Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2)

by Cari Silverwood

A tidal wave of compulsion had arrived when I placed my foot on the first step leading upward. Stop. Then exhaustion had swamped me too.

  That I could climb these stairs today was because I knew the guards were here by order. Or was it? Did we somehow understand what Einar and Kaage wanted of us? That was creepier.

  Without anyone saying it out loud, I knew what these mesmers wanted me to do.

  When a mesmer died, the default position for our minds meant we still couldn’t reveal anything of what had been done to us, no matter how immoral or terrifying it may have been. Mavros had helped me understand the mesmers’ unwritten rules, but I gathered even he wasn’t sure of every detail.

  If it was as easy as some normal person, like these guards, telling me to do the opposite, I could’ve solved this in an instant. I’d have found Grimm and made him tell me to leave.

  And what were that chances Grimm would say no?

  Why was he here? I’d already been fucked by him, without any protests from Grimm. Not one.

  The breakfast room was the same room as yesterday, the one with the fireplace and the blue rug, only now a table was parked on the rug. Grimm was sitting there, on the opposite side to where I was told to sit.

  It was possible one of the stains on the rug was from our sex. If I hadn’t dripped wetness and cum, I’d be very surprised.

  I surveyed the table, worried but feeling horribly hungry. Grimm and four other men sat opposite – my guards and another. The manacles on Grimm’s wrist, were they new? Yesterday he’d been behind me. I remembered the coolness of metal snaking across my back while he’d fucked me.

  Somehow that made things right again. My relief was solid, like stone falling through me.

  Maybe he was innocent and I had a partner in crime. A friend still.

  I turned my elated smile into a grimace.

  Telegraphing my emotions wasn’t a good idea when mesmers were nearby.

  To my right, were the three women. The one at my elbow had her white-blond hair in a ragged, ear-level cut. She looked as Nordic as Einar. I could imagine mountain climbing as her favorite hobby. None of the women looked at me. They only helped themselves to the various foods – breakfast cereal, pancakes, fruit, and sausages. There was coffee and tea. There was Einar at one end of the table and Kaage at the other. There was an overload of please and thank you and the clinking of knives and forks, of people chewing, swallowing. I felt sick. They could’ve been chewing people’s bones and I’d not have felt worse. Well...a little worse.

  “Are you well?” Grimm ventured, one eyebrow raised.

  What a ridiculous question. Guess I’d gone pale.

  I couldn’t tell if he looked at me any differently to how he always had. I’d known he’d desired me in his bed. I just hadn’t been interested in normals like him. He hadn’t turned me on at all...except now, in his eyes, I sensed something animalistic stirring.

  I swallowed quietly. My imagination was running wild. Not surprising, considering where we were and what he’d done.

  I’d come, but Einar must’ve done that.

  I remembered to answer.

  “This is surreal.”

  Grimm nodded.

  “Quiet.” Einar lazily waved his fork our way. “You two will not talk. I forbid it.” His jaw worked for a few seconds as he considered me. “Do not talk to her, Grimm, without permission. Understood?”

  The silence was brittle.

  “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  “Good,” Kaage said. “You will see. We reward our men with gifts.” He winked. “You’ll get more of her ass if you behave.”

  The laughter showered about me and I grabbed the nearest thing, a pot of honey and poured it over the fruit in my bowl.

  I eyed the mess. Then realized the women weren’t reacting at all. They seemed unperturbed by anything.

  “Can I talk to them?” I indicated the women with a jerk of my head.

  “No.” Einar stuffed toast into his mouth. “Maybe tomorrow. Be good and I will let you talk tomorrow.”

  Someone laughed low.

  Why, I wasn’t certain. Perhaps because the women made poor conversationalists or maybe because being good was a depraved thing here. The man who’d laughed smirked at me. Then stuck a piece of sausage in his mouth and chewed noisily, open-mouthed.

  Yeah, it was the latter.

  I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking embarrassed. “Pass the sausages please.”

  I stuck one on my plate then carefully dissected it, skinned it, and ate it.

  That no one objected to my breakfast mutilation scene gave me a case of the chills.

  They didn’t care about my silly gesture. I had no power here.

  The sausage tasted like nothing. My taste buds had run away from home and I didn’t blame them. Sourly, I kept on chewing, swallowing, trying not to throw up instead. My grip on the fork was making my fingers hurt, so I flexed my hand and pretended fascination with the red marks.

  When I gave in and placed my knife and fork on my plate, I realized more than a few of the men were staring at me, as was the strawberry blond-haired girl next to me. Though her expression was guileless, my sausage-torturing actions had seemingly bothered her. She blinked at me. The perfection of her makeup and hairstyle, her innocent demeanor, all of this contrasted evilly with what had happened here yesterday.

  What was I missing?

  I let myself relax into the atmosphere for the first time. My tension had prevented me feeling the soft, friendly glow in the room. An artificial one, but it was here. There was a mesmer-projected peace. I’d accidentally shown I could resist them. Not good.

  “You can see this one is a little different.” Einar wiped his mouth with a napkin then pushed back his chair and stood. “Time for your first training lesson, Zorie. I’m sure you will enjoy it.”

  Paralysis gripped me.

  “Come.” He beckoned.

  Faced with that directness, I stood and followed. Einar let me reach him then pressed his hand to my neck for a moment. A pink tide arose in my head, pushing and spreading through my body and stirring intimate places, my labia swelled, my nipples shrank then perked up in excited little buttons. By the time I reached the door ahead, I was a hot mess of arousal. Merely walking was making my muscles stir me, as if I had put my hand between my legs and was massaging myself.

  Kaage halted me from behind. I knew it was he with his heavy hands on my shoulders.

  “You’ll find her wet already, Grimm. This is hands-on training. We touch her and make her come, while you fuck her. Understand?”

  I swayed, barely understanding but dying for whatever they intended.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  The tide in my head surged and ebbed but I blinked, breathed deeper, and found it cleared. I could think better, understand better. Two mesmers were screwing with my perceptions worse than ever.

  Not fair. Not fair.

  I just had to stand firm in my mind, more than ever before.

  The room ahead was bizarre and filled with all manner of machines and chains. Chains and struts hung and swung from overhead beams or were attached to walls, or sprouted from the floor like metal and black leather mushrooms.

  “This is our torture chamber,” Einar said grandly, brushing past me and making a sweeping gesture. “I am joking, of course. Mostly we only get you to fuck.”

  “And he has a fetish for women in chains, rope, leather. I indulge him, and he allows me my fetishes.” Kaage squeezed my shoulder.

  Ohhh. I whimpered at the pressure of his fingers. Nice, so nice. Through my fog, I wondered what his were. His fetishes...

  “What shall we get you to do to this one today, Mister Grimm?” Then he turned to me. “I think she’s agreeable.”

  Yes. Anything, please. My legs began to tremble. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg him, Kaage, to fuck me on the instant. Or Grimm. Or Einar.

  Chapter 12

  Grimm

  Whatever I’d expected when I foll
owed them, it wasn’t this. My throat closed in. It was my every dream-slash-porno fantasy and my every nightmare. Though no one as yet hung from or was strapped into any of the devices, I could imagine.

  Zorie was here. She’d be horrified. I was horrified.

  Then I dared to look and saw the fascination on her face – the raw desire, the way her mouth hung open a fraction of an inch, the slip of her tongue across her lips, and the brightness in her eyes. Einar had his hand clamped on one of her shoulders, while Kaage held the other. She swayed so prettily with that white dress sculpting her curves. One strap had slipped halfway down her arm, revealing a translucent white bra. Her locks were such a pure red river where they curled against the white cloth that each beat of my heart began to hurt me.

  I was stricken...with remorse at my response and the desire ripping through me.

  I imagined myself tearing off the petals of a daisy. Take me. Take me not. Take me...

  Zorie was innocence personified and I wanted to fuck her until she was limp and spent and struggling to get enough air into her lungs, until she was unable to do more than gasp and blink at me, while I...I would be leaning over her with my cock still inside her, pulsing with cum. It was so wrong, so fucking wrong, and doing it here in front of these men would be even more wrong.

  Yesterday should have been the once and only time this happened. Were we both stuck in some horror amusement park, condemned to fuck and be fucked while inside we screamed?

  “Hell,” I murmured to myself. How had we arrived here?

  “What do you think?” Einar came to my side. “She’s beautiful? Pick one thing. Anything. You can do what you like to her. You said you had protected her from harm?”

  I bothered to tweak my mouth, barely acknowledging him.

  “You think this is below you?” He tsked and smiled briefly, his barely there gold stubble twitching. “You fool yourself. She’ll love this. You will too.”

  I couldn’t stop my words. They ground out of my mouth – crushed words and spit. “You’re selling her to someone. How the fuck can that be my dream?”

  “Ahhh. I see.” He nodded, like a king talking to a subject. “Perhaps we can negotiate that one... Do this right and maybe you can have her, for always.”

  Fuck. My cock had risen at that hint of a promise. My mind had cleared as if a bucket of ice water had washed through. Did I believe him?

  Zorie, mine forever.

  Would that make this worthwhile?

  My traitorous thought made me shudder inside. No way. I’d lived through knowing she’d killed my stepbrother Tom when a teenager, and felt only a twinge of distaste when I finally met her, years later. Vengeance? No. Her attitude to life, her bouncy acceptance of challenges, her energy and beauty, all those had stripped away any thought of vengeance from my brain.

  Tom’s world had been dark. Zorie’s was colorful and bright, or had been.

  Now this. I was dumbstruck by lust, and I would’ve preferred love. I’d thought there was a place for both in my life.

  It would come to me, love, I swore it would, but now was different.

  Kaage stepped away from her at the same time as he dragged the dress down on one side...and the bra strap. Last of all, where it held one of her breasts, the bra cup slid down too.

  The cloth scraped her skin and made the upper slope of her breast redden, made it bounce and sway.

  So close, I could see everything.

  Despite her arousal, her areola was a plump and shining pink circle with only the central nipple standing up then, the little bumps around the nipple arose. I wanted to taste her, to let my tongue slide across her skin. I knew the hints of salt and the smell of her that would fill my nostrils...then I’d bite, and watch her squeal.

  I shook my head. This need to hurt her wasn’t me.

  From the flare in Zorie’s gray eyes, and the hitch in her breath, I swear she knew the moment I’d thought that.

  I should not do this. My morals had twisted into a knot I was afraid I could never unravel.

  “Go.” Kaage pushed on her back with all of one finger and she took a faltering step or two my way, then halted, as it waiting for my decision. Then one more step.

  Her chest rose and fell.

  My cock swelled and my thoughts switched from denial to need. A woman who attracted me greatly, naked, willing, and aroused.

  Wrong, immoral, not me, but maybe this should be a yes.

  This was like yesterday, refuse and I’d put us both in danger, certainly myself, perhaps her. Zorie was lost somewhere in her head even more than I was in mine.

  I was supposed to ask her a question, so she’d know this wasn’t my idea and couldn’t blame me when she was thinking straight again.

  I felt as if I was losing pieces of myself, my core that defined me. This had to be the result of the mesmer bug, or whatever it was. I could never be like this, desiring to screw her in public, if I was only me today.

  God, she was beautiful.

  My mind ran away.

  I wanted to fuck her like a beast – exuberantly, rawly, banging into her, slapping at her flesh, and roaring as I jammed her body against the wall, the floor, whatever I’d trapped her against. I wanted to tame and claim every part of her – her mind, her body, her every orifice, her every wet, tight, hole. I wanted to hear her moans and, worst of all, I wanted to hear her screams, her protests.

  Panting lightly, I tore myself from the craziness of those thoughts, and found every muscle taut from the sexual fury they’d evoked.

  “She’s hot, yes?” Einar tilted his head.

  “Quiet.” I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth, but I smiled when he didn’t say anything. I drew on an inner reserve of calm, then, when ready, I opened my eyes.

  I had to do this.

  “Come.” I took Zorie’s hand and drew her further into the room.

  I was the king leading his queen to her place on the sacrificial table, but at least I had found a part of me that answered to my call. Control, that was the answer to this swamp of darkness that mesmers inhabited.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  She glanced up at me and for the first time I saw fear.

  “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

  Those words...I prayed I wouldn’t regret them. Behind us were the rest of the men from the breakfast table. I wouldn’t turn to see, but we had an audience and nowhere to run. Far above this large room was a jigsaw of color and dark. Hanging chains cut black lines across the beautiful light streaming through rows of arched and narrow, stained-glass windows. Modern fluorescent tubes hung down on chains. The floor shone with polish and, as we walked, it reflected us as ghostly shadows.

  The exquisite parquet flooring echoed.

  The men behind us were silent.

  I’d expected catcalls, and insults, and dirty curses. Their absence seemed ominous. I’d read enough books to make me think in similes and automatically catalog my enemies. These men were ravens and vultures, hyenas and carrion creatures. If I faltered they’d pick my bones clean.

  “Do what we ask of you, Grimm, and we will all be happy.” Einar with his twisted words and Scandinavian inflections. By the end of this I would hate Vikings, at the least. Already I wanted to bury an axe in his skull.

  Kaage seemed content to keep at a distance. That was one thing to be grateful for. I checked our surroundings again. No way out except the double door we had come in by, unless I scaled the walls and squeezed out through a smashed, stained-glass window.

  Do or die. I stopped beside a framework of gray metal, like a leftover from a construction site, all tied together with screw-in bolts and fasteners.

  They wanted me to fuck her in front of them? A knee-high table was here also. The black leather padding looked as promising as anything.

  With her hand in mine, my lust had diminished, along with the size of my erection. Touch and closeness had transformed her back into my Zorie and not simply a victim. It was a relief, that I could still be normal.
I turned her and put both hands on her waist, tempted to pull up her dress strap and cover her but knowing it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t risk being good.

  When I bent and tilted her chin to look into her eyes, they seemed clearer, more able to focus. Both of us had recovered.

  “You in there, girl?” Her nod was subtle but there.

  I needed to ask her about escape, needed to let it sink into her memory, because I had to stamp down on her recollection of the day before fast. I didn’t want her to see me as evil.

  With Einar so close, I had to be careful but I would do it now, before weirder things happened. And this would get weird and nasty, and perverted... My cock took that hint to mean sex and rose again. The thing was like a damn weathervane.

  I rested my mouth on her ear lobe and pretended to kiss and tongue her there. “We need to escape. You need to be ready.” Kiss. “Be ready to run if I say to, anytime, any day.”

  I should inch down her dress, to distract Einar. In this moment of peace, that would be sacrilege.

  Her nod came again and she whispered yes to me. So quiet, but it made me smile.

  “Good –”

  “Do you remember, Grimm?” Einar arrived, a few feet to the left. I straightened, my hand tightening on Zorie’s shoulder. “Being told not to talk to Zorie?”

  Eyes narrowing, I nodded. What was the bastard up to?

  He sucked in his cheek and his little beard-stubble twitched as his skin distorted. Grow it or shave it was my most coherent thought. Dread wormed into my stomach. He had ideas.

  In his hand was the familiar black cane, which he raised. “I said I would have to punish the girl if you disobeyed. You are only on probation here, Grimm. We don’t trust you enough yet. No...” He rested the cane on his shoulder. “Whispering in her ear. You may only talk while fucking her if I can hear what you are saying. Clear?”

  “Crystal. I apologize. Can we move on?”

  “After a second time, I feel we need to reinforce the rule. Strip her and strap her into our iron man.”

  My gut clenched. His what? He’d nodded at the upright metal frame. The device did have a roughly standing-stick-man or beast-rearing-up shape.