by Esme Devlin
But I can’t fight the entirely broken part of my mind that takes pleasure from watching her try to hide her fascination with me.
And I can’t watch her in the dark.
“I could take you right here, up against this wall.”
We haven’t even re-drawn our line in the sand, and already I’m trying to see how close I can get to it. How far can I push her?
“You wouldn’t,” she says. Though she doesn’t sound at all sure about that. “Anyone could walk around that corner and see us.”
Indeed, they could.
But if that is her only objection, then I have a pretty simple solution for her.
I let her slide down the wall and take a step back.
She visibly relaxes, letting out a breath. It’s premature, but still divine to watch.
Sliding a hand behind my back, I retrieve the gun and, spinning it around, hold it out for her.
Her eyes narrow.
There we go.
The moment when she, too, realizes her relief was precarious.
“Go on,” I tell her, nodding at the weapon. “Take it.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
I chuckle. “It’s quite simple, really. Should anyone walk around the corner and see us, you aim and then you pull the trigger.”
She shakes her head, but I keep the weapon held out. “You’ve lost the plot again.”
I shrug and take a step toward her. “Was there ever a plot? I’m merely problem-solving, sweet girl. But if you’d prefer me to keep watch while I fuck you, I can always put you on all fours. Cheek on the carpet. Hips in the air. I’d have a clear shot should anyone catch a glimpse of you…”
She moves so fast, not realizing it’s completely unnecessary. I would have still given her it, even knowing what she was about to do.
I hold my hands up and take another step back, making it easier for her to point the gun at my head.
My covered-in-a-thick-layer-of-metal head.
Oh, the bullet would likely still penetrate.
But I doubt my little sheltered girl knows that.
“Do it,” I tell her, nodding. “See what happens.”
She lowers the gun just slightly to my chest.
“Don’t think I wouldn’t,” she warns me.
I laugh. “That’s exactly what I think.”
She thrusts it toward me again, and I take another step back.
“I would.”
This is perfect. She is utterly perfect.
“You actually want to shoot me?” I tease her. “Oh, how magnificent! Here’s what we’ll do… you can shoot me, or you can shoot whoever walks around the corner.”
Her face drops, and she begins shaking her head.
I brush her arm to the side as I move in closer to her. I can almost feel the beat of her heart increasing. It’s in the air around us like a drumbeat. Faster and faster.
I lift her up again, pressing her hard against the wall, legs spread around my stomach. Pulling my cock out and slipping it inside her would be effortless.
I’m betting she knows that, too.
“I can’t do that,” she says.
“Then shoot me,” I tell her, my hands curving around her thighs, my fingers pressing against her soft skin, making her squirm.
“You know I can’t do that, either,” she says, all breathless.
Breathless. Oh, if only this was a dark room. If only I could own that breath right now. I’d steal it with my mouth. But the lights are on. Unluckily for her, she will have to make do with my second-favorite brand of foreplay.
She will have to play my game.
“Why ever not?” I ask. “I’ve shown you how worthless a man’s life is. We’re a plague on this earth. Shoot me in the head. Send me to Utopia. Do whatever the fuck you want with this place.”
She shakes her head, but I press my metal forehead down hard onto hers. “Do it,” I whisper. “If you hated me, you would.”
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “I hate myself for not hating you.”
I chuckle. My little Sapphire and her morals. Still, she clings to them. Like a child, she refuses to see the bigger picture.
“You shouldn’t hate yourself, my sweet, naive girl. Hate the world. Hate the way things are. Hate me. But you… you never had a choice. Would that make it easier for you? If I take away all of your choices, then you can’t hate yourself, can you?”
She swallows. I can see the cogs working in her brain, trying to figure out what answer is correct and what answer isn’t. What to say. What to do. Trying to get ahead of me.
Impossible.
Noble, but also impossible.
I’m always in front of her.
She tries, she fails. She tries again.
I will never grow tired of watching her try again.
Two nights ago—when I went to her, and she told me she was giving up—my heart almost dropped to the floor.
But she didn’t. She was lying. She was lying to herself.
Just like she’s lying to herself right now.
She likes to lie to herself because it makes her feel better. Pacifies her. Stops her from thinking too hard.
I push her harder against the wall, locking her in place with my body while my hand frees my cock.
I slide it against her.
She’s soaking wet. The sigh that escapes her as I rub myself along her slit is like a fucking kiss. I let her body slip just slightly, just enough. More than enough. She squirms as she slips lower, as I fill her up.
“There,” I tell her, quite pleased with myself. “Is that better? Is that what you wanted? Is that what you wanted but couldn’t bring yourself to admit?”
She tries to shake her head below me, and it is adorable.
I let her fall another inch, and she sucks in a breath.
“Was that a no? Hmm?”
She says nothing.
“Just say it, sweet girl. You don’t hate me enough to kill me, but do you hate yourself enough to not say no?”
Her little fingers grip my left shoulder. The other hand—the one with the gun—drops to her side.
“Ah, none of that,” I tell her. “You know the rules. You either point it at me, or you point it down there.” I nod my head toward the end of the empty hallway.
“No,” she grits out.
I grind myself against her.
“No, what? No to this?” I look down at us. “Or no to that?” My head turns to the empty corridor. No one is walking down there anytime soon. I specifically forbid it. No one goes near her, not after what happened.
“I’m not shooting anyone!”
I laugh at her. Of course she isn’t. “Very well, sweet girl. I’d never force you.”
24
Sapphire
He’d never force me.
Why don’t I believe that?
He lifts me off him and snatches the gun from my hand in one quick motion.
“What-are-you-doing?” The words come out as one long word. I sensed a game of his starting a while ago, and I have absolutely no idea how to get myself out of it.
The familiar rise in body temperature. The heat in my ears. The pounding of my heart.
They all lead to the same thing.
And I think I’m learning to enjoy it.
It terrifies me and excites me at the same time.
“I did warn you, sweet girl. If you cannot do it, then I will.”
I shake my head, but he catches my chin and stops me.
He takes a step closer and leans down so that his face is level with my ear. “Stop this pretense. This feigned refusal. It’s tiring for me so I can only imagine how it wears on you. You don’t have to fight me. It’ll be our secret. No one but you and I need to know. Just let me love you… Let me rule you.”
His words do something to me that’s almost indescribable. They’re like a physical thing spreading over my body.
And I am tempted.
My life is like a dream and I don’t
know if it’s a good one or a nightmare.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just let it all go?
Get over the bad things he does to other people?
There is a huge part of me that wants to. But there is a small voice inside my head that’s warning me against it.
The same small voice that clings on to the hope of escaping him. Or changing him. Or that one day, I’ll wake up to discover that it was all, indeed, just a beautiful dream or a terrifying nightmare.
He forces my head around to look at him. “What do you say to that?”
He says I’m pretending. That I say no when deep down I mean yes. “I say you’re a far worse a pretender than I am.”
The sound of his cruel laugh floats in the air between us and also seals my fate. “Of all the answers… that’s one I can’t say I anticipated.”
He spins me around so I’m in front of him and then forces me to my knees in the middle of the hallway.
I feel him kneeling down behind me, the metal of his mask cool on my neck. “And what, exactly, makes you think I’m pretending?”
“I’ve been here for weeks now, and you’ve lost your temper precisely once. For a man who claims to not have a conscience, to only want my fear, to be a monster in a mask… for the most part, your bite doesn’t match your bark.”
He’s silent for a long moment, and a knot forms in my stomach.
Then he chuckles quietly, his fingers curving up around my neck. His hands are gentle, his gestures tender.
Have I won?
Was that what he wanted, for me to work it out?
“My precious little girl,” he whispers, barely audible through the layer that separates his mouth from my skin. “Naive, as always. I will have to relieve you of your nonsense. Get your cheek on the carpet.”
There is no sign in his tone that he is anything other than deadly serious, but still I turn around to reason with him.
That’s when I feel his free hand in my hair, wrapping my ponytail around his fist. “No, no. None of that.”
He forces my head down, and I lay my palms out flat to stop some of the impact. “You won’t move from that spot,” he tells me.
Tells me.
My whole body burns as his hand runs up my inner thigh, stopping just short of the place heat is radiating from. I gasp as he pulls my dress up and over my hips, completely exposing me to him.
I should run.
He’s not holding me down. I know I wouldn’t get very far, but I should at least attempt it.
But something has me rooted in place.
Do I actually want to run? I don’t fucking know. I hate the man, but I love what he does to me.
There, I admitted it.
I love this fucked-up existence he’s made me dependent on.
His arm crosses over the small of my back and forces me to arch farther for him, to lift my ass higher in the air.
“There’s my perfect girl,” he says, and his voice makes me aware of how empty I am. How desperate I am for him to take that emptiness away. My cheeks burn, and although he can’t see it because of the paint, I close my eyes in shame.
“Tell me, how do you feel about me right now?”
I don’t even hesitate. “I hate you.”
He laughs, as if quite proud. “But you don’t hate this. You’d hate this if you were to choose it, but not when I force it upon you. Truth?”
“Yes.”
Yes, I think that is true.
When he forces me, I don’t have to let it sit on my conscience. I’m not betraying myself, or any other woman who lives here, by fucking him because I want to.
It’s easier when he makes the choices for me. When he tells me what to do.
“This game,” he says, sliding my knees apart with his. “This game is a simple one. I’m going to fuck you, and all you need to do is come before someone walks around that corner and I shoot them. It doesn’t end until you finish.”
As he slides the head of his cock inside me, he lets out a sigh, and so do I. “And don’t try to fake it, sweet girl, because I’ve felt you fall apart on my cock before, and it’s a feeling I won’t likely forget.”
My heart thuds against the carpet while I wait for him to do something.
Anything.
But he does nothing.
He’s barely even inside me.
He doesn’t move an inch.
I groan in frustration when it becomes clear he has no intention of doing anything at all.
He wants me to do it.
So I do. I push back against him as much as possible, feeling him stretch me.
Then he grabs hold of my arms, gun still mostly in one hand, crosses them over my back, wrist to elbow. He uses one free hand to hold them there.
I can’t move an inch.
“How am I supposed to do it if you won’t let me?” I grit out.
He pulls almost all the way out and then slides in slowly.
So slowly I clench my teeth.
I feel every single inch of him as my body makes space.
There’s nothing I can do to stop the cries and whimpers, to hide my frustration.
“You don’t,” he says as soon as he’s settled all the way in. “You lie there with a pussy full of my cock and you beg me to let you come.”
His arrogance is astounding.
I say nothing.
And he does it again.
Slowly.
And again.
Even slower.
Inch by hellish inch.
All the way to the hilt.
It’s simultaneously the best and worst feeling in the world.
I’m moaning, but I don’t even mean to. It’s like being tickled, yes you will laugh, but inside you just want to die. Inside, it’s torture.
“Someone,” he begins. “Anyone could walk around that corner and I’d have to shoot them. All because you’re too stubborn to beg for what we both know you want.”
Well, yes. But if I start begging we both know I’ll lose. He hasn’t specifically said that, but he doesn’t need to. He never fully explains his games. I just have to guess.
I try to push back against him as the head of his cock sits motionless at my entrance, but he just digs my arms in farther.
“Stop that,” he says, slamming into me viciously as if to drive home the point.
I let out a moan which turns into a whimper the moment I realize he’s not going to do it again.
“Where are those morals of yours now, sweet girl?” he asks as he inches his way in again. “Just tell me you want me. Tell me you need me. We both know it’s not a lie.”
“You’re the one who wants me,” I grit out.
He barks out a laugh and slams into me again, but it’s not enough.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that,” he says. “What is there to be ashamed about? I want to own you completely. Every inch of you, inside and out.”
He pulls out and I feel empty.
“I want to control every aspect of your life. I want to be the only thought that ever crosses your mind.” He enters me again, and this time lowers his weight until my hips buckle and I’m flat against the carpet. “Am I supposed to be ashamed of that?”
“I’m a person,” I tell him, hoping that conveys my answer.
He arches his back in order to get closer to my ear and leans in, lowering his voice. “But haven’t you ever wondered if perhaps that is overrated?”
Maybe. Yes. The thought that maybe it would be easier to give up and become the little doll he wants so badly has crossed my mind. “No.”
He grinds against me painfully slowly, stiffening his body until I can barely breathe. “Then we will play my games until you change your mind. And perhaps long after, too. Because I’m never giving you up, sweet girl. Now beg me to give you what you need.”
His hand slips out from between us, but I can’t get my arms free before he presses his full weight against them. The hand slips down between my legs, fingers rubbing against my clit wh
ile the heel pushes against the lowest part of my stomach.
My insides contract as he picks up speed, and I try to resist it because I know the moment I let it build is the same moment he’s going to stop.
He’s not going to let me come until I beg for it.
“Fine,” I whisper, barely able to breathe. “Fine, you win.”
He pulls out and flips me over onto my back.
“I win the game? Or you?”
I stare up at the faceless face, finding myself liking it. “The game. You want me to beg, then I’ll beg.”
“Then do it,” he says.
So I do.
“Louder.”
I say it louder.
“Scream it,” he taunts.
Is nothing ever good enough? I push against him, using my feet against his thighs to scramble away. I already said he won, but it’s never good enough for him.
He drops the gun and grabs my thighs with both hands, dragging me back to him and hooking both limbs over his arms.
I already know it’s going to hurt by the way he positions himself, and I squeeze my eyes closed, turning my head to the side in preparation.
He pushes inside me, fucking me brutally while telling me to look at him. “I want to see the light go out in your eyes when you realize I won you a long fucking time ago.”
I stare up at the mask that invades every waking moment and haunts my dreams.
“You’re living a lie, little girl. But I’ll keep your secret.”
It only takes moments for it to hit me like a storm.
25
Sapphire
I’m tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep while my mind races.
That’s when I hear it.
A tapping noise.
Sitting up, I close my eyes to better locate where the sound is coming from.
The wall?
I get up from the bed and make my way to the dresser, pressing my ear close to the wall.
Tap, tap, tap.
I tap back. Twice.
Tap, tap.
“Hello?”
Another tap.
Someone is on the other side of the wall.
I take a step back, contemplating my options.
Baron would forbid me to speak with anyone. That much is clear. The door is locked. I heard him turn the key when he left me so I can’t go outside and try the neighboring door.