His collar was precisely folded.
His pants, sinfully dark, were rich of color and cut.
He’d dwarf the sun with his brilliance, let alone the fluorescents of my room.
His thoughts locked, snicker-snack, onto mine and froze me; my fingers clutched the wrought-iron, mock arrowheads.
Who the fuck decorated a railing with arrowheads?
Go! A whisper, a suggestion.
Fingers uncurled. My fingers.
Mine.
Horrified, I was unsure who was making my hands do what they did. Would he make me suicide? I watched them as they unlocked from the metal, felt my weight shift, and I fell, outward into space, pivoting on my feet where they rested on the edge of the concrete of the balcony.
My last link with the solid world.
I fell.
Strong hands caught my wrists and I jarred to a halt, gasping. Those hands hauled me inward, winching me to their owner. The circle of man flesh about my wrists was potent and promising.
“Hello.”
My stomach kissed the railings and I dared raise my head, dared meet the stark blue eyes of my possessor.
“Tell me, Red. Were you planning to shoot me?” That Scandinavian accent. In any other man, at any other time, I’d find it desirable.
Red? My mouth slackened, my tongue thought of lying. But, I couldn’t lie in the face of this man, never had been able to during the days with him in Cuba.
Those days. Three. Fucking. Days.
“I was. Yes. Asshole.” I cranked out a smile. I could defy him, though it took effort.
Maybe his power had waned.
One could hope.
“Climb over the railing and come inside, little robot girl.”
No. Don’t.
My thought switch flipped from no to yes, and I remembered that exact feeling from the first time, and was dismayed at how this replayed.
Yes. Oh yes.
Exactly like an obedient robot, I climbed over. I stood before him when he sat in a chair placed in the center of my room. On my rug. His weight pressed the chair legs into the softness.
If I didn’t look at him, maybe he’d go away.
The hard outline of the rifle lay to the side, hinting at my recent deadly intentions.
I could smell his thoughts, feel them in me, purring. Lucky he couldn’t read all mine.
And I quivered – fear, the unknown, my stupidity in coming here, though what else could I have done?
What...
Else...
As if I’d ever have stayed away and done nothing.
Some situations have that flash of comprehension where you see what should’ve been in your face from the start.
I should’ve known how weak my situation would be.
Should’ve seen he would find me. I knew his powers.
This was how it would always have been. It was inevitable.
Swallow your doubts. The battle hasn’t ended. I needed to figure out how to skew this my way.
“What am I going to do with you?”
The rumbling growl underpinning his voice hardened my nipples and awakened between my legs for the first time in three years.
“What...am I...” His finger touched my midriff over the silken negligee, precisely where my navel dwelled, and dug in. “Going to do.” He pushed. I swayed. “With you.”
That finger. The pressure.
Not a question.
My cunt liquefied with heat.
Shameful.
I strived to still my trembling legs.
With his forefinger, he beckoned me closer, until I had to spread my legs to navigate him, until I was poised over his lap where his cock bulged his pants. My negligee had ridden up my legs until it barely covered my black panties.
He laid a leisurely hand on my inner thigh then drifted his palm up and inward until he cupped between my legs. His palm pressed, his thumb made soft rhythmic indentations on my mons. I hung, caught in a moment of no time, mouth open, unable to stop him, unwilling to, and there was the puzzle.
There was why I had to kill this man – he made me crave what I should not want.
“You’re different, Red,” he drawled as he played with me. “How different is what I’m going to find out. Tell me, how many times have I fucked you?”
Loaded question. Fucking loaded question.
My mouth twisted and I swallowed several times, as if dust or his probing fingers were stuck in my throat. “Never,” I croaked.
“You might get lucky this time,” he murmured as he slipped a finger beneath the edge of my panties, and squeezed it slowly along my slit then back again, almost to my clit. Slip, slide. Not inside me, and barely parting my cunt lips...yet, an orgasm built.
Desperately, I shored up defenses, stiffening and muttering inane curses.
“Don’t come,” he added, gaze steady as iron.
As if. As if I would.
But, god help me, I did want to. Unwelcome, as it was, I lusted for that cataclysm of sensation.
Don’t come, don’t come, and so...I couldn’t.
Couldn’t, after he teased me for ages. That finger, playing me.
Don’t come.
He stroked until my legs shook and I had to clutch at his shoulders. My eyes leaked tears; my vision blurred; my abdomen cramped with need.
I wanted to. God I wanted to. Three years without coming and he stopped me.
“Beg.” Isak smiled, a thin unemotional smile.
The connection between our eyes could’ve bored a hole in the air. Some things were too far, irrefutably wrong. I scowled a denial, in silence.
“That.” He leaned in, voice hushed. “I haven’t seen that in years.”
He took his hand away, pushed on my belly, and my legs caved, I slipped to the floor, to all fours.
Moistening my lips, swallowing, I raised my head and rasped a question to this monster, “Seen what...?”
“Defiance.”
Oh.
“What pretty tits those are. Wriggle those panties off. Keep your head up.”
He waited for me to obey and drop my underwear to the side, then reached down and fondled my breasts until I was moaning, again. Fingers circling my nipples, squeezing. Fuck. When I felt liquid dribble down my thigh, I wanted to hide.
“Don’t come,” he whispered in my ear.
“Stop, please,” I said as softly.
“You don’t mean that, do you?”
It was a second before I shook my head, and pressed my breasts into his hands. A bare second. Humiliating.
I rode to his house in the car, curled on the floor below him, jarred uncomfortably by the bumps as the tires met uneven road. I was clothed as I had been, in lingerie, and compos mentis enough to know what was happening. We were going to his house. I was infuriated, sad, and in discomfort, for he kept his foot riding my stomach.
What was defiance when it achieved zero?
“Because you’re different, I’m going to give you a chance.” He rocked me, the sole of his shoe hard and squashing deep into my stomach. “Red. I don’t want to remember your real name so you’re Red from now on.” Poignantly, roughly, the feel of his shoe summoned me back to the almost-orgasm I’d wept over minutes before. “Forget your name.”
How could I?
I stared. What did he mean?
A chance at what?
“Your name is Red from now on.”
Of course it was.
CHAPTER 3
I let her wake. She’d been my paperweight on my large, timber and glass-topped desk for some time, lying on her side on the blotter. It must be five AM by now. Having her there let me think while also admiring the view.
It was wise to let some of the girls drift away and forget, lessened their anxiety. I hadn’t been sure I could do this to Red but I had, with difficulty.
Her eyelids fluttered. Eyelashes so delicate a butterfly would be jealous.
I raised the calligraphy pen and considered where to write on
her. One of my hobbies, though I’d never written on a girl. Red seemed a good manuscript.
She pushed me into a new realm? She could bear the consequences and the evidence.
Where better than her areolas. Pink, circular perfection. Her upper breast lay over the lower, presenting me with an exquisite female canvas.
I began writing in black ink. The lines and loops stood out against the white. When I reached nipple, I dipped the line and wove around it in a pretty curve.
I placed a dot lower above her navel. Let it dry for a few seconds, then licked. The mark stayed, if dull. Good.
Her eyes opened fully. Pretty, light-green eyes looked out through the fan of red hair I’d arranged across her face. Green eyes. What else for a redhead. Her pubic hair, the thin arrowhead she’d left herself after, I presumed, laser therapy proved her color was inherited.
After placing the pen on the desk, I leaned back into my chair, considering my prize.
“Who are...” she began then stopped.
“Isak Bain. You know that.”
“Yes.” The change in her eyes was from fear. I let it happen. Dampening all her reactions was probably futile with Red, as well as less interesting.
“Do you remember the last words I said to you when I left you in Cuba?”
Cogwheels turned somewhere in that skull, neurons clicked, and finally: “Yes.”
“What did I say?”
She wet her lips with tongue, then lay staring until I tired of waiting and leaned in. I gestured – flicking a finger. “Raise your leg. I want to see more of you.”
Her eyes flared with anger. “Why?” Anger was remarkable, that she could so easily get angry at me.
“Now.”
Though her leg shook, though her forehead crinkled in a cute line, she lifted her upper leg, bending at the knee and placing her foot on the desk.
Pushing my will at her came naturally after these years. I rolled my chair sideways, put my hand between her legs then idly played with her slit until she grew wet and wriggly.
“What did I say?” I drew the copious liquid lower and painted her leg, dipping my finger into her entrance, observing her shudders, the squeeze of her cunt.
“You said, not to find you.”
“Exactly. Why then are you here?”
“To kill you.”
“Of course. You are brave, and stupid, and it’s amazing you managed to even think of killing me, let alone getting this close to me.” I toed off my shoe, pushed back and brought my leg up, placed my foot before her face. “Suck.”
My toe was definitely not one hundred percent clean, and that was all part of the allure in getting her little tongue and lips to latch on.
The no was blatant in her expression but after a moment of squeezing her eyes shut, she opened them and her mouth then shifted until my big toe was reachable. The warm wetness, as she engulfed it in her mouth, went straight to my cock.
“Keep sucking,” I murmured. “I should fuck you then kill you, by making you kill yourself. You’re trouble. The CIA will look for you, won’t they?”
She nodded, making my toe move, making me grin. What a situation – a CIA agent naked and on my desk doing oral on my toe. Not that novel, perhaps, after all, the mayor’s wife was one of my collectibles.
I was going to have to sort this out quickly, efficiently, with rigorous attention to why the fuck she attracted me more than others. What to do with her? I wanted to keep her but that was problematic.
“My little talisman, that’s you.”
Her eyes fixed on me but the pulsing, the play of her tongue on my dirty toe never stopped.
“Taste good?”
Her mouth screwed up.
“Good girl that you are, I will explain, as all villains do to their victims, though in your case I like torturing you with possibilities.” A joke though she likely wouldn’t see that. “I have a monster inside me. You can spit out my toe.”
I lowered my foot to the floor, pulled a tissue from the box in the desk drawer, then gently wiped the spit from her mouth.
“Of course you do,” she said.
“Yes. Of course I do.” Such an honest conversation. Casually, I waved the tissue. “Some days I can see it lurking in my veins.” Though it was a strange statement, she barely blinked.
“How long do I have before your agency finds where you are?”
“A...week?”
“And will they see the connection between this and Cuba?” Which would surely mean whoever had been chasing Wolfe, would become curious about me.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
Her responses seemed slow. “Is your brain still foggy?”
“No.”
“Wolfe had to hurt you here.” I tapped the center of her forehead, kissed her nose, stayed there face to face. “To make you vulnerable. I love how different you are.” I wiped clean my toe. “I’ve been wondering how he did it.”
No matter how I explored her head, it was an inexact thing. I couldn’t read thoughts, only emotions. I could feel a collectable at a fair distance, could often pull them to me once in tune, but the mechanisms of this were mostly a puzzle.
“I’ve used you.” I nodded, mostly to myself. “I’ve used you for a long time to ward off my monster. But now you’re here, I’m wondering why you are. Is it fate poking at me? Telling me to do something new?”
“No,” Red said softly, eyes a little dull, which told me she was still affected by the forced sleep, though the poor thing didn’t see it. “It’s my need to kill you.”
“I should just fuck you.” Something was wrong with that idea... The leather chair squeaked as I leaned away. “Fucking collectibles fixes things. You’d be happier. But me? You bother me. A deal for you. Argue your side. Convince me I’m wrong to keep you, fuck you...” Maim, kill, etcetera, all my options scrolled past. “Just follow my rules. Don’t try to thwart me or there will be suffering. Immense suffering.”
I reassessed the undulations of her sprawled body. The line of hair leading to her clit and pussy charmed me every time. Shaving it off would be a crime...though I did like crimes.
“Do that and maybe I’ll release you.”
“Maybe?” By the cracked syllables in that word, the lovely girl was enticed.
My gaze sharpened. “Best offer.”
Vitor walked up to where this open plan study-and-bedroom merged onto the outside, seaward-facing deck. He waited, knowing that by this time of morning, I should have instructions for him. I crooked a finger, watched him approach to within a yard of my desk and stand behind Red.
“I have a question for you.”
“Sir?” Dressed in a smart shirt and pants, Vitor looked the part of a bodyguard – which he partly was. Despite his nonchalance, he perused the girl’s body. The man loved girl’s asses and he knew my tendency to throw them his way when I was bored or done with them.
“You want to fuck this?” I lightly patted Red below her hip, across her bottom.
His eyebrows rose. “Yes. It’s time for me to remind you though, sir.”
Of the ritual. True. Twice a day. Clockwork. She’d messed with that.
I could feel Red striving to glance behind her but shook my head. She subsided almost as readily as any ordinary collectible. Almost.
It was the almost that fascinated me.
I liked her remnant of ferocity.
I was bored with the other girls because they were perfect robots. Red was fractured, flawed – what Wolfe had done was not complete and left openings for defiance. Defiance, I decided, was the frosting on the cake. A pity there was only one of her.
“Maybe I’ll let you have her.” I switched my focus to Red in time to see her flinch. “I have five girls, so five chances for you to argue your way out of me keeping you. Maybe you can save them too. Give me good reasons. Get enough ticks from me, and there you have it. Freedom.”
“For us all?”
I shrugged, then reached and put my forefinger below her eye where
tears had gathered. I pulled my finger across her face, her cheek, creating a glistening track. “This isn’t some typed contract, it’s one written in spit, tears, and cum, and in blood. Blood is easier to read.”
Her mouth made an O.
“Stick out your tongue.”
I took hold of the tip. Slippery, squirmy thing. “I like you. Argue well and I won’t have to cut this off and shove it up your cunt. It’s a retribution the cartels might use.”
I let go of her tongue, wiped my fingers on her tits.
“Fuck, I hate you.”
Her shoulder-length hair had slipped across her face again. The red strands stuck to the tears, to her full lips, shielded her eyes.
“I can fix that. The hate. For a CIA agent, you have such an innocent face.” She grimaced. “The first time we met you were a field agent, had this short hair, shaved on one side. No-nonsense, fuck-the-world hair. Do you remember what I told you?”
Frowning, she shook her head, stirring the hair tucked between her neck and the desk blotter.
“I told you never to cut it. I made it a quiet command, whispered it, told you not to remember my command, just the need to obey. I bet you haven’t cut it since.”
For the first time after I’d caught her again, she blushed. “I don’t believe you.”
“I see it worked.”
CHAPTER 4
He’d left a subliminal command, inside me.
Fuck.
What else could he do? The ramifications might be endless. The instructions he could give...
Should I believe him? I couldn’t help wondering, but I must forget that and concentrate.
Freedom. Maybe. He hadn’t answered me properly, yet it was the best answer I was getting. Freedom or my tongue cut off. Though only a threat – he might not carry through, he might be making the worst, sick joke, ever – I didn’t know.
“I have to convince you this is wrong?”
Isak nodded. Behind me, his man waited for God knew what.
While I thought this through, I crept my arms forward to cover my breasts. If ever I needed a calm mind, it was now. How impossible was this? He was the judge and executioner. The bias was clear as day.
“Immoral. It’s immoral.” Obviously. How could he argue against that?
He huffed a harsh laugh. “Morality? Yours or mine? And take your arms off your tits.”
The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used Page 2