Sweet: A Dark Love Story (5 page)

He laughed, and it was a dark sound that sent chills down her spine. “No, they’ve done exactly what I instructed them to do for the last four years. When I realized you were the key, the only link left to Joseph Evans, and that I could get what I wanted from you, I focused all my attention on you. When your term in foster care was almost up, I approached the Blakes about keeping you financially in their care.”

She drew in a ragged breath as pain rippled through her. “You mean Claire and Clay didn’t want me? They were just going to let me leave when I turned eighteen? They only kept me for money?”

Kat wanted to refuse to believe it, remembering how insistent they had been that she stay with them after she’d graduated and turned eighteen, and then helped her get settled in her dorm room right before college started. They had visited her every week, or she had gone to their home to do laundry and all the other “family” things that she had started to take for granted over the past six years. And he was telling her none of it had been real?

He shook his head. “No, I doubt that. I think they were determined to keep you either way, but I simply made it possible for them to do so more comfortably.”

She was still wounded, Raw pain flared inside her as though someone had abraded her nerves with an emery board. “I don’t understand. They didn’t want me until you paid them to keep me?”

He sighed, sounding exasperated. “No, as I said, I simply made it easier for them to do so.”

She shook her head, her mind whirling with confusion. “But why would you do that, and why would they allow it?”

He wore a strange expression, one that was a mix of amusement and perhaps a touch of bitterness. “Let me answer your second question first. They accepted the help because they thought I was an altruistic man, and they were moved by the fact that I cared enough about your fate to want to help you anonymously despite what your father had done to my family.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “They know who you are, and what my father did, and they never questioned your kindness?”

He shook his head. “No, especially not when I told them how kind you had been after the trial, and how upset you were that your father had gotten off. I told them I was concerned about you, so I had kept tabs on you over the last couple of years, and with you coming out of foster care, I wanted to help provide you with a good start in life.”

She shook her head, struggling to take it all in. “Why didn’t you just tell me this?”

His lips tightened. “I’m certain you already know the answer to that. You were too young at eighteen for me to just take you then. You needed time to grow up a little bit. I didn’t want a baby having my babies. Now that you’re a mature woman, the investment has paid off. And I think we both know you would have turned down any offers of assistance from me,” he added with a sly tilt to his mouth. “Too many strings.”

“You’re damn right I would have, and as soon as I get a job, I’m going to start repaying you for your
kindness
.” The last word practically oozed with bitterness. “You still haven’t explained why you did all that?”

“That’s simple enough. The Blakes are conservative people, and you seemed eager to please them. I knew they would exert a good influence on you, and it would be easier to control your actions. It was also easier to keep tabs on you when I knew exactly where you were…and exactly who you were with.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He winked at her. “You dear friend and roommate Michelle was in my employment for the last four years, and she reported everything back to me. She also did her best to ensure you didn’t get too serious about any boys, because I made that a stipulation. I didn’t want you falling in love with some young fool when you belonged to me.”

A fierce sense of betrayal swept through her as the nights she had talked and giggled with her dorm mate, the times they gone out together, and the friendship she thought they’d had crumbled to dust under the truth. No wonder Michelle had always wanted to do girls’ night out, or even better, girls’ night in. She’d never liked any of the few boyfriends Kat had introduced to her, and she had always encouraged her to focus on studying instead of dating.

At the time, Kat had just assumed Michelle was simply a conscientious academic who cared about her as a friend and wanted to see her succeed too. Now, realizing she’d lived with a spy for the last four years, one who had used her influence to further Declan’s agenda, made her stomach churn with nausea. She pushed away her plate without eating anything else. “How else did you control my life for the last four years?”

He shrugged. “That’s pretty much it, though I have intimidated or paid off a couple of little fuckers to get out of your life when things started to get too serious.”

Through the flash of irritation at the boys being such cowards, and the pain still clinging to her like a shroud, she gave him a simpering smile. “If your goal was to keep me untouched, you failed. I’m certainly not a virgin.”

He didn’t even blink. “I didn’t think you would be. I’m not a virgin either, and the last thing I want to do is break you in physically before I start breaking you. I wanted you to have some experience, and to know what it felt like to have a cock in you before mine entered. I just didn’t want you to get serious about any of those little fuckers and do something impulsive, like elope before you finished college.”

“How I wish I had. I would have married any of them if I’d known it would save me from you.”

He observed her coolly as he finished the vegetables on his plate, not speaking until he had swallowed the last bite. “Sweet, deluded Kat, do you really think I would have let something like that stop me? You could have been married and had little brats of your own, and I still would’ve taken you at the right time. You belong to me, and now, you always will. You wasted the opportunity to have a short-lived average life with any other man, and now you’ll never have the chance again.”

His words shocked her. “You would have torn me away from my own children just to be part of your mad plan, if I’d had any?”

He shrugged. “I might have allowed you to bring them. It’s a moot point, since they don’t exist.”

She couldn’t let it go. “What kind of monster takes a mother away from her children?”

He got to his feet abruptly, the chair screeching against the hardwood floor as he shoved it back quickly enough for it to fall with a crash. “What kind of monster takes a wife and unborn baby away from their family? Your father.” He slammed his hand onto the small table, making the silverware and plates on it clatter together. “We’re arguing over something that didn’t happen. If it had, I would have been no worse than your father.”

She sneered at him. “That’s the standard to live up to then, is it? I guess by that reasoning, kidnapping me, sexually assaulting me, and planning to knock me up against my will is all about as bad as my father robbing, raping, and murdering your wife and child.” Even as she said the words, she regretted them. It wasn’t fear of his reaction that prompted the regret. No, it was the way his face paled, and the stark reflection of pain in his pale-gray eyes.

He came around the table quickly, and she braced herself for him to grab her or hit her. Instead, he walked past her stiffly, in a rapid clip. She was actually surprised by his show of restraint as he sped from the kitchen. If he’d been her father or her uncles, she would have been lying on the floor by now, cradling a throbbing cheekbone or staunching the flow of blood from a broken nose.

A few moments later, bracing herself to face him again since she couldn’t stay in the kitchen all night, she turned and walked through the house and up the stairs. He wasn’t in sight, and she made it to her room without running into him again. It was a relief to close the door and push the chair underneath the knob, and she was happy to have survived the meal with no more than angry words exchanged.

As she settled on the bed, trying to force her mind to the problem of how to escape, she couldn’t help another dart of regret at the awful thing she had said, though his awful words and actions had spurred them. Maybe she’d gone too far, but anger at his manipulations wiped away the shred of remorse.

For a long moment, she indulged in self-pity and mourned the loss of the relationships she’d had the last six years. Michelle had been a friend, and it hurt to know she’d never actually been her real friend, but it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did to know the Blakes had been practically on Declan’s payroll as well.

Despite how he dressed it up, the bald truth was they had stayed part of her life past the age of legal obligation because he had paid them to. They had been more like parents to her than either one of her own, but they had never been her real parents. She’d never been more conscious of that reality than she was at the moment as tears slipped down her cheeks.

Trapped in the room that she had barricaded herself in, on this private island, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life, even after the police had brought the news that her father had killed himself in a drunk driving accident two days after the state dropped its charges against him. Then, there had been the tentative hope that she was finally breaking free, and though she hadn’t expected to enjoy foster care, it had seemed like it couldn’t be any worse than living with her biological father and her boisterous uncles, all of them angry drunks, with fists that were quick to fly.

Even then, she’d known none of them would offer to keep her, even if social services would have allowed it, and she’d been right. Not one had been present when the social worker came for her a couple of days later—though they had probably cleared out to avoid being picked up for active warrants rather than feeling compelled to avoid saying an emotional (yeah, right) goodbye to their niece.

The Blakes had been lovely and warm and welcoming, and now she knew why. Even if he hadn’t been involved in the beginning, he had propped them up as her pseudo-parents, and they had gone along with it. It didn’t matter their motivations, or even if they’d thought they were doing a good thing for her. She was betrayed by the fact they had taken money to help keep her in their lives, and they’d never told her about it or hinted at any other reason for maintaining contact besides that they loved her.

He had stolen her parents from her, and she hoped it provided him a measure of comfort or satisfaction to have ripped out her heart. Maybe it would be enough for him, and he would end this farce.

And maybe she would sprout wings and fly herself back to the mainland.

Neither possibility seemed likely to occur, so she was still on her own and relying on her wits to free her from the situation.

It was the middle of the night, and she hoped she had waited long enough for him to fall asleep. After hours of thinking and strategizing, she’d come to the conclusion that the only means of escape from the island was to acquire the key to the boat and the boathouse. If he kept that with him, she would have to take it when he was distracted, preoccupied, or asleep. Asleep seemed like the most likely scenario that might succeed, and she had waited tensely as the numbers slowly crept by on the clock, until it was finally two a.m.

The house was quiet and dark when she opened her door, at least as far she could see, and most importantly, his room was also dark as she crept down the hallway toward it. She held her breath as she carefully turned the knob slowly to ensure it didn’t squeak or open with a click. When she had it fully turned, she eased the door open, letting out a soft exhale when she saw his form under the covers.

He slept with the curtains open, and the full moon provided enough illumination for her to see he was on the bed, curled up in the fetal position. She was temporarily distracted by the idea that he was in pain, but she squashed the thought, reminding herself she didn’t care about his pain after all he’d inflicted on her.

With determination, and in her bare feet since she had worried the sandals would reveal her presence, she tiptoed across the hardwood floor, bracing herself for a step to squeak at any moment. Apparently, he was rich enough, or the house was high-quality enough, not to have any weak or squeaky spots in the floor.

She crossed the room silently, and he stayed in the same position the entire time, with one arm extended from the light blanket covering him. She was half-convinced her thundering heartbeat was loud enough to wake him as she reached the bed, gaze darting over the surface of the nightstand near him.

There was nothing that looked like keys there, so with a deep inhale that she held in a superstitious fashion, as though it would keep him from waking, she eased open the top drawer of the nightstand. Looking down, she couldn’t make out many details of what she saw, but her eyes widened when the moonlight reflected off the silver barrel of a gun.

She let out a cry of shock when his hand fastened around her wrist, pulling her on top of him as he rolled her over and pinned her to the bed underneath his body. She shoved against him, trying to buck him off. “Let go of me.”

He chuckled darkly. “I told you there would be a wedding night, and that you would come to me.”

She gasped. “I didn’t… I wasn’t… I just want the damn key for the boathouse.” Her tone revealed her panic, and she strained to throw him off her again.

“I know what you want, and I’m going to give it to you.”

Kat tried to turn her head away, but he captured her cheeks between his hands and held her in place as his mouth approached. She tried one last time to reason with him and to remind herself why she was there. “I didn’t come for this. I just want the keys.”

He ignored her words as his lips softly touched hers. They coaxed her to respond as he kissed her, making her gasp and her lips part. Declan ran his tongue across her bottom lip before easing inside her mouth. She knew she should pull away, turn her head, or perhaps even bite his tongue, but the feather-soft kiss started sensations deep in her belly, and instead of turning from him, her body sagged as it relaxed into the embrace.

She put her hands to his shoulders, telling herself she meant to push him away even as she dug her fingertips into his firm flesh. When his tongue stroked over hers, she massaged it in return before trapping it against the side of her mouth, between her cheek and teeth, sucking lightly before she nipped him.

He let out a startled grunt, and the kiss changed from sweet to passionate in the blink of an eye. His pace increased, the force of his kiss strengthened, and all she could do was surrender to the maelstrom of sensations. Denying her own response would be like standing fast in the face of a hurricane, trying to remain on her feet and show it didn’t affect her. She wasn’t that good of an actress.

His mouth slid down to her chin and across her neck. Her stomach fluttered as he skimmed her carotid artery with his tongue, and then his teeth. She moaned when he bit firmly at the bend of her neck, a conflicting array of sensations accompanying the gesture. Chief among them was pleasure, but with a heavy dose of guilt for enjoying herself. When he finally lifted his head to look down at her, she let out a sigh of relief that she didn’t have to keep fighting herself for the moment.

Declan moved lower, nibbling his way toward her breasts. Each nip her flesh sent a spark of electricity shooting through her, but the closer he got to her tender nipples, the more tense she became. She held her breath and braced herself as his mouth encompassed one of her nipples and a good deal of her areola, and she couldn’t hide the pleasure as he started to suck firmly.

She arched her back and thrashed beneath him, uncertain if she was trying to escape the touch or deny her own willingness to proceed. When Declan released her nipple with a soft popping sound, she almost grunted her disappointment. Clinging to the last shreds of self-control helped her hide any response, but she was a wreck on the inside.

Kat was devastated by how quickly she was surrendering to him, ceding all control to the man pinning her to the bed. She wanted to be strong and defiant, but it felt so good to have him touch her, and part of her, deep down, almost felt like she had been waiting for this all her life, drifting through limbo rather than actively engaging as she had awaited reconnecting with her prince charming—who wasn’t so charming.

She cried out with shock and a hint of pain when his teeth scraped her breast, nibbling on the underside. Kat threaded her fingers through his hair, uncertain if she was going to pull him closer or push him way.

Declan moved laterally across her chest, biting the flesh as he went. When he reached her left breast, his tongue swirled around the taut nipple before his teeth clamped onto the fleshy part of her breast, biting forcefully enough to make her scream. “What are you doing? That hurts.” But in a good way.

He lifted his head, and his expression was full of dark delight. “I’m marking you.”

She rolled her eyes. “You keep saying that. What does that even mean?”

He lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “It means I want to see my mark on every inch of you. I want to leave bite marks on your breasts and your belly, whisker burns on the insides of your thighs, and splashes of my cum all over your sweet little pussy. I’m marking you as mine and claiming you.”

“What if I don’t want that?” It was an ambiguous question, made even more unclear by the fact she didn’t know the answer herself.

“You certainly don’t give off the impression that this isn’t what you want.” His hands had moved down her body as his mouth went further south, and he stopped the slow way he had been advancing downward an inch at a time. Instead, he went straight to her folds, which were far too easily displayed to him by the way the silk nightie and peignoir had slithered up to her hips as he had flipped her onto the bed and on her back.

The set had included a pair of underwear, but they were skimpy briefs that did nothing to dissuade him and certainly offered no shielding from the truth of her arousal. His fingers slipped under the edge of the panties and into her opening, finding her wet and easily accommodating two of his fingers. “It feels like you want this too.”

She wanted to deny that, but then she would look like a fool and a liar in light of the fact that her juices gleamed on his fingers as he lifted his hand to his mouth to suck them clean.

“Delicious.” His mouth resumed its trail southward, biting her stomach as he went. As hard as he bit, she was certain there would be marks in the morning, but she was beyond caring at the moment. Despite her own inner turmoil and the circumstances that had brought her here, she couldn’t deny she wanted Declan regardless of all the reasons why she shouldn’t.

She winced when he veered to the left to bite firmly on her hip, leaving another mark. The pain shot through her, and she wanted to tell him to stop, but the pleasure that followed in its wake kept her silent.

Declan extended his tongue, and she trembled as the damp appendage moved down to her pussy. Her heart was racing in her ears, and a voice in the back of her mind was demanding she stop this right now. As his fingers made swift work of the tiny panties included with the set, she shook under the force of the sensations. She couldn’t allow this to continue, and she opened her mouth to demand he stop, but all that emerged was a deep and husky moan when his tongue targeted her clit.

He lapped at her slit before tracing her clit with the tip of his tongue and sucking firmly. Looking down, the sight of him between her splayed thighs was erotic torture. It shouldn’t feel so good or look so sexy to have the man who had arranged her kidnapping between her legs.

She gasped when he sucked forcefully on her clit before nibbling the inside of her mound. She held her breath as his teeth raked her flesh in several places, certain he was going to bite harder in an attempt to mark her, which was his most often expressed wish.

Instead, he seemed content with the light bites interspersed with the plunge of his tongue inside her lips. She hovered on the edge of coming, whimpering as the pleasure built and headed toward a final explosion. At the last moment, he flicked his tongue underneath her clit in a particularly sensitive spot that sent her into a trembling orgasm.

Her body shook under the intensity of release, and she was so lost in the force for a moment that she didn’t realize his hands were around her throat until he started to press lightly. Still trembling from the force of her release, her startled gaze met his, and she shuddered at the darkness in his expression.

He must have seen the question in her eyes, or perhaps he simply wanted to share, because he said, “You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined this happening, just like this. I give you pleasure, and I give you pain, and all in an attempt to control you. I need to control you.” His hands tightened a bit more on her throat. “I want to control everything about you. If I could, I’d regulate your heartbeat and be in command of your breathing.
”

Fear spread through her as his thumbs pressed deeper into her neck, though she was unsettled by how much the lack of ability to draw in a deep breath enhanced her release. She shuddered as he squeezed, alternating between firm and light pressure at his whim. She was completely at his mercy and under his control as his hands gripped her throat, and she was bitterly ashamed to realize she was enjoying it.

She was ready for another release already, and her body was crying out for his as he controlled her breathing. Could she really be that depraved? Did she want to be under his control and at his command? It had never appealed to her in the past, but she couldn’t deny some small, primal part of her responded to his dominance with the urge to present her throat to his teeth—or his hands, in this case.

As the last pulse of her orgasm faded, she started to struggle to free herself, realizing just what she had allowed to happen. Kat clapped her hands over his, struggling to pull them from her throat.

He retaliated by tightening his grip more, abruptly reducing her oxygen supply to the point where her head spun for a moment. “Don’t fight, and don’t try to pretend like you aren’t getting off on this too. You like to be controlled, don’t you? You want me to own your every breath, your every thought, and your every orgasm.”

The truth was too humiliating to acknowledge, so she averted her gaze, holding her breath to see what he would do next.

His grip on her throat eased, and his hands went to her hips. He clenched them tightly and shifted her so that her pelvis was angled upward. She shook her head, exhaustion and lethargy competing for supremacy inside her. “Not tonight. Please.”

His expression was stern. “Tonight and every other night. As soon as you stepped foot on this island, you became my plaything, my lover, and the future mother of my children. Most of all, you submitted yourself to my will.”

She shook her head as she drew in a ragged gasp, pleasure soaring through her as the head of his cock pressed to her opening. “I didn’t submit to you or agree to anything. You lured me here under false pretenses.”

He chuckled softly. “Yes, I did, but no matter how hard I try, or how I manipulate the situation, I can’t force your body to respond. Only you control that, sweet Kat, and your pussy is dripping wet for me.” With those words, he drove inside her completely, surging as deeply as he could and burying his shaft to the hilt inside her spasming cunt.

“No.” The word was meant for herself more than him, trying to reject and refuse to acknowledge her body’s reaction to the man holding her captive. She didn’t want to be wet and aching with need, and she didn’t want the walls of her sheath to conform to him and cling to Declan’s cock as though desperate to keep them fused. She didn’t want to feel aching desire deep in her womb, and she certainly didn’t want to lock her thighs around his waist, but she did so just the same.

“You look beautiful like this, so torn and conflicted and angry, but so sexy and turned on. If I could, I’d keep you just like this all the time, in your own little tormented state between pleasure and pain, between guilt and ecstasy, with your hot, dripping cunt tightly squeezing me.” As he spoke, he thrust in and out of her forcefully and rapidly, sending renewed sparks of arousal shooting through her.