Chapter 12 Obedience
TWELVE
OBEDIENCE
NOELLE
It’s a trap. I’m not so much of a brainless idiot not to realize that.
Does that stop me, though?
Later, I’ll wonder if I really thought I could get away, or if I got up and dashed past him because I wanted to see what he would do.
Deep down, I think I already knew that we were both bluffing.
Me, pretending I wasn’t at least partly enjoying his attention.
Patrick acting as though he didn’t care if I ended this before he had claimed ‘payment’ for the lives he took for me.
He wasn’t done, and it wasn’t until after I had rushed outside, grateful I’d put my boots on following our shower, that I realized that this was a trap—and one I’d run right into it.
Still, I tried my best. One moment, I was sitting in the chalet, wrapped in Patrick’s sweater, trying to convince myself that I still understood the rules of my own life as he opened that door to freedom. The next? I was running right out into what should’ve been a magical Christmas Eve night.
It is gorgeous out here. The cold air on the mountaintop steals my breath immediately, each lungful of air almost freezing my insides.
Snow drifts down in lazy flurries, soft and deceptively gentle. The wind has died, leaving the mountain eerily quiet, like it’s watching to see what I do next.
My boots crunch against packed snow as I push myself forward.
I’m no athlete. I do cardio maybe twice a month, if that.
Running? I haven’t run since high school, but once I realize I won’t slip and fall on the ice, there I go.
My lungs burning, heart hammering, I take off into the trees surrounding the chalet.
I don’t know where I think I’m going. Down the mountain, maybe, since I can’t use my car, and the layer of fresh snow would’ve made it difficult regardless.
Right now? I’m just going anywhere that isn’t him—but, just like I should’ve known, he didn’t let me get that far away.
I’ve seen Patrick North’s naked body. For a guy twelve years older than me, he’s in way better shape than I am. He tracks me easily, only letting me know that he’s followed by calling out his nickname for me: “Starling.”
His voice carries easily.
I whimper, torn between going forward and turning back. If I go to him… maybe he won’t be so mad that I fled from him, making him chase. Just because Patrick won’t hurt me, that doesn’t mean he won’t make me pay for my disobedience…
Fuck.
Disobedience.
This isn’t just a trap, is it? It’s a test.
And that’s why, when he says one more word, I go against every instinct inside of me and listen.
“Stop.”
I stop. Shivering in the snowy weather, stuck between a couple of snow-covered trees, stamping my boots to keep the chill from creeping in… I stop.
On the plus side, his cable-knit sweater combined with the exertion it cost me to run as fast as I did…
yeah, I’m not that cold. Not yet. I suddenly understand why he insisted on making me wear it, and when he appears out of the darkness a few moments later, carrying an oversized bag with him, it hits me that this…
like everything else Patrick’s done so far… was meticulously planned.
He didn’t open the door to see if I’d go. He opened it because he wanted me to.
Dropping the bag at the base of one of the towering trees with its empty branches and the snow piled up on the naked wood, Patrick stalks toward me.
His hand closes around my arm, pulling my body so that I’m backed up against his hardness.
He’s solid and warm behind me, his scent suddenly going to my head, and it’s like the world just narrowed to the space we occupy together.
“You were doing so well,” he murmurs, hot on my ear.
I swallow nervously. “What? You said I could choose.”
“I did,” he agrees. “You chose to run. But when I told you to stop, what did you do?”
Fuck. He wants me to tell him. He wants me to admit it.
On a sigh, I tell him, “I stopped. Okay?”
He drops a kiss to the side of my neck. “You obeyed, Noelle. That’s what you did. And now, when you continue to do so, you’ll see just how… pleasurable it can be to do what you’re told.”
My heart skips a beat, but I can’t tell if it’s because I’m scared again—or because I do want to see exactly what Patrick means by that.
Another kiss before his teeth scrape down gently. “Be a good girl, won’t you? Stay here. Let me get set up and, I promise you, you’ll be glad you did.”
Going over to the large, black bag he carried with him, he unzips it calmly, as if we’re about to decorate a tree instead of unraveling whatever’s left of my resistance.
I almost laugh out of stunned surprise when my analogy proves apt as he pulls out a long string of—I shit you not—Christmas lights.
A click of a button on an attached battery pack has them turning on. Unlike the twinkling white lights on the Christmas tree in the chalet, these are colorful. Red, green, orange, blue, yellow… it’s like a rainbow coming to life in the dark as he sets them down on the pristine snow.
Next, he pulls out a dark tarp. Could be black, could be blue, but I whimper again when I see it. It looks like something a butcher would put down before he got to work… and it’s in the hands of a contract killer.
Patrick lays it out, but not before turning to me. “Don’t worry about this. Understand me? It’s not what you think. But it might be necessary, and, my dear Starling, I’m nothing if not prepared.”
And, as though eager to prove it, he pulls one last item from the bag.
To my clear confusion, I see it’s one of the decorative wastebaskets from the chalet.
He turns it upside down, jamming his boot on top of it a few times to get it caught in the pile of snow.
Then, once he’s sure it’s not going anywhere, he looks back at me.
“Join me in front of this tree, Noelle. Stand on that. We don’t want you losing your toes from the cold.”
What the fuck?
I glance over at Patrick. Beneath the moonlight, the look in his face tells me that this is the true test. I could refuse him.
I could tell him to bite me. I could scream and hope that someone, anyone, might be out late this Christmas Eve and help me…
or I can do what I’m told and trust that I can believe this man who walked into my life and has taken it over.
“You wanted obedience,” I say hoarsely, shuffling over to the tree. “Is this it?”
“Yes,” he answers simply.
Thought so.
He moves with unhurried confidence, directing me without touching at first. He again orders me to step onto the overturned waste bin he brought out with him, to lean against the tree, to pull off my boots, then my leggings.
My fingers fumble with the fabric, numb from cold and fear and, fuck it, excitement.
As soon as I’m standing there in only Patrick’s sweater and my red panties, he picks up the string of lights.
“Trust me,” he orders, voice impossibly deep.
I gulp, then nod.
I’m absolutely shaking by the time he loops the lights around me, around the tree, effectively trapping me against it. It’s not tight tight. It doesn’t hurt. In fact, he ties it just tight enough that when he kicks the wastebasket away, I’m effectively trapped a good foot off of the ground.
Patrick was careful to focus on stringing the lights over and under my chest. Peering down, the lights color the pale sweater, my nipples so hard, they’re poking through.
My lower half is almost completely naked, but though he tweaks one of my nipples through the fabric, earning a high-pitched squeal from me, it’s my panties that he turns his attention to next.
“Look at you, Starling. All trussed up, the perfect Christmas present. Even better, you did exactly what I told you to do. You surrendered yourself to me, and now… now it’s my turn to touch you.”
I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to. The sick thing is?
I… I’m not sure I do. I never would’ve thought it would be a turn-on to be chased through the woods, ordered to stop, then tied to a fucking tree to prove that I’ll be a good girl from now on.
He promised me pleasure… and maybe I should’ve resisted a little longer, but as Patrick slips his fingers under the scrap of embarrassingly soaked panties covering my pussy, it’s almost a relief that I can’t get away.
Thanks to the cold, his fingers are icicles. The instant he touches my heat, I gasp, and he grins.
“That feel good, sweetheart?” He drags two fingers up my slit, smirking a little when he can tell for himself how hot and slick I already am. When I can’t bring myself to admit that it does, he dips the fingertip of one of them inside of me. “How about that?’
I close my eyes.
“Answer me,” he commands. That same finger thrusts into me. Not with enough force that it causes me pain, but it’s the first thing to penetrate me aside from my therapist-approved vibrator since that violent night two Christmases ago.
“Yes,” I cry out because, damn it, it feels amazing. I’d forgotten just how pleasurable it could be when you had a lover who was content in taking his time, learning your body, figuring out how to make you react just like that.
“That’s what I thought. Now look at me.” When I refuse to, he adds a second finger, slowly fucking me until I have no choice but to obey for fear of what he’ll do next to get my attention.
“Ah. There are those gorgeous eyes I can drown in… you think I’ll let you hide from me?
Keep your reactions from me? Fuck, no. You will show me just how much you like it when I do this. ”
Two fingers stretching me out, scissoring me now, he adds his powerful thumb to the mix. He jabs down on my clit, providing more stimulation I can’t escape as I writhe against the Christmas lights keeping me pinned against the tree.
God, I’m so fucking hot—figuratively and literally.