Chapter 9
Liam
Her compliance doesn’t help at all. If anything, it’s making the situation worse.
I still hear the echo of her begging in my head as she follows close behind me to the middle of the room.
I don’t say a word as I crouch and reconnect the chain to the eyebolt in the floor. I don’t spend an extra second before leaving the room.
I can’t stay in there with her, seeing her naked. Knowing what she looks like completely bared to the skin was almost too much for me to handle.
I’m hard as stone in my sweats as I walk down the hallway, taking the first right into my home gym.
I don’t prep my hands the way I normally would. I don’t wrap them in tape before the first punch lands on the punching bag. I want to rage and scream but doing so would only alert her to the emotions that I can’t seem to control.
I do my best to ignore my cock. I know it was sick to watch her shower, to insist that she strip naked in front of me. I know it was demented. I know how fucked up I am for what I wanted from her.
I’ve never crossed that line with a woman before… ever. I’m not saying I’m not capable, because I’m not accustomed to lying to myself.
What pisses me off the most is that I want to fuck her. I don’t know if I want compliance and whimpers of pleasure, or if I want screams of pain.
I don’t know if I want her to fight back or if I want her to give in. All I know is I want her, and that pisses me off beyond measure. I shouldn’t want those things from her.
Wanting her that way makes me no better than the men I don’t hesitate to kill while working. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in a man’s head if I walked into his house for a job and saw him doing exactly what I had just done. I didn’t touch her, and maybe that’s a win.
Maybe tomorrow that will be enough to ease my mind for what I’ve already done to her, but I doubt it.
As I hit the bag over and over and over, my knuckles, wrists, and arms grow sore from the impact, but my cock never flags. He has a one-track mind and his attention is stuck on Raya.
I try to refocus that anger. I try to find a way to blame her rather than blaming myself.
I remember the way she looked shocked at the different items in the shower, as if it’s unheard of for a man to have separate bottles of shampoo and conditioner, as if it’s unheard of for a man to take care of himself.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Maybe she was just judging me once again, the same way she did at the surf shop.
Her quickness to judge is what got her into this situation in the first place. The assumptions she made about me are what landed her with a collar around her neck and a chain connecting her to the floor, preventing her from leaving. I don’t see that ending anytime soon.
Those assumptions from her seem ingrained, something she learned, something she was taught in life. And now that I know who she actually is, it makes a little more sense.
People in the political world are quick to judge, quick to assess, quick to assume.
Raya is no different from her father, who was no different from any other man that came before him.
They’re manipulative and abusive and expectant. They may work hard for the power they have, but once they get a taste of it, they’ll never relinquish it willingly.
I smile, thinking about the fight that Raya has in her, about what it means for the days to come.
It makes the situation in my sweats even worse. My cock throbs with the potential. Sweat rolls down my temples, cresting my jawline and dripping down my neck before disappearing into the fabric of my t-shirt.
I don’t know how long I stand there, strike after strike, hitting the punching bag.
By the time I step back, winded, my clothes are soaked.
It didn’t work, getting my energy out this way.
I know what will work, but I do my best to try and find an alternative solution. I don’t want to be that man. I’ve never been that man before, but there’s just something about that woman that is driving me insane.
The idea of slitting her throat and dumping her body for her senator dad to find should be easy. It’s not like it would be the first time I had to dispose of a corpse, but it’s the sight of her eyes looking up at me lifelessly as I imagine it that makes me automatically reject the idea.
Plus, she’s no fun if she’s dead.
I couldn’t taunt her.
I couldn’t torture her.
I couldn’t manipulate her until she bends to my will if I kill her.
I’m not completely rejecting the idea of that being the ending of what happens to her, but it’s not something I plan to do anytime soon.
So long as she continues to obey.
So long as she gives me what I want.
I can let her live.
I don’t have any grandiose ideas that I won’t eventually be found. Her father is going to be the president of the United States. That means he has to have multiple agencies out looking for her.
It’s only been a handful of hours since her disappearance and already the story is being covered by nationwide news outlets. I’m gonna get the most out of this fuckup that I can, because taking Raya could very well be the biggest mistake of my life.
Why not enjoy it?
The biggest mistake, hell, she could be the very last woman I ever see.
I don’t know that I would be shocked if, within the hour, the FBI kicks in my front door. It’s not like I was exactly strategic in her abduction. I did my best to stay out of sight of cameras at the hotel, but there’s no way to avoid them all.
I stood watching her in the middle of that ballroom as she spoke to her father and a man I now know as Jackson Smith after a brief internet search earlier.
I’m sure the feds have already been through the camera footage. They already know I watched her. They’ve already run my face through face-recognition software. They know the name I was born with.
They may not know it yet, but the name I go by now will eventually be discovered. It’s not like I’ve spent my entire lifetime trying to bury the man.
It’s only a matter of time.
That should make me nervous.
Knowing my time with her is limited should scare me. It should make me want to pack a bag and run.
But it doesn’t.
It fills me with an urgency. One that says I need to get in as much of her as I possibly can before it all comes crashing down around me.
I growl in a rage, striking out and hitting the punching bag one last time so hard that the chain holding it to the ceiling rattles.
I refuse to grip my cock.
I refuse to touch it the same way that I refuse to touch her, but I don’t know how long I can hold on to that control.
She’s not even in front of me, and right now she’s all I can think about.
I pace the room.
What else could I possibly do right now?
I can’t leave the house. Imagining putting distance between the two of us makes me feel insane, which also pisses me off.
One run-in at the surf shop.
One upturn of her nose in disgust when she looked at me and this is where I’m at.
It makes no damn sense. This obsession seems uncontrollable. It seems unmanageable. It seems like fate.
“Fuck you,” I growl, striking the punching bag again, but instead of standing there and trying to assess the situation even more, I trace my steps back to the room she’s caged in.
I throw the door open.
I don’t even flinch when it slams against the wall. I don’t have time to worry about the damage it could have left behind. It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance to fix it. There’s no time for trivial things like that.
Her eyes widen as I stand in the doorway, my chest heaving up and down, both from the exertion of my workout and the anger that’s boiling inside of me.
She looks terrified, and she should be.
I felt like I’ve won a small victory because she’s no longer trying to mask her fear. There’s no soft smile on her lips. There are no timid questions coming from her mouth.
I don’t say a word as I approach her.
I don’t say a word as I pull down the front of my sweats.
I don’t say a word as my cock points directly at her face, as if that’s where it was always meant to be.
She tries to scramble away, but the chain connected to the collar around her neck will only allow her to get so far.
I don’t hesitate to close that distance. I don’t touch her. That would be crossing the line. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to come back from that.
If I touch her, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll hurt her and use her up.
“Take your shirt off,” I demand, losing control on being able to resist stroking my cock. My hand glides up my shaft.
It’s easy to see that she can’t figure out where her eyes need to be. I slow my hand as I witness the struggle. Her gaze darts from my eyes to my hand to the curtains on the wall. She wants to escape. There’s no part of me that she’s interested in.
Once again, I wish I could be inside her head. Ten minutes in there would give me all the information I’ll ever need.
“Take your shirt off,” I growl. “Now.”
Her fingers hesitate at the hem of her shirt.
“You know the rules. Do it or I’ll do it for you.”
She’s no faster at pulling the fabric free of her body with a threat than she was without.
“Pl-please,” she stammers. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do you even know what this is?” I snap. “I could—” My words halt completely at the sight of her tits.
I feel out of control as my balls draw closer to my body.
“This is your fault,” I tell her. “This is what happens when you make assumptions about me.”
I roll my lips between my teeth, biting down until I taste blood.
She doesn’t deserve my grunts. She doesn’t deserve my groans of pleasure. This isn’t fun. This is torture. And she’s the cause of all of it.
“I wanted a polite conversation with you at the surf shop. That’s all I wanted. But you looked me up, looked me down, and decided I was no benefit to you.”
I stroke harder, faster, swirling my thumb over the tip of my cock on the upstroke.
“Are you always that way? Or do you just dismiss the people who you determine are no benefit to you? Is that how your family is? Is that how your dad is? Were you taught to do that, to look at someone, spend two seconds assessing them, and throw them away like trash when they can’t help you?”
She cries, her eyes unfocused and yet still darting everywhere.
“I’m not like that at all,” she says.
“Your actions prove differently,” I remind her. “Hold your tits up.”
She’s to the point of sobbing, but she obeys.
“Look at me,” I demand.
The second her eyes reach mine, I fucking lose it. I don’t look down, despite wanting to see every spurt of cum land on her tits.
I wish I could say I was the one to look away first, but I’m stuck in her trance until she squeezes her eyes closed and her sobbing grows exponentially.
How is it that she’s the one chained to the floor, yet she’s the one who’s in control?
“Open your fucking eyes,” I growl, and she does, obeying me once again, making me question everything I’ve done since I noticed her on the beach earlier. “Don’t you fucking dare,” I say, as she releases her breasts and lifts a hand to wipe my cum from her skin.
“If you touch it before it dries, next time, I’ll fuck your mouth and make you swallow it.”
Her sobs follow me out of the room. I should feel like the biggest asshole ever. I should feel dirty and depraved and worthless, but I don’t.
I liked it way too much to lie to myself.