My footsteps echoed back to me as I walked through racks of aging wine to the little cava di vino usually reserved for my enemies.
The guest suite I’d instructed the staff to make up for Emily was a generosity I didn’t have to bestow on her. A luxury she didn’t yet deserve.
Though, even now, she was being housed next to amarones and cabernets laid down by my predecessor. Many of which were worth more than her car, so really, it could have been worse.
I turned the key in the lock of the door, the old mechanism clanking loudly as it retracted.
On the cameras, Emily was frantic when I first left her a day ago, combing the room for over an hour like an abandoned pet, searching. For what? There was nothing to find.
I longed to punish her for her little show of defiance, but like a good Catholic boy, I was fasting. Starving myself. Whetting my appetite for the inevitable feast.
Twenty-four hours should’ve been plenty of time for her to soften up but the precedent was set. Her will was thick and unyielding. I could either pierce it with a knife or wear it down until it was soft and pliant.
My chest swelled with anticipation as I swung the door open.
Having her here the past day, under my roof but unable to touch her was torture. Worse than watching her when she was in her cabin.
Awake, but not alert, Emily sat cross-legged on the floor. Without natural light to mark the passing of time, she could have no idea that it was near midnight.
Being sealed in a glorified tomb with zero stimulation looked to have succeeded in its purpose of subduing her.
Unlike the others before her, I didn’t want a momentary outlet for my darkness, a pin prick of pleasure to swallow the bad medicine of the world down. With Emily, I wanted to make it last.
“Emily?”
I watched her warily, but she didn’t move. She sat still, eyes down, body slumped heavily against the wall, she looked like a Sim. Lifeless, empty, awaiting animation.
“Have you had time to think?”
Her curtain of black hair hung limp around her face, obscuring any expression. I edged closer. The silent treatment was only going to last so long. Human beings were resilient, but they were social. The worst torture was isolation. At some point, she’d take any scrap I threw at her if it meant hearing something other than her own thoughts.
Perhaps another few hours. Another day? A week at most.
A heavy object sped toward me. I ducked, the heavy chunk of stone grazing my temple, breaking skin.
With spider-like quickness, she lunged past me, flying through the air. I brought my hand to my temple, fingers coming away stained red, and grinned.
I chased, catching her in seconds, my hand grasping the back of her shirt, jerking her backward. She lost her balance with a yelp and our bodies collided, falling to the ground. I climbed over her, grabbing her flailing arms and pinning them to her sides with my knees.
She shouted in protest, enraged, her teeth gnashing as she slung curses at me.
“I see you haven’t learned your lesson.”
She tried to buck her way off the floor, pushing uselessly against my body.
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” she shrieked.
I laughed, taking her arms from her sides to press them above her head, pushing my knee in between her legs so she was forced to part them. I’d wanted so badly to see her like this in the dark of her cabin and now I knew what I was missing.
Her perky tits lifted with her arms and the hollows on either side of her elongated waist made me feral with need. I settled myself against her, edging her thighs wider despite her fight to clench them shut.
“If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
“Then what do you want?”
For her to stop talking. For her to put those lips to better use.
“What I wanted since I first saw you,” I said, running a finger down the side of her neck. Her lips parted on a shaky gasp. Fear rose from her body, edged in something far more potent. The intoxicating combination had me hard in seconds.
Taking her right here, right now… I could picture it.
My jaw clenched painfully with the restraint.
“Get off me,” she said, thrusting her hips upward, rubbing herself just there.
Her face paled at what she felt, a red flush bleeding into the white.
So fucking beautiful.
I brought my mouth to her neck, running my lips over her soft skin, unable to resist. I wouldn’t fuck her, not yet. Not until she begged me for it.
But I could taste her.
She was the one being punished, for fuck’s sake, not me.
She trembled beneath me, her pulse like that of a cornered mouse against my lips.
“Was it you?” I heard her ask in the faintest whisper. “Outside my cabin… watching me. Was it you?”
I tore my face from her neck so I could see into those wild green eyes.
“You knew.”
I slid my hand up her tattered t-shirt, fingers stroking along her collar. She shuddered at my touch.
“You knew and yet you undressed in plain sight of your windows, open to the night.”
I curved my palm gently around her slender neck, watching as her breathing hitched.
“You knew and yet you touched yourself, coming even while you felt my eyes on you from the shadows.”
Her jaw clenched.
“Why?” I demanded, tightening my hold on her throat, my fingers wrapping around it like a necklace. “To tease me? To torture me?”
I released my hold and she blinked slowly, drawing in a slow breath.
She arched her back and I took the invitation, grinding into her warm cunt through her sweatpants as I dipped my free hand beneath her shirt.
“Tell me,” I pressed, running my thumb over her nipple, pulling it into a taut, stiff peak. A whimper came from her lips. She liked that. I did it again.
“Tell you what?” she asked with defiance in her eyes.
“Why you didn’t run.”
I flicked her nipple.
She swallowed her moan, pressing her lips together.
“What?” she snapped as if she hadn’t heard me at all, her focus dropping, her eyes glazing with desire.
I smirked, her nerve, her restraint, whatever she was hanging on so she didn’t give in to me was giving out. It was intoxicating… feeling her break under my touch.
My cock hardened, restrained by the cage of my pants.
She’d be the greatest reward I ever delayed my gratification for.
Just a little more.
A little longer.
“If you could feel me watching you, if you knew something was out there, why didn’t you run?”
I abandoned her pebbled nipple, pushing my hand down her sweats.
She screamed, clenching around my knee as I ran my fingers along the edge of her panties.
She gasped, closing her eyes in shame as my fingertips struck gold.
My little lamb was wet.
So wet she was seeping through her panties.
Heat built in my core, rushing straight to my already aching cock.
“What good would it have done me to run?” she asked quietly.
“Admit it,”
I pressed my fingers hard against her clit, making her squirm. “Admit you liked it.”
She laughed at me, the sound harsh and short.
“Fuck you,” she said, glaring at me through heavy-lidded eyes.
Her mouth said one thing, her body, however, was saying something quite the fucking opposite.
She knew why she fucking stayed. She fought herself, denied her basic instinct. She said she was scared but she didn’t run. No. Instead she put on a show.
Even now, she pushed me away, and yet…
I hooked my fingers around the edge of her panties, sliding them along her bare folds, a growl emanating from my throat when I felt it. Her heat. Her desire, undeniable against my own flesh.
“Your body gives you away, little lamb.”
I pulled my fingers free of her waistband, twisting them this way and that in the light, watching how her lust glimmered over the surface of my callused skin. She watched as I sunk each one into my mouth, tasting her.
“You’re sick,” she whispered.
She wasn’t wrong.
I analyzed every tiny flicker of movement over her features as I slowly buried my hand back into her, finding no trace of denial. Fear in spades. Anticipation. Anger. But also… hunger.
I ran my moistened fingers over her clit, drawing another moan from her throat that she attempted to block with the dam of her lips.
Sensitive to even the lightest touch.
Fucking her would be heaven on earth, and not just for me.
I hated her ex-boyfriend. I hated any man who had gotten to experience her before I had. Decided I’d kill them all.
I pulled her shirt up, exposing her smooth, lean body. I held my breath, the picture of control as I drank in every perfect inch of her. Her abdomen fell and rose with short, staccato breaths. She watched me warily, awaiting my next move. I wondered if she realized she was no longer struggling. The tension in her arms had gone slack. Her hips beneath me, sat pliant against the cold floor.
“Get a good look?” she asked sarcastically.
Actually, no. Not yet.
I grazed her nipple with my tongue and like a good little lamb she pushed her chest up to my mouth.
“Not so fast.”
She let out a sound, something halfway between a whine and a moan.
I held her nipple between my teeth, flicking the hard tip while my fingers danced at her entrance, playing over her slit, touching everywhere but where she wanted, needed to feel me.
“Tell me you want me to touch you.”
“No,” she whispered, sealing her eyes shut as I edged closer to the apex of her sweet pussy, the strain in her pinched expression winding me up just as much as it was her.
“Then tell me not to.”
Her jaw flexed.
I grinned, sucking her nipple into my mouth as I plunged my finger into her depths. She cried out, back arching off the floor. Her velvet walls stretched as I pushed a second finger into her and began a violent assault of her cunt, using the heel of my palm to keep pressure where she craved it most while my fingers did all the work on the inside.
She turned her face away from me, trying to hide her pleasure even as her hips rocked, desperate for me to shatter her.
My jaw fell slack watching her.
She was exquisite.
Her body deserved worship.
Men should kill and die to have her.
Men had done just that.
I fought the cloud of lust in my mind to remain focused. She didn’t control me. She didn’t possess me. She belonged to me. Mine.
Mine to touch. Mine to mold. Mine to break.
She bit her lower lip, her body coiling around me, muscles tensing for the inevitable explosion.
I withdrew my fingers, leaving her bereft moan to echo off the walls.
“What are you doing?”
Burning green eyes met mine.
“What do you want, little lamb?” I posed the question a second time. “All you need to do is ask.”
She glared at me, obstinate.
I buried my fingers back inside her, jerking them fast and hard. She writhed on the ground. Curling my fingers, I found her g-spot, working her back into a frenzy, right to the edge, before pulling out again.
She let out a cry at the loss, her eyes filling with unshed tears.
A spark of possession zapped through me watching a perfect droplet skate down her cheek and vanish into her hairline.
“What do you want?”
She let her head fall back heavily against the stone floor, panting, her hair stuck to her temples with sweat.
“No,” she said, defiant to the bitter end, bent on accepting her punishment like a good girl.
Standing up without spending my erection on that perfect body took every ounce of will I had.
“I don’t like that word,” I warned.
She swallowed, unable to meet my eyes as she wet her lips to speak. “Is that what you want?” Her voice was so small, so weak and timid, I could barely hear her at all. “To touch me?”
Emily seemed to remember where she was all at once, the austere concrete room jumping back into focus. She covered herself, drawing her legs in close, the tatters of her shirt closed.
I shook my head. Looking at her now I knew it was more than that. Touching her wouldn’t be enough. I wanted to possess her. Wanted to twist her into something that could fit against my broken parts. I didn’t just want her body. I wanted her heart. Her fucking soul.
“I want it all.”
