Seduced in the Dark (24 page)

Later still, after the tears faded, I
finally decided to leave my self-imposed prison and face whatever
sick punishment Caleb undoubtedly had in store for me. I opened the
bathroom door. Light from the bathroom spilled into the dark room,
and there was a deep pinch in the middle of my chest when I saw
they were both cuddled up together in what I’d come to think of as
my bed. I stepped closer. They were both obviously naked and the
sheet only covered them from the waist down. Celia’s face was still
flush, and her lips looked swollen from kissing. She looked
content. Caleb held her in his possessive way, as if he didn’t want
her to get away, though I doubted she would try. I swallowed past
the lump in my throat and looked around.
Where am I supposed to
sleep?

I paced around the room, knowing I’d
probably end up on the floor, but not able to accept it yet. I
walked past the door to the bedroom, and my heart skipped at the
thought the door might actually be open. I looked back toward the
bed and saw Caleb’s face within the sliver of light coming from the
bathroom. He slept peacefully. I put my hand on the latch and
pressed down, and I held my breath as I pulled back gently, and the
door opened.

Soft light gave the long hallway an eerie
glow and I almost had the feeling of being in a hotel, but my door
seemed to be the only one down this hallway. At the end of the
hall, I could make out a railing, and just beyond it, a large
chandelier hung from the ceiling. I took a step forward onto the
soft carpeting and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to pee.
What the hell are you doing?
I crept further out into the
hall, not knowing what I intended to do once I reached the end. As
I reached the middle of the hallway, I looked back toward the
bedroom door and was suddenly overwhelmed with the memory of the
bikers. Immediately I knew I wouldn’t be running away. More than
anything, I just wanted to look around – but I didn’t want to risk
Caleb’s temper any more than I already had. I turned back. I closed
the door behind me, as gently as I had opened it.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”
said a husky male voice.

“I wasn’t looking for anything,” I replied,
my anger gave my words a harder edge than I intended, and it belied
my surge of fear at being caught. Caleb sighed. I watched as he
disentangled himself from Celia and rolled over on his side to face
me. Celia groaned and wrapped herself around my pillow and
continued to sleep.

“Come here,” he said softly, but I knew it
wasn’t a request. Conveying a confidence I didn’t have, I crossed
the short distance between us and stood next to the bed.

As I stood there, trying not to let my knees
knock together, he looked me up and down, and from that alone my
entire body grew uncomfortably warmer. He reached out with one hand
and ran his fingers from my elbow to my wrist. He pressed his lips
to the inside of my wrist.

“You slapped me,” He said. He looked up into
my eyes and I swallowed.

“Yes, Master,” I whispered. I hoped
addressing him properly would please him. He intertwined his
fingers with mine, and pressed firmly. I winced.

“Before you, I’ve never known a woman to get
away with that.” Tears fell from my eyes. I couldn’t pretend to be
brave.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” I sputtered.

He looked at me calmly, with a smile playing
across his lips. “Well, it wouldn’t take much would it? You’re
already broken as it is. It wouldn’t be any fun for me.” I let out
a deep breath I didn’t know I was holding, and took another.
“Still, I can’t exactly let it go.” Without thinking about it I
squeezed his hand when he spoke. “What are you bracing for?” he
asked. “I already told you I’m not going to hurt you.”

Inexplicably, sobs caught in my chest, but I
managed to respond, “You’ve already hurt me, Caleb. Why would you
do that? Why?”

He was silent for a long moment before he
responded, “This thing between us…it has to stop. I don’t like it.
I’ve tried to make this easier for you, as ridiculous as it sounds.
I can’t keep you, Livvie. Stop trying to make me.”

My heart clenched in my chest at the sound
of my name. He remembered. I hadn’t imagined those moments with
him. They were as real to him as they had been to me and it was
almost more than I could bear. Everything he had said was true. I’d
been trying to manipulate him since the night he’d told me the
truth. The night I realized I was nothing more than an object, a
thing to be bought and traded.

I had no guilt over it, either. Caleb wanted
me to survive and I was trying my fucking best. I’d chosen my path
and carefully placed my moments. Caleb was my way out of this whole
thing and I was set on doing all I could to bend him to my side.
What I had never anticipated was the way my feelings would
develop.

“I don’t know what to say,” I finally
replied.

He smiled sadly, “Don’t say anything. I
shouldn’t have. Just get in the bed.”

A look of shock crossed over my face. “I’m
not getting in there with the both of you,” I said
matter-of-factly. “Besides, you’re naked.”

His laugh was a low rumble that made me feel
like a petulant child, but I didn’t care. He sat up, and the sheet
did a bad job of covering his thickening penis. He put his hands on
my hips and gently urged me forward. Heat spread through my belly
and I looked up past his head, my eyes landing on Celia’s sleeping
form.

His breath touched my belly through the thin
fabric of my nightgown as he spoke, “I’m not asking, Kitten.” I was
about to say I didn’t feel right sleeping next to Celia when his
hot mouth closed over my puckered nipple, and an unbelievably hard
tug inside me quickened my pulse and made the lips of my sex
swell.

He let go quickly, but the damage was
already done. The residual wetness left by his mouth continued
hardening my nipple as the air touched it. My breath was seemingly
harder to come by, but Caleb seemed calm and in control.

“Now,” he said over the roar in my ears,
“are you going to get in this bed and go to sleep, or are you going
to give me a reason to torture you in a thousand different ways
that don’t hurt?” A whine escaped my throat.

He coaxed me toward the bed, but I dug in my
heels and gently refused to move. Caleb sighed deeply.

I knew I was testing his patience, but I
wouldn’t relent. “Please make her go,” I whispered.

“Wouldn’t that be mean?” he teased me from
previous conversation, and I smiled in spite of myself. He regarded
me for a few moments, then rolled his eyes playfully and yelled,
“Celia!” I jumped. Celia woke with a start and rubbed the sleep
from her eyes.

“
S
í,
Se
ñor
?”
she said, alarmed
and groggy.

“Go back to your room.”

Chapter
Thirteen

Matthew sat in silence for a few minutes,
trying to soak in the story. What could he say? There wasn’t
necessarily any relevant information to be gleaned, but he was
beginning to become curious about Caleb and the kind of man he
was.

Caleb seemed like a very conflicted person.
To Matthew’s thinking, the conflict didn’t excuse Caleb’s actions,
but as he sat in Olivia’s hospital room struggling not to notice
the throb of arousal he experienced every time he shifted in his
seat and thought of Sloan, he wondered if he didn’t share something
in common with the man. It wasn’t a comforting thought by any
stretch, but there it was. He was curious.

As Olivia spoke, he recalled their earlier
conversation about whether or not monsters were born or made. He
believed they were made, as did Olivia, but Matthew had trouble
with the notion that cruelty, justified further cruelty. Or a lust
for it.

In Matthew’s case, he felt he should be able
to subjugate his need to be humiliated and dominated sexually. His
desires were a remnant from a childhood spent taking care of a weak
woman and getting verbally and physically abused by an even weaker
man. That Matthew had become a strong-willed and self-assured
person was a blessing, but his need to be abused from time to time
was a curse he struggled with in every romantic relationship he
had.

Matthew wondered if the situation were
reversed between him and Caleb, if it would have made any
difference in how either of them turned out. Would Matthew have
been a kidnapper? Would Caleb feel the need to submit instead of
dominate? Or were certain aspects of a person’s personality
ingrained in them from birth?

A loud ping from his laptop snapped Matthew
out of his thoughts. He received an email from Agent Williams. It
was probably rude to open it, but he was glad for the distraction
and the information could be important.

“Sorry. I have to read this email,” Matthew
said.

“Can you tell me what it says?” Olivia
asked. She seemed to also need a distraction.

Matthew’s finger scrolled through the email.
His brows furrowed as he went over bits of information, his mouth
quirking in different expressions depending on what he read. “I
suppose. It might be helpful if you can tell me anything new.”

“I can try,” she said and Matthew realized
he believed her. He still strongly believed Olivia was suffering
from Stockholm’s Syndrome, but it didn’t mean she was trying to
stop him from doing his job.

“Demitri Balk has gone through a lot of
trouble to cover up his past. According to this, prior to 1988 he
was known as Vladek Rostrovich. Allegedly, he was a small-time arms
dealer out of Russia,” said Matthew.

“He disappears after ’88, and then reappears
as Balk in ’98. In 2002, his company goes public and he becomes a
billionaire seemingly overnight.”

“What does that mean?” asked Olivia.

“I’m not sure,” Matthew said. He obviously
couldn’t give Olivia all the details. She didn’t have a need to
know. However, he hoped giving her some of the information might
lead her toward divulging information she was either keeping or
didn’t know she had.

Given the information, Matthew surmised that
Pakistan, like many of their neighbors, bought weapons from Russian
arms dealers in the 1980’s. It was the most plausible explanation
for Rafiq and Vladek crossing paths. For a moment, Matthew wondered
if the bad blood between Rafiq and Vladek revolved around the sale
of weapons to enemies of Pakistan, but that didn’t seem like the
kind of thing that would justify a vendetta spanning twenty years.
It had to be personal.

At least now, Matthew had a timeframe for
when it might have occurred. Also, given the fact Olivia had been
kidnapped for the purpose of human trafficking and not drugs or
guns, there was a large piece missing from the puzzle.

“Did Caleb ever mention why he and Rafiq
want Balk dead?”

Olivia cocked her head slightly to one side
and looked up toward the ceiling as if answers were written there.
Matthew recognized the behavior of someone trying to remember
something. He found it interesting how people, with all their
differences, were still inherently the same. Olivia finally
responded, “Yes and no. The night Caleb told me he was…,” she
suddenly looked sad.

“What is it?” Matthew asked.

“I think you’re right, Reed,” she said, her
voice rough at the edges. “I’m going to need a lot of therapy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and meant it.

“Me too,” she whispered and took a deep
breath. “Anyway, the night he told me he planned on selling me, he
said something about Balk needing to pay for what he did to Rafiq’s
mother and sister. Apparently, he did something to Caleb, too. I
remember because later I wondered if that’s where Caleb got the
scars on his back.”

“Is it?” Matthew asked.

She looked away, getting choked up again.
“No. He said it was some guy named Narweh. He wouldn’t tell me
much; just that he was the one who whipped him when he was younger.
Caleb said his life was hell until…Rafiq rescued him.”

Matthew wrote everything down, hoping all
the pieces would fall into place for him soon. Every piece was
valuable because he knew alone they meant nothing, but together
they would lead him toward realizing the whole picture. That’s what
he loved. It was all he lived for: solving the puzzle.

“Did he say anything else about this,
Narweh, person? Do you have a timeframe?”

Olivia shook her head, “Sorry, no. I know
Caleb was younger than me when it happened.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. We…we became very close by the
end, Reed. Last time you were here and Sloan had just left, I was
scared that maybe I made it up. I was scared that what I feel for
Caleb was my way of surviving. Then I think about all the things he
told me. I think about the way everyone gave him shit for being
soft with me, and I…. I just don’t think I made it up. It’s real.
The way I feel for him is real.” Olivia said.

“I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”
Matthew shrugged, “My job is the case, not to determine if your
feelings are real. Not to say your feelings are irrelevant, it’s
just no one can answer that question but you.”

“I know, Reed. I just….”

“I know, Miss Ruiz,” said Matthew. “When
this whole thing started, my job was to get your statement and
bring someone to justice. It’s become something much larger than I,
or my superiors had anticipated. I don’t want to hurt your
feelings, or discount them, but the bottom-line is: Someone has to
stop that auction. Everything else? I’m not sure,” Matthew said. He
had done a lot of talking with Olivia over the last week. He’d
learned a few things, but whether or not it would lead him to the
auction was still unclear.

Luckily, he had a team working on it
now.

“Why don’t you tell me the rest?”

Olivia was staring off again, but she
nodded. “Yeah, why not”