Lies & Lullabies

by Courtney Lane

  Too dizzy with exhaustion and emotional pain, I couldn’t find my fight. It was drenched in betrayal, confusion, and forlornness. I wished I could erase it away and remember the woman who came to Catch, ready for a mental battle. I wasn’t well-prepared, he easily stripped me of my armor from the second we met.

  He dropped me down on the bed, and clawed at my dress, ripping it from my body. Grasping my waist, he flipped me over, forcing my stomach down on the bed. He positioned me as though I were his paper-doll with my legs and arms spread.

  There was no point in running or fighting. I had nowhere to run and not enough strength to best him. I mumbled inaudible words.

  “Shhh.” He ran his fingers up and down my spine. “You may think you don’t want it right now. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging for me.”

  He tore pieces of my dress and used the strips of silk to bind my arms and legs to the bed, keeping me spread.

  The chill in the air made my nude body shudder. Things moved around the room, items rustled and shifted.

  “So tense,” Catch’s voice echoed throughout the bedroom. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”

  Hot, thick liquid drizzled down my spine followed by his hands. Each piece of my skin touched by the warm oil pleasantly sizzled. His hands worked in circles down my back, pushing and massaging out the kinks and tension, working lower. He slid his hands down my ass and worked the back of my legs. The painstakingly slow inch upward threatened to drive me mad. A finger slid up the fissure of my ass, gentle at first. Repeating the action, he went deeper and slid his hand down to my slit.

  A gasp escaped as I jolted in my constraints. Catch wasn’t satisfied with fucking my mind; he was going to untangle my body from its need to protect myself against feeling anything for him.

  A hot stream of air against the small of my back sent a shocking heat up my spine. “Every fucking part of you will sing for me tonight.”

  Wet fingers entered me. Another skated up my spine, massaging up and down while he urged another finger inside me. Liquid dripped over my back and ass, sliding down into other places. A finger circled around my puckering hole and pushed its way inside.

  Leaning over me, he rocked his fingers in my ass and my pussy. The heat of his exhale activated the oil and made my skin feel inflamed.

  “You’re so beautiful, Simone.” He touched the scars I earned from fighting with another hand, and ended with soft circles around the raven tattoos on my shoulder blades. “And it’s a shame you don’t know how much.” With a sweep of his hand, my hair was shifted off my neck. His tongue teased the sensitive spot at the base of my neck. “When those gorgeous hazel eyes met mine in the arena, you knew what I knew. We were made to fit together.”

  I lost the ability to stand outside myself and scream at my corporeal body to wake up. He was fucking me with his words and his hands, and fuck, I couldn’t stop the two parts from meeting in the middle and melding together for him.

  “Catch,” I whimpered.

  His fingers moved faster, thrashing in both parts of me, rubbing at the sensitive wall.

  “Oh, fuck.” My words trembled in sync with my body.

  He situated himself between my legs and snaked an arm around my waist. His fingers crawled down between my stomach and the mattress until he found my clit. He retracted the hood and ran his fingers along the sensitive tip. I sucked in too much air and nearly suffocated on it. The rush was blinding and hard-hitting. Like a million shocks of electricity emanating from my core, I came together and fell apart simultaneously.

  He stopped on my downfall, withdrawing, massaging the swell of my bottom. The throbbing, thick and long erection glided inside the separation of my ass.

  I pressed my lips together, stifling the “yes, please fuck me” behind sealed lips.

  His hips retracted, and the head of his cock probed at the opening of my sex. With one thrust, he slid the tip inside me, rocking shallowly. A shocking thrill rippled through me, and I couldn’t help my hips from eagerly pushing back toward him to swallow him deep inside my wet walls.

  He pushed my ass down forcing me to become immobile as he moved hardly an inch. He fingered my clit, moving expertly to manipulate the swelling, sensitive nub.

  I shivered on the brink, and he immediately withdrew his erection and ejected from the bed.

  “Fuck me,” I mumbled against the pillow, hating the words that came out of my mouth.

  Standing by the side of the bed, he unknotted one of my hands and guided it around his wide shaft. My eyes met his, hungry for more.

  “I want you to need it like the fucking air you breathe.” He reached around and down my ass, pushing two fingers inside me.

  A sharp exhale shuddered from my lungs. “I really, really fucking need it.”

  Leaning forward, his mouth hungered for mine, thrusting his tongue between my lips. It was abrupt and shocking. He withdrew, stepping backward, leaving me so hot and wanting, I begged with my eyes.

  He pulled on his pants and gave me a wink. “I think…you should take a cold shower and sleep in another room tonight.”

  Anger fueled my will and shoved the truth into my head. While I couldn’t fight what was already there, I wasn’t going out with a whimper. I had feelings for him, and that would be the only part that I wouldn’t be able to help. I wouldn’t help him get his revenge. I would fight with everything I had to go down screaming until I was forced to become everything he wanted me to be.

  I slid up, untying myself from the restraints, starting with my other hand, and dragged the sheet up to cover my oil slicked body.

  I dropped the bed sheet, distracting him with my nudity. I stared at him, undeterred and silent, expressing everything I wanted to say in the stillness between us.

  His blue eyes brightened. Catch, for the first time since I had met him, was stunned. He quickly wiped it away. “Tell me who I am, and I’ll fuck you.”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Catch.” I jammed my hand in my hair, manipulating it away from my face. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he appeared seconds away from taking me down on the bed.

  I broke because I wanted him to let me go and release me from the madness threatening to suck me in. I had no idea what to believe anymore. I was beginning to love the way he treated me. “You’re the son,” I stated, sticking to my belief.

  Lightness lifted his face, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a minor bit of amusement. He walked toward the bed with a sinister motive in his moves. I jumped, assuming he was going to hurt me. He shook his head, holding out his hand as if holding out a white flag. “What’s my name?”

  I racked my brain for answers. Combing through the organizational trees, I tried to remember the name most heard on people’s lips when I attended a “family” function with Deana. “Marcin. Marcin Di Stefano.” I couldn’t tell if I’d hit pay dirt or not. The impassive facade was firmly in place.

  “Why do you think your father protected you, Simone?”

  My hands began to tremble as the question shocked me to the core. My answers weren’t premeditated. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, desperate for what hung beyond my grasp. “Michael protected me from the world because he wanted me to be his secret weapon. The education he wanted me to get and keeping me separate from the family…it had a reason; to leave me disconnected and lure anyone who wanted to dethrone him. Maybe make any person wanting to take him down think we’re kindred spirits because I’m an outsider.”

  He kissed me and sucked the energy to breathe from my lungs. Our mouths devoured each other, eager to blend the truth and the lies until they resembled each other.

  He pushed me down on the bed. I fell backward, my legs spread out before him. Sucking in a sharp breath, he delayed, taking his time to scan down my body as though he wanted to taste every inch of me. Sliding his pants down his hips, he allowed them to pool around his feet. He crawled up
the bed, writhing his naked body against mine. He grabbed my hips, sliding me fully underneath him. A telltale sign of impatience stemmed from his gaze.

  I fell flat back on my elbows and my legs rested flat on the bed. His eyes were frozen on my face as he slowly descended down between my legs. He opened his mouth only inches from my pussy and exhaled a tepid stream of air. Extending his tongue, he slid it from the bottom of my pussy, gliding through my wet lips, and ended with a slow swirl on the tip of my clit.

  I practically came undone.

  “Are you a kindred spirit, Simone?” he mumbled against my clit in between giving it light sucks. “Do you want to see your father succeed or do you want to see him die?”

  “Fuck,” I trembled at the sensation of his mouth on my pussy. I gripped the sheets so hard my hands began to ring with pain. My eyes rolled back, ready to succumb to what Catch made me feel.

  He slowed down, and I forced myself out of my mind-numbing flight to continue. “I-I don’t know.”

  He sucked the nub harder and faster, opening his mouth wider to cover and manipulate more of the points that drove me insane.

  Scared he was going to stop to punish me, I exposed what rested in my darkest desires. “Yes, I want to see him die. I want him to die, and I want Deana to have everything she dreamed of.” The confession spilled from my mouth in a shaky and quiet voice.

  His mouth claimed my pussy like territory he owned, licking, sucking, not missing a single inch of any part that made me weak. Fingers slid easily inside me and pumped in and out, rubbing against a spot inside, coaxing me to feel like I was either going to urinate or come extremely hard. With his mouth hidden in my sex, he stared up at me, his smoldering blue eyes manipulated me with a skill equal to the sensation of his mouth on me.

  “I’m gonna…c-come.” I had thought to lock my thighs around his head and ride out the wave if he decided to deny me in the worst way.

  He mumbled against my clit, creating insane vibrations.

  Clutching the sheets, I dug my nails down into the mattress. I broke apart beneath him, hard and fast.

  Sitting upright, he swiped his hand down his mouth and pulled me farther down to lie underneath his body. He licked his palm and tugged on his erection leading it to my pussy. Flexing his hips, he pushed only the head inside me.

  A sharp gasp resounded, and I shivered in a repeated cycle. His sedated and shallow thrusts were steady, creating an emotional rift. Watching me with a look torn between cockiness and penetrative desire, he captured me in his prison. “Would you kill for me?”

  Too stuck in the throes of unrequited need to digest his question fully, I submitted. “Y-yes.”

  He pumped inside me at an increasingly heady speed. “Are you ready for this?”

  “So ready,” I hummed, holding onto his firm ass as it flexed.

  On his withdrawal, he manipulated the head of his cock to slide up and down my slit. The burning grip of his hand wrapped around my hip, held me down, and forced me to endure his teasing.

  I wrapped my legs around him and pressed my hands against the hard muscle at his back, aiming to pull him deeper inside. The ability to look innocent in his brutality was a sweet poison.

  His sinewy figure wasn’t just for show. He had me in speed and strength. He had me mentally. He had every part of me that I didn’t want to give up. He seduced me into opening up my most vulnerable pink parts, and he fucked me in every way he could. The moment solidified everything I wanted to fight against—there was nothing left of me to face off against him. The instant he slipped the tip of his erection between my glistening lips, and I silently pleaded for more, I knew it.

  A hand tangled in my hair. He searched my eyes for the flag of surrender. Intimacy was in the way he held my gaze. It touched me in ways I had no ability to grasp and maintain control over.

  I twisted my hips in his hands, feeling impatient. I lifted my hands up, knotting them behind his head. A slow, creeping smile splashed across his face.

  He pushed fully into me and I gasped, keeping my eyes open because the look in his eyes had me caught in a trap.

  “Simone,” he groaned against my lips, his voice misted in sex. “Your cunt was made for my cock.” His cock throbbed inside me, massaging my walls.

  I clung to him tighter, wanting him to move and slam inside me until he broke me.

  “Say it,” he charged, his lips toying with mine. He took my mouth violently then apologized with the gentle caresses and suckling kisses, cycling over and over again. Biting and sucking, sucking and biting until he drew blood and sucked my lips clean. I opened my mouth to him, stressing the agony over being unfulfilled.

  His tongue darted between my lips and ran up the roof of my mouth. Both of his hands found their way to the side of my neck and pressed in.

  “My pussy was made for your cock,” I confessed, digging my nails into the back of his head.

  “And?”

  “I was made for you.”

  He withdrew, and slowly slid into me. The motion increased the sloshing sounds of my pussy, soaking wet for him, and spread to the crux of my thighs. He pumped inside me, filling me, and withdrew in shallow strokes. The tip of his erection rubbed against a place inside me that shocked my body with tingling pulses. I shuddered like a cube of ice slid down my spine. His rhythm picked up and began a pace that dissolved every stitch of rebellion. Fucking me harder than a machine and pushing deeper, he touched places no man had ever been able to grasp. I’d never wanted someone so badly—to break me into a million pieces with one word, one thrust, and one look.

  My sex clenched around his cock as he took me harder. The headboard shuddered against the wall, clanging with the symphony of our bodies crashing into each other.

  I was stuck in the energy syphoning cyclone held in his eyes. His thumb angled up my jaw and opened my mouth. I sucked it like it was his cock.

  My body was awash in everything Catch made me feel, leaving me dazed. I cried out to the ceiling, nothing that made much sense but something between a mewl and groan.

  The brink promised a high I’d never felt. Sliding out of me, he kneeled back on the bed. With a rough handle on my waist, he flipped me over on the mattress with my ass up and my breasts pressed against the surface as though I weighed nothing. The swell of my ass was clutched in his hands as he opened me and slid easily inside my pussy, tearing into me like he meant to break me.

  The strong grip he held on my hips began to ache as he forced me to meet his brutal pounding. I cried against the mattress as my body vibrated and sung at a drugged out pitch.

  Shuddering against him, I succumbed to the high. I couldn’t stop coming. I lost control of my body completely. Every piece of flesh took only a simple touch to reap pleasure, and my pussy was the hot button that led to the greatest explosion of ecstasy above all.

  He fucked me in every position he possibly could on the bed: on my stomach, on my back with my legs over his shoulders, and the most lethal position—my legs pushed to my chest as he penetrated me deeply and pinned me against the headboard fucking me until the pleasure was too much and my eyes watered.

  Every part of me hurt and felt good at the same time. I let him consume me, and he reveled in my stupor. He worked me over until neither of us could come anymore, and I was so full of his arousal it pooled out onto the bed, and saturated the sheets down to the mattress.

  When he leaned forward, staring down at me with a different look on his face, I gladly made myself comfortable in his trap and opened my mouth for him to kiss me.

  Instead of hoping to unravel myself from his control, I swathed myself in it from head to toe.

  -16-

  AUTHORITY FIGURES

  Catch holed himself up in the basement most of the day, and I was left to wander around the house. I made my own meals, using the gourmet goods stocked in the refrigerator. It had been a long time since I was able to cook a decent meal for myself. I went overboard at dinner time, hoping he’d surface from the basement and
join me.

  It was a silly notion to think I could find safety with Catch, and eventually see my sister again without the threat of Michael standing in the way. I wanted to believe it so fiercely. I wanted to believe since he opened up to me, it meant I had a better chance with him and his psychopathic tendencies than anywhere else.

  Acutely aware of how lovesick my inner thoughts had become, I rummaged through the wine rack for something to drown them out.

  A commotion in the dining room and Catch’s signature hoarse baritone voice made me smile.

  Smoothing out my white dress and primping my hair—straightened with a blow dryer, and later, a flat iron—I approached the siting room, leading to the foyer.

  Without thinking, I placed my arms around him and tipped up on my toes to kiss him. When he didn’t react, I slowly opened my eyes. “I missed you,” I told him, maintaining my hopeful smile.

  Grinning brightly, he looped his arms around my body, alleviating my fears. “I hope you caught every second.” He threw his voice as though we had company.

  My attention trailed to the far side of the table. Michael was bloodied, and his mouth was secured with duct tape. His hands and feet were bound to the arms and legs of the chair by several layers of tape.

  In an abrupt and stunned reaction, I removed my arms from Catch.

  “Did you make enough for three?” Catch asked, unwilling to let me go. “As you can see, we have a special guest.” With his ethereal blue eyes glittering at me, he extended his hand to me as though he was going to seat me.

  My position was frozen in place. The smell of the food I once hungered for left me feeling queasy.

  “Excuse me.” Jory announced her presence, appearing behind me. She skipped down the length of the table and plopped herself down on Michael’s lap. “That food smells too good to pass up.” She crouched over the table and began to paw at the food, spooning portions into a plate with her fingers. She fluttered her dark eyelashes at me. “Are you going to get dessert out of the oven, or are you going to burn it? Smells done.”