Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 (23 page)

“I did it this way because I wanted to. I like making you suffer. I like making you scream from orgasms as well as pain. I like fucking you.” His eyes turned mean and implacable—a stone god, preaching to his subject. “I like you at my feet and under my hand.”

Christ.

“But you’re going to let me go, afterward.” I said it firmly, made that not a question.

The pause worried me.

While he swirled his finger round and round in my navel, he let his gaze take in my body from my face to my pussy. His hand above, pinning my wrists, was hard. “I don’t know. You wanted the truth? That’s it.”

This revelation floored me. “You can’t…you can’t do that.”

“Maybe not, but I like to dream of possible. See, that’s how much I like you and I like this.” His grip tightened, hurting. “I like having you. Owning you.”

“You have Jodie.” I strained against his grip, pushing outward and getting precisely nowhere. “You said truth was important! You said you’d let me go.”

“I would have, then. Seems I have this little quirk. Just that once, I needed to see that you liked this situation enough to not walk away. But now I know what’s deep down inside
there
, Steph.” With the forefinger of his free hand, he pressed on the center of my forehead. “I know, and that’s enough. Protesting now…” He shrugged. “It adds to the spice.”

“It does?” I said weakly.

“Yes, sweetheart, it does.”

Then he freed me. I stood there underneath the warm running water, rubbing my wrists, and wondering what in hell I’d gotten myself into.

Criminal charges? The differences were astounding. Who wouldn’t rather be charged with whatever the fuck it was that I’d done, maybe sent to jail a while, compared to this madness? I shut my eyes, ignoring him for once, while I rallied my bedraggled mind.

“Turn around, girl,” he said quietly, and with his hands on my hips he encouraged me. “I’ll soap you up.”

He ran his hands and the soap over me, everywhere. Though it stung in a few spots, like where the K was cut, and my thighs, back, and arms ached from bruises and sore muscles, I became aroused again. I couldn’t help it. I shut my eyes and let him play with my body, remembering Jodie doing the same.

I moaned when he spread my legs and roughly soaped my pussy. My traitorous mind whispered to me,
who wouldn’t rather have this than be in jail?

*****

Over the next week, he trained me…I guess I had to use that word.
Trained.
I associated that with dogs and pets, but it was the best word to describe what he did. I knew what he was doing and why and even knew why all the praise and the pain and the possessive ways he touched me should be ignored as the underhanded actions that they were. Negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement. I was a self-aware Pavlov’s dog.

It was clear as glass to me. I understood all the whys and yet I still began crave his approval and his touch, to dread earning a punishment. I wasn’t dumb. I’d passed most of my exams at university. I just couldn’t be bothered devoting myself to finishing something in which I’d lost interest.

Maybe that was why this worked so well? Dead simple. No choice of subjects. No distractions from the path. I did this, or else. Instead of the crazy clutter of life, I knew my purpose. The only thing I lacked and could not have was diversity. I wanted out to see the world. To feel the sun on my face. I wanted to be able to race down a riverbank and plunge into the water. I wanted more than life in a room.

One day, he let me out.

The door clicked as it unlocked. Quickly, I knelt. That was my first task when he entered a room. I’d put on the little red dress with the overlaid red lace and no underwear that morning. The hem came to slightly above the crease of my ass. A deliberate length, of course. No matter how I tugged on it, the very edge of the lips of my pussy were visible, even more so when I knelt with my forearms flat on the floor. I’d checked in the mirror by bending over and looking back at my reflection. It had both annoyed me when I’d first tried one of these dresses on, and made me imagine him looking, and touching…

Which is what he did this morning after circling behind me and standing there a while.

“Good girl.” I heard the scuffle of his shoes, and the soft noise of cloth on cloth as he crouched. Then his voice, closer, a few feet back. I kept my forehead down. I’d felt the cane enough to know I’d rather display myself and be admired, than be punished.

I was already anticipating what he might do, already wet, and so his finger entering me only made me choke momentarily then moan. I wiggled and his finger slid deeper then in and out a few times.

“You realize how wet you get for me now?”

He waited. Expecting an answer? As if I’d admit that out loud. I would
not
say that.

I grunted, tensing in case he decided that was an insult, but he only laughed.

“Poor thing. You’d go down on Jodie when she’s unconscious…”

Oh fuck, I tensed more.

“But you won’t say how aroused thinking about me touching you makes you? I know that’s what it is.” Propping one hand on the floor, he leaned over my back. So close. The heat of his body warmed mine. “I find that amusing. A week ago, I can guarantee you’d not have reacted like this. I can see your moisture down there. That’s how excited you are. Answer. Why do you think that’s changed? Hmm?”

He jammed his finger up as far as it would go then shook me side to side using it, like I was a popsicle on a stick. “Why?”

Saying this out loud bothered me. Even more so when he was forcing a digit into me, and finger fucking me. I said my answer softly. Maybe hoping he wouldn’t hear? I had no idea except this mortified me. “Because you’re always touching me when I’m kneeling like this, Sir.”

“That’s it? Tell me more. What else do I do?”

Crap.
“You put your fingers inside me.”

“And I make you come.”

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered.

After his finger left me, I felt metal tinkle, and he clicked a chain to my collar. A few times he’d used the collar to tie me to something, but this was the first time for a while that he’d attached a leash.

“Rise,” he ordered and I obeyed. “We’re going outside. The back yard. Our one neighbor is down a drop off to the left. Do not talk too loudly or I will be forced to gag you. Your wrists will stay cuffed and linked.” He attended to that. “But you can walk with your legs unlinked. I trust you that much.”

I’d never visited their house before and only had a vague idea as to where it was. The beach must be near—I’d heard gulls crying and smelled the sea. From the kitchen window I’d even seen the waves rolling in. Trepidation made every movement like walking on fractured glass. We had to go up to the next floor then down an external flight of steps. This was an old house, refurbished, but pretty.

I smiled as I descended the steps, despite the peculiar circumstances. The sky was a blinding blue, the breeze magnificent and salty as it cooled my face. The house was rendered brick and timber shutters and Mediterranean in colors—azure blue trims and terracotta against expanses of white. I absorbed all this like the proverbial sponge.

“You look so happy.” Klaus observed me as I stood on the lawn at the bottom of the steps. Bare foot. I wriggled my toes, smelled the grass. Smelled
everything
. I’d barely moved two steps before being struck dumb by my surroundings.

“It’s been…” I blinked, swallowed. “Two weeks?” I wasn’t sure of the time. “Without the sun.” With hardly anyone to talk to, as Klaus was at work during the day. I’d had snacks for lunch and not seen Jodie at all, only heard her moving about upstairs.

“I figured you needed to get outside.” He tugged on the chain leash. “Come. The beach is that way, below a big steep cliff. No one can see us up here though.”

As we approached the edge, the salt-gray grass dropped away in a small slope, petering out to bare earth and crumbled rock before the ground fell away. With my wrists linked, I was afraid to get too close, but I went up on tiptoes, in a vain attempt to see the beach. I couldn’t but it didn’t matter. I smiled again and squinted out across the expanse of the sea, which slowly, massively, rolled landward with lines of lacy froth decorating the tops of the waves.

“You may sit.”

“I love it,” I whispered, sinking down onto my knees then shifting so I could sit with my legs to one side. As I’d lowered myself, Klaus had put a hand to my elbow, as if afraid I would topple. I frowned at him, puzzled, but he’d sat down to my left and was looking out to sea. My dress had ridden up so I tried to tuck it down to no avail. If anyone out there on the distant yachts or speedboats had binoculars they’d get an eyeful.

I didn’t often get a chance to study him, my cruel yet also loving captor. I knew he was loving, as I’d seen how he treated Jodie, when he wasn’t beating her. He even, I had to admit, was caring toward me at times, like that hand on my elbow. Love and beatings. But she wanted pain. What a mad concept.

The wind hummed in my ear and whipped my hair about my face. His features were sharp enough, square enough, to look beautifully masculine, yet regal in a way. Kingly? I smirked at that notion. Maybe he’d put crack in my bowl of cereal this morning?

Blond stubble marked his chin. I remembered the roughness of that from the last time he’d made love to—no, wrong word—fucked me.

Where was Jodie? I’d like to ask her to her face what she thought of her man keeping me to himself in their basement. I’d like to say sorry to her, again, maybe this time she would understand. Sadness leaked in, in spite of the cheerful surroundings.

“Where’s Jodie?” When he swung his face to me and frowned, I added, “Sir.”

“She’s coming.”

She was? My heart beat faster. I toyed with what to say, wanting to be nonchalant before him, but desperate won out. “Does she forgive me?”

“You’ll have to ask her that.” I guess I looked worried because he added, “She will. I know she will.”

“Thank you.” I swept my wind-teased hair from my eyes and pretended I was unaffected. I must be mad, pleading for forgiveness after what he’d done.

My eyes ached from restrained tears.
Thank god, she’s forgiven me.

I tripped into an assumption. “Does this mean you trust me?” I sat up a little.
Does this mean you’re letting me go?

The way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled was actually cute, and I smiled back. So easy to see him as normal when he was like this.

“You’d like that?”

I nodded. A stupid question.

“What would you do if I released you today?”

I opened my mouth to answer, shut it. What would I do?

He was going to send me outside Australia, or so he’d said. I didn’t want that. But then I didn’t want to be arrested either, and…I held my breath, thinking…and I didn’t want to send Jodie to jail. I stared at him, seeing that he was waiting for whatever I came up with. Like he knew my confusion. What had happened in this house, by his hand, mostly, was something I would never forget. He still scared me but, damn him, in some twilight zone way, he attracted me too. He always had. I’d survived his worst, hadn’t I?

And strangely, most terrifying and telling fact of them all, I’d experienced the depth of his desire for me. He loved Jodie, and yet desired me also. Not love, no, I really doubted that, but it was more than I’d ever had from any man. Crystal clear, hot as the center of the sun, desire.

Klaus didn’t mess around with misdirection or lies. What he said, he meant.

What would I do if he released me, right now?

I shook my head, unwilling to commit, or to say something dumb. Which was likely, knowing me.

A cream-colored cat strolled up and stepped onto his lap, begging for a pat by rubbing its head on his hand. To my amusement, Klaus obliged, giving it a full body pat that made the cat stretch and purr even more while treadling its paws on his leg.

I knew so little about what happened in this house. A frown crept onto my forehead and stayed as I contemplated my place. Fucktoy. A humiliating name. But with the name came a whole string of emotions. I’d never had a man want me in the crazy way that Klaus seemed to.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I pointed at the cat moving its paws on his leg. I was sure there were claws involved.

“Yes. But I like patting Baxter. He’s our pet. I’m willing to take a bit of pain with the pleasure.” His smile turned to curiosity.

“Huh.” Clearly that was referring to us. I refused to rise to the bait, but I looked out across the sparkling ocean and saw an opening. “There’s a difference between him and me. He has freedom.” Then I picked up a pebble and threw it out past the cliff edge. “He can go where he wants to.”

“True, to a degree.” Klaus propped himself back on one arm and contemplated me.

This struck me as so odd—like we were an ordinary couple having an ordinary conversation. The sun warmed my skin and I plucked a stalk of grass to tease the cat with. With my wrists linked, to reach the cat, I had to stretch out both arms. I tickled just next to one ear, smirking when his ear twitched.

“You like playing with danger. Baxter has a mean right paw. He might seem free, but he relies on us for food and shelter and love, companionship, even for help if he gets hurt. Freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Sheesh. Sure it ain’t.

After trapping it with his paw, Baxter chewed at the stalk but I grinned and tugged it loose.

Klaus nodded, deflecting my stalk when I teased under the cat’s chin. “You do like danger.” He grabbed my wrist and stopped me pulling back.

“Let go.”

The
mean
returned to his gaze. Mr. Predator.

Uh-oh.
I swallowed around the constricted spot in my throat. “Please, Sir. Let me go.”

“Come here.”

Then he hauled me over his lap, facedown, arranging me so his right hand nestled on my bottom with his fingers a miniscule amount away from my cleft. I let him, subsiding so my forehead rested on my arm, and waiting. I was too…used to this? Too something I couldn’t figure.

Ugh. Too content. Though he’d used some pain here and there, unless I did something wrong, he hadn’t truly hurt me for days. Humiliated perhaps, that was a constant, but not so much pain. All the orgasms had rotted my brain, apparently. I sighed as his fingers slipped upward.