“What are you—”
His mouth slants over mine, hard and hungry, and his hands tear at my clothes, literally ripping my shirt in half. I tense, startled by the violence, but he doesn’t stop, working my jeans down my legs with rough, jerky movements as he devours me with his brutal kiss. As he yanks down my underwear, I spare a moment’s thought for the sheets and the bloodied pad I’m wearing, but his fingers twine with mine, pinning my hands above my head, and I forget all about it, swept up in the savage storm of his lust.
It’s overwhelming, even frightening, yet the desire is still there, lurking underneath the fear. My muscles instinctively lock tight even as warm slickness lubricates my sex, the tension intensifying my arousal. I burn for him, craving the danger and the roughness, and as he plunges into me, I cry out from the shock of it, from the dark pleasure and stinging pain.
He pauses then, lifting his head to meet my gaze, and I remember our first time, the way he took me, losing all control. He hurt me then too, but unlike that time, there’s no hate in my heart today, no bitterness or stifling shame. The pain feels good, pushing away the remnants of my worry, reminding me that he’s alive.
Reminding us both that we’re alive.
“Sara…” My name is a hoarse exhale on his lips, his molten silver gaze holding me captive even as he throbs inside me, his thick cock stretching my inner tissues, filling me to the brim until I ache. “Ptichka, I need you so f*cking much…”
“And I need you.” The words feel like they come from the very center of my being, torn out of me by the impossible fire burning in my veins. I can’t fight it any longer, can’t pretend I hate this beautiful, lethal man. It’s not love between us, nor anything resembling friendship, but our connection is undeniable, the bone-deep chemistry binding us together in coils of dark need and violent attraction. I want this from him: the roughness and the tenderness, the fear and the all-consuming heat.
He’s everything I never knew I needed, and as his eyes darken at my admission, I realize what this means.
I am his, as terrifying as that thought may be.
Closing my eyes, I wrap my legs around his hips, taking him even deeper, and as he begins thrusting, his muscled ass flexing against my calves, I give in to the inevitable.
I give in to him.
Part III
30
Sara
* * *
By the time the second month of my captivity transitions into the third, I find my resentment slowly lessening, the desperate longing for my old life transforming into a kind of bittersweet ache. I continue to look for opportunities to escape, but someone’s always in the house, watching me, and as the days bleed into one another, I stop worrying about the impossibility of getting away and begin to enjoy some parts of my leisurely routine. The warm weather helps—we’re in the hottest month of summer now, and there’s a lot more to do outside—and so does the fact that outside of a few supply runs, Peter has been spending pretty much all his time with me.
“You haven’t had a job in a while,” I comment as we head down to a mountain stream where we’ve been swimming on particularly warm days. “Is it because of what happened to Ilya the last time, or you just don’t get clients that often?”
“We get contacted all the time, but we’re selective in the work we take on,” Peter says, raising a low-hanging branch to let me pass underneath. “The risk-reward ratio has to be just right, especially now.”
He doesn’t say why, but he doesn’t have to. From what he’s told me, and from what I’ve gleaned from my brief conversations with my parents, the authorities are intensifying their manhunt, throwing all their resources at the problem that is Peter. Partially, it’s because of my disappearance; even with my twice-weekly calls, my parents are convinced I’m in danger and spend their days harassing the FBI for updates. But the main issue is the last target on Peter’s list, a former US general who’s proving to be as elusive in his own way as Peter and his team.
“Wally Henderson is highly connected,” Peter explained to me a couple of weeks ago. “He caught wind of what’s going on long before anyone else on my list, and he staged a disappearance worthy of Houdini. So far, every lead our hackers have followed has led exactly nowhere. As far as we can tell, he’s not in contact with anyone from his former life—neither friends nor coworkers nor distant relatives—and he hasn’t made a single slip. No appearances on social media by his teenagers, no credit card use, nothing. A lot of his background is classified, but rumor has it, he was a CIA operative at some point, possibly a field agent working deep under cover. And while we haven’t been able to discover the specifics of how he’s doing it, it seems he’s been pressuring the authorities to turn up the heat from wherever he’s hiding.”
“You think he knows he’s the last name on your list?” I asked.
“I’m sure he does,” Peter replied. “Like I said, he’s connected, and not just in Washington D.C. He knows everyone in the international intelligence community, and he’s leveraging that to make me as high priority as any ISIS leader.”
I’ve been trying not to think about the implications of that, but it’s impossible. I can’t put my worry for Peter out of my mind. By all rights, I should cheer for the general and hope the authorities find my captor, liberating me in the process, but rational thinking seems to be beyond me these days.
“Why don’t you stop these jobs altogether?” I ask now as we approach the stream. “You must have enough money already.”
Peter shoots me an oblique look. “There’s no such thing as enough money when you’re on the run,” he says and pulls off his T-shirt, exposing a powerfully muscled torso. “Private planes and helicopters don’t come cheap.”
I look away to avoid flushing as he steps out of his shorts—he’s commando underneath—and wades into the stream after kicking off his boots. I see him naked all the time, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of his tautly muscled body on my senses. Nature has blessed my captor with a perfectly proportioned male frame—broad shoulders, narrow hips, long, strong-boned limbs—and intense military training has given him a physique Olympic athletes would envy. But it’s not his looks that fill my veins with liquid heat; it’s the knowledge that if I so much as glance at him in a certain way, the dark fire that always simmers between us will blaze out of control, and I’ll end up in his arms, screaming his name as he takes me against the slippery rocks.
“You know, you wouldn’t need all those planes and helicopters if you didn’t venture out as much,” I point out when he’s safely covered by the water. My voice is huskier than I would’ve liked, but at least my face is not bright red. “You’d be safer, and you wouldn’t have to… you know.”