Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) (31 page)

I didn’t dare
say anything, only lay on my back waiting permission to rise.

“Good.”

I sucked in a breath, feeling my bared breasts press into the rolled-down cups.

His gaze cruised down me. “Stay there until I say to move.”

I could have fought but like him at the House, I needed to conserve my energy. He’d once told me he hadn’t fought back because it was clearly useless, a waste of energy, and likely to get him hurt when he needed to be healthy. Two could play at that.

I could play a waiting game.

The haze from the caning was fading, though it left me prone to despair.

The last possibility
for escape, the one I tried not to think about, was to wait until we left the island, even if it meant being his
kitty
, his bed toy, and his precious piñata. But this last option for escape scared me, because already I could see the break between the old me and the one here, now, on this island. I’d changed.

“
Mmm. I like seeing you down there. You are showing me stuff about myself I never knew was there. I don’t think I could
fokken
well ever go back after having you. There’s something pure about owning someone...or you, at least.”

His words seemed to echo my own thoughts and I lay there a little shocked. He sat down and put his feet on my side and smiled, as if to say,
you are worthy of being my footrest
.

Confusion
– that was the summation of my thoughts.

Resisting wasn’t worth it?
The problem was I could see the allure of being his toy taking me over if I left it unchecked. Kneeling, not speaking, obeying, it dulled the mind. I had to keep myself thinking. What was his motto? I’d have my own.

No giving in.
Yes.

No giving in
could sustain me until I found my way out. I’d be meek, pliable, his, I’d kneel and be his footrest but I’d still remember to be me. I’d lull him into a state of vulnerability.

Ano
ther option came to me. The rifle I’d seen him carry into the hut. I could kill him if I got hold of it. Could I kill? Maybe. But did I want to?

“What are you thinking?” He peered down at me.

“Nothing, Sir.” I blinked innocently.

“
Ja.
That’s good then. I believe the sun rises in the west too. Sit up and kneel. I’m getting our dinner.”

Wary, I did so. When he returned with two bowls of soup and
some bread then put a bowl down before me, and the other on an upturned box next to his chair, I wasn’t sure what he intended.

“Eat.”

No spoon? I looked from the bowl to his hand and the bread he carried.

The chair creaked as he sat.
Then he leaned sideways to tip up the chair and free my leash from the leg.

“
Go on. I want to see you lick it up. Be good. When you want bread, nudge my hand.” He smiled but there was a dark glitter in his eyes, as if he expected a challenge.

Fuck you,
Pieter
. Another demeaning task.
I see what you’re doing, sir.

No giving in.

I counted to ten. I could do this.

Then I crept forward and began to lap. I was hungry and my resources needed to be kept in reserve, plus my butt hurt, he was big, and I had zero c
hance of winning a level fight. Licking up soup took time and he finished before I did. To get him to give me the bread I found I had to butt his hand with my nose, but then I got a smile and a pat on my head, and once a kiss. It was so humiliating that it made my toes curl, but in my affection-starved universe, where once upon a time the best I’d had was a peck on the cheek or hug from an aunt or my friend, this was alluring in a weird way.

I could feel the effects inside me, warming me, and it was so scary.

I didn’t like this, just like I didn’t like pain. I stared at my empty bowl and called BS on my logic.

While I was wrestling with my weirdness, he
traipsed inside and returned with a stapled-together sheaf of pages then sat down and leafed through them.

Reading the words on the flipped back front page wasn’t easy.

“Time for your lesson.”

I whipped my gaze to his face.
Lesson
sounded bad.

“Jazmine
Foulkes. Freelance journalist. As you can see, I printed out some information before I left. Very interesting. You are a clever girl. Want to tell me how you really got into this mess you’re in? You can talk.”

Then he turned it around and showed me page one where a clear photograph of me was featured, smiling for the camera, windswept hair but perfectly and fashionably dressed in a suit.

Is that really me?

His hand
under my chin tilted my head. Then he said in that gravel-deep voice, “That’s you, a gorgeous, smart woman, but I like you better how you are here. With my cum on you, mostly naked, and that pretty, tear-stained face.”

God.
Those words should have repulsed me but they didn’t. They stirred me. My pussy clenched.

I’m smart, remember?
Maybe I needed that too, like armor against these foreign emotions he was evoking in me. With those brown eyes of his observing me, I gathered my scattered thoughts.

I used to be a writer. Write something. Be intelligent.

A headline emerged:
Jazmine Foulkes kidnapped and enslaved by virtue of her weird naive emotions and being made to eat off the floor.

Ugh.

“What are you thinking? Hmm.” He tidied my hair, tucking it behind my ear.

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Nothing? Again? Do I have to cane you? Or spank you? I expect an answer when I ask you.”

A
nd now he was trailing his fingers over my lips like they were some forbidden fruit he’d discovered. I shuddered when he dipped one inside my mouth, left it there for a few heartbeats, then pulled it out, but I knew I’d dampened.

The nonchalant ownership of my mouth...

Mindfuck alert
. Inhale. Exhale. I cleared my throat. “I was imagining the headlines about me.”

“Sir,
” he prompted.

“Um. Sir.”

“Why did you lie to me about your name and who you were?”

I frowned, but he was playing with my hair and it
mesmerized me in a way only my hairdresser had ever managed. “I thought it would make you...” Why had I?

“What?”

“Hate me? No, it wasn’t that. I was worried because I didn’t trust you with my real name, with knowing how to find me if I ever escaped. Sir.”
Escaped
, my favorite word.

“Trust. I thought so. I never really believed you were a librarian but you know what?”

I shook my head, barely catching myself before I sighed as he kept on combing my hair and patiently untangling knots. So tired...

“It still hurt when I found out this was who you were.” He pointed with his chin at the paper. “I lost a finger for you, killed for you, kept you alive when someone else would’ve pa
ndered to Gregor. You repaid me with a lie. Do you think that was good,
meisie
?”

Oh, man, play with my guilt w
hy don’t you.
Slowly, I shook my head. “I did it because I was afraid of you.”

H
is smile was a stark one. “And you were right. Why did that man want to kill you? What did you do to his son?”

When I tried to duck my
head he waggled my chin from side to side. “No. You’re not allowed to look away. Tell me it all.”

Fuck.
I sucked in my lip. I wasn’t sure what was on those pages, so I took a deep breath, and said it straight. “His son was my boyfriend, only I found out he was married, with a wife and daughter.”
Who must’ve died. How much should I say?
“He was odd. We never had sex.”

Especially n
ot like you make me. I never even knew anyone could really, outside of porn fantasies, have sex like this.

W
ith him holding my face, I had an urge to squirm. “He used to tell me all these secrets. Including that he was ripping off the government for millions through his plastic surgery practice.” I wound down. “And that was it.”

“If that’s not all, my girl, I will hurt you.”

He couldn’t know. Couldn’t. But he kept staring...and staring. I should tell. My mind filled with crazy thoughts...

And
I broke.

“He had a fetish for my underwear and when
I wrote up the story, I mentioned his kinks too.” To embarrass him, for lying to me, the bastard. “Last I heard, he was being charged and going to be arrested.”

“
Yeah. He suicided and killed his family on a Monday. They kept it covered up according to the news until three days later. You were taken on the Wednesday.”

“Oh.”

“If I’d known,” he set his mouth in a line, “It would’ve made no difference. Except I would’ve thought you callous. It was the sexual allegations that made him suicide. He wrote a note, and a journalist as nasty as you leaked it in a story.”

As nasty as me.

My heart thumped slowly, painfully. Everyone likes to think they are good deep down. Making someone want to die, and to kill their family... I’d heard what his father had said, and swept it from my memory. Because I didn’t want to be that person. Besides, what had been done to me had cancelled it out, right?

Wrong.

“I never wanted him to die. Or his kid or his wife. I was just doing what I do.”

It was never worth th
is. I was stupid. Vengeful. I’d hated that I was only some bit on the side for him, and not even worthy of intimacy. Being scared of sex had only made me think about it incessantly.

“
You were bad and you lied to me about it. Were you planning to write a story about me?”

I did not want to answer this. Ever.
I’d thought he’d plumbed the depths of my soul with what he’d already made me confront. He had no lie detector – not that they worked. But people made the best readers of body language. As an ex-cop, he’d know that. I was afraid and the fear was overriding my instincts. In a way, lying had been my life. The best way to get ahead. It always was.

“Pieter, I mean Sir. I...”

My forehead was pounding from the strain of trying to second guess him.

“
Tell me. From the length of time you’ve taken to reply, I already know.”

I slumped.
“I was, at first, but then I wasn’t.”

Pieter snorted. “And when did you change your mind?”

Late. Way late. Shit.

“In the taxi. After you found me
, I felt guilty.” And how silly was that, considering what had happened since?

“Uh-huh.”

Then he sat, with his hands between his knees, obviously thinking. I waited. I could do nothing else, except wait for his judgment.

A
fter a while, he focused on me again. “What you did was terrible, and so was what his father ordered done. But you’ve paid. Too much if anything. As for me, I’ve already punished you for lying.

“
From now on, every day, you’re going to tell me more about yourself, until I have all of you, up here.” He tapped his head then he tugged on the leash and beckoned me to climb into his lap.

Oh, that appealed. I always did like his hugs, once I had them. Though it’d taken a while to see that.

He tugged again.

Feeling like a penitent soul pardoned by a benign king, I climbed up
and rearranged my legs when he urged me to, until I curled there. The similarities to a cat struck me yet again, especially when he began petting me.

For a few minutes I tensed. I was
damn well never going to purr. Then the stroking wore me down and I breathed out, relaxed into him, and closed my eyes. Exhaustion flooded in.

When he spoke again, I was half asleep.

“There,
meisie
. Consider this your new life and today the first day of that life.

My last hazy, crazy thoughts drifted in like clouds on a
warm summer’s day. I’d always been the one who looked in on other’s exciting lives but now I was the one looking out. Eyes closed, I snuggled up to the warm man under me. Funny how good this felt.