by CJ Roberts
“I was so shocked when I saw you again. Shocked to discover…I thought you were a monster then. You terrified me. But now? Now, I don’t know how I feel about you,” she whispered.
Caleb gripped the wheel tighter with one hand and flipped on the stereo, flooding the vehicle with loud Banda music.
Kitten turned to face him, the once far-away look gone from her face and replaced by narrowed eyes and a mouth set into a stern line. She reached for the knob and switched the radio off. “So that’s your answer?”
Caleb took a deep breath and tried to control his anger, “You think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you?” He gave a mirthless, condescending laugh. “Do you honestly believe for one second I’m not aware of what you’re doing? You’re trying to make me feel guilty, trying to make me believe you have feelings for me.” She winced, her jaw clenching. “You know you’re trapped and you’re trying to find a way out. Trying to seduce me with your show of caring and sharing won’t work on me.” He scoffed when he saw the way Kitten feigned surprise and hurt. “You can drop the act. I’m not impressed. You’re attempts are laughably transparent.”
He anticipated her rage, braced for it, but he hadn’t given her enough credit. Instead of invective, Kitten attacked him with cold and resolute reason.
“You’re right, Caleb. I am trying to seduce you. I am trying to find a way out of this fucked up mess you’ve gotten me into. What else can I do? What would you do in my place?” There were no tears in her eyes, nor was there anger. There was only truth, and the truth was always more powerful. And painful, too.
Caleb knew exactly what he would do in her place, because he’d done it. There were times when he had tried to get men to help him, free him, and deliver him from Narweh’s treachery. He’d listened to the men who bought his body swear they loved him. He’d allowed himself to put stock into the endearments they whispered in his ear. But when it was over, when they’d taken all they could from him, they’d betrayed his trust to Narweh. He remembered the way his heart had broken when Narweh had used his own words to taunt him as he was beaten.
“I’m sorry I’m so bad at it. I’m sorry you find my attempts laughable, but I don’t know how to do it any better. You’re all I know. For what it’s worth, I’m not trying to make you believe anything. I’ve never lied to you. When I asked you to make love to me, it wasn’t a ploy, and it hurts like a bitch to hear you think otherwise, because –” her voice finally broke, tears bursting past her façade.
Caleb felt panic. He had no idea what to do. Her words, her presence, and her pain, affected him. He hated it. His memories, the ones he worked so hard to push deep into forgotten recesses of his mind, banged on the door of his consciousness. They connected with Livvie, they connected to her suffering, and together, they threatened to undo him.
A shuddering breath and Kitten seemed in better control of herself. She wiped at her eyes, took another breath and retreated to her side of the vehicle, her eyes once again focused on the world passing her by. Every now and again her chin trembled and she would take another breath to will her tears away.
She had more dignity than even she was aware of and Caleb decided, he would never again say otherwise. He wished he had never said it in the first place. His heart was racing, banging harshly in his chest and creating a thumping in his temples that made his head ache. His stomach was also affected, a strange kind of tingling pain churning in his gut.
He had an impulse to offer Kitten comfort, to tell her the truth: her attempts were anything but laughable. However, he knew telling her would be putting himself at an incredible disadvantage. Just acknowledging how much he wanted to comfort her was disconcerting. Still, the thought of hurting her any more than he already had, was too much – too much by far.
“Kitten, I –”
She leaned over and twisted the knob for the radio and the annoying voice of the announcer cut Caleb short. She avoided his eyes as she returned her focus to the window.
Caleb sighed in relief. He had no idea what the hell he had been about to say. The important thing for him to focus on was there would be no more talking for the moment. He wished he could say the same for the next twenty-four hours they would spend together on the road.
***
It had been an exhausting day. What should have been a nine hour drive had turned into twelve because Caleb had had to stop for Kitten every so often. With her bruised ribs and collarbone, she needed to stretch frequently, so he stopped along scouted roadways. When they reached the city of Zacatecas, Caleb had breathed a weary sigh and decided he could finally stop for the night and get some much needed sleep.
Kitten had spoken very little during the drive, which proved to be a great relief to Caleb. He had traded the doctor’s luxury sedan for a sturdy, but dented farming truck, and some groceries. It would offer quite the profit for the farmer, so he asked as few questions as possible, going so far as to pointedly ignore Kitten and her bruises.
She slept most of the way. The drugs in her system seemed to numb her pain, though it left her drowsy. Caleb made sure to keep a bottle of water next to her and also, that she drank from it whenever she was awake.
Zacatecas was a full-blown city, filled with hundreds of thousands of people, many of them tourists. Caleb took great care in finding a motel for them to spend the night. Kitten had said she wouldn’t run from him again, but the look in her eyes, whenever they passed American tourists with families, spoke differently. She would run again, given half the chance. Not that he could blame her. “I need to take a shower,” Caleb said into the silence of the room. “You can either sit in the bathroom with me, or I can tie you up. Option’s yours.”
Kitten stared at him hard. “Don’t trust me?” she taunted.
“Not when you’re looking at me like that, no.”
She sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, her anger emanating off of her like a toxic fog intent on choking him. “I told you I wouldn’t run. Go take your fucking shower and leave me alone.”
Caleb closed his eyes and took a deep breath to settle him. They were back to this. Well, he thought, this was just as good a time as any to reestablish the rules between them. When he opened his eyes, a warm tingle drifted down his spine and he finally felt like himself again. His gaze fell on the girl and he smiled when she flinched.
“Get up,” he said calmly, the threat in his voice muted but still present. The girl looked at him for a moment and swallowed harshly. It was obvious her anger had quickly turned to fear.
“Caleb?” Her voice was small, meek.
“Get up. Now.”
Slowly, Kitten cast her eyes toward the floor and stood on trembling legs. In fact, her entire body trembled. Caleb, at last, felt no remorse, no pity for the girl in front of him. She was his to do with as he pleased. The thought was an aphrodisiac on its own.
“Strip,” was his command and the girl flinched though his words had been softly spoken. A whimper escaped her lips, but she didn’t hesitate to follow his command. Slowly, she reached for the waistline of the flowing skirt Caleb had selected for her to wear and pushed it down over her hips until it pooled at her feet.
She ignored the panties and slid her trembling fingers to the top button of her blouse, there were more whimpers, but Caleb ignored them. He watched, painfully aroused by the adrenaline coursing through him as she gingerly let each button slip through its hole until she reached the bottom. The fabric parted, exposing a tantalizing line of flesh between her naked breasts. She looked up at him briefly, eyes pleading.
“Off with it.”
“Caleb…”
“That!” he growled with menace, “is not how you address me. Do it again and I’ll not forgive you.”
Kitten began to weep, but still stood. “Yes…. Please…don’t….”
“I gave you a choice. If you cannot make it, then I will make choices for you. Understood?”
She sniffled, “Yes…Master.” The words seemed painful for her to say, but Caleb cared
nothing for her pain at the moment. She had defied him for the last time. He watched dispassionately as she slid the shirt from her shoulders and the panties from her legs. She stood, shaking and sobbing, but finally compliant.
“Kneel!” he barked for the sake of watching her scramble to obey. He smiled as her knees hit the threadbare carpet and her hands went to cup her breasts to hide them from view. His heart raced and he nearly groaned at the touch of his palm against his erection, trapped inside his pants.
He stepped slowly and deliberately toward her, watching with sadistic pleasure as she closed her eyes and her lips moved; she made no sound. He pulled at the tie holding her hair back, letting her long, dark mane cascade down her naked body, but hiding nothing.
“Do you remember what happened the night you decided to scream out my name?” he asked casually. The girl sobbed as she nodded. He lifted a piece of her hair and wound it around his hand, each turn bringing his hand closer to her scalp and tugging softly, but with ominous implication. “If I wanted you to nod, I’d move your fucking head myself. Answer…please.”
Kitten’s chest heaved with the force of her sob, but the answer came through, “Yes, Master.” Caleb undid the top button of his pants, jeans, pilfered from the good doctor. “Oh. No. Please, no, Master. Please, no.”
“Don’t speak unless it’s to answer a question you’ve been asked!” Kitten became silent, lips pressed together. “Breathe through your mouth; the last thing I want is for you to pass out without my permission.” She gasped, but didn’t speak. “How did I punish you?”
The words seemed to affect her like a physical blow and she pulled away from his hand, panicked, but with no place to go. Caleb pulled her hair hard enough to force her back into position, but not hard enough to injure. “Answer me.”
“You…you…I can’t!” she sobbed.
“Answer the question!”
“You fucked me!”
Caleb slid his zipper down slowly, drawing the moment out for the benefit of them both. “Yes, I fucked you. Right in your sexy little asshole.” She gasped at his words, her face a puffy mess from her open-mouthed sobbing. “Did you like it?”
She shook her head, “No, Master. No.”
Caleb tsked and brought her head toward his erection, still secure in his underwear, but undoubtedly hot against her skin nonetheless. “Liar. You came more than you had a right to. I know because I felt you, hot and clutching at my cock, begging me to come inside you. Isn’t that right?”
The girl shook her head, no, but she whispered, “Yes, Master.”
Memories played through Caleb’s mind as a series of erotic flashes. He remembered how good it had felt to be buried inside her and feel her push against him. It would be so easy to have her again, to have her in any way he wanted and to bring her to the heights of unbearable ecstasy until she no longer knew how pain or pleasure differed. However, he had a different point to make.
“What is your name?”
“Kitten!” she shouted without hesitation.
“To whom do you belong?”
“To, you,” she sobbed.
“Yes. To me. Now, tell me what I could do with you?” His tone was urgent.
“I don’t know!”
“You do know! Tell me.”
“Cal–”
“Don’t you dare! I am not your lover. I am not your friend! Who am I?”
“Master! You’re my…. I want to stop. Please make it stop.”
“Answer my question, what could I do with you?”
“Anything! Fucking anything!” she sobbed wetly.
“Yes, I could do anything to you. I could throw you face down and fuck you until you can’t stand and there would be nothing you could do about it. You’re beaten, bruised and damn near broken. I could kill you. Those bikers could have killed you, but you keep provoking!”
“No! No, Master.”
“Are you prideful?”
“No, Master.”
“No?”
“Yes! Yes, Master, I’m prideful. I’m sorry!”
“Is your pride worth the situation you are in?”
Caleb let her go and watched as she placed her hands on the floor and cried with her head bowed. “No, Master.”
He’d done what he set out to do. “Exactly, Kitten. Your pride isn’t worth it. It’s not worth the pain. It’s not worth the torture me, or anyone else, could put you through. It sure as fuck isn’t worth your life. Be smart! Fight the battles you can win and accept the ones you can’t. That’s how you survive.” That’s how you avoid being tied to a fucking mattress and soaked in your own blood.
“I’m sorry! Please…just stop. Don’t be this way anymore. I can’t stand it! I can’t stand being with you and not knowing who you are from one moment to the next!” Kitten cried.
Caleb buttoned his pants and crouched with one knee on the floor and pulled Kitten into his arms. She offered no resistance, her arms wound around his neck as though she had been desperate for them to be there all along and she sobbed into his neck.
“I like you so much better when you’re like this,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to his neck softly, over and over as though she sought to calm him, when it was her in need of calming.
“What you like or don’t like is irrelevant, Kitten,” he answered, gently. She went still, not tense, just lax. “That’s what you need to start expecting.” Without another word, Caleb lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bathroom. They both needed to rinse the day away.
They would start fresh in the morning.
Chapter Four
Day 6:
I look around the room and feel let down by the lack of darkness and sterility. I had an image of what an interrogation room might look like: two-way mirror, scratched metal table, a high watt bulb lighting my face and making me sweat. Instead, the room looks more like a kindergarten classroom with art projects and motivational sayings glued onto bright construction paper on the walls. I am sitting on a plastic chair, staring at Reed across the round, faux-wood, table in front of me.
“Okay,” Reed says. He releases a breath, “just to get the chronology right: After you were kidnapped, you spent approximately three weeks, locked in a dark room, in a city you can’t recall. You escape the man known as ‘Caleb’, and are, almost immediately, held for ransom by a man named ‘Tiny’, and his motorcycle gang. You contact your friend, Nicole Freedman, and ask her to obtain your ransom of one-hundred-thousand-dollars and meet ‘Tiny’, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to exchange your freedom for the money. You never make it to the drop because you are rescued, by ‘Caleb’. In the morning, you discover he has kidnapped two people and held them hostage in their home. He leaves them alive, but steals their car and you both drive into Zacatecas, Mexico. You are there for approximately three months.”
There is a long pause, as though he expects me say some other thing that will amaze him. He’ll be vastly disappointed. He ought to start expecting disappointment.
“Is that all correct?” Reed asks.
“You look like you want to spit every time you say his name,” I say, without inflection.
“My feelings are irrelevant,” Reed says.
“They’re relevant to me.”
Reed shakes his head and can’t seem to stop himself from giving me his two cents, “He’s a human trafficker, Miss Ruiz, a murderer, and a rapist. He didn’t rescue you. He captured you. There’s a wide distinction between the two. Have you considered you might have Stockholm’s Syndrome? Otherwise, I can’t see how you can defend him on any reasonable level.”
My vision is blurry. “He was a lot of things, that’s true enough,” I say. My voice is raspy and my lips tremble with the force of my sorrow. “But he was also more than what you’ve written in your damn reports.” I blink, and glare at Agent Reed. “It was the bikers who tried to rape me. It was the bikers who nearly beat me to death! If Caleb hadn’t stopped them, I’d probably be dead.”
“Is he the one who kille
d them?” Reed asks, insistently.
I take a deep breath and lean back in my chair, wiping the tears from my face, “How would I know?” I shrug. “I was unconscious.”
“I’m not defending what those men did to you. Especially, if it happened the way you said it did.”
“Are you implying it didn’t happen that way?”
Reed lets out an exasperated breath, “I didn’t say that. I’m interested in the truth and nothing more.” There’s a long pause, both of us regrouping. “The auction. When is it supposed to happen?”
“Caleb said about a week from now.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Pakistan, somewhere.”
Reed’s questions come at me quickly. I have no choice but to answer just as fast. I don’t want him to mistake my pauses for answers. Worse, I don’t want him to think I’m taking time to form a lie – which I am. “So, according to Caleb and Muhammad Rafiq, Demitri Balk, also referred to as, Vladek Rostrovich, is supposed to be there?”
“I guess,” I grind out.
“Will, Rafiq, be there?”
“How the fuck would I know?”
“Will, Caleb, be there?”
“Caleb’s dead!” I pound my hand against the table. “How many times do I have to say it?” Reed sits back, unconvinced, “How did he die?”
“I told you already!”
“Tell me again.”
“Fuck you!”
“Whose blood was on your clothes when they brought you in?”
“His.”
“How did it get there?” He leans toward me.
“I told you! He died in my fucking arms.”
“And it was all very romantic, who killed him?”
I burst out of my chair and throw it behind me, knocking it into another table and littering the floor with art supplies. “Stop asking me! I’ve answered already.”
Reed stands quickly and circles the table. Before I can run, before I can even react to the fear racing through me, he has me face down on the table with my arms behind my back. I feel the cold from his cuffs, and then hear them click as he cinches them around my wrists. It occurs to me I should never have asked to be alone with him. There’s no one to watch him. There is only my word against his.