I let her rain her clenched fists on my body. It actually feels good. I deserve to be punished. When I feel her blows lose their momentum, I turn around, seize her wrists, and throw her on the bed. She is as light as a feather. Standing over her, I watch her bounce slightly on the bed, her breasts bouncing. I haven’t sucked them yet.
I stare down at her. She is like a wild animal. Her face swollen and blotched with crying, her chest is heaving, and her eyes glare murderously at me, but her young body is silently calling out to me. I bend down and, grabbing her ankles, open her legs wide. She doesn’t struggle. She lets me. I look down at her abused pussy.
I will be the first man inside her.
I want her so bad it fucking kills me to turn away, fling her legs away, and walk out of the room. I slam the door shut and lock it. I feel like a mad man locking his treasure away. Because she is mine now. Even the thought of another man looking at her fills me with fire and rage. I will not rest until I have possessed her completely. Then I will fix it so no other man may touch her while I am alive. I stop at the unexpected thought. Where the hell did that come from?
Nothing is working out the way I planned.
Chapter Eleven
Liliana
For a long time after I hear the lock turn I remain naked on the bed, unmoving, my legs still open, staring at the ceiling. Not hearing or seeing anything. It feels like I am in a beautiful dream that suddenly turned into a nightmare.
The gardener’s son. He has always brought both painful regret and a crazy warmth into my heart. Today, he brings indecipherable bafflement, disappointment, and hatred. I cannot believe that this is the man that I have pined over for years.
I thought of him incessantly, but never once have I ever contemplated I would be in a position like this. Or imagined it would be possible to be stripped to such a level of vulnerability and abuse. I feel like an animal. All these years in my head he was a Prince, in reality he is an unfeeling, feral beast. Not only am I a hostage, but I’ve just been sexually assaulted.
Then, a voice in my head speaks up. Have you forgotten the shameless way you climaxed in front of him? When he opened your legs and looked down at your throbbing flesh, you wanted him to take you. You wanted to know what it would be like to have him inside you.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I know that is the truth. I had no control over the way my body responded to him. And if it had been any other man it would have been unthinkable, demeaning and horrible, but because it was him, I don’t even feel dirty. I don’t even want to wash the smell of him away. Even though the sane, normal part of me wants to kill him for what he is doing to me and my family, the part of me that spent all these years yearning for that kiss wants him to come back and finish what he has started.
I think of the hatred in his eyes. He holds me responsible for the death of his father, but what exactly did I do that was so wrong? I thought back to that day almost a decade earlier. Over the years I thought about the incident incessantly, but not for the reasons he is now accusing me of.
I was angry at myself for running into the house and telling Dad about the kiss. It had been special until I opened my big mouth and told the world about it. I kicked myself for not being more like Mum. She would never have told a soul. Mum can keep a secret like nobody can. If only I had been just that little bit discreet everything would have been different. The gardener would not have been fired, both of them wouldn’t have disappeared from our lives and whatever horrible thing had happened to his father might never have come to pass. In that one unthinking moment I changed the course of all our lives. And I never stopped regretting that careless move.
But that doesn’t excuse his cruelty.
I was just a child and I could never have known the consequences of my childish actions. Even my dad firing his dad did not warrant kidnapping me and keeping me prisoner in the middle of nowhere and punishing me in this way. I think of my mother and how worried she would be to think of me alone in Spain. Thinking of her makes me tremble with fury. I close my legs. If my mother is in any way harmed, I am going to kill him, I swear it. I will hunt him down and kill the fucking bastard.
I rise to my feet then and head into the shower.
The water is scalding hot, but I don’t feel a thing. I let the water wash him away. I am no longer a virgin. He doesn’t know it but all these years I’ve been secretly saving myself for him. He is the only man in this world I’ve ever wanted. What a strange turn of events that my greatest dream was his ultimate revenge. I try to remember the kiss, but it has strangely become vague and colorless. As if it happened another lifetime ago.
It used to be so vivid and colorful. A kiss stolen on an innocent afternoon. The most exciting thing that had ever happened to me until then. I could remember everything, even recall the exact scent of him. A mixture of fresh sweat, earth, and something else.
If only … if only the stars had aligned the way they should have and things had worked out different.
But all I have now is the memory of his black eyes, how hungrily they roamed my body, and suddenly my hand slips down past my belly, to my core. I feel my breath quicken. The simple act of inhaling and exhaling becomes hard. I remember his hard finger inside me, rough, uncaring, intense. So intense nothing else existed but his fingers inside me.
No!
I pull away my hand violently, turn off the water, and stand with my head bowed. Water drips off my hair and runs down my body. Time passes. I don’t know how long I stand there, but the steam in the air cools and goose pimples begin to scatter over my arms and legs. I start to shiver slightly.
And still the urge will not go away.
Tears of frustration fill my eyes. Fuck him! I slam my palms on the cold, wet tiles. My palm slides on the surface displacing water droplets. It moves lower. Suddenly it is off the tiles and between my legs. At the first contact with my clit a cry flies out of my mouth. I think of him. I cannot believe what I am doing. I cannot believe how animalistic is my lust and how little I knew myself. He doesn’t need to lock me in. I hate him for what he is doing to me and my family, but I cannot run away from him any more than I can cut my heart out of my body.
My fingers begin to move faster and faster, but in my mind, they are not my own. They belong to him.
Chapter Twelve
Brand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpnjE1LUvE
-from the first day I saw her I knew she was the one-
I await her in the dining room south of the Manor. I knock back my glass of whiskey and slam it down on the eighteen-seater Italian rosewood table. My stomach is in knots. My house
keeper, Lindy Parks comes in and silently places a fresh drink in front of me, but the brief look she gives me is brimming with questions. The main one, no doubt. Why have I imprisoned a woman?
I ignore the look and she takes her leave.
I’m on my fifth whiskey when Liliana eventually strolls in, much, much later than I stipulated, but I cannot help the smile that spreads across my lips at her entrance. I requested she wear one of the dresses provided for her, however she has chosen to dress in the same soiled silk blouse and skirt she arrived in. Her face is free of any makeup, her hair severely secured at the back of her head, and her gaze is a glare of hatred.
“Take a seat,” I invite, without standing up.
She goes and sits on the chair at the opposite end of the table.
I lean back into mine. “I requested that you be appropriately dressed.” I glance down at my own ensemble of dark trousers and a crisp white dress shirt. “Even I made an effort.”
“I like my own clothes,” she says tightly.
I frown. “What is wrong with the clothes I have provided?”
“They are clothes fit for a whore. I’m not one.”
I laugh softly. “Ah, but you are my whore. Do you want me to show just how much of a whore you are?”
Her eyes flash with panic. “No.”
“Please ensure you dress in something different tomorrow.”
She nods. “What is your name?”
“Brand.”
“Brand Vaughan,” she says softly.
“Yes, you remembered.”
“I liked your father.” Then she pulls out her weapon. “I too have a story to tell you. I was trying to help the gardener’s son, but he had such a big chip on his shoulder he grabbed me roughly without permission and kissed me. What did he expect me to do?”