I wasn't going to get cocky, but it was hard not to do. I'd never felt this empowered, or energized. Ever. And the transfer went easier than I thought.
Looping the paracord through the interlocked manacles – quick release knots that could only be released by me – I told him I was going to go against my principles and allow him some mobility. Very limited mobility, of course.
On the count of three, I would unlock the two cuffs, and bring his arms forward with the paracord. Much like a marionette.
I stood a calculated safe distance away, my flare gun trained on his crotch, and warned him if he didn't do exactly what I said, how I said it and when I said it, I'd blow the Petersen jewels clean off the face of the planet.
I unlocked the cuffs, got in position, and arrived at two-and-a-half when I yanked on the paracord. The scream was absolutely mythical. If I hadn't enjoyed it so much, I would have cringed. Jesus Christ what a pussy this guy was. We were definitely getting down to the brass tax of what made Maddox Petersen tick.
Money made him tick.
Power made him untouchable.
Take all that away, and you're left with a shell of a douche-bag.
A whimpering piece of dog shit whose fingers were trembling as I said he had another count to three before those cuffs better be locked back together. And we both knew I didn't always make it to 'three'.
With the business end of the flare gun four feet away from his gonads, he managed to lock the cuffs in front of him, numb fingers or not. He was snuffling. Actually snuffling, like the snotty ass toddler he was. A very woke part of me said this was probably an act, that he was only pretending to be on the verge of crying so he'd get my guard down.
Tell me something I don't know, I told my woke self. Ain't no way this jackass was going to pull a fast one on me. Being out here in the most primitive of conditions, the adrenaline pumping through my veins, every sense was on its highest alert. I pulled the release end of the knot, and the paracord slithered back in my hands like an obedient snake.
“Ready for an adventure, Maddy?” I rolled my eyes at myself, and laughed. “I mean, another adventure. We're already on one, right?”
“You're fucking insane,” he panted, there at my feet. On his knees. Naked and bound like a subservient little boy. I dug the fuck out of that.
“Get up, asshole.”
“I can't–”
“Holy fucking shit, are you kidding me? You are the biggest god damn wimp, Maddox, seriously. Your mother must be so disappointed.”
He swallowed, hard, stared at his hands, and croaked, “So's my dad.”
I paused, for just a moment, kept the gun exactly where it needed to be, but paused. What was that supposed to mean? Did he think I gave a shit about what his daddy thought of him? Or was that another cutsie-tootise diversion tactic? Men like Maddox (and I use the term very, very loosely) don't have feelings. They're incapable.
“Okay, well, whatever. Shit head. Get up, get moving, or I'll make your life three times more miserable than it is right now.”
“Just three?” he hissed, getting to his hands and knees, trying to stand upright. Like a fucking Neanderthal.
“Oh, you're funny. Handsome, charming, and full of wit. Can't believe you're not married. Is that why your mom's disappointed? And your dad?”
That got him. Hah. He stopped, halfway to straightening out his posture, pretended like my last dig didn't bother him, but the eyes are windows to the soul. Even though Maddox had no soul, it was still obvious there was some sort of issue in the parental department. Big shock. Who doesn't have demons in their childhood closet? Well, Becca and I, for two. We were members of an exclusive club – one whose formative years weren't filled with trauma and dysfunction.
“I was engaged, once,” he said without me prompting the question.
“Awww. Isn't that nice. Start walking.” I pointed the gun toward a small path through the brush.
He turned and started shuffling where I'd indicated. His butt was red from the grit of the sand, and there were dimples just above his tight, sculpted cheeks.
“Nice ass,” I complimented.
Maddox didn't reply. Too busy trying to push his way through the thick overgrowth. Lucky for me and women everywhere, our genitals are on the inside. Chugging one's way through prickly branches and shrubs whilst your member is fwapping around, exposed and vulnerable to Mother Nature's bountiful – perhaps poisonous – abundance must be quite the challenge. Especially when your hands are manacled in front of you. Either keep 'em cupped around your only reason for existing, or shove the plant life out of your way.
He'd opted for the latter, which surprised me.
We hiked our way through the overgrowth, me keeping a safe four foot distance away from that ass, never taking my finger off the trigger.
Maddox stumbled a few times, but never went down. It impressed me, the way the muscles in his ass clenched like their own fists to keep him on his feet. I never figured myself to be an ass-chick. Maybe I was.
Not that ass, though, I scolded myself. Then nodded to myself. I didn't know what I was thinking. Maybe I was ovulating.
The sound of rushing water echoed through the tropical air. It had gotten humid today, making the air warm and sticky.
I wiped my forehead. Hearing the trickle of cool fresh water seemed to be make me sweat even more. Maddox was certainly sweating. Clear rivers of perspiration ran between his shoulder blades. There was a splattering of freckles on his back, too.
He had to be Irish.
Not that I cared. Northern Europeans were fair skinned and burned easily.
Even though the canopy of trees was thick, it wasn't rainforest thick. Maddox would rue the day he started shaving his head. It was already pinking up a bit from exposure, and getting fuzzy with hair that wanted to grow but for whatever reason he disallowed.
God, he was so pitiful.
We arrived at the rocky bank of the small pond. Water from above splashed into the clear blue of the lagoon, churning and turning it into the world's coldest jacuzzi.
“Get in,” I said.
I half expected him to turn around and start bitching and whining that the water wasn't his preferred seventy one point five degrees, that it wasn't chlorinated, and its PH levels weren't at recommended levels.
He jumped. Covered his gonads, and jumped right in, surfaced half a second later, gasping for air, his flesh covered in gooseflesh. His nipples had shrunk to the size of tiny peas, and I could only imagine how shriveled his meaning of life was.
“How's the water?” I asked as I sat on a flat rock, and put my feet in.
It was cold as hell, but not arctic.
“Fine,” he said through chattering teeth. “Why don't you join me?”
“Because I'm not as stupid as you think I am, jackass.” I rested my elbows on my lap, keeping the muzzle of the flare gun pointed at his torso. “Wash up, dick head. You're a fucking mess.”
He did as instructed, splashing water on his face, rubbing his head, beneath his arms. Cupped his hands, and scrubbed at the beard that was starting to grow.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, put my hand in the water, and brought some to the back of my neck. My skin was warm with the heat of the sun, and the thought of dunking myself into the pond wasn't just a passing fancy, it was a survival technique. Crisp, cool refreshment would be both invigorating, and cleansing. No bullshit. The falling water was potable, too, being that it rushed in a constant current.
How to pull that off with the big buffoon so close… that was the question.
He was dangerous. One false move on my part, and he'd be right back in charge. But I needed the water, too. More than he did, I reckoned, and as I ran through a list of possibilities that did nothing but end in my ill-fated misfortune, I saw the solution.
An Acacia tree was growing close to the pond – its lower branches just above the water, some draped in moss which floated on the surface. Long, graceful tentacles.
&nb
sp; “Hey, Maddy,” I said, and pointed to the Acacia. “Over there.”
He didn't know what I meant. God, he was as dumb as a sack of wet rocks.
“You're gonna truss yourself up for me, honey pants. That is, if you want your intestines to stay on the inside.”
The look on his face remained one of complete puzzlement, but he began wading over to where I wanted him to go. The pond was shallower beneath the branch, just up to his waistline.
“Put 'em up,” I said, indicating that he was to loop the joined cuffs over the closest branch. That would keep him where I wanted him, his hands far above his head and hung like a pelt drying in the sun.
Naturally he missed on the first attempt.
He tried again, and caught himself just right. The cuffs draped down on either side of the limb, much like the moss. The water lapped just below his pelvis, licked at a faint trail of pubic hair. He was prone. Secured. But it could be better.
“Back,” I said.
He tried to look behind him, but his current position made it impossible. When he turned his head, all he saw was his own biceps. He took a step backward, then another. And another. Until I was satisfied.
“That's enough,” I told him. Keeping myself a very safe distance away and keeping the flare gun within very easy reach, I began unbuttoning my blouse.
Chapter Twenty-One
MADDOX
She was doing it again.
Had I not been halfway submerged in what was, in effect, an ice cold jacuzzi, the head of my cock would have broken the surface like a breaching whale.
She'd stripped down to nothing, dipped in a toe, then dove into the pond. She swam, slowly, toward the gentle fall of water. he temperature didn't seem to bother her. Nothing seemed to bother her.
Finding a foothold beneath the cascade, she used the natural fall like a shower. Her hands ran through her long, wet locks.
I gripped the links of the cuffs and watched her. Watched her wash her hair, massage her neck, then lean her head to the side and smile at me. That cat-with-the-canary smile. A Cheshire smile. Not a friendly grin. Not sweet by any stretch of the imagination. It was sprinkled with a sinister, almost fiendish amusement.
She gave me a purposeful, full frontal view as she took hold of her breasts, and began to rub them. Her head arched backward, exposing more of her chest, her nipples huge and hard between her fingers.
She pushed her breast upward, toward her mouth, and with her eyes still trained exclusively on me, stuck out her tongue and flicked it against her perfect, pink flesh.
My grip increased. Despite the frigidity of the water, a surge of warmth began seeping down toward my groin.
No. No, no, no, I thought, and shut my eyes.
A recent ex of mine warned me that one day my cock would get me in a shitload of trouble. (And if I'm honest, she wasn't the only one who'd prophesied that.) It was in charge, not me. I knew it, she knew it. Hell. Everybody knew it. And that was more than fine with me. My life had been spent having everything at my fingertips and at my beck and call. I say ‘jump’, the world asks ‘how high’.
If they could see me now…
Strung up like a piece of meat, with a psychotic Hispanic woman who took great, great pleasure in torturing me, and whose hands were suddenly slithering against my hips.
I startled, my eyes snapping open. She'd glided silently through the water, and positioned herself behind me. I tried to lurch forward, to slide the chain toward the end of the branch and get the mother fuck away from her, but it snagged. Hung up on a notch, or a fucking twig... how the hell was I to know? I couldn't see shit from this angle.
“Where're you going?” she whispered in my ear, her fingertips walking their way down south.
Her other hand was against my chest, kneading my flesh, squeezing, releasing, squeezing, releasing… and god help me, it felt so good.
“Don't do this,” I said, knowing full well it wouldn't make any difference to her.
Whatever I said, whatever case I plead, it was damned if I did, damned if I didn't. When her hand beneath the water wrapped around my cock, already halfway to erect, I jerked backward. But she held on good and tight. So, so tight.
“Dear lord,” she commented, increasing her pressure, increasing my desire. “I could stick it in a snow drift, and it would still get hard. What, you have bionics installed down there?”
She tugged on me.
Faster.
Tighter.
“...don't, Sophia...” I clenched my teeth, my eyes.
I couldn't go through this again. Not again.
“Don't what? Don't you want to come, Maddy?”
She let go, suddenly. Slid around to face me, and wrapped her legs around my waist. The tip of my cock was so close to her sex, so close… Just another inch…maybe two. Ah, my cock was desperate to taste her. Fuck the water, it was her wetness that it craved. Her wetness it wanted to teach a fucking lesson.
Her hand went to my jaw, the pad of her finger on my lips, drawing them apart, as if she wanted to kiss me.
“Open your eyes.”
I did.
She sighed, heavily, through her nose, but kept her finger on my lips, and stared at me with the coldest eyes I'd ever seen.
“Have you ever killed anybody?” she asked.
Oh, fuck, I thought.
She'd brought the knife with her. Or my razor. She was going to gut me like a cow in a slaughter house, wasn’t she? This is how it was going to end, and a very, very tiny part of me believed I deserved it. I don't know why I thought that. I was afraid, I wasn't thinking clearly, and I didn't want to die.
“No,” I shook my head.
And the eyes that I didn't think could get any colder went to sub zero. “You really believe that.”
“Sofia, I –”
“My name's not Sofia,” she snapped. It was almost like I’d offended her by using the name she told me to use. She whispered something under her breath and pushed herself away from me before swimming to the edge of the pond, and pulling herself out of the water.
“It… it's not?” I said, and the words sounded dumb as fuck when I said them.
I didn't know what else to say, though. This girl was a game player. A cock tease in the ultimate sense of the word. Also completely off her rocker, so no matter what I said, it wouldn't matter.
She wrung out her hair, and laid down upon a flat rock, allowing the sun to dry her. Droplets ran down the sides of her breasts, her legs, her skin covered in goosebumps, but she didn't seem to mind.
A breeze rustled the fawns of the trees, and she brought herself up to her elbows, shielded her eyes, and looked to the sky.
Propping herself up on her arms, she gazed at the horizon. The breeze grew to more of a wind, and blew back her long, dark hair. I was unable to look away. The woman whose name was not Sofia was enchanting. Beautiful. A form that exquisite should be immortalized in the finest of marble.
I began to shiver, and wondered when she was going to let me out of the water.
If, she would let me out of the water.
“Sofi- um, I… what should I call you?”
She stood up, and began to dress. Slipped her legs into the skirt, then her arms into my shirt. Picked up her flare gun, and ran her fingers through her hair again. It kept getting in her face, what with the wind picking up and all.
The sun was slowly starting to disappear behind billowing clouds of gray. I looked down, and saw the surface of the water rippling in tiny white caps.
“I'll… I'll just keep calling you Sofia, okay?”
More dumb words, yes, but I was starting to panic. There was a storm on its way, I was still chained to a tree branch, and the woman I was calling 'Sofia' didn't appear to have any interest in helping me out of the situation.
She stepped off the rock, scratched her chin with the flare gun, and said, “I told you my name's not Sofia. Not my first name, anyway.”
“Okay, well… what, what is your first name? I'd really
like to know. Will you tell me?”
“You're scared, aren't you, Maddox?”
Maddox. Not 'Maddy'.
There was no smile to her face, amused or disdained, I wasn’t sure. One way or the other, I didn’t like that smile because that smile didn’t mean anything good. “It's Ramona,” she said. “My name is Ramona.”
That was a lovely name, fit her, too, but if I said so, she'd blast my stomach open.
“That name mean anything to you?” she asked, having to raise her voice to be heard over the escalating rush of the wind. The cold, cold wind. The whitecaps of the pond were growing, raindrops fell against the surface, and the name 'Ramona' meant absolutely nothing to me.
I wished it did.
God, how I wished it did.
The rain blew against my face, and it stung. I winced, shut my eyes against it, and when I opened them, saw her stepping closer.
Her, and her gun.
Her, and those eyes.
“Ramona Sanchez,” she said. “Still nothing?”
“I'm not… I'm not in a great place to remember anything,” I replied, looking at the barrel of the flare gun. It was a hell of a lot bigger than her original weapon of choice.
“You're in the perfect place,” she said, wiping the rain from her forehead.
A crack of lightning cut through the sky. Seconds later, an angry clap of thunder. A storm was rolling in, and it was rolling in fast.
I looked up to the tree from which I hung – thick, thorny, and tall. Lightning would like it a lot. What with half of me immersed in water, I'd be poached like an egg should it decide to strike.
“The perfect place,” she said, nodding and looking up at the gray clouds. “To think about what you did.”
“I don't know what I did!” I screamed as another bolt lit the horizon. “I don't know what you're talking about, alright!? Don't you god damn get it? I, don't, know!”
She should have been a serial killer, what with that look on her face. Evil satisfaction, that's what I saw. She hated me. We’d never met, or maybe we had, but the effect wasn’t lasting enough on me, so it shouldn’t have been lasting enough on her, either. But, here she was, acting like I’d killed her first born. Wanting to kill me, wanting to see me suffer. If I’d fucked her and rushed out of bed before she could flutter a lid open in the morning, if that’s why she was mad, it made me wonder how many guys she’d already gone through. Was she just some deranged serial killer running around offing the men who didn’t have the courtesy of calling her the morning after. Except, I was sure I hadn’t fucked her. I would have remembered those tits, dammit!
Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Page 17