Wolfe (8 page)

Damian

Their UAV sitting in the hands of the park ranger was a minus, but Damian dismissed disappointment with a twitch of his mouth and pretended to listen to the lecture – they had another drone in the boot anyway.

“You folks have violated a regulation we’ve had in force since last year. Be best if you check up on such things next time. It’d avoid this happening.” He slammed the trunk of his car. “You understand you won’t be getting it back?”

He and Guera nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he added. Always best to placate authorities and act average. “Sorry. I really am.”

“Just sign here to acknowledge that the matter has been explained to you and you accept the penalty and we’re all good.” The ranger offered the clipboard with the form on it, all filled out with date, their car registration, and their fake names. Then he waited, hands on hips, while Damian signed.

“Thank you, ma’am, sir. Have a good day, won’t you.”

“We sure will.” Damian kept the smile on his face until the ranger had disappeared up the road.

“Nice man,” Guera mused.

“He was. We didn’t even have to shoot him.”

“As if we would.” Guera mock punched his arm. “So. We drive on for a bit longer before starting up drone two?”

“I think so. That seems wise. Getting caught twice would look bad. I’m not sure how he found us either.”

“Well, we have their general direction as they exited this area. The highway. Going west. I wish we knew what he might be aiming for there. With luck and the tracer, we can pick them up again.”

“Yes. Yes. I hope so.” He rubbed his chin. “I’m going to ask for clarification. Since he’s driving, he may have something from his past making him want to go that way.”

“Great idea. And now that you mention it, your turn to drive.”

When they reached their Ford, he grabbed Guera and pinned her to the door, squeezing her with his body, then leaning in to capture her mouth.

The kiss went on for some time before they came up for air.

“Damnation.” She exhaled then reached up to put her thumb to his mouth. Damian sucked it in and bit down.

“Owww. Now you are
really
turning me on.” She slowly extracted her thumb from his teeth, giggling as she did so. “I wish we had time to go make love.”

“Not yet.” Damian stepped away, though he took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Soon. Once we catch him.”

“We must be quick then.” She tossed him the keys.

Kiara

When I shifted the sleeping bag off my face, morning shone, full blast, into my eyes.

Two wild turkeys were rustling about in the undergrowth at the edge of this clearing, scratching up dirt and leaves, and Wolfe was...

I peeked around, turned over, and found him munching on a bowl of cereal. Milk splattered in a messy waterfall into his bowl with every spoonful he lifted and he chewed with his mouth open half the time.

I wrinkled my nose and muttered, “Manners,” before I could put a brake on my tongue, before I remembered last night and why my back and butt hurt. Why everywhere hurt if I sat on it.

He was glaring. Had he heard?

I tried to cover up with the sleeping bag again but then did a suicidal reverse backflip on that idea. Instead, I threw off the bag and stood, though a few moves had me wincing. His glare changed into an appreciative, slow cruise down my body.

Of course. I was naked.

Damn.
I shut my eyes for a second then opened them.

He wasn’t prowling for me and that was intelligence in his eyes. This was like the gunfight at the OK Corral. Neither of us moved and he recommenced munching on and swallowing cereal. Had he forgotten last night? It was possible. I couldn’t know unless I asked, and I sure wasn’t doing that.

It might be best if I simply acted as if nothing had happened.

“Morning.” I turned and headed for the bag with my clothes.

It wasn’t until I had my hands full of bra, panties, and a skirt and top that he spoke.

“Come here.”

Well fuck. That spoiled it. After one somewhat shaky breath, I headed over, clothes clutched in hand.

“What?” I halted a few feet away from where he sat on the log, and cocked an eyebrow.

No way was I subjugating myself to him. I didn’t care what he did. Had done.

A memory flashed in of his hands all over me while I came, of my body not my own, tied up and at his will. It had been...what? Demeaning? Yes, but also, there’d been the rush of a climax tempered with pain singing across my body in a thousand, amazing places.

I swayed and came back to the present.

“How are you?” He put the bowl of cereal on the ground and leaned forward, his focus moving from place to place on my body even as his hands reached for me. “Bruises.” He pressed here and there, on breast, stomach, and thigh. I hissed and flinched though he held me in place. “Marks.” The tone of his voice was almost reverent. “Turn.”

I turned and again felt the brush of his skin on mine. Surprisingly, he was gentle. When he rested one hand on my hip while the other hand journeyed, palm down, over my ass, one cheek then the other, my breathing deepened – my body reacting without my damn permission.

It was...nice, having him do this. I was a project he oversaw, a test bunny, but more personal than that, much more personal. I held my breath when he slid that palm between my legs and left it there, cupped over my pussy. The world drifted.

“I don’t remember everything I did to you last night. It wasn’t moral or legal, but I’m not sorry.”

Was this surprising? No.

I swallowed as he continued in that low, deliberate tone. There were reactions I should be having. Tears to shed. Indignant, angry words. But, as it was, with him holding me, nothing was worth doing because it would interrupt the intense sensation he’d conjured. In that moment, I belonged to him and everything else could wait.

In the blurred distance, the turkeys kept doing what turkeys did. The sun shone through the trees and, as leaves and branches shook in a breeze, the light flickered, shifted, bright as the purest gemstones.

“Not because you deserved it,” he continued in that soothing monotone. “Because I liked doing it – making you like something you’d never ask for in a million years. Would you?”

His thumb delved along my slit then he casually popped it inside. My toes curled the instant he entered me and I couldn’t help sighing.

It was equally immoral to like this. Had he asked a question? I wasn’t facing him so I would just refuse to answer.

“That was a real question.”

Crap.

“Would I?”

“Ask for it.”

“No.”

“No? I’ll have to change that.” After working his thumb in and out enough times that my pussy was making embarrassing wet sounds and I was biting my lip to stop myself squeaking, he pulled it out.

His wet thumb made a cooling trail up my backbone to end at my neck, where he drew a line across the base. Something scratched me there. “What’s this, Kiara?”

His voice seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well. I summoned my mind, blinking and trying to figure out what he meant. I put my hand to my neck. There was something circling my neck.

“Grass?” I frowned.

“Yes. Did I put it there?” He used his hands to turn me to face him.

It felt like the lightest of necklets, a twined chain of grass leaves and seed heads. Had he? If so, I’d been asleep.

I shrugged.

The corner of his mouth sneaked upward. Amusement lines surrounded his blue eyes. “Guess I did. Keep it there. Until it falls off.”

Huh.
I shrugged again.

“Say yes.” He pinched my clit between finger and thumb.

Startled, blitzed into arousal, I stared open-mouthed. He increased the pressure and I blurted, “Yes!”

“Good girl. Go get dressed. We’re leaving in ten.”

What? I hadn’t had time to eat. We had to pack...and what was this? Was I organizing a family picnic? Who gave a flying fuck if we were late leaving? I slouched toward the sleeping bag area and began slowly dressing.

“Ten,” he repeated. “Or else.”

I looked at him. The
or else
had made my nipples perk up and a chill chase through my body.

Wait, he could have just made this a true order. Or was that too easy? He had preferences, as he’d said about last night, such as the application of sticks and other things I hadn’t even seen –

“I could’ve made everything hurt more, much more, if I’d wanted to.”

Mind reader.

I hurried to dress.

* * * * *

We wound our way through the forest then out the other side, heading west, from the direction of the dawn.

I stared out the window, at the vehicles passing, at my toenails, and I wondered if I should paint them...if I survived.

“Where are we going?”

“The Iron Range area, Minnesota. I have a friend there.”

“Ahh.” Trees and farmland flowed past my window. The day was overcast but bright enough to make the swathes of dandelions by the roadside seem yellow enough to pop. “You did say that.”

I snuggled into the angle of door and seat and eyed him, dubiously. Every bounce of the car made me ache. Lucky it was a BMW with good suspension.

Staying quiet and ignorant might’ve been wise, but look at me – agreeing to be a spy in the USA just so I could get back here. Clearly, wise wasn’t a big part of my make-up.

How long ago had this friend of Wolfe’s lived there? I thought of asking, but he likely wouldn’t know. Besides, being his captive didn’t mean helping him by encouraging him to remember. A nurse, yes, but not now.

Unless he ordered me too.

Yeah, that.

Don’t run away again. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like.
That one was so vague I could maybe dodge it, if I thought it through? Or was it just some bone-deep understanding of the meaning of his words? In which case, I was up creek minus paddle.

I had this horrible urge to ask him very pointed questions, though. He’d made me
feel
things last night... I had to know.

I should hold my tongue.

“Why’d you hit me last night?” There. Asked it anyway.

In trepidation, I waited.

He kept his concentration on the highway.

“I like it.”

“So you said.”

“That’s not enough?”

The bastard was smiling and here I was squirming over asking a question and I couldn’t even figure out why I’d had to ask it.

“No.”

“I like it. I think...I’ve always liked it. But only if the lady also wants it.”

What? Well, that ruled out –

“Did you like it?”

This being new...

Did
I
like it?

I blinked, thinking furiously. “You know this doesn’t make for a sensible answer. I guess I did...but only because you made me.”

“You liked it.” Finally, he glanced at me. “And do you want more?”

Now I knew why I should never ever have touched this topic. My throat felt filled with glue, yet I knew that in a few damning seconds I’d be answering.

He just waited and the pressure of that question built.

If I said yes, what did it mean? Still, he could compel me to do anything. So my feelings meant nothing.

Really.

I swallowed down that gluey chunk of squeamishness, and despite the nausea saying these next words brought on, I uttered a “Yes.”

The car purred onward and neither of us spoke. Was he letting me stew on my answer, or had he lost interest? I wouldn’t look his way and find out.

The roadside flowers got bucket loads of attention.

We stopped that night at a motel, after Wolfe reconnoitered and found out the receptionist was susceptible to his control. No sign-ins, no payment exchanged hands, nothing. When we left, they’d clean our room and it would be as if we’d never been here at all. How was anyone going to find me? I’d tried not to fret but I wasn’t superwoman.

I could end up dead. Wolfe wasn’t entirely sane. Okay, worse, at times he was barely human.

The TV had showed a short, news story of a missing patient, Wolfe, and the nurse who seemed to have kidnapped him – me. If I could’ve simply walked into the local restaurant attached to this motel, I could’ve been free of Wolfe.

He’d forbidden me to run and that was it.

Stuck here, with him, for one more night.

With two single beds. I rolled onto my stomach and bunched the pillow under my chin and chest, shut my eyes. I’d managed to get a partial dose into him with the take-out he’d had brought to us, so I wasn’t concerned about him going nuts, not tonight.

What if I managed a heavy dose and made him sink into an Andy-type status? Would that give me leave to escape? He’d implied some orders would last and last. I should try it.

I didn’t owe him. With all the evidence on my body, the bruises and scratches, they’d prosecute him not me.

The bed sank at the edge and I realized Wolfe was here and he’d put his knee on the bed, plus most of his body weight. When he pulled the sheet off my lower back then rolled my panties down to the top of my thighs, dread and anticipation arrived, in equal proportions.

Equal.
Fuck.

“Want this?” His hand rested on my ass – such a large, male hand, weighty with the promise of sex, and I swear I could smell his presence.

I stayed with my eyes buried in the pillow and my arms. Maybe I was crazy too.

A
yes
would set off the avalanche. Saying no would be a lie and I could already feel the resistance of speaking a falsehood waiting in my throat.

I couldn’t lie, but would my answer be mine, or one he’d subtly arranged?

I didn’t know.

And I didn’t
really
care. How easily I betrayed myself. There was a halfway answer that I could use.

“Maybe,” I said softly, kind of hoping he’d not hear me.

“Maybe?”

He leaned in and sank his teeth into my ass then two fingers into my pussy.

“Fuck!” I gripped the pillow tighter.

The unrelenting pain blasted away my doubts, leaving me stuck in the now, where a man called Wolfe was appropriating my body to use how he wanted to. He hooked his fingers deeper and used them to lift my lower body then drop me again to the bed.

Stunned, I sobbed, almost,
almost
ready to spread my legs and beg.

“Answer properly.” This time his tone was dead mean.

I panted into the pillow then threw myself into his path by blurting, “Yes!” I prayed he’d not hurt me too much. “Yes.”

Not trust, just prayer. I didn’t know if I could ever trust him.

“Good.”

By the time I came, I had several new, throbbing teeth marks all over my ass and back. Some, I feared might be bleeding. But when he sank his cock into me, I merely held onto the sheets and suffered, and enjoyed the ride.

He dragged the beds together afterward and wrapped me in his body, while I stayed sprawled in limbo, across most of my own bed. Breathing, just breathing. How bizarre this was.