Caged (17 page)

He smiled, his stunning olive eyes warming, and my mind took me back to a time when he had always looked at me that way. A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it back.

“I’m a professional fighter, Kloe. Don’t worry, no one has hurt me enough yet.”

“You fight for a living?”

Nodding, he grinned. “It helps.”

I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth in his revelation because I had no doubt that it did help him to release his anger. Maybe that was why he was being a little friendlier now.

A noise behind him made me jump and I stared over Anderson’s shoulder at a man that stood watching us closely. I hadn’t noticed him before. There was something not right in the depths of his cold grey eyes and a shiver tore through me, jolting each of my vertebrae with the strength of it. Looking back at Anderson, I frowned. “What’s going on?”

His previous warm smile grew into a vicious, sharp grin. “The reason I woke you. I’d like you to meet my friend, Robbie.” Turning, Anderson spoke to Robbie. “Rob, this is Kloe.”

Robbie’s ruthless eyes grazed down my body, a cruel smirk greeting me when his severe inspection finally rested on my face. “I’ve heard so much about you, Kloe. It’s nice to put a face to the name after all this time.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, the flat tone to his voice giving away nothing. I swung my gaze back to Anderson. “What’s going on?” I repeated.

“Do you want to see me, Kloe? Really see me?”

Alarm sent my pulse into the heavens and my chest tightened with dread. “I can already see you, Anderson. The you that you’re unwilling to set free.”

He laughed, the disturbing sound unnerving me. “No. This, what I’m going to show you, is the real me. I told you that you needed to accept me for who I am, and now is the time for you to find out exactly who I am.”

I scuttled backwards and shook my head urgently when he pulled a length of rope out of his pocket. “No, don’t.”

“I’m sorry, I have to. I don’t trust you enough to not interfere.”

He grabbed hold of my hands, his strength denying me anywhere to go, and binding a portion of it around my wrists he then tied the other end to one of the spindles on the bed. Once again the conflicting elements to him made me dizzy as he laid a soft kiss to my sweating forehead. Fear caught my ability to respond and I pulled my knees up to my chest, dread biting like a viper’s venom at my muscles and paralyzing me.

My pulse quickened when Anderson tore off his t-shirt. His body was solid, his muscles defined with perfect grooves. He kept his eyes fixed on my face when he yanked his belt through the loops and dragged the strip of leather over his palms.

“You all tried to save me,” he said quietly, his stare darkening on me. “But what none of you realised is that I didn’t want saving. But you, Kloe, you took away the only reason I had left to keep breathing. You clogged my lungs with your lie and you stole any hope I had of a normal life. They all took everything from me. And now… now I want it back.”

I couldn’t speak, the lump in my throat restricting my voice box when he turned around and walked across the room. Taking one of the suspended chains, Robbie fastened the cuff that was attached at the end to Anderson’s wrist, then doing the same with another chain, he yanked hard on them until Anderson’s arms were pulled tightly above his head. His back muscles bulged and his strong shoulders strained under the strict hold. Sweat glistened the skin on the nape of his neck and the waistband of his jeans slipped a little now he had removed his belt. Yet as fear poured through me, I could feel an excitement seeping from Anderson, his perspiration from anticipation not stress.

Instinctively I shouted out when the crack of a whip fractured the tense atmosphere and the skin on Anderson’s back split in two. Robbie, ignoring my cries for him to stop, brought down the razor edged thin strip of hard leather once more, the sound of it tearing into Anderson’s skin making the bile in my gut turn to acid.

I struggled in the ropes, trying to wrestle free as I watched Robbie rip into Anderson with an unimaginable violence. The more Anderson cried out, the more his skin shredded, fine strands of it hanging off him as his blood streamed down and beneath his jeans. Raw, bloody flesh conveyed just how brutal Robbie’s thrashing was, his merciless strikes making tears roll down my face.

“Stop it!” I screamed out.

Both disregarded my pleading, both lost in a world that only belonged to them in that moment. I wasn’t even sure if they knew I was still there, terrified and confused.

Anderson’s severe yelling had turned to groans, yet they weren’t groans of pain. They were moans of ecstasy, pleasure filling the room with each additional strike of the whip. I refused to accept the erotic quality that filtered into each sound he made, and the atmosphere in the room, the thickness in the air making my skin clammy with expectancy.

Anderson had willingly slipped his hands into those cuffs and he had calmly allowed Robbie to buckle them. Robbie had voluntarily taken a whip from the rack and used it against his friend. But how could anyone
want
that level of pain?
Need
that degree of violence?

The scent of blood around me made my breath quicken, my heart struggling to keep up with the adrenaline running through me. Each whistle of the whip was becoming muted under the hungry growls coming from Anderson.

But, just as I was about to pass out, the brutality making me hyperventilate, things took a drastic turn.

Suddenly Robbie dropped the whip and I watched in a daze when he yanked Anderson’s jeans around his thighs and pushed him forward. Then, releasing his cock from his trousers, Robbie forced himself inside Anderson’s backside. He fucked him with an extreme savagery until the blood from Anderson’s back merged with the blood flowing from his anus. Their grunts were wild, frantic and loud, their fucking just as untamed.

My head shook as my sanity started to slip. Anderson gained enjoyment from the very thing that had tortured him for so many years. Yet this wasn’t rape; this was very much consensual. Anderson was screaming, but not with pain, or maybe not an unwanted pain. He was roaring in ecstasy, his face screwed up in rapture as Robbie drove hard and deep, the power forcing Anderson’s face into the wall.

My throat constricted and a tragic sob broke from me when Robbie abruptly pulled out and unclasped Anderson’s chains, then pushed him to his knees and thrust his cock into Anderson’s mouth, the blood that coated him smearing across Anderson’s lips.

Anderson fisted his own cock, pumping himself hard and fast until his spunk sprayed across his belly and Robbie came down the back of his throat with a thunderous roar.

That’s when the horror and overwhelming sadness engulfed me in its black protection and took me to a place where my nightmares weren’t remotely as dark as reality.

I
DIDN’T SEE
A
NDERSON FOR
a few days after. When I woke from the shock induced sleep a few hours later, I found a six pack of water, various savoury and sweet snacks and a flask of coffee sat on the small table. Beside the items was a tatty hardback copy of
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
by C.S Lewis. I couldn’t help but smile when I picked it up and held it in my hands, and I was grateful for the distraction it allowed my thoughts. I was also staggered to find it was a first edition when I opened it.

I never heard Anderson come or go but I was surprised to see Red laid on the floor beside my bed the next day when I woke, together with
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee – another first edition. Red seemed as happy to see me as I her, and licked my face as I scratched behind her ear. “Where’s your master, huh?”

She whined in reply and treated me to another long swipe of her tongue. It was nice to have some company, and even though she never replied to my ramblings, I didn’t feel as though I was losing my sanity by talking to myself.

I devoured each book, the respite to my mind welcomed and very much needed. But when I wasn’t reading all I could think about was Anderson, and more specifically the side to him he had revealed. At first I had refused to believe he could have enjoyed that, but the more I replayed the scene in my head, the more I had to accept that, from the sounds that had escaped him and the expressions on his face, he had found immense pleasure from every part of Robbie’s violence. And the more I reran it, the more I was disgusted to find myself reacting physically to the images in my head. What had happened shouldn’t have turned me on, it shouldn’t make my body hot and my breathing accelerate. Nevertheless, I found that concentrating on the memory of Anderson’s face got me hotter, the echo of the erotic sounds that had come from him and the expressions of sheer ecstasy on his face making my belly throb.

The third day I woke to find Charles Dickens’
A Tale of two Cities,
and, yes, it was a first edition. I remembered back to the day at Seven Oaks when I had found Anderson learning to read and I was delighted that it was something he’d obviously kept at.

This time a flask of soup and some fresh bread came with some cans of
Coke
and more water. I was angry that Anderson never woke me on his nightly visits, and I had to wonder why.

That afternoon I placed my book down and after a cup of soup, I decided to take a shower. The water was good and hot, the refreshing torrent of water on my skin invigorating after the stuffiness I felt from being cooped up. I ached for fresh air in my lungs and the sun on my face, and when I felt tears prickle my eyes and the memories from twenty years ago start to infiltrate my mind, I shook them from my head and leaned my face into the spray of water. Taking as long as was physically possible before I started to shrivel up, I reluctantly switched off the water and stepped from the shower.

I gasped when I found Anderson leaning against the wall. He held a fluffy white towel and his stark eyes bored into me when I froze in place. There was a hardness to his face but a soft smile formed while his gaze grew softer.

I was suspended in the deepness of those green eyes just as much as he was lost in my blue ones. He took a sharp breath then moved his eyes down the length of me. I wasn’t uncomfortable with his blatant perusal, the insecurity that I always felt being naked in someone’s company this time leaving me confident and unashamed. The way his eyes blazed the lower they got made my skin tingle with awareness, his obvious appreciation evident in the way his eyes became hooded and his soft lips parted. I couldn’t understand my reaction to Anderson’s shameless inspection. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to like what he saw. And I wanted him to see that I was as broken as he was.

He stepped forward and slowly lifted his hand. I stood still, allowing him,
needing him
, to touch me. He pressed one finger to a scar, his eyes studying it along with his tender contact. His touch barely registered on my skin but my mind was very conscious of it. Running his finger down, he found another scar and ran his touch over it, then to another, and another.

Eventually his eyes came back to my face. “Cigarette burns?”

I nodded.

“Your step-father?”

“Yes.”

My breath caught in my throat when he flattened his hand to the centre of my chest. “Your heart is racing.” His whisper was controlled but his eyes exposed the wildness running through his blood.

“Yes.”

Heaviness in my limbs stole all capability to move when he slowly moved his hand to my breast. His caress burned, my nipple hardening and divulging just how much I needed his physical attention.

I expected amusement from him, the effect he was having on me bringing out the cruel side to him that I didn’t like, but he remained totally gentle, both in his stare and in his caress.

“You’re attracted to me.”

It was hardly a revelation but then again there hadn’t been a hint of surprise in his statement.

“Yes.”

His eyes fired and he inhaled sharply. “I often imagined how beautiful you would be naked. But my imagination couldn’t ever have done you justice. I could never have envisaged anything so utterly perfect and exquisite.”

His tongue ran along his lip, mesmerising me.

“Tell me, Kloe,” he breathed as he ran his hand up my throat. I gulped beneath his hold when he enclosed my neck in his fingers and squeezed lightly. “Do you dream of us fucking, of my cock slick with your cum? Do you wonder what it will feel like when I fuck your tight little arse? Or how my cum will taste in your mouth?”

Every part of me pulsed with his words, my lungs trembling and causing me to gasp for air. My chest heaved the tighter the constriction on my throat became. However, I wasn’t scared, far from it. The scorching heat that travelled within my veins drove a yearning through me that I thought would drive me insane.

“Tell me,” he ordered with a tone that heightened the painful longing inside me.

“Yes.”

My back pressed into the cold tiles of the shower cubicle when Anderson pushed me back, his strangling hold sliding into my hair when he kissed me with a viciousness that robbed every one of my senses. His tongue whipped at mine, the furious way he curled it around my mouth making my lungs scream for oxygen. My scalp throbbed with the pain of his grasp on my hair and the way he feasted on my mouth refused me the air I needed to breathe. But I didn’t care, I wanted him to have my last breath, I needed to experience the passionate pain only he could grant me.