the hallway behind them. He moved further down the hallway and opened another door. He heard Ari’s gasp when it opened. Inside was an arsenal, a steel table with chains looped along the sides, and plenty of tools designed to make people very uncomfortable. Rex grabbed two lengths of rope and they exited that room as well, heading back up the stairs.
Ari tripped over her feet, trying to make them go fast enough to keep up with Rex. Too many thoughts to process whirled in her mind. The one that kept coming back was that she was really screwed now. Rex would never trust her again. That was closely followed by the fact that her ass hurt. He’d spanked her! The rational part of her brain insisted that it could have been much worse. The row of cold cells and a torture chamber deep inside the house was evidence of that.
She was panting as she all but ran up the stairs to keep from falling. He returned to the room she had been staying in and yanked her inside.
“Strip down to your underwear,” Rex ordered.
“What? No!”
He was on her in an instant, pulling her hair back to force her to look at him. As though she could look anywhere else at that moment.
“I wasn’t asking. You’ve just moved from guest to prisoner. Now, unless you’d like to go back downstairs to our normal accommodations for captives, you will do as I say.”
Ari shivered. Tears slipped down her face. Rex released her with a shove. She waited for him to look away, but he didn’t. Her shaking hands made the ties on her boots and the button on her jeans difficult to undo, but eventually she managed. She pushed the rough fabric down and hissed from the bite of pain in her ass. She kicked them away and then pulled her sweater off as well.
“Bra too.”
She unclasped the bra and let it drop, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Rex picked up the clothes and tossed them in the closet. He rummaged for a minute before finding a long sleep t-shirt and thrust it at her. She pulled it over her head. Rex stalked across the room and opened the door to her suite’s bathroom, checking inside first, then he locked the door and pulled it shut. He did the same with the door to the hallways from her room. Then pulled her through the door to his room. He pushed her into the bathroom but didn’t leave the doorway.
“Do what you need to do to get ready for bed,” he ordered.
“A-are you going to… watch?” she stammered.
“Well, I don’t think you’re stupid enough to try to escape dressed like that, but I’m not taking any chances,” Rex replied.
Ari wanted to protest, to insist that she needed privacy, but one look at his face told her that wouldn’t help. Doing her best to ignore him, she used the bathroom, washed her hands and face, and brushed her teeth. He never looked directly at her, but he didn’t leave the doorway either. When she had finished, he dragged her back to her room and pushed her down on the bed. He bound her wrists together with one length of rope and then used the other to attach her wrists to the bedpost.
“You don’t have to do this,” she whimpered, the feel of the rope making her anxious.
Rex glared at her, and she cringed. “Obviously, I do. I won’t let your stupidity risk your safety.”
With that, he turned the lights off and left her. He’d left a bottle of water and the television remote on the table opened with enough slack in the rope to reach them, but otherwise she couldn’t get to anything in the room. She didn’t dare drink. Who knew how long it would be before he’d come back and let her use the bathroom again? Ari curled up under the blankets as best she could with her hands bound and she cried. Now what? Everything was ruined. How would she get to her siblings now? She couldn’t think straight.
Her ass was on fire, but even that was confusing. The pain in her backside blended into a heated ache between her legs, and her underwear were soaked. She wanted to put her hand between her legs to get some relief, but she couldn’t without curling her body up into an awkward position.
She admitted this plan may not have been the best one, but it was all she could think of. Her brother and sister needed her. She had to get them away from her stepfather. Tears fell again. Now she would never get away. She was tied up in the house of a man… a man who had a prison in his basement? The thought hit her out of nowhere. This man who had bought her wasn’t a good man. Good men didn’t have prisons and torture chambers in their basements. The only people who had those things were men who didn’t follow the rules. Maybe if she came clean. Totally clean. The whole truth he would help her. A sob caught in her throat. She’d probably ruined that with this stunt tonight, but maybe.
Ari’s thoughts spun out from there. She felt as though she had jumped from a frying pan, into fire, into a vat of hot oil by this point. Stan was the devil she’d known. Being sold at auction had been a whole new level of horror. Now here she was in the home of… a dangerous man. Maybe one like those that her father had worked for. The big house for the family, the money, it all made sense. She didn’t know which family she was with, but based on looks and names, so far probably an Italian family. Ari’s father had worked for the Irish. If she told him who she really was, would he even believe her? And if he did, he might be just as likely to toss her in a dungeon for real this time.
She cried until she was completely wrung out. As she felt herself drifting off, she forced herself to sit up and take a few sips of water. Then she curled up on her side and pulled the blanket around her as best she could. It would be a long night. Her arms and shoulders already hurt from staying in one position. All she could do as she slipped off to sleep was hope that Rex would come back in the morning, and she would tell him everything.