Chapter 6
Georgia
By the time he slides in and closes the door, I’ve scrambled to the other side of the car.
With the engine off all I can hear is our breathing and the intermittent rush of cars passing.
Every time they do, lights swim across the interior, painting things bright, before darkness falls again.
It’s a darkness softened only by the moonlight, once the interior car light turns off.
Three cars go by. The car rocks a little when a truck follows. He’s not saying anything and finally I give in and speak.
“I was getting to trust you, you asshole.” I’m brave for the moment, but I know that could change. My wrists are at my back and he’s knotted the belt thoroughly. I’ve tested it twice already.
My own inbuilt kinks betray me when I do that, strain at the leather.
It throws me back into scenes when I was bound and fucked, railed and pounded into the bed or a convenient wall.
For a few seconds I’m wrapped in the vivid sounds and the scents, the feels, of lovemaking.
I used to adore being tied up by lovers.
And Rafael? The sweep of his dark hair and those equally dark brown eyes, those slay me. Or they did, before he wrecked this.
“I could’ve liked you.”
“I figured you’d not trust me, once I told you.”
“And you accuse me of lying.”
He shrugs. “I have no choice in this either.”
This is so gentile a conversation, when I should be spewing lava and kicking him.
But I’m trapped, again, and if beneath that suave and ruthless exterior lives someone like Shawn, I am doomed.
Think positive. Maybe he just wants to fuck me once or twice and then let me go.
And not kill me. Ha. I have a low bar for morals nowadays.
“You didn’t mean what you said before, surely? You can’t keep someone forever.”
“They’ve done it before. You have no idea of the power we have.”
“We.” I spit that out like it’s nasty medicine.
“Yes. We. My family has been a member for a long time. We get mutual benefits for our business. As well as everything else. The opulent parties where anything goes.” His mouth twitches up at the corner and he casually studies me from bottom to top, dwelling on my mouth before he meets my eyes.
His thoughts are in the gutter but I’m too angry to react. Anger won’t help me.
I look at the seat between us and concentrate on the possibles. My anger fades, but he really is my only option. I have to convince him to let me go.
“You cannot just keep me.” I’m repeating myself but my tone has turned to pleading. “Please. I have a life out there.” I try a different tack. “Are you lying again?”
“About?”
Should I ask this? It might shame him, make him feel sorry for me. Hell, I feel sorry for me. I can’t have been completely wrong about who he is?
“You’re not going to just kill me after a while?”
“No! Fuck no. You think so little of me?”
Now it’s my turn to be silent.
“Okay. Okay.” He drums his fingers on the back of the seat where he’s draped his arm.
“You have reasons to think that. I do understand. Look.” He leans back into the door and puts his hands together as if praying.
“This is how things are. My family is in the armaments industry. We sell weapons and military hardware to countries. Most of the fraternity members trade off the influence of other members—fingers are in many pies, people will do things for you they won’t do for outsiders. ”
“Corruption,” I murmur, completely willing to annoy the shit out of him now that he seems mostly harmless. Though he doesn’t seem to care that I insulted his family. “So, I’ve been sold to you.”
“Sold? In a way, but also not. It’s more that you are something we must do to win favor, to earn points.”
I close my eyes. Ugh. So I’m a little box they’re checking to get a special gift prize, like at some fast-food joint. Either way, I’ve been valued and auctioned off. “You know I’ll never stop trying to escape you.”
“Touché. You hit the tipping point, the pivot on which everything depends.” His tone seems a little ominous. I open my eyes and see he’s shifted closer.
Whatever this pivotal thing is it’s ridiculous. One minute he wants to punish me by using a belt on my rear, now he’s explaining the conventions that prop up this fraternity. As if it matters to me.
“I don’t care.” I’m cold and trembling and it’s not the temperature. I’m fucking tired of being a victim. I may also be tearing up but fuck this. Fuck this fraternity and fuck Rafael. My anger resurfaces.
I shoot him a malevolent glare. “You cannot watch me every second of every day, unless you just lock me in a room twenty-four hours a day. Is that it? Is that the end game?”
“Georgia.” He leans in. “Yes, I will not do this—I won’t lock you in a room forever. But here is your problem.”
“I only have one problem? Yay.” The sarcasm drips from my tongue.
“Sassy little bitch. A brat is always more fun to tame.”
Me? “You’re not taming me, Rafael. I’m…” Going to kick your balls in was what I was about to say, but no. If I am escaping him, I need to stop broadcasting my intentions. “Go on.”
“Here is your problem. If you won’t behave for me, I cannot risk keeping you. The penalty for you escaping would be catastrophic to our company.”
My mouth is open. I close it. I’m that big a deal? It’s true that in the past, criminal charges and scandals have brought down members of the British parliament. Wait. He cannot risk keeping me? I squint at him sideways. “And?”
From under his brow, with the curtain of his dark locks disguising his eyes, he adds a killer caveat.
“And so I would have to pass you on to someone else. I will let you choose. Here and now. You must promise to obey me, no ifs or buts, no escape clause”—his mouth curves slightly at that—“or I will give you away. And I cannot guarantee who would take you on or what they might do afterward. I’m sorry. ”
Oh my god. He is sorry?
I don’t have a choice then, do I? It’s agree and stay with him, or go and maybe end up someone’s slave in a box, or even dead.
With Rafael, I’m starting with some insight into who he is.
And with the knowledge I might be able to do what I already did—run and get to the embassy.
No escape clause? Har-de-har. Because next time I won’t sit on a beach moaning about my past life.
I curl forward and stare at the car’s floor, at my shoes. “You want me to stay with you?”
“I do. Truth. From that first day at the house, I wanted you at my feet.”
Not by his side, like normal people. Though I’ve been there, acted out that scenario with a man I trusted, for a while. “Hard to do when I don’t trust you.”
“That’s fixable.”
“Is it though? This choice is no fucking choice,” I whisper, too aware of my wrists being bound.
“Try me. It is. Swear you will obey me. Do what I ask of you, and I am a man of my word. I can protect you from whatever or whoever is after you. You’ve forgotten those killers?”
Strangely they have receded, though they aren’t forgotten. This, here, is more urgent a dilemma. “No. I haven’t.” I glance sideways at him. “What will you make me do?”
“What do you think I will make you do? Everything you ever fantasized about, and more. You’ve been informed about our events—kink, sadism, masochism.
Maybe tying you up while I fuck you in front of others.
And of course public viewing of your degradation.
Generally all the participants love it. It’s why we do it. ”
Everything I ever fantasized about? And the worst part of that sentence is that it is true. I used to have some very nasty fantasies. Used to.
Headlights, several of them, arrive, zip past, and wash the car in light.
I barely stopped myself from reacting as I saw those scenes he mentioned playing out. He’s been eagle-eyed and watching me and I’m not showing him any weakness, not when he’s staring at me like I’m his pet already, on a leash and collared.
Fuck though. The way he framed that with me being the focus of his attention, and being played with…
A therapist would make me a case study.
The slow arch of his eyebrow is strangely attractive. He leans in and adds, “I am in no hurry, Georgia. I’d rather take this slowly than damage you. Don’t deny some of this excites you. Your nipples are more obvious than before.”
I’m blushing, stupidly, but I refuse to acknowledge that. The dress is black. I almost look down at myself. It’s dark…he can’t possibly have seen them? But he is right.
“Shut up.”
At his guffaw my cheeks heat even more.
“Should I stick my fingers between your legs? Tip you upside down and test your wetness? It’s not a flaw. Women and men are supposed to react to each other,” he drawls that out, like it’s some lesson on fucking sex.
“Not like this.” I shake my head. “Not to the man who has basically kidnapped me.” The man I may knife if I get the chance. And that mismatch is so wrong. Sex and death are opposites, aren’t they?
“Enough talk. Choose. Me or someone else. The fraternity wants you locked away.”
After all that, my self-destructive ego demands I say the flaw. Because…I want to know the risk. “And what if I go with you then I still try to—”
His chuckle is the last thing I expect. “Run? Punishment. Delicious punishment.”
“I see. But not death. Not handing me to another man?”
“Listen when I state things.” Headlights sweep across him and his face becomes a monstrous landscape for a few seconds.
Coincidence, but I tense up. “I will never kill you, or harm you. Unless it’s some kink you have.
You’d need to injure me to make me discard you to another.
Do. Not. Do. That.” The last words are said with a deliberate cadence that seems as lethal as an executioner’s axe.
So. If I knife him, do it properly. Noted.
Not that I’ve ever managed to knife anyone, but I tried with Dave, and surely that counts?
I’m digging my nails into my palms behind my back and I’m furious and scared and I never knew the two could go together so well.
Like jalapenos and sugar? More like jalapenos and shit.
What am I doing then?
I’ve known all along I was going to go with him. The alternative could easily be worse. That he knew this too is annoying AF. I hate him for that also. He set me up from Day One.
I want my revenge on him but there are others I hate far, far more than Rafael.
“I have one thing I need.” I edge my teeth into my lower lip, as I figure out how to say this. “You said you wanted me to help you and Somersby?”
“I did.”
“I want to know what happened too. I need to know who decided I should survive but be given to those evil fuckers. Let me stick around and find out that and I will agree to whatever you ask of me. I need to know…who trafficked me to Australia…to be hurt over and over.” My words came out cracked, fractured.
The fear of those days they had me chained and trapped is back in 3D, high-res imagery.
“You were sent to be tortured. I understand. I will make sure you’re in on everything. You are the only witness.”
“Then I agree.” There, I said it. “Fffuck,” I whisper. What have I done?
“Show me you understand then. I’m not releasing your hands yet. Turn around and show me your mouth, open it. Just that.”
My mouth. He wants my open mouth. I bet he plans to fuck it.
I shift then twist at the waist, facing him properly for the first time since we entered the car, grimacing as he takes me by the waist and pulls me closer.
It is excruciatingly difficult to do what he asks. This simple thing. It’s a surrender that makes my toes curl and my hands want to strangle each other.
He’s waiting patiently so far.
Okay, I tell myself. Just do it.
I open my mouth and stay like that, waiting.
“Good girl.”
I eyeroll at the compliment, watching his hand approach, amused by the similarity to a mother feeding her baby a spoonful of food.
Until he grips my neck again, to keep me in place. A man’s hand there, undoes me.
I cannot help reacting, just as he said women do. I close my eyes and stop breathing for a second. His two fingers are at my mouth, entering me there, playing inside, pushing in like a cock might. It’s enough to make me wet. Or wetter. He was right there too.
Yet, I remain still.
When he pulls out his fingers, he tells me again, “Good girl,” then runs that hand under my dress, and across my thigh.
The wetness of my own saliva leaves a cooling trail.
The touch on my mons, the slow introduction of his hand between my legs, pushing between my squeezed-together thighs then searching for and finding the start of my slit…
Now I’m swallowing, wriggling, opening my legs a little. Impossible to stay calm. Normal. This is how it should— I gasp as he slips his fingers inside me, feeling the slide and thrust, the forcing apart of my flesh so intimately. He entered me easily. I’m much more than wet. I’m a slippery mess.
I’ve shut my eyes, but I hear his words. “Open your legs wider.”
I obey, because I promised to. Because I want to. His thumb begins to revolve over my stubbornly engorged clit and I collapse backward with my legs stretched wide, letting him do this.
Is it rape? Not really. I promised him this.
I whimper as I feel his large hand squeeze my neck as he thrusts in again and stays there, inside me.
Two fingers? Three? His knuckles dent my inner thigh.
The flicker of my eyelids gives me glimpses of him greedily watching my reactions.
I am the center of his world in this moment.
“You don’t have to come, but I want you to. I want to see your first orgasm, here, while my fingers are fucking you.”
He keeps rubbing and thrusting, gentle but urgent, and it’s enough. It’s more than enough. I huff out an anguished moan—shamed by how quickly I’m unravelling.
Enough to know he’s in control.
Enough to be forced to do this. Throat held, hands bound, I arch and sob as everything rolls over me, the building pleasure, the fingers fucking me, the need he has to watch.
Ecstasy bursts and spills. Shudders torment me as I come, and I’m arching harder, my thighs clamping in on his hand.
A moan breaks from my recently fucked mouth.
When I’m slumped into the seat, gasping, I finally dare to peek at him.
Only when our eyes lock does he slowly extract those fingers.
“Beautiful. Now I know you’re mine, Georgia.” Then he wipes his fingers on the skirt of the dress.
Though I’m still catching my breath, I manage to spill two words. “You…bastard.”