Several beats passed as her gaze dipped to his bare chest and traveled the length of him, top to bottom, side to side. “I really hope you won’t be offended, but you’re rather large and spectacularly intimidating and I’ve always had a-a…wish.” Her chest rose and plummeted, her words puffing out like little gusts. “A fantasy, really. To be jailed. Kept prisoner. Your likeness is sort of reminiscent of someone who could—not would, just could—do that to me.”
The blood running through his body rose a thousand degrees in temperature. “It turns you on. The idea of me holding you captive.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, but not before he caught sight of her stiff nipples poking through her t-shirt. “I guess you could say that. But—”
“Do we fuck, Ms. Reynolds? In that little head of yours?”
A squeak left Autumn and he watched as her thighs pressed together. “Um, maybe? I mean yes. Regularly, I’m afraid.”
Unbelievable. They’d barely exchanged a word since she moved in, yet they’d been mentally screwing each other’s brains out from two floors away. “Do you still want to know the face I made when I saw the drawing?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean…it was a good face, right?”
Blake advanced on her, cataloguing everything. The way she backed up, then steeled her spine and attempted to hold her ground. The way she shivered and glanced at the door. Her very real apprehension forced him to make a decision. “Go home.”
Her expression was the physical embodiment of a record scratch. “Wait. What?”
“Go home, Fun-Size.” He took the drawing out of his pocket and offered it to her. “I don’t hold scared little girls prisoner, even if I look like I do.”
Autumn’s eyebrows knitted together. “Show me the face you made.” She plucked the drawing from its place between two of his fingers. “When you saw this.”
What was the point? He rattled this girl. His painful attraction to Autumn was one that should be kept to his goddamn self. She’d just gone through a break up and there was a chance her vulnerability—combined with a very specific kink—could give him a shot at something physical. But he shouldn’t take advantage. Couldn’t take advantage. “No.”
The green in her eyes seemed to deepen, like some kind of beautiful female hypnosis. “Please, Mr. Munroe?”
The desperation behind those three seemingly innocent words did him in. Having her throat exposed, head tilted back while she begged him for something, put a huge dent in his reservations. Blake slowly stole back the drawing and opened it with one hand, shaking it out without taking his eyes off Autumn. Seeing the depiction of them with the new titles of prisoner and jailer made his eyelids heavy. So heavy he couldn’t see her from the mouth up. And whatever she saw on his face caused her pink, bow-shaped lips to drop open and a low moan to escape.
“Will you do it?” Autumn whispered. He could feel her nerves vibrating the scant air between them, but still she pushed on. “I know it’s crazy to ask, but…h-he would never do those things for me and I’ve needed them—”
“Quiet.”
Blake didn’t mean to bark at her. It was reflex when she brought up the ex-boyfriend. Jealousy, pure and simple. But it was more than that. It was the right to provide. Autumn needed an itch scratched and couldn’t get it from her ex. So she was here, asking him to fulfill her urges. Christ, how many times had he imagined this happening against his usually iron will, never actually believing it would? Having his ultimate craving handed to him on a platter. Could he actually say no? Especially when Autumn had clearly been denied something she needed?
There was one detail holding him back, but it was a big one.
“I…shouldn’t have snapped at you.” Apologizing was more difficult in practice than in theory. Autumn didn’t seem to mind his stilted backpedaling, though. She smiled like he’d just handed her the keys to a Mercedes. “It’s fine, Blake.”
Her words, the way she said his name, tightened a bolt in his chest. “That’s what I do, though. I snap at people. I snap at sunny girls going through break ups. I’m not a nice man and that’s why you have these thoughts about me.”
“Do you meet loads of sunny girls going through break ups?”
No. No, he would never meet anyone like her again. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. And any day now, she could return to Australia. “I have a condition,” Blake heard himself say out loud. “If I’m going to play jailer.”
“You’re actually considering this,” she breathed. “Has the TARDIS idea ship sailed? Because I definitely should have washed my hair.”
“Nothing is going to happen today, Fun-Size. Listen carefully.” He waited for her nod, before flexing his stiff fingers and settling them on her waist. They almost encompassed the entire fucking thing. It was immediately not enough. He wanted full body contact and her nails ripping his ass cheeks to shreds. Or her wrists rattling in chains against his headboard. But the catch in Autumn’s breath reminded him of his resolve.
“Here’s the thing.” Blake lifted Autumn off the floor, took two strides and pinned her to the wall, his mouth a centimeter away from hers. “If I wanted to kidnap you and keep you as my personal fuck toy, I could do it. I’m bigger and stronger and you live alone now. Nothing to stop me, is there?”
“No,” she panted, squirming in his grip. Her pupils were dilated, her gaze fixed on his mouth. “Is that w-what you’re doing?”
“If I was, how would you fight me off? Show me.”
Autumn twisted to no avail, Blake pressing her tight to the hard surface and looking her in the eye as she struggled, her cunt shifting around on his hard cock like an invitation. “Come on, you can do better than that.”
“I can’t.”
Blake eased off on the pressure, his stomach knotting as he heard a whimper of relief. “My point is you’re afraid of me. Of course you are, you don’t know what I’m capable of, but I don’t like your uncertainty.” Blake tucked his hips higher in between Autumn’s thighs and savored her shaky gasp, the way her knees rose and cradled him, as if she couldn’t help it. “I’ll tie you up and punish you. I’ll fuck you like he never could. But I want you to know I’ll let you go home when it’s over. I want you wet and naked. Not scared.”
“Being scared is part of it, though. I need to believe it’s happening in the moment.”
“You will.”
Her eyelids fluttered closed at those two words, like she knew he damn well meant them. “How are you going to make me less nervous around you in real life?”
Blake had backed himself into a corner without realizing it. Now that he was there, though, he didn’t want to be free. The idea of taking a leap with this girl scared the hell out of him, but there was a loneliness in Autumn he recognized. Once upon a time, he’d shut out the world and gone into hiding. Autumn was in the process of doing the same. This new life she’d built for herself in New York would get tossed out with the trash because someone had chewed her up and spit her out. Blake knew that exact shitty feeling. It was none of his business whether she stayed or left…but a sense of purpose he hadn’t experienced in a long time prodded him. She shouldn’t give up, but he couldn’t help change her mind without exiting his cave.
Could he do that? Going out with Autumn would mean talking. In the usual custom of basic human interaction, she would ask him questions, about his job, his friends, his past… Not responding would be rude, even for him. But answering truthfully would mean telling her where he’d come from. He hadn’t thought of his former life in so long, the simple act of it now burned his gut with acid. Ironically, that physical reaction is what spurred him into making a decision. He’d deal with the consequences later, but for now…he had to do something to help her. Doing nothing was unacceptable. After all, she’d cleared that path in the garbage for him the day she moved in…
“We go out. We…spend some time together. So you feel at ease with me.” When she gaped at him, Blake scowled back. “Three dates. That’s my condition. Take
it or leave it.”
“Take it,” she said, arching her back. “But I am feeling kind of prisoner-y right now—”
With a monumental effort, Blake sighed and stepped back, steadying her as she slid down the wall. “Go home, Fun-Size.” He said a silent apology to his stiff dick. “We start tomorrow night.”
“But—”
“Next time you walk into a room alone with me, I don’t want you shivering like a scared rabbit.” He reached out and gripped her jaw, tilting it for his inspection. “Not at first, anyway.”
Closing the door on a sputtering Autumn, Blake stood there for a moment, battling the need to open it, drag her back inside and fuck the damn thing off its hinges. Finally, when he heard her leave, he returned to the bathroom with the drawing. He’d intended to pick up where he left off, but instead he stood staring at himself in the mirror. Had he not only arranged a date, but three of them?
CHAPTER 3
Autumn peeled off her disposable rubber gloves and placed them in the hazmat bin.
“She looks good,” her nurse, Pauline said, nodding toward the thick brown and gold tabby lying on the operating table.
“Fingers crossed.” Autumn held up said fingers. “Are you okay to take things from here?”
“Sure thing, sweetie. You go wash up and have something to eat.”
Autumn could barely contain her relief. The operation to remove a paperclip the cat had swallowed had been complicated by multiple haemorrhages and lasted an hour longer than it should have. Her hands and back were cramped and her stomach was growling ‘Hostess mini doughnuts are not food,’ at her. She collected her bag lunch from the fridge and sat down at the staff dining table to eat in peace. She was only one bite into her ham sandwich when she realized her head had been far more peaceful when she was operating on cat guts. With nothing to do but chew, she was free to think about the fiasco that had taken place in her landlord’s apartment the night before.
After fifteen minutes of straight freaking out—and recovering from the nitrous—she’d decided the best way to proceed was to go to Blake’s apartment, fake that the hot water system was broken and steal her sex-drawing back. If he caught her, her plan had been to claim the images were a metaphor for their landlord/tenant relationship and shout something like ‘You’re making me suck your dick for capitalism, you Big Real Estate shill!’
It was a pretty bananas plan, but it paled in the reality of the craziness that had actually gone down. As she gnawed at her uninteresting lunch, Autumn filed the insanity in order of least to most surprising.
1. The Landlord had come to the door shirtless and revealed he was not only fucking enormous but ripped. Cover of a fitness magazine ripped. Just all bulges and biceps and abs and those thick flaring hip muscles.
2. He didn’t live in a dank woman-dissolving cave, he lived in a beautiful, leather-bound book paradise. It smelled like sandalwood and non-douchebag intelligence.
3. The Landlord repaired said leather-bound books for money. Not only was that a job, apparently, that was The Landlord’s job, in addition to being a landlord. Like, how many size-inappropriate jobs did this cunt have?
4. The Landlord had seen her sex-drawing. He’d just straight up seen it. He’d seen the picture she’d drawn of him making her suck his dick. That was a thing he’d seen. With his eyes.
5. Instead of announcing that she was a sicko and to kindly leave his identity out of her masturbation routine, he’d seemed…well, not intrigued. That was too strong a word for a man who had basically one facial expression, but definitely interested.
6. In a moment of severe, nanged-out weakness, she’d sexually propositioned him. She was pretty sure she’d also mentioned that she needed to feel as though she was being held captive by him and that Ian had been unwilling to go there for her.
Here, Autumn paused to contemplate moving all her stuff out of the apartment without ever seeing Blake ‘The Landlord’ Munroe again. She ruled it impossible and returned to her list.
7. The Landlord turned her indecent proposal down, claiming they couldn’t role play until she trusted he wasn’t actually going to hurt her, and they would have to go on not one but three fucking dates to get to know each other, first. Autumn had assumed that was just an excuse to get her insane ass out of his apartment, and then…
8. …she found a note taped to her door as she was leaving for work. It read “Dinner at 8pm.”
Which brought her to the craziest thing of all…
9. She was sincerely thinking of going. On a date. With her landlord. Whom Ian had unfavorably but accurately compared to Blackbeard, famed pirate rapist of the seven seas.
By the time she was done nibbling her green apple, Autumn decided there was no way in hell she could go on the date. For one thing, she and Ian had only just broken up. Surely a period of celibacy was warranted? Also, it seemed unethical of her to use The Landlord—Blake, his name was Blake—as a means to fulfill her prisoner fantasies and maybe read a couple of rare books before her visa expired and she fucked off back to Australia.
Yet, as she drank her strawberry milk, Autumn found herself questioning the validity of those reasons. For one thing, she wasn’t sure if she was going home or not, so why shouldn’t she go on a date? Sitting around her apartment with a flock of increasingly resentful pigeons wasn’t helping her feel better, and Ian certainly hadn’t waited a respectful period of time before seeing other people. The fuckstack had a head start of at least three months.
Maybe a rebound shag was what she needed to get motivated and stop doing nangs alone in her apartment. And location-wise, it would be very convenient to have a sexy, no-holds-barred fling with a guy who lived in her building.
Plus, she liked Blake. He was scowly but he seemed genuine, something she could deeply appreciate after all of Ian’s head-fuckery. Blake seemed like he might be funny, too, in that sardonic, Dylan Moran, way few Americans seemed to have mastered. He was also good-looking, not at all like Blackbeard and seemed more than capable of giving her what she wanted in bed. When he’d pinned her to his door and told her he could fuck her better than Ian ever had, Autumn was surprised her underwear hadn’t melted clean off her body.
But a date?
What the hell would they talk about? Or would Blake just stare intently at her until she promised she wasn’t freaked out by him anymore? He was one concise motherfucker and after six years in a relationship, God knew her dating skills were rusty as hell.
She could barely remember the time before Ian. She’d been so into her studies that her sex life consisted of solo expeditions and the occasional party hook-up. She and Ian had met on a student booze cruise at the start of her second year of university. Autumn was the soberest person on the boat and had noticed the striking blue-eyed jokester right away. Her ex-boyfriend had been in the thick of things, chatting up girls and making everyone laugh. She’d stared at him a while, wondering if a guy that gorgeous would be any good in bed, then headed onto the deck to talk to her friends and eat cheese puffs. Later, when the boat docked she’d headed below to collect her handbag and found Ian leaning against the side of the ship. He was bleary-eyed and alone, his fancy shirt untucked, his thick chestnut brown hair on end. She wanted to leave him there, but knew she’d feel so guilty if he fell over the side and died and everyone on campus had to attend a really tragic memorial service. She’d edged closer to him. “Are you okay, man?”
Ian had drawn his head up and stared at her as though in a trance, his eyes glittering like cold sapphires. “Do you ever feel like friendship is an illusion and all we do is use each other and get used until there’s nothing left?”
Jesus H Christ. She took a step backward. “Uh, no…?”
He smirked. “An optimist, huh? Wish I was one. My outlook’s pretty fucking bleak, I’m afraid.”
Autumn held up her hands. “Look, dude, I think you’re just drunk. Do you want me to call someone? Maybe get you some water or an Adderall or something?”
I
an had come closer, gazing intently into her face. “You’re nice, aren’t you?”
“I, uh, try to be.”
“You can tell.” He let out a low whistle. “A hot blonde who’s nice. What a miracle. You go to Melbourne uni, right? That’s why you were on this shitty boat trip to nowhere?”
“Yeah, I’m in vet-science.”
Ian laughed. “Smart, as well! A triple threat! How did that happen?”
A little unnerved by the fact that Ian had called her hot, and the beauty of his gorgeously symmetrical face, Autumn tried a joke. “I have a twin sister who’s a hunchback. She does all my homework.”
He laughed even louder. “Funny! A quadruple threat!”
His hand found hers then, and when their skin touched, a tingle had shot up Autumn’s arm.
“Want to hang out with me?” Ian asked. “I was supposed to go to this after party, but now I just want to sit on my roof with you and look at the stars and discuss life and the universe and everything.”
And Autumn had smiled then, because this man was so handsome and his words were so musical and she’d just been going to head home alone. This was so much more exciting. “As long as that’s not a metaphor for groping me, sure, we can hang out.”
Ian had laughed and wrapped an arm around her waist and steered her off the ship. He did take her up to his roof so they could see the stars, and then he’d kissed her and asked for her number, and then they’d become a couple. The couple, really. Everyone was in awe of them, or maybe just that GQ-hot Ian had chosen a short nerd for his girlfriend.
They’d had fun together, her and Ian, but the flaws had been there right from the start, sparkling like the unearthly blue of his eyes. Ian had loved her, but he had also never believed he loved her. In his heart, he really did think people were all out to get one another, that love was chemical and friendship was co-dependency. She wasn’t built that way. She thought real love existed, both romantic, platonic and maybe even cosmic love. She thought that people were fundamentally good and that selflessness paid off. Her mistake had been thinking she could change Ian’s mind. You could never change anyone’s mind, at least not about stuff like that.
Captivated Page 4