42. The Devil
THE DEVIL
Ivy
Everything slowly came back into focus, but my mind was fuzzy, and the room was still dark. It took me a moment to truly categorize everything around me.
Goose bumps blossomed along my flesh as a warm breeze brushed along my bare skin.
The thought stopped me in my tracks as I realized my arms were above my head, bound, and there was something soft over my eyes, blocking out all the light.
I shook my arms, but it didn’t seem to help.
I swallowed down the panic as I backtracked over my thoughts.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good.” His voice seemed to come from all around me, all at once. My pulse skyrocketed. “What’s the word, Ivy?”
The word?
My brain was in overdrive as I tried to figure out what he meant, only it came quicker than I anticipated.
Our conversation in my new library. The sweetest thing anyone had ever even thought to do for me, let alone actually accomplished.
Him asking me what was going on in my mind and my refusal of an answer. His words back were fuzzy, though.
The word?
I was tied up, the rope digging into my wrists, as my toes just barely grazed the ground.
“Oliver?” It was a whisper, the words groggy and weird sounding as they fell from my lips.
“What’s the word, Ivy?”
I forced my throat to swallow, and I pushed out a slow breath. “Red.”
His hands came to my sides, and I could feel him at my back, the heat caressing up my body. “Good girl.”
He’d asked if I trusted him and he’d given me something. The thoughts fell away as his fingertips glided over my skin. Down my sides, along my hip bones, across my navel. A small whimper left my lips, and I wanted to swallow it down. But it was as if I was incapable.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t see.
Everything felt like more than it was.
As if the lack of senses actually made me more sensitive, overwhelmed as my thoughts spiraled and raced.
He did nothing more than drag his fingertips along my skin. Everywhere I didn’t need him, and nowhere I did.
“Oliver,” I whimpered once more.
“We’re going to have a chat, Ivy. You and me. All the cards on the table by the time we leave this barn.” His voice sounded close. In front of me close. Calm and steady. I wanted to see his eyes more than I wanted air right now. “Sound good?”
I swallowed, my throat tight, but I did my best to nod.
“Good. Now, we’re not going to waste time. So, a truth for a truth. You neglect a truth? Your ass will take the pain for you. Questions?”
“No questions, Daddy,” I replied. My voice came out quieter than I wished it to, but apparently my anxiety wasn’t allowing for volume.
I wasn’t even nervous about this game he’d planned. I wasn’t nervous about how I’d gotten here. No. I was nervous because I knew Oliver Carragan. I knew he expected the truth, and he’d know when I gave it to him. Which meant I’d have to give him all of the truth.
“Good,” he began. “I’ll start.”
I could hear his soft footsteps surrounding me, but I had no true idea where they were coming from until the backs of his knuckles once more grazed down my spine.
“You’re the first woman I’ve been with since Emily. The only one I’ve had any desire to claim.” Silence and then his fingers left me. “Your turn.”
I could feel my heart in the back of my throat as I forced myself to swallow. I should just get this over with. Just tell him what he wanted to know, but the words wouldn’t form.
What if that wasn’t what he wanted to know? What if he was searching for something else and I just added to the pile of ‘shit he had to deal with when it came to Ivy Tinsley’?
His fingers once more grazed over my ass—a calm and subtle reminder of what was to come with my lack of answer.
“I only ever asked Rowan about work in hopes that he’d mention you,” I blurted, my toes pressed against the dirt below as I tried to take a little bit of weight off my wrists.
A chuckle filled the space, and I knew, even without seeing him, that he was smiling.
“The only reason I ever went out to The Raven was to watch you dance, to witness your smile.”
I wanted to call bullshit, but as I thought back, I realized he never came out with us until after we met that first time when I’d come over to watch Sunny. Then, and only then, was he at our weekly gatherings.
“I waited so long to break up with Todd because I felt guilty for having feelings for you before…I thought I deserved him. Two shit people.” The latter part came out as a whisper, but a sudden tug on my hair pulled my head back, a gasp slipping out as his mouth came beside my ear.
“You deserve the world, and I have full intentions of giving it to you, baby doll,” he growled.
Releasing my hair, my head fell forward, chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath.
“I swapped out your birth control for sugar pills before we went to California together.”
His confession struck me and took me a long moment to fully comprehend.
“I don’t—why would you—what if I went back, Oliver?!”
Another chuckle filled the air, this one darker as the blindfold was ripped away from my eyes.
It only took me a moment to acclimate to the sudden burst of light.
Mostly because there wasn’t one. Oliver had a single lamp in the corner turned on, and besides that, it was just the two of us and the natural light from the moon above.
He stood before me. His jeans sat perfectly around his hips, and a dark T-shirt stretched across his broad chest. But he was also barefoot, his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t wearing a belt, so his jeans sank down just enough to see the top of his boxers. A tantalizing view at any other time.
“The moment I carried you up those stairs, Ivy? There was no going back. Not to him. Not to anyone. You’re mine. You have been since that first night you showed up at my door. It just took us both a bit to catch onto the fact.” His arms dropped back to his sides. “Your turn.”
He eyed me as if he knew what I needed to say but couldn’t. My mouth wouldn’t work.
“Okay, just remember that I did give you a way out.”
“What do you—” I began, but my question was cut off when he stepped forward, his mouth dropping down as he took one of my nipples into his mouth without a moment of preamble.
Over the short amount of time Oliver and I had spent together, he’d made it his mission to find out every single thing that made me tick. Things I didn’t even know about.
So when the heat of his mouth encapsulated one nipple, and his other hand brushed against the opposite, it took all of my willpower to stand on my toes and arch my chest into him. I wanted more—no, needed more.
More of him.
More of his mouth.
More of his hands.
All of it. Now. On me.
“Yes, Oliver,” I whimpered, pleading with him to continue.
A small part of me thought he wouldn’t. I thought he’d pull away. Show me just how much I craved him and make me talk that way, but that wasn’t what he did.
His teeth gently ran over my now-sensitive nipple, and he swapped. His mouth moved to the other, and his hand moved to the sensitive one. The same treatment once more.
My eyes widened as my core tightened, and I felt myself building.
“Oliver, I’m so—I can’t,” I whispered, my voice breathless as I went over the cliff and came without any more warning.
He stood then, and I was expecting him to give me shit. Remind me what happens to girls who cum without permission, but instead, he smiled, his fingers slipping between my legs and over my clit.
A gasp left my mouth, my eyes squeezing shut as he slid his fingers through the mess between my thighs. One of my legs lifted, his fingers pressing into my thigh as he gave himself more access.
“Oliver, what—” I began, but two fingers sank into me, and my head fell backwards.
He curled them just right, my heart still racing from the first time.
I couldn’t process a thought as he slowly started moving his digits.
“I can’t,” I tried to whisper, but I wasn’t sure if the words were audible or only in my head.
“You know what I want to know, baby doll. So tell me.” His words were hot against my skin as he leaned down, pressing his lips to my collarbone, the heel of his palm pressed against my clit, the smallest of movement as his fingers kept at their slow ministrations.
“I-I-I,” I stuttered, the word tumbling from my lips as I tried to focus on anything else, but I couldn’t. The heat was building once more, and I wanted to scream as my cunt squeezed around his fingers. I could feel him smile against my skin. His lips kissed up along my shoulder and neck.
“We’ll keep going until you talk to me, baby doll,” Oliver explained.
Breathless, he dropped my leg, my toes hitting the ground and letting a bit of pressure off my wrists again.
“I can’t again,” I mumbled as air began returned to my lungs.
“You can and you will. Or, you can talk to me. Your choice.”
Our gazes met as he reached down and unbuttoned his jeans. I hadn’t even had a chance to notice just how hard he was beneath the thick material. My mouth watered at the idea of his hands around my waist, fucking me—nope. Stop. Take a breath.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” I whispered.
He nodded slowly. “Well in that case, I have one more confession for you, Ivy.”
Taking a step away from me, he pulled his phone out from his pocket and unlocked it as he started reading aloud.
“Ten-thirty last night, I’m not joking anymore Ivy.
I have them and I’ll share it all. Ten-thirty-five.
I know you’re getting these. It says delivered.
Two minutes later. You have until the end of the month or I’ll tell your new boyfriend.
I’m sure your boss will appreciate the view.
” He stopped reading then, a fact I was thankful for as I didn’t think my heart could take another moment of it.
“My confession, I had Wyatt block Toad on your phone. All his texts and calls have been forwarded to my phone instead since just before we left for our trip.”
I had a brief fleeting thought about those drama shows I loved as a teenager.
The ones where a high school girl received some shocking information, and even though the information is only shocking to her, and not the audience, you still feel for her when her whole face drops.
Her lips would part and her eyes would get that distant look within them?
That was me right now.
I was the stupid high school girl who was too stupid to see what was in front of her.
As if I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know this man was crazy.
I didn’t want to see that the cowboy standing before me did everything I said I’d always wanted, and logically I should be infuriated, but I wasn’t.
If anything, I was judging myself for how relieved I felt, knowing that someone this crazy was in my corner.
I knew then and there that this was a man I could lean on. One I could confide in and love with all of my being. The words tumbled out then. As if my subconscious couldn’t hold it back anymore. My fear being fully trumped by the realization that he’d stand beside me.
“He cornered me in the bathroom at the bar and said he had tapes of…us…him and I, and that he’d post them if I didn’t come back to him. I swear, Oliver, I had no idea he ever took the videos. I never told him he could.”
A look passed over his face, and I wondered briefly if he was contemplating if what Rowan said about people noticing Todd was gone was accurate or not, but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he unbuttoned his jeans, pushing them down enough to pull his cock free.
“Thank you for trusting me, baby doll,” he finally said gently.
I nodded as I watched him carefully. “What are you doing?”
A smirk lit up his face. “Giving my girl what she deserves for being so good.”
His hands slipped around my waist, lifting me up until my legs wrapped around him. Somewhat effortlessly, he maneuvered himself and slid into me. Between the restraints around my wrist and the feel of his fingers digging into my flesh, it was just the right amount of pain meeting pleasure.
“One more thing, Ivy,” he began, his cock bottoming out. “You had that fucker in your phone as the devil?” I felt myself nod as much as my body would allow, and he leaned down, his lips against my neck and up to my ear. “The only devil in your life anymore is me.”
My mind went into overdrive, a thousand thoughts at one time as his thrusts increased then.
The man whose hands were imprinting themselves into my thighs along with my soul.
The man who went above and beyond the normal requirements of a partner for me—even before I ever considered him as such.
I should want to run, flee as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t stop myself as my feet dug into his lower back, pulling him closer in a way my hands couldn’t.
“That’s right, baby doll,” he growled, his thrusts deepening as he pulled me closer to him. “Give me one more. Be such a good girl for Daddy.”
My head fell back, my eyes fluttering closed as I clenched around him once more. In a feat I didn’t believe myself possible of achieving, my entire mind went white as the world stopped moving outside of the two of us.
Time passed in a way I couldn’t describe after that.
Small kisses up my chest and along my neck as my arms fell and wrapped around his neck.
His whispered words flowed around me as a gentle breeze caressed along my bare skin.
My perfect girl. So good for me. Daddy’s perfect girl.
On and on his voice carried as my body curled against his chest and my mind continued its lazy journey towards peace.