On the Way Home (17 page)

It suddenly seemed necessary that I surrender to her, like a gift. The only gift that would mean anything to a woman like this. I’d felt pissed off that she hadn’t trusted me enough. Enough to let me help her with Dmitri and whatever else. She’d barely tolerated my fixing her porch step, for Christ’s sake. But how could she trust me if I didn’t trust her?

I must have been distracted, must have let my guard down without consciously realizing it, because my ass had relaxed. Her mouth was between my ass cheeks, kissing my asshole. I strung up tight, my whole body bending off the bed.

“Jesus, that’s so good. So good. More please. More.”

She gave it to me, rimming me until I was only babbling sounds of pleasure and grief, so close to coming but not allowed, not allowed. My dick felt raw against the bedspread, as if I were rubbing against sandpaper, but I couldn’t stop now. Just humped the bed and groaned and pressed my ass into her face. She wasn’t the one degraded here; I was, and I loved it. Oh God, I loved it.

“Cuff me,” I managed to say. I felt drunk, drugged, unable to form words, but I said those.

She drew one wrist behind my back and secured the cuff tight. Then the other was attached to it. Bound. Helpless. So fucking turned on. Then my legs got spread even farther apart, my ankles wrapped by more cuffs and held in position by the metal bar. I groaned at the loss of control. You don’t let girls in. I was letting a girl in now, and the alarm bell was a distant memory.

Then her dick nudged my asshole, and my whole body twitched. I was one big nerve ending, one massive involuntary reaction writhing on the tip of her rubber cock.

Her hands settled on my hips as she pushed the cock inside, inexorably, forcefully. I couldn’t help it. I clenched to keep her out, but I wasn’t sure she even knew it. The rubber cock just pushed in deeper, splitting me open, making me burn.

I gritted my teeth. “Fuck, that hurts.”

“Want me to stop?” She didn’t even sound breathless, and I was going to explode.

“I feel you everywhere.” It was like she’d invaded my body—not just my ass, but my whole body, filling me up to my fingertips. I pressed my cock against the bed, desperately rubbing. “Hurts. Feels good.”

“Guess I’ll keep going.” I heard the smile in her voice. Then she was fucking me, pulling out and then pushing inside. Each thrust into me felt like the first one, a cold and hot, unforgiving and so damn sweet.

She found a rhythm, and that was the end for me. The friction of rubber against a spot inside me. The steady pulls of the sticky bedspread against my trapped cock.

I yanked my arms against my restraints and tried to drag my legs together, as if that could keep me from coming. But I was held open, helpless to whatever she could do to me, and that was hot enough to make me come all on its own. I shuddered and shouted my release, fucking the mattress just like she’d told me to do.

My mind drifted off into that cloudless night, the space between frantic fucking and cuddling after, the time when you are truly alone and prefer it that way. Then I felt her press a soft kiss to the back of my neck.

That was the only warning I had before a sting replaced the kiss, the sharp pain of a needle followed by the sting as some kind of drug worked its way into my system. I shuddered, barely able to comprehend what was happening, so fast, not right, alarm bells, before falling out of the sky. I landed in the water with a crash, losing my breath before sinking under, sucking in water, looking up and asking the moon why?

Chapter Thirteen

Della

The thing about drugs was that they weren’t instantaneous. Not like you saw in the movies, where you put a rag over someone’s mouth and their eyes rolled back. It took him a while to pass out. But the sedative I injected into Clint still affected him. The small movements he could make, with his hands curled into fists, and his ass in the air, told me that the drug was slowing him down. His speech was slurred too.

“What the fuck?” he said.
What the fug?

“
Della. Why are you doing this?”
Dell… Why’re you doooing this?

It made me sick to hear him ask me that, to know that he was lucid enough to understand what was happening but too drugged to protect himself. My stomach turned over, and I wanted to back down. Could I untie him and pretend this was all some sort of kinky game that had gone wrong?

Then I remembered the fingernails in my garage and forced myself to calm the fuck down.

My sister was sitting in a basement somewhere with her fingernails torn off. She had already been beaten, I knew that, but I’d hoped Dmitri would leave her alone once he’d told me what to do. Apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. Fuck. He was right to doubt me. I had been stalling, but that was over now.

I’d made my choice. It came down to my sister or Clint. It had always been down to that, but for a little while, for a blissful few days, I’d pretended I could have both.

The crazy part of all this was that I tried to soothe Clint. I stroked the back of his neck where I’d injected him, trying to ease the pain of entry.

“It’ll be okay,” I lied. “Just go to sleep. Just rest.”

He thrashed in his restraints, wrists pulling against the leather, metal links in the spreader bar clinking. There was no way he could get free, though. He had to have known that, even in his spaced-out state, but he kept trying, kept fighting. It broke my heart, so I stayed there, my head bent next to his, whispering words of nonsense.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I know it doesn’t make it okay, but I’m so sorry.” I rested my forehead against his shoulder. “I think I fell in love with you. I’m a monster. I shouldn’t love you.”

But I couldn’t let my sister die.

Finally he slumped against the bed with a defeated sigh. I stared at his still body with a growing sense of horror. I had done this. I was doing this. And I couldn’t even stop yet. I had to deliver his body to Dmitri so I could trade him for Caro.

Release him. Tuck him into bed. Maybe he won’t even remember.

I was shaking violently. Even when I clenched my hands, my whole arm shook. It came from inside, a chill so strong and so deep that no warmth would reach me ever again.

On my first push, rolling him over, I realized I had underestimated this part of the job. Clint was heavy. Seriously heavy, with long limbs and thick muscles. I had to shove him with all my strength just to get him on his back. His cock was soft now—and still wet from his semen.

Guilt sliced me into a million pieces, not only for doing this, but for doing it during sex. I’d taken something beautiful and made it ugly, but at least I hadn’t come. There was no way I could have climaxed, no matter how beautiful he’d looked bound and trusting.

Maybe I could have done it while he was sleeping. Or taken him by surprise in the shower. But there was always the chance he’d overpower me first. And besides, I was used to wielding sex like a weapon.

For a very long time, sex was the only power I had.

I found a washcloth in the bathroom and dampened it with hot water to clean him off. I didn’t know why it would matter. Dmitri would most likely torture and kill him, so what did it matter if his dick was clean? If he smelled like sex? But it mattered to me, that small bit of dignity, the pathetic consolation prize of being second place to my sister. So I cleaned him off carefully, gently, and undid the cuffs.

I knew what dignity was worth—worth something, that was for sure. I knew how being naked could strip you of your dignity. I knew how Dmitri could take advantage. Dignity.

Fifteen minutes passed, and I was panting and sweating, but he was dressed now. He wore the same jeans as before and a gray shirt that said ARMY in bold letters. I wasn’t sure whether that would be a proper fuck you to Dmitri or whether it would feed into his pride. But I figured Clint wouldn’t mind. He was a soldier, through and through. This would be his uniform in the least fair fight of his life.

I had found a gun too. It must have been on his person when he undressed. I stuffed that into his duffel bag alongside his clothes and toiletries.

At the last minute, I took the medal out of the bag and hid it in my dresser. If Clint made it through this, I would return it to him—along with the rest of his boxes. If he died, Dmitri didn’t deserve this as a trophy.

Then I redid the wrists and ankle cuffs, binding him up again in case he woke up. I left the spreader bar off this time, so his ankles were stuck together. His hands were cuffed in front of him this time, to put less stress on his shoulders. I laughed, a little maniacally. What did it matter, stress on his shoulders?

He would be dead soon.

For good measure I added a blindfold. It seemed like a standard thing to do when kidnapping someone, but I didn’t fool myself that there was any criminal logic going on. I just didn’t want to see the betrayal in his eyes if he woke up.

It took another fifteen minutes to get him down the stairs without bruising either of us too badly. I ended up more injured than him, having banged my elbow and gone down hard on my knee trying to maneuver him down without us both falling. Over half an hour had passed since I’d first given him the drug, and it made me nervous how long this was taking. I still had an hour’s drive, and I wanted to make the exchange before he woke up.

The street was mostly empty. Even the green car I sometimes saw parked a few houses over was missing. I breathed deep in relief and dragged him onto the porch and down the steps that he’d fixed for me. Of course the sturdy new step supported both our weights with ease. Whatever sense of morality I’d had was a fragile thing, made of glass, and now it cut me as it shattered.

I was drenched in sweat and panting by the time I managed to load him into the bed of my trunk. I found the plastic tarp in the garage and used it to cover his body, wrapping it snug around him as if I were tucking him into bed.

Then I went upstairs and got his duffel bag and all his stuff from the bathroom. It would be like he’d never been here at all, as long as I ignored the stack of boxes in my garage. But I’d have to figure those out later.

I tossed it into the back of the truck and pushed the tailgate closed.

“Della?”

I whirled to see Katie standing on her lawn, hugging herself. My heart thudded in my chest. How much had she seen? She said there were only shadows from far away.

“Hi, Katie,” I said, giving away how breathless I was.

“Is everything okay?” She stepped forward uncertainly. Her eyes were shielded by large brown sunglasses. They were overkill for the waning afternoon light, but I imagined they were more for hiding her disability than blocking the sun. “Do you need some help?”

My eyes felt wild as I glanced at the huge unmoving lump in my truck bed. Had she seen me load him in there? But no…if a regular person saw their neighbor loading a limp body in their vehicle, they would be way more freaked out. They would probably not even come out and talk to me. They’d call the police, but Katie was just standing there, waiting for me to answer.

“I’m good.” I struggled to slow my heart rate and catch my breath. “I’m fine. Just have some errands to run.”

She smiled a little. “More errands. You need to relax more.”

I managed to laugh a little. “Tell me about it.”

“Actually, I was wondering if you could give me a ride.”

“Uh…what?” She’d never asked me for that before, and while any other day I would have been happy to help, there was no way I could do it now.

“I need to stop by the pharmacy and pick up these special eye drops.” She made an apologetic face. “They’ve been bothering me all day. I can wait in the car while you do your stuff.”

Oh, I could just imagine that: Katie sitting peacefully in the car while I traded in human flesh with a monster. Yeah, no problem. “I’m sorry, Katie. Really I am. Any other day I would’ve done it but now… But I’m running late and I have no idea how long it will be. I’ll take you tomorrow. Or as soon as I come back. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded, as if confirming something. “All right. Well, be careful.”

And she stood there waiting—and watching?—as I got in my car and drove away. Her words rang in my ears. Be careful, be careful. I might die in that crazy mansion tonight. Dmitri might take it in his head to shoot Clint and me and Caro too, to exterminate us like pests. You couldn’t trust assholes like Dmitri, which was why I’d never planned on dealing with them at all.

God, Caro. Why? I hated that she’d put me in this position. I hated that she’d put herself in this position. Even though I tried not to blame her, it was hard not to think she deserved some of the blame as I drove me and Clint to our deaths.