Day 8:
I’m feeling somewhat better today. I still miss Caleb, I don’t think the feeling will ever go away, but I can get through several minutes without wanting to break down and weep for him; it’s progress. Dr. Sloan says one day I’ll make it to an hour…a day – but that’s as far as I let myself hope. The thought of one day not thinking of him at all is just too much for me. It feels like a betrayal to ever hope for such things.
Once again, I am sitting in the dreadfully cheery room they use to interrogate Kindergarteners. This time, I don’t have to do very much talking. I have a lawyer to do it for me. He and Agent Reed have been battling it out for the last hour. David, my lawyer, isn’t much to look at, but he’s very smart and incredibly aggressive. There’s something super hot about watching the two of them argue…or maybe I just like Reed when he’s unsettled.
His hair is somewhat disheveled from where he’s run his fingers through it so many times to keep from punching David in his face. Every now and again, his eyes flick to me and I feel a dark thrill just thinking about what he’d like to do to me if only he could. If he were Caleb, I would assume a spanking is most certainly in order!
“When exactly did you imagine yourself as…? My lover?” My heartbeat vibrated my skull. “Was it the first time I made you come with my mouth? Or one of the many times since, that I’ve put you over my knee? You seem to like that.”
And there he is – Caleb, in my thoughts, in my blood. I can feel my face getting warmer, my stomach getting tighter and already there is the drumbeat of my arousal pulsing between my legs. I squeeze them together and get so lost in my thoughts it takes me a second to realize Reed is still staring at me. When our eyes finally meet, I blush – hard. I smile when he blushes too.
Agent Reed clears his throat and takes a drink of water. It’s enough to bring back his control. I sigh through my disappointment.
“Agent Reed,” David says, reclaiming Reed’s attention, “my client is being held on ridiculous charges that would never stand up in court. She was living with her mother and attending high school at the time of her kidnapping. Even though she’s eighteen, the U.S. Attorney would be hard pressed to try her as an adult. If she’s considered a minor and involved in a human trafficking case, under Section 107 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, she’s protected from the FBI’s tactics of investigation. There’s no point in us even sitting here. I should be talking to the U.S. Attorney, not you.”
Reed does not look happy, but he doesn’t look beat either. “Your client has two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars in a foreign bank account. How did it get there? She won’t say. Also, she’s been living with suspected terrorists. She’s admitted to it. Then, there’s the small matter of her knowledge of a meeting between enemies of the United States taking place in less than a week! We need information and her refusal to give it qualifies as an obstruction of justice –”
“What terrorists!?!” I yell at Reed and move to stand, but David calmly pushes me back into my seat.
“Muhammad Rafiq, Jair Baloch, Felipe Villanueva, and of course Caleb,” he says. “Do you or do you not, also have information about Demitri Balk?”
“I never said I knew him!”
“You said you knew where he’d be,” Reed says with a raised eyebrow.
“Miss Ruiz, please stop talking and let me handle this,” David says in an irritated tone.
“By the way,” begins Reed anew, ignoring my lawyer and focused on me, “Balk is suspected of having ties to arms dealing and narcotics trafficking. And until I know how you,” he jabs his finger in my direction, “are involved, you’re a suspect too. You can deal with me or I can let the DEA and Homeland Security in here and when they use Patriot Act against you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“That is enough,” David said firmly, glaring at us both.
“Caleb is not a terrorist. I don’t know about the rest of them, but he’s not a terrorist! And neither am I! And–” A cold wave crashes over me. Felipe. I never said anything about Felipe. Reed knows things he’s not saying.
Caleb! Fuck!
I can’t breathe; all of the oxygen is suddenly being sucked from the room, from my fucking lungs! I keep taking deep, deep breaths, lots of them, but I can’t get any air.
My heart is racing.
I can’t breathe!
“Olivia?” says Reed and I can hear him shuffling around.
“We’re done here, Agent Reed. I’ll be speaking to your superiors.” David reaches for me and tries to get me to stand. I don’t like his hands on me. I can’t breathe! He’s suffocating me. I need to think. I need to breathe.
“Shut up! Everybody just shut up!” Reed and David go silent and I ignore them as I put my hands on the table in front of me and try to catch my breath.
You fucked up, girl. Don’t make it worse.
I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to breathe slower, deeper, calmer. My heart starts to slow in degrees until finally I feel only a fraction of my panic. Without looking up, I think about what I need to do.
How does Reed know about Felipe? Does he know more about Caleb? Is he really going to charge me with murder? It was self defense!
I have a feeling Reed would be a lot more amenable if my lawyer weren’t here. Still a prick, but less likely to push this hard. Dr. Sloan said he was a good guy and would do right by me. I don’t have much faith in anything anyone says to me lately, but a glimmer of hope is better than none. I take a sip of water when Reed slides the paper cup beneath my face. I hope he feels guilty, the son of a bitch.
David puts his hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off, “Don’t touch me.”
“I think I should take you back to your room now, Miss Ruiz,” he says.
“I want you to leave,” I whisper with my eyes still fixed on the table.
“Excuse me?” David says, indignantly. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Miss Ruiz. I strongly advise you to keep silent and let me do my job.”
“She wants you leave.” Reed says. He knows he’s won this round. He boxed me in a corner and I let him. I realize I should have assumed he knew a lot, not just about me, but other things too. I feel stupid, and angry and scared. But right now, I need time to think and Reed is the devil I know.
They argue for a bit, puffing their chests at each other in some National Geographic display of machismo. In the end David gathers his things and leaves. Reed and I are alone again. I have a feeling it’s what he wanted all along.
He sits quietly, relaxed and patient, unwilling to break the silence. He doesn’t want to lose ground. He wants me to come to him, and I know it’s exactly the way it’s going to play out. I need him on my side. Just the way I once needed Caleb.
My voice is soft on purpose. I need him to see me as fragile again. I need to bring out the alpha male in him. I need him to believe I’m his to protect, even if I already belong to someone else. Caleb would have been proud. I remind myself that I am now my own master. “You wouldn’t really let them take me to jail would you? After everything?” I let the threat of tears simmer beneath the surface of my words.
Reed exhales deeply through his nose and I hear his fingertip tapping softly against the table. “I would never put an innocent person in jail, Miss Ruiz, but I still need you to convince me you’re not guilty.”
“I thought I was innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.”
He chuckles a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He really is stunning. “I think most people subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry philosophy these days.” He leans forward, conciliatorily, “The truth is, I think you’re just a girl who got caught up in a whole lot of awful shit. I think you did what you had to do to get back home and I think that makes you incredibly smart, and incredibly brave. You don’t have to be brave anymore, Miss Ruiz. You don’t have to protect anyone. You’d save yourself, and me, a whole lot of grief if you’d just tell me the truth so I can make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to someone else.”
It would be so easy to believe him. I’m more tempted than I’ve ever been to just spill my guts to Reed and let him figure out what to do. It’s no wonder he’s so good at his job. “I wish I could trust you, Reed, but I know I can’t.”
His brow furrows in confusion, but there is a wry tilt to his lips, “Why?”
I give him a small smile of my own, “You think you’re different from men like Caleb. You see everything in black and white, you don’t care about the whole story; you don’t care about the gray. Some stories aren’t black and white, Agent Reed.”
He shakes his head a little, obviously amused, but still professional, “In my experience…the only time a woman wants to tell you ‘the whole story’, is when she wants you to make a decision based on emotion instead of logic.”
My eyes narrow and I stare at the surface of table, the scars not visible at first glance but clearer as I stare, unblinking, “Maybe,” I begin, my voice hollow and far away, “but if it weren’t for emotions overriding logic, I wouldn’t be here.”
Reed’s smile is gone, his gaze intent, “Meaning?”
“Caleb. It wasn’t logic…what he did for me.” The words are a revelation. I hadn’t been expecting to say them, but I know they’re true. Caleb might not love me, but he cared. He kept his promise to keep me safe, even if it meant we couldn’t be together.
It makes the pain so much worse.
“I’ve been doing this a long time – manipulating people to get my way. That’s why you think you love me. Because I’ve broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn’t an accident. Once you leave this behind…you’ll see that.”
“Please. Please Caleb. Don’t make me do this, don’t make me go back to trying to be someone I don’t know how to be anymore.”
“It’s time for you to go, Kitten…”
Reed’s voice jolts me back into reality, “What did he do for you?”
I wipe my eye, sweeping away the tears pooled there, “Everything,” I say through a pained smile, “but it had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion – revenge, honor, betrayal, lust, even love…all of these things stem from our emotions.” I paused. “I’m sure you’re not doing what you do without some kind of emotion, Agent Reed.”
“You made your point,” Reed says softly and leans toward me, “but I’ve been around and seen some shit.”
“Why should that matter to me? Is that supposed to make me trust you?”
Reed shrugs. “What other choice do you have?”
“How do you know about Felipe?”
He smiles, “I thought that might get your attention. I’m good at my job, Miss Ruiz, and I’ve been digging through anything I can find on Muhammad Rafiq. What I’ve found so far is pretty damn disturbing. Looking through his known associates, and cross-referenced with those in Mexico, it didn’t take me too long to find Felipe. As far as I can tell, the man is quite…eccentric.”
Eccentric wasn’t quite the word I would have used. “Wait…if you know where he is, why haven’t you–”
“Mexico, isn’t the US, Miss Ruiz, we can’t go rounding up every criminal in another country based on suspicions we can’t substantiate. Also, he’s left the country and gone who knows where. Maybe Pakistan?”
I look up and shake my head. “Hard to say.” I wonder if they’re all dead: Felipe, Celia, Kid, and Nancy. I’d like to believe Caleb wouldn’t hurt Celia, but then I remember the blood and I wonder if…. No, I can’t handle it.
“Miss Ruiz, where’s the auction?” Reed’s words are sharp and serious. This is his end game. I really would have to make a choice.
“I don’t really know, Reed. I don’t. Not specifically, but I could probably give you an idea. Maybe if you listened to the whole story you could figure it out for yourself. You probably know more than I do.”
“Okay. Tell me.”
It’s my turn to smile and shake my head, “No. Not without some concessions.”
He’s exasperated, “WITSEC. I told you, I can’t guarantee it. More than that, I don’t think it’s the right move for you. The last thing you need is to be separated from everything and everyone you know. It’s a cop-out.”
“I don’t care what you think it is. I want to disappear. I want this whole mess behind me and if and when I ever decide to deal with it – that’s my business. Not yours.”
Reed and I go around for a few minutes as I lay out everything I want in exchange for my story. It isn’t pleasant. Reed is a scary bastard when he wants to be and I would be lying if I said he didn’t intimidate me, but I’m willing to take him on. There are things I will not bend on. There are battles I’m determined to win.
“I know what I want, Reed, and if you can’t give it to me…you’re shit out of luck. After what I’ve been through, I don’t care what you think you can do to me.”
Reed’s jaw is clenched and I can hear the subtle pop as he grinds his teeth. He stares long and hard at me for a while and even though I want to, I don’t shrink under is gaze. “Start talking.”
“Will you help me?” I whisper, but keep my chin up, my eyes level on his.
He exhales slowly and unclenches his jaw, “I’ll do my best. If you get us there, get us to the auction, I’ll help you.”
My heart is in my throat. I want to leap over the desk and hug the hell out of him. He’s given me hope. Hope for all the things I want most in the world. With great care, I lick my lips and prepare to tell Reed what he wants to know.
***
Where to begin?
So much was different between Caleb and me.
So much remained the same.
He was still the man who had hired ruthless men to kidnap me. Still the cruel person who had locked me in the dark for weeks, forcing me to become dependent on him, crave him, rely upon him until even my own instincts stood no chance. He was the man who had saved my life, and the one who had put it in danger. Finally, he was still the man who planned to sell me as a sex slave. A whore.
He’d had his own reasons for wanting me back and they’d had nothing to do with my well-being and everything to do with revenge. Did I know why he wanted revenge? No. Trust did not run both ways between us. There were certain things I had no choice but to trust him with: keeping me alive, fed, safe, and unless it was him – untouched. It didn’t leave much, but I refused to trust him with the most important thing of all, my future.
I guess things between us were the same and the differences didn’t matter.
What mattered is I was different. The naïve girl in me had been bitch-slapped into womanhood. I’d been razed by pain, grief, loss and suffering, and honed by lust, rage and an acute awareness of my need to survive.
I understood things I couldn’t fathom before. I understood Caleb’s need for revenge: because the seed had been planted in me. I recognized how he often turned my body against me: because the desire for him had always been there. Above all else, I had learned the one thing every person has to learn to make it through life: the only person you can truly count on is yourself.
I was still reeling from Caleb’s display of dominance over me when he finally laid me down to sleep. I should have been angry with him, and in a very real way, I was, but the way he had unleashed on me made me realize how thoughtful and gentle he had been before. Dealing with Caleb was all about perspective. You couldn’t appreciate his kindness until you’d felt his cruelty. I had felt it, but even I, was smart enough to know he’d still taken it easy on me.
He didn’t have to explain himself to me – he’d made it plain. However, I knew he wanted me to understand the danger I was in. He wanted me to think before I acted. He wanted me to pick and choose my battles, even if those battles were with him. He wanted me to survive. He’d told me as much in the car, but then he’d shown me. For Caleb, that was kind. He dosed me again and I drifted, thoughts swirling in my mind and none of them comforting. Then Caleb was there, and his long, warm body was like a prayer I held onto as I tried to stay awake and did not succeed.
I woke up crying. I could hear the shower running and it was sickening how the relief washed through me, knowing he was close. I forced myself to lie back down, to find a position less aggravating to my injured shoulder or cracked ribs.
I didn’t feel comfortable without his arm around me. I couldn’t sleep without knowing he was near. He’d done this to me. He’d made me afraid. He’d made me need him. And if he thought he was suddenly going to abandon me and clear what was left of his shriveled conscience, he was sadly mistaken.
A strange noise drew my attention away from my thoughts. Regardless of my renewed fear, it was a welcome distraction. I wondered for a moment if Caleb had hurt himself, slipped in the shower or something, but there was no loud crash, only a muffled sound. I listened intently, waiting for the noise to repeat itself and was annoyed by the apparent loudness of my breathing.
“Uh!” That was the noise. Like a grunt mixed with a whimper. “Uh!” Something inside my belly tightened, muscle memory. I should have ignored it, but I couldn’t. In spite of everything that had happened to me, and everything Caleb had put me through by deed or design, I still thought him the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Min fadlik!” he sighed loudly, but I didn’t know what it meant. Whatever it was though, it sounded…needy. What did Caleb need? And why did I find the idea of his need so intriguing?
I needed him to touch me, not want, because I didn’t want him to, I needed him to. Only his arms wrapped around me could make the nightmare dissipate, only the smell of him made me forget the fetid breath of the men who had attacked me. Only his. I was always grateful for his presence and resentful of it.
More sounds came from the bathroom and I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t stop the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins urging me into some kind of action, anything that would reveal to me what was happening behind the closed door. What if he’s fucking someone in there? The thought stopped me cold, a wave of something akin to nausea clogging my throat and tightening my stomach. “He wouldn’t,” I whispered to myself in the darkness of the room. For whatever reason I just couldn’t make it a possibility in my mind. He’s done it before. Remember? Remember him fucking that woman while you were tied up in the other room. The voice in my head was cruel. I had to know! I had to know if he would do something like that to me again. Bastard!
I forced my steps toward the bathroom door, my body trembled and my palms were wet with sweat, but I couldn’t stop myself from knowing.
“Fuck…” The obscenity was little more than a whisper beyond the door as I pressed my ear against it. “Oh…yes baby” then something in another language, then “open your pussy.” I nearly fell against the door as my knees went weak. Between my legs I felt a gentle throbbing keeping pace with my heart. Please, please don’t be fucking someone else.
I could hear the fan was on, which might have been why he felt safe making sounds. If I hadn’t been awake, I wouldn’t have heard him. Forcing bravery I didn’t really feel, I pressed on the latch to open the door. I gripped the latch in my fist until sweat seemed to squeeze between my fingers. The shower was to the left of the door, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to see without opening it fully and making my presence known, but there was a mirror to the right where I might be able to see his reflection. I could only pray he wasn’t directly facing the door or mirror.
The door opened, just a crack, barely enough to get a finger through, but my heart felt crammed into my throat for those breathless seconds. I waited, hoping not to hear him yell at me or make a startled sound. I heard his heavy breathing and those same groaning sounds from before, accompanied by a wet staccato rhythm. I knelt on the floor, not trusting my legs to support me as I pressed my cheek flush with the door and peeked inside. The room was steamy and it aggravated me to no end. I waited while some of it cleared, but all I could see was a shape in the mirror.
I dared to open the door a little wider, my adrenaline pumping through me in proportionate degrees to the opening in front of me. More steam drifted out of the room and settled on my face and neck, dripping like sweat into the well of my breasts before being absorbed by my shirt. The mirror was much clearer and finally, I could make out the image in the shower.
I gasped, but Caleb didn’t hear me. I was sure he couldn’t. He was much too absorbed in what he was doing alone in the shower, only a few feet away from my prying eyes. I should have felt embarrassed or guilty but there was no way I could feel those things. All I could feel was the throbbing between my legs and the sharp pang of lust that punched me in the belly. He was fucking…perfect. Sooo fucking perfect.
He was facing the shower so I could only see him in profile. His skin was pink and white from the intensity of the water. One arm was braced against the wall, his long legs spread for balance as his head dipped toward his chest and he panted. His other arm was rigid; the muscles tense while his large hand held his enormous erection in his hand. I swallowed hard and licked steam from my lips.
The head was thick and a deep dusky pink as it slipped through his fist. His shaft got thicker toward the base, until his fingers had to grip hard to keep him contained. I remembered his weight in hand.
He didn’t shuttle his hand up and down the length of it. He rocked his hips into his fist, making the well-muscled globes of his ass hollow on each side as he thrust forward, his large, heavy-looking balls swaying between his splayed legs in a fluent rhythm. His cock was the arrow and his fist, the quiver.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away, didn’t even try. I wondered how much come he held inside those large balls and if he’d given me all of it when he’d come in my hand and on my breasts. I thought about the only time he’d been inside me and I could remember the sound of them slapping against the wet flesh of my pussy as he held me bent over and drove his meaty cock into me. The throbbing between my legs was intense. My own thoughts had me panting and wet. My thoughts were dirty and sexy and they flooded my body with every sensation imaginable.
“Make him love you,” Ruthless Me, whispered. “Make it so he can’t live without you.”
“I can’t,” I whispered back. “I tried. He said my attempts are laughable. He doesn’t care.”
“He will.”
“Uh…mmm…come on.” Caleb’s eyes were shut tight; his beautiful mouth open and the sexiest sounds I’d heard in my life were coming out of him. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if it could be me. Could I be the one driving him toward this frenzied display of lust?
“Yessssss,” Ruthless Me shuddered.
My nipples were tight and painful, scraping against the suddenly rough fabric of my shirt. I wanted to take them out. I wanted to touch them against something cool. I pressed my body against the door, rubbing them against the hard wood as I continued to watch Caleb in all of his masculine and somehow vulnerable glory.
I leaned back and pressed the palm of my hand against my mound rubbing in tiny circles I feared wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go nearly quick enough. I didn’t want to get lost in my pleasure. I wanted to watch Caleb. I wanted to see him come. The thought made me press against my clit even harder, the circles smaller, tighter and faster. I felt a flutter in my belly, then a warm tingle spread from my spine out to all my limbs until finally I felt my pussy clench tight, then release and clench again. I let out a small cry before I sucked in my lips and bit down on them to keep in any other sounds. It hardly sated me. It was a sneeze compared to how Caleb made me come, but it was enough to force my focus toward Caleb.
His hips were thrusting faster, the cheeks of his ass flexing up and down as he put real effort into reaching his climax. He leaned his body forward resting his forehead against his forearm as he gritted his teeth and pumped that monstrous thing he called a cock back and forth through his wet fist. Rivulets of water fell from all over his gorgeous body and I was suddenly so thirsty. I wanted to kneel at his feet and lick water off of him, especially his impressive cock. I wanted to lick water off of it and suck it.
I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do when he let out a grunt, followed by a painful whine as ropes of thick semen burst out of his dick and covered his large hand before dripping down toward those heavy balls and eventually the shower floor. It was a lot of come and yet his balls didn’t seem any smaller.
Caleb was panting hard, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort. His beautiful face was red with exertion, but if possible, it made him look even more handsome. I wanted to continue to admire him, but doing so felt like a betrayal – of me. The facts were still the facts. He didn’t really care about me. He was using me.
My passion was quickly cooling and finally, I slowly shut the door and crept back into bed to nurse more than my physical injuries.
Sometime later I heard the bathroom door open and the soft scrape of Caleb’s feet against the carpet as he made his way toward the bed. I felt the bed dip as he got between the covers, making sure no part of him touched any part of me.
“I woke up and you weren’t here,” I whispered, with my back toward him. I knew he tensed, but I can’t say how, perhaps it was the air between us that was tense.
“Have you been up long?”
“No, just a few minutes.” I felt him relax into the mattress.
“Another nightmare?”
“Yes,” I lied, but felt completely justified as his warm chest, covered in soft cotton, met with my back and his fingers, the ones covered in his semen only minutes before, traced along my arm to soothe me. A vision of his powerful, sleek body straining toward orgasm made its way into my mind’s eye. His fingers were long, influential and still damp as they charted their course along my flesh, leaving me tingling in their wake. I touched his skin. “You’re wet.”
He sighed heavily, “I’m sorry Kitten. I needed another shower.” His voice was low, dopey with fatigue, but sincere nonetheless. One mention of the word shower and my throat was dry thinking of all the water sluicing off his perfect body and from that beautiful organ. I wondered what he would taste like.
“It’s okay.” I whispered. My throat was hoarse.
“Anything I can do to make you feel better?” All sorts of answers flitted around in my lust filled head. It was tempting to fall back on reliable tactics and pretend things were…perfect. To pretend he was only a boy and I was only a girl and we desired each other. I wanted him to hold and kiss me and pretend he would do anything to protect me. I wanted to pretend he felt a fraction of the things I couldn’t seem to stop myself from feeling for him.
My heart hurt. As much as my shoulder and ribs screamed with pain, they were eclipsed by the sorrow in my heart. I couldn’t pretend anymore. The time for it had passed; there was only the reality of things left to deal with.
“Yes, Master,” I tried not to sob, “There’s so much you can do to make me feel better.” His body pressed deeper into mine and for a moment I just let him be close. “You could not sell me… I could stay with you… be with you?” Caleb gripped me tight, not because he wanted to hurt me, but because I’d shocked the hell out of him. I’d shocked myself, too, but I’d been through too much not to just tell shit the way it was. He swallowed audibly, fingers tentative, as they loosened their hold.
“Kitten…” his forehead pressed hard against the nape of my neck, “you ask for impossible things.” I wanted to ask which parts were impossible, but I knew the answer. He couldn’t let go of his revenge, but he could let go of me.
