by Stella Hart
Cora frowned. “No.”
“Sorry, let me rephrase. Was there anything you didn’t mention because it didn’t seem relevant at the time? For example, any odd people hanging around the street near Celeste’s place? Could be at any point since she moved in. I’m trying to figure out if someone was following her.”
Cora’s frown deepened, and she scratched at her white hair. “Hm. You think she had a stalker, huh?”
“Possibly.” I didn’t let on who I thought that stalker was. Poor old woman would probably go into cardiac arrest.
“Well, I hope not. I always kept an eye out for her, you see. Sometimes I thought I heard noises in her backyard when she wasn’t around. I’d poke my head out the window and have a look, but I never saw anything. Probably just a cat.”
“I see.”
She raised her brows, her gaze still focused on Celeste’s house. “Have you checked inside her place? If someone was stalking her, maybe they got in at some stage and left some DNA behind, or something like that?”
I nodded. I’d received permission from the landlord to check out the house a few weeks ago, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. A bit messy, perhaps, but that wasn’t particularly strange. Certainly nothing to suggest any sort of break-in close to Celeste’s disappearance, and the only stray hairs and prints came from either Celeste herself or Samara. “Yes. No leads there. Can you think of anything else?”
Cora looked to the left, her thin eyebrows furrowed. “No. I never saw anyone at her house. Unless….” She trailed off, and I waved a hand to prompt her to keep going. “I did see a strange car parked around the corner a few times over the last couple of years, when I went for my evening walks. Not right across from Celeste’s block, but up the road a bit, by one of the empty lots.”
“What made you notice this car?”
“Well, I’ve lived here a long time. I know some people think I’m a nosy old biddy, but I like to know what’s going on. So I’ve gotten used to the general comings and goings around here. I know what cars belong to which people, and I notice when things are different. This car… it was only here every few months, so it didn’t belong to someone who lives here, and to be quite frank, it was too nice for the neighborhood. Most folks around here don’t bother driving anything quite that nice, because they’d just be asking to get it stolen. Shame, but it’s true. Although I will say, the area has picked up a bit recently. It’s getting better.”
“But you still found this car to be out of place?”
She nodded. “Yes. And it isn’t just that it didn’t belong… it was always parked in that spot when Celeste was out on a night shift or studying late at college. I suppose I always thought it was slightly odd, but I didn’t make that connection until just now, when you said she may have had a stalker. But now I wonder if maybe the person who drove it knew when she would be out, and came over here to sneak inside and go through her things while she wasn’t around.” She shuddered and pulled her black woolen scarf tighter around her neck. “I suppose it could all just be a coincidence. Could’ve been someone visiting another person in the neighborhood, which is what I thought back then.”
I pulled out a notebook and a pen. “It could be nothing, but it could also be something. So anything you can remember would be very helpful. Make, model, color. Any other details.”
She scrunched up her face in thought. “Silver Mercedes. New-looking. Not sure on the exact model.”
“Anything else?”
“I remember part of the plate.”
“Yes?” My pulse picked up. If I was religious, this would be the time I got down on my knees and said a prayer to every god in history: please, just give me this one lead.
Cora nodded. “Not the letters, but the numbers. 3941. It always stuck out like a sore thumb to me, because that same number combination was my Frank’s birthday. March 9th, 1941.”
“Frank was your husband?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “He’s been gone a while now. But yes, I remember that plate number clearly, all because of his birthday.”
I jotted down the number. “Thank you, Ms. Rossi. You’ve been very helpful.”
She waved her hand. “Oh, no, I didn’t even remember the whole registration.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, even partial license plates can help. Really, they can.”
She gave me a sad smile of her own. “You think it could help to find Celeste?”
“I hope so,” I said firmly. “I really hope so.”
9
Alex
“How does that feel?”
Celeste moaned gratefully. “It’s helping.”
“Good.”
At first, she looked scared when I approached her holding silk scarves and a silver windmill-like object with sharp spikes, but I told her firmly that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and this was designed to help.
I still felt terrible for the mistake I made yesterday. Although Celeste’s nerve condition had improved dramatically since I brought her here, it still plagued her from time to time, and I’d really fucked up when I tried to make her feel better yesterday. I knew when she saw Dan die that it made much of her pain seep away, and I thought her going down to the shelter and seeing Baldwin would have the same effect. I hadn’t anticipated that it would make her feel worse, bring her neural pain right back, but it did.
I couldn’t stand the thought of her in that kind of pain. I dealt with chronic nerve pain sufferers at work frequently, and I saw the hell they went through. Celeste didn’t deserve that. The only pain she should ever feel was the kind of pain she wanted. The kind she begged for.
This nerve syndrome wasn’t that.
“What exactly are you doing, sir?” Celeste asked breathlessly. She was lying face-down on her bed, wrists bound in front of her with one of the scarves. The other scarf was wrapped tightly around her eyes, preventing her from seeing anything.
“It’s called a Wartenberg wheel,” I said as I gently ran the spikes over her delicate skin. She squirmed, and I patted her ass. “Don’t move too much, or it will hurt.”
I kept tracing patterns on her back, and she did her best to stop writhing and twisting beneath me, though little moans frequently escaped her mouth.
The Wartenberg device had originally been designed for medical reasons to test nerve function. However, a lot of people had started to use them on their partners for pleasure. When the spiked wheel was gently run over the skin, endorphins would be released, creating a pleasurable sensation akin to the afterglow of an orgasm.
The sensation also distracted the brain from other physical feelings, so in Celeste’s case, it was dulling her nerve pain. Taking away one of her senses with the blindfold intensified the tickling, slightly-sharp sensation.
“God… this feels amazing, sir,” she murmured dreamily.
I smiled and ran the wheel over her skin one more time before getting up and putting it away, leaving my girl writhing on the bed, begging for more. She’d been better since yesterday. I thought she’d been distancing herself, hunting for an escape, and it hadn’t occurred to me that it was more like she was searching for reasons to stay. I wasn’t giving her enough of what she wanted: affection. I wasn’t spending enough time making her feel good, and I could’ve fucking kicked myself for it.
It was hard for someone like me, who spent so much time being detached from emotions, to pick up on the needs of a girl like Celeste. I initially thought that by giving her everything she’d ever dreamed of in her old life—the luxurious room, beautiful clothes, all the books she could ever need, good quality food, and so on—that it would be enough. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she needed more. She needed quality time, needed to know she was the only one in my life right now.
To me, it seemed ridiculous that she even needed that kind of reassurance. Of course she was the only one in my life right now. In the dark spaces of her mind and the soft curves of her body, I’d found exactly what I needed. Found what I didn’t even kno
w I needed until I discovered her. It was something no other woman had ever been able to spark within me; something wild, fierce, demanding. I fell for her innocence, but I also fell for the fiery nature she kept so carefully hidden beneath that mask of purity. A beautiful duality. Perfectly imperfect.
Every time I left her, I had to force myself to walk away, but I thought I had to give her time and space to process things slowly. I hadn’t realized I was making her feel bad, making her crave more of that connection we shared. That sort of stress could actually make her nerve pain worse.
My own damn fault for being so blind to her needs.
“How is your back now?” I asked.
Celeste managed to roll onto her back, her hands still bound above her head. “So much better,” she said. “Thank you, sir.”
She was practically panting, and I could see her wetness leaking through the thin white fabric of her panties, the only clothing she was currently wearing aside from her collar. I could smell her arousal from where I was standing. I smiled, proud of how far she’d come. She didn’t seem to be ashamed of her body anymore, didn’t seem to be embarrassed by the dark needs that had always lingered deep in the shadows of her mind. No, she embraced it now. Openly allowed me to explore those needs with her.
I couldn’t see her eyes through the blindfold, but I knew if I removed it, I’d see a fiery lust burning in her gaze. My touch always drove her wild, and judging by the way her legs were twitching and the way she was biting her lower lip, she was ready to be fucked into a mess.
I leaned over her, trailing kisses along her jaw. She shuddered, then let out a blissful sigh. “Please….”
I kissed her full on the mouth, crushing myself against her. She moaned into my mouth as one hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head forward so I could deepen the embrace. The kiss lit me up inside, and my cock stiffened to the point of soreness. I needed to have her. Needed to claim her again.
“Spread your legs,” I grunted in her ear, pulling away from her soft pink lips.
She automatically did as I commanded, like the good little slut she’d been trained to be. I slid down the bed, lowering my mouth to her bare tits, circling one of her stiff nipples with my tongue before biting it gently. She cried out, and I repeated the action with the other nipple, leaving it red and swollen.
My cock was harder than it’d ever been, aching to slide into that tight, wet little cunt before me, but I held back. I liked making her plead and cry. Teasing her till she couldn’t take any more. It was what we did, what we both needed. She needed me to claim her, mark her as mine, show her the force of my desire. I needed her to fucking beg for it. Beg for the pain, beg for my cock inside every hole.
I slid down between her open legs, ripped her panties off, and pressed two fingers inside her pussy, working them against the ridged spot on her front wall that always drove her wild. She cried out again, goosebumps populating her skin, and I lowered my mouth to her pussy, sliding my tongue over her clit as my fingers worked away inside her. Her legs shook wildly, and she moaned beneath me. “Sir, please... fuck me. Fuck me now.”
I kept lapping at her clit as she begged for my cock. When she was just about to come—I could tell from her pulsing pussy and the way her chest was heaving—and then I moved up and pushed myself forward, burying my cock deep inside her, fucking her with wild, primal need.
“You’re gonna come on my dick,” I grunted as she whimpered and panted beneath me. My groin was bumping her clit every time I thrust forward, and her walls were already beginning to contract around my cock. She was going wild, bucking and rearing to meet me, thrust after thrust. “You’re gonna make my cock so fucking wet that I can almost slide right into your ass.”
Celeste’s pussy clenched around me at that, and she let out a gasp and a scream as she came hard, coating my cock with another gush of desire. “Good girl.”
I silenced her moans with another kiss, sucking her bottom lip between my teeth and biting down. Then I grabbed her legs and threw them over my shoulders, slamming right back into her. Her cunt was even tighter in this position, and it also gave me the ability to reach down and circle her asshole with my fingers.
I jammed my right index finger into her hot mouth, and she automatically sucked on it, leaving it coated with her saliva. I kept fucking myself into her pussy as I moved my hand down and under us, rubbing the pucker of her asshole. She cried out as I dipped the finger inside, but I knew she liked it. I put a toy in her tight ass the other night in the bath, and she’d been reduced to a quaking, quivering heap by the end of the evening.
“Gonna fuck your ass,” I grunted, adding another finger. “Gonna fuck you right open.”
“Yes, sir,” she gasped. “I want it.”
I pulled out of her pussy and slapped my hard dick on her clit, making her squirm. Then I went into the bathroom and grabbed the bottle of lube. Celeste was dripping so much that it was running everywhere, so her ass was already quite lubricated, but it wasn’t enough.
Before I did anything, I removed the blindfold, keeping her in the same position on her back. I wanted to see the look in her eyes as she submitted to me, letting me claim and fill her last hole, one which was so forbidden. I wanted to see her expression when she realized her surrender to me was complete.
I pushed on her legs until they were curled up and folded against her chest and abdomen, ass and pussy exposed to me. Then I squirted some lube on my fingers, fisting them over my cock until it was slick. I rubbed some on Celeste’s asshole as well, and I pushed myself forward, pressing my cock right up against her entrance.
I held her tightly as I pushed inside, just the tip, and Celeste’s face scrunched up in pain as her body adjusted to the thick invasion. With a few more pushes, I was all the way in, slowly opening her up, and she gasped and let herself relax enough for me to start fucking her ass properly.
“Fuck… you feel so good,” I muttered, sliding all the way inside. “So fucking tight.”
I rubbed on her clit as I slid in and out of her, needing her to love this as much as I did. Her toes curled and her body began to shake, and she bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes focused on my face. “Fuck me harder, sir,” she whispered. “Fuck my ass.”
With a few more thrusts, I was lost in a flurry of heat and pleasure. My breathing turned harsh, ragged, and I kept pumping into Celeste, rubbing my fingers in expert circles on her clit. Spasms shook her, and she panted and moaned as she surrendered to me completely, coming with my cock buried in her ass. I gave in to the pleasure as well, spurting my release in her, marking her deep inside.
I collapsed beside her, letting her put her legs down to rest. “Every inch of you is mine now,” I grunted next to her ear. “You belong to me.”
“Yes, sir,” she breathed.
“I don’t want to let you go. Ever,” I said. I cocked an eyebrow. “Do you want to leave?”
The question hung in the air for a few seconds, and then Celeste shook her head. “No.”
For the first time in days, I believed she meant it.
10
Celeste
I curled up contentedly in the armchair in my room, my head buried in a book. The weather today was horrible, freezing and stormy, but I was in a good mood. Alex had made me feel truly special in recent days, and my nerve pain was almost completely gone again. I was, dare I say it, happy for the first time in weeks. As happy as I could be under the circumstances, that is.
Alex had several consults in the city today, so he wasn’t going to be home for hours. I had the whole house to myself (aside from the rooms I wasn’t allowed in) and I could do whatever I wanted. Today, what I wanted involved curling up with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate.
I jumped at a loud crashing sound a moment later, before sighing with relief. It was just a tree branch falling somewhere on the property. The storm outside was whipping everything into a frenzy. Suddenly the lamp in my room switched off, leaving me in shadows, and I groaned. The power had
gone out.
My mood brightened almost immediately. So many things in this house ran electronically. With the power out, I could get into places I usually wasn’t able to gain access to, because all the locks on the upstairs doors were electronic as far as I knew. I wouldn’t even be seen, because the security cameras would all be down too. Also, I could go farther than fifty feet on the property, because the invisible electric force field surrounding the place would’ve failed in the outage.
I didn’t want to escape. Really. I just wanted to see if I could.
I hurriedly put some thick, comfortable shoes on and stepped outside. Dead leaves were whipping in a fast, howling wind, and spurts of freezing rain and ice pellets spattered onto my face. I headed to the back of the house before running down the garden path by the greenhouse. Alex once told me it led to a creek on the property, frozen over by now. I wanted to see it out of pure curiosity and appreciation for the outdoors, but it was well over two hundred yards away, so I’d never been able to get anywhere near it.
I hadn’t even made it a third of the way when my body began to jerk and convulse with sharp jolts. I sprang back, cursing. The electric collar must’ve had a backup battery system in it in case of power outages. Disappointed, I trudged back up the path toward the greenhouse.
Shit. The plants!
My heartrate picked up again, and I raced into the greenhouse. The space was temperature-controlled, and if the power failed for too long, the plants I was attempting to grow would be affected. The herbs I’d planted from pots might wither and die, and the things I planted from seeds might never break the soil surface at all.
With a sigh of relief, I realized there was a backup generator in the greenhouse. All I had to do was manually switch the system over. When that was done, I murmured to the plants. “I hope you’re all okay.”
I knew it was stupid to talk to plants, but I once heard that they liked it. Somehow, it helped them grow. It wasn’t like I had anyone else to talk to around here anyway, when Alex was gone. Unless you counted Justice Baldwin down in the shelter cells, but I had no desire to speak to that dirty old bastard.