Chapter 8
Kara
The leather of the Maybach’s seats was cool against my skin, which was really a small, insignificant detail in the grand, terrifying scheme of things.
We were moving, but I felt utterly still, almost like a specimen pinned to velvet in a dark, silent museum.
And he was the collector.
Lev sat opposite me, a study in controlled menace. He hadn’t touched me since we’d left the hotel, but his presence was a physical force, a pressure that made the air feel thick, hard to breathe. He just watched me, his eyes dark fathomless, with a predator’s ever-patient gaze.
I tried to rally the pieces of myself, to find the Kara who could handle this.
The spy. The weapon. The woman who had walked into Roman’s penthouse with a mission and walked out with a victory.
That woman felt like a ghost, though, a character in a story I’d once heard when I was little.
The woman in this car was a scared, trembling thing, her body a canvas of pleasure and pain, her mind a battlefield of surrender and resentment and lust.
The silence deepened between us. I looked at him, a question in my eyes, but he didn’t offer an answer. He just leaned forward and opened a compartment in the door.
He pulled out a pair of slender black cuffs. They weren’t police-issue steel, but more refined, more threatening. Polished carbon fiber with a sophisticated locking mechanism. They looked expensive. They belonged to him, of course.
“Hands,” he demanded.
My breath hitched. A spark of the old defiance flared. “No.”
He smiled, his mouthing curving up at the edges in a wicked grin. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Kara. Either way, your hands will be cuffed. The choice is whether you’d like me to spank you first.”
I looked at his hands, large and capable, the knuckles scarred from a life I could only imagine. I looked at the cuffs, a symbol of my submission, a physical manifestation of his control. I thought of the belt, the searing pain that had blurred into desire, and I swallowed hard.
I didn’t want to fight him. Not again. Not now.
Slowly, reluctantly, I brought my hands behind my back.
He leaned forward and reached around me, the scent of him filling my senses.
He fastened the cuffs around my wrists, the click of the lock an ominous, damning sound in the quiet car.
The cool carbon fiber was a strange, heavy weight against my skin, a constant, inescapable reminder of my new reality.
He settled back into his seat, his movements unhurried. He watched me for a long moment, his eyes dark with heated promise. He was enjoying this. Savoring it. The bastard.
Then he reached for his fly.
My eyes widened, a flicker of panic cutting through the post-coital haze I was still wading through. I watched, mesmerized, as he unbuttoned his trousers, the metallic rasp of his zipper sending chills down my spine. He reached inside, and his cock, already hard and demanding, sprang free.
It was a beautiful and terrifying thing. Thick, long, with a prominent vein pulsing along its length. It was a weapon, a tool of pleasure and punishment, and it was pointed directly at me.
“Come here,” he commanded.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My body was a statue, frozen by a mixture of fear and a dark, shameful anticipation.
He sighed, a sound of mild exasperation. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of black lace.
My panties.
He leaned forward, his face close to mine. “Open your mouth,” he snarled.
I shook my head in frantic, silent denial.
His hand shot out, wrapping around my jaw, his grip like iron. He wasn’t gentle. He forced my jaw open, his fingers digging into my cheeks with a painful, unyielding pressure. He balled up the lace, still damp with my earlier arousal, and shoved it inside my mouth.
He reached for his suit jacket, which was slung on the seat beside him.
He pulled out a silver roll that I quickly realized was duct tape.
He tore off a strip with a terribly loud ripping sound, then smoothed it over my mouth, sealing the panties inside.
It was a brutally efficient act of silencing, a final, physical manifestation of his control.
I was gagged. Bound. Helpless.
He leaned back, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. “Now,” he said, his voice a low, possessive growl. “Let’s try that again. Come here.”
I had no choice. With my hands cuffed behind my back, my balance was precarious. I rocked myself up, hunched over, and shuffled forward. I was clumsy and awkward, basically a creature humbled and humiliated.
When I was directly over him, my knees straddling his thighs and my head leaning on his shoulder for balance, he stopped me and lifted my dress up around my hips, baring me.
His cock was a hard, insistent pressure against my stomach.
He reached down, his hand closing around my hip, his grip bruising.
He positioned me, aligning my body with his, his intentions unmistakable.
“Ride me,” he commanded.
I hesitated.
I couldn’t do this. Not here. Not like this.
His hand cracked across my outer thigh, a sharp, stinging blow that made me jump, a muffled cry escaping my throat. “I said, ride me,” he repeated, his tone darkly suggestive.
Lifting my head to look at him, I slowly, reluctantly lowered myself.
The head of his cock nudged against my entrance.
I was still sore from our last encounter, and I winced as he pushed inside me.
The initial stretch was a dull, aching burn, and I yelped out loud, which simply caused him to raise an eyebrow in my direction.
He guided me down with his hands on my hips. I was forced to take him, inch by thick, throbbing inch, until he was fully seated inside me. I was so full of him that I ached.
“Now move,” he commanded.
I started to pump my hips back and forth in a slow, awkward rocking motion. It was difficult, and incredibly humbling, to be so exposed, so utterly controlled by him, with my hands cuffed behind my back and my mouth gagged with my own panties.
“Faster,” he prodded.
I quickened my pace, my movements clumsy and uncoordinated.
The friction, the relentless, pounding rhythm, was sending jolts of pleasure through me.
A dark, insidious heat was coiling low in my belly.
I hated it. I hated him. I hated the way my body was responding, the way my hips were tilting to meet his, the way a fresh wave of arousal was slickening his cock.
He watched me, his mysterious eyes attentive. He was relishing this, savoring my humiliation, my struggle, my reluctant surrender. He leaned back against the leather, his body a study in relaxed power, as he enjoyed my increasingly frantic, desperate movements.
“Look at me.”
I met his gaze, my eyes wide, a mixture of shame, desire, and a bit of horror surging through me. I could see it in his eyes, the triumph, the possession, the raw, primal satisfaction. He had broken me. He had remade me. And he was not done with me yet.
My desire was slowly building bit by bit despite my efforts to fight it. Already, I was close to orgasm, and he was so arrogantly proud of himself. I could see it in the smug, self-satisfied way he watched me.
He reached between us, his fingers finding my clit, still swollen and sensitive. He circled it slowly, teasing me, taunting me. The combination of sensations was a perfect storm of pleasure and pain that was pushing me closer and closer to the edge.
“Come for me, Kara,” he commanded. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
That was it. That was the final straw.
The orgasm that ripped through me was a violent thing that tore a muffled scream from my throat. I threw my head backwards, arched my back, and screamed through the gag.
He growled, and his pace quickened, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper. He was fucking me like he owned me, like he was trying to brand himself onto the very fabric of my soul.
And that’s when I saw something strange.
Through the darkened rear window of the Maybach, there was a flicker of odd movement.
Not the blur of the city or another car, but a silver glimmer that caught the sunlight just so.
I squinted, realizing it was a machine. A delivery drone, the kind that were as common as pigeons in this city of impossible futures.
But this one wasn’t carrying a parcel.
It was moving with a certain predatory trajectory, its red sensor light a steady, unwavering beacon. And it was closing in on us.
Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the haze of pleasure still throbbing through my body.
I tried to speak, to shout a warning, but the gag turned my words into a useless, muffled grunt.
I bucked against him, trying to twist, to point, to do anything to break through the fog of his own impending climax, but nothing seemed to work.
His hand cracked across my already sore ass, a quick, stinging blow that made me jump. “Stop trying to distract me,” he grunted. He thought I was fighting him. He thought this was another game.
I shook my head, my eyes wide with a terror that was no longer just for myself. I slammed my hips down, a desperate, awkward movement that was meant to be a signal, not a surrender.
He mistook it for enthusiasm. His grip on my hips tightened, his pace quickening, his thrusts becoming more determined. “That’s it, baby girl,” he growled. “Take it all.”
He came with a loud, guttural groan, and closed his eyes in a moment of pure, unadulterated male satisfaction. It was the only opening I had.
I threw my head forward with every ounce of strength I had left, my forehead smashing into his nose. The sound was appalling, a wet, cartilaginous crack that echoed in the quiet car. Bone on bone.
He roared, a sound of shocked agony, his hands flying up to his face. Blood instantly streamed between his fingers in a hot, shocking flood.
Holy shit.
Had I broken his nose?