I gave this woman pleasure.
She gave me even more.
“I’m never letting you go,” I said, my breath coming out with a heavy pant as I spilled myself into her.
No.
No.
This was not the plan.
I pulled out of her and resisted the urge to kiss her, to hold her, to cuddle her into my arms. “Get on your hands and knees and crawl back to your cage to sleep,” I ordered.
I was an asshole.
A fucking prick.
Yes.
Yes.
That was the plan.
* * *
Nayla Bell
I woke up in the middle of the night, with the sharp chill in the air and vengeance pumping through my veins. I didn’t want to hear his heavy breathing as he slept or feel amiss for not being in that bed with him. I wanted to kill him. Torture him. And God help me… I wanted to fuck him. Fuck him hard over and over again.
A moment of peace as he slept. A moment of safety as his arm lay draped over the edge of the bed as I was learning was the way he always slept. An illusion. The full moon cast a strong beam of light into the room, bouncing off the metal of the bars of my cage, only illuminating my harsh reality. I was a captive in an underground bunker with my captor. I had only myself to hold on to, even though my strength was fading. A strength turning into a pool of thick dark weakness, threatening to strangle me in despair.
Fuck Eddie. Fuck him straight to hell. And yet, as he slept, I remembered small glimpses of his humanity. There were many. He gave me small peeks into his soul that showed he wasn’t all black inside.
“Eddie?” I whispered, breaking the silence of the room. I looked through the bars at his face as he slept. He looked so peaceful, gentle, and even kind. This was not the rough man who had punished me repeatedly and then kept me as his caged beast. This sleeping man was not a monster. “Eddie,” I said again a little louder.
His eyes fluttered open. “You should be asleep,” he said in a scratchy voice.
“Am I going to die?” I had to know the truth.
“Go to sleep.”
“Are you planning on killing me?”
“No.”
“Then keeping me in a cage as your pet forever instead?”
“Would you rather I kill you?” He took a calming breath. “Did my discipline earlier not teach you anything? You should be afraid of me, not poking the bear. Go back to sleep.” He said the words, but his eyes lingered on me hungrily. I saw how he looked at my bare pussy and my exposed nipples. I could sense the intensity in his stare, almost feel the heat of his body even from afar.
“Why did you kidnap me?” I asked. “There’s more than just because I was building a case against you, isn’t there?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said.
“I know you didn’t do the massacre at the church. I heard you talking at dinner.” I paused and then added, “But I already knew that. I knew you weren’t capable of doing something so awful.”
“I’m capable of doing much worse.”
I shook my head. “No. You don’t kill or hurt women and children. None of your men do.” I grabbed hold of the bars and pressed my face closer. “So why did you kidnap me? This isn’t your style. I know this. I studied you. I know everything about you.”
“You don’t know me,” Eddie said, though he did seem to soften right before my eyes.
“I know you more than you think. I profiled you for quite some time.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I know.”
“So, you won’t tell me?”
He remained silent for a little bit. He finally let out a deep breath and said, “Your life was in danger. A hit had been made on you.”
His words were like a punch to the gut. “What? A hit? Why? Who?”
“Moretti’s men were coming for you that night. I got wind of it and got to you first. You’re lucky that I did.”
“But why would Moretti want me dead? I wasn’t even working on that case. Dylan was.” I stopped speaking as I tried to process everything and make sense of what Eddie had just told me. “Is that why you kidnapped Dylan too? To save him? Then why torture him and—”
“I wasn’t saving that shithead,” Eddie interrupted, clearly pissed. “That fucker deserves to die. The only reason he’s breathing right now is because you begged me.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said more to myself than to Eddie.
“Dylan ordered the hit on you. Just as he helped arrange the death of that cop you grieved over. He also knew the massacre was going to happen that day in the church and was conveniently in a place where he came out of it unharmed.”