by Stella Hart
“Are you sure he’s definitely one of them?” I asked, my heart thudding. Just because I recognized him that day didn’t mean he was definitely a Circle member. For all I knew, he was innocent, and the party I remembered him from was some other benign, boring event my father took me to.
Alex peeled back the man’s shirt to reveal a tiny black circle on his wrinkled arm. “Already checked. But here, see? He’s one of them.”
I stepped closer to look, and a throbbing ache drummed along my back and shoulders as I caught a better view of his face. He was fifteen years older now, but he didn’t look much different—after all, when I last saw him, he was already what I considered to be quite old, seeing as I was only five or six. His hair was a lighter shade of gray than it used to be and a little thinner, and he had a few more wrinkles, but it was still unmistakably him.
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes as I remembered sitting on his lap again. Remembered every miniscule detail. Seeing his face brought it all flooding back.
“Such a good little girl, aren’t you,” he said to me that evening, reaching up my blouse and tickling my belly as he bounced me up and down on his lap. “Such gorgeous eyes. It’s a real shame little girls have to grow up, isn’t it?”
In my young innocence, I thought he meant it was a shame that everyone has to grow up one day and be an adult with all the responsibilities that came with getting older. It simply didn’t occur to me that there was any double meaning behind his words.
“Yes, Mr. Ball-win,” I said. My father had told me his name, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
He pinched my bottom, and I squealed. “Shh, it’s just a fun game. Bottoms are funny, aren’t they?” he said, eyes glittering as he reached up and tickled me again.
I remembered giggling and nodding, but at the same time, some deep part of me felt uncomfortable and wanted to get away. I wanted to find my daddy and leave the party, but he was nowhere to be seen for the next hour.
I turned away and leaned down, bile rising in my throat at the harrowing memory. Pain was stampeding through my upper back now, and my face contorted in a grimace.
“Celeste?” Alex stepped over to me and touched a hand to my shoulder. “What is it?”
“My nerve pain… it’s coming back.”
He simply stared at me with wide eyes. He looked more vulnerable than he ever had. I suddenly realized he’d done this just for me, brought me to this man like he was some kind of prized gift, thinking that seeing him locked up would ease my condition like watching Dan’s death did. It made sense, and I could see why he thought that. But it wasn’t working today. Seeing the old man made me prickle with more pain, as if the mere sight of him stressed my nerves to their breaking point.
If he was already dead or dying, then it might work, but he was still breathing, still alive and unharmed before me, and Alex would want to keep him that way for a while. Extract as much information as he possibly could. Torture him. Make him feel what all those poor kids did when they were taken and locked away by men like him.
Alex shook his head. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry, Celeste. I thought you’d like this. I didn’t realize it might make your pain worse.”
The expression of guilt in his eyes was haunting me, filling me with an overwhelming urge to make him feel better.
“I know how to make it go away. You taught me how,” I said breathlessly. Alex raised his brows, and I went on. “Take me to the playroom, sir. Tie me up to that beam. Or the cross.”
I wanted him to whip me. I wanted to beg for it. I craved it; that sweet mixture of sizzling pleasure and stinging pain. The exquisite pain that took away the bad.
Alex didn’t look surprised. He simply said, “Okay,” and took my hand.
Moments later, he had me stripped and cuffed to the X-framed cross in the playroom, facing away from him. He said he would let me pick which flogger I wanted him to use on me, but I told him to choose it himself. I wanted him in full control, needed it.
His hands caressed my back for a moment, and I felt the chill of their absence when he pulled them away and stepped over to the rack to select the flogger. I heard a whistle through the air, and then a snap of the leather spray on my upper back. I moaned with pleasure, walking a tightrope of pleasure and pain, the two sensations spiraling together until I was spinning and vibrating, whimpering and begging. Out of control. Just like me. I’d given Alex all the power, and I loved it.
I squirmed with pleasure as he kept whipping me, and soon I felt like I wasn’t even in the room. I was floating, drifting, dancing on fire, my skin ablaze with raw sensation.
“More,” I cried out. “Please, sir….”
The leather tendrils kept snapping against my back, then down on my ass cheeks, and I gasped and moaned with bliss at each stroke. I couldn’t feel the nerve pain beneath my skin at all anymore; it’d been drowned out by the wonderful distraction of the whip, my body responding exactly as I knew it would.
“Yes!” I groaned, waiting for the leather spray to fall again. It never came.
“That’s enough,” Alex murmured, his hands caressing my bare skin in gentle strokes.
I moaned, desperate for him to untie me. He placed a finger between my legs, trailing it up and down my wet folds. He chuckled. “You’re fucking soaking.”
I always was after he hurt me. I couldn’t help it. It always turned me on so much.
“Please.…” I breathed, quivering with intense need. His hand slid around to my stomach, palm rubbing against my delicate skin as he slowly trailed downwards, finally coming to rest against my clit. He pressed harder, applying more pressure, and my breath hitched. I was dizzy with desire, desperate for more.
I moaned again, and Alex’s mouth moved to my left ear. “Please what?”
His hand wrapped around my throat, tilting my head back, and I whimpered. “Please fuck me, sir. Fuck me like the little slut you know I am. I need it….” As I spoke, his mouth latched on to the spot right below my ear, and I punctuated the sentence with another whimper, achy with arousal.
He uncuffed me and carried me out of the playroom, leaving me writhing in agony as I waited for him to take me to my bed. He could’ve just fucked me on the cross like he’d done on other occasions, but he wanted to make me wait and tease me to the edge of madness. Wanted to see me unwind completely, wanted to see me beg and cry for him. This was our dance of passion; I needed him to dominate me and strip me of all control, and he needed me to fall apart and give myself wholly to him as I let him claim me.
He was the only man I would let in like this. The only man I would allow to do these things to me.
He threw me down on the bed, kneading his fingers into my skin as he forced me onto my hands and knees by the edge. His touch sent arousal straight to my pussy, and he leaned down, lips marking the back of my neck as he began to grind his cock against my ass, the sweet torment of his hard body against mine making me unravel, spiraling down and down.
Finally he was in me, hard and deep, and I saw stars as he began to pound in and out of me. He was so big, stretching me so wide I could barely breathe.
“Please,” I begged, just like he loved. “Harder.”
“You want it fucking harder?” he growled, slamming into me so deep that I cried out.
“Yes, sir,” I said breathlessly, gasping as he dug his hands into my hips.
“What else do you want?”
“To be yours,” I cried. “I want you to own me. Do anything you want to me.” I knew he loved hearing things like that, and despite everything, I loved pleasing the man.
He grunted, sliding out and thrusting in again, increasing the pace until he was fucking me into a frenzy. I was so wet, so slick with need, making all sorts of embarrassing, unladylike sounds. But with Alex it didn’t matter. I felt no shame with him anymore.
He sank into me harder and faster until I couldn’t control the howls and screams coming from my mouth anymore. I barely even recognized my own voice as I shattered
like glass, clenching around his cock, my head falling forward. I felt boneless, desperate to collapse, but Alex held me up and kept fucking me until he came too, shooting his release deep inside me. Then he slapped my ass and pulled his cock out, making me gasp.
I felt his cum oozing out of my pussy and coating my thighs as I finally collapsed weakly on the bed. Alex went into the bathroom to get something to clean us both up, but I didn’t want him to. I wanted to lie here for the rest of the day, covered in him.
“Are you angry at me, sir?” I asked softly when he returned with the wet wipes. Now that the pleasurable buzz had worn off, I was reverting back to all my usual thoughts.
He frowned as he dabbed at my thighs. “Angry? Not at all. Why?”
I nervously bit at the inside of my cheek. “Because I chose to stay here to help you, but I haven’t remembered anything useful in more than a week. Even when I saw Baldwin just before. You haven’t been around as much, and you always leave right after we do things like this. So I thought maybe you were upset wi—”
“Celeste.” He smiled and pressed an index finger to my lips, cutting me off. “You didn’t just stay because you want to destroy the Circle. Or for me. You stayed for yourself. It’s who you are.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my forehead wrinkling.
“Like I told you a long time ago: this is your nature. To give yourself over, let go of control. That’s why you stayed.”
I chewed on my bottom lip as he spoke, staring straight into his eyes. He was right. I didn’t just stay to help him, or because I wanted to see Dan and Justice Baldwin and the rest of the Circle dead. I stayed for myself, because as much as I loved freedom, I also loved this. I loved submitting, loved being Alex’s captive. His hostage. As long as that war between freedom and submission was going on in my mind, I’d never be able to make myself leave him.
At this point, I had no idea what would end that mental battle… or if I even wanted it to end anymore. I almost let out a sob at the harrowing realization that I may very well love being a prisoner more than I loved freedom.
“You’re right, sir,” I murmured. “I… I wanted to give myself to someone.”
“Say it, angel. Tell me what you are.”
“I’m yours.”
I still meant it when I said those words. I was his. But still, despite the realization that I liked being a victim to him, liked being his captive, I was starting to slip. Starting to worry again. Recently something in my mind had been shifting, stirring, my thoughts rearranging themselves in a way which was almost imperceptible. I still needed something else, something more. Something to keep me here for good.
As if he could read my mind, Alex leaned down and whispered in my ear. “It’s just you, Celeste.”
“What do you mean, sir?” I murmured.
“There have been other women in my life. To fuck, to give me companionship. But never like you. Never anyone I kept. I promise. It’s only you.”
“Really, sir?” I said breathlessly.
He nodded. “Really.”
As messed up as it was—though I suppose I went far beyond that point a long time ago—hearing that I was the only girl he’d ever taken made me feel special. Powerful.
It seemed counterintuitive to feel that way when I was his captive, and therefore not in any position of control, but I felt like that all the same. Out of every other woman in the world, he’d chosen me, and there was some element of me which made him do that. I had something no one else could give him, and it was the one way in which I had power here. Being his first and his only.
“Later on tonight, I’d like to sleep with you. In your bed, all night. Would you like that?” Alex tenderly ran his fingers up and down my spine as he spoke, and then he punctuated his words with a kiss on my neck. Sugary thrills burst through my system.
Yes. Finally, he was giving me what I’d silently begged for all these days. This was it; the exact thing I’d been missing. It was what I craved, what I needed. This intimacy and closeness to the man I’d chosen to remain with.
“Yes, please,” I whispered, feeling the tension drain from my shoulders. “Thank you, sir....”
8
Agent Jason West
The dreary sky was filled with angry gray clouds as I stood outside, gloved hands in my warm pockets. I was in front of an old brick rowhouse with crumbling pockmarked concrete steps leading up to the door, waiting for Cora Rossi to come out. She’d answered the door a moment ago but then immediately insisted on going back inside to get a scarf and a cup of coffee for me. She also politely invited me in, but I preferred to stay outside and have another look at Celeste Riley’s house.
So here I was, waiting and staring over the wrought iron fence which divided the two properties. The rental house Celeste lived in up until her disappearance six weeks ago was tiny and getting on in years, with a sagging front porch and chipped, peeling gray paint on the exterior. The block it was situated on was actually quite large in contrast, and the empty lots surrounding it made the space seem even larger.
That was probably quite nice for the girl when she was here—all that privacy. Especially in a neighborhood like this with one of the highest crime rates in the city. I was willing to bet the empty space surrounding her made her feel a lot safer than she would otherwise, like a haven on her very own tiny island.
Unfortunately, the location and space posed a big problem for me. With all the trees, hedges, and overgrown grass, now coated in thick layers of snow, there wasn’t much visibility from other nearby buildings. That meant it was unlikely anyone would’ve noticed if Celeste had a stalker, and I thought she did.
By now I was sure Samara was right, and the Heartbreaker had followed her, kept tabs on her, and eventually taken her. The guy could’ve stood in one of those empty lots, covered by the tree line at the fence, and peered in her windows. Or he could’ve crept into her backyard and broke into her house while she was out. He could’ve figured out all her movements, all her usual activities.
The only person close enough to see what went on around the place was Cora, the old lady next door. She’d backed up Samara Silva when she reported Celeste missing, and she’d given a statement to the police, but I hadn’t had the chance to speak with her myself. Apparently, two weeks after Celeste’s disappearance—and a week before the case had even been called to my attention by Samara—she’d gone down to Florida to stay with a relative for a few weeks, ostensibly to escape the cold. I’d tried her cell while she was away, but it didn’t seem to be connecting.
Now that she’d finally returned, I could speak to her in person. ASAC Dwyer was covering for me back at the field office like he’d promised, seeing as Foley vehemently disapproved of me ‘wasting’ time searching for Celeste. If anyone asked, I was working on a cold case file.
Cora came outside again a moment later, her wrinkled hands coiled around a white mug. Steam rose from the cup, and she handed it to me. “Thank you, Ms. Rossi,” I said, taking a grateful sip. “Must be a shock to come back to all this cold, huh?”
Fall had been much colder than usual this year, but now that winter was right on our doorstep, the daily temperatures had dipped even lower.
Cora shrugged. “Florida was nice, and it was good to see my nephew, but I’m used to the cold. Don’t mind it that much.” She took a breath and shuffled her feet. “Sorry I haven’t been around for so long. After I talked to the cops, I got the impression they weren’t gonna do much of anything. I didn’t think anyone else would want to talk to me. So I didn’t even take my phone down there. Can barely figure out how to use the thing anyway.”
“That’s all right. I’m just glad you’re here now.”
She rubbed her neck. “So what can I do to help?”
“I just wanted to talk to you about a few things regarding Celeste. When did you first notice she was missing?”
“Probably around the same time as her friend, that girl… Samara?” I nodded to confirm the name, and she went on.
“Celeste almost always came home. There were only two occasions I can think of when she didn’t, but she always told me the next day that she’d stayed at a friend’s house. Probably Samara.”
I nodded again. Samara had told me the same thing—Celeste usually liked to stay alone at her own place, and never went home with any guys after social events.
“So I noticed right away when she didn’t come home that night. I knew it was her birthday, though, so I figured she was out celebrating. It was only when Samara came round looking for her that I started to worry. She said Celeste never showed up to her own party.”
“How long did you wait before reporting it?”
“I went in the same day as Samara. She drove me in. Nice girl, just like Celeste.”
“What did the police say?”
Her nose wrinkled. “I think you already know,” she said bitterly. “They acted like she was just some runaway. Then later, they told us she probably went off and killed herself, either accidentally or on purpose. The way they talked about her, you’d think she was some sort of heroin addict.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. I’d heard the same stuff myself, even from my superiors at the FBI. They seemed to think that because Celeste had a chronic pain problem, she must’ve been troubled enough to make herself disappear.
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about Celeste’s behavior in the weeks leading up to her disappearance?” I asked. I held up a hand. “Sorry, I have to ask.”
“I know. But she was fine. She had the back problems, I know that, but she seemed to be coping with it pretty well, and she told me she was seeing a really good doctor.” She paused and let out a sigh, staring over my shoulder at the gray house next door. “You know, she used to make me cookies whenever she had spare time. She was a sweet girl, really. Not the type to run away, let alone anything else along those lines.” She made a cross over her chest.
“Is there anything you didn’t tell the police when you gave your statement about her going missing?”