Abduction (8 page)

In her mind they were in the living room, she on the sofa, he standing by the fire, the inevitable glass of whiskey in his hand. He was looking at her intently, not looking away when she noticed, challenged his stare. Feeling embarrassed and a little frightened, she got up from the sofa. Attempting an air of nonchalance, she went to the dining table to pick up a book she had been reading. Vaughn came up behind her, pressing himself against her, gently pinning her between his body and the table. The fear his strength elicited in her was exciting. She was helpless to resist as he pushed her forward, bending her over the table before him. Through her sweats she felt his hand on her bottom, slowly working his fingers between her cheeks, rubbing her suggestively. Then the feel of his hands spreading her, his hips pressing eagerly against her bottom, his hard length nestling between her cheeks, slow suggestive grinding.

“Please, not like this.”

Her voice trilled with fearful desperation.

As she lay in bed, touching herself, imagining the encounter, the threat of it ignited an electric charge in her groin. In her imagination he relented to her plea. He lifted her back into a standing position, then turned her around to face him. She struggled as he tried to touch her breasts, but he pinned her hands behind her back, then gripping both her wrists in one of his large hands, he reached up under her shirt and, pressing his palm to her, drew it slowly up along the sensitive skin of her stomach, over her ribs, to the soft curve of her breast. He stopped, taking a moment to enjoy her look of helpless submission to his caress. Then he took her breast gently in his hand, making her feel the pleasure of his touch as he teased her nipple to hardness with his fingertips. He released her wrists and, undeterred by her efforts to stop him, he lifted her shirt above her breasts, tying it tight in a knot so it would not slip down and hide her from his gaze. The stretchy cotton fabric, pulled tight in that knot, pressed in against the full soft flesh, making her nipples jut out just a little more, forcing them to turn slightly upwards. Holding her arms down at her sides he bent and took a nipple in his mouth, licking it rigid, pulling it between his lips over and over with little pulsing sucks that made her quiver with unwilling excitement.

He stood back for a moment, looking her over, taking pleasure in how hard he had made her nipples, knowing she was trembling with arousal as much as fear. She watched as he undid his jeans, pushing them down low on his hips, revealing his hard cock. Then he pushed her back on the table, and pulled her sweats and underwear down and off.

As he stood, he brought his shoulders up under her knees, holding her legs to him. He stared down at her for a moment with those silvery eyes, taking in her look of nervous anticipation. She could not see, but felt him pressing his smooth hardness to her soft wetness, sliding against her, up, opening her to him and to the cool night air, up, nudging against her most sensitive little spot, teasing out her startled moan. He smiled, amused by her reluctant arousal. He rubbed himself against her that way a little longer, and she felt herself softening, beginning to tremble, felt some of her fear and reluctance melting under a swelling wave of needful yearning.

With a knowing smirk he slid his hardness down and she felt it threatening her virginity, promising pain and pleasure. Her aching body was desperate for it but she was afraid—afraid of him, afraid of the pain. Then she caught her breath as she felt him blunt and hard sinking slowly into her, his thickness pressing her open little by little until she felt him filling her and then a sudden pain and then she felt his hips pressed firmly to her bottom. He stayed like that, deep inside her, holding her legs with his thickly muscled arms, the backs of her calves and thighs pressed to his belly and chest, and pulsed in little movements with his hips, making her shudder to feel the thick length of him twitching within, her pain ebbing as other sensations swelled up. She whimpered a little. Another little smirk cracked his look of intent arousal.

The little pulses of his hips went on, gaining in momentum, and the twitching of him deep within her turned to hot friction. Her breathing burst out in rapid gusts. He was fucking her. God, she was being fucked. His hips jolted faster, harder. She felt a twinge of painful embarrassment at the way her breasts were shuddering as he moved against her. She crossed her arms over her chest, but he leaned forward, pressing her wrists to 67

the table next to her shoulders, forcing her to raise her hips to him. In this position his rapid thrusts seemed to plunge even deeper inside of her and, flushed with a potent mixture of embarrassment and arousal she writhed and moaned.

As he fucked her he released one of her wrists and brought his hand down to her pussy, laying his palm flat on her mound, pulling the soft skin there taut as he drew his hand slightly upward. She squirmed and, unable to stop herself, let out a little gasp as he moved his thumb down, onto her clit, stroking it lightly as he slowed his fucking, drawing out, out, out, letting her feel momentarily empty where he had been before plunging slowly back in. The way he was touching her clit, so softly, teasingly, was excruciatingly pleasurable. All her exhales were soft moans now.

Her excitement thrilled him, but he kept his hips in check, pumping into her rhythmically, teasingly as he worked her into a writhing frenzy with his caresses. Then, knowing she would not be able to hold out against the combination of his gentle touch on her tender little button and his hard length bowing in and out through her resonant depths he shifted tempo, moving from his gentle adagio to an exhilarating allegro, giving her a flurry of deep staccato notes. And as he went lower, deeper, fuller, her voice flew up the scale in perfect opposition, rising higher and higher in pitch but always small, quiet, a tiny accent until, at last, with a high, crying moan she came and in her moment of abandon he let his own orgasm burst from him.

She had brought on her fantasy climax in sync with the orgasm she had given herself. She lay there, feeling the ebbing throbs in her sex pulse against the hand that cupped her. It felt strange, those muscles convulsing involuntarily around her finger, 68

against the heel of her palm, as if they were being shocked by electrodes in a laboratory.

She wondered why it was that all her life she had never had normal sexual fantasies, but always imagined some kind of coercion. She’d always felt a little ashamed about this, as if there were something wrong with her. It seemed even weirder now, after all that had happened. And how could she be so frightened of Vaughn, and so aroused at the thought of him? He really did terrify her, but the idea of the threat, of the irrepressible longing of a man too strong to be fought off was irresistibly arousing to her.

On the evening of the third day of their uneasy cohabitation Devan was curled up on the sofa, reading. Vaughn was sitting at the dining table, watching her. Considering.

She had come to his cabin on purpose. Come for him. But she was playing her game very coolly. She didn't flirt. She never asked him about himself. It galled him; she was winning. His every waking and dreaming thought was wrapped up with her.

Christ. Why, after months of physical and even mental celibacy, was he so terribly, darkly aroused now, with her there? Every night when he went to bed, every morning when he awoke, he found himself masturbating furiously to thoughts that twisted his gut the moment after his orgasmic spasms subsided. Even during the day he would become suddenly, unbearably aroused and have to retreat to his room to silence, momentarily, the irrefutable demands of his body. And then he would come out of his room and find her, looking at once innocent and somehow disturbed, inevitably devouring the pretty prose of a book from his shelf. Like him she seemed to prefer the Russians.

As she sat, at the dining table, on the sofa, or curled up on the floor by the hearth, he would gaze at her, sensing that she sensed his eyes on her though she rarely met his gaze, and his mind would drag her into the dark, unexplored recesses of his imagination.

He wasn't a violent man. Or predatory. Or misogynistic. Even as a teenager he hadn't been one of those guys who'd try to get girls to do more than they wanted. If he ever sensed reluctance in a woman his own interest flagged. Even after fame brought hordes of horny groupies back stage in search of him, he'd always steered clear of the ones who seemed too young, too high, too drunk. All his life he'd been wary of hurting anyone.

And now it seemed that hurting her was all he thought about.

It had to be the thing that had happened to him. And the way he had found her there in his house. That he knew—almost for sure—that she'd come after him like those others had.

That, and her strangeness. Her quiet vulnerability, with something else lurking there.

At least those things were part of it. What it really was, though, the thing that stoked his cruel passion from those quiet embers of resentment and curiosity, was their isolation there at the cabin. Only his subconscious had grasped that there, deep in the woods at his secret hideaway, he was free of the laws and mores of society. That there, miles and miles from anyone, she was at his mercy. And it was this feeling power, felt but not consciously acknowledged, that fueled an endless stream of fantasies that aroused and disgusted him.

Seeing her before him, small, frightened, he would imagine what it would be like to simply take her. Not in the sense of the romance novel—the bodice-ripper. When he thought of taking her, he thought of taking her from herself and making her his--a thing for his use. There, away from the world he was in danger of forgetting that she belonged to herself.

He imagined going to her where she sat, on the floor in the radiant heat of the fire, her legs bent beneath her, her head resting on her palm, her elbow resting on the hearth. Striding to her. Standing over her. And, as she looked up, her face an innocent question, kneeling down by her and, without a word, without even thinking to set aside the novel in her hand, pushing her back, onto the floor. He did not think she would really say no, or cry. But he liked to imagine it. Her mouth shaping the no. Her head swiveling left and right on her neck in slow motion. Her face cold and gray and streaked with tears of no. He would not be rough. Taking off her clothes would be like peeling a thick-skinned fruit to be eaten. Simple. Necessary. Mundane. Calmly stripping off each piece of clothing—his sweats, his boxers. Pushing her legs apart, pushing in, pumping, slow or fast, to the end. Maybe she would be silent. Maybe he would forget that she was there, that there was more to it than his cock and how it felt. If he held her close and tight as he fucked her it would be similar to that convulsive, involuntary close tightness of his fist around his prick. That was one.

Another one. As they walked past one another in the living room, maybe just by the back of the sofa he would stop. Stop her. Make her look at him. Make her see, in looking at him, what he was thinking. Then slowly, deliberately, he would turn her toward the fireplace, pin her against the back of the couch, close an arm across her 71

waist. She would not fight. Holding her in place that way he would tug her sweats down, pull out his hard cock, press it to one hole or the other, thrust in, and fuck her until he came.

These were just ephemera. Phantoms which barely glanced the surface of his consciousness.

The fantasies were more elaborate. More concrete. And more damning. Even now his damned conscious mind was projecting a reel of these sinister images.

His mistrust fed his fantasy. He imagined going out, into the woods.

She watches as he puts on his shoes, opens the door, closes it behind him. She moves to the window, watching him cross the clearing before he disappears behind the shadowy screen of trees. Seizing her opportunity, the one she has been nervously awaiting, she scurries to his room. He has closed the door, but there is no lock, and she is undeterred by his silent request for privacy. She throws the door open and charges in, anxious to complete her mission before his return.

She is not like the others, after all. She is a freelance journalist, just starting out, desperate for a good story, to make a name for herself. She knows the rumors about him—the speculation about why the band had canceled a whole tour the year before at the last minute, his much-publicized divorce, all the talk of his sudden change in demeanor, his reclusiveness, the buzz about his secret hideaway in the woods. She has come to find the evidence behind those rumors. She has come for information. Not for him. That is why she acts the way she does, shrinking from him when he is close.

In a methodical frenzy she begins her hunt. Seeking proof. Letters. Photographs.

She opens the drawers in his nightstand and dresser, looking under his shirts and 72

boxers, riffling through old magazines and stacks of irrelevant scribblings—jottings of music and lyrics. She looks under the bed, but there is nothing there but bluish gray dust bunnies. She goes to the closet, pushing through jackets and jeans and scrambling over shoes and piled dirty clothes, and there, in the back, she finds what she is looking for.

His journal.

Too excited to wait she opens it then and there, flipping through the pages, scanning his scrawl, seeing that there, in her hands, his mystery is undone. The secrets that half-destroyed his life, ending his marriage, changing him from an affable outgoing guy into a taciturn recluse, fraying the solid bonds he had shared with the others in the band, eroding the joy he had once found in being a part of all that.

She knows. She knows, and she will take it all back with her. Publish all the ugly details. Then they will all know. Then the rest of what remains of his life will be over.

It is at this moment, as she stands before his disemboweled closet, his secret confession in her hand, that he steps into the doorway. Something has told him to return silently, to see what she has been doing in his absence. And this is how he finds her.