Wicked Ways (Dark Hearts Book 1) (11 page)

Zorie

Nearly midday and cars were parked up and down the street near Reuben’s stonework-and-white, modern two-and-a-bit-story mansion. As I left the car and shut the door behind me, people waved from the rooftop, with flutes of wine in hand. Laughter filtered down.

How many people were here?

The thought of anyone else seeing my degradation was horrifying. Except, I wasn’t letting that happen, was I?

The heaviness of my handbag spoke volumes as I neared the front door.

Dirke opened it and stripped me with his eyes, as per usual. “Into the study, to the right. Remember it?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Take off all your clothes and put on what’s there, then go up to Reuben. Top story, above the birdcage.”

At my hesitation he grinned. “Don’t worry. Someone else has that privilege today. You can watch her.” I turned and had taken two steps when he added, “Put your hair in pigtails! Orders!”

His laugh followed me down the hallway. The study was empty and I closed the door with my palm, quietly, leaning against it as I checked out what lay over the chair and on the long glass desk. The outfit was skimpy, as I’d thought it might be – a leather harness, a leather collar with blunt chromed spikes. When I padded over for a closer inspection, I found a dog tag that said
slut
attached to the collar. Plus there was a see-through, pink, baby-doll dress.

A foot-square mirror propped on the desk let me see my apprehensive expression.

Take off all my clothes. That would mean my underwear as well as my skirt and top.

“Damn.” I toed off my shoes and eyed it all again, nibbling my lip. Did the dress go on over the harness? It must.

If I didn’t wear this, I’d never get near him without Dirke spotting me coming out of the study in the wrong clothes. From past experience I knew he had permission from Reuben to chastise me.

I donned the collar then the leather harness, with some difficulty, doing up buckles and cinching things so they fitted. How quaint to be preparing myself for defilement. The collar went round my neck and the harness connected to it by clips at the side of the collar. A mirror helped me figure everything out. Straps circled my waist and my breasts. Two thin straps delved from the waist between my thighs and up again to the back of the waist strap. Silver rings, here and there, would allow for me to be attached to other things.

The baby doll dress, when slipped over the top, barely concealed anything. All the leather was visible as well as the strip of hair on my mound and the dark circles of my areolae.

A swirl of lust washed across me, so unexpected I staggered, and making me instantly wet and my nipples jut out. I closed my eyes, shivering. Reuben had detected me. His use of will was as subtle as a slap in the face compared to Mister Black. I prayed Reuben wasn’t as perceptive as the other man.

There was no way to conceal the gun, unless I took my handbag. If Dirke thought to take it from me he would surely notice the weight. If that happened I was done for.

Courage. I removed the shoulder strap to make the bag less conspicuous and clutched the top of the bag. If I kept it at my side and my arm long, it would look casual. I needed to get close. The man might be drunk already, or something.

“Let’s go,” I whispered to the mirror.

My journey seemed so obvious, and the weapon in the bag so like a snake in my hand, that I waited for discovery all the way as I marched along the hall to the spiral stairs. Up I walked, passing men and women, most of them blatant in their appreciation of my see-through clothes. Laughs, murmured sexual insults, and growls followed me. Two men cornered me in an angle of the stairs just to smirk and lift the baby-doll dress high enough to show my pussy.

“Hey,” I spat. “I’m Reuben’s.”

“We know, slut.” He flicked my dog tag but backed away. The skirt of the dress floated down again. “Off you go. We’ll come watch, later, while he has you fucked.”

Their dark glowers were on me as I turned and began to climb the stairs again.

“Nice fucking ass,” one of them murmured. “All the better to fit two cocks at once.”

“Or three.”

Their laughter made my grip the handbag tighter.

Everyone was in on this. Where did he get these people? None of them were mesmers, I was sure. Being Reuben’s slut for en-masse fucking was not happening today.

If I pulled out a gun, they’d be witnesses though? If I failed and he did something to me, a court of law wouldn’t look kindly on his actions either.

What was I thinking? I was going to shoot him, no, I’d kill him. Fuck the consequences.

Each step I took, as I rose to the level of the roof, summoned ominous, stomach-clenching moments. Through the open, Mediterranean-blue doors I could see his back. He leaned on the edge of the breast-height wall, looking down at whatever festivities were going on in his birdcage garden. Someone getting gangbanged, I guessed from the hoots of guests also looking down, but from the opposite side of the house. To the left a little bridge spanned from this rooftop to theirs. A profusion of small trees and large-leafed plants in pots broke up the lines of the white building.

I took it all in as I stepped onto the paved roof. Shady gazebo to the right, chairs for lounging in, chairs for sitting, a cane-framed blue lounge, and a long, low table with wine bottles and trays of snacks. Men? Only Madoc, over near the footbridge and a truck-sized, hulk of a man standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Reuben. No one looked my way. I set my face, slipped my hand under the cool leather flap, and seated my fingers and thumb around the butt, with my forefinger nestled on the trigger.

If I blew off my foot, so be it. The decocker on the Beretta was off. I only needed to aim, and squeeze, and put all ten shots into Reuben’s back.

The breeze whisped my dress about my thighs and curled between my legs, cooled the light sweat on my brow.

My ears heard nothing but the
shush
of wind and laughter.

Don’t get close. You know...

I knew.

Feet apart, I began to draw the gun from my bag. When the gun was halfway emerged, his
will
smacked into me.

I rocked in place.

In that instant I recognized the bleak pall of failure but also that the man beside Reuben was a mesmer. A strong one.

“You have a problem?” the stranger drawled in a posh British accent that reminded me, poignantly, of Cherie’s boyfriend, Jacob. He didn’t bother to look away from the courtyard spectacle.

“No.” Slowly Reuben turned, locked eyes with me then leaned back and put his elbows and forearms on the stone top behind him.

He looked at ease, while I was desperately frozen and awaiting Armageddon. My heart belatedly began to race, as if trying to catch up with something I’d lost. Myself...

“No. I have this one in hand.”

“Good.”

“Yes.” Reuben smiled. “This was going to be our day of celebration, Zorie. Don’t you know we’re getting married soon? This is our engagement party, and here you are being naughty.”

Zorie

Married? What? He couldn’t do that to me.

Instead of discarding me, he was going to bind me even closer to him?

No!

The more I strived to resist, the more rigid my body became.
Side step
.

I expected him to get me to put down the gun but he only whistled and beckoned Madoc over. His footsteps grew louder and halted somewhere behind and to my left.

Side step.
It was too late. Why bother. Nevertheless, weeping silently, I thought of how pretty the sky was, of cartoons, of the dragonfly that hovered beside me.

My forefinger ached.

My muscles refused to obey. Perhaps because lifting out a gun, aiming, and pulling a trigger was a complex operation. Perhaps, simply because he had me, he had me calibrated somehow, down to my last molecule. And I was way too close.

Giving in was not an option. I struggled, twisting my thoughts every which way, until my eyeballs seemed ready to pop.
Do it. Resist. He must not win.

But then my resistance stretched and stretched and ... something snapped inside of me. It left no barrier, at all, between me and him.

“Stay there, while I think. Put the safety on.” With my thumb, I fumbled for the decocker then shifted it over to the safe positon.

Second by second, the blue eyes of Reuben began to dissect me, breaking me down into little pieces.

The gun seemed there, in my hand, and yet far away. After a minute, two, the metal numbed my fingers. I gasped, and every breath afterward had to be strained in and out through lungs that barely wanted to expand. I’d had asthma and this was as agonizing.

If he wanted to marry me, he wouldn’t do anything terrible, would he? He couldn’t stop me breathing?

The pieces of me seemed to float slowly, ever further apart, until I wasn’t certain if my brain knew the way to my arms or my legs. Soon I’d forget how to talk, how to walk, how to think.

Everything ground down. To a halt.

Black specks rained before my eyes and my head expanded. I swayed, knees weakening.

A touch on my chin had me jerking my head up. “Don’t faint. Remember to breathe, dear girl.” It was Reuben, and he was close enough to kiss my ear, softly, and whisper into it, “How can we all enjoy this if you’re not feeling it and knowing what’s happening?”

My mind cleared and I could think again.

I could hear the footfalls of many people coming nearer, from the direction of the footbridge.

Reuben backed away, his small, evil smile taunting me.

“Show off that fake gun, Zorie.”

Fake? He wanted people to think it a fake?

While I was semiconscious, the bag must have slid off the gun and to the floor, because my handbag lay at my feet. The pistol was by my side, dangling from my hand. I held up, letting the sunlight caress the gun metal. I was a robot, again.

Not all of the party-goers had arrived. There were some still over on the other rooftop, but four men and a woman were here, as well as Madoc, Reuben, and the stranger who was fascinated by the lower cage activities. Two of the men were those who’d passed me on the stairs. All of them wore wolf-like expressions, as well as expensive, carefully selected clothes, cologne, and hair styles – wealthy people with cushy lives, no doubt. Yet here they were, waiting to see what nasty games Reuben would do to me. If they’d grown long, canine teeth I’d not have been shocked.

“Lift up your dress, and show them your pussy, pretty wife to be.”

I shut my eyes, but did what he asked me to, with my left hand, grabbing a fistful of the cloth and lifting it to my waist. When instructed, I took a few steps toward the gazebo and chairs then turned so they could see me better.

Only one woman had come to watch the entertainment. She was with her man, whose waist she clutched. Though her glee was more obvious, I didn’t doubt the men were anticipating something juicy and erotic also.

Reuben couldn’t just marry me without notice. Was he planning some orgy where he did a mock ceremony? Then I realized how twisted my life had become. I’d rather be fucked in public than that he truly marry me. A mock ceremony left me hope of freedom, one day.

“My Zorie has a taste for exhibitionism. She’s going to put on a show. Madoc.” He tossed some metal chain to the man. “Chain her to the lounge then get her to sit on your lap while she shoves that cannon up herself and pulls the trigger a few times.”

The safety was on.
Nothing will happen.

The glitter in his eyes was terrible.

He just wanted to make me wonder how far he might go.

Fake gun? Of course, this was why he’d said that. Using a real gun was illegal and they wouldn’t all be his puppets.

I couldn’t help yelping as Madoc towed me by my hair to the lounge. He attached the chain and ran it from my collar to the nearest timber leg, then made me sit on him.

“Keep your legs open.” He grated that out then slapped my inside thighs to make me obey. Then he wrapped his hand around both my pigtails. “Now, do it. Let me hear you moan as you fuck yourself silly.”

My breathing was crazily torn by then. Scared wasn’t a big enough word.

“Fuck yourself.” Reuben folded his arms. His word and will was all it took.

With my eyes watering and the sky above wobbling, I pulled up the dress and put the muzzle of the gun to my entrance. Though the gun felt huge, I worked it inside an inch before the pain from the metal stretching my tissues made me whine and stop.

Reuben
tsked
. “Keep going. More.”

Their eyes were on me, their ravenous eyes.

At last Reuben relented. The flood of lust, I knew it was his doing, but I half shut my eyes and humped the gun while shoving it into myself, then in some more. This time the small pains only made my eyes roll up. I moaned as Madoc had requested, because I couldn’t stop myself, in between making strange little grunts.

It was big, it was metal, and the gun’s barrel fitted, just. If I twisted it and turned it at the difficult spots, I made myself wetter, lubricating the ride. I hit full depth when the trigger guard bumped my lips, and started fucking myself thoroughly, in then out, then in again, while exquisite sensations blossomed.

I’d come soon. The fucking alone would do it. The metal was grinding on somewhere nice and Reuben was mere feet away. That always worked for me. His presence.

When I hit bottom, I forced the gun in another half inch and writhed on it, making weird noises as I stifled my need for release.

“No coming,” Reuben snapped.

“Not yet.” Madoc wrapped his forearm around beneath my breasts so my tits bulged under the pressure of leather and arm. Then he wrapped his hand over my face and dragged my head back at an angle into his shoulder. The cheap baby doll material rasped over my erect nipples.

“Fuck that’s awesome. Seeing that going up there. He’s never had one of you do this before.” Madoc chuckled. “Shove it all the way in again then pull the trigger.”

That penetrated my maelstrom thoughts.

“Do it,” Madoc commanded.

The safety was on. My heart knocked at my chest, like it hadn’t heard the facts.

“You’re a crazy bastard, Madoc.” Reuben had arrived. He squatted and put his hand over my gun-holding one. I knew him from his scent even though Madoc blinded me with his fingers pressed on my eyes.

The safety was on, wasn’t it? I hadn’t bumped it?

“Let me check the safety.” Reuben’s fingers caressed mine where I reverse-gripped the butt. “Fuck me, it’s on.” His fingers moved and I thought I heard a click. “Now it’s off.”

Fear slithered in with icy tentacles. He wouldn’t... I strained to move away, to let go of the gun. Nothing happened, except I’d bowed up my abdomen, imbedding the gun barrel more firmly.

“No. No.” My whisper was croaky and so quiet no one could have heard.

“You want more?” Reuben smothered my smaller hand in his and squeezed the gun in farther. I was going to split open. The pain made my whimper in staccato breaths. “Much better.”

He was fucking with my head. The safety would be on. Must be.

Just messing with me.

“Do it,” he added. “Come for me. Fuck yourself, pull that trigger, and come.”

Madoc’s palm covered my mouth and nose.

“Please,” I begged past his hand, dragging in paltry amounts of air, but Reuben only planted his hand over my mouth on top of Madoc’s.

Now I couldn’t breathe...

“Do it.”

...couldn’t breathe at all.

The spasms of my pussy forced the gun out an inch. I readjusted my grip.

Lost, frightened, yet aroused.

Reuben’s touch on my face and the sound of his mean-as-fuck voice had brought me to the teetering brink of climax. I arched up onto the gun. I tasted the skin of one of the men’s hands. He wouldn’t kill me. As I shunted the gun to maximum depth, my mouth opened, and I pulled the trigger with my thumb.

The hammer snapped down.

It’d fired, but I was alive.

“Come.”

I exploded into orgasm.

Alive.

My walls spasmed painfully around the captive barrel. My thighs tightened as I bucked on the metal, holding the gun in there, rammed in, because I needed it so much, needed it impaling me. A violent depraved fuck yet, in the worst of ways, a fuck I wanted.

I was making myself his toy, like never before, with everyone watching my abasement.

My ecstatic noises were mostly silenced by the men’s hands on my face.

They let me go. They took their hands away.

Chest heaving, I slid sideways, until stopped by Madoc’s arm.

The gun fired. It fired.
He’d removed the bullets. When? Muddled, I couldn’t figure it.

Lying there in his lap, recovering, with my eyes still shut, I expected them to flip me over and fuck me next, or to get the other men to do so.

Instead, Reuben only laughed.

“You can stay there with that in you until I say you can take it out. None of you touch her,” he added when he rose to his feet. “Look, but don’t touch.”

They left me then, sitting on the floor but chained to the lounge, with the gun inside me. I could feel my wetness under my ass, cooling the tiles.

“What an obedient little bitch she is.” The woman sounded amused.

I prayed nothing inside me would tear, when he let me pull it out.

At least he hadn’t beaten me. I wrapped my arm around the leg of the lounge and sniffled. I’d been so sure Reuben would do that if he caught me. I’d gotten off easy.

Every so often, the gun slipped out a little, being pushed by my pussy’s natural rhythms. If I left it alone, it’d fall out. Before that could happen, Reuben returned and made me open my legs so he could inspect me.

“If that comes out, I’ll do what I wasn’t going to and let them all have you. Keep it in there until I say.”

After one shaky inhale, I reached down, and pushed the gun back inside. I wrapped my thighs over it, to be sure.

“Good. In a week, we can get married. Two weeks since you signed the declaration of intent to marry.”

“What? I never –”

“You did. Last time I had you. Forgotten? Luckily I have a good memory. I’m going to keep you until the day you die. You’re so good at doing what you’re told to. Aren’t you?”

I nodded. I was.

Then he slapped my ass and walked away to party some more.

That was when I noticed the pile of gleaming bullets in the cognac glass left standing on the tiles.