Make Me Yours Evermore, Book 3 (2 page)

She, obviously, wasn’t his friend.

“So…what are you planning to do with her? You’re not, god forbid, killing her?” I knew the answer would be no, but I had to ask.

“You think I would do that?”

I shook my head. Fuck, I hoped not.

“Of course I wouldn’t.”

“And so instead, like a Good Samaritan,” I waved my hand in a vague circle, “you’re planning to set her up for life with a huge lump of money and a mansion in France?”

He laughed. “Comedian.” Chris glanced back toward the box that held the woman. He leaned over, reached between the seats, and lifted the side of the box, keeping his body mostly in the way in case anyone passing by looked in.

Through the gap between my seat and Chris’s body, I studied the woman. Her face slumped in either sleep or unconsciousness. Wrist cuffs locked her hands down onto a metal ring on the box beside her neck. She was breathing fine. The ball of the gag even had a large hole through the middle.

Youngish. Cherry red hair. So bright it must be fake. The edge of a tatt showed on her shoulder.

I wondered what she would look like without the black ball of the gag. My gaze slipped downward to where her breasts were jammed together by the position. The bunched-up pale blue T-shirt had a few specks of blood and grime on it. The neckline showed the top of her red bra. Pretty. Vulnerable. Pity and an urge to help her vied with a deep curiosity as to what she’d look like naked. That my head even went there bothered me. I pulled my gaze away.

Shit. This was like perving on a victim in an ambulance.

“She’s good. Breathing’s settled.” He lowered the side of the box. Despite his nonchalance, I couldn’t help but notice the absolute fascination he had for her, the last second of hesitation as he closed the side. Like he couldn’t tear his eyes away. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

How did you answer that? I shrugged. “I’m not going there. You still haven’t said what you’re doing with her.”

A line formed between his eyes. At last I’d stirred him. “I’m not going into details.”

Then he waited again. Shit.

“You expect me to leave her with you based on that?”

“Yes. I never wanted you to get in the car. The less you know the better for you, me and her.”

His chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm – too regular, forced perhaps. Or was I reading in things that weren’t there? I needed a fucking lie detector. Wait, no. He wouldn’t lie to me. Would he?

“Well. Too late, I did get in. I emailed you. Tried to phone…” We always hung out together when I visited the island. “When I saw your car, what else do you think I was going to do? Assume you had a woman tied up in the back and leave you be? I thought we’d go to the pub and have a beer somewhere. Have fun. Go fishing, swimming. Fuck some girls. You know…” I faked a laugh. “Shit, now…” I shook my head vigorously. “What are you doing with her? You have to tell me.”

“I don’t want to pull you into this.”

“You
have
. You’re my best mate. You saved my goddamned worthless life once or twice. I don’t want to dob you in to the cops. Tell me something. I’m not going to walk away. She was having trouble breathing and you never saw it. You want murder on your conscience? Why? What are you doing with her?” I glanced out at the approaching line of the mainland harbor. “Five minutes left.”

Chris rubbed his finger along his nose for a second. “Okay. Do what you want to. “I’m…” He took a deep breath. “I’m keeping her.”

“What?” Oh shit. I remember a drunken night when we’d all spilled our guts.

What are five things you’d most like to do that are illegal.
Then we’d shared. A bunch of teenagers at university having a stupid drunken party. The usual. Until I checked what Chris had written as number one on his list.
Kidnap a girl and keep her
. At the top of mine, I’d written,
keep a girl as my slave
.

Funny. But ever since then we’d been one. I’d never forgotten the list. We hadn’t always lived in the same place but when we were together we partied and hung out and had great times. Until now.

“The list,” I murmured, so softly he couldn’t possibly hear.

But his eyes narrowed. “I’m driving to the Daintree area. A business friend has loaned me a house there. Somewhere quiet, away from anyone who might see or hear anything. I’m going to make her mine. Going to train her to obey me.”

Shit. My blood thundered. My cock stood up all on its ownsome. This was so wrong that my head was spinning. “You can’t do that.”

“I can. I am. It’s that or let her go to do so much damage to my friend’s life, and now, to mine. She brought this on herself. Now are you going to open that door and walk away?”

What was I going to do? He was blaming her for this? I wrenched my logical brain into gear. “That’s a six-, seven-hour drive. What if she dies? You can’t watch her breathing. You’re driving straight through?” I deadpanned those words but I was fucking tumbling through rapids in my head.

He nodded, pursed his mouth.

I couldn’t leave her with him, but I didn’t want to be with him either. With her…them. I wiped my mouth. “I’m not leaving her alone with you. I’m not having her death on my conscience. I’m coming with you until we sort everything out.”

“You think I’m going to change my mind? I’m going to let her go? She’d go straight to the police and then everyone is up shit creek without a paddle. If you want that just go to the cops yourself, Andreas.”

“I’m coming with you. This way we can figure out some alternative. And I can make sure she’s not going to choke to death.” I
had
to convince him to release her. I held up my hands. “I’m between jobs. No one’s going to miss me.”

“I wasn’t going to leave her unsupervised, Andreas.” Chris had a knack for knowing when to stop talking. The ferry was angling toward the jetty, engines throbbing loudly. “But okay.”

“Good.” I settled back into the seat. Once we were on the road, I’d prop open the flap to the box so I could keep an eye on the woman.

I attempted to calm my racing heart but some delayed logic snuck in. The box she was in was no spur of the moment thing. How long had he been planning this?

We were close mates but I knew how kinky Chris was and all about his love of BDSM. He’d let me watch him flog a girl once. Even though I could see she wanted it, that scene had fucked me up for days. While I’d watched I’d been a confused mix of aroused and horrified. I’d also seen the steel mask of concentration on his face. Chris was a sadist through and through.

I’d trust him with my damn
life
, but with this woman? What he might do to her scared me. There was no way I was leaving him alone with her.

We left town with no fuss, the tires purring over the Bruce Highway on our way north. As soon as we were past the outer suburbs, I pointed over my shoulder at the box. Andreas propped open the front. Whenever I glanced sideways, I caught him looking back as if studying her. I wasn’t sure what he made of all this, apart from that obvious disapproval and his desire to keep her safe.

In a way, I was glad he was here to watch her. It was safer for her. I just prayed this wouldn’t backfire on Andreas. And I prayed like hell I could get rid of him fast once we got there. I needed to be alone with her. To sit and figure out what I wanted to
do
to her.

My fingers were hurting I’d clenched the wheel so tightly. Relax. I’d waited so long, thought about this scenario, off and on, much of my adult life, but…I could wait a bit longer.

No matter how well you know someone, as soon as you break the law, everything goes into a cyclonic blender. What would come out when he’d had time to digest all of this?

I hadn’t seen him for a few months. He’d been out on the oil rig in the Bass Strait same as my brother. Soon we might be going separate ways. His wavy black hair ruffled in the breeze when he wound down the window for a while. From beneath the short ochre sleeve of his T-shirt, the scars from the shark attack ran like pale confetti down the muscles of his left forearm. Remnants of a time when he’d needed me. I liked that. My good friends defined my world.

Andreas was a solid man with a solid conscience. That might prove a problem for him.

Me? I’d stick with my decisions, no matter how wrong they might be in a moral world. But I wasn’t in a moral world, hadn’t been since I was twenty-two and uncle had introduced me to shaky accounting.

I tensed my forearms, using the steering wheel to control my frustration. Of all the people to arrive and fuck this up…to maybe, fuck this up.

But…I made a hard and cutting decision then and there. If Andreas decided to hand me to the police I’d go without protest. I wasn’t jeopardizing things with him. No matter how deep into the dark this kink of mine took me. I could be Mister Evil to her, no worries, because it got me off. Not to him.

“You can take off her gag now,” I said over the engine noise.

He nodded and did so. For a few seconds he held the gag before him like it was some creature he’d caught and he was afraid to let it go in case it bit then he wiped it with his T-shirt and placed it back in the box with her.

“I swear I can hear the thoughts running around in your head. If we get stopped or have to slow down near people, drop the flap back down. If the cops stop us for any reason and they find her, pretend you didn’t know she was there.”

He grunted.

Andreas wasn’t normally the quiet sort but he didn’t say another word until we were near the Mount Spec turn-off.

“I want to stop here. You have to free her, Chris.”

Oh shit.

My stomach was so knotted up I’d probably need a valium myself before the day was out. I could have let this go. I could’ve not told Klaus my idea to take Kat out of the equation. But I had.

I hated that Andreas was here with me. This was my messed-up self. Not his doing. If I could’ve pushed him out the moving car without hurting him, I would have.

For most of my adult years I’d had a distant, back-of-the-cupboard,
dangerous
yearning to go further than BDSM allowed. Kat… Fuck, her prima donna personality and her pseudo-submissive, emotionally distant behavior had triggered every snarling instinct in me to wrestle her down and impose on her a set of laws that would make her behave. Those little shorts she wore, and the curvaceous body underneath, drove me crazy. I’d been allowed to strip them off her a few times when she agreed to scenes, but that had never been enough.

Being able to mark her with red, to make her scream, to run my hands over her hips and ass and, a few times, to get her off with a vibe or my fingers, if anything that had fed my craving.

Some Doms would have nothing to do with her, but me…I only dreamed of what might be possible.

But I never had, truly, been able to make her behave, because I couldn’t. Hard limits, safe and sane, consensual kink – all those drew lines I couldn’t cross.

“I’m not stopping unless you want to get out and take this to the cops. If you’re doing that, I may as well drive us there. If we stop to chat like schoolgirls on a picnic, the drug will be wearing off. I may have to give her more and that adds to the danger.”

The long, dead-straight road unrolling ahead, for the next kilometer, allowed me to drift my thoughts into remembering how Kat had looked back there. Controlled, for once, waiting for me to decide what to do with her. Her eyes half-closed. It was a miracle I’d wanted so badly for so long.

“Fuckit.” Andreas had shut his eyes. Air hissed in through his teeth. “Fuckit. Fuckit. Fuckit. You’re going to hell, you know.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. You don’t need to be here. I promise I’ll take care of her. I can let you out somewhere and you can catch a bus back. Then you can forget this.”

“What’d you drug her with?”

Ignoring me, hey? “You’re a stubborn bastard when you want to be.” I sneaked a look at his earnest face before concentrating on the road again. “Valium. I researched it, Andreas. Doses, effects. It was the safest one and the easiest to get hold of.”

“It’s hours yet to the Daintree. When does it wear off? What if she starts screaming?”

I kept my voice level. “If I have no choice, I’ll give her more.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask how. The answer would freak him out. “It might take four to six hours to wear off. It might take less. It varies from person to person.”

“Uh-huh.”

Andreas seemed to relax at that – as if knowing I’d planned this well had reassured him. I turned the thought over. His response almost said he didn’t want her to escape. Which was curious. I inhaled and the mind-cracking tension ebbed from my muscles.

“You know this is wrong, don’t you?”

“Yes.” A semi-trailer going the other way rocked our vehicle in its wake and I adjusted my hands on the wheel.

“So you’re not going to shoot anyone if things go ass over turkey?”

“No.” I checked him out. Meditative. “You’re still wondering if you should hand me over to law enforcement?”

“No. Hell, no.”

The road thrummed under the wheels. “Yes, I know it’s wrong. Do I care if society condemns me for doing this? Only if I get caught. Will I hurt anyone over this? No, especially not you. I never thought I’d do this. If the opportunity hadn’t arrived, I’d have kept going the way I was.”

“The way you was?” he murmured. “Just BDSM with chicks who said yes, hey?”

“Yep.”

“I keep thinking I’ve fallen into the wrong wardrobe and come out in Narnia or something. Jabberwocky land. Oz, maybe.”

I pulled a contemplative face and nodded. “Oz is close.”

He bit out a laugh. “You know she’s listening? Doped out, but she is. I can see from the way she holds her head. Does that worry you?”

“Let her.” Kat mightn’t remember much of this. I wasn’t sure of the long-term effects. But if she did… If she did, she’d remember her helplessness; remember us casually talking while she was back there unable to do a thing. I liked that. It gave my balls a warm feeling. I wished I could see her expression.

Yet this wasn’t purely sexual. Even after all these years of being a kinkster, I wasn’t sure what it was that grabbed me about dominating a woman sometimes. It just was
me
.