Tied To You Read online

  As soon as she was done, she handed me her glass, and I made a quick dash to our table to set them down before returning to her.

  The beat had increased when the song changed, and she curled closer to me, her pelvis pressed against my thighs as she grinded against me. She was practically dry-humping me on the floor, and the sweet little thing made no attempt to hide her desire for me. My cock obliged by returning the favor, pressing insistently against her stomach, and her eyes widened.

  As she pressed even closer against me, rubbing her belly against the length of me, she said with a giggle, “Aren’t you just the cliché, Mickey?”

  I think she meant it to tease me, or perhaps stroke my ego, but it hit me wrong. It reminded me of Rowena and her games, and why I was here, and why I had targeted the Chastain girl. She had grown up in a household under a man who’d raised her to believe black people were second-class citizens, available to use and dispose of however they wished. The sudden return of focus was actually welcome, reminding me of what was at stake.

  I didn’t respond to her teasing, other than to pull her closer and grip the luscious globes of her ass as I lifted her more firmly against my body. She moaned as she nestled closer, her breasts pressing against my chest. I let anger roar through me, nurturing the reaction and blunting any guilt I felt as I danced with her for the next twenty minutes, gradually noticing her motions became more sluggish.

  When I heard her yawn for the third time, I stepped back and looked down at her. “Am I boring you?” I asked with a chuckle.

  She shook her head, smothering another yawn. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been traveling for the last couple of days, and even the layover in London didn’t give me much rest. I can’t believe how tired I am all of a sudden though.”

  I nodded, feigning sympathy. “That’s understandable. Why don’t I give you a ride home?”

  She smiled at me, but there was a hint of hesitation. My hackles rose as I prepared to make myself seem unassuming and not at all dangerous, to convince her it was safe to take a ride with me. It turned out, her anxiety was nothing to do with that.

  “I must admit my bed sounds good, but I was having such a good time with you, Mickey. I hate for it to end.”

  I chuckled, aware of a dark undertone that she seemed oblivious to as I said, “Don’t worry. I’m not through with you yet, Gabriella.”

  She must have taken that as an indication of further dates to come. If she had realized what I really meant, there’s no way she would have wrapped her arm around my waist and snuggled against me, allowing me to help hold her up as we left the club and hailed a taxi.

  She didn’t seem to realize driving her home consisted of a taxi ride, and she got in the back without protest. Apparently, her senses were nicely dulled, or she would have realized there was no reason for me to come along with her if I was paying for a taxi to take her. She also would have realized that I gave the address of the hotel I had arranged, rather than her place.

  She was starting to doze a little bit and apparently didn’t realize she hadn’t given me an address, and I shouldn’t know where she lived. It didn’t matter, because I wasn’t taking her home. At least not yet.

  Chapter Two

  Gabriella

  I woke with my mouth dry and my head pounding. I didn’t think the drinks were quite that strong, but I had downed that pink thing pretty quickly, mostly in an attempt to impress Mickey. That was ridiculous, because he’d only been sipping at his drink, but something about him made me feel fun, flighty, and flirtatious. Drinking my drink like that had seemed like the kind of thing a party girl would do, and for that time, I had wanted to be the party girl-type.

  I was paying for it now. With a groan, I started to lift my hand to press to my aching head, but my arm refused to cooperate. It took my scrambled brain a moment to realize it wasn’t a lingering effect from alcohol preventing me from moving my hands. Rather, it was the fact that my arms were tied above my head to a headboard.

  I turned my head, my vision still slightly blurry, to stare at the soft cord binding me to a metal headboard. The purple rope looked like the kind lovers used to play with, but it was strong and sturdy when I tested it. I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at for the longest moment, either because my brain was still sluggish from alcohol, or simply because I didn’t want to accept what I was seeing.

  Looking around, I saw an unfamiliar room that was clearly in a hotel due to its impersonal nature, and the fact there was another queen bed beside the one to which I was tied. The bathroom door was closed, and I assumed Mickey was in there. A pang went through my chest at the thought of his name. I had clearly misjudged him.

  He had seemed like such a nice guy, and I had let down my barriers, trusting him instinctively. I was a damned fool. All the times Wayne had called me an idiot came back, and this time I heartily agreed with him. I knew what ignorant crap he would have spouted about flirting with a black guy, let alone having dinner with him, but I had ignored his uninformed advice, thinking he was crazy and just plain dumb.

  It was no secret my stepfather was a racist asshat, which had always made me determined not to be. Any way that I could set apart myself from Wayne and the rest of his family was a good way to me, but discriminating against someone because of their skin color had always struck me as wrong on a fundamental level, even as a very young child before Wayne entered my life.

  Now, here I was the victim of my own naïveté. I didn’t for one minute think Mickey had done this because he was black. Evil came in all colors, shapes, genders, and sexual orientations, and he was clearly one of the evil ones. I just hadn’t realized it. Unfortunately, I had been predisposed to trust him because I had wanted to prove Wayne wrong, even in my own head. It was a disjointed, confused thought, but I understood what I meant. I wouldn’t have been as likely to trust him if he had been white like me.

  Or maybe that was just bullshit. I had been attracted to him, noticing him from the moment he’d entered the airport lounge. Apparently, I was just a lousy judge of character, and I probably would have reacted just as trustingly to anyone I’d found that attractive without factoring in race. Until this moment, tied to this bed, I hadn’t even considered race. That I had jumped there as a knee-jerk reaction shamed me, even though I was still attached to the bed by the sociopath who had targeted me.

  Suddenly, the bathroom door opened, and he emerged. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer-briefs, and I was further shamed by the way my mouth watered and my panties grew damp at the sight of his hard, muscular body, his dark skin stretched taut over firm musculature as he stalked toward me like a graceful panther. No, Jaguar. They were basically the same thing, but jaguar sounded sexier and more dangerous. I knew he was both. I just had to ignore the sexy and focus on the fact that he was dangerous.

  He stopped by the bed, and I opened my mouth to ask what was happening. I just wanted an explanation, and perhaps maybe I could get through to him and convince him to let me go. I wasn’t overly optimistic, but my optimism faded away completely when he stuffed a soft cloth in my mouth as soon as I opened it. I tried to spit it out, and he crammed it in deeper.

  “I’ll tape it in there if you don’t behave, and that’s going to pull your hair when it comes out.” They were stern, angry words, but the fact that he was considering my discomfort was strangely soothing. It made it that much easier to stop trying to free myself from the cloth stuffed in my mouth. It also renewed a spark of hope, because he was talking about removing the tape at some point, and warning me about pain, which indicated he expected me to be alive when he took it off. I might still survive this.

  My docility disappeared when he brought a tie to my face, wrapping it around my head a few times to cover my eyes. I tried fighting and grunted my protest through the gag in my mouth, struggling against the bonds holding me to the bed.

  “Be still, or you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  I whimpered as I stopped struggling, hating myself for d
oing it, but somehow unable to resist the command in his tone. Perhaps part of me still hoped this was just some kind of kinky bedroom game, and he was playing with me. I prayed he wasn’t going to do something horrible to me, and that he had thought this would be fun, but hadn’t bothered to ask me first. I was still going to be extremely angry that he had tied me up without my consent, but I would happily embrace the idea this was a bedroom game I could refuse to play rather than something more sinister.

  “You might be wondering why I covered your eyes, since you’ve already seen my face.” As he spoke, his hands moved over me slowly, going first to my sweater and inching that up underneath my armpits. The cool air caressed my soft stomach, and my nipples beaded against my satin bra. I wanted to believe it was simply from the change in temperature, but I wasn’t that good at fooling myself. “I don’t want you to see what’s coming, Gabriella.”

  I whimpered at the ominous words, even as I shifted restlessly when his fingers stroked over my stomach and down to the zip and snap of my jeans. He opened them a moment later, peeling the denim from my hips. I couldn’t believe it when I lifted my butt to help him take off my clothes. What the hell was wrong with me? We weren’t lovers, and this wasn’t fun and games. As much as I had tried to cling to the idea, I knew there was a darker purpose at work here. I didn’t know what he had in mind for me, but it probably wouldn’t be good. I shouldn’t be helping him at all.

  Once he’d removed my jeans, my shoes and socks already gone somewhere before I woke, he moved away for a moment. When he returned, a chill went down my spine when I heard a soft snicking sound. I don’t know how I knew, but I instinctively realized it was the sound of a switchblade opening. It wasn’t like I’d had much experience that sort of thing, other than on TV, but I just knew, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think he was going to use it to cut my arms free.

  I whimpered when I felt the brush of cold metal against my rib cage. A moment later, there was the sound of slicing fabric, and I realized he was simply cutting off my sweater, since he hadn’t done that before tying me up. I was briefly relieved, but the reality was he still had a knife. He could do whatever he wanted to me with it, and I was completely at his mercy.

  Why the hell did that turn me on? Not the idea of the knife, but simply being at his mercy? I was an idiot, because it was clear he had no mercy, or I wouldn’t be here now.

  The next time I felt the knife, it was edging under my bra, and I shivered as the back of the blade touched me, but didn’t break my skin. I didn’t even know if it was sharp enough to do so, but he seemed to be holding the knife carefully, working under and through the underwire so he could slice up the middle. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding when the satin gave way, and my breasts sprang free as the knife moved away.

  A second later, his large hands cupped my breasts, his fingers rubbing my nipples in a way that made me arch my back and press my thighs together. I shouldn’t be enjoying any of this, but I couldn’t help the physical response. In some dark way, even the fear contributed to my sense of arousal, along with the unknown. This would have been a fun and exciting game if I had known he wasn’t going to hurt me. Since I didn’t know how it was going to culminate, I was a tortured mess, a blend of aroused and terrified.

  “You have beautiful breasts, Gabriella. I was wondering what color your nipples and areolas where. I like this light-pink color, and your nipples are adorable. They’re small, but they fit your breasts well. I bet they get a lot larger when I suck on them.”

  I whimpered, hoping he would take the sound as one of rejection rather than an expression of the pleasure that shot through me at the thought of his mouth consuming my nipple.

  A second later, his mouth replaced one of his hands, and he began to suck in earnest on my taut bud, tightening it almost to the point of pain, his saliva providing adequate lubricant to allow his tongue to glide over my tight tip.

  The other breast received attention in the form of his hand, as he twisted and tugged on my nipples more forcefully than I liked, but eliciting enough pleasure to make me moan. Whatever he was doing to me, I liked it, though I hated that I did. I was betraying myself by surrendering to this…whatever it was. Seduction certainly wasn’t the right word. He wouldn’t have had to seduce me, because I would’ve been in his bed willingly.

  Coercion didn’t seem quite like the right word either. True, I was tied up, but so far, my body was completely on board with everything he was doing, even though my mind was in a state of confliction. I didn’t know what to label it, and I was afraid to just let go and enjoy it, since I didn’t know how he planned to end this adventure.

  His mouth moved lower, his tongue tracing down my stomach and making the muscles in my abdomen twitch in response. He paused long enough to hook his fingers into the band of my panties and pulled them down, completely removing them in less than a minute. I tried closing my thighs together, more because I thought I should than because I wanted to, but as soon as his fingers nudged between them, I yielded and parted my legs, splaying wide for his inspection.

  Knowing I was acting like an idiot, practically begging him to fuck me without knowing what he planned to do afterward, wasn’t helping my brain ignore the impulses. I’d never felt like this before, so consumed by desire that I would do anything to feel relief any way he allowed. It was confusing.

  “Nice,” he practically purred as one of his fingers stroked my slit. “I like the neat little trim job you have here. It’s somehow demure, yet inviting. It’s nice to see a little hair. Too much is off-putting, and none makes you seem too young. This is just the perfect amount.” As he spoke, his fingers dipped inside me, stroking in an arousing fashion not meant to hurt. He was tender as he touched me, his thumb circling my clit as two of his fingers pressed gently into my tight channel. I gasped at the same time he drew a harsh breath when he encountered a barrier.

  “Is that what I think it is? Are you a virgin, Gabriella?” He must have taken my ambiguous moan as a yes. Either that, or he was accepting the evidence he had found. “How unexpected. Wayne is going to go insane when he realizes your first lover was a black man.” Anger throbbed through each of his words.

  My eyes widened, though of course I could see nothing with the blindfold in place. What did my stepfather have to do with this, and why would he ever find out the identity of my lover? My stomach dropped as possibilities occurred to me, and he gave me the answer before I could completely guess what he had in mind.

  “Smile for the camera, baby. Oops, I guess you can’t since the mouth is busy, isn’t it? It’s too bad I can’t put it to work doing other things, but I’d like to have my dick left, and I don’t trust you not to bite it off.” He laughed, and it sent a shudder of need down my spine despite what he’d just said. “Wave your fingers for your daddy, baby. He’s going to see the full show.”

  I couldn’t help crying, humiliated beyond reason at the thought of Wayne seeing me like this. I didn’t care what else he had planned, but that was the worst horror I could imagine. Still hoping to get through to him, I shook my head frantically, grunting against the gag as I tried to beg him not to do it.

  He laughed again, but there didn’t seem to be any real amusement in the sound. “You can beg all you want, but this is happening, Gabriella.” He turned his head slightly, and I imagined he must be speaking to the camera.

  “After all, that’s only fair, don’t you think, Wayne? That’s pretty much what you told Annika when you and your buddies held her down and raped her. You stole her innocence, broke her, and she’s never been the same again. When you’re watching this, you just remember you brought it on yourself with your own actions. This wouldn’t be happening to your daughter if you hadn’t done what you did to Annika.”

  Tears burned my eyes, and I tried to spit out the gag in spite of his threat of taping it in my mouth. I had to be able to talk to him, to find out who Annika was, and why he had targeted me. Didn’t he understand that Wayne didn’t give a damn abou
t me, and he wouldn’t care that someone had raped me? This was all for nothing if it was simply to get revenge on Wayne.

  He moved away from me for a few moments, and when he returned, the bed dipped as he joined me on it for the first time, laying atop me. I tried to buck him off as I turned my head when his mouth pressed against mine. I wasn’t going to kiss him without knowing what was going on. Not that he could kiss me anyway with the gag. It must have been a simple accidental brush against me instead of an attempt to kiss me.

  I held myself stiffly, refusing him any sort of response as he parted my thighs and settled between them. The head of his cock pressed against my slick entrance, and I was embarrassed by how turned on I still was, and even more embarrassed by the fact that there was proof to show it. At least it wouldn’t hurt as badly when he raped me.

  He froze, hesitating for a moment. Tears squeezed from my eyelids as I endured the wait, which was almost worse than what was coming. I was certain his pause was just to toy with me, to make my apprehension that much worse, and it was working.

  “Fuck.” He roared the curse word, and a second later, I flinched when he punched the mattress, at least two feet from my head. I obviously hadn’t been his target. With another expletive, he suddenly pulled away from me and rolled off the bed. “I can’t do this. I fucking cannot do this.” He sounded shocked and angry.

  Hope fluttered through me, and I didn’t know how to react when he sat down on the bed beside me a couple of moments later. Was he doing something else to me first, or was he perhaps letting me go?

  His fingers were gentle when they unwound the tie around my face, removing the garment and allowing me to see again. I blinked at the sudden return of light, though the hotel room wasn’t excessively illuminated. After a moment, I could focus, and though my eyes were still blurry and itchy from the tears that had escaped, and more that wanted to fall, I was able to focus on his face. I caught my breath at what I was certain was remorse in his expression.