by Holly Hart
“I’m saving you, Puss,” I reply.
“Some guardian angel you are!”
“I never said I was,” I bite back sharply. She’s got fight, this girl. I like a girl with fight. So long as she knows that while she’s mine, she’s mine.
“Then what is this? What are you doing with me?”
I close one eye, thinking. The other remains firmly fixed on the dark road ahead. I could make up some lie, but I don’t know what it would be. If I’m saving her, it’s only a brief respite – a second’s escape as I toss her from the frying pan straight back into the fire.
“It’s simple,” I reply, lying through my teeth; it’s anything but simple. “I want things that I can’t have. So you, Casey, are a dangerous thing to have around.”
“Person,” she mutters, low but firm. “I’m a person, not a thing.”
“Tu-may-to, ta-ma-to,” I grin. “It all comes out the same in the end. Here’s the fact: taking you could get me killed. Now that’s interesting to me. You, Casey, are interesting.”
She rakes my face with disgust. “What happens when I’m not: when I’m no longer ‘interesting’,” she rolls the word across her tongue, and layers it with enough sarcasm that I’m left in no doubt as to her opinion on the subject.
“Do you give up and throw me onto the scrapheap? How many girls have you done this to, Declan. How many survived?”
“None.”
Casey’s face drains of blood, and she looks at me like I’m a killer. She’s not wrong, but I correct myself before she has an aneurysm; or she tries to grab the wheel … she’s got balls, this one. I wouldn’t put anything past her.
“I’ve not ever done this before, I mean. You’re the first.” At this rate, maybe the last, as well.
Hell, if you asked me straight to my face, I still wouldn’t be able to explain why the hell I was doing this. This is the kind of stupid shit that dad drilled out of us when we were kids. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything this dumb. Starting a feud over some girl is movie drama; it’s not real life.
Least, it’s not supposed to be.
“Why me?”
Why her. It’s a good question; I don’t know if I can answer it. The second I saw her in Vince’s warehouse, I knew I had to have her. That’s not an answer, I know. I don’t know how to explain it.
It’s like my whole life I’d been wearing shades; then this beautiful redhead strolls in and plucks them from my eyes. Suddenly I see her in color. The rest of the warehouse might still look the same to me: gray; depressing; lifeless…
But somehow, Casey gave it color. She was like a beam of spring sunshine, shining in that place, revealing all the cracks, misery, and evil that lurked in the darkness.
I could say all that, but I don’t. I fall back on something trite and insufficient ; a quick, easy, little line, the kind I’ve used my whole life, to distract from serious questions.
“It’s quite simple: because, I saw you, and because I can.”
“Tell me then,” she spits, revealing a hint of the fire I know lives inside her. “Tell me these rules of yours.”
“You are mine. Whenever I want you, wherever I want you, however I want you, you will submit to me. If you do as I say, I will make you feel things you have never felt before. I’ll take you places you don’t even know exist; show you the heights your body is truly capable of reaching. But if you don’t…”
I pause, picturing Casey’s naked body in my mind’s eye. I’ve only seen it hidden by darkness, and concealed by a skirt.
I feel a familiar stirring in my pants, and the breath catching in my throat. I feel the muscles in my thigh tense as my foot hovers over the gas pedal, and my fingers flinch as I imagine plunging them deep inside her pink lips. I feel…
Casey interrupts that train of thought, and she’s just in time. The truck was beginning to sway across the white-painted asphalt. I jerk the wheel and pull her level.
“However, if I don’t?”
She’s turned back to face me. She’s trying to act cool, but I see how her cheeks are flushed red with interest, and the way she’s playing with her fingers. She can try all she likes to hide it from me, but her body is giving away every secret her mind is trying to hide. It’s not just her cheeks or her fingers; it’s her pose, the way her chest is pushed out.
She’s eager. She wants it. She wants me.
I clear my throat. It’s not a choice – I have to. This seductive minx to my right has put a frog in it. “Well,” I reply, my voice hoarse, “I guess I’d have to punish you.”
“Punish … me?” She replies, stumbling over the words. “How?”
She licks her lips, and I watch in the mirror, enthralled, as her eyes caress mine. “Tell me: exactly.”
I tear my eyes from the road. Casey’s not acting like a girl who only minutes before was locked in her own private hell, without an escape in sight. I don’t know if she’s trying to play me, but if she is…
… It’s kind of working.
I’m off balance. “What do you mean?” I ask.
I’ve had every type of girl: believe me. If you can think of it, I’ve ticked her off my list: blondes; brunettes; short; tall; petite; curvy. It’s not that I’m not picky; because I am. I just happen to see myself as a connoisseur, and just like a wine aficionado might try a dozen vintages before finding the one for him, so am I with women.
There’s beauty in all of them, somewhere. Women are like paintings – you don’t have to like the final product, but you can still admire the skill, and the hard work that goes into each and every one.
In my experience, though, some try too hard.
I’ve taken girls to my dungeon before who called me daddy and squealed like a stuck pig. It felt desperate; and desperation is so not sexy.
By all rights, Casey should be desperate. She was a month away from the grave when I found her. She should have been down on her knees with my cock in her mouth the second after I offered her a way out, or else burying me under a landslide of thankful kisses. She isn’t doing any of that. First she played sulky, and now, this – whatever this is.
Sultry?
But then, if she had…
If she had, I wouldn’t have cared. It’s her resistance to my charms that excites me, not meek submission. Oh, I want that too, but later; after I’ve taken her; molded her.
Once I’ve tamed her. I’ll get her consent, of course, but it’s exactly that which I find so delicious. That someone believes in you so completely, so implicitly, that they’re willing to sacrifice everything for you…
That feeling’s better than any fuck I’ve had.
“I want you to tell me what you’ll do to me,” Casey whispers, toying with a strand of her rich red hair, “if I disappoint you. I want to know how you’ll punish me. What will it be?” Her eyes drop to my crotch, and I know she can see the thickness of my cock pressing out against the denim. “Will it be your belt; your palm?”
She bites her lip, and catches my eye in the rearview mirror.
“Will it be your hand around my throat?”
I gulp.
Casey’s not acting like any girl I’ve ever met. She’s taking control – or at least trying, when by rights she should just be thankful to be alive. I think back to the parking lot, and the way she fought me off like a fiend …
It’s … different. I’m not sure if I like it. Some part of me does – it finds her more interesting than the gray women I’ve dated in the past. Women who simply lay back and took whatever I threw at them, just happy to be there. Women I discarded in days, bored out of my mind.
Casey’s not like those other women. She’s a challenge; an enigma.
I swallow, and Casey’s greens stay fixed on me. A wanton smile tickles at the corners of her lips, and I know she knows the effect she’s having on me. I can’t help it.
“Would you like that?” I ask.
I need to put her back on her heels again, to knock her off balance. This whole
conversation’s heading the wrong way. I don’t know what it is with this girl. She seems stubborn, and headstrong – like she’s always got to have her own way.
I don’t know what’s happened in her life to make her like this, and honestly I don’t much care. All I know is that I’ve got to fuck her out of my system, have enough fun with her that my body remembers I’m a Byrne, not some love-struck teenager.
We aren’t meant to be tied down. Not even to a girl with so much chemistry the whole damn truck’s at risk of sparking.
She licks her lips. Slowly, dawdling, never breaking eye contact. I want to blink, but I daren’t look away.
“Like is a nebulous word,” she says, her voice breathy and hoarse. “It’s also not quite the right one: need, maybe. Yes, that’s better.”
I bash the back of my head against the seat rest. “Jesus fucking Christ, Casey,” I groan. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
A flash of hurt flickers across her face, but it’s gone in a second: replaced by that sultry mask. I make a note to figure out what it means, but I don’t pry: not now.
“It’s been said.”
The headlights lick at the black asphalt. We’re alone in the world, an hour from dawn, with only engine noise for company. It makes my mind up for me. I look up at the rear view mirror, and she matches my glance.
We’re staring at each other, separated by a piece of polished glass, and it seems like a fair enough metaphor for everything that’s happened between us so far. Two different people, fucked up in God knows how many ways, brought together for some unknown reason.
I reach over with my right hand, and she never breaks eye contact. I thread my hand into her soft, silky red hair, and caress the back of her neck. I feel the way her breathing changes – catching in her throat.
“What are you doing,” she gasps.
“I need an answer, Casey. Now.”
She grimaces. “I can’t, I won’t…”
“You can, and you will,” I shrug. “Or else you can find another way out of this mess; but we both know that you can’t do that – or you already would have.”
She flashes me a hateful glare, so powerful I worry it might break the mirror. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”
I think back to her words from a minute before. I grin. “It’s been said…”
“Fuck you…”
“I need an answer.”
“Fuck you, Declan. I’m yours, but screw you to hell. Three months, and then I’m gone.”
I breathe out – every scrap of breath in my lungs escaping in one powerful heaving movement. I feel … something I never expected to: relief.
I tighten my grip on the back of her head and begin to pull her towards me. She resists, and it only makes me work harder – to shape her, to tame her, to make her mine.
“What are you doing?” She protests.
“It’s time to get to work,” I say, staring directly into her glittering green eyes through the mirror. “Nothing’s free.”
The scowl she shoots my way would kill a lesser man, but it just turns me on even more. I don’t know; there’s something kind of exciting in knowing that I’m making her do this, that there’s probably a hundred places she’d rather be.
She shakes my hand free of her head, unclips her seatbelt, and leans over my body. I watch it all happen in the mirror. There’s an excitement in watching it unfold like this – like watching myself in a dirty movie.
But I can’t help notice that – in her own little way – Casey’s taken control once more. I’m not making her do this, not physically, not anymore.
The sound of my belt unbuckling startles me, and reminds me to keep my eyes on the road. But it isn’t long before they are slipping. The second I feel her hands on my cock for the second time tonight, I close them entirely.
“Jesus, Casey,” I groan.
The car vibrates, and I pull it back from the white line marking the edge of the road.
She slips my cock in her mouth. I take one hand off the wheel and thread it through her hair, pushing her down. It takes everything I have to keep my eyes open, and they are slipping shut to enjoy the pleasure more often than I care to admit.
Headlights flash in the distance, then the blaring sound of the horn, and my reflexes kick in. I’ve strayed into the opposing lane, and I tug at the wheel, pulling us hard right and into safety. I catch a glimpse of the other driver as he speeds by, flashing me the finger.
Casey sits up, wiping her bottom lip. She doesn’t look bothered by the fact that we nearly died. When she speaks, it’s with complete calm.
“What a way to go…”
Chapter Nine
Casey
This is my life now.
I’m a glorified excuse for a house cat. Declan even calls me “Puss,” like I’m a tabby he revels in keeping around; or maybe I’m some kind of trophy – what, exactly? I’m sure as hell not a trophy wife, or a trophy girlfriend. I’m a throwback, a trophy in the oldest sense of the word – a captive, a prize of war.
Declan hasn’t told me anything about what he does, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Guys his age don’t get apartments like this without playing fast and loose with the law. That’s most definitely true for guys born this side of the river, with an accent like his.
But as luxurious as his place is, it’s nothing more than a beautiful prison. Hell, even the exposed brick walls remind me of a jail cell. Rule number one echoes in my mind: “you go where I tell you, when I tell you.” Right before he left, Declan told me to stay put.
He says it’s to keep me safe;, but stuck in my cell, waiting for his return, I feel like Rapunzel, wasting away in her tower; or the Princess from Shrek …
Either way, it grates on me.
I’m not one of those girls who can just sit on her ass all day doing nothing. I need to be out in the world, doing something, or I start to feel antsy. For the last few years, I had Luke to worry about, but now he’s gone. The more I wait around doing nothing, my thoughts descend into ever darkening depths.
Declan left before lunch, and it’s a quarter to eight at night, and he’s still not back. That’s a lot of hours to be left with nothing but my brain for company.
The doorbell chimes, and I almost sprint towards it, I’m so bored. Declan didn’t say anything about anyone turning up, but then, it’s not like we’re a married couple with a goddamn reminder whiteboard.
We’ve barely spoken, other than to negotiate my fate. It wasn’t much of a negotiation. Take it or leave it was the offer, and I didn’t have a choice.
My fingers rattle against the chain, and the door swings open.
“You her?” A man grunts. He’s tall, and between his dirty red hair and the accent, it’s not hard to tell he’s second-generation Irish. The weapon strapped to his hip tells me a little more about Declan’s line of work.
“Um, I guess so?” I reply, my eyebrows dancing with surprise at the man’s gruff manner. “But that’s a hard question to answer, isn’t it?”
He stares at me like I’m an idiot, and shoves a small black case against my chest. “Don’t open it; don’t look inside; don’t leave the apartment. Got it?”
By the time I’m recovered from his barrage of instructions, he’s already off. I close the door, muttering: “well – good day to you, too.”
Once that burst of excitement fades away, the apartment falls silent again, save for the slow, incessant ticking of a mahogany grandfather clock in the corner. It’s totally out of character with the rest of Declan’s place, and I guess it’s a family heirloom. That’s lucky, because if it wasn’t, I’d be sorely tempted to smash it into pieces. The sound is driving me insane.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
I can’t take my eyes off the case. It’s light – not more than a pound, and that’s including the canvas bag itself. A thousand different explanations pop into existence in my brain, each more fanciful than the next.
Money?
Drugs?
>
A weapon?
A fake passport?
Maybe it’s a test?
If it is, and Declan’s trying to figure out whether he can trust me to follow instructions, he’s going to be disappointed.
“Fuck it,” I grunt to the room at large, and scramble for the case. My fingers scrabble for the zip, and when I pull it open, my eyes nearly pop out of my head.
I know what I need to do. When Declan finds out where I’m going, he’ll kill me, but I don’t care. He might own my body, but I’m the one who’s got to live with my mind. And if I don’t do something, then I’ll go crazy. I need to feel like I’m still in control of something: even if it’s only over a fraction of my existence. I’m still his, but I’m not a goddamn house cat.
Maybe this is the only way I’ll get to feel alive.
I’m not dressed like a whore, not tonight. I might be someone’s slut, but I’m not Vince’s, not anymore.
Lenny catches sight of me the second I come through the warehouse’s rusting iron front doors. They squeal in protest as I push my way past them, and that sets off the dogs. I don’t know what’s worse – the fighting animals’ vicious snarling, or the knowledge that in a couple of hours men will goad them into ripping each other apart, while other men gamble on the result.
“You, you bitch, what’s your name again?”
I bet it annoys him that I’ve got to look down to look him in the eye. Sure, I’m wearing heels – I thought it’d help me feel more powerful, but still, I’m not exactly tall for a girl.
“Casey,” I reply, biting my lip, “And don’t call me by that other word: it’s rude.”
His mouth bobs up and down a couple of times in disbelief as his little brain tries to process what I just said. While the rusting gears are slowly ticking over in his brain, I brush past him. He grabs my arm, and his fingers dig in tight.
My body jerks back from the force. “The fuck did you just say to me?” Lenny growls. A little spark of fear ignites in my stomach, but I push it away. Now I’m here, actually doing this, it doesn’t seem like such a smart idea.