Blaire's World: Volume One

by Box Set

  “Hart.”

  Heart? Any other questions that sat on the tip of my tongue disappeared. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not. Was it a nickname?

  “I can see you fumbling around in your mind trying to figure it out,” he murmured. “But I assure you there is nothing to figure out. My name is Hart. H-A-R-T, Hart. My mother was an English literature professor with a penchant for poetry. Hart Crane was a modernist poet from the early nineteen hundreds who stole my mother’s heart. When I was born, there was no doubt in her mind what I’d be called.”

  Hart. It was unusual, but I liked it. It probably should have been effeminate, but this man was all male, carrying darkness in his eyes that expressed anything but gentleness.

  “And you?”

  A simple question with no simple answer. Who was I? My previous name was barely a fading echo in my chaotic mind. One thing I knew for sure: I wasn’t her anymore, she was long dead. But neither was I, Beauty.

  “What did Algimas call you?”

  “He liked to call me Beauty,” I spat out, my face scrunching up as if a bad smell had entered the room.

  “Beauty,” Hart purred. The word sounded reverent off his tongue, but still made me shiver with revolution.

  Leaning forward, his large body hovered above mine. Thankfully, the granite counter between us resembled a protective barrier. I didn’t trust this man, in fact, I was certain that at any moment he would turn on me. Even though he hadn’t shown me anything other than kindness, there was something sinister about the way he moved. Effortlessly quiet, efficient, and controlled. He wasn’t your run-of-the-mill police, possibly not even a soldier. The unnerving way he moved and controlled himself wasn’t natural. It was learned and perfected. People who had something to hide made me nervous.

  While he hadn’t hurt me, I was fairly confident he wasn’t a good man. He also hadn’t been forthcoming of what would become of me and my freedom, which made me guess my freedom may not be as close as I hoped.

  “Perhaps, you need to take Beauty back.”

  My wandering gaze swung to Hart’s. He wasn’t mocking me, the seriousness in his eyes and the determined set to his strong jaw told me as much. Take it back? And do what with it? Beauty wasn’t a name, it was a noun that had been used to belittle me, to turn me from a living breathing being into nothing more than an object.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take it back. Beauty shouldn’t be something to fear, it shouldn’t be something so ghastly it makes you visibly squirm,” he noted my flinch at the mention of the name. Resting on his elbows, his gaze level with mine, he smiled as he held out his hand, palm upwards, a gleaming silver knife resting in it. “Take it back, own it, show that rapist fuck you are not his Beauty anymore. You are your own Beauty.”

  I couldn’t look away from the knife. How many times had I prayed for a weapon? How many nights did I sit on the floor beside Algis as he ate, wishing the knife in his hand was mine to use? With slow, tentative movements, I reached out. One finger touched the blade, so smooth yet deadly. It was the closest I had come to something so beautiful and sharp in many years, and I savored the feel of such power beneath my touch. Once I reached the hilt, my fingers wrapped around it, and then it was mine. Pulling it away from Hart, I held it protectively to my body. My lip curled and a feral growl purred from my chest. Hart simply smiled and rose to his full height.

  “Come, Tiger.” He chuckled. “Come see what I prepared for you.”

  He strode from the room without a care in the world, his back turned, unconcerned of the knife he had just relinquished to me. One part of my mind screamed at me to run, another wanted to attack, but the loudest voice was the one that urged me to follow. Slowly at first, I tracked him as he wandered through the house. Hart seemed comfortable here, even familiar with its layout. Soon I was padding along behind him on bare feet, the knife still clutched to my chest, my eyes darting around the house, wary of an attack at any moment. It didn’t come, but my heart began to race, and my palms became slick with sweat when I realized where we were headed. The doorway from the informal dining room was familiar. The stairs that led down to the basement level felt never-ending, and my feet seemed to grow heavy and reluctant the further I went. Cool air bit at my flesh as we made our way through the dimly lit corridor, my soft breaths coming in panicked gasps, my lungs frozen with terror. But I couldn’t stop following Hart. It was if he were the Pied Piper, and I was ensnared by his presence. At the heavy steel door to the dungeon where my nightmares began, we stopped.

  Hart glanced back over his shoulder and winked. “Consider this, my gift to the new and improved Beauty.”

  The door opened easily on silent hinges, and my world narrowed to the sight before me. The room was the same, but different. Instead of me hanging from the cuffs that bit into my flesh, was Algis. The sight shocked the breath from my lungs. He was naked, his head hanging limply, his chin to his chest. For the first time in three years, he looked nothing like the monster my mind had portrayed him to be. He looked small, weak, and oddly human. Hart strolled into the dungeon, looking over the stainless-steel tables adorned with all sorts of equipment that had been used to break me: scalpels, pliers, dildos, vibrators, scissors, and other instruments that made my stomach churn with sickness. From the walls hung whips, chains, collars, gags, floggers, saws, and an assortment of other paraphernalia.

  His inspection soon moved to the cage that sat on the cold floor, and I could hardly believe I had spent so much time trapped inside it. Small, too small, and entirely menacing. Hart stared at it for a long time before moving on to the obscene chair sitting in one corner. It was reclined, with stirrups for the ankles to secure one’s thighs wide and helpless. I had no idea what he was thinking as he observed my personal hell, his emotions hidden carefully behind a blank mask. Ever so slowly, Hart made his way closer to Algis, until he came to a stop directly in front of him. Reaching out, Hart gripped the shaggy brown hair that hung over Algis’ forehead and pulled, lifting his lifeless face high. A ball gag had been shoved in his mouth and was buckled at the back of his head, and spit dribbled down his chin. With a grunt, Hart let go and turned abruptly to face me.

  “Forty-eight hours, and you can’t kill him,” he muttered, stepping to one side.

  No longer did Hart look calm and relaxed, instead, he looked furious. His glare could have cut through the ice in the air as he stared at me.

  “Well, get in here and get started.”

  Shock stole my momentum, and a bombardment of confusing thoughts held me in place. Get started? Where would I start? I’d had so many dreams about this moment, and the room was filled with a concoction of devices that would bring forth pain and blood. Would I slice him open with a scalpel? Perhaps choke off his airway with a collar? Maybe I could penetrate and rape him with one of the many oversized dildos. Hart suddenly appeared before me, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. There was tension around his hard and cold eyes as he glared down on me, lips flattened and nostrils flared. Was he angry at me? Perhaps I should hurt him, too. I was so fucking sick and tired of men looking down on me like I was the scum beneath their feet.

  “He stole you, raped you, defiled you, tortured you.” Hart’s deep voice rose with every word, and with each reminder of my imprisonment, I flinched. “How many times did you wish it was him and not you? How many times did you pray for help? How many times did you beg for mercy?” His words were chipping away at my mind, putting memories in there I didn’t care to recall. My breathing was choppy, and I swayed on my feet. “How many times did he ignore you and fuck you instead? How many men did he watch stick their cocks in you? How many hours did you hang from these chains? How much fucking blood did you spill on this concrete floor?” Hart was yelling now, and I realized his anger wasn’t directed at me, it was for the life I had been forced to live. As his rage grew, so did mine. It was as if we were somehow linked in this moment, his fury on my behalf pushing my own until I felt like a pressure
gauge about to burst. The answer was . . . too many times to count.

  The rape was endless, the torture permanently etched into my skin, my humiliation drowned beneath tears. There were days where I begged until my throat was raw, and I prayed like an obsessed fool until one day I decided there was no God. There were men, though, lots of them, and the hours hanging from the chains that Algis currently hung were immeasurable. My eyes fell to the concrete floor, my blood had fucking stained it. All that feeling of hate and grief boiled over, and I screamed, my feet moving, taking me over the threshold and toward the man who had destroyed something within me, and at the same time created the wrathful beauty that now filled me.

  The knife slipped from my fingers to the stone floor, clattering loudly as my hands curled into fists. Then I began to hit him with weak punches, slaps, and scratches. I attacked like a wounded yet wild kitten. I’d only just begun, and my energy was already waning. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh was so familiar in this room, I was sure the sound had seeped its way into the concrete walls that would forever hold such devastating secrets. Tears clouded my vision, and with one last slap, my head hung low, and I swallowed a sob. Taking a step away, I glanced at Algis. He was still passed out, my pitiful attack gone completely unnoticed.

  “Why won’t he wake up?” My voice was rough, but almost resembling a whine. The tears that had filled my eyes remained unshed as I forced them away with a few blinks. Tears would not be shed. Today was my day for vengeance, today was the day I made this man bellow to the heavens for mercy. Overwhelmed with the endless possibilities of torture and mayhem, I rubbed at my arms as my fidgeting fingers yearned to reach out and cause pain.

  “I may have over-estimated the drug I used to sedate him. He might need a few more hours before he’s conscious again.”

  It wasn’t fair that he would sleep through my revenge. I wanted the man wide awake and screaming. Scooping the knife up from the floor, I retreated to the door.

  “That’s it?” Hart asked, his brows raising high.

  I couldn’t drag my gaze away from Algis. At any moment, I expected him to wake up, free himself, and attack me. My hands shook as I held the knife to my body. I wanted to drag the blade over his flesh, dig it deep until he cried in pain. The need to hurt him was still within me, but he should be awake for it. I had always been awake for it.

  “Let me know when he wakes up. I don’t want him to miss what I have planned.”

  Turning, I scampered down the gloomy corridor, back up the narrow stairs, and into the warmly lit home. While not one single square inch of Algis’ mansion felt homey, I preferred being upstairs to being in the dungeon any day.

  HART

  The girl, Beauty, had surprised me. While her effort to attack the unconscious Algis was pitiful at best, her need for him to be conscious while she carried out the rest of her revenge made me hard. Perhaps I was sick, maybe even evil, but the thought brought me a rush of lust that made me want to fuck for days. The truth was, I got off on pain. Not sadism as such, for I had difficultly inflicting pain on my lovers and the women I fucked, but the thought of slicing my blade under the ribs of a piece of shit human being made me hard as fucking steel. If that piece of shite happened to be a rapist, even better.

  After a kill, the energy that coursed through my body wasn’t sated until I plowed into a woman, sometimes two or three at a time, hard and fast, for hours on end. The poetic screams of my kill heated me from the inside out. It wasn’t normal, I wasn’t normal, but I had accepted that fact many years ago. My love for death had been born when I was still a child, forced into violence by the most depraved of circumstances. For a time, I fought the sick need for brutality that stayed with me long after the blood had been washed from my body. Now, I motherfucking embraced it. Rotating my head, I groaned before palming the thick length of my dick behind my zipper. Yep, I was sick, and the next forty-eight hours were going to be painful with no outlet for the need that would build inside me. Sure, Beauty was all female with the parts I needed to gorge upon, but there was no way she’d be a willing participant in my animalistic need. I’d have to wait until this job was over, then I could call on one of my regular women, or perhaps pick up a new one from a local bar. Maybe a blonde . . .

  As if my thoughts alone had conjured her, Beauty wandered into the living room. She moved gracefully and quietly, doing her best to go unnoticed, obviously a habit from the hell she had been living. Her pale features could almost blend into the bleached white surroundings of Algis’ home, but I wasn’t a man you could sneak by.

  She’d obviously managed to sleep for a few hours, the dark circles beneath her eyes were a little softer. Her wild mane of hair had been twisted into a thick braid and hung over one shoulder. She was still wearing a business shirt that obviously belonged to Algis, and had added sweatpants that hung off her thin frame. Luckily for her, Algis wasn’t exactly a bulky male, so the clothes would do for now. The knife I’d gifted her last night was still clenched in her fist. Watching me from the corner of her eye, she took a chance at turning her back to me to peer out the window. Dull, blue light was beginning to filter through it, the night gradually edging toward morning. With my ankle resting on top of one knee, my body relaxed in the white, leather sofa while I watched her. Healed of her bruises and with a few extra pounds, she’d be a fucking stunner, unparalleled.

  Her shoulders lifted and fell with a long, audible sigh, and she finally turned to face me, all signs of subterfuge gone.

  “When can I go home?”

  Straight to the point. Her little hands curled into fists at her sides, the long, sharp blade hanging from one. She was stronger than others who had endured what she had. I was curious about the girl she was before her abduction. Was she strong too, or did circumstances mold her into the resilient creature that stood before me? Did she always have that crazed gleam to her eye? Or was that too courtesy of Algis?

  “Home is not an option right now,” I answered. I was being a cryptic bastard, and honestly, I wasn’t sure why. Handing her off to someone else would be so easy. They’d place her somewhere safe or help her find her way home. The selfish bastard in me wanted to keep her close, though, for now. Beauty’s nose scrunched up in frustration, and she moved restlessly from one foot to the other.

  “Why the hell not?” she snapped.

  I bet she never spoke to Algis like that, all thorns and barbs. Fortunately, I didn’t mind it, in fact, I loved it.

  “Perhaps you could help me with something.” Her face paled. I didn’t think such snowy skin could lighten any more. “Not like that,” I gruffly huffed out, my foot falling to the thick carpet, my forearms braced on my knees. “I don’t buy women, nor do I sell them.” The stiffness that had quickly invaded her limbs seemed to disappear, but she still looked wary. “Trust me, Beauty, I have no problem finding willing women to fuck. You, though, are a loose end, a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit anywhere, and it will be my job to make sure you fit somewhere.”

  “I won’t allow another man to use me again,” she murmured, after a long pause.

  I believed her. She’d take the knife I had gifted her and slice a man deep before being enslaved again, I could see it in the wild gleam to her eyes.

  “There are other men I am searching for, friends of Algimas Bakaitis, men you may have met during your time with him. You may have even visited their homes.”

  “I didn’t travel often, and when I did he drugged me to keep me compliant.”

  A recollection of her travels would have been helpful, but it didn’t matter. The men I was searching for were buried deep underground in an attempt to escape the reach of Charlie, but they wouldn’t remain that way for long. There had never been a target I couldn’t find.

  “Perhaps I can show you pictures, and you can see if anybody stands out in your memory.”

  Beauty stared at me, an unnerving look on her face, her eyes boring into mine as if trying to bury beneath my skin and see who I really was. She
could stare all she wanted, but she’d never figure it out. I was, if anything, a master at keeping my emotions in check.

  “Where’s your home?” I sighed, wondering myself and sorely after a change in subject. The way she continued to gape at me was beginning to piss me off.

  She didn’t answer for a moment, but her brow was creased in thought. “I’m not sure exactly.”

  Interesting. She couldn’t remember, or she didn’t have a home? Had Algis picked her up off the street? The homeless were the easiest to procure.

  “I’m a bit mixed-up . . . up here.” She pointed to her head.

  A mixed-up mind was something I knew well.

  “Well, that is a conundrum. Perhaps you could give me a name, your real name?”

  More confusion wavered in her features.

  “Beauty.”

  My brow rose as I watched her edge closer to the sofa opposite me. It was like gaining the trust of a wild animal.

  “I was under the impression that Algimas gave you that name. Surely you had another name, a surname?”

  Her head tilted to one side, those big doe-like eyes snagged on mine and not letting me go. Any signs of confusion had been shut down, revealing nothing but a blank mask.

  “I don’t remember it.”

  “Interesting,” I murmured as she finally sat her pert ass on the corner of the cushion, the hand with the knife resting in her lap, the other resting protectively on top of it. Nodding, I relaxed back in my own chair. If she was suffering some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, her memories might have been locked away, just waiting to come tumbling out.

  “Why can’t I go home?” she persisted.

  “It’s not safe.” My tone was brisk, hoping to brush away her persistent questioning.

  While her tenacity was somewhat admirable, it was also raising my ire. I wasn’t accustomed to being questioned, or having my authority doubted.

  “Why is it not safe for me? You have Algis, why can’t I leave?”