Chapter 11
Liam
I needed to escape her. I needed to get away. I needed a few minutes to myself to think, to reevaluate every goddamn thing I’ve been doing since I brought her here. But I couldn’t. Because once I made it out to the bedroom, I realized that she was still untethered.
I have no doubt after what just happened, she’d try to leave.
I don’t even attempt to meet her eyes as I walk back into the bathroom, throw a towel in her direction and pick up the chain. She follows me, the sound of her wet feet on the bathroom floor.
I lock her chain back in place, not saying a word, and then I’m able to escape her.
“Jesus, fuck,” I hiss, as I make my way into the kitchen, my hand scraping over the top of my head in frustration. Coming on her skin last night, made things worse.
After a handful of hours of tossing and turning in my bed, I came up with a different plan. Watching her touch herself had to be the best and worst thing that could ever happen to me. It didn’t help things. It didn’t scratch an itch. It made me want more.
It made me need to touch her fingers to my lips. It made me want to swipe my tongue along that glistening slit of hers.
It made me desperate for her taste. It made me desperate to feel the warmth of her skin pressed against mine. It made me insane.
I busy myself in the kitchen, throwing together a platter of food. I need to stay away from her but I know that I won’t be able to. It’s never been instinct for me to fight my urges and that’s not going to change now.
She’s wrapped in the bath towel, sitting on the sofa, when I reenter. Although I can feel her eyes on me, I can’t bear to look in her direction. She makes me feel like a monster and I want nothing more than to feed that dark part inside of me.
That line I refuse to cross is getting thinner. It’s fading and disappearing. But I have the ability to fight it just a little bit longer.
I place the tray of food on the end of the bed before turning back in her direction. I wouldn’t say that the look on her face is expectant, but she’s also not looking away from me. She’s not ignoring me, the way I would expect. She’s not begging me to set her free or demanding that I release her.
It surprises me. She could easily make threats. Her father could easily follow through with whatever threat she does make, but she doesn’t open her mouth.
I lock eyes with her as I drop my sweats and kick them across the room much in the same fashion she did in the bathroom not long ago. Just like I was unable to look away from her, she doesn’t follow the fabric as it slides across the floor before disappearing under the bed.
She gasps when I turn around to unlatch the chain from the floor. I know what she’s seeing. My back is a map of scars and burns. Sometimes I forget that those souvenirs from my time in Mexico are still there.
I don’t know anyone who spends any length of time turning around to look at their back in the mirror and it isn’t until I’m agitated or until I witness horrific things while working that they tingle and itch. Much like they’re doing right now with her eyes on me.
She doesn’t ask me what happened. She doesn’t placate me or tell me that she’s sorry because of the sight of them and for some reason that surprises me a little too.
Maybe she’s imagining adding more scars there. The threat of that makes my cock stir once again.
I’m not picturing her taking a knife to me or putting her cigarettes out on my skin. It’s the scrape of her fingernails curled and drawing blood as I fuck into her that I imagine. My mouth feels dry as I stand.
“Get on the bed,” I tell her. My grin is sly and hidden as I hear her stand from the couch. “Leave the towel.”
She doesn’t argue and when she walks around to the end of the bed, she’s completely naked.
I watch the muscles of her arms and legs work as she climbs up on the bed.
She doesn’t hesitate to pull the blankets up to her chin and I don’t know if I’m feeling generous or if I think her covering her body up would ease some of the aches the sight of her nakedness causes.
I climb in beside her, taking great care not to let our skin brush. It’s not hard in this big bed.
I lean forward, grabbing the tray of food so I can situate it between us and I feel her eyes on my back once again.
Those scars connect me to Angel Guerrera and I know he has to have some of the same injuries on his own flesh. I find myself wanting to tell her about them, even though she will probably never ask.
There hasn’t been a single person in my life that I’ve had that conversation with and I don’t know why she’s different.
Why I want to tell her about the month I spent in South America, being tortured.
It’s as if I need to try and explain myself.
It’s like I need to tell her that I’m still a monster, but I’m not the same monster that was caught in the middle of an assassination job.
I want to explain that month changed my life. That was the switch that flipped. That’s why I began taking jobs to help others, to save others.
She probably wouldn’t believe me. It’s not like my current actions and her situation right now isn’t a complete contradiction to what I could claim is to come, but I’m not hurting her. I’m not touching her. I’m not raping her. And that has to mean something, right?
Her eyes are locked on me when I finally look up at her. Her hair is wet, a tangled mess around her shoulders. And although the blush I saw in her cheeks from her orgasm has faded, my memories of it haven’t.
I feel like I need to get the upper hand. I want to taunt her and tease her. I want to chastise her for thinking even for a second that that fake little display she put on in the beginning would convince me that’s how she orgasms.
I knew the real one would look different, but I never anticipated the thrill it gave me to watch her muscles seize, to watch her hands move faster over her body.
My balls still ache from the power of my own orgasm from watching her pleasure herself.
My lips tingle with the urge to praise her because I saw the reaction she had when I did it in the bathroom.
The guilt I saw swimming in her eyes was also part of the reward. She did it because I told her to. She enjoyed it because she couldn’t help herself and then she hated me for it. Each aspect of the entire interaction pleased me.
“Eat something,” I tell her, pointing to the tray of food situated between us before reaching for the remote on the bedside table.
Raya doesn’t look impressed. She doesn’t ooh and ahh when I press a button, making the television glide upward toward the ceiling, out of the footboard.
Expensive things, top-notch technology, isn’t something new for her.
She’s lived a life of leisure and excess.
Despite having all the things that I have now, it pisses me off the life she’s been handed.
She’s not the type of person who has ever had to worry where she’s going to sleep at night.
She hasn’t had to concern herself with where her next meal is going to come from or what she would have to do to earn it.
Hell, she probably thinks she’s roughing it, to spend a night in line, waiting for concert tickets with a group of her friends.
Her bodyguard would be there of course. They’d never leave her unprotected.
She’d be exhausted the next day and make a social media post about the trials and tribulations she suffered.
She’s nothing like me. She couldn’t comprehend the things I’ve been through.
The things I’ve had to do just to survive.
I have no doubt Raya Reed is the type of person who would make a monetary donation to a women’s shelter, brag about it to the people in her life, and honestly feel like she has made a damn difference in the world.
What I have now looks nothing like what I had fifteen years ago when I had to scratch and scrape and make sacrifices and give up bits and pieces of my soul to have what I have.
I take pride in my home. I take pride in the things I’ve worked so hard for.
I haven’t gotten them in the most legal way but I have fought hard to have everything I possess.
Blood sweat and tears. Isn’t that how the saying goes?
Granted, it’s not always been my blood, my sweat, my tears, that have earned me the things that I have.
But it takes a certain kind of person, with a certain level of dedication to hurt others in order to get what you want and what you need.
No one batted an eye when I was the person screaming and crying and bleeding for them to get us a leg up.
Why should I care if I earned the things I have in the same way?
I point the remote at the television, scanning slowly through every channel.
I pause and read the description of each and every pornographic movie on the listing.
I don’t want to watch porn. It wouldn’t make this situation any better and being in the bed beside her with the echoes of skin slapping against skin wouldn’t end well for either of us.
Just as I expect, she doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t tell me that she refuses to watch anything that I would choose.
She doesn’t make a suggestion. She doesn’t ask for a certain show.
She just sits quietly like a little church mouse, hoping not to be noticed.
I settle on a syndicated television show, starting with season one episode one, before dropping the remote to the bed.
She doesn’t pick up something to eat from the tray until I do.
Although it annoys me that all she’s doing is mimicking my exact behaviors much the same way she did in the bathroom, only touching herself harder, only moving her fingers faster when I did the same, I don’t say anything.
She has to eat. I may be a depraved monster that has abducted her and forced her to come on her own fingers, but I don’t want her to waste away into nothing.
She doesn’t eat with the same gusto that I do. Maybe she doesn’t feel like she’s starving after an intense orgasm the way I do.
I’m in a generous mood, so when I notice her favoring the strawberries over the grapes, I eat the grapes, leaving the fruit she desires for her.
The television rattles on, neither one of us speaking even as I climb out of the bed and place the now empty food tray on the table across the room.
Her eyes are on me rather than the television when I re-approach the bed, but once again, she doesn’t say a word as I climb up to join her.
It only takes about ten minutes of my naked skin in the open air for me to begin to feel discomfort.
I get the first real reaction out of her in over an hour when I shift my body and lift the covers, joining her under them.
I don’t touch her, but that doesn’t keep her from thinking that I will if I decide to take those liberties.
I don’t make the mistake of thinking that she wants me there, even though she doesn’t ask me to leave. That would be crazy. This woman may do what I want her to, she may obey my commands, but she’s never going to want to.
I push the limits of her sanity as I inch closer.
Still without touching, I close the distance until I can feel the warmth of her skin against mine.
The heat radiating from her own body soothes me.
It makes me once again realize that this woman may be more dangerous to me than I could ever be to her.