by Vonna Harper
Laughing, Saree stared at her fingers poised over the keyboard. Should she? Wisdom said no, but hadn’t she already taken some huge risks in life, and look where she was, more than solvent with a job she loved, most of the time.
Hi Reeve, not even close, I’m afraid. To set things straight, I was raised by Eskimos and by age ten could reduce a whale carcass to a skeleton in two hours. Unfortunately, that earned me more than a little problem with frostbite, so I jumped on the next cruise ship heading for the tropics. For the next eight years I supported myself selling bait shrimp and moonlighting as a bartender until a gun battle between rival commercial fishermen reduced the bar to rubble. I’d been living with a pirate and thought I had it made, but he tried to sell me to a tugboat captain so I took off for California. The details of how I got into the porn industry are a little hazy, but I do remember waking up on the operating table with spectacular boobs—they are something, aren’t they—and deciding to let them earn their keep. Housing is an old warehouse that was cut into apartments. The roof leaks and the plumbing’s a joke, but it’s cheap. I do have a boyfriend, for lack of a better term, and if you follow professional wrestling, I’m sure you’ve seen Bubba. He recently changed his hair color from orange to blue, which works better with his eyes. Believe me, you don’t want to mess with Bubba. Neither do you want to try to carry on a conversation with him for at least three days after he’s lost a match. Now, how about you?
Bubba? You know Bubba? Can you get his autograph for me? Look, I want you to tell him something. I lost a cool twenty grand betting on that loser. I’m planning on being at his next match, and if he blows it again, I’m climbing into the ring and spreading his nose all over his face.
Too late, macho man. Someone already beat you to the punch. That’s where he is tonight, trying to get his hands on enough money to get his nose put back together. He didn’t say where he was going, and I didn’t ask.
That mean you’re alone tonight?
Not to you, big boy. Not to you.
Sitting in the dark with the monitor light playing on his features, Reeve Robinson slowly reread what Sass had written. Interesting. Sass, or more accurately Saree McKeon, had a keen sense of humor and was quick-witted, judging by how little time it had taken her to reply to his carefully worded nonsense. He had to admire her because glib rejoinders came easily to her. Granted, his agenda was multilayered, while she was just having fun.
More than having fun, he decided as the minutes stretched out. He intrigued her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have lowered her self-imposed barrier between herself and the faceless, nameless men who fantasized about getting their hands on and their cocks in her. Images of countless hands wrapped around countless cocks made him wish he’d mixed his drink stronger, but that was nothing compared to what went on in certain shadowy rooms—shadowy buildings surrounded by impenetrable security systems.
Turning off the computer, he stood and stalked to the nearest window. Night hadn’t finished killing the day, but it wouldn’t take much longer and then—
Then the monsters—himself included—came out.
Keep the beast at bay. Damn it, don’t let it loose! Do your job.
Yeah, the job. He’d taken a vital step tonight by introducing himself to Saree. Next came learning whether she had the guts and courage for the role he believed he had to force on her. Everything he’d learned about her had pointed to her ability to survive, but just as he wore masks, she undoubtedly had her own.
One thing, the woman embraced forced sex, or at least the pretence of it. The question of whether her submissiveness was genuine or part of her public façade would be answered soon. And did it really matter as long as he got and kept her on her knees?
“I’m hunting you, Saree. Don’t look over your shoulder because you won’t hear me coming until it’s too late. And once we’re together…”
Damn it! He’d had no intention of grabbing his hurting cock! This was nothing more than another assignment, and he was a pro. Keeping her captive, naked, helpless, and dependent on him wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.
Who the fuck are you trying to kid? his cock demanded.
2
The damn dream was waiting for her. No matter that she’d taken a sleeping pill and indulged in a long, relaxing bath—experience told Saree that she wasn’t going to get through the night without visiting that place. Too far gone to try to fight her way back to consciousness, she opted for tunneling into blackness. Maybe if she refused to acknowledge what came too close to being a nightmare, it would leave her alone.
There. Soft music from instruments she didn’t recognize. The darkness wasn’t complete, more like a heavy fog but fortunately not cold. She loved being at the beach while early morning mist coated the world and softened its edges. She could concentrate on planting one bare foot after the other in the damp sand, looking for seashells and the countless prints left behind by shorebirds. Yes, that was going to work, a slow sliding movement in time with the quiet waves. Walking forever, walking strong and alone except for the birds. Add a gentle, salty breeze and a distant, hollow foghorn. She had this beach to herself; maybe the entire world belonged to her.
Good, good and safe. There was no sex here, no delicious but powerful assaults on her senses, no private moments of wondering whether self-control and direction might be slipping away. Maybe she’d walk into the surf and start swimming, her body weightless and surrounded by warm, caressing waves. No man would touch her, and she would remain alone, safe.
Walking. Walking slow. Something snaked around her ankles and something else connected to that preventing her from taking more than mincing steps. Her arms held against her belly via wrist restraints lashed to the strands of rope around her waist. More rope ran from her cuffs to between her legs, trapping her pussy in sensation. She couldn’t stop walking because the shadowed human ahead of her had a firm grip on the leash hooked to her collar.
Collared. Led like a captured animal. Taut heat radiating throughout her sex whenever she tried to move her useless arms. Gagged with a rubber ball wedged into her open mouth.
Caught. Caught and being taken somewhere by someone who’d claimed the right to do this. No more sand to walk on, but at least the spongy vegetation on this trail into hell was easy on her feet.
She’d been here before, maybe not in this particular spot, but in sensation and understanding. The forced journey was about having self-control wrenched away and placed in a stranger’s hands, a dark stranger who understood her as intimately as she did herself.
Where are you taking me? What are you going to do with me? Why is this happening and who will I be when you’re done with me?
But maybe he’d never finish molding her.
The instinct to fight raced hot and wild through her, but she’d been rendered docile. And with each step, more of the old Saree seeped away to be replaced by need.
Need. Sex. Fucking and being fucked. Legs forced wide to accommodate a cock, arms immobilized to ensure compliance. Not rape because although she had no choice in the hot act, she wanted it and he knew.
Knew. Understood.
Shadow man stopped. Doing the same, she stood with her head down so she could focus on her lashed-together hands and the soft, pale rope caressing her belly before disappearing between her legs. His. Hate or love this moment, she was his.
“Almost there,” he said. “One journey finished so another can begin.”
Where are we going, she asked with her eyes. Whether he understood or not didn’t matter because he was walking toward her, his grip on her leash warning her not to try to back away.
He touched her, a rough, owning hand raking over her left breast and puckering her nipple. Fighting her quickened breath, she tried to twist away.
“No!” Grabbing her tethered wrists, he forced them away from her body, which tightened the rope’s grip on her cunt. Although she sobbed and begged behind her gag, he refused to let up on the pressure until she dropped her head in surrende
r.
“Lessons to be learned, so many lessons.” He touched her right breast this time, the contact gentler but the message just as unshakable. “This is now my body and I’ll do what I want with it. For as long as it pleases me, I control it.” A thumb and forefinger closed around her hard nipple. “I’m easily pleased, slave. But hard to satisfy.”
What was he trying to say? If only she could concentrate! But between the pressure on her nipple and against her labia, she simply blinked away tears and waited.
Waited for her master.
“You know you crave what I offer. No matter how much you try to deny what lies deep inside you, the truth is in your eyes. And here.”
Grabbing the rope against her belly, he ran his free hand between her legs. The cunt tie prevented him from reaching her opening, but the promise and potential worked its way through her skin. Slow and steady, she relaxed, surrendered. Promise and pleasure lay in his fingertips.
He held his fingers up to her nose. “Smell yourself, slave. No matter how much you might deny it, your pussy speaks the truth.”
He knew. Oh yes, he knew!
“Time to start walking again because we have a long way to go. But first, a change because it pleases me to see you in another position.”
Vague awareness of the moment’s dreamlike quality briefly—at least she thought it was only a few seconds—distracted her. By the time her mind and body connected again, her hands were behind her. A single rope circled her waist and forearms, effectively rendering her arms as useless as they’d been before. More of the same rope was now nestled in her ass cheeks, against her labial lips, and under the rope belt in front, leaving a loose strand to dangle nearly to the ground. The ball gag had been replaced with wood doweling. A separate rope now cinched her elbows so close together that they nearly touched.
The man—her master?—stood a few feet away with his head cocked as he surveyed his work. Only then did she realize that her ankles were free, not that she could run like this. Not that she wanted to.
Wet between her legs and soaking the rope. Heat working deep inside her.
Slave. His slave.
As the word resonated, she concerned herself with what her master looked like. Although bright sunlight filtered down through the heavy vegetation, she couldn’t make out his features. His hair was thick and raggedly cut, drifting in the breeze. He was big, outweighing her by seventy or eighty pounds, and many inches taller. His dark shirt clung skinlike to his chest and arms before caressing his taut belly. Jeans covered his lower body like a lover.
She longed to be that lover, to welcome him into her hot, wet core.
“You’ll see more of me when you’ve earned the right. You’re beautiful in your bondage. Carry that with you as we travel. Your master proclaims you beautiful. And desirable.”
Unable to thank him, she nodded. This time she didn’t stare downward but kept her head level and her eyes on him.
“I could have kept you unconscious until we were where your training will take place, but I want you to be part of the process. To feel every step of the journey and know how inescapable it is.” With that, he picked up the loose rope and pulled her toward him. Loving and hating this latest demonstration of his absolute control, she resisted. Then pressure against her labia forced compliance. Instead of reeling her in, he turned away and struck out, a livestock owner bringing his latest acquisition home.
One step followed by another, a single movement of thigh and calf muscles, mind tunneling inward to where heat waited. No longer alone and free, no longer fighting the beast living deep inside her.
Rejoicing.
“You sound, I don’t know, off.”
Shaking her head, Saree acknowledged that she should have known better than to try to pull something over on her sister. So much for pretending she’d called Hayley on a whim. “I didn’t get my usual eight hours of beauty sleep. You know what a bitch I become when I don’t feel beautiful.”
“Yeah, right. Look, I don’t want to cut this short, but Mazati and I are meeting with the state historical society this afternoon and I need to prep.”
Mazati was Hayley’s lover, hands down the sexiest man she’d ever known, and unknown to more than 99 percent of the population, a time traveler from ancient Aztec civilization. The story of how he’d claimed first Hayley’s body and then her heart was something Saree still didn’t entirely understand. What she did know was that from the moment the combustion between the two started, Hayley’s fire opal jewelry creations had become works of inspired perfection. Not one for jealousy, Saree wished Mazati could get himself cloned.
“Historical society?” she belatedly thought to ask. “What’s this, your jewelry has made you so rich that you’ve decided to include them in your will? Let me point out that as your one and only living blood relative, it’s all suppose to come to me.”
“Which is why I’ve hired a bodyguard,” Hayley shot back. “And I’m learning self-defense in case you decide to bump me off. Seriously, you remember that article Mazati and I had published in World Historian about the role of precious stones in the lives of the Aztecs? Well, we’ve been getting calls from all over. People are starting to see us as Aztec researchers. Little do they know the truth.”
“Which is that Mazati is how many thousands of years old? How is my almost a brother-in-law holding up? Not aging too fast, is he?”
“I don’t have any complaints.”
Sighing, Saree closed her eyes as an image of her sister and Mazati staring at each other came to mind. What was it with those two? Not only was the sexual attraction between them so intense it had a life of its own, but even when they were arguing about where to go for dinner, energy radiated from one to the other. Damn! What she wouldn’t give to be on the receiving end of that!
Or would she? Maybe because she paid her bills by letting men supposedly use and abuse her body, she wasn’t sure she’d ever let a man get that close in her personal life.
“Are you there?” Hayley asked. “You didn’t fall asleep, did you?”
“No.” She wandered from the living room to her bedroom. “Shit, how’d it get that late? I’ve got to get ready for work.”
“What did you call about?”
On the verge of sidestepping the question, she stretched out on her bed and stared at the ceiling. “I had that dream again. Guess I was hoping you knew of a spell I could use to get it out of my mind.”
“That dream? Oh, you mean the one where you’ve been captured by someone you can’t see?”
“One and the same.”
“Is it really that mysterious? Not only do you make your living fostering the bondage fantasy for both sexes, but I told you a lot about how things started between Mazati and me.”
“Maybe.” Yes, Hayley had a made a valid point, yet she sensed that dreams of having had control wrenched from her came from somewhere deep inside her—probably because she’d long proclaimed that was the last thing she’d ever allow to happen in the real world. Get serious! What modern and liberated woman wanted to spend her life groveling at the feet of some man who demanded she call him Master?
“Just maybe?”
“I need a vacation,” she said before she’d known she was going to. “A break.”
“Job burnout? Come on, you love what you do. Who wouldn’t adore being well paid to have endless climaxes?”
“Maybe I’m getting old.”
“You’re twenty-seven. That ain’t old.”
“It is in this business.”
“Bull! Damn it, sis, you’re one of the top ten most-viewed Dungeon porn stars. To quote more than one of your fans, except for your boobs, you’re genuine, no faking nuttin.”
No, she’d never faked an on-camera orgasm, which maybe was part of the problem. Granted, being helpless while a man who knew what the hell he was doing held a powerful vibrator to her clit guaranteed success, and when she screamed out her delight, she was absolutely and completely convinced she had the greatest gig
on earth. Only afterward did she admit that being trapped in a body she had so little control over scared her. Her sister found joy and fulfillment using her hands and creativity to craft exquisite jewelry while she moaned and shook and sweated and sometimes begged the rigger to turn off the damn vibrator before she splintered.
“I should make you president of my fan club,” she said, again belatedly. “Hell, I know what it is. I’m jealous of you; you have Mazati.”
“You want to amend that. He has me. You’ll find Mr. Right. You just have to be patient and keep looking.”
How, she nearly asked, but they’d been over this ground. Even Hayley couldn’t argue that her career choice limited rather than expanded her potential mates. Most men were intimidated by what they perceived to be her overcharged libido. As for those in the industry, the majority were so self-absorbed they barely gave her the time of day, not that she ever really lusted after a rigger or male porn star.
“If I was on vacation I could look,” she offered. “Tropical island, nearly nude native hunks, filthy rich old men burning their fat bellies in the sun.”
“With their rich old wives in tow, don’t forget. Damn it, sis, you keep talking about taking some night classes. Do it. You never know who else might be taking the same class or teaching it.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t hmm me. Move beyond work situations in your search for Mr. Right.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? I’m just repeating what you’ve told me.”
“I know.” She drew out the words. “I was just thinking—the other night this guy joined one of my chats. Then later we e-mailed privately. Great sense of humor, and he kept the conversation out of the gutter, if you know what I mean.”
“Humor’s good. What do you know about him?”
“That’s it.” As she reached between her legs, the word Reeve echoed in her. “I don’t know a damn thing.”