Текст книги "The Swan and the Jackal"
Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
“I’ll take my chances with the dumpster,” I hear her say and I grin with my back turned.
I turn to face her, my hands buried in my pockets. She’s wearing a long coat, too, with a faux fur-lined hood draped around her dark hair where loose strands push against her face by the wind.
She is quite beautiful.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I say matter-of-factly.
She smiles, breaking a little of the sexual tension for the sake of conversation. “You’re really…blunt.”
I shrug and gently purse my lips.
“I guess I am.” I smile faint and close-lipped, offering my hand to her.
She smiles back and places her fingers into mine.
Chapter Fifteen
Fredrik
We’re at my house after a ten minute drive. Gwen talks a lot. Maybe she’s just nervous after getting into a car late at night with a man she doesn’t know, but I couldn’t care less what she has to say or what she might be thinking. I brought her here for one thing and it isn’t conversation.
“Wow, this is a nice house,” she says when she steps through the doorway. “From the outside, I never expected it to look so…expensive.” She looks back at me with dollar signs in her eyes as I pull her coat off from behind. “Not that the outside looks bad, it’s just…well, very different.” She smiles.
I don’t respond to the mating ritual. Already this is beginning to feel like the start of a dating relationship—even if it’s just with my money. And I don’t date. In fact, I don’t do ‘normal’. This is very awkward for me.
I wish she’d just stop talking.
I needed a house under the radar to make it more difficult to be found by the Order. So, I chose an old, small brick house and redesigned the inside to fit my expensive lifestyle. But the large basement, it got the most treatment. I wanted Cassia to feel safe in my home…despite the imprisonment.
I pull both of my coats off and break apart the buttons of my dress shirt. Gwen watches me with vaguely concealed lust in her eyes, and a little concern, which won’t go away until she’s sure I only brought her here for sex.
“How long have you lived here?”
Kill me now.
“Take off your boots,” I say, just to derail the pointless chit-chat.
“Huh?”
I tilt my head slightly to one side.
“I said take off your boots.” My standard expression never falters.
Gwen’s eyes grow a little wider. She bites down on her bottom lip again.
I pull my shirt off and drape it over the back of the nearby leather chair.
Finally, to ease her fears and get this night underway, I lean in toward her mouth and say, “I won’t force you to stay”—I graze her lips and slip my hand up the bottom of her skirt. She gasps—“but if you’re going to stay, you’re going to do whatever I tell you to do. Is that understood?” My middle finger presses between her nether lips over the top of her wet panties. A small moan vibrates from her lips into mine as I slip my tongue into her mouth. Breathing in deeply, I kiss her with predatory intent and when I pull away, it takes a moment longer than it should for her to open her eyes again.
“Now take off your boots,” I repeat.
She steps out of them without reluctance this time, and then her close-lipped mouth turns up at the corners seductively as she waits for my next command. But what I really want her to do is to tell me to go fuck myself. I want her to be defiant and aggressive, just like Seraphina often was. I want her to hit me, but still want me to despoil her with lust and violence. That’s the kind of sex I need tonight, but I know I can’t have it because only Seraphina can give it to me the way I crave it.
But, this isn’t about me. This is all for Cassia.
I reach out with both hands and finger the buttons on Gwen’s shirt, slipping it off once the last button is undone. Her generously-sized breasts are practically busting out of her black, lacy bra. The chain she wears lays neatly between them. I reach behind her and clasp my fingers around the back, unfastening it on the first try. Her eyes are looking into mine, but I’m not ready to return the gesture. She needs to earn it.
Her bra falls around her bare feet with her top and she stands before me halfway naked. Almost all traces of nervousness gone, leaving only anticipation and desire. She appears demure with her eyes lowered in a submissive fashion.
That frustrates me, but I ignore it.
Fitting my fingers behind the elastic of her skirt, I slide the material slowly over her hips and down her thighs. The fabric pools around her feet. Once she’s fully naked, I wind my fingers within the back of her hair, jerking her head back, shocking her into full submission. Her eyes grow wider, unsure, even a little afraid. But she says nothing and I walk her toward my bedroom down the hall, flipping the overhead light on as I pass the switch by the door so that Cassia can see everything without shadows and darkness impeding her view.
I shove Gwen to her knees on the carpeted floor where she doesn’t dare move. I can sense every part of her body already opened up to me, desperate to feel me inside of her. She’s played this game before. She knows how to be the submissive. She likes it. And any other time I’d accommodate that desire and enjoy it myself, because I am a man of control. But the truth is that I’ve never respected a woman completely submissive to me. I like a woman to put up a fight, not to bark when I tell her to bark, or suck without argument when I put my cock in her mouth.
Not even Cassia, as soft and fragile as she is, who I know would do anything for me, would subject herself to that. And it only makes me care about her that much more.
Cassia…
I look toward the small camera hidden on the dresser across the room. I wonder if she’s looking back at me.
Why do I hope that she’s not?
I shake it off quickly when I feel Gwen’s hand moving between my legs over the top of my pants. She looks up at me suggestively—and quite surprised—her almond-shaped eyes softened by willingness, heated by hunger.
If only Seraphina was here to be in on this. She was the only one who could ever make a submissive girl exciting to me.
I wrench the back of Gwen’s hair in my fist again and pull her to her feet.
“I’d rather you on your knees on the bed.”
Letting go of her hair once she’s standing, she does exactly as I tell her, just barely looking over her shoulder at me, telling me with her eyes that it’s OK, that she wants this the way I want it. Only, this isn’t the way I want it and I continue to pretend.
Gwen crawls onto the edge of the bed and I step behind her, placing my hand against the small of her back and pressing her body forward to raise her ass in the air. My dick twitches when I touch her with the back of my middle finger, sliding it length-wise between her wet nether lips. Two smacks zip through the air when I slap each of her butt cheeks hard enough to make her whimper.
“Don’t move,” I tell her as I step over to the nightstand, sliding out of my pants on the way.
After shutting the nightstand drawer, the condom wrapper is on the floor seconds later and I’m behind Gwen again.
“What was that?” Gwen raises her face from the mattress, her eyebrows drawing inward as she concentrates to hear the cry that I pretend not to have heard.
But I did hear it. Cassia’s side of the basement is directly beneath my room, precisely where I’m standing.
Suddenly, I feel more of an urge to check the video feed from her room on my cell phone, than to continue what I was doing.
“A condom,” I say, pretending.
She turns her neck at an angle so that she can see me. “No, I thought I heard something…like crying.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I say. “Might’ve been the TV in the basement.”
Gwen accepts my answer and presses her cheek against the bed again.
I try to ignore my thoughts of Cassia, grabbing Gwen’s thighs firmly in my hands and pressing myself against her. But I can’t ignore her and I become irate with myself, digging my fingertips into Gwen’s flesh.
“Oww! Jesus! That fucking hurt…,” She sounds angry. But just a little.
Was that defiance?
Suddenly, I feel like I might get the violent sex that I need, after all.
Then I hear Cassia screaming my name and although faint and muffled through the floor, it rips through me like a hot poker burning a hole through my chest.
I don’t think Gwen heard it that time because when she looks back at me again, it seems only out of curiosity. She wonders why I’ve stepped away from her, why I’m not already inside of her by now.
She’s as confused as I am.
I look at the hidden camera again, wishing that I could see her through it just as she can see me.
“Are we gonna’ do this, or—“
“You need to leave,” I cut in.
She blinks, stunned, and then turns around on the bed.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
She blinks several more times as if trying to reset her brain because maybe she didn’t hear me right, and presses the palms of her hands against the edge of the mattress. Her arms and shoulders become rigid as she lets her body slouch in-between them.
She cocks her head to one side and grins.
“Is this part of your game?” she asks teasingly and then cocks her head to the other side. “I’ll play whatever game you want me to play, baby.”
Concerned for Cassia, I’m growing more impatient and intolerant by the second. Reaching out, I take Gwen by the elbow and pull her from the bed.
“Just fucking leave, all right?”
She’s speechless. And pissed. And humiliated. Her mouth falls open partway, her eyes draw inward harshly and it looks like I just slapped her across the face.
“I’ll call you a cab,” I say, but she puts her hand up in front of her, indicating she doesn’t need or want my help.
“No thanks, asshole,” she snaps, stomping naked across the room toward the bedroom door. “I’ll call myself one and wait for it at the gas station on the corner.” A few minutes later, after Gwen has gotten dressed in the living room and found her purse, the house shakes as the front door slams shut.
I’m numb. Completely numb inside and out. I haven’t moved from the spot in my bedroom since Gwen stormed out of the house. My chest aches for Cassia.
What is happening to me?
Shuffling around inside my pants pocket for my cell phone, I grab it and pull it free, dropping my pants back on the floor. I open the feed to Cassia’s room to see her curled up in the fetal position on her bed—not in the corner—crying softly into her delicate hands. And I watch her for a moment, still trying to sort through the disarray that my mind has become.
My heart aches. Everything aches. But this time I don’t fight it because I don’t have it in me anymore.
I toss the condom in the trash beside the dresser and step into my black boxers before rushing into the basement to fix what I broke.
Chapter Sixteen
Fredrik
Taking the steps one at a time, I make my way slowly into the basement with a boulder sitting in the pit of my stomach. The concrete is cold against the bottoms of my bare feet, the air getting cooler as a winter storm begins to bear down on the East coast. I make a mental note to be sure to turn the heat up significantly when I go back upstairs so that Cassia stays comfortable down here.
But all of these random thoughts are just my way of shoving the inevitable moment I know is sure to leave me reeling into the back of my mind for as long as I can before I’m forced to confront it.
When I step off the last step, I can’t help but glance over at the television behind the protective glass to see the view from my bedroom. That boulder in my stomach starts to burn painfully when I picture what Cassia just saw. When I picture what I almost did. When I realize how much of a bastard I really am that I was going to make her watch.
I turn the television off.
“Cassia?” I speak up softly.
She doesn’t respond right away. She lays on her side with her back to me, her body covered only by the thin material of her nightgown. I feel a desperate urge to go over and cover her with the blanket so that she doesn’t get cold. But I don’t. Not yet. I’m unsure if she even wants me there. And I’m unsure why that even matters to me. What she wants. When did what Cassia wants first become my priority? I want to say ‘just moments ago’, but that would be a form of denial and I think I’ve been in denial for far too long. Cassia has been my priority for a very long time, since shortly after I brought her here. And I’m only just now allowing myself to believe it.
“Stay away from me,” I hear her say in a small, wounded voice.
Compelled by her rejection, I move toward her instead of away.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I say, stepping up closer to her bed. “I never wanted to—”
Cassia rolls over and springs to her feet so quickly that I barely have time to react.
“I said stay away from me!” she shrieks, tears shooting from her anguished eyes. “I hate you! Bastard, I hate you!” I’m directly in front of her in a flash with her small fists pummeling my chest.
I let her hit me as hard and for as long as she wants, taking blow after stinging blow deservingly. Sobs rattle her entire body, her eyes are clenched shut so tightly that I wonder how tears can continue to seep through her lids at all. She screams at me, so vociferously and strained that I know it must be shredding her throat.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly behind her screams, still trying to understand why I’ve even apologized. And it’s in this moment that I realize the shackle isn’t locked around her ankle.
Confused and panicking a little inside, I want to ask her how she got it unlocked, but I can’t as it isn’t the right time.
Her fists pound my chest some more, until finally I seize her small frame in my arms and crush her against my heart.
My hands are shaking.
Why are my hands shaking?
The backs of my eyes sting and burn. It feels like a fist has collapsed around my heart restricting the blood flow, and that hot boulder in my stomach has grown to encompass all of my chest, robbing me of my breath.
Sobbing into my body, at first Cassia tries to push me away, but I refuse to let her go. I want her here, now more than ever. Because it’s where she belongs. Her fingernails dig into my chest muscles. Her cries break my heart over and over again. But I just hold onto her tighter until she relents and her body collapses into mine.
“I hate you,” she cries, slowly letting go of anger and surrendering only to pain. “I hate you…”
I shut my eyes softly and press my lips into the top of her feather-soft blonde hair.
I know she doesn’t hate me. She loves me. She loves me more than she’s ever loved anyone or anything in her whole life.
How can Fate be so fucking heartless and cruel? Was what Life did to me as a child not enough?
I squeeze her tighter.
“Cassia, I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you just put me in the chair?” she cries. “How could you do that to me?” Her fingertips press harder into my bare chest muscles. “Break my body! Break my will, Fredrik! But don’t break my goddamn heart!”
“I’m sorry…”
It’s all I can say.
It’s hard to say anything else when you don’t even understand your own feelings, your own reactions. When you’ve come to the realization that there’s more to you than you ever wanted to believe. I feel like I’ve just been introduced to a man who looks exactly like me, yet is so very different on the inside that nothing makes sense anymore. I’m staring into a mirror at my doppelganger and all I want to do is kill him fucking dead so that I can feel normal again. So I can be in control again. So that I can go back to not caring about her again.
It’s so much easier when you don’t care.
“I couldn’t do it,” I whisper into her hair about Gwen.
I feel her tears warm and wet on my chest.
“I wish she was dead,” Cassia says through gritted teeth. “I hope Seraphina is dead by the time you find her.” She pushes away from me and I finally let her go.
Cassia takes several steps backward, her small fists clenched down at her sides, her angelic features twisted angrily, resentfully. I’ve never seen her like this before, so defiled by indignation, and it’s a tragic thing to witness in one so kind and beautiful.
She locks eyes with me and there’s something else in them I’ve never seen before. Fury? Retribution? I can’t be sure. And then just when I intend to explore it further, it disappears from her face and is replaced again by pain and heartbreak.
Cassia falls on her bottom against the soft rug covering the floor. I move immediately to crouch in front of her, balancing myself on the front pads of my feet. She cries into her opened hands and I reach out to pull her into my arms again, but she refuses me, raising her brown eyes to mine full of defeat. Withdrawing my hands, I sit down fully against the rug with my legs splayed and my knees drawn up with my forearms resting atop them.
She says softly, “Why can’t you love me back, Fredrik?” and every word is laced with sadness which breaks my heart into a million tiny shards of glass. “What is wrong with me that you can’t love me back?”
I shake my head rejecting her self-depreciation and reach out to touch the side of her face. “Nothing is wrong with you. You’re perfect in every way, Cassia.” I brush the edge of my thumb against her jawbone. “Don’t let my imperfections as a worthless human being make you feel like less of a person—you’re a better person than I could ever be.”
She stares back at me—her eyes welled up with tears—with enough heartbreak that if she wasn’t so strong inside it would surely kill her.
“I don’t care about your imperfections, Fredrik.” Her hand falls atop mine still resting against the side of her cheek. “I just want to know why you can’t love me.”
My gaze strays.
“I can’t love anyone,” I say in a quiet voice.
“That’s a lie,” she says equally.
She moves in-between my legs, keeping her knees bent and her gown covering them.
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
I look up even though I don’t want to face her. Because she’s right.
Love is a wicked game, I think to myself, remembering what Seraphina sang to me on stage one night in New York sometime after we met. Wicked Game. Because just like Cassia, Seraphina was once a singer. And as I recall Cassia admitting to remembering everything about Seraphina, I realize that right now in this moment with her, I don’t care. I don’t care to know what I’ve waited so long to find out.
I just don’t care….
Cassia’s soft lips touch mine and my arms are around her little body before I realize what I’m doing. I grab her against me, pressing her thinly-covered breasts into my bare chest, my mouth collapsing about hers hungrily as I kiss her unlike I’ve ever kissed her before. Her warm tongue tangles with mine, her fingers press into the back of my neck, mine into the flesh of her bottom as I hoist her onto my lap. Pushing her gown up and out of the way, her bare thighs straddle my waist, and still without breaking the kiss I dig my fingers in deeper, moaning into her mouth with anticipation.
She bites down on my bottom lip, breaking the skin. The stinging pain sears through my mouth and travels down into my stomach, warming every part of me and making other parts ache and throb with need. I taste the blood in my mouth, and she just kisses me harder as if wanting to taste it herself, to share it with me.
Gripping her bottom vigorously, I force her hips toward mine, pushing my hardness against her until I can’t stand it anymore and I race to get her panties off. I yank and pull blindly, our eyes closed, our lips still locked in a devouring kiss, until I finally get them off and her naked legs fall around my waist again.
She pulls back and looks into my eyes, her arms draped around the back of my neck. Her lips touch mine again lightly, one hand falling to find the waist of my boxers. Softly pushing her hips against mine, it drives me crazy feeling my cock pressed into her through a thin layer of fabric which feels like the difference between ecstasy and Hell. Moaning against her lips, I raise my ass from the floor enough to give her access to get them off. But impatience takes over and I grasp her around the waist with one hand to hold her steady while wrenching them off the rest of the way myself with the other.
Flesh on warm flesh, she presses herself into me, peering into my eyes with her mouth gently parted. I want to taste her lips again, but I study them instead, the plumpness of her bottom lip, the perfect little indention of the top, just below her nose. Her breath smells faintly of mint. The natural scent of her skin which always sends me into a brief high when I’m this close to her.
“I am yours. Always.” she whispers onto my mouth and kisses me once, pressing the warm wetness between her legs against the aching stiffness between mine. “Even if you can’t love me the way you love her, I’ll always be yours.”
I grab the back of her head in both of my hands and crush my lips against hers, stealing her breath away and replacing it with my own. I ache. Every part of me aches. For her. Only for her.
I need to kill someone to wash these feelings away, but in this moment I can’t do anything but give in to them.
Grasping her firmly around her back, I push myself to my feet with her legs wrapped around my waist, carrying her to the bed where I fall between her thighs.
I gaze down into her eyes—What am I doing?—and secure her head with my hands on her cheeks. The warmth from her thighs I feel on either side of me, the softness of her flesh. So delicate. So innocent. How can I do this to her? How can I do this to myself?
“I’m sorry, Cassia,” I whisper and lower my body onto hers. She never takes her eyes off of mine, her fingers dancing against one side of my unshaven face. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you…and for what I’m about to do.” I kiss her deep and hungrily, and slide my cock into her with careful, predatory intent.
The sweet sound of her whimpering as I enter her only makes me want to go deeper. Her thighs tremble at my sides, her fingers dig into the skin on my back. Break the flesh, Cassia, I say only to myself.
She does break the flesh and my body reacts in such a primal way that I can’t help but hurt her as I force myself inside of her as deeply as I can go. Her neck arcs and her arms come up behind her, seeking the wall behind the bed. I can’t bring myself to ask if I’m hurting her. I want to hurt her. I want to feel her breaking beneath me, to see the tears in her eyes, to hear the shuddering of her breath. I want to know that she wants the pain as much as I need to inflict it.
Tiny moans and whimpers move through her throat as I thrust into her. She’s so small and tight that I feel like her first all over again.
All over again…
Almost losing control too soon, I force the feeling of ecstasy back for as long as I can, rotating my pelvis against hers to hit her sweet spot. She pushes her hips forward, her thighs tightening around my waist as if she could crush me with them. “Don’t stop,” she says breathily, “please don’t stop.” And I push harder until she breaks the skin on my back again with her fingernails and it sends me over the edge. I devour her lips as I empty myself inside of her, moaning intensely into her mouth. Her thighs strengthen as I feel her tighten and throb around my cock. She whimpers again, arcing her head back against the mattress, her breathing out of sequence as her body melts into oblivion beneath mine.
What have I done?
I gaze into her eyes, holding myself deep inside of her, and I brush her cheeks with the pads of my thumbs. Her eyes, filled with so much love and innocence, they only briefly detract my need to cut her back with my blade and lick the blood from her wounds. To bond with her the way I bonded with Seraphina.
I want to do it.
But I know that I can’t. I’ve taken it too far with Cassia already. I can’t allow myself to take her all the way, or then I would truly be the Devil.
I press my lips to her forehead. She smiles up at me softly.
I’m no better than Seraphina…
Intent on stopping this, I start to pull myself out of her, but her legs tighten around my waist as she holds me still.
“Don’t go,” she whispers, her fingertips touching my lips, her other hand winding carefully within my hair. “Please don’t go.”
She kisses me lightly.
I try to avert my eyes, because I’m ashamed for what I’ve done. It isn’t the first time I’ve given in to Cassia like this, it’s not the first time I’ve slept with her in the year she’s been my prisoner. But it is the first time I’ve done it with something more in my heart than darkness.
“Cassia, I shouldn’t have—”
She shakes her head softly against the mattress. “Please stay.” Her smile fades and she suddenly appears dejected, but I feel like it’s not an attempt to keep me here.
It’s something else.
Her head falls to the side and she looks out at the room as silence descends between us. I wait patiently, though hanging onto her sudden change of mood with an impatient and conflicted heart. I feel like what’s left of my world is about to be pulled from underneath me.
“I was ten-years-old when I met Seraphina,” she says in a distant voice that seizes every fiber of my consciousness. “She was my best friend…until she murdered my parents and was sent away.”
A tear moves from the corner of her eye and pools around her nose, resting in that little indention above her lip.
I swallow down her words and say nothing because there’s nothing more to say. I know now that everything is lost and I’m never going to get it back.
