Hard Way (9 page)

She couldn’t follow the twists and turns of the car. Stops and starts sent her swaying. She couldn’t even keep track of how long they’d been driving. Her fingertips were tingly but hadn’t gone to sleep. Because one long, smooth acceleration lasted awhile, she thought they might have hit the freeway.

Where the hell was he taking her?

A slowing curve hinted at leaving the expressway. A few more minutes later, the Evo jumped and stuttered over bad road before coming to a stop.

She coiled. No other word for it. She was not going down easily. With her knees drawn close, she pulled upright as much as she could to prop on one elbow.

He’d put her hands out of commission, but he’d made one technical error. Her feet were free.

She felt as much as heard the driver’s side door open, followed by the resonant thud when he shut it. Letting her imagination roam, she could practically count his steps.

The trunk popped open.

He loomed over her. The round moon glowed over his shoulder, throwing his features into darkness. With only that brief impression of shadow, she kicked out with both feet and caught him in the stomach.

He fell back a step with a guttural, “
Ooph
.”

Digging her elbow into the floor of the trunk, she used her core muscles to flip up and out. She crouched in the small space between Liam and the car’s bumper.

She’d expected him to grab her. Fight her. Throw her around or back into the trunk.

Instead, he stepped back. “Run. If you want. If you feel like hanging out with coyotes.”

Sunny tried to keep one eye on him while she glanced around, like a rabbit watching a fox and scanning for extra danger at the same time. An impossible task. To assess the landscape, she had to look away from his magnetic gaze.

She found…nothing. The land had been cleared at one point, with roads run through. They stood in a half-paved cul-de-sac, where the desert stretched out to reclaim lost land. There were sidewalks and concrete posts for mailboxes—a neighborhood that had never been built.

What a depressing sight.

“Good God,” she muttered, but the words were wet and obscured against the gag. She pushed at it with her tongue. So slick and tight, it didn’t budge.

“Like I said. No one around. We’re a good five miles from the nearest house. This was supposed to be a fully self-supporting community before the economy tanked.” Dash stood there with his arms crossed over his lean chest. He lowered his chin and looked at her with a wicked expression. “Run. I dare you.”

She eyed him. Wary wasn’t the word for it. Behind her back, her palms were sticky with sweat. She ground her teeth into the resistance of the gag. Her stomach flipped over and over.

“You’re not going to run?” He reached for her and traced a single fingertip across her forehead. A sweaty lock of hair caught on his touch. He smoothed it back into her braids. “I’m almost disappointed. I like it when you fight me, Sunny.” His smile was all teeth.

She glared at him.

“You don’t like the gag, do you? I find I don’t either.” His long, elegant fingers delved behind her head and slipped the clasp free.

Sunny spat out the taste of latex. “Fuck off, you cunt.”

“There’s my fighter.”

After crouching again, she slammed her shoulder into Dash’s stomach, then hooked her ankle behind his knee and jerked. He was so damn fast. His arms flipped her, spun her, wrapped around her. The sharp edge of the trunk dug into her hips.

“Get off me, you pervert,” she snarled.

He wedged fingers into her hair and pulled back. Her neck was tight, bent viciously. Pain washed over her scalp. Her breath ran shallow. She couldn’t wiggle free. She’d tried her best moves and he’d shut her down. Between Liam’s body and the dark recess of the trunk, she couldn’t escape.

Then he unbuttoned her slacks.

Chapter Nine

Dash’s hands had shaken when he’d followed Sunny from work to the organic grocery she loved. His hands had shaken after throwing her into the trunk, when he was torn between firing up the engine and setting her free.

Christ. What the fuck were they doing?

His hands weren’t shaking now.

Did that mean it was right? Okay now? Or maybe he’d warped his mind around the possibility so that every curse and attempt to fight back was Sunny’s way of saying
yes, yes, more.

Her slacks were loose-fitting in that way models wore, accentuating beautiful figures by leaving some to the imagination. Dash didn’t need his imagination when they pooled onto the desert blacktop and revealed a skimpy, pristine white thong. It practically glowed in the full moonlight, resting there between her golden-hued ass cheeks.

Holding her immobile, he took one breathless moment to enjoy that incredible sight.

Then it was gone. His softness. His tenderness for this woman. It winked out. No, it detonated like a chandelier smashed with a baseball bat.

With his forearm across the base of her spine and clasping the zip tie, he kept her torso still. He used his other hand to yank her head back toward his chest. The profile of her taut throat was a work of erotic art against the backdrop of the moonlit sky. A tear had gathered in the eye nearest, the one she used to glare at him.

“Crying already, darling.” He pulled the dark, sinful mass of her hair like a tether that would always bring her home.
His.
He kissed away the tear, taking that salt into his mouth. “And we haven’t even started.”

“If you think I’m going to cooperate in this piece of sick theater, you’re dead wrong.”

“Too bad,” he whispered. “You already are, whether you like it or not. If you’re very, very lucky, you’ll come when I do.”

“Liam—”

Without letting go of her hair, he clasped a hand over her throat. Dark strands tangled in his fingers and stray wisps streaked across her lush mouth. “Whatever you’re going to say won’t matter. You’re helpless here, Sunny.
Helpless
.”

Her tiny moan was accompanied by the slightest shift of her hips. Toward his.

“So, say it now if it makes you feel better,” he said. “I like knowing you still think you can get something out of this.”

“I…I didn’t like the other morning. You’ve never left me wanting before.”

“I was trying something new. Like this. This is new.”

He shoved her face first into the trunk. Her ass was even more delectable in such a vulnerable position. While she fought his hand where he pressed and pressed her nape, Dash pulled another zip tie from his back pocket. The coiled plastic sprang free. He looped and tightened it above her kneecaps. When the fuck had he learned to do that one-handed? Or any of this? The logistics had fallen into place in a matter of moments—how he would follow her, where he would abduct her, where he would take her.

How he would fuck her: with her legs tied, her arms tied, and her head futilely shaking against his hold.

“Such a sweet peach of an ass. Do you know that, you teasing slut? And I own it.”

“It’s
my
ass,” she said, gasping.

“Not from where I’m standing.” He was so goddamn hard. He literally tented the stiff denim of his jeans. Her thong was easy to pull to the side—then rip away. Her growled cry shot adrenaline down the back of his thighs. “And look at this. Two holes.”

“No! Don’t you fucking dare.”

He squished her face against the floor of the trunk. Her delicate features were in profile, her cheek smashed. The glare from the trunk light only added to Dash’s arousal. Sordid and sexy.

“I take. And you shut up. That’s how this works.”

The sound of his zipper was like a shotgun blast, so far out in the desert. Only their breathing was louder. His, tight and controlled. Hers, a rasping pant.

No warning, Dash shoved three fingers in her cunt. She screamed. Dash palmed her mouth. Those screams were muffled now. Helpless now. She was so slick, her arousal dripping down her thighs. He covered his fingers in her juices, then leaned flush against her bowed body.

“You’re a lying whore. Protests and whining and struggles. Your body is giving you away.”

He smeared those three fingers over her face, daring to let go of her mouth long enough to paint her lips with her taste. She tried to bite him. Had his reflexes been any slower, she’d have taken off a knuckle.

She needed to be punished, the stubborn bitch. Dash straightened. Fast, harsh, he slapped her ass, over and over, until he couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t stop shrieking against his palm.

Then his cock was inside her. He loved that. No warning. No sweet seduction of her clit and her pussy. Just
using
.

Her outraged gasp throttled down to a moan. Her legs bound at the knees made shoving into her more of a challenge. She was tighter that way. Clenched. Fighting him even there. Dash spread his legs to bracket hers. Thrusts lifted her hips from the edge of the trunk. He bucked into her, using his knees to dig the whole of his weight and power into her slick cunt.

More slaps. A counterpoint to the rhythm of his hips. More growled curses mixed with moans from Sunny.

But he needed more. He needed her screams.

Last zip tie. He wrenched her arms up from behind her back, then secured her to the cross bar where the trunk met the rear window. Her feet lifted off the ground and wrapped around the back of his thighs, probably to ease the pressure on her shoulders.

He surged inside her again and fanned his fingers between her shoulders blades. The pressure he applied pulled her restraints to the extreme. With his other hand, he bowed her neck and forehead down. Sunny struggled against the many places he held her trapped, but that struggle felt more like fucking. Her ass reared back to meet his every thrust.

“Goddamn hogtied bitch,” he rasped. Dizzy. Losing it. Yet he’d never been so focused. “Look at you, loving every stroke.”

“I might as well, you shit.”

Her hair was the tether he needed. He wrapped both hands through that thick silken mass and rode her. She screeched as she arched back toward the rear of the trunk. Her body became his toy. Any way he wanted to pull her, tug her, fuck her, she was his.

But she was the one who came first. She spit his name like a curse, then shuddered on a long, satisfied moan.

He loved that sound. Always had. When Sunny came, she did so with as much abandon as when she cussed a blue streak. No one would ever know that about her other than Dash.

This was different. Tonight was different.

She wasn’t getting out of this without feeling completely used.
He
would use her.

“Did you come?” Although it took control and all the fierce meanness in his blood, he slipped free of her pulsating sheath. He shook her head, yanked her hair from side to side. “Answer me, Mrs. Christiansen. Did you like being treated like a piece of trash?”

Her face was flushed and sweaty. Tresses that had been perfectly coiffed were a sticky mess at her temples and nape. “Piss off.”

Dash should’ve been pleased with how much she enjoyed it. Their marriage was failing. They needed a buoy. A rescue. Apparently acting out sick, taboo fantasies was something they never knew they had in common.

But he wasn’t in the mood. Sunny had come first.

“Greedy bitch. It’s gonna get rough now.”

“Rough? I’m going to be bruised all to hell tomorrow. People will notice.”

From a pocket in his boot, he drew out a utility knife and cut the ties except for the ones around her knees. Knife safely stowed, he pulled her up and flush with his chest. She was nude from the waist down, and he still wore all of his clothes. He didn’t need it to be any other way, not when she was there to be used.

“You didn’t think this was it, did you? The lovely Mrs. Christiansen gets what she wants and leaves her husband to twist? Oh, no.”

“I have a job.”

“Which I hate. So guess who wins? We’re not close to being finished.”

Dash hauled her out of the trunk, supporting her the whole way. She was trembling and barely able to walk. He caught sight of the arm he’d slung over his shoulder. Welts had risen up in red bands around her wrist.

Later,
some rational part of him reminded.
Take care of her later. You brought supplies. She’ll be fine.

Hell, he hoped so.

His momentary lapse in concentration meant Sunny got the jump on him. She knocked sideways and up, using her shoulder as a well-aimed battering ram. The momentum was enough to set Dash off balance. He stumbled back a few feet. She lurched, balanced herself, tried to run.

At first he laughed, cruelly, as his arousal jacked up another thousand percent. He caught her around the waist before she had the opportunity to fall. He wouldn’t even allow that much control over how this went down.

“Gonna have to hit harder than that, bitch.” He sounded like a demon. Felt like one.

They’d strayed from the blacktop. Good. She was the most put-together, beautiful woman he’d ever known. Time to drag her down into the dirt. He’d make her eat it if he wanted to.

One solid push and she was on her hands and knees. Wobbly. She probably stayed on all fours by sheer force of will.