Two more days passed, two weeks without him. His absence twisted my emotions, each day increasing my desperation. My life existed around my routine. I had nothing but the endless cycle of exercise and that damn puzzle of a keypad.
I stared longingly at the door. Beyond it lay a freedom of sorts, not from my enslavement, because my guards were never far away. I also had a GPS strapped to my ankle. I tapped at the keypad. Yesterday, I had finally accessed the root directory. Chad was with me today. He stood behind me, hovering, arms crossed over his chest.
The urge to tell him to mind his own business burned in my gut. I turned to give him a piece of my mind and saw the bracelet clutched in his hand. The silver dolphin swung back and forth. He shook his head, as if to remind me of one of Master Xavier’s rules.
No talking unless spoken to first.
My attention focused on the dolphin, wondering why Chad had taken the bracelet down from the headboard. I glanced up into the slate gray of Chad’s eyes. His gaze flicked from the chain, to the keypad, then back to me. He gave a wink, turned on his heels and headed to the bathroom.
I shook my head. What are you up to?
Moments later, I heard him urinating in the toilet.
I really needed to get out of this room.
My attention returned to the keypad and the last string of code I’d been fooling around with.
There’s nothing sexy or glamorous about computer programming. It’s slow, tedious work. A single misplaced character can spell disaster to the simplest code and this was far from simple. I liked the monotony of programming. The beauty of stringing together code to make a program come to life always amazed me. Back at MIT, I’d been known to lose many nights to long sessions writing code. All my friends did it. There, it was considered normal. I wondered what Chad thought of my tinkering.
My friend, Sadie, used to laugh about losing time as she called it. She was a bio-mechanical engineer and didn’t understand us computer nerds. If it weren’t for Sadie, I’d have missed out on most of college life. I vented a deep soulful sigh. Sadie and I were supposed to be crawling from one pub to another across Europe right now, with our roommate Elsbeth. What excuse had Z given them when I failed to show up for our trip? Did they believe his lies? Other than my friends, no one would come looking for me. Z had made the perfect fait accompli. I disappeared from the rest of the world and no one noticed.
My shoulders pinched from hunching over the keypad. My fingers pecked at the display, tapping away at new algorithms. I breathed in through my mouth, making my lips and tongue dry out. I did that when I worked, held my mouth open and tapped my tongue to my upper teeth. Sadie said it was the one time in my life I looked like a dork.
I didn’t care, because whatever it was, it worked. I finished the code. A quick check over my shoulder revealed no sign of Chad. I listened and heard the shower running in the bathroom. Before I could think it through, I hit the RUN command and entered Bay’s pin code. The light on the display flashed, asked for the palm print, and rolled right on by without it. The display blinked. Electronics clicked and whirred as the locking mechanism disengaged.
With a deep breath, I straightened in my chair. Pinched nerves in my neck and shoulders protested against the movement. I glanced to the bathroom and debated my options. Chad sang some pop tune in the shower. Another deep breath and I grasped the door handle. It twisted and swung inward. Thunder hammered in my chest. The pounding sent blood surging through my body, carrying with it a burst of adrenaline.
Fight or flight. I was ready to flee.
I took a step toward freedom, but stopped when Xavier stepped in front of the doorway. I blinked at Xavier dressed in a charcoal gray suit, wearing a Caribbean blue tie the same color of his eyes. Flanking him, my other three guards waited.
Bay stepped forward. “Looks like I win. She cracked it in under two weeks.”
Xavier didn’t move, but then neither did I. We stood there, locked in a battle of wills. The only move he made was a slight twitching of his fingers.
From behind me, Chad spoke up. “I was way off. I had her pegged at a month.” He came to stand beside me and held up the bracelet for Xavier.
Xavier took it.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from the man in front of me, but I noticed Chad’s sleeve, the same one he’d been wearing all day long. He fooled me. He hadn’t been in the shower.
Chad leaned toward me and whispered. “What are you supposed to do in the presence of your master, kitten?”
Eyes locked on Xavier, I followed the direction of his gaze down to the ground. The chain dangled between us. The dolphin glinted in the light as it swung in the air, and I remembered what he said. Obedience would be rewarded.
I lowered myself to the ground.
No way was I going to spend another two weeks trapped in that room.
As I knelt, I lifted my chin with strength. I fortified myself for the ensuing battle, even as my body shook with weakness. I trained my eyes on my adversary, the man who held my fate dangling by a silver chain in his hand.
“Master,” I breathed out, “how may I serve you?”
Chapter Twelve
Xavier’s strong jaw scissored back and forth as he regarded me in that way of his, full of possession, laced with heat, and brimming with desire. Darkness lurked within him as well. I saw it, along with his need for me. I’d never felt that from a man before. His need washed over me in the way his eyes consumed my body. With a look alone, I fell further under his control.
A new emotion swirled in the depths of his gaze, a sense of satisfaction and victory. I didn’t understand it. While not specifically forbidden, I had broken his security. Not that anyone had tried to stop me, but I was pretty sure it was against one of the many rules he had established.
Beneath his stoic control, I did not see anger. That gave me pause, enough to really look at him and admire the force of will he leveled upon me. In his gaze, I sensed no threat of punishment, which relieved and disappointed me at the same time. I did not desire the pain, but the promise of the sensations he could draw from my unwilling body mystified me and ignited an inquisitiveness inside me. Memories of what happened in the aviary had certainly brought passion laced dreams boiling to the surface over the past two weeks. My skin grew hot and molten with desire. Two weeks and a look from him could do this?
Mel passed something shiny to Xavier; a length of chain. Leaning toward me, Xavier grabbed at one of the rings attached to the collar and snapped one end of the chain to the ring. A leather loop dangled from the free end. He wrapped that around his wrist. Had he leashed me like a dog?
He caught my chin in his hand and stared into my eyes. A surge of electricity passed between us with the contact. His pupils dilated and he sucked in a breath. Did my face mirror the response in his? My eyes had grown wide, and I most certainly held my breath. He stood there for a moment, stooped over me, one hand on my chin, the other holding the end of the chain.
“I was hoping you would break the code, but I did not think you would be this quick.”
I gasped and drew back, but his grip tightened around my chin. He held me in place, our breaths mingling with each inhale. He smelled of dark coffee and spice. God, I wanted to taste him.
I tried staring back, meeting him with strength, but our faces were too close. I turned away. The intimacy of the contact more than I could bear. I fluttered my lashes, hiding behind the long natural lengths of them.
Pride swelled in his voice. “MIT certainly trains the best, but I didn’t think you had that much skill.” His brows lifted. “I’m impressed.” He turned to Ben. “This is good.”
I blinked and forced myself to look into the depths of his blue eyes. They were vibrant, bright, yet sharp and cutting at the same time.
“This was to be your reward...” His mouth twisted as he lifted the dolphin pendant into my line of sight.
This was to be your reward…The use of the past tense had fire rising in my belly. My breaths came dee
p and fast as a queasiness settled upon me. My fingers curled in on themselves, useless and impotent. The world turned black.
He moved with that incredible speed of his, bending before me between one beat of my heart and the next. One moment he was standing over me, dominating with his size. The next, he hunched down, on the same level as me, hands cupping my cheeks, and wiping away tears I did not realize had been shed.
Breaths sawed in and out of my lungs and pain sliced through my chest. For two weeks they watched me work at the security pad—laughing at me? Did they think it was a joke? Not once had they told me to stop. I guess I surprised them when I actually cracked it.
But I wasn’t trying to escape—not really. I was bored to tears and desperate for something to do. He hadn’t left me any books, or TV, no internet of course, and I wasn’t allowed to speak to the men locked inside with me. I’d stared at the walls for days.
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. The press of his fingertips against my skin turned my stomach. I pulled away as desolation blanketed me in a cloud of despondency. He refused to let me go.
With a mournful sob, I cried out. “I obeyed every one of your damn rules.”
“Do not swear at me, slave.” Shadows shrouded the crystalline blue of his eyes.
“Fuck you and your damn rules. You never meant to give me that.” I swiped at the bracelet, catching it, and flung it across the hall. I dissolved into a hissing, spitting, scratching she-cat. Breath pumped out of my lungs as I launched myself at him. “They never stopped me!” I huffed as I dragged my nails across his jaw. “If you didn’t want me messing with the keypad, they should have said something.”
I drew blood below his left eye. I yanked on the hair behind his right ear.
“Are you that desperate to get your sadistic freak on that you set me up?” I screeched at him. “You perverted bastard.”
Every obscenity I knew I hurled at him. I used every weapon at my disposal. It didn’t matter anymore. Option One or Option Two was nothing more than his way to fuck with my mind. Since he wasn’t expecting an attack, I got in a few good hits before Chad tried to pull me off. He was unsuccessful.
Xavier grunted as I hit him in the solar plexus and kneed him in the groin. Instead of folding over, however, he surprised me. He lifted me and held me away from himself. Truthfully, it was difficult to tell who did what. My four bodyguards descended to protect their master against the she-cat caught in his grip.
I hated being played. No longer would I think of that man as Xavier. He would now be reduced to a single letter like my father before him. I took Z’s name away when I was very young, when he pushed me out of his heart. I think I was seven. I did that now to X.
“God damn it,” Bay huffed, “she can fight.”
My foot clocked Bay in the jaw. Damn straight I can fight. And I’d had two straight weeks to condition myself. I kicked Ben in the ribs as he struggled to trap my leg.
“Grab her fucking arm,” Ben shouted, as he helped X drag me back into the room, restraining one of my arms. I twisted out of his grip, scratched his chest, leaving three long raised welts in the skin as I ripped his shirt.
X had me, supporting me under the arms as he lifted me through the air. I bucked against him, spitting, hissing, biting. Bay gripped one of my legs. Mel had the other. Ben secured my arm; Chad took my other arm. The four of them walked in lockstep, carrying me suspended between them.
“Get the restraints,” X grunted, as I clocked his jaw. He threw me on the bed.
I bounced, fire surging in my belly. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…”
Words dissolved into sobs as he launched on top of me, straddling me and effectively pinning me in place. I was immobilized and trapped again. X held me down by my shoulders as Ben, Mel and Bay restrained my arms and legs. Chad opened up his locker and returned with leather strips. Through blurred tears, I watched him thread the long strips through rings in the four poster supports of the bed. He tossed one to Ben, who lashed it through the ring in the platinum band around my wrist. Then he threw the ends of two others to Bay and Mel who looped them around my ankles.
Sobs wracked my body as I thrashed beneath X.
Chad secured my wrist, tying back my last extremity. I pulled against the restraints, effectively bound.
“Leave us.” X said with a low, ominous growl, heavy with need.
Beneath him, I bucked against the press of his body. The men had trussed me up, spread eagle, arms out to the side, legs straight and slightly spread. There was no give to the restraints. I was at the mercy of X, and they were going to leave me alone…with him.
I knew what came next. I’d been dreading it for weeks, fantasizing about it in twisted eroticized dreams. But now, with him straddling me, restrained as I was, terror streamed through me. The last of my anger burned out as the door to my prison shut. The finality of the lock cycling sent panic surging through my veins. I didn’t want X to rape me.
Strangled gut wrenching sobs escaped my lips, struggling between desperate attempts to breathe. I blinked to clear my vision and to face the monster sitting on top of me.
X braced his knees on either side of my hips and rested his weight over my pelvis and thighs. His warmth penetrated my clothing, a persistent heat that brought no answering swell of arousal from me. He held his arms crossed over his chest and stared down at me. He swiped at his left eye and wiped away the trickle of blood.
“What the hell, Raven?”
Adrenaline still pumped in my blood. Fight or flight? Well, I had fought, and now I lay beneath X in defeat. My vocal cords pinched. What did he expect me to say?
He blew out a deep breath. “This is all fucked up.” He rubbed his palms against his trousers.
You don’t say?
The man was a fucking genius, stating the obvious.
Roaring filled my ears, blood rushing to my brain. If only that blood helped to make smarter decisions, I would find it more useful. I had snapped. It had been a mistake, and now I was going to pay. Part of me was ready to get this over with. I was resigned. The other part of me cringed with the horror of rape.
The longer X took to go about it, the longer he left me to think about it, only made things worse. I had to look at him, at his body, at his face, and into his eyes. He had an amazing physique, muscular and athletic, and he had a handsome face, but it wasn’t X’s looks that drew me. It wasn’t his attractive features that had me spiraling in an unwanted direction.
There was something about the way he held himself and how he commanded the respect of the men around him. There was a quality in his expression, a sharpness of intellect, that drew me in every time. He was a potent cocktail of good looks, intelligence, masculine power, and some sort of raw primal energy. Those eyes drew me now and obliterated all thought.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said.
His nostrils flared and his pupils dilated. Power swirled in the air between us, cloaking him, and choking me.
“You agreed to cooperate. What has gotten into you?”
I found my voice. “How long does it take to rape a woman? Get on with it. I know you don’t have a problem getting it up. Hurting women gives you a guaranteed hard on. You’re probably stiff right now.”
“You do not want to push me.” Nostrils flaring, his eyes widened as scorn dripped from my voice.
I spit at him. Stupid because my spittle sprayed the air between us and landed back on me. I lunged at him, teeth snapping, until my restraints pulled me back.
He gripped my chin, then he was on me. His mouth crushing mine.
I bit at him, drawing blood as my teeth punctured his lip.
He howled and pressed his fingers to my jaw. Pain forced my teeth open and I released his lower lip. The pain didn’t stop him; if anything, it made him more frantic. Deep panting breaths smothered me as he mouthed my neck, kissing, biting, licking his way from my ear to the tip of my shoulder. Fabric ripped as he tore at my dress. He pulled it apart, kissing the sof
t hollow of my throat as I shook my head from side to side. I couldn’t shake him off.
With the bodice of my dress shredded, he tore at my bra. It fell apart in his hands with a tug and a snap of elastic. Then his hands were on my breasts, squeezing and pawing at me. Then his mouth was on me. I moaned and arched into his mouth. Heat flooded my core, licking between my legs as I grew wet for him. My fingers clenched and unclenched as my head shook side to side. My body, my treacherous body, betrayed me again.
He pulled up the skirt of my dress, leaving a scrap of sheer fabric as my only defense against him. To my horror, it was drenched with my need for him. He laid a line of kisses from my chest down to my navel. His tongue swirled around my belly button as his fingers clutched at the lace of my panties. A sharp yank and I was exposed to him.
I gasped and sucked in my lower lip. Powerful waves of desire pulled at my core.
“I may get hard hurting you, but you like it, Raven. You’re fucking wet for me.” Satisfaction filled his voice.
My mindless desire for stimulation drove me into a frenzy. I barely noticed him cupping my mound, or the fact that he had stilled. His breath swept against my belly, cooling the trail of his passionate kisses.
“You’re so wet.” His voice dropped to a whisper.
His violation of my body would soon be complete. My insides coiled like the wires of a spring, tightening with tension. Hot shame burned my cheeks. Tears poured out of the corners of my eyes and pooled in my ears. I hated him with every fiber of my being, and yet I wanted him as I had wanted no other man. I twisted against him.
Harsh ragged breathing filled my ears. Not my breaths, but rather his.
He fumbled with the fly of his trousers and drew the zipper down with a sharp jerk. His body twisted over mine as he kicked off his shoes and freed himself of his pants. Hot, naked skin covered me, and between us, the pulsations of his erection decried his desire. The tip of it dragged against my hip, wet with the promise of what came next.
She’s Mine: A Captive Romance Page 9