“Ah, fuck,” he said, tensing his muscles. He needed to stay upright.
They built up a steady momentum together, him using his hold on her hair to guide her movements while he rocked back and forth. Her tongue did wicked things to him, continuing to swirl around his base, even while he was shoving his cock down her throat. Twin trickles of drool ran from the corners of her mouth, but she made no attempt to pull away from him or turn her face. He wondered how wet she would be now if he touched her. Was she soaking the chair?
The familiar heaviness in his balls and the tightening from his perineum to the base of his cock increased. His erection grew harder, enough so Lily must have felt like he was ramming a rod of lead down her throat. He wanted to watch her, with her eyes wide and streaming as she stared up at him, drool down her chin, but the force of his orgasm surged up inside him. His eyes squeezed shut as hot cum surged up from his balls and spurted down her throat. His fingers held her hair tight, pulling it enough that it must have been painful, and he thrust his hips forward, jerking again, and then again, as stream after stream of silky cum spilled from his slit.
Lily swallowed with every jet, and the sensation felt like heaven. Tears spilled from her eyes, but he knew they were tears caused by the effort she’d put in, rather than tears of sadness or pain.
He began to soften and pulled himself from between her lips. He zipped himself away, his skin still wet from her saliva.
Lily licked her lips. “I hope it’s my turn now.”
He shook his head. “Not until you agree to what I want.”
“You’re a bastard, you know that, right?”
He gave his shoulder a slight shrug, the hazy afterglow of his orgasm settling over him like a warm blanket. “I’ve never claimed to be anything else.”
Seventeen
Lily loved having the taste of him on her tongue again. By consuming him, it felt as though a tiny part of him was hers again.
She knew there was a sick and twisted part of her that enjoyed Monster dominating her, but perhaps she was thinking of this wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t sick and twisted, maybe it was natural for her to want to give herself over to him. She was just wired differently than other people. She didn’t know if she’d been born that way, or if events in her life had created that side of her, or even if it had been Monster himself who had awoken it inside of her, but she craved him, while other people left her cold. She didn’t need a reason or excuse for what she felt. She just did.
But she couldn’t allow herself to think about her needs and desires now. If she survived the next few days, or even the week, maybe she could have that conversation with a psychiatrist, but right now they had more important matters to work through.
“So you’re seriously going to keep me like this until I agree to start my life over?” she said.
He gave her a half smile that made her heart flip. That way he was looking now, as though he was drugged, she’d done that to him. Even though she was the one in the handcuffs who was left desperate for an orgasm herself, just that look gave her a sense of power. He still wanted her, still cared about her, whatever else he said and did.
“I thought I’d made that clear,” he replied.
“And if I never agree? What do we do then?”
“I guess I rack myself up a very large hotel bill, and at some point the man who was on the end of that call will find us, and take you and kill me.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth. I don’t know what else you expect me to say. I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, Flower. Bad men are involved. Men worse than me. Worse than the Gonzalez-Larrinaga brothers, in fact.”
The mention of their name sent shivers through her. She remembered how close she’d come to being raped by them. Was that her future now? Being taken by men even worse and raped over and over? She couldn’t even fathom it.
“I’m not going to release you until you agree to go along with my plans,” he told her. “We can stay here and continue with this, but at some point this adversary is going to track me down, and when he does, he’s going to take you.”
“I don’t care about me,” she said. “Maybe I should, but threatening me isn’t going to make me do what you want.”
“I’m not threatening you, Flower,” he said, reaching out so his hand cupped her cheek. “I’m warning you.”
“I care about other people more than myself. Give me something I want, and perhaps I’ll think about it.”
“What do you want?”
“You. I want you.”
He shook his head. “Not possible.”
“What about Cameron? Where is he?”
“He’s safe.” His expression darkened. “If you can’t have me, do you plan on replacing me with him?”
“I thought you understood now that it couldn’t happen even if I wanted it to—which I don’t. I still can’t handle people touching me, Monster. You’re the only one whose touch I long for rather than dread. I don’t know why, but even if I wanted another man, I don’t think I could do it. There’s something wrong with me, and for some reason you’re the only one who can heal me again.”
He regarded her with dark eyes filled with sadness. “Then you will never be healed. I’m sorry.”
She suddenly remembered the noise she’d heard from one of the containers as she’d been taken. “The women!”
“What?”
“There were women in the container where I was taken. I heard them.”
She yanked at her bonds, trying to stand up from the chair, but her shoulders wrenched back, the metal cuffs cutting into her skin. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of them until now. She’d been so caught up in fear for her own skin when she’d first been taken from the port, and then in finding Monster here, she’d completely blocked out the memory of that small cry for help from the container.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Monster. We have to do something! We have to help them.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“What do you think I was doing down at the port near the Marine Corps base?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t there, Flower. Men I employ were the ones to track you down and bring you here. They told me what direction you were headed in and who you were with, but the next call I got was to say they’d taken you into their possession and were on their way here.”
“I went there to try to track down the traffickers you paid to take me the first time!”
“What? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
“Because the police weren’t listening to me, and it wasn’t as though I could ask you for help. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those poor women I was locked up with. They’d been beaten and raped, and I wasn’t just going to carry on with my life and forget about them. I’d already left it too long when I stayed with you.”
“We have bigger problems to worry about, Flower.”
“Really?” she said, incredulous. “What could possibly be bigger? Why is my life any more important than any one of those other women who have been taken? “
“It is to me.”
“But it wasn’t when you first had Cigarette Hands and his friend abduct me. I was a nothing to you then, just like these women are now.”
His brow creased. “Who the hell is Cigarette Hands?”
“He’s the guy who took me. I never knew his name so I called him that because his fingers stank of stale cigarette smoke.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry you went through that. I should have known better.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t, and that wasn’t all your fault either. Besides, even if I had the choice to not experience everything I had and go back to life the way it was before, I don’t think I’d choose that. We can make a difference now.”
He glowered at her. “Since when have I ever been some kind of bleeding heart, Flower? Don’t try to twist who I am in your head, because you’re going to be sorely disapp
ointed.”
“Fine. Then we’ll make a deal. You let me go, and we go back to the port and put an end to what that sick man and his partner are doing, and then I’ll do as you ask and vanish.”
He stared at her, and she knew he was at least considering her proposal.
She thought of something else. “And I want to see Cameron again. Alive. I need to know he’s safe.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Not on this, no. And also, I want to tell him I’m sorry for getting him involved in this mess, and I want him to know it won’t go any further.”
He began to pace, his hand against his mouth, thinking, his dark brows furrowed. He drew to a halt. “The deal is you let my men deal with Cigarette Hands, and I’ll let you see your friend via video call.”
She shook her head. “No deal. It’s what I want or nothing at all.”
“You don’t need to be involved in what’s going on at the old port.”
“Yes, I do. I want to see the look in that son of a bitch’s eyes when he sees who it is who has come for him. He told me we never come back—the women he took and sold on—but I did. I want him to know that. And I want to make sure the women he’s holding are safe. It’ll help them to have another woman there, and to know I am a survivor.” She gave a cold smile. “The men who run in your crowd don’t exactly seem to have much respect for women.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, “but I do respect you, Flower.”
“Maybe you think you do, but you don’t. If you did, you’d take my thoughts and feelings into account, and not just make decisions for me. You’d trust that I know how to make the right choice.”
He shook his head. “It’s not about a lack of respect, Flower, it’s that I’m afraid of losing control.”
“I’m a human being, Monster. You’ll never be able to control me, even if you think you are from the outside.”
“Not being able to control what you do in order to keep you safe is the thing that frightens me the most,” he admitted.
“So meet me halfway. Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want. Let’s go and free those women and find Cigarette Hands and his buddy—together—and show me that Cameron is safe and free. Then I’ll pack up my stuff and get the hell out of Los Angeles.”
He paced the floor, his head in his hands. “Damn it, Flower. You’re not going to give me any other options, are you?”
“No. This is fair. This is called compromise.”
He came to a stop and scowled at her. “I could always keep you tied to that chair, teasing and torturing you until you agree to my way of doing things. In fact, perhaps I like the sound of that option far better than one that also puts you in danger and reunites you with a boyfriend.”
“Cameron isn’t, and never has been a boyfriend,” she said. “He’s just a friend, I swear.”
Monster’s scowl deepened. “Just hearing his name from your lips makes me want to kill him.”
“But that’s not going to happen, right?” she said, her voice firm.
“Only for you,” he replied.
“And as for Cigarette Hands, it seems to me that you’ve got enough men on the payroll to help us take him down. It’s not as though I’ll be going in alone. I’ll have you by my side, and whoever else you’ve hired while you’re on American soil. I assume they’re all armed.” She thought of something and frowned. “Actually, I had a gun myself, but your guy knocked it out of my hand.”
Monster turned and went to the dresser drawer, pulled it open, and lifted out a weapon. She recognized it as the Glock she’d purchased only the other day.
“That’s mine,” she said.
“If I give it back to you, do you promise not to do anything stupid?”
She twisted her lips. “I’m not going to shoot you, Monster.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, his lips quirking at the edges. “I should hope not. I meant more that you weren’t going to rush into the situation before we can be assured you won’t get hurt.”
“As long as no one kills that bastard before I get the chance.”
“You think you could kill him, Flower? Do you have that in you, to take a man’s life?” He walked toward her and crouched at her side. “It changes who you are. Are you sure you want to take that step?”
“I already am changed,” she said. “And yes, I have it in me to take his life. You’ve no idea what it was like inside that container—being forced to piss where I was sitting, watching what he’d done to those poor girls, and the whole time he had this smug attitude, as though he could do whatever he wanted and none of it would come back on him. I want to be the one to show him that it can.”
He studied her face, as though he could read the truth of her thoughts written upon her skin. She held his gaze, defiant, even though everything had been done to take away any dignity or modesty. She wouldn’t be broken.
Finally, he gave a slow nod. “Okay, Lily Drayton. You have a deal.”
Her heart sang. Not only did he agree to her terms, he’d used her full name.
Monster picked up her jeans and underwear from where they’d been dropped in a bundle on the floor. He untangled them and then pulled the panties back over her feet and up her legs. She lifted her bottom up, to allow him to cover her back up, though part of her wilted in disappointment. He wasn’t going to finish what he started, then? What if something happened to either of them and they never got the chance to make love one last time? He repeated the process with the jeans and did up the button.
“You’ve lost weight since you first came to me,” he said. “Is that my fault?”
She nodded. “In part, yes.”
He leaned in and kissed her stomach. “I’m sorry for that.”
Lily held back sudden tears. “Thank you.”
He slipped her sneakers back onto her feet, like a modern prince finding his Cinderella, and then pulled a small key from the back pocket of his pants.
“Don’t make me regret doing this,” he warned.
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
He moved behind her with the key, and she felt him move the cuffs in order to get access to the lock, and then with a quiet click, the metal rings fell open and dropped to the floor.
Lily let out a groan and pulled her hands onto her lap, massaging her wrists with the opposite hand, and rolling her shoulders. Monster’s large hands made contact with the spots on either side of her neck where the tension had built, his thumbs rolling firmly into the tight knots that had come from having her arms in the same position for so long. His touch felt like heaven, and she circled her neck, her eyes slipping shut.
Monster massaged the knots out of her neck and then his hands left her skin. Her eyes opened, brought back to real life, and the space where he’d been felt bereft of his presence.
He was at the bar, making them a drink. Needing to stretch her legs, she got to her feet. Her calves twitched, threatening to cramp, so she paused to rub the knots out of them as well.
Monster carried a glass over to her. “It’s only sparkling water,” he told her. “No drugs, I promise.”
“There had better not be,” she warned. But her throat was parched, her tongue thick and sticking to the roof of her mouth. The ice clinked against the glass, and condensation clouded the outside. Her thirst took over, she brought the water to her lips, desperate to soothe her dry throat and hydrate herself.
Even so, she hesitated. It wasn’t that she really believed he’d added something to the water, but she’d been fooled once and didn’t intend on being so again.
“Swap with me,” she said, nodding to the tall glass he held for himself.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“No, actually. Take a drink of yours first, and then swap with me.”
He exhaled a sigh, but did as she asked, taking an exaggerated draw of the water to prove to her there was nothing untoward hidden within it. Satisfied, she handed her drink over and took his instead.
; She lifted the glass to her lips and took her first gulp. The water tasted clear and fresh, and no different than any other glass of sparkling water. She drained the glass and then crunched the ice between her teeth.
Looking into her face, Monster took the glass from her. “We should go.”
She stared back. “Yes, we should.”
They hesitated, the air between them growing charged. They’d not had the opportunity to hold each other again, to tear each other’s clothes away, and press together, skin to skin.
A world of danger lay before them, and passing through those doors would mean the start of one thing, and bring to a close their relationship forever. Though unspoken, neither was ready to step into that world just yet.
Though they fought the compulsion, their bodies were drawn together as though magnets were sewn inside their skin. They were pulled by an internal force neither of them quite understood, and were unable to fight.
While the touch of anyone else made her skin crawl and ice particles lodge in her veins, her whole body sang out to touch him and be touched by him. She longed for Monster, craved him like a hunger, as though her body told her what her mind fought so hard against—that he was the only one she would ever want and she needed him as much as she needed food, and water, and sunlight. Yes, Monster was twisted inside, but perhaps so was she. Maybe that was the reason he was the only person she could not only stand to touch her, but actually long for with every single cell in her body.
Eighteen
Monster had sensed the change in atmosphere between them as well, she could tell by the smoldering look in his eyes. His gaze told her more than his mouth did, the dark stare challenging her, making her insides quiver. She let her tongue flick out over her bottom lip and then bit it gently, her teeth digging into the soft skin.
“You drive me crazy, Flower. You know that, don’t you?” he said, his voice gruff.
Her breath was suddenly shallow, her heart tripping. “I could say the same about you.”
Without further warning, they crashed together in a frenzy of hands and mouths. His lips against hers were so warm and familiar, like coming home, while his tongue pushed into her mouth, demanding attention. Monster’s hands were in her hair, knotting in her tresses, and she reached to lace her fingers into the short, soft hairs at his nape. He pulled her close against him, her soft curves crushing to the hard planes of his body. One of his hands left her hair and slid down her back to clutch one cheek of her bottom, his fingers digging into her jeans and the flesh beneath, forcing her against him. She could feel his erection rigid across her stomach and she stood on tiptoes, wanting to grind herself against the thing she knew would bring her release. She’d been teased mercilessly for the last few hours, licked and fingered, and forced to swallow his cum, but she hadn’t been granted release from the heavy coiling between her thighs and low in her belly which he’d started.
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