by Amira Rain
Apparently, I wasn’t being too bold, because Jackson set me down with a low growl, then began peeling his t-shirt off in front of me bedside, obviously enjoying the act of losing his clothes under my gaze.
Earlier in the day, Jackson had had several dozen red roses delivered to my apartment, and I’d arranged some of them in crystal vases on my dresser. Between the arrangements, I’d set tall pillar candles in various shades of white and orange, which I’d lit before Jackson had arrived. The effect was that now, in the dim light, the top of my dresser appeared aflame in mingling shades of red and orange, the actual flame from the candles casting a warm, golden glow over everything.
This tableau struck me as the perfect backdrop for Jackson to undress against, since his body was fiery hot itself, to say the least. Just the sight of his bare chest, stomach, and arms, all hard ridges and muscle, was enough to make me whimper with desire, sitting up on my elbows to get a better look.
His upper body wasn’t all I wanted to get a closer look at, though. He was wearing gray sweatpants, and something was now tenting the front of them, this tenting apparently brought on just from the sight of me, and our kissing alone. As I’d seen and felt the last time we’d spent the night together, Jackson’s “tent pole” was not of insignificant size, either, and just to look at the outline of it beneath the fabric of his sweatpants at present was enough to make me whimper with desire yet again. I wanted it, badly, wanted to feel it sliding in and out of my slickness with long, powerful strokes. I wanted to feel it inside of me so deeply that the feeling hovered between pleasure and pain.
I was going to have to wait a bit for that, though. Because now, it seemed that Jackson had noticed how intently I was watching him undress, and it almost seemed that he was trying to tease me, kicking off each of his shoes, and then peeling off each of his socks, with almost unbearable slowness.
Slightly irritated, I sat up fully. “I think you can get undressed faster than this.”
With his thumbs in the waistband of his sweats, Jackson cocked one dark brow at me. “Mm, I don’t know. Sometimes I can be almost unbearably slow about things.”
An involuntary noise of frustration escaped my mouth, and I folded my arms across my chest.
“Well—well, please don’t be unbearably slow right now. I need to touch you, Jackson. I need to feel you. And unlike my texts, me saying this isn’t some kind of a mistake or an accident. I need to touch you right now.”
That finally seemed to spur him to a bit faster action. Watching my face with his dark, midnight blue eyes glinting in the candlelight, he pushed the waistband of his sweats down over his hips, revealing his sizable erection covered only by the thin, silky fabric of his boxer briefs. I sighed, scooting over on the bed, not wanting to wait a second longer to touch him; but he took a small step back, moving his “tent pole” just out of my reach, maddeningly. Then, surveying my face, he stepped out of his sweats, then dropped his boxer briefs, finally allowing me to see exactly what I’d been wanting to.
The sight alone made me moan softly, slowly shimmying over to the side of the bed without taking my eyes from it. Thick and long, and already clearly rock-hard, Jackson’s erection seemed sculpted out of my most private erotic fantasies.
Before I knew it, I was touching it, stroking it with one hand, making Jackson groan, throwing his head back. He let me touch him for a while, reveling in the feel of his heft and hardness in my hand, before he made it clear that he wanted me completely naked, too.
After lifting my silky camisole up and over my head, revealing my bare breasts and hardened nipples, he gently pushed me down to lie on my back, then climbed in beside me and took one of my nipples in his mouth, flicking his tongue across it, making me moan. Once he’d given the same treatment to my other nipple, reaching down my silky shorts to caress my slick feminine folds at the same time, he got to his knees and slowly peeled my shorts off, a low growl rumbling deep in his chest while he did so.
“So, so beautiful, Vivian. You’re exquisite.”
When he moved a finger between my slick folds and began stroking my most sensitive spot, still on his knees, making me cry out, I couldn’t take the waiting any longer.
“Please. Make love to me now. I want to feel you deep inside me. I want you to fill me so completely that it almost hurts.”
I’d never felt like I needed that before, but now, I did. And I knew that his manhood was plenty long, thick, and hard enough to achieve the desired effect.
After hiking my legs up on his shoulders, hovering above me, he told me to tell him right away if he actually caused me pain. “And, I mean, tell me right that second. Okay?”
I nodded. “I will. But if you don’t hear me say stop, please don’t.”
He looked deeply into my eyes while entering me, that intimacy alone nearly making me swoon. But the feel of him sliding every milometer of his granite-hard pole into my depths was what made me cry out, tangling my fingers in his thick, dark hair.
“Yes. Yes, Jackson.”
Growling, he soon began thrusting with powerful, deep strokes, pulling himself out almost completely before driving back deep inside me once again. As he increased his pace, still holding my legs up on his shoulders to allow for maximum penetration, I moaned, writhing beneath him, flirting with the line of pain but never crossing over. As deeply as he was moving inside of me, I just felt perfectly filled and a little stretched, the sensation sending me into a world of pleasure I’d never even imagined.
After a while, I felt my orgasm building, and I knew it was going to be powerful. I told Jackson not to stop, and he didn’t, thrusting his thick pole into my depths even faster and deeper, almost even borderline roughly, making me vocalize my pleasure in words that hardly even sounded like words, just gibberish. When he soon moved a hand between us to stroke my most sensitive spot while still continuing to thrust, my gibberish became one long, garbled cry of pleasure as my climax rolled over me in a series of powerful waves. With his breathing as fast and ragged as I’d ever heard it, Jackson groaned with his own climax shortly after mine, pulling my legs apart gently to drive himself the deepest into me he had yet.
Afterward, he collapsed beside me, panting, pulling me close. Slightly sweaty, I clung to him, panting myself, more satisfied than I was sure I’d ever been.
***
After a night of deep and dreamless sleep, wrapped in the strength and safety of his arms, I woke up well-rested and refreshed, though alone. On the pillow beside me was a note, and I picked it up and read it with a smile. You look like an angel when you sleep.
That afternoon, Jackson returned from the northern front, where the Gorgolians were still massing, just to have lunch with me. We ate in his penthouse, one floor above my apartment, then took a stroll through his private gardens, accessible by climbing a set of winding, polished mahogany stairs that led to the roof. Afterward, he had to return to duty, to my disappointment, and his. He said he’d come back that night, though, not a second past eleven, he promised.
I knew this was likely to be our last night together before he and his men attacked the Gorgolians, hopefully killing them all, and I wanted to make the most of it. The lion and bear shifters would be arriving the following morning. Then, with his ground backup close by, Jackson would lead his men into battle, going to fight the Gorgolians outside the city, where they wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of civilians being injured.
That evening, I had dinner with Celeste in one of the finer and more secluded Arch restaurants, then returned to my apartment to wait for Jackson’s arrival. I planned to take a shower, redo my makeup, and put on something silky. Maybe I’d even have another glass of wine to add to the one I’d already enjoyed with dinner.
However, I didn’t quite get that far. I didn’t even make it to getting undressed to get into the shower before something funny happened. Though funny was soon not nearly a strong enough word.
Around ten, I developed a strong, inexplicable urge to leave T
he Arch. Though it wasn’t even so much an urge as it was a feeling that I had to. A feeling that I couldn’t not.
I had no idea why I should be feeling this way. I didn’t want to leave The Arch. I knew it wouldn’t be safe. I knew it would be putting my life in danger. And, unlike Celeste, I wasn’t the type of person to completely disregard that.
But just the same, I soon found myself slipping my shoes back on, almost beginning to feel as if I were being controlled by some unseen force. I had to leave The Arch. The unseen force was going to make me. Whether I wanted to or not, it was happening.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
I felt like a puppet, a marionette, with some invisible puppet master pulling my strings from afar. I couldn’t fathom what was happening to me. I really couldn’t even seem to think. The unseen force that had me now exiting my apartment and getting into my private elevator wouldn’t let me, as if it were blocking my own mind from functioning.
From my private elevator, I transferred to a public one, somewhere down around the fiftieth floor, though I wasn’t even sure. I seemed to be quickly falling into some sort of a daze, awake but losing awareness of just what exactly I was doing. I knew I was pushing buttons in the public elevator. I knew there was someone in the elevator with me. A young woman with red hair, sort of familiar. One of Celeste’s acquaintances. We’d met before, though I couldn’t recall her name. With my thoughts becoming increasingly muddled, I was honestly having a hard time recalling just what exactly I was even doing in the elevator.
After pressing a button, then another to close the elevator doors, the young woman smiled at me and said hi, but I found I couldn’t respond. Something was wrong with me. Something was very wrong. This thought was now bubbling up to the surface of my clouded consciousness, rising above all others. This thought made me croak out a single word to the young woman standing beside me, feeling as if it was urgent that I do so.
“Help.”
She frowned, drawing her gingery brows together. “With what?”
I couldn’t answer. Try as I might, I just couldn’t. Whatever strength that had allowed me to act independently from the force I felt controlling me had now left me.
But after a quick second, the young woman smiled. “Oh, help you with the crowd that will probably swarm to you the second you step off the elevator, right? I bet that’s getting a little bit old to you by now, and probably very old. Well, don’t worry; I’ll hold them off so you can get to wherever it is that you’re going.”
Something unseen made me curve my lips into a smile. “Thank you.”
The young woman began babbling on about something having to do with celebrity and pop culture; I couldn’t really hear her anymore. The force that was bending my will almost seemed to be speaking to me now. Leave The Arch. I could faintly hear these words whispering in my mind, hissing at me. Commanding me. And I had to obey. Not being in control of my body or my mind anymore, I couldn’t do otherwise.
Soon the elevator doors whooshed open with a ding, revealing a group of young women waiting outside.
Half-shielding me with her body, the redheaded young woman beside me addressed the group at large. “Hey, everyone! Free drinks on the house at my dad’s bar on the twenty-fourth floor! But you have to follow me and get down there right now!”
As the group of young women responded with excited murmurs and whoops, the redheaded young woman began pulling a few of them into the elevator while at the same time, giving me a gentle shove out. Feeling the urge to leave The Arch now more strongly than ever, I took my chance and dashed away, down to another nearby elevator.
With the command to leave The Arch echoing in my mind, over and over, without a break, I seemed to completely zone out for a while. Because the next thing I knew, I was out on the street, on the west side of the building, standing at the driver’s side door of Celeste’s car in the dark. Dim light from a nearby streetlamp allowed me to see what I was doing. My fingers were typing in a code to unlock the car and get in.
Then I was in the driver’s seat, turning the lights on and starting the car with its push-button ignition, making it lift several feet above the road to hover-drive. And that’s when, like earlier in the elevator, my own will seemed to break through the will of whatever, or whoever, was controlling me. I knew it wouldn’t last for long. I realized I probably had only mere seconds
Knowing Celeste kept a spare phone in the glove box for when she forgot her own, which was often, I yanked open the glove box and snatched out the phone, immediately dialing Jackson’s number. He answered after a few rings that felt like an eternity, asking who was calling, sounding confused. But I knew there was no time to explain about Celeste’s spare phone. I just started speaking.
“Something’s... controlling me. Something is... it’s like I’m under a spell. It made me leave The Arch. It’s like... maybe it’s Drago.”
The moment I’d uttered his name, it was as if the phone had become a hot potato in my hand. I had to get rid of it. Speaking on it was the wrong thing. Or so the invisible force that seemed to be controlling me made me feel.
With my own will now completely gone once again, I immediately chucked the phone out the window and stomped on the gas, sending the car speeding down the street, which was fairly empty, on account of most people having decided to stay indoors until the situation with the Gorgolians was resolved.
Hands gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles were white, I drove for I didn’t even know how long. As if I were in a trance, I was beginning to lose all sense of place and time. I really didn’t even see any of the buildings or streets flying by on either side of me. All that mattered was driving. All that mattered was obeying. All that mattered was that I do what the unseen force was compelling me to. That I turn where it wanted me to turn. That I accelerate and brake when it wanted me to accelerate and brake.
Dizzy and disoriented, and with an increasing sense of the surreal, as if I were deep within a dream, I eventually stopped the car somewhere just outside the city. Maybe somewhere to the north, though I wasn’t really sure. I got out, with a vague sense that I shouldn’t, though I couldn’t not. As if pulled by some invisible string, I walked a little ways to the left of the car. I stopped when I saw the outline of a man standing in the dark with several other men behind him. Moonlight revealed the face of the man closest to me. I saw his Roman nose, his high, pronounced cheekbones, and his green eyes that glittered like jewels. My voice came out in a whisper.
“Dan.”
Right away, he drew back a hand and cracked the back of it across the side of my face, making me stagger backward, crying out in pain.
“Oh! Dan, please! Don’t!”
The situation felt strange, surreal, yet wholly familiar at the same time.
Dan took a giant step forward, crossing the distance between us. “I told you that you could never run from me.” Sneering, he paused, looking deeply into my eyes. “Bitch.”
His hand cracked against the side of my face again, and this time I went down, seeing stars. When I hit the ground, everything went black.
***
I had no idea how long I was out for. I awoke some time later in a bed, in some small and grimy room. Cracks zigzagged through the walls that lightning bolts. Cobwebs hung from corners in the ceiling. Beside me sat a young woman on a low stool. She was small, thin to the point of being nearly emaciated. She surveyed me with flat brown eyes, seeming to be looking right through me at the same time, and when she didn’t speak after a second, I cleared my throat, trying to find my voice.
“Who are you? And where... Where am I?”
“I’m Anna. And you’re in Blackblood, just over the border.”
Head swimming and thoughts racing, I stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Where?”
“Gorgolian territory. Our capitol. You’re in the palace right now, in the prisoner’s quarters.”
With the side of my face aching, I sat up in bed, hazy bits and pieces of what had happened slowly coming back to m
e. “How did he... How did he get me here?”
“He flew you here, of course, on his back. And he got you to leave where you live by using remote mind control. He’s been trying to do it for days now. It’s one of his sorcery tricks. He’s not able to do it very well yet, though, so it took him a while, and he wasn’t able to do it for very long... Though he was able to do it long enough to get you where he wanted you. He was very determined, and of course, Lord Stone is very strong.”
Lord Stone. Drago. Dan. Just the thought of him, coupled with the realization of what he’d done to me, made me feel nauseated, and intensely so.
Throwing the covers off, I looked at Anna, praying she wasn’t without kindness. “I think I’m going to be sick. Where’s a bathroom, please.”
Moving her head, she gestured to a door on one side of the small, dingy room, and I flew out of bed and into the equally small and dingy bathroom, then promptly got sick into a toilet brown with rust and grime. The sight of which made me retch even harder.
Once my stomach felt completely empty, I stuck my head out the door, relieved to see that Anna hadn’t left. “Can you give me a toothbrush and toothpaste? Mouthwash, maybe?”
She got up from her low, wooden stool, looking at me but somehow still seeming to look right through me. “You’ll find paste and a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, and those are probably the only new things you’re going to get. Go ahead and shower, because Lord Stone says he wants all traces of the UFS commander washed from your body. Then you’ll dress in used clothes. Lord Stone says you’re not to be treated like a princess here. He says you don’t deserve it.”
With that, she came over and shut the bathroom door, borderline slammed it, actually, shutting me inside. Fighting a rising sense of panic, I peeled off the dress I’d been wearing the night before and did as she’d told me to, brushing my teeth and then getting into the shower, which only sprayed freezing cold water, chilling me to the bone. Shivering, I washed my hair and body with a cake of gritty gray bar soap, the only cleanser provided. There wasn’t even a washcloth.