I pleaded with my eyes as I lowered my hand and lifted my dress, found the elastic of my panties.
“No.” he grunted and thrust in to the back of my throat, held his cock there, deep. “No.
I would’ve come in seconds, if he’d let me touch myself.
He didn’t come either, just pulled out after a few more strokes, and tucked himself away, with me still on my knees, gasping, blinking, maybe crying a bit at the sudden lack of sexual potential.
“Be aware,” he murmured. “You may experience other side effects. Sometimes it varies. It won’t last forever.”
I bowed my head and shifted on my knees, aware of how wet I was and glad I’d chosen tights because the wetness would’ve shown if I crotch-flashed accidentally. “What side effects?”
“Not dangerous, just possibly you will feel some attraction to people you shouldn’t.”
What the hell did that mean. “Who?”
He shrugged. “I can’t predict. It’ll pass. The main thing is that it will make you harder to control.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nothing further could be dragged from him on the subject.
*****
We went to the club. We walked out...and we were assaulted and I was taken by strangers.
Wrapped up, tied, drugged, taken.
I was in a bad, bad place, lying on this car seat, and each time I surfaced, the events of the night swirled through my brain, as if by doing so I could wind back time.
Grimm was here.
Mavros, I still wasn’t sure where he was.
But Grimm, he’d been talking to men who seemed to be the enemy.
I wanted to hurt somebody so much it made me grind my teeth. I’d have punched the Easter Bunny if I was free and if he turned up in front of me. Somebody was going to hurt for this and it would not be just me. I gulped. I swore inside my head this would come true.
Nausea swam into my stomach. Barfing when gagged was best not done.
Maybe, maybe I should sleep.
When a man’s hand pressed down on my shoulder, it became, somehow, the right catalyst and my thoughts dissolved and scattered, for a long, long time...
Chapter 5
Zorie
The darkness cleared, light slamming in like a hit of hundred proof alcohol. I gasped in a gurgly breath and coughed up some phlegm.
Waking in the arms of a strange man was alarming, especially when I found my wrists wrapped in leather and chains. I shook crazily, going from cold to hot and back again. Sweat popped out on my brow and dribbled down the side of my face. The room slowly spun and I put my palms to one side onto a blue weave rug to steady myself. My mouth ached at the corners as if recently stretched. My arm stung precisely where a needle might go in.
Drugged, or had been.
Throwing up on their rug would be karma.
The man still held me by the shoulders. After I sucked in another shattered breath, having decided I wasn’t quite ready to vomit, he rose to his feet behind me. Then his black boots appeared to the right.
“Awake? We can take off the restraints.”
That had been a male voice, with an accent that seemed some sort of British one, plus an odd inflection.
Blinking, I looked up. Wait. This wasn’t the first man with the black shoes since he was still standing by my side. As my awareness settled into something like normal, if you subtracted the lurches of nausea, I detected mesmer.
Shit. I should’ve known. Though for mesmers, that had been violent. Reuben had simply grabbed my mind and beckoned. I could barely tell up from down, but I seemed to have a memory of someone being stabbed or thumped. Weirdly, I would rather that have been Grimm than that he had again betrayed me.
My heart rate climbed, pitter-patting with hard insistence.
Either way, I was here, shafted yet again. What did these mesmers want? The obvious answer was so unpalatable. I might be wrong. Maybe they wanted to enroll me in their home makeup program or sell me cookies?
“Not yet,” said the man at my side. He had a softer accent, perhaps Scandinavian. “We won’t free her yet. You know how much I enjoy the look of a woman in chains.”
“Yes, Einar, I do.”
Fuckers. Swearing at them out loud might bring out their bad side so I stayed quiet.
I had to get on top of this. I’d been here before and losing ground started early. Think, Breathe. Be as calm as possible. Gather information.
Even if I was about to puke.
I shut my eyes, listening to the rasp of my breathing and the call of a distant bird...to the creak of an ancient house. This place smelled old, slightly musty though clean, with the sharp tang of disinfectant, but whatever drug they’d given me might be messing with my senses.
“Do you know where you are, Zorina Brown?”
My full name. Fear arrived like a blow from a giant. They know my name. That had significance. They knew who I was. Why? How? My purse. Relief tangled up with yet more panic. They knew me. My details were in there.
And two days ago, there’d been an article in the paper, about the Australian heiress with the kinky past. I’d been shocked even if the only photo had been a poor one of me checking in at the airport. What Reuben had made me do in the university car park hadn’t been hushed up after all. The professors would be miffed.
Stupid to think these two omniscient. I knew mesmers. I needed to plan.
Nevertheless, tears filled my eyes. We’d been attacked outside that club and now I was alone again and without friends. Fear could wipe me out if I kept on like this.
Take stock of your surroundings. Think.
It was light in here. Quiet though. No traffic noises. My partying dress had ridden up my thighs all the way to my ass, but my tights were still on.
“Zorina?”
The voice stayed on keel, not angry, and not normal in these circumstances. More men who thought catching unwilling women and keeping them was nothing unusual, or rather catching those made willing via the weird mesmer skills.
“Zorie.” I said it firmly, almost said please, but instead I braved my fears and glanced up.
The one speaking, mister not-black-shoes, was broad of shoulder with a close-shaven scalp of black hair. The darkening of his skin, his cheekbones, and the tilt to his eyes, said part-Asian.
He had no shoes at all, in fact.
“Good.” He smiled. “My name is Kaage.” He took a step back and subsided into a wide, throne-like chair with leather upholstery and carved timber arms. A would-be king, maybe. Laughable if I wasn’t where I was – on the floor. He wore plain dark pants and a chest-sculpting shirt, with tight muscles to match, and...I’d heard his voice before.
A long time ago.
The largeness of his thighs and his body, together with his voice, and knowing he was a mesmer, triggered a memory. He’d stood beside Reuben on the rooftop. When I’d been made to fuck myself with a gun, he’d been there. I was sure Kaage was that man, the truck-sized one, though I’d never seen his face. I shut my mouth then licked my dry lips.
“You recognize me,” he added dryly. “I can tell.” Then he tapped his temple.
Mesmers picked up emotions.
“I know you, yes,” I agreed quietly.
Here I was being all logical, and I was in the hands of mesmers. Two of them. Grimm and Mavros had vanished. I could make a ground plan of the building we were in, count the bricks, all that, and it would do me no good at all. Whatever they wanted, they could make me do it.
Depression threatened to swamp me. By association, I was remembering how it had been with dear, darling, asshole Reuben.
I’d beaten him, not easily, but I had.
Negative thoughts are the pathway to extinction. It mightn’t be an old Chinese proverb but it was correct. I was going to count the doors, the windows, the hairs in their nostrils if I had to. I would find a way to leave their hands. And I would kill them, when I could, the same as I had Reuben.
“We have had emails about y
ou. An order for you to be delivered to a man. This is our business, you see.”
Someone had ordered me, like a bag of apples?
“So we already knew about you and of Reuben’s death, but the interesting thing was that I thought he’d ordered you dead.”
A pause – one that stretched for far too long. I filled it with a whispered, “I’m not. Dead.” Then I twitched out a smile.
“No. Which makes me wonder. Did you somehow avoid his order to die? Is this possible?”
I resisted swallowing, and found I’d gone into Bambi-in-the-headlights mode. They couldn’t know for sure that Reuben had told me to suicide, but if I said yes, that I could resist commands, that would make me dangerous.
“He never said to me to die.”
Kaage stared at me. “Ahhh.” He stroked his chin. “This is good.”
I’d lied. And he’d not seen through it. I had improved in my resistance. Fireworks threatened to fill my head. I could lie to them.
It was a huge step.
“We call ourselves Collectors.” Kaage pursed his lips, his gaze bright and centered on me.
I guess I was his latest collected girl, yet different. How many must they have dealt with? Hundreds?
“Reuben was one of us and he was murdered. We’ve heard rumors about who did it. We saw you were in the country, Zorie, then this man ordered you, to our surprise.” His smile widened. “We caught you for that and so you could tell us all of the hows and the whys of the murder, if you know them.”
Oh fuck.
“And when we have those...” One of the black boots belonging to man two nudged my folded leg.
I dared to raise my eyes.
Einar, I recalled. My gaze travelled from shoe and up his leg, to his lean-muscled torso. His lips puckered as if he were amused yet aware of his superior status. Asshole number two, I decided. What else did I expect from a mesmer? Einar was a tall, mean-faced, and red-dusted blond, with tight skin like a skeleton pretending life. His beard was so short it made you doubt his shaving technique.
Kaage seemed a kindly Buddha who would smash you only if you did wrong.
Einar was scary looking and blue-eyed. The thin ebony stick in his hand was held with an intensity his sword-wielding Viking ancestors would’ve appreciated. He swished it like a pendulum. To and fro. Tick, tock. Then the end lifted and he placed it beneath my chin.
“You know what we can do.”
“She’s definitely a collectable,” murmured Kaage. He leaned forward, put his elbow to knee and rested his jaw on his hand.
What point was there in lying? “Yes, of course I know.”
Kaage nodded. “She’s been with a collector. That bird on the back of your neck, girl. Who put that there?”
He meant the raven. “The last one of you, who had me, he put it on me.”
“I see. I thought I’d seen it on a girl we had here. Perhaps not.”
I stayed quiet, hoping he’d not decide I’d been with someone other than Reuben. If they hadn’t taken Mavros, maybe they didn’t know he was one of them?
“Let us talk to the one who was brought in with her.” Einar walked across between me and Kaage, who then stood and followed him.
Who? Grimm?
“Stay there,” Einar tossed over his shoulder as he opened a door. “But take off your underwear and tights. We will be back once we have conversed with this man.”
The room was empty of all but me.
I let out a long breath, while trembling, then tried to blink away the tears that threatened to drip to my cheeks. The shock was finally getting to me. And I’d been drugged. I may as well excuse my weaknesses with that. I was going to be strong but there would be lapses. So long as no one told them I’d had Reuben killed, I could survive this day.
I struggled to my feet, trying not to faceplant with my wrists clamped by the heavy chain and the leather. Overdone bondage there, muchly. I wasn’t going anywhere anyway. I could feel the invisible stretch of the mesmer command on my mind: Stay there.
I removed my tights and panties, taking at least five minutes, by doing an advanced shimmy and wriggle while shoving with my hands. My bra had to stay on, as I couldn’t maneuver my hands that far. I guessed they might class a bra as underwear. I shrugged and subsided again to the rug, to wait.
Being half naked with strangers wasn’t new...I’d just kinda hoped I was past this phase in my life. The damn tears came again, to dribble down my face.
No screams or sounds of blows had reached me. Perhaps they didn’t torture men...or women.
I sure hoped so.
Chapter 6
Grimm
I hadn’t had a lot of choice at the parking lot considering the guns jammed in my side and face. With Mavros down, maybe stabbed, and Zorie tasered, bundled up, and down on the ground in seconds, I’d judged it wisest to not resist. Besides, they knew me. They’d said my name.
They knew my name and they’d said their boss wanted me, alive. Since they hadn’t shot me by then, I surrendered. The odds were bad. I could yell and fight and get shot, but I wasn’t going to win, and Zorie would need someone with her. Assuming I went to the same place.
This was some sort of abduction but I hadn’t thought it was mesmers, not until they told me so.
Whatever drug they’d dosed me with had worn off. Someone removed my blindfold and I shook my hair off my face.
I let the room come into focus, while I blinked away the muck blurring my vision. My hands were behind me, tied somehow, and I was sitting in a chair.
Two men to my front, both standing before a desk.
Skinny Conan and Kenji, I decided to call them until they gave me names. Rusty-blond, nasty, and scrawny, versus the big man with no shoes and a Japanese Yakuza vibe.
This was a small room – a study, from all the bookshelves and the posh desk. I took another look while clearing my throat and wetting my lips. They must’ve poured a desert into my mouth while I was out.
“Grimm Heller,” said my Conan.
“That’s me,” I drawled. They knew me, or they’d read my driver’s license. I could’ve asked why I was here but I figured they’d tell me if they wanted to.
“My name is Einar.”
If that really was his name, it meant they were happy to kill me after this, or something worse. Kidnapping wasn’t a minor offense.
I inclined my head.
“We have your girlfriend in the next room. Miss Zorina Brown. At this moment, she will have taken off her underwear because I told her to. Without question. You know what that means?”
Yeah, I did. Mesmers. “It means you can control her mind.”
“That’s correct,” the samurai added. “I am Kaage.”
They knew I knew about mesmers – and that wasn’t from reading my driver’s license.
I nodded to him too. “Nice to meet you.”
“He’s a cool one.”
“Yes.” Kaage continued, “We are Collectors, of women who we can control. We sell them, train them for other men, normal men. Our clients like that we can guarantee silence, no matter what is done to the girls, and even if they get away from the client. It pays well.”
I bet it fucking did. “Why are you telling me?”
These two gave off an emotional connection that said they slept together. Certainly Kaage sent Einar some caressing looks. If they were mesmers, how did they train women they didn’t touch?
“We know your history. Librarian. Bouncer. Working for Zorie as a bodyguard after her marriage to Reuben. We know he died. We have contacts in Australia who tell us that you had Reuben killed, that the cops are thinking of issuing a warrant for your arrest. It all depends on whether one man tells his story to them.”
Ah-huh. Fuck. Had someone snitched on me? It was possible. One of Rack’s men might. I wasn’t in their biker club, so I was fair game if things went nuclear. It was the hazard of paying others to do illegal stuff for you. Shit happened.
They were waiting for me to ans
wer. Maybe they expected me to stutter or go white or something. I’d had enough stand-offs in my time, with men who had pulled knives on me, so as not to blanch or twitch. I watched them back, like a damn hawk with prey in sight.
After a while Kaage added, “Did you?”
I couldn’t tell if Reuben had been a friend of theirs or what. Saying yes would probably get me killed. Would saying no just mean they’d torture me to get at what they thought was the truth?
Fuck, I wasn’t playing this game.
“I think you two have made up your minds already.”
Einar snorted, picked up a black stick that was on the desk then he walked to me until he was a couple of feet away. Nice boots. Though he stood like a confident man, and looked fit, I didn’t read fighter in him. He’d likely been using other men for all the dirty work.
I could take him, and Kaage if I had to. Once I was free.
“What we are concerned about is that woman out there.” He pointed at a side door with the cane. “We want to know if she had her collector murdered. You see, we have an order for her and yet, if she kills, can kill, we can’t let her go up for sale. It would void our guarantee to the customer.”
“And it does other things. Disturbs what should be true. Girls can’t disobey us. It’s not how things work.” Kaage looked disgruntled.
I ran that through my logic filter. They would kill Zorie if they thought she could do that? Yes, that made a lot of sense. If I told the whole truth, she would be as good as dead.
If I lied completely, said neither of us did it, they’d not believe me. I figured they had some sort of proof in the way of words, else why be asking me? Why even be suspicious?
Would they believe me? Did I want to risk dying?
Risk. It was me and not me. I took action when I could, waited and took my time if I could. Today was not to be my day for rash action.
I ached for the lost possibilities between Zorie and me. She didn’t want me...I didn’t exactly want her, as things were, but the possibilities... The future made me want to weep and roar.
I wasn’t that selfish.
Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2) Page 4