by Brynley Bush
I pull the blindfold off. As if suddenly aware of what’s just happened, her startled green eyes meet mine. I smile. “Sweetheart, I love how I can always count on you to break the rules.”
* * * *
I wake Ava up the next morning with kisses and a cup of steaming-hot coffee, and she sits up, giving me a sleepy smile as she takes the cup. I sit down on the bed next to her, and she snuggles closer. Although I’d been a little worried after I’d seen the checklist, last night had been fucking amazing.
Unfortunately, I’m still worried. I’ve watched enough reality TV to know that the best ratings come when the contestants are forced to face their deepest, darkest fears, but other than the obvious things on our list that make Ava uncomfortable—masturbation and ball gags, to be specific—I don’t know what on the list is likely to hit a trigger for her, and it’s making me nervous as hell. We do have reservations to go zip-lining today, and I look at her consideringly.
“You aren’t afraid of heights, are you?” I ask. She’d seemed fine on the helicopter, but maybe this is different.
She shakes her head. “No.”
An hour later when she’s buckled into the harness and standing on the platform high above the jungle treetops with a huge grin on her face, I know that’s not it. I try to be all manly and strong, checking her harness and admittedly copping a feel or two of her ass as I reassure her, but she clearly doesn’t need my strength, because with a quick backward smile at me, she launches herself off the platform. My heart feels full as I watch her sheer joy as she flies over the treetops. Afterward, still high from the thrill of the zip-line tour, we sit together in a hammock at a small beach café, drinking beer, our arms and legs so tangled I can’t tell where I stop and she begins. I take her hand in mine, threading our fingers together.
“Have you ever been zip-lining before?”
“No, but it was amazing! I want to go again.” She flashes me another one of those brilliant Ava smiles, and I’m a goner. She enchants me with her contagious enthusiasm and beguiles me with that smile of hers that’s just for me.
“Have you traveled much?”
She looks down. “Not really. We took the usual family vacations when I was younger—Disneyland, camping in Yosemite, skiing in Lake Tahoe or Colorado, but my mom has never liked to travel much. It makes her nervous to fly. And after my dad died, my mom and I barely had enough money to eat, much less travel. She traveled with my stepfather after they got married, but I usually stayed behind with my grandmother.”
“Why?”
“My stepfather and I have never gotten along, and it was uncomfortable being the third wheel.” She shrugs. “After my grandmother died, I was already at NYU, so I just stayed there.”
I want to take her everywhere. I want to give her the world.
“Had you visited New York before you went there for college?”
She laughs. “No. It was just the farthest place from my stepfather that I could think of to apply.”
I look at her admiringly. “You’re a brave woman. I know the writers were trying to come up with scenarios that play upon your fears, but I’m not sure you’re afraid of anything.”
Her smile fades. “Things can’t hurt you. Emotions can. That’s what scares me.”
Despite her assurances, I can’t shake my worry over accidentally hitting some hidden trigger.
“We have a role-play scenario that I want you to be prepared for,” I say seriously. “I’m supposed to kidnap you and then try to break you and make you beg for mercy.” I smile wryly. “I guess the writers know how stubborn you are. The longer you last, the more points we earn.”
She looks at me with amusement. “And what happens if you don’t break me?”
“Apparently this kidnapper is intent on having you whether you’re willing or not. You know me well enough to know I’m not going to go easy on you. This kind of scenario plays to everything I love in a scene—torture, resistance, you struggling…” I clear my throat, trying to get my thoughts back on track. “I need to know now if a mock kidnapping or rape might trigger anything.”
A shadow flickers in her eyes, but it’s gone so fast I’m not sure if I imagined it or not.
“No. I’m fine,” she assures me, stroking my cock boldly. “And while I promise to put up a valiant struggle, I don’t think I’ll find being taken against my will by you too much of a hardship.”
* * * *
Ava and I have gone over exactly what’s going to happen, including the magic words I’ll try to get her to say, and although she doesn’t know when to expect the role-play scenario to begin, she knows it has to happen sometime during the next two days.
Several hours later as we’re lying on the beach, the surf lulling us into sleepy complacency, I tell her I’m going to go get a surfboard. She nods, her eyes still closed, and I give Logan the signal it’s time.
Twenty minutes later I meet Logan in the designated spot in the dense jungle where my victim waits, blindfolded and bound to a tree. Except something is very wrong. She’s quaking like a leaf with fear. But this is no sexually charged apprehension; this is pure unadulterated terror. Logan stands a few feet away from her, his eyes filled with concern. Our eyes meet, and I nod, assuring him that I’ve got it from here, and he silently disappears back into the jungle.
I turn to Ava, and in a moment of stark clarity, I realize her greatest fear. Ava hates to be alone and powerless, and right now she’s in the middle of her worst nightmare. It’s why she works so hard to keep her emotions buried and her mask in place, so she doesn’t give anyone the power to hurt her. It’s time for me to give my brave girl her power back.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ava
I’m on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. My heart is racing, my body’s shaking, I’ve broken out in a cold sweat, and I’m seconds away from using my safe word despite the fact that I know it was Logan who’d kidnapped me and is probably standing somewhere nearby. Hell, Roman had told me it would be Logan. But that hadn’t made it any less real or terrifying when he’d slid the hood over my head as I dozed on the beach. I’d struggled futilely in the sand as he’d duct-taped my wrists and ankles together, thrown me over his shoulder, and carried me into the jungle. He’d replaced the duct tape with rope and tied my wrists to a low-hanging tree branch, replacing the hood with a blindfold.
I feel Roman’s presence long before he touches me. It swirls around me like a comforting blanket, surrounding me with his familiar scent and steady strength, and it calms me immediately. I remember his words in the limo on our first date. He’d said if I wanted to know him, I would have to learn his voice and feel his presence even when I couldn’t see him. I now know him like I know myself. His breath is deep and steady near my ear, and I automatically match my breathing to his, inhaling and exhaling slowly as my heart rate slows and my panic recedes. After a few minutes, when I’m finally calm, his hand closes around my throat.
“Well, well, well,” he says, his voice silky and menacing. “Captured and delivered exactly as promised.” He pulls at the ropes that bind me to the tree, reinforcing exactly how helpless I am. But now that he’s here, I’m not scared anymore. “Nicely done. Perhaps I should reward my man for doing such an excellent job of kidnapping you by letting him have a taste of you first.”
He wouldn’t! Would he? He and Logan are like brothers. I shake my head wildly.
“No? Would you rather I leave you here, tied up and available for anyone who happens by? That might make you a bit more docile when I’m ready to have my way with you.” He lowers his voice. “And I will have my way with you.” His fingers trail down my back, and I can’t help the little shiver that dances across my spine. “Yes. I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll leave you here for a while and let you think about your predicament.” I hear his footsteps moving away from me. “Feel free to scream. No one will hear you. Or maybe,” he adds diabolically, “they will.”
I know he won’t really leave me here
alone tied to a tree. I know it. But it doesn’t stop the fingers of dread from creeping back to squeeze my heart. “Wait!” The footsteps stop. “Please,” I beg pitifully. “Don’t leave me. I’ll do anything you want.”
His quiet footsteps grow nearer, and then his big hand covers my mouth from behind me as he savagely yanks the fabric of my bikini top aside and roughly grabs my breast.
“Yes, you will,” he agrees. “You’re going to do everything I tell you to do if you want to live. Maybe, if you please me well, I’ll let you go when I’m finished with you.” He squeezes my breast hard, and I gasp. “I’m going to do terrible, wonderful things to you. I’m going to have my way with you and torture you until you beg for me to let you go. Then, and only then, will I consider giving you your freedom.”
There it is. The words that will end this role-play scene and buy my freedom. I have to beg him to let me go, and he has to do everything he can to make me, but our success for the finale depends on me lasting as long as I can. His simple but deliberate reminder to me that this is just a game gives me my courage back. I bite his hand.
“Ow!” he yells, pulling his hand back. He slaps my breast, and I feel the zing go straight to my clit.
He grabs a fistful of hair and yanks my head back painfully. “Big mistake.”
I feel the sharp tip of a knife pressing into my skin, not hard enough to actually cut me but with enough pressure for my brain to send out the call for adrenaline, flushing my system to prepare my body to fight. He slips the knife between my breasts, and with a small tug, my bikini top falls away. He scrapes the edge of knife slowly down my stomach to the waistband of my bikini bottom, and with a loud rip of fabric tearing, he cuts it off as well, leaving me naked.
He moves away from me then, and I stand quivering, wondering what he’s going to do next. I hear foliage breaking, and then he’s back, running a supple branch over my now bare breasts.
“Apologize!” he demands.
I press my lips together stubbornly. The sting of the branch as it makes contact with the undersides of my breasts has me gasping. He runs it slowly over my breasts again, making sure it catches agonizingly on one stiff peak.
“Must I beat the apology out of you?”
Despite the single warning strike of the makeshift whip, I know Roman won’t actually whip me. He’s proved to me time and again that he’ll honor my limits, and I trust him completely. If he thinks he’ll get me to beg this easily—by threatening me with something I know he won’t do—he’s sadly mistaken.
“Do it, and I’ll bite you again,” I say defiantly. “But the next time I’ll make sure it’s your cock and not your hand.”
There’s a whoosh of air, and the branch sears against my buttocks. Fuck!
“We’ll see how defiant you are after you’ve had some time alone to think,” he says. I hear the sound of the knife slicing through rope, and my arms are free. He grabs the end of the rope and tugs so hard I stumble, but his strong arms catch me, making sure I’m steady before he leads me through the jungle by the rope that’s attached to my still-bound wrists. My cheeks burn with embarrassment at how I must look being led naked, blindfolded, and bound through the jungle behind Roman, who is no doubt still fully clothed. Hopefully no one will see me. Then I think of the television audience, and my cheeks burn even hotter. Right. No one but a few million TV viewers. I push the thought out of my mind, concentrating only on Roman.
Once back at the villa, I don’t have to work at concentrating on anything. My thoughts are focused on Roman’s ruthlessness as he removes the rope, unceremoniously pushes a plug into my ass, binds my wrists and ankles with bondage tape, and removes the blindfold. I get one quick look at his face—just long enough to see the glint of dark and primitive excitement in his eyes—before he’s placing a piece of cotton over each of my eyes, covering it with two pieces of duct tape crisscrossed to form an X. He finishes by placing a strip of duct tape over my mouth.
“It makes me so hard to see you restrained like this,” he murmurs. “So helpless.” His voice hardens. “Maybe after I leave you alone for a while like this, you’ll be more agreeable to pleasing me. Or begging me to set you free.”
I thought I’d gotten used to being restrained and that nothing could make me feel any more vulnerable than the variety of ways Roman has thought of to immobilize me over the course of the games, but nothing has prepared me for being left naked on the hard floor of the outdoor deck with my wrists and ankles bound, a huge plug throbbing in my ass, and my sight and ability to speak removed by strips of duct tape—his use of such a seemingly ordinary household item somehow all the more dehumanizing.
The minutes tick by, and it’s pure torture. I’m uncomfortable and even a little scared, but I can feel Roman’s presence near me the entire time. He has not left me alone. After a while—it could have been half an hour or several hours—he removes the tape from my ankles and hauls me to my feet.
“Are you feeling more compliant now?” he asks, his voice near my ear.
I don’t give him the satisfaction of a response. He drags me several feet and lifts my arms over my head again, fastening my wrists to some sort of hook overhead. I wonder briefly where we are. I can hear the birds chirping and the warm ocean breeze whispering across my skin, so we must still be outside on the patio. He rips the duct tape from my mouth, and the sting brings tears to my eyes, wetting the cotton pads.
“Time to beg.”
The blast of cold water takes me by surprise as it hits my torso, and I try to dance away, but I can’t escape it. The spray hits my chest next, and the relentless hard jet of cold droplets is torturous, tightening my nipples and making them fiercely erect from the onslaught. I must be in the outdoor walk-in shower. He continues to spray me with cold water, using the handheld showerhead to move the direction of the spray to different unsuspecting parts of my body until my skin is pebbled with goose bumps and I’m shivering. Mercifully, the deluge of cold water stops, and I squeal as his teeth bite down on my tingling nipple.
Fiery heat meets icy cold. Pleasure converges with pain as his mouth electrifies me, sending shards of arousal piercing my armor of defiance. I arch into him, silently begging for more. He chuckles and moves away. I brace myself for another icy blast, but when the spray hits me this time, it’s warm and soothing, and instead of the full force of water I’d been subjected to before, this time the water flows over me like a sweet, drenching rain. It feels heavenly, warming my chilled skin, and I think I could stay here forever. Unfortunately, the spray changes again. This time it’s powerful stinging little needles that he moves over my shoulders and back, across my buttocks, and finally over my breasts, pricking them painfully as I try to twist away. My nipples bunch under the piercing stream of water.
“Beg!”
I shake my head mutely.
Now the water’s flowing like rain again as he moves it lower and lower. He places the showerhead directly over my clit. It’s warm, and I squeeze my thighs together as the orgasm starts to slowly build. He roughly kicks my feet apart and increases the water flow, keeping the showerhead pressed against my clit. The moan seems to come from far away as I feel my core tighten deliciously. The water starts to pulse, pounding against my needy clit until I’m dancing around on my toes as I hover on the edge of ecstasy. His hand smacks my ass in reproach, driving the plug deeper into me, my wet skin making the blow sting even more, but it only drives me higher. I’m greedy for sensation—be it pleasure or pain. He shifts the showerhead slightly from side to side, and I try to stand still, but it’s impossible. He moves the spray over my entire slit, from my clit, over my pussy, and all the way back to my ass until the spray deflects off the plug, before diverting it back again, redirecting the stream to my belly every time I’m close to coming. I want the orgasm so badly I’m ready to beg. If he turned the water off right now, I’d concede defeat in a heartbeat, begging for him to let me come.
This time instead of moving the spray again, he makes it st
ronger, and with a shrill cry, I come in gasping, convulsing shudders, the release so intense my knees give out, making me grateful for the hook holding me up. He continues to run warm, soothing water over me until I stop trembling. Then he unhooks me and wraps me in a towel, rubbing my skin vigorously until I’m dry and my aroused skin is tingling. He folds me over his arm and spanks me a few times, but I barely notice. I’m on sensory overload, so turned on by our role-play and decimated by my orgasm that I’ve lost all sense of reality.
“I didn’t give you permission to come,” he barks, forcing me onto my knees. His cock presses against my lips, and I take him into my mouth, greedily sucking and licking him, wanting to return the pleasure he’s just given me. After a few minutes, he pulls his cock out of my mouth and lightly slaps my face with it.
“Do you think you’ll save yourself from me taking you forcibly if you make me come with your mouth?” he asks pitilessly.
“No, Sir,” I whisper.
Without answering, he lifts me into his strong arms and carries me inside, tossing me onto my stomach on the bed. His knee presses into the small of my back as he hog-ties me with a length of rope, tightly binding my wrists to my ankles while I writhe underneath him. Using my hair for leverage, he holds my head still and carefully removes the duct tape from my eyes. I blink in the light. As I’d suspected, I’m on the bed, and he’s standing in front of me, magnificently naked, his cock bigger and harder than I’ve ever seen it before. His eyes are glittering with hot and naked savagery. God, he wasn’t kidding. He totally gets off on me being his unwilling prisoner.
“Beg for me to let you go, and maybe I won’t fuck you ruthlessly, taking whatever pleasure I want from you over and over again until you don’t even know your name,” he says.
“No,” I whisper.
He takes a menacing step closer, and I can see the ball gag dangling from his fingertips. God, I hate that thing!