Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 (11 page)

“You? In the army? Never.” I couldn’t figure that one.

“I guess I’m a bit of a wanderer. I’ve tried everything at least one time.”

Now that was the truth. Stephanie seemed to have trouble sticking faithfully to one thing for very long. Was that bad, for us? What if we let her go because she vowed to keep quiet, but then she reversed her decision?

“I’m done.” Lightly, I tapped her behind. “Let’s go find some breakfast.”

I’d have her help me. Maybe let her wash and dry dishes. There were knives out there, in the kitchen. It could be a test, of sorts. I think I had her figured out, but I would rather know now, not later. I’d count the knives. Though if she were naked, where could she hide one? In my back was about her only choice, and I somehow didn’t think she was that sort of girl.

My thoughts went to dirty places.

If instructed correctly, Stephanie seemed far more likely to cave in, kneel and lick me precisely where I told her to than to want to put a knife in my back. I wanted to test that theory out, soon.

The big square window in my office overlooking the Nelly Bay road and the beach beyond was suffering the usual seaside ailment of getting all blurry from the salt deposits on the glass. Not that I was enjoying the view. Disgusted by my procrastination, I shoved back my chair from the paper-assaulted desk. No matter how high tech we got, the paper documents piled up.

The office was the opposite of where I wanted to be. Leaving Jodie home with a woman who had reasons to hate us seemed the stupidest thing ever. Yet the alternative was to do something that would draw attention to this day if suspicion were to fall on us. Plus we had to earn a living and Jodie had little chance of matching my income. The practice was surging forward and my partner, Chris—well he was not a partner yet, though I had great hopes—Chris was turning out well.

Four reasons had gained him the job. He was a great accountant, innovative at times when it came to promoting the practice, and friendly. And the fourth reason, that he was into kink and one of Kat’s previous Doms…that was why I’d first noticed him.

I glanced at my watch. Almost two PM, we’d both had lunch in the office a while earlier but, with the lunchtime rush over, we could afford to have a break. Marjorie could take over. She been with me long enough to know the place back to front. I went out to reception and set it up with her.

After a single, unintelligible grumble at me about losing potential clients, she resumed typing.

I knocked on Chris’s office door.

“Come in!”

No matter how often I saw him, his neatly trimmed, pure-blond hair drew my eye. I doubted he bleached it. It was so close to white I felt like reaching for my sunglasses.

His desk looked a tad neater than mine, but then I’d been flinging a few docs about like Frisbees today. Not my usual manner. I guess having a kidnapped woman in my basement wasn’t too normal either. I doubted Marjorie would dismiss that excuse with merely a huffed look over her silver glasses.

“Think you can stand giving me that lesson on fling-dong-doo, or whatever martial art it is that you practice?”

He grinned. We had a running joke about judo versus more
practical
branches of fighting. I knew he was correct but that didn’t stop me ribbing him every chance I got, and since he happily taunted me back, we got along famously.

“Now?” Half-disbelieving, he looked from under his brow.

“Now. If you’ve got a change of clothes? We can go up to the park. I have a sudden desire to learn from you, oh wise one.”

“No worries. I’ve got my running gear in my bag. Give me five minutes to change.”

It was the truth. This predicament we were in disturbed me. Learning a better way to kill someone, and defend myself, seemed a good idea. Why? Who knew. I wasn’t about to fight the cops, and Steph…I could take her out with one finger. Maybe it was a male instinct of some sort, buried under millennia of evolution. When threatened, pick up a big stick so you can beat your enemy’s fucking brains out?

Maybe. Besides, I could then teach Jodie myself. She’d had lessons from Chris for weeks. Time for me to do the same.

Once we’d both changed into shorts and t-shirts, we strolled up the hill road to the park. A few tourists sat on picnic blankets and benches eating ice creams and other crap. We ignored them, though once we started sparring most of them looked our way.

Actual kicking and punching wasn’t the strongest part of judo, since it was more a grappling-style martial art incorporating ways to throw someone or, in the groundwork, ways to choke, pin, or lock them down. From how Chris moved and responded to my combinations, he’d blended several martial art disciplines seamlessly.

After twenty minutes we were both running with sweat and we needed time to shower and change, so I called a halt. To cool off, we sat on the grass swigging from our water bottles. I plucked at the chest of my t-shirt and waved it to and fro to help the sea breeze dry the sweat.

“That was…” I looked for a good word. “Enlightening.”

He swung to face me. “A compliment? What brought that on?”

“A brain aneurysm maybe?” Grinning, I shrugged. “Take it while you can get it. You’re a good teacher. I should know. I used to teach at the club.”

“You’ve stopped?”

“Yeah. A month ago.” I swigged down more cool water. I looked about to see who was nearby. “Kink and doing things to Jodie to make her scream, even if she wants me too, it made teaching judo seem strange. That’s the best I can explain it. I stopped before I got to the stage where I was forever self-analyzing and gazing at my navel. Life’s too short for getting hung up on hang-ups.”

“Truth. Here’s to that.” He waved his water bottle at me and chugged down a few swallows, then wiped his mouth. “I know just what you mean, man. Some days…” He shook his head and grimaced. “Some days I feel so fucked up. Some of my kinks I could follow down a rabbit hole forever and never come up for air. You get me?”

“S and m? That power rush you get?”

“That, yeah, sort of.”

“Yes.” I nodded. Chris was a sadistic Dominant too. “I understand. Kat’s helped me sort out when to pull myself back, but I’m always having to double-check myself. I don’t want to hurt Jodie more than she needs me to, or more than is wise.”

“Yup. Though Kat?” He shot me a quizzical look. “That woman is so confusing, so enigmatic. Bouncy, bubbly, mean too when she switches. Says she’s a sub, but naaah. She never really submits. If she did, though…” He pursed his lips. “She’s damn hot. I’d have kept her.”

“You too?” I smiled. “She’s left a trail of perplexed Doms in her wake. I don’t think she understands herself either.”

Fate likes to mess with us humans—to run us over and then come back for a second and third try. When I got back into my office, I clicked to the local news update before getting stuck into work again, and there was the report on two bodies being found at Leon Edante’s mansion. Nothing as yet revealed by the police except that the deaths were suspicious and homicide detectives were handling the case. Any members of the public with information regarding the incident were urged to contact the police.

I sat back in my chair and gnawed my lip. Shit. Well, it had to happen. Now to hope none of the evidence led to us.

My cell phone rang, I picked it up, and Kat was there.

“Klaus?”

“Hi, Kat.”

“Have you seen the news? About Leon Edante?”

Fate was backing that truck over me as we spoke. “Yes. Just now.”

“Probably another case of too rich and too many designer drugs. Fucking painful how many idiots can’t handle being well off.”

I grunted.

“Say, Klaus. You rang me Saturday night about him, remember? About where he lived?”

Keep calm. She cannot know. “I did, yes. Jodie and I were thinking of going looking at some of the nice houses on the island and I remembered his.”

“Ahh. I see. What an awful coincidence, hey?”

“Yes. I imagine there’ll be a ton of police around the house by now.”

“Yes. Did you not end up going then?”

“No, we didn’t.”

Her pause was a little too long, but we chatted for a bit more before saying goodbye. I put my phone down on my desk and arranged it with my fingertips so it was perfectly square on to the edge. Did it matter if she suspected anything? Perhaps…if she told the cops. I’d just have to pray she didn’t. Nothing we could do. She was a friend of sorts. Most likely she’d say more to me or to Jodie, before she went that far. We’d have some warning.

I decided then and there to put together an emergency escape plan. Fake passports, cash, and maybe see if I could find out how people went about leaving Australia without going through customs. Boat for sure, up to Papua New Guinea, then there’d be a way. We needed to end up someplace with no extradition.

All we seemed to be doing was frigging cleaning. Now it was washing up after lunch. What next? And this wasn’t even my house.

I tried not to scowl as Jodie passed me yet another plate. Only us two, how had we used so many dishes? And not using the electric dishwasher was criminal. Their cat, Baxter, wove around my feet, looking up at me, purring, and no doubt hoping I’d give him some more of the canned food Jodie had scooped into his bowl.

“Sorry, cat. We’re all out.”

“He’s gotten inches fatter in the last six months.” Jodie searched under the sink water and froth for more dishes. “Klaus will be home soon.” The sideways inspection she gave me sent anxiety burrowing into me.

Klaus…I pretended to be absorbed in drying a bunch of spoons. Was he going to expect sex? This was surreal. Ninety percent of the time he and Jodie were friendly even if there was that expectation of obedience. The rest of the time they seemed to regard me as some sort of a sexually available captive. But I was me. This was my body. I didn’t care if he was attractive, or if he had three heads, letting him fuck me was not on
my
fucking agenda.

He was a sadist too. I had no need for floggings or spankings or whatever evil things he did to Jodie. Why couldn’t they just accept that I would help them and let me
go
?

After breakfast and cleaning up those dishes had come and gone, Jodie had smiled at me, undone the link between the wrist cuffs, and let me dress in a short lacy and strappy dress of hers. The pastel blue suited her more than me, but I was happy to not be parading about naked. Though she’d clucked her tongue and ordered me not to wear panties.

But… Frick. I was growing tired of these orders. I didn’t want to be Klaus’s latest second-best woman to kick around. I didn’t want to be hurt. She seemed to think I was some creature that had proven its loyalty, and so she’d rewarded me. Her praise had, oddly, pleased me. I couldn’t deny that, no matter how silly my reaction seemed.

But then my mind
had
been totally fuzzed out after the shower…after she’d cornered me there. That had been so taboo, so hot, so unexpected. Jodie had made me come with her fingers inside me. I clutched the plate I had been drying for a few seconds as I ran through that in my head.

God. Sure, once upon a time at university, I’d drooled over her figure from afar, and on Saturday night I’d stupidly done other stuff while she was passed out, but I’d never
ever
imagined she felt that way about me.

An orgasm though, it wasn’t like she could buy my soul with one. She’d need a trillion of them to do
that
.

Now, I got told to clean and they expected me to somehow destroy my life and be their little sex robot so that they could keep their life the same? Crap. Jodie’s dismissal of my intelligence and my need to be me, and not a
thing
she and Klaus could manipulate, was contemptible.

Oh. Fuck me dead. I stared at what I was drying. A bunch of cutlery, among them a steak knife. Not just any steak knife. This was extra-long and extra-pointy. My ears rang; I had such an urgent need to use this. To use this and get Jodie to open the doors and let me go.

Then Klaus could go stuff himself.

I swiftly thought through what I should do, what might go wrong, and I waited until Jodie had let out the water and there clearly were no other knives near her. Important, that part. No point waving a knife at her only to have one waved back at me.

The door to the outside was the other side of her at the far end of this kitchen. Locked and solid, just like the long kitchen window that looked out over the ocean far below. But she knew where the key was.

I could do this.

Heart thudding, I stepped up to her, put the point of it into her side enough so she’d feel its sharpness. I croaked out my demands as fast as I could so she’d hear it all before she had a chance to react. “I’ve got a knife, Jodie. Show me the key. Don’t do anything stupid. Just the key. I’ll go. I promise I won’t tell about you and Klaus. Okay?”

Silence.

“The key.” I sucked in a breath and poked her harder.

She leaned into the sink a second with her palms on the counter top. “What the fuck are you doing, Steph? Didn’t you hear what Klaus said?”

“What?” What the hell was she on about? Was she trying to fool me? “I have the knife, girl.”

“Think. Did Klaus tell you that you would be punished if you did this? Yes. Did he say the house was secure? Yes. Are we going to fucking let you go when we trust you?” She swung her head and stared at me through a fringe of her auburn hair like some tiger in the grass.

“Um.” I gulped. My grip on the knife became sweaty.

“Will this make us trust you sooner? No. And last of all, am I going to give you the key because you threaten me? No.”

“What? Listen, bitch. I’m not a pushover—”

She tapped her finger on my shoulder and went on quietly. “I obey Klaus. Not you. I know you, Steph. You’re the girl who had to carry the baby spiders outside our unit after we sprayed bug spray. I was half expecting you to do CPR on the damn things. You’re not going to stick that in me.”

“You don’t know me that—”

She pushed my hand back and made as if to step away, but I was cross and pushed toward her. When her hand slipped along my wrist, the point ran forward and jabbed into her.