Caged (3 page)

And he adored that dichotomy in a woman, especially when he could drive her past her natural resistance.

He wondered what she would be like in her pleasure.  Would she barely move, just close her eyes and sigh, letting him do what he wanted and mentally wishing she were somewhere else?  Or would she buck her hips up against his hand—or his mouth—he hadn’t decided which one yet — and cry her pleasure to the Heavens, perhaps even shouting his name, as some women had in his sensual embrace?

Although she didn’t know his name, now, did she, you blockhead, he thought.  And she couldn’t, either.

Surprised at just how much he wished he could tell her a piece of information that would put his neck in a noose no questions asked if it were repeated in front of the wrong people, he leaned over just a bit to graduate to the next step.  His open mouth claimed first one nipple then the other, suckling with infinite gentleness. He swirled his tongue over those turgid peaks, flicking the tips relentlessly against the roof of his mouth, listening avidly for signs that—even against her will—she was enjoying this.

And they were there, not to be missed by an avid ear—a reluctant sigh, the way she arched her breasts into his mouth occasionally before realizing that she was doing it and quickly relaxed back down again, and one very soft moan that went directly to the part of him that, when he’d been shot, he’d worried would never be able to work through all that pain again.

But it was proving him wrong, and in this case, he was only too happy to be wrong. 

Cage knew that this time would be just for her, and he was fine with that.  He’d make up for it when he was feeling better.  He knew that with a little time and a little patience, he could exhaust her into sleep, and that was his goal.

He gasped loudly at the searing pain in his side as he hitched himself up onto his elbow, letting his fingertips learn the curves and valleys of her body as he watched her struggle with herself not to enjoy his touch.

Rachel didn’t know what sorcery he was doing to her, but it felt so different from what the other man had done to her. He wasn’t pinching her nipples until she wished that they would just fall off, or slapping her breasts until they were covered in scarlet handprints that were delivered with such agonizing strength that each individual finger could be made out in each case.

No, what he was doing when he touched her like that, when his head bent and he took her nipple into the warm wet confines of his mouth, was almost worse, almost more degrading, if that could even be imagined.  He was making her
like
it. 
Crave
it. 
Lust
after it—and him, the man that was making her feel like that. 

She didn’t want him to stop, whereas she would have given anything to get Hemmingway to cease what he had been doing.

Mr. H. hadn’t touched her like this, as this man was touching her, with a concentrated, determined eye towards a pleasure she was quite certain didn’t exist within her. The gunman’s self-satisfied expression said that he was enjoying himself enormously as he did so—the man who had pointed a gun at her so many times that she couldn’t even count, who had probably left bruises on her body as a result of digging its barrel into her side, who had forced her to get into bed with him then strip off all her clothes in front of him, who had taken first his hand to her—which had been plenty bad enough—and then his belt, and who was now molesting her, forcing her body to acquiesce—to
join
him—in his depraved pursuits.

She knew she had to stay strong, that she had to not give in to what he was doing to her, but it was terribly, terribly hard, especially when she had a traitorous body that wanted nothing more than to surrender completely to the exquisite pleasure he was already bringing to her.

And then the surprisingly gentle fingertips of the hand that had already made so free with her began to trail down over her ribcage.  She thought she’d heard him make some sort of a sound at how plainly they showed through her skin, but she must’ve been mistaken.  His fingers circled her navel, finding their way from there to her hip bones, which were also in too much relief, a sign of just how lean a year it had been.

But they didn’t stop there.

They ventured further, much further, to where she most feared he would end up.  There was little she could do to stop him, with both arms anchored well above her head and only one small, skinny leg free against a man his size.

Not that she didn’t try, but she also noticed that all of her writhing and wiggling to try to dislodge his hand only ended up looking as if she was trying to entice him to explore her more, and since that was the last thing she wanted, she went abnormally still beneath his big hand even as it began its undeniable possession of her most secret, sacred spot.

Cage didn’t know what it was that had prompted her to quiet for him—he hadn’t really done anything to try to stop her from dislodging his hand, knowing there wasn’t anything she
could
do.  He wanted to touch her, and he proceeded to do just that, barely able to prevent himself from sighing loudly at the warm, womanly feel of her, letting his middle finger glide between full, pouty lips that he could watch part for him as he heard her breath quickening—part fearfully, he recognized, and part because it felt better than she wanted it to.

“No! 
Please
–
please
don’t touch me there!”

With some difficulty, he stretched himself out on his side, his head near hers, not having moved his hand one bit, despite her heartfelt plea.  But as he began to move it—as he let his fingers claim more and more parts of what should have been her private areas, reserved only for what he was quite sure was her non-existent husband, he did his best to diligently ignore how afraid she had been when he’d first begun exploring her—more so than a wholly untouched virgin, and much more like a woman who had been subjected to the intimate ways in which a man who was of a mind to hurt the female he should have been caring for.

Not that she seemed any less afraid now—she was trembling fit to break the bed apart and her eyes were wild with it.

“Shh. Close your eyes.  Try to relax.  I’m going to do this whether you want me to or not, so try to relax and enjoy it.”

His eyebrow rose at her indelicate snort.

“Close your eyes,” he repeated a bit more forcefully this time.

“No, please!”

His voice was firm, but he tried not to allow its tone to make her more afraid.  He said it as a statement of fact.  “Close your eyes or I will blindfold you.”

Tears leaked out the corners of the eyes that she nonetheless closed.

Cage sighed almost exasperatedly.  This wasn’t going quite to plan.  “I’m just going to help you get to sleep.”

That set her to flailing helplessly, tugging against the ropes at her wrist, trying to buck away from him but wholly unable to do so.

“Stop, stop
now
!  I am still
wearing
my belt,” he threatened, wishing he didn’t feel he had to.

She did as he said, her trembling worsening, body taut as if prepared for the worst.

“What I’m going to do isn’t going to hurt you.”

Rachel was confused and, in her nervousness blurted out, “But you said you were going to make me sleep.”

“I am.”

“Then you’re going to punch me. Please don’t!”  She turned her head away from him towards the wall, her face all scrunched up, if she was trying to provide him with the least target area possible.

“Punch you?  No, I wouldn’t–”

“But that’s how he–” She said it to the wall, barely able to stop herself, not wanting to let him know anything more about her than she had to, no matter how mindlessly terrified she was.

Cage’s blood ran cold.  It appeared that Mr. Hemmingway hadn’t shied away from using his fists on her, and tiny as she was, he could well imagine the results.  No wonder she was trying to disappear into the wall to get away from him while he was blithely thinking that just telling her he was going to try to help her get to sleep would soothe her.

“No, Missus,” he whispered softly.  “That’s not how
I’m
going to help you feel sleepy.  And it’s not how any other man should, either, husband or no.”

How was it that her captor, who hadn’t hesitated to brandish a gun at her and who still had her naked with her wrists bound above her head, managed to sound so darned calm, and more than that, indignant and—dare she think it—angry at how she had been treated by another?

And then those fingers of his, whose presence between her legs—between the folds of her body that she had never really explored herself except enough to get herself clean—she’d never be able to come to grips with, began to move, almost vibrating against skin that she was suddenly reminded was the most tender, the most sensitive on her body.  They hovered gently, not groping as she was used to, not pinching, not probing painfully.

Instead they seemed to float and glide over her teasingly, as if he was trying to get her to beg him for more, and then he gave it to her as soon as the thought entered her mind without ever having given voice to it, boldly exploring every bit of her, as if merely touching her would serve as some sort of a permanent claim.

He was infinitely patient, and eventually she began to relax a bit, however against her will, until he tried to gently insert the tip of his index finger into her and he discovered two things at once:  she definitely didn’t like that at all—she was back at square one as far as being in a blind panic about what he was doing to her, and the not very esteemed Mr. Hemmingway had hurt her here, too, although not enough to relieve her of her innocence.

She was wholly intact.  A virgin.

And he knew that he was a bad enough man that he wasn’t going to let that make a difference to what he planned to do to her, except that he at once stopped trying to enter her for the moment, crooking his middle and index fingers, instead, just outside her opening.

There wasn’t a lot of moisture there—nowhere near as much as he would have liked, but more than enough to start with.  He was quite certain that there’d be a lot more very soon.

Cage used his outer fingers to keep her lips well apart, eliciting a soft moan from her along with an almost token movement of her hips beneath his hand.

“Shh.  This won’t hurt a bit, I promise.”

“Says the man who still holds a gun on me,” she accused bravely, if somewhat under her breath.

She was right, and there was enough conscience left in him that he felt a certain amount of shame, but not enough to make him stop doing what he was doing, either.

His hand continued its journey back up that beautiful groove of hers until he hit the top, where he spread his fingers as wide as they could be and still keep her spread open, letting two of them deposit her slick potion over the top of a clit that wasn’t merely small, it was as if it, too, was trying to hide from his attentions.

Not that he was going to let it do that for very long.

She actually flinched when he touched her there for the first time, her body becoming even more tense than it had been before, and he ignored her discomfort and simply continued to explore her, his attentions slow and deliberate, never disengaging once they’d taken possession of that little bit of flesh.

It took a while, but her body slowly began to betray her.  Each time he ventured down to gather more of her slickness, his fingers got wetter and wetter, making them glide that much more easily over her, splitting occasionally to reach both sides of her, then joining at the end to pull both of them back over her, wiggling them back and forth as he did so.

Eventually he noticed that while the rest of her had become more pliable, she was still quite tense beneath his hand, and, with the next dollop of her cream, she moaned as his fingers worried that no-longer-so-little nub.

He felt as if he’d hung the moon, but he didn’t let his sense of accomplishment make him cocky.  Instead he redoubled his efforts, increasing his tempo, and soon she was emitting a steady stream of mewls and groans and something that sounded wonderfully close to a growl, although he knew she was desperately trying to stifle all of it.

But then she began to look fearful again when he thought she might be somewhat close. 

“What–what are you–what are you doing to me?  Please stop!   I–what’s happening?”

Cage couldn’t prevent a smile from spreading across his face, although it dimmed some when he looked up and her eyes were open again.  “Close your eyes, Missus, or I’ll flip you over and tan your hide again.”

They snapped shut before he could finish his threat.

“I know you’re frightened by what’s happening to your body, but I promise you that it’s a good thing.  It’ll make you feel amazing and then it’ll make you feel sleepy.  There’s nothing to be frightened of.  It doesn’t hurt. It feels wonderful.”

His words sounded hollow even to his own ears.  How was she supposed to trust him, since he was essentially holding her captive after having insulted and berated and threatened her into helping him while literally holding a gun to her head?

But he knew that she was capable of this, and he knew it would help her become calm enough to fall asleep despite the inherent and understandable fear of the situation she found herself in. 

And she was, he thought, very, very close.

“But I don’t want to feel wonderful with you,” she whispered somewhat belatedly as an agonized sob was ripped from the back of her throat and morphed, as he continued to manipulate her with his fingers, into an unmistakable moan of pure pleasure.

He almost stopped at her words, but he hardened his heart.  She would feel what he wanted her to.  He could—and would—make her do this any time he felt the urge.

And, to his shame, Cage was beginning to realize that he was going to have that urge quite frequently with her.

And he realized, too late, that he had said those words out loud to her as she continued to sob softly at the same time she panted and whimpered as his fingers danced over her, and he knew the truth of it when he made his last trip to wet those digits at the entrance to her body and found quadruple the amount of what had been there before.

As much as she protested against it, as much as he absolutely believed that someone had hurt her badly before by doing something not too far from what he was doing to her, she liked it—perhaps it was just her body now, but he had no doubt that he could get the rest of her to come around, too.

Cage put both fingertips directly over the most sensitive peak of the most sensitive part of her body and began to swirl them, pressing a little more insistently than he had been before, listening avidly to the way she was responding to how he was touching her, watching her mouth drop open, her sobs and groans almost becoming chant like in their rhythm.

“That’s it.  Let go.  I’m not going to stop until you do so you might as well obey me.”

And, seconds later, she did, her eyes flying open abnormally wide, her body convulsing helplessly beneath his fingertips.

Rachel didn’t know what this was—she was afraid to know its name.  It was surely something she shouldn’t be doing, but he had relentlessly driven her to an unbearably pleasurable peak and suddenly the buildup was over and she felt her entire body—concentrated where his hand was mostly—convulse and writhe as she mewled and writhed in a very unladylike fashion.  Her nipples tightened even more painfully, and her hips rose to meet the unbearable rhythm of those fingers as he continued to move them over her.  The spasms lessened from the first unbelievably strong, unimaginably ecstatic one, but his touch still felt good until, all of a sudden, the climb began again, building and ending much more quickly, but the feelings were still there, perhaps even more acute than before.

Cage was amazed.  She’d not only surrendered her first orgasm to him, but another one just after it, seconds later.

He continued to rub her gently, knowing she would be excruciatingly sensitive, and managed to coax another two peaks out of her before she began to actively try to close her legs around his arm again, and he withdrew his hand, however reluctantly.

“That was amazing!”  He’d been able to bring most of the women he’d been with to orgasm, but one was usually enough, as far as he could tell. The ones that usually wanted more were of the looser morals variety, but there was no questioning hers, considering what he’d discovered about her.

He wished he thought he could trust her enough to untie her and hold her in his arms.  She was crying again, and it made him want to soothe her in a more conventional manner.

But when he reached for her, to hold her as best he could, having already taken what she undoubtedly thought was his heavy leg off hers, relinquishing control of her lower body to her, she turned onto her side, deliberately presenting her back to him.  Cage lay gingerly on his back, listening to the sounds of her weeping when that was what he had been trying to prevent in the first place although she did, eventually, precede him to sleep, but it was a fitful night for the both of them.

Rachel awoke with a start and a stark need to relieve herself.

“Mister.  Sir.  Please wake up.  Please!”  She was yelling at him at the end, and he barely stirred.

She began to kick him, hard.  It felt almost too good to finally be able to take the aggression he inspired in her out on him.  Rachel wasn’t sure which offense it was that she wanted to beat the crap out of him for; the list kept getting longer.  Probably what he had done to her to “help her sleep” was first and foremost.  She did not like that she liked being molested by this man, this dirty outlaw who forced her into complete vulnerability—even more than Hemmingway had— and then took advantage of that fact to molest her under the guise of helping her.

But you loved it, her body singsonged to her mind.

Never again, her mind promised back to her body.

“What the fuck are you doing, woman?” he roared, coming out of a sound sleep.

There.  She’d rather deal with the dangerous, gun wielding side of him than the one who wanted to “soothe” her to sleep.

“I have to … use the necessary.”

“The what?” he asked fuzzily.

That was what she had grown up calling it.  Of course, because her father was an inventor, they had had one of the first in-house necessaries in town.  “The outhouse.  I have to go to the outhouse.”

She heard him sigh heavily, and saw him rub his hand sleepily over his eyes.  “How far is it from the house?”

“Quite a ways to the back.”  Once the words were out of her mouth she knew she should have lied and said it was close—he would more likely have let her go in that case, although he also might well have wanted to use it himself, in which case he would have realized she’d lied to him.

And she already knew how he would punish her for that.

Her horrified ears could barely begin to process what he said next.  “Well, I’m not going to let you outside on your own so you can run away.  Find something in here like a pail and use it to pee into.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I do not pee into pails!”

She frowned down at him as he grinned.  “That sounds just like something my mother would say, and in exactly the same tone.”

“Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, this is a very humble cottage.  I only have one pail and another with a hole in it, and I use the good one for milk.  I’m not going to relieve myself into a pail I need to use to carry milk.”

“Then pee into the one with the hole.”

“But it’ll leak all over my floor!”

He looked unimpressed at her concerns.  “It’s a dirt floor.  Pee into the pail with the hole, throw what you can of it out the door, then use a shovel to get the damp dirt and throw it out the door.  Or cut out the middleman and pee on the shovel.  I don’t care.  I’m only going to untie you for a short amount of time, so you need to decide what to do.”

Since the shovel was in the barn, that point was moot, but as he removed the roped from around her wrist, she decided to put something down beneath the pail, since the hole was a bit up the side, she’d probably be all right.

She certainly wouldn’t be happy, but she’d live.

But when she stood up, she remembered her nakedness, especially since he seemed to be enjoying it all too much. She reached for the pile he had made of her clothes next to her nightstand, but found her hand slapped smartly.

“Oh, no.  No clothes for you.  You’re sneaky and disobedient.  I need you at a disadvantage if I’m going to keep myself from getting another hole blown in me.”

Rachel took umbrage at being called sneaky and disobedient when he was the outlaw, but her need to go was overriding the set down she wanted to give him.  She found the spare pail and put it as far away from him as she could.  There was nowhere to go where he couldn’t see her at all in this tiny space, which was only made tinier by his size, but she was going to do what she could to preserve what little was left of her modesty.

“Turn away, please,” she asked politely as she stood there with her arms crossed over herself, tapping her foot impatiently.

“No.”

She just about snapped.  “I won’t go anywhere.  I couldn’t lift the bar off the door before you could get to me–”

“No.  I don’t trust you any more than you trust me, Missus,” he drawled lazily.