by Jisa Dean
"You know she's dead, don't you. I've held out hope for so many years and I've been a fool. She could've died before they ever loaded her onto the ship. What the fuck does it matter if I survive or not as long as people are safer?"
"No one is going to die. Do you hear me? No one is being killed. Say it. Say no one is going to die."
He touches my cheek dragging his thumb down my face and for the first time I realize how wet my face is and not from the water he dumped on me before. I was crying my heart out and didn't even know it. I can't tell him what he wants to hear because it isn't true.
"Me and you have a date remember?"
"We do?" I am almost sure he's trying to trick me again. I would remember if I had a date with someone as hot as he is.
"Me and that cherry between your legs very much have a date."
I look down at my lap for the cherry he's talking about but I don't see anything but my legs spread apart and my wet panties showing everything through the scrap of white cotton.
"I have a cherry on my lap? Have I been eating cake?" He doesn't say anything and it frustrates me. "I hate cherries; I usually just give mine away. But I like it when they put more than one on top. It always makes me think they're a pair wanting to be together. Like soul cherries."
I lean my head back again but he takes my hair and pulls my head up so I have to look at him again.
"From now on all of your cherries belong to me, understood. Only I get your sweet cherries. Say it. Tell me only I get your cherries." Guy must really like some cherries to be so hell-bent about eating all of them.
"Only I get your cherries," I repeat word for word what he told me to say.
He growls and takes my face between his hands, "All of your cherries belong to me from now on, tell me they all belong to me."
"All of my cherries belong to you," I whisper. It feels like an important statement. The look in his eyes tells me there's more there than what it seems. I lean closer, "I have more than one? How many do I have?"
He tracks his finger down my tear swollen cheek and pulls me so close his breath caresses my lips, if I pout my lips just a little bit we would be kissing. Self-preservation stops me.
"So many, baby, oh, so many. And they're all mine."
Four
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I start to pace again. I have to move, away from her, away from the situation, away from her thin as fuck white panties that are showing me everything that now belongs to me. There must be something in the damn water at the club making all of us go fucking pussy crazy. In all my years of killing, I have never tracked someone down and became obsessed with them. Never wanted someone so bad my nuts hurt. Never allowed anyone's problems, except my brothers, to become my own. It's a dangerous thing for a man like me to become obsessed.
It makes me so much deadlier than I already am. I go back to her and sit in my chair. She's finally passed out and I don't feel like throwing any more water on her. She's wet enough. I can tell what color her nipples are under her bra. If I hadn’t given her something that makes it harder for her to lie to me I would have called bullshit on the whole virgin thing. The drugs make that almost impossible and I'm not a fuck enough that I'm going to find out when she's passed out and can't tell me yes.
Looking isn't going to hurt anything though and I can look my fill. Her curves are that of a woman's, she's not Poppie or Sally who are just kids, barely legal enough for my brothers to fuck. When I read over her file I thought she was older than what she is. Even though I would like to say I am not rocking the same crib they are I can't and be totally honest with myself. Even if she isn't a schoolgirl that just passed eighteen she's still more than ten years my junior.
I normally don't go for someone so young. I like older women, women who recognize what they want and ask for it. Women who aren't afraid of the dark shit I like to do. Seeing the outline of her pussy through her panties makes me rage. I have to stand and walk the fuck away again to keep myself from touching. My mind comprehends it is wrong but some wild fucked up part of me is screaming that she's mine anyway. Mine to have, to control, and to fuck. Mine to love, take care of and protect.
Still, this one is different. Not only is she mine in every physical way possible but I also love her sass and her mind and her smart fucking mouth that is constantly running. This woman is very different. And that means I have to follow her rules and her timeline. I have to find that damned friend and bring her back or at least find out what happened to her. I have my phone out before I can even question what the fuck I'm doing.
On the fourth ring, a familiar voice answers, my brother, Hades. "Do you still know that judge that owes you a favor?"
My brother laughs on the other end, "Good to hear from you too. I take it you've found her since you are calling."
"Yeah, I have her. She's with me now. But brother, I have some running to do before I can make it back to you and Neptune and the girls. Things have changed and I think if what I saw last time with you and Poppie you damn well know how they've changed."
"Is it like that, is it?"
"It's like that." The sound of shuffling reaches through the phone and I can imagine my blue-haired brother is putting some distance between him and his girl so we can talk in private about things that would only make her upset or worried.
"You're going after the friend." It isn't a question. This man understands me too well to ask me things he already knows about me on a bone-deep level.
"I have to if I want what's mine."
"How can I help?" the best part of my pact with my brothers is any of us would drop what we are doing to help the other without question or hesitance.
"I need to send a message to Kronos; I need info on the people in her life and who might have been connected to this ring." I give him Noel's full name and the school both girls went to at the time. Street addresses and any other information I have gotten through my search for Natasha that might tie back into Noel is important so I give him all of it.
"Why not get in touch with him yourself?" he doesn't try to hide the confusion in his voice. There's more worry than anything else. He wants to know if he needs to come watch my back for me.
"I'm about to be wheels up."
"Ahh, happy travels my brother. If you need anything let us know."
"I'll call you back as soon as I land and settled in." We say our goodbyes and hang up. I have to get my little prisoner ready to fly to a new location.
Five
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I am having one of the craziest dreams/nightmares of my life. People move around and even talk to me sometimes but everything is a blur. I can't lift my eyelids and the weight of sleep pushes down on me so hard I don't think I will ever wake up.
What's worse is the guy I saved is in this one. He keeps coming over to me and petting me like he's concerned about me for some reason. He croons to me about everything being okay and that's how I can tell it's a dream. Nothing in my life has been okay for six years. But it's nice of him to tell me that in my dream and the touch of his hand feels good too. Nice and rough, with calluses on the bottom. A working man's hands.
I think we might be moving but I can't be sure. Everything blurs together until I can't tell what's a dream and what's real. When I come up enough to think I'm about to open my eyes ‘The Guy’ is back and he does something to me to put me right back out again.
***
This time when I wake up I'm completely sure I am not dreaming. No dream could possibly be this terrifying. I can't move my arms or legs at all. At first, when I started to wake up I thought it was the drugs the guy is continuously giving me - God, I hope he doesn't get me addicted to anything. The clearer my mind becomes the more I can tell it is not the drugs causing my limbs to be immobile. When I jerk my body I can feel straps holding me in the world's most fucked up gyno chair and for a split second, I think about trying to end it all before whoever this guy works for starts doing things to me that make me want to kill myself.
One more terrifying thing enters my mind and I'm not sure how much more I can take before I snap and have a full-on breakdown. I have absolutely no clothes on under the blanket I have draped over me and if I wasn't freaking out before, I am now. Are they going to harvest my organs? Do some sick, weird medical testing on me? I am aware of how loud my breathing has become when a shadow moves across the room.
I'm half a second from a full-on panic attack and he strolls in looking like he just got off a runway. Only the runway would have to be on fire with guns blazing every so often. There is absolutely nothing metrosexual or zaddy about him. He's got a fucking knife bigger than my arm strapped to his thigh and when he dresses all in black his eyes really pop.
"You're awake. Shh, don't try to fight the restraints."
Fuck that. If I'm given a chance to make a run for it I am tearing myself off this damn table and running as far the fuck away as I can. His eyes are laser-focused on me when he sees the shiver go through my body. I can't stop it. "You'll be warm soon. It's an after effect of the drug."
I really don't want to but I have to ask, "What, um, did you give me? Am I going to become addicted to it?"
He shushes me again, "Nope, not even a little bit. How are you feeling?"
I guess now wouldn't be the best time to call him out on things so I should probably not say 'like I've been drugged by a psycho who has a thing for bondage' and instead wait until later to tell him that.
"Did...anyone...?" I vaguely remember asking him if he was going to rape me and him saying no but who the hell knows if that was a dream or something that really happened. Also, things change, maybe he meant not right then but maybe now before he yanks out my kidney and sells it on the black market.
"Like I would let someone touch so much as a hair on your head. I already told you, Cherry, I won’t let anyone hurt you, especially not in the way you fear the most."
So I'm guessing this means he's not going to be selling my organs. But it also doesn't explain why I'm strapped down to a table that bears a horrifying resemblance to a gynecological chair. Or who the hell Cherry is? Still, this guy's safe might not be my version of safe where I can go home the same way I left it. Before I can ask he continues.
"You know that I am not like other men. My profession is one that leads to...certain tastes."
Oh boy, now I am really leaning towards us having different versions of safe.
"You understand I am a...violent man when I have to be." The image of him through my scope comes back to me. He's killed before; I sat and watched him do it. I should be repulsed by it but I'm not. What he did saved the life of my friend. I took a life that day too. How hypocritical would that be if I judged him on his ability to kill without hesitation when I did the same.
My attention is directed back at him when he rolls something over into the light and on it are instruments I do not want anywhere around me. I thought things were bad when he was just going to take my organs and run but the things lying on that tray look downright nauseating.
"I am also a man of my word. I never say anything I don't mean and I always come through on a promise." My mind has been preoccupied with the Tray of Doom so long that the weight of a second blanket surprises me, making me jump. "I made you a promise and I intend to follow through. Do you remember that promise?"
I search my mind for any hint at what he could possibly promise me but I'm coming up blank.
"No worries, Cherry. You don't have to remember to make it so." When his hand touches my lips it is covered in a latex glove that freaks me the fuck out. He runs his finger back and forth on the swell of my bottom lip and I want to open my mouth to scream but I'm scared of what he'll do to me when I do. He squats down so he is eye level with me. "I'll help you find your friend and I'll bring vengeance to the people who touched your life with such ugliness."
Well fuck; when he says things like that he can touch me with a glove any time. If what he says is true and he's not telling me what I want to hear to get me to relax.
"Never again will you have to worry about something so dark touching your life..." He stands, "after we find your friend."
Oh crap, that can't be good.
"I have something for you, Cherry. A kind of gift, just for you. Not a traditional but I think it shows you what kind of man I am and what lengths I am willing to go for you." He yanks the plastic back and instead of a wall behind it, there's a huge space. We must be in a big warehouse. The vastness of the room is not what has my attention. It's the man strapped down to the table in the center of it. He's strapped down too but unlike my bindings, his are painfully cutting into his extremities. I don't really want to raise my eyes to take in the victim of this psycho but I can't help myself.
What I'm looking at makes my blood run colder than anything my psycho could shoot in me. I've seen this man, I know who he is. I've not seen his face for almost six years but I would recognize him anywhere. He is the person who’s influenced my life from my career to my day to day activities. He made me who I am today. He's the man who hooked my friend on drugs and someone I always suspected played a bigger role in her being taken than I could prove.
"Call it a wedding present if you will."
What now?
I think I heard him say something about a wedding present. My mind is running a little slow because of all the junk he gave me but I can't understand what the hell he could even mean by that.
It doesn't make a difference if I understand or not, the fact the man who had so much to do with Noel's disappearance is lying not ten feet from me and I can't do anything about it is driving me crazy right now. What would I do even if I could? I've been down this road before and got nothing from it.
Right after, I tracked him down to a flophouse in D.C. and begged and pleaded with him to come back with me, to tell the police she didn't just leave on her own. Surely the man she was dating would want to do everything he could to help find her. He pushed me away, knocking me down hard. I believe he would have done more if someone from the neighboring room hadn't come out and investigated the noise right at that time. I wasn't stupid. I made my escape that night but it wasn't the last time I found him.
I ran surveillance on him under the table when I first joined the CIA working as an intel geek and found him in New York. I was convinced, given the time that had passed; he could tell it wasn't just a woman being flighty. I was all set to fly out when my information went cold and the guy disappeared off the face of the planet. So why the hell was he now yards from me and what the hell was about to happen?
"Don't move so much, Cherry. If that blanket slips and shows this piece of trash so much as a freckle on your shoulder I'll have to kill him before I get what we want out of him." He pulls the blankets all the way up to my chin and flattens them out with a precision found only in hospitals or military barracks.
This guy has some serious issues if he thinks freckles are sexy. I think this guy has issues without the freckle thing. He seems like a whole ball of issues barreling down a path like a boulder in an Indiana Jones movie. He speaks in riddles I can't understand and says things that make no sense to me. What do we want from this piece of shit that he could give us now after all these years of holding out?
My psycho moves away from me and takes the tray of nightmares with him. I turn my head to see what he's going to do. Every time I tried to call or talk to this guy he was always so smooth or violently angry. Now his eyes are filled with fear. He watches t
he guy like a fly would a spider.
"Mr. Tabbs, you were not an easy man to find. In fact, for anyone else I would hazard a guess you would have vanished like a ghost in the night, like you never even existed."
Bright Eyes, that's what I'm calling him until he tells me his name, looks like he's mulling over his choices of tools. He finally chooses a small thing that looks like something a doll would use to pretend to be a doctor.
He holds it up and the tip catches the light. "This is a Sapphire knife. It's clear to show the tissue and muscle underneath so the surgeon can tell what he is doing. Not that we'll need it for that. You see, you won't be walking out of here in one piece, if at all."
He proceeds to lay the blade across the man's stomach and slicing a thin line across his bare body. The sound of his scream bounces off the walls of the room. A thin red line runs down his side.
"The woman over there is very special. That woman is the very heart of a man that is the darkest thing you have ever seen coming for you." He cuts again and waits out the screams. He bends down so he can whisper in the man's ear so I can barely hear what he is saying but the walls do funny things to the acoustics and I hear him. "She's very special to me because she is mine."
I try to hold in my gasp but I don't think I did a very good job since psycho turns his head to look at me. "You didn't know it at the time and maybe you can be forgiven for that so now that you understand I'm going to ask you one time and only one more time."
"I'll tell you whatever you want to know, man. Just don't cut me again."
Psycho runs the knife along the man's thigh and puts his hand on the cut. The man yells and strains to break his bonds. My stomach rolls and I think at any moment I may be sick.