Dark Duet Platinum Edition

by CJ Roberts

  Heat crawled up my face and the lump in my throat got harder to swallow and keep at bay. I bit on my lip and looked down at my plate of cooling food.

  “With so much responsibility resting upon your shoulders, how is it you’re still so innocent, still a trembling little thing needing to be told what to do?”

  “I’m not a baby,” I stated firmly, but my voice lacked that certain kind of conviction—of confidence.

  “Right,” he said, a big grin played across his face. It fell quickly, “Do you blame your mother?” Taken aback, I blinked and simply nodded in response. How could he see me so well? I wiped away the tears before they spilled from my eyes.

  “Yes!” I cried and succumbed to my tears, head in my hands.

  “I don’t mean to make you cry, Kitten.” He leaned in farther, his hand reaching for mine. The hell you don’t. I tried to pull my hand away, but his hold was insistent. I dared a look at him. Was that my pain reflected in the pool of his eyes? He swallowed and it was as if he was hiding some powerful emotion. He cleared his throat and when he spoke, he was once again in charge of himself, “Do you think she misses you?” He asked so matter-of-factly, as if the answer was not capable of breaking me inside, but it was, it really was.

  I cried so hard the tears spread all over my face and I kept wiping my hands on my nightgown. “Please, stop it. Why are you being so cruel?”

  He seemed impatient, “Just answer my question. It’s very simple–do you think she misses you? Or do you think it’s possible she’s already moved on and forgotten you?”

  I pulled my hand from under his oppressive grip and pounded the table, “You don’t know me! You don’t know my family. You don’t know a single thing about me. You’re just some sick pervert who kidnaps women so you can feel superior! You think I give a fuck about what you say? I don’t. I hate you!” The moment I finished with my outburst, cold, black, heavy fear took hold of me. He looked pissed. He gently tapped his fork against his plate, but one look at his knuckles, all white with the intensity of his grasp, suggested there was nothing gentle about him just now. I looked into his eyes, keeping his gaze locked onto mine, hoping that his anger would ebb. If I looked away, there was no hope for me.

  Suddenly, he burst into a fit of laughter so loud and forceful that I jumped and slapped my hands over my ears. It made me want to scream, just to make him stop laughing. He rose from his chair and came at me with his hands out. I quickly threw my hands up to protect my face. To my surprise, he grabbed my face in his hands and kissed me on the mouth so intensely it made my lips hurt a little. His face lingered close to mine, his breath warm on my mouth.

  “I’ll let you have that one, Kitten. I’ll let you have it because it’s told me so much about you already. And I like you; I like your saucy little mouth. I don’t want to hurt it. I’d rather kiss it, just like this.” He put his mouth on mine again, this time softly, his tongue gently probing my lips, until forced apart. I put my hands on his wrists, gently pushing him back before I turned my head away and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. He stood upright, grabbing my chin and tilting it upward. We looked at each other again.

  “But if you keep this up,” he continued, “I will have to teach your saucy mouth a cruel lesson. Do you understand?” I nodded slowly, his hand still holding my chin. He smiled, “Good.” He sat back down at his chair, seemingly delighted with himself. So much for his pity.

  “My mother does miss me,” I was adamant. “She’ll never stop looking for me; no mother would ever stop looking for her child.” But my tone wasn’t too convincing, not even to my own ears. For a moment he looked just as stricken as I felt, but only for a moment. Did I want to know why? Was he after more than my misery?

  “If you say so,” he whispered, expression cooling.

  I looked away and chugged on my beer, picked up my fork and stuck a big scoop of food into my mouth. If my mouth was full, I couldn’t talk. We sat in silence for several minutes, just the sound of both of us chewing and drinking. I stared at the fork, my metal fork and for too long because when I felt watched, I looked up. Caleb just smiled at me. He was daring me to use it as a weapon. It was odd to discover I was learning his various smiles. I think I got a little bit drunk because the world seemed a little, I don’t know, wobbly? For reasons unknown to me at the time, I felt compelled to repeat a question…carefully.

  He had told me once before he would do whatever he wanted with me, but he’d never told me what that might be. Was what happened between us the worst of it? I was surprisingly hopeful. “Master?” I paused. When he said nothing, I continued. “What happened before…is that all you plan to do with me?” The question didn’t seem to surprise him in the least, but it felt like I’d asked him the most important question I could ever ask him.

  He continued eating without another look at me. I pushed the food around, drank my beer as the weight of the silence became denser, more obvious he had an answer and didn’t want to say anything.

  My face grew very warm, though I figured the alcohol was responsible for a little of it. I looked down at my plate again. I had eaten everything; funny, I didn’t remember doing that. “Another one?” He pointed at my drink, that smile of his playing on the curve of his lips.

  “Um, yeah, I guess.” He got up from the table and moved around in the small kitchen. I looked around again, still in mild shock over how it was that I had come to be here. I never believed such a thing could happen to me. I had never imagined my life could take such an outrageous turn, or at least, certainly not for the worst. Not that I ever had any reason to be optimistic. He returned shortly, bottle in hand and opened it before giving it to me.

  “Don’t drink too much, Kitten. I don’t want you to be sick.” I drank from the bottle, marveling to myself at just how much like water it tasted now. He sat back down, set on ignoring me while he continued to eat and drink. It was pissing me off.

  “And what about you—Master?” I provoked. “What about your family?”

  “What about them?”

  “I assume they aren’t all kidnappers.”

  He actually smiled. Not the usual half smile, the one he always tried to hide. A real smile. God, he was a beautiful son of a bitch. Not fair. “No.”

  “No sisters?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “No.” Hadn’t we covered that? What did he know? “What about your mom?”

  Caleb’s face went blank. “Dead.”

  There was a great feeling of loss that swept across the table and despite my better judgment I couldn’t help but be deeply touched. If my mother were dead… I would be lost. It didn’t matter that she was an impossible woman, or that she still held me responsible for things I knew deep down weren’t my fault. I loved her. Nothing else mattered. Not even the feeling that the love may be one sided. “I’m sorry” I whispered and meant it.

  “Thank you.” He gritted.

  “How did she die?” His eyes blazed with a fierceness I had yet to see, but I held my ground. To my chagrin, he broke eye contact first. He stabbed his tamale, and I wondered if he had meant that forceful jab for me. He has mother issues—figures. Didn’t we all?

  “What happened to your mother?” he asked. “Men came in and out of your lives, making promises, taking what they wanted and leaving?”

  “Isn’t that how it always is?” I sneered. Or worse.

  “Come here, Kitten.” My heart thudded loudly in my ears at the sound of his suddenly baritone voice. I already recognized what that tone meant. My head shook, “No,” of its own volition, making my thoughts known to him before I formulated words. “I won’t hurt you, Kitten, not unless you make me. Now come here.” His voice was soft yet firm and his words pressed upon me with a grave seriousness. I stood up and slowly crossed the distance between us, stopping when I stood directly in front of him. He reached out and put his hands around my forearms, steadying me.

  “You see,” he sighed, “right now you are so sweet, so docile and meek.
You respect me; you respect what I can do to you if I wanted. Just as you are, all I want to do is hold you, protect you, and take away all the distress in your little face. Right now, if I made you a promise, I would keep it.”

  He stood from his chair, still holding my arms. My breath hitched in my chest, my mind reeled from the alcohol and the new anxiety in my chest. I looked down at my feet, refusing to meet his eyes, though I felt them on me. His breathing seemed heavier, his hold more pronounced. He leaned down, my breath non-existent now, and he kissed me, almost tenderly, first on one cheek and then the other. And then he simply walked passed me, calling out behind him, “Put the dishes in the sink. I’ll be right back.”

  I operated as if under a spell, quickly gathering up all the dishes and placing them in the sink, wiping off the table with a sponge I found. Then I returned and sat at the table. My thoughts were all over the place. Were it not for the fact I had watched him open my drink I would have thought maybe he had slipped me something, but no, I guess I was just drunk. It didn’t even occur to me that I was alone, that I could be searching for a way to escape until I heard his footsteps making their way toward me. Had he been testing me? I suddenly felt like a trained animal. Stay, Livvie. Stay. Good girl.

  “Well, Kitten, that was really fun, but I’m afraid I have some business to attend to; so that means you’ll have to return to your room.” A cold chill ran up my spine, and I shivered, a little too violently.

  “Please, Master,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes “I can’t go in there, please don’t make me go in there.” My body began to convulse with dread and panic, but no longer that frantic and angry rush. The alcohol made it nearly impossible to disguise my emotions.

  “Kitten, we both know begging won’t get you anywhere. I said I have things to do, and I don’t have time to baby-sit.”

  I begged anyway. “You won’t have to baby-sit, I promise. I’ll stay out of the way, I’ll be quiet; I’ll be whatever you say. Just please! Don’t make me go back into that dark room. I’ll go crazy in there.” I looked at him, imploring him with everything I had at my disposal. I could not go back in that room. I couldn’t go back to the dark, to the loneliness, to the fear within those walls.

  He sighed heavily, weighing me silently.

  “Tell me, Kitten, what’s in it for me?”

  Chapter Nine

  Caleb had been surprised at the lengths to which his captive had agreed to go in order to stay out of “her room.” He wondered, not for the first time, what the fuck he was thinking. He knew this was the last thing he should be doing, inviting her into his space. She’d already worked her way much too far into his thoughts. The longer he was near her, the less he seemed capable of trusting himself. Especially now, when every glance at her triggered the memory of her quivering beneath him, wanting more and never realizing it. She had come a long way from the timid girl he’d met on the streets of Los Angeles. What he had done was wrong, somewhere inside him he knew that and still he couldn’t say with any sincerity he wouldn’t do it again given the chance. Or that he didn’t want to do it again. There was just something about her, something he wanted to taste and touch. Something he wanted to claim. This was the first time she had ever offered him anything and he was hard pressed to refuse.

  An unexpected shiver ran down his spine and his cock instantly lengthened. While his mind had doubts about what he wanted, his body apparently did not. He closed his eyes, trying to feel what she must be feeling as she stood a few feet away blindfolded and shaking slightly. He felt the cold tile under his bare feet, smelled the crisp scent of the candles in the air, and tasted the slightest trace of sweat on his lip. He wanted to taste her sweat. He wanted to do anything to distract him from the debacle at the kitchen table.

  It had been a mistake to ask her all those questions. He didn’t really want to know. He especially loathed all that talk about mothers. He had said his mother was dead. And she could be for all he knew. Regardless, she was dead in all the ways that mattered. His passion instantly cooled at the memory of her pitying expression. Fuck pity. He didn’t need it. He didn’t need anything from anyone, least of all her. Liar.

  Caleb potentially had a mother out there, and according to the girl, she might still be missing him. Why couldn’t he remember her? He felt, somewhere, very distantly, he had once…loved her? But he felt nothing when he thought of her now. It was…unsettling. Breaking free of his frustrating and perplexing thoughts, Caleb refocused his attention on the girl.

  He smiled to himself as he looked at her, standing in the grandeur of the oversized, old-world bathroom. In some countries it could be its own home. She stood a few feet away blindfolded and vulnerable. But this was her choice. Her shapely and tremulous form rekindled his softening erection. She couldn’t possibly know the effect she had; his little innocent captive. Her hair was absolutely unruly, having been left to dry on its own after their bath. It was as untamed as the girl, and almost as alluring.

  Before entering his room she had become increasingly bashful. He suspected the reason. He had released his pleasure inside her, and then she had eaten a large meal and gotten drunk. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why she was suddenly talking her way out of his room, when she had worked so hard to get an invitation. She was very cute when she was drunk. But then, she was always cute, inebriated state aside.

  But in the end, she’d gone with him. Trusted him to take care of her as he’d promised.

  She gasped at the sound of him snapping the table into place, and he wondered what she thought it could possibly be. He nearly groaned when he spied her nipples tautly pressed against the satin of her nightgown, all but entreating him to take them into his mouth and suckle them until her body succumbed to remorseless shudders. He sighed. What the hell was wrong with him? After leaving Tehran he had glutted himself on women. Done everything he had ever fantasized about doing. He’d been with so many women, yet none of them had ever affected him the way she did.

  If the first lesson every slave had to learn was to accept that their wishes did not matter, then the first lesson every master had to learn was not to be a slave to their own desires. The logic was simple, to command a slave, you must command yourself.

  Over the last three weeks it had become easier to bend his captive to his will, to make her respond in ways Caleb knew she would. Yet the more her body obeyed, the less her mind seemed to play a part. The less he knew of her thoughts, the more he wanted to get inside her in every way possible. But at every turn he remained locked out, denied, rejected—infuriated. His aggression toward her had escalated, but their dynamic remained the same. It had begun to bother him in ways he could not explain.

  He should have been satisfied, relieved in fact. Vladek would have no part of her. In her mind, she would remain safe and untouched by him even as her body would not. Still, the thought of Vladek touching her repulsed him.

  “Take off the nightgown,” Caleb said softly but firmly. He smiled, taking pleasure in her little startled jump at the sound of his voice. She fidgeted, shifting her weight from one hip to the other, trying to find something to do with her hands.

  “Um…?” she hesitated. Her voice was nearly lost in the cavernous tiled bathroom. Caleb moved toward her, as stealthily as possible, wanting to enjoy the obvious tension that coursed through her tender frame. He truly was a sick bastard. She panted ever so softly and then sharply sucked in a breath as Caleb put his hand across her belly, gently forcing her back into the breadth of his chest. She was warm, deliciously warm.

  “Are you afraid I’m going to hurt you, Kitten?” he whispered into the shell of her ear, “because that’s not what I’m interested in, not in the least. I promised not to hurt you, and I won’t, not as long as you keep your promise to do whatever I ask.” Her breath was forced and ragged and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to kiss her bottom lip, which she presently used as a chew toy. Instead he stepped back and simply repeated, “Take off the nightgown.”

&n
bsp; The girl took a deep, but shaky breath, searching no doubt for resolve. Caleb felt both wise and devious for allowing her to partake of a shot of tequila after dinner. He was surprised she didn’t sway more on her feet given the fact she was blindfolded. With a trembling hand, she slipped the right strap off her shoulder, shortly followed by the left, exposing her beautiful breasts as the nightgown slipped down to her waist. Caleb had to focus on his breathing, barely able to keep himself rooted in place.

  Next she attempted to push the nightgown the rest of the way down, but her ample hips wouldn’t allow it. He thought it was all so fucking naïvely sexy. Exhausting the possibility of pushing the fabric down, which would have been more modest, she finally endeavored to pull the fabric over her head. Caleb’s body seemed to sway with the motion of her generous breasts.

  His cock could not possibly be any harder. He grabbed it and adjusted it into yet another position that didn’t leave it so painfully twisted. “Stop,” he said huskily. “Just leave it the way it is.” He walked over to her and effortlessly hoisted her into his arms and laid her flat on the table he had prepared. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, but Caleb wasn’t surprised when she instinctively went to cover her exposed breasts. He wanted to stay her hands, to correct her behavior, but he let her have her seductive modesty. Especially since her soft little sobs, barely audible over the rush of the water in the bathtub, let him know that tears undoubtedly hid behind the fur lined blindfold. Warm, salty, delicious tears that he suddenly wanted to feel against his lips.

  “Turn over, Kitten.”

  “What are you going to do?” she gasped.

  When she hesitated he added, “I promise not to hurt you.” She seemed sated with that and slowly turned onto her stomach. She cried out when Caleb reached for the nightgown and pulled it up to her waist. All at once she scrambled to get up, but he quickly used the weight of his body to pin her still. “This is for your own good, no pain.”