Wicked Ways (Dark Hearts Book 1) (20 page)

I followed Mister Black up the shallow timber steps and into a hallway, down deeper into the house, then all the way through to a huge bedroom at the back of the house. A wide, curtain-framed window looked out over a vista of fields and grassland.

The king-sized bed was covered by a quilt as big as the fields out there. Lemon yellow daisies and a white background that was glaring and clean.

Mister Black eyed the bed. “What a pity we’re going to get it dirty. Take off your shorts and T-shirt.”

I slipped them off and felt the driver behind me take them from my fingers. He hadn’t spoken at all that I recalled. Whoever he was, whatever he was being paid, I imagined he was enjoying watching this otherwise Mister Black would never have employed him.

I expected an instruction to remove my bikini next but instead he gestured at the bed. “Lie down on your back, with your ass at the edge and your feet on the floor.”

I walked over and did so. I lay on the bed obediently, feeling the bed dip as the driver sat above me. Watching, as always. Dirty man.

His steps quiet on the floor rug, Mister Black stepped in until he towered over me.

“Open your legs, inch the bottoms down so I can see your pussy, and play with yourself. I want you ready for me to fuck you.”

Intense words but the grip of his command was light. I swayed, caught in a backwash of maybe yes, maybe no.

Alert, I switched my gaze to his eyes. Bastard. He wanted me to choose. I was free enough that I saw the depth of his labyrinth. I was aching to have him fuck me. If I said no, he might make me open my legs anyway. I could almost feel him doing it. The temptation was intense. Wasn’t it better to do it of my own volition?

He aimed to make me betray myself.

Choice. For once it was mine. He knew I didn’t have to make myself ready. My lower lips were swollen and aching. When you’re imagining a man’s cock in you before it happens, when the man holds the key to your sexuality because you and he both know he’s the only man who can arouse you...

I sobbed, caught in the dilemma. “Bastard.” Third time that day I’d called him that.

“I mean
now
.” He moved until he stood between my spread legs and ran a finger along my thigh. His mouth curved upward in a way that said he’d had me pinned, chloroformed, and catalogued in his butterfly collection since the moment I stepped into his car. “I want to see your own fingers inside you.”

Trembling with disgust at my needs, I slipped my fingers downward, lifting my ass so I could pull down the bikini bottoms. I poised my fingers over my mons area then lowered them into the wet mess that was my pussy entrance, making a
V
to either side of my shaved lips.

“Inside. Put them inside,” he grated out, his gaze focused on my pussy as if laser-targeted. “Fuck yourself.”

Maybe the Zorina Brown that existed a few months ago would’ve shut her eyes as she did this but I didn’t. I looked at him as I forced my fingers into my entrance and began to masturbate. As I made more sounds, as I felt the build of arousal, he pulled his gaze upward and looked into my eyes. From then on, he alternated between watching my face and what my hand did. So fucking hot, to see him do that. I was tied to him, it seemed, irrevocably perhaps.

I didn’t care. Not then. Maybe later I would care.

I moaned, squirming.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

When he sank his fingers into my thigh to push my leg higher I shivered to a halt, caught in mid thrust.

Around his eyes wrinkled in a smile. “Like me holding you?”

So close to coming from him simply doing that, holding me, and from what I’d done. “Mmm.” I grunted out. Fuck, yes.

“Stop now.”

I stopped, despite the throbbing of my clit. “I need to come,” I whimpered.

“Take your hands away.” Unhappily, I obeyed, then he shed his clothes and dropped them at his feet, returning to me carrying a silver chain that he’d taken from his pocket, and with his erection out and proud.

“Raise your legs.”

Without saying more, he grabbed my ankles and pushed them back and back until they were above my head at which point he growled, “Hold her.”

I stiffened. I’d forgotten the extra man. Odd but true – that was how insistent this need had become. When this stranger gripped my legs and pushed them closer to the bed, I saw Mister Black exchange a long look above my head. For whatever reason, I refused to try to look at the man behind me. It would be too...too, something revoltingly wrong. He could hold me down but I was being fucked by Mister B. That counted for something.

I knew that more when he touched beneath my chin and said quietly, “This will hurt but I want you to be still for me.”

The silver chains dangled from his hand. Each end bore small silver clamps. I could guess where they were meant to go.

For him. The assumption was astounding. As if I could be still.

Yet as he gripped my left nipple, squashing it flat in preparation for the clamp that he held in the other hand, I watched fascinated. The pain as the jaws met had me squeaking. The second one was worse and I tried to sink my breast and body into the mattress but didn’t succeed.

“There.” He smiled. “Good.”

Now I throbbed in both pussy and nipples – the sharpness of the pain intermingling and disturbing me. I shut my eyes to sort them out, only to have his cock slide into me. Arching was instinctive but brought the pain to the fore. I went to pluck at the clamps only to have both wrists taken over my head and pinned there.

Mister B. plowed deeper into me, driving me into the pillow, shifting the chain across my breasts. The man above adjusted his grip on my ankles, making my legs spread wider and I heard him grunt as if the view pleased him.

I snapped open my eyes. Exposed to both men’s gazes, held down and made to take this pain, it messed horribly with my head. Was this my doing or his?

“What am I doing?” I whispered.

“What are you doing?” That kindly if in-fucking-tense expression tensioned his face. Amused but aroused was my interpretation. No wonder. He was buried in me up to his balls. “You’re being fucked by me, taking my pain because I asked you to. You’re becoming mine, Zorie. Because you want to be. I’m not in your head.”

“You’re not?” I wanted him to say the opposite. Because... Really, I didn’t know why anymore.

“I’m not,” he said with his mouth an inch from mine. “Only my cock is in you. Make yourself come now.” He released one of my wrists.

“Now?” I blinked, incredulous at this request.

Now.”

“Kiss me?” I asked. Just one mouth on mouth suctioning of my soul as he tongue fucked me, I wanted nothing more. Kissing was so personal. It proved something.

“No. Not yet. Not this time,” he added.

The
yet
gave me hope. I began to work at my clit though my fingers slipped about in my own moisture.

Doubled over and held in place on the bed by the two men, it took at most thirty seconds of rubbing, with his cock cheering me on by pulsing and twitching, before I clenched in on us both, and an orgasm hit me. I was writhing and sightless, still rapt in the sensations when he recommenced fucking me, properly this time. Thrusting, over and over, going deep, going shallow, and at one point making me suck on him while he fucked my mouth. I could taste myself, I could hear the man behind getting more aroused too, and all I wanted was to make Mister Black come inside me...to make him happy.

The bed kept rocking and creaking with his thrusts and my nipples ached. I only wriggled and wanted him deeper, harder.

Somewhere in my head was still me. I was just a little more perverted than I had been when Reuben first laid hands on me. Changing in the face of adversity, or a man who could fuck the life out of me, was only natural. One day, I’d get him to kiss me, and then...then everything would be good.

My eyes rolled back.

The next drive of his cock was relentless, seeming to go into me forever, ramming my body into the mattress and holding me there, squashed down, pinned by cock and the solid weight of a man. He ground in harder, swore, then withdrew and thrust, holding me down again as if trying to drill me into the bed. I tried to writhe despite their hands on my wrists and ankles but couldn’t move. When I groaned, the man above me swore quietly – the first time I’d heard him speak.

Grimm

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...”

- Mary Shelley

I was the ultimate voyeur, watching Mister Black fuck her senseless until she was babbling in tongues. And still I held her ankles and her legs open for him. I felt her legs shake, saw her come, repeatedly, like a damn clockwork orgasm toy.

He’d gone into the whole thing in detail, taken me aside after arranging to speak without Zorie knowing. He’d deduced I’d murdered Reuben. Somehow he’d installed an app on Zorie’s phone and, through the mic, he’d overheard us mentioning it. I guess we’d slipped up a few times during the past months. Scary, to think what might happen if the cops had done the same. He wouldn’t have revealed things to me without that information, though. If I went to the cops, he could do the same.

Not that anyone would believe me, and not that it would help Zorie if I did.

Even before his little speech to me, I’d come to the conclusion that she didn’t feel any passion for me. The attraction had fizzled out. Once I spoke to Mister Black, I understood more, even if I was disbelieving the first time.

Then he’d taken her after I left her defenseless. I’d betrayed her trust but I was with her the whole time too. I was ready to stop everything if I saw he’d lied. But at his first touch, she’d quivered. She’d obeyed him like the most well-trained slave girl. Fuck me it’d been eye-opening. He could make her lick his cock, show off her cunt, even let a stranger be present while they had sex.

This was what Reuben had possessed. The same powers. There were other men like him who were as bad or worse and Zorie was going to be some sort of way to take them down? It seemed a good thing to do. The right thing.

Did the goal justify the means? I wasn’t sure. I knew I didn’t want to see her hurt.

When he was done with her and they were in bed together I went out onto the back patio and rubbed one out by myself. No one to see me for miles except the birds and the bugs. It’d hurt watching that. No man who’d had designs on a woman could watch her be fucked by another and not feel the pain. I doubted I’d ever get over the attraction I felt for her.

He’d been true to his word and made her not look at me but tomorrow I’d have to let her know I was here.

My last look through the window had revealed them lying together on the bed, spooning. She’d seemed at peace. Mavros had seen me but it hadn’t deterred him at all – he’d had his arm over her and was studying her as she slept. I knew the look of a man thinking hard about the woman in his arms. Been there, done that.

Nevertheless, in spite of the bloody ache in my gut, it was good to see her happy.

I sniffed, grimaced. Zorina Brown had made a fool of me, I guess, though not deliberately. She didn’t seem to understand why we’d not clicked – no more than I had. Tom would’ve laughed and told me to go in and take her from him.

Shit. No.
I didn’t work like that. Tom’s methods hadn’t worked for him anyway. She’d killed him that night. How could I be so involved...so almost in love, with the woman who’d killed Tom? He might’ve only been a stepbrother but perhaps because of that we’d been greater friends than most real brothers.

“Sucks,” I muttered and took a swig from the bottle of rum I’d found.

Tied up and in the cabin of his truck, she’d still managed to trip the brake and the truck’d rolled forward and crushed him against the garage door.

Kidnapping women. Christ. Loser. I’d loved him but he was still a loser.

I raised the bottle to the setting sun. “You were a stupid fucker, Tom. Damn stupid. I’m doing this my way. The patient-as-a-tortoise way.”

It’d suited me well up to now. Maybe there was a way to become a mesmer? There had to be. There were some people who, when faced with adversity, gave up. There were others who would stiffen their resolve and carry on fighting, even harder.

Me, I just kept on going. I was the water wearing away the stone. I was the tree root cracking the stone. I was also malleable. When I saw a weakness, I became the stone. I prided myself on being who I needed to be to win.

Today I’d found out what it was I wanted to win.

Another swig warmed me all the way to my center. The heat flowing outward made me smile at the sun lowering itself into the field, making the tops of the crop into a glowing carpet. The daylight was going but given a few hours of night, she would be back, like me.

A jingle warned of a text coming in on Zorie’s phone and I ambled into the spare bedroom and fished it from her handbag. I knew the password. Hell, after all these months it’d be a surprise if I hadn’t watched her and figured it out.

The text was from a Jacob Wyatt. I couldn’t recall the name but the other name in the body of the text – Cherie Lynn Wolfe? That was the student Zorie had spoken of. She was lost in London, missing for days while on leave from the
Medecines Sans Frontieres
program in Thailand. What did he expect Zorie to do? I read the second, following message.

“Ahhh.” I understood.

Thought you’d want to know since she was quite a friend of yours. Pray we find her soon.

*****

Zorie

As I lay there, mostly asleep, in the bed with Mister Black behind me and his arm resting heavily over me, with his hand nestling in the sheet inches away and cupping my own hand, I became aware of the oddest feeling. It took me several minutes of drowsy thinking to decide on what it was that I was feeling because it was novel and complex.

I hadn’t felt this way for what seemed a thousand years.

Peaceful and safe.

I smiled, closed my eyes properly, and fell into a dreamland where nothing bad happened to anyone, ever, ever...

Ever.