When I’m finished, I stand. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand as Cilla watches me, her breathing short, her face flushed. The shoulder of her dress has slipped, exposing one breast. I reach down, take hold of the dress and push it to her waist so she’s sitting with her pussy and her tits exposed.
“Hands and knees,” I say, pointing to the floor at my feet.
She doesn’t move, just sits staring up at me. I bring my hand to her face, touch her cheek, twist it around to the back of her head and urge her down.
“Hands and knees,” I repeat as she slides to the floor, but doesn’t quite get into the position. She remains kneeling there, looking up at me.
I strip off my jacket and open my shirt. I don’t have time to undress. I walk around her, kneel behind her. She doesn’t look back. I slide her dress up her back and when it’s at her neck, I push her head to the floor. She lowers herself onto her elbows, her forehead on the carpet. I undo my pants, widen her knees with my own as I take my position behind her. I settle in, take her hips in my hands, spread her wide, and I look at her. I just look at her for a long time. Her back is arched, her cunt is dripping. When I close my thumb over her tight little asshole, she gasps, clenches. I slap her hip.
“This is mine too. I want to see what’s mine. Touch it. Fuck it.” My voice is a low, deep growl. She cranes her neck to look behind her. “Mine, Cilla.”
She swallows, faces forward. I wonder if she’s preparing herself to be fucked in the ass, but that’s not the hole I want tonight. Still, I close my finger over it, push a little, only because I can. Because I want her to know I own her. I own this hole. I own every part of her.
She makes a sound, but I see how her pussy is leaking down her thigh. I guide my cock toward her wet cunt, take my time tonight, watch her stretch to take me. She’s tight, so fucking tight, and I know from the sounds she’s making it hurts her, but I also know that pain will only intensify her pleasure. Intensify mine.
I push deep into her, taking in a breath, closing my eyes as her warmth engulfs me, resting here for one moment before pulling out to fuck her. I watch my cock disappear into her folds, hear the sounds she makes when I do, feel myself thicken inside her, until, finally, I bury myself in her, gripping her hard, her throbbing walls milking my cock, taking everything I give, everything I have.
I slump backward, my back to the chair. Cilla pulls away, draws her dress up over her shoulders, down over her hips as she stumbles to her feet, her hair out of it’s neat bun, now looking like she’s just been thoroughly fucked.
She’s watching me with a look on her face I can’t quite figure out, can’t quite look away from.
“Am I getting another computer tomorrow?” she asks, pushing the shoulder of the dress that keeps sliding down her arm back up.
I rise, closing my pants as I do.
“Or something else?” She takes a step backward, and I realize she’s now barefoot. I don’t know why that strikes me. She looks around like she’s thinking. “Maybe a car? I don’t know. I mean, what’s next when you start with a laptop?”
I chuckle, make my way to the liquor cart.
“It’s funny to you, isn’t it? I’m funny to you.”
I pour a whiskey into a new glass, cap the bottle and take my time turning to her, the crystal tumbler in my hand. Studying her, I sip. Swallow. Feel it burn my throat.
“Is my cum sliding down your thighs?” I ask.
After everything, she’s not expecting that. She shifts her gaze, her eyes glisten like she’s on the verge of tears. I don’t need tears though. I don’t want them. She’s here for one thing and one thing alone. I have to remember that.
“I hate you,” she finally says.
“You’ve told me that already.”
She walks to the door, puts her hand on the knob, turns it.
“Cilla.” It’s a quiet command to stop.
She does but doesn’t turn to face me.
“You’re not excused.”
She stands there, clearly unsure what to do. How far to push me. So I push her instead.
“I need you to get back on your knees and clean my dick.”
Tears have wet the skin around her eyes when she slowly turns her face to me. I watch her. I sip my drink. I’m an asshole, I know. But I can’t be anything else. She can’t be anything else than the thing I brought her here to be.
“Clean your own fucking dick, Killian Black.”
With that, she pulls the door open and rushes from the library and I laugh. I laugh so hard, I double over with it. So fucking hard, I almost spit the whiskey out of my mouth. But when I stop, it’s finished.
I look out into the hallway and wish I could hear her thoughts right now because she’s running for her life. I go to the door, close it. I then take the bottle of whiskey and sit in the seat she was just in. Her shoes are on the carpet, and the room smells of sex. I leave the glass and drink straight from the bottle. Because I won’t go after her tonight. I won’t punish her tonight.
This is good. What happened is good. Because it puts us firmly on our separate sides of the boxing ring, where we belong. We’re not friends. We’re not lovers. She is nothing to me and what happened this afternoon, that goddamned cross, it won’t happen again. I won’t lose control to those memories again. I won’t ever let them own me again.
11
Cilla
After my shower, my skin is raw. I scrubbed so hard, it still burns. What was I trying to get off me? His touch? His scent? It would be easy if it was only that. But what I don’t understand, what I can’t make sense of, is what happens to me when he touches me.
I’ve never felt safe with anyone. I’ve never really needed anyone.
No, that’s not true. I just pretended all my life that I was fine. That I could handle life. I didn’t need human touch. Didn’t need to be held. When I fucked, I chose who. A bar. A stranger. A one night stand. No names exchanged. No kissing. I used them and I always left first.
It was always a control thing. My vibrator typically gave me more pleasure than any of the men I was with. I just needed to know I didn’t need it. Didn’t need them. Anytime I felt weak or vulnerable, I went on the hunt.
With him, I don’t understand. I don’t get it. He’s forced me here. The deal I made I made for my brother. We both know that. I’m Killian Black’s captive. It’s bullshit he says I can leave any time I want and we both know it. Hell, I’m not allowed anywhere but in three rooms of this massive house, and can’t even walk outside without a goddamned chaperone.
But when he touches me, it’s like my body comes alive. It craves his touch. His hands on me. His mouth. His cock inside me, splitting me in two.
When he knelt between my legs and opened me up, fuck, I can’t even…I could have come from the look in his eyes alone. Then he put his mouth on me and I was lost.
I was his whore.
I am his whore.
Because after that, when he stood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ordered me to the floor, I wanted to kneel. To bury my face in the carpet. But I also needed to be made to do it. And I guess in a way, that’s where he’s trustworthy. He will make me.
And this is exactly why he’s dangerous. Because with him, I’m not in control.
I glance at the clock. It’s a little after two in the morning. It’s raining again, I hear it coming down hard against the windows. I throw the covers back and get up. I can’t sleep. I want a drink.
I’m only wearing a tank top so I grab an oversized sweater and slide my arms in, cocoon myself inside it, only realizing my feet are bare when I step out of my room and into the hallway, which isn’t carpeted but hardwood. I almost go back inside to grab a pair of socks because this house always seems to have a chill, but it’s quiet and dark and I decide to go downstairs and just find a bottle of something to bring back to my room. I know where he keeps the liquor, obviously, and it’s one of the rooms I’m allowed in.
I fume at that. I’m allowed
in the library. Like I’m a child.
And like a meek, scared little thing, I obey his rules. That knowledge turns my stomach. When did I become a rule follower? When did I obey anyone? It’s not something I’m used to, hasn’t been for a long time. Not since Jones got us out of that house. Before that, I obeyed because it wasn’t me who was punished when I didn’t. It was Jones. Every time.
The memory is crippling. I stop halfway down the stairs and close my eyes, force it back into the closet of my shame. I keep my past there. The years between mom and dad’s death and the day Jones turned eighteen. I wish I could obliterate that time from my head. Get amnesia or something. Although one thing those years and the ones following taught me were that I can put them away. I can shove them into the farthest corner of that room, close the door and lock it. It’s just that the lock is flimsy and pieces of the past seem to creep through the unending cracks in the walls.
But at least I have that room. Those years broke Jones in a way I’ve never been able to put him back together again.
My feet don’t make a sound as I walk down the fourteen steps. I glance around the dark space. One lamp is left on in the living room and although it’s a dim one, it’s enough to guide me. I make my way to the library, open the door quietly, although it appears to be dark. I can’t imagine he’s still in there, but I exhale in relief when I confirm. Leaving the door open so I don’t have to switch on any lights, I go directly to the cart that contains bottle after bottle of high end booze. After a quick inventory, I decide on a bottle of vodka and a glass and turn to leave. It would be better over ice, but I can’t risk that so I’ll have it at room temperature. I’m just glad to have the liquor at all.
I close the door behind me and am heading to the stairs when I hear a sound. It’s quiet, a door sliding open. My heart leaps to my throat and I spin around, expecting everyone to be in bed, expecting to be alone.
The rain is loud, it sounds like a flash flood out there. You never know how powerful those things are until you see one for yourself. See it hurtling boulders and trees like they’re nothing.
That’s all I can think of as I watch him coming in from the sliding glass doors that lead to the back of the property. He’s soaking wet, still dressed in the same button-down shirt and pants he’d had on earlier. Except he’s not wearing shoes. He’s in his socks, and they and his pants are covered in mud. He’s making a mess as he takes three steps inside, sees me, stops.
He sways on his feet and rain is coming into the house, making the marble floor shine. I grip the neck of the bottle with one hand, the crystal tumbler in the other. He looks me over, eyes the bottle, and I notice the flashlight he’s holding in his hand. It’s like he only just realizes the door’s open behind him and turns to close it. He’s drunk, I know he is. And if I were smart, I’d take this moment to disappear up the stairs and into my room like I hadn’t been here at all, but I’m not that smart, so I continue to stand there until he turns around to face me again.
“It’s late,” he mutters, his voice a low, deep grumble. “What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Where has he been this time of night? In this rain? “What are you doing?” I ask before I can stop myself. “Where are your shoes?”
He looks down like he’s just realized he isn’t wearing any, then looks up at me, and for a split second, I see something strange. Something familiar. Vulnerable. Like all of a sudden, he’s a little kid. A lost little kid. But then he gives his head a shake, turns toward one of the closed doors of the house, digs into his pocket.
“Go to bed. Don’t wander the house at night.” He takes out a ring of keys.
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” I say to his back.
He stops, but doesn’t turn. A moment later, I hear the key slide into the lock. “Maybe you should be.” He goes into the dark room. Doesn’t switch on a light. Doesn’t close the door. If he closed the door, perhaps I would have gone up to bed, like he said. But he doesn’t, and so I take a few steps toward it, curious about the room. Curious about him.
I step inside, my eyes adjusting to the darker room. I find him sitting on the leather couch, watch him bring a bottle of something to his lips. “You probably shouldn’t drink any more tonight,” I hazard, setting my own pilfered bottle and tumbler on the corner of the huge desk.
He looks up at me, his eyes bright and shining in the darkness, and purposefully takes another sip.
“Go to bed, Cilla.”
I walk to him, I don’t know why, but I do.
No, I know why. It’s what I saw in his eyes a few minutes ago. It’s like something in me recognizes it, recognizes that part of him. Feels somehow kindred to it.
I sit on the couch, not close enough to touch, and notice the muddy prints he’s left on the animal hide area rug beneath my feet.
“Where were you?” I ask.
He turns to me. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“So are you. Why were you outside without your shoes on? Without a coat?”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t.”
I look around at the dark walls. They seem to be papered in black and a bookshelf lines two of them. Two windows draped with heavy curtains take up the one behind his chair and there’s a painting I can’t quite make out between them. A laptop sits on top of the desk, and next to it, a cell phone.
When I face him, he’s watching me. “If you were smart, you’d run to your room, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. Again. It’s disarming, but I shrug it off and study his eyes. “Would I be safe there?”
He thinks about this for a while before he finally replies. “No.”
His single word answer is deliberate and it makes a chill run along my spine. He’s being honest though. I think he’s always been honest with me.
We sit like this for what seems like an eternity until he closes his eyes and leans his head back.
“Does it mean you believe in ghosts?” he asks, confusing me.
“What?”
He turns his head, meets my gaze. “You said earlier you’re not afraid of ghosts. Does that mean you believe in them?”
“I…It’s just something I said.”
“You waste words.”
I’m upset by this, by his disapproval. He rises to his feet and stands over me, waiting for me to do the same, I presume. I get up. He sweeps his arm toward the door and I go. The keys hang in the lock, and the door remains open as we go upstairs, him following close behind me. When I get to my room, I reach for the doorknob, but he puts his hand over mine. He’s so close, I can smell him, the whiskey on his breath, the rain on his clothes, the man beneath. I turn my head a little. His is bowed, close, dark eyes burning into me.
“My room,” he grunts. “Tonight, you’ll sleep in my bed.”
This makes my belly flutter, my heart race. Why? Why does he want me in his bed? Him fucking me is messing with me already. Why does he want me in his bed too?
“I don’t…” I start, my voice breaking. “I don’t sleep with anyone.” I hear how ridiculous that sounds.
His eyebrows shoot up but he doesn’t reply, instead, he pries my hand from the doorknob and we walk toward the double doors at the end of the hall. It’s like a movie. Like the corridor is growing longer, the doors larger, the ones to his room looming like a dark omen. He’s already fucked me. Why is this different?
Kill opens one of the two doors and hits a light switch. Two lamps on either side of the king size, four-poster bed come on and the room is bathed in golden light. The frame of the bed is steel, this room modern in comparison to the rest of the house. The carpet is lush and the tones are a deep, dark blue. The curtains are closed, as if someone already readied the room for sleep, and when I hear the door close behind me, I startle.
With a grunt, he points to the bed.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because there are ghosts, Cilla. Angry ones.”
I’m watching him, trying to make sense of what
he just said, but he turns and walks into the bathroom, leaving clumps of mud dropping from his clothes. A moment later, I hear the shower go on. I stand there like an idiot. I should do something. Find a weapon or a key or—no that’s stupid. A weapon for what? To do what? A key to leave the house? When I go back on my word, he will hurt Jones. Period. One month. It’s what I agreed to. To be his captive for thirty days. And that means he owns me.
With heavy legs, I walk to the bed. The shower switches off and I quickly duck beneath the covers, turning my back to the bathroom, trying not to think of how the sheets smell like him. I listen to him moving around the room, and a moment later the bed shifts under his weight. An arm wraps around my middle and I gasp when he draws me to him, turns me onto my back.
He’s naked and although we’ve fucked, this is the first time I see his chest. Droplets of water cling to the muscles of his arms and shoulders, the hard ripples of his stomach. The tattoo on his chest, it’s the Joker. And he’s laughing and flipping someone off. Why do I get the feeling the joke’s on him?
When I look up at Kill’s face, I see that his eyes have cleared, the darkness softened a little, giving way to the specks of gold inside, vivid, intent on me, my face, on my eyes, my lips—skimming over my body. They lock on my panties. He pushes my sweater and tank top up a little, exposing my stomach. His fingers are feather light when he touches my belly button, trails a path to the waistband of my underwear. His eyes lock on my sex and I feel my body readying itself to betray me. Readying itself for him. Because I know what he wants. It’s in his too bright eyes. His thick, ready cock.
His fingers slide beneath and he glances at me momentarily before returning his gaze to my sex and drawing my panties down, down, over my hips and thighs, off my feet. He brings them to his nose, watching me as he does this, as he inhales deeply with a satisfied moan. I feel my face burn when he tosses them aside, a knowing look in his eyes. He slides his knees between my legs and spreads them, and I feel his cock on me, on my thigh, my stomach. It leaves pre-cum in the places it touches. He takes my wrists, stretches my arms out to either side of me, holds them there and locks his eyes on mine when he penetrates.
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