His Wicked Games (His Wicked Games #1) (18 page)

The hallway on the other side is as dark as
the passageway—far darker than most of the rooms and corridors
upstairs, where the windows let in light even on rainy days like
today. I edge my way along the closest wall, a hand out for
support, and my fingers brush against stone.

Looks like he definitely wasn't kidding about
that dungeon bit.

I don't know what I'll find down here, but
there's no way I'm giving up the chance to explore a little. What
do eccentric billionaires keep in their sub-basements? Vaults of
jewels? Stashes of the latest designer drugs? Dead bodies of people
who defied them?

My hand brushes against a door, and I fumble
for the handle in the dark. It's locked. About ten steps later, I
find another door, but this one's locked, too. And then another,
and another—this entire basement is stone walls and locked doors.
I'm screwed if Calder catches me down here. There's nowhere to
hide.

My body is tense, my skin alive with nerves.
The thought that Calder is somewhere above me, hunting me down,
incites a feral excitement in me. If he catches me down here, what
will he do?

My heart almost leaps out of my chest when I
find the next door unlocked. I slowly push it open then raise my
cell phone to try and light the darkness beyond.

There's nothing here. No storage boxes, no
cases of jewels, no dead bodies. I wander around the room,
inspecting every corner, but I'm in an empty stone cube. A small
one, at that. It really does feel like a dungeon cell—all that's
missing are a few chains on the walls.

I flip my cell phone closed and sit down in
one of the corners, trying to catch my breath. I'm not sure why
this place flusters me so much, but I'm already too far gone to
fight the fluttering in my stomach. There's no point in denying
that a part of me wants him to catch me, but I won't willingly lose
this contest. After the time is up, however, then all bets are
off.

I glance down at the time on my phone.
Twenty-eight minutes left. Halfway done. I can do this.

The minutes tick by slowly, all the more
because I can’t see anything around me. I can only focus on the
excitement running beneath my skin. When I close my eyes, I can
only imagine the things Calder has planned for me upon my
capture.

I should feel bad for indulging my
imagination, but I don't. I'm not ashamed of the fantasies playing
in my mind, nor am I ashamed of the anticipation coursing through
me. I feel alive and wild and free. I feel like this place, this
mansion, is entirely removed from my old reality. My normal life
and all its stress and responsibilities are far away. In here I can
be reckless. In here I can be shameless and unrestrained. In here I
can explore every dark, wicked corner of myself.

When I finally grow impatient and look down
at my phone again, there are only seven minutes left.

I draw my knees up to my chest and rock
gently. I don't want to admit it, but I'm a little disappointed
Calder hasn't come for me yet. After our close encounter in the
passageway upstairs, I thought I'd spend the entire game on my
toes, just steps ahead of him, breathlessly out of reach.

Just when I’m about to resign myself to the
letdown, I hear a sound out in the hallway.

I hold my breath. For a moment, I hear
nothing but silence. I’m beginning to think I might have imagined
the noise when suddenly it comes again.

There, down the hall—is that the sound of a
door closing? Has Calder stumbled down here at last?

For a solid minute I don't hear anything
more, and then there's a footstep, light but distinct. Yes, there's
no denying it—someone's walking down the hallway. Toward the room
where I wait.

I press myself further against the wall and
flip my cell phone open for one last look. Three minutes until the
alarm goes off. Three minutes, and I'll have the money the Center
needs to survive.

I hear the jiggle of a door handle. Not mine,
no—three doors down, maybe four. This level is so quiet that I can
practically hear my heart pumping.

Outside my cell, Calder moves a few more
steps and tries the next door. I shouldn't have chosen the first
room I found unlocked, I realize suddenly. He'll move on from the
locked doors quickly, but he'll stop and search this room, and
there's nowhere in here I can hide.

I'm tempted to pull out my phone and check
the time again, but it's too risky. Instead I remain curled up on
the floor, afraid to move, and I wait.

Calder tries the handle of the room next to
mine. One jiggle, two. And then his footsteps approach my door.

I'm lightheaded. There can't be more than two
minutes left. If I can escape him for just two minutes…

The handle of my cell turns, and the door
opens with a
click
that seems to echo throughout the room. I
stay perfectly still. A single breath or the tiniest shift of my
foot might alert him to my presence.

He steps into the room. He moves slowly, as
if he's unaware that his time is about to expire. Or maybe he does
know—maybe he already knows I'm in here, and it's all part of his
game.

Every nerve on my body is afire. My muscles
tighten, urging me to jump, move, run—but I can't. I won't. I
ignore the knots twisting in my belly, the desire growing between
my legs, and I wait, frozen, for the end.

Calder's footsteps move forward, toward the
far wall. He pauses only briefly when he reaches the corner
adjacent to mine. He's no more than twelve feet away from me
now.

How much time is left? It can't be more than
a minute.

His steps turn, and now he's moving along the
wall. I can hear his fingers graze against the stone. His steps are
slow, deliberate. He's only ten feet away from me now.

I should run. Or better yet, crawl. Maybe I
can stay beneath his arms. If he doesn't touch me, then he doesn’t
win. Even if my shoe squeaks against the stone, I might be able to
evade his hands in the darkness.

It’s risky, and I’m too close to winning.
There can't be more than thirty seconds left.

But Calder can't be more than five or six
steps away.

I lift myself off the ground, only just
enough to slide myself a couple feet to the left.

Calder doesn't break his step. He doesn't
appear to notice my presence at all.

I shift another couple of feet. Why haven't
our phone alarms gone off yet? How much time is left?

Calder has reached the corner where I was
hiding just a moment ago. If he could see through the darkness, he
could grab me easily.

Are there ten seconds left? Twenty? I'm so
close. Just a little longer…

My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket.
Relief sweeps over me, but dread follows just a quickly. It's not
my alarm going off—it's my normal ring tone. Someone's calling
me.

Calder reacts before I have time to recover
from the shock. He dives toward me, and his hands grab me in the
dark.

“Caught you,” he says, his fingers digging
into my skin.

Then, only then, do our respective alarms go
off in unison.

<<>>

It’s not right.

I was so close—
so close
. To lose like
this, with only second left—to lose because my phone went off… no.
No. I won't go down like this.

“You can't—” I start, but Calder surprises me
by yanking me to my feet.

He doesn't say anything. He just pushes me up
against the wall. I try to argue again, but his fingers close
across my lips.

I reach up and grab his shirt. I intend to
push him away, to explain to him why his victory shouldn’t count,
but instead I find myself pulling him closer. After an hour
fantasizing about this moment of capture, I realize I don't have
the will to refuse him.

His warm breath sweeps across my nose, my
cheek, my ear. In the darkness like this, robbed of my sight, I
feel like all of my other senses have exploded. The side of his
face brushes against mine, and his stubble scratches my jaw in a
hundred tiny places, but it's the sort of pain that only increases
the heat building in my core. He pulls my earlobe between his teeth
and sucks. Pleasure surges through my body, and I start to whimper
against his fingers, but he tightens his grip on my mouth and
pushes me harder against the wall.

His free hand slips beneath my shirt and
glides across my stomach, up toward my breast. His touch sends
waves of heat across my skin, my core throbs in anticipation. His
fingers slide beneath the bottom edge of my bra and push the cup up
over the curve of my breast. I moan, but once more he tightens his
hand across my lips, this time so much it hurts.

He pulls his hand away from my breast and
tugs at my tank top. I’m so flustered that it takes me a moment to
wrestle it over my head, and before I can throw it aside, Calder
grabs it from my hand.

“What are—”

He cuts me off by shoving the shirt in my
mouth. I nearly choke on the fabric, shocked by the force of the
movement, but I don’t fight him.

He wants me to be silent
, I realize.
Here we are, with no speech and no sight—we're like two strangers
coming together in the darkness.

That realization excites me more than I want
to admit.

I clamp my teeth down on the makeshift gag
and reach around him, slipping my hands beneath the back of his
shirt. I trail my nails across his skin as I move upward, hoping to
remind him of our earlier encounter, and I’m rewarded when a tremor
passes beneath my touch.

And then suddenly he grabs me by the elbows
and yanks my hands away from him. He captures both my wrists in one
hand, and before I can twist away from him I hear the telltale
metallic clink of his belt buckle. I playfully struggle, but his
grip on me is firm. When he manages to free his belt, he brings it
up and wraps it around my wrists, so tightly that the leather edges
are digging into my skin. Then he jerks my bound hands upward,
pinning them to the wall above my head.

I writhe against him, and he responds by
grinding against me, hard. The button of his fly digs into my
stomach, and his arousal presses against my lower belly. He moves
only enough to allow his free hand to slip between us and undo the
button on my own pants. He undoes my zipper in one swift motion,
and then he jerks my jeans down over my hips and pushes them toward
the floor.

His leg forces my knees apart, and I step out
of my pants as I obey his silent command. I strain against his
hands, wanting to grab him and feel his hot skin beneath my
fingers, but he won't let me move.

Only when I stop wriggling does he release
the hand on my waist. He grinds against me once more before leaning
back just enough to reach for his own pants. There's a slight
crackle as he pulls something from his pocket—a condom, I'm
guessing—and then the rustle of fabric as he wrestles his way out
of his pants. When he presses against me again, I can feel the
smooth hard length of him against my own heated skin.

I want to kiss him, but my lips are frozen
around the gag. He doesn’t seem particularly inconvenienced by
this. His own mouth moves past mine, brushing against my cheek on
his way to my ear. He buries his nose in my hair and pulls my
earlobe once more between his lips. I twist beneath his grasp.

His grip on my wrists tightens as he shifts
again, and even though it's painful, I find myself fighting back a
cry of pleasure.

I don't know how much longer I can bear this.
I buck my hips, urging him to meet me, and quickly, but he responds
by pushing me forcibly back against the wall. The message is clear:
he's in charge here. That was the prize, wasn't it? I'm truly at
his mercy.

Maybe I should be ashamed at the reaction
that realization sends through me, but I'm not.

When I've stilled again, Calder reaches
between my legs. His fingers slide back and forth across the
wetness there before he shoves my legs further apart.

This time his cock slides between my thighs.
My clit throbs as the smooth skin of his shaft brushes against me.
Another couple of touches would send me right over the edge, but
Calder doesn't seem interested in gentle erotic caresses. His
length nudges between my folds, seeking my core. And then he
pauses, his head just inside my opening, and I throb again in need
as I feel myself start to stretch around him.

Fuck me
, I want to scream.
Ram
yourself inside of me.

But he moves with such excruciating slowness
that I'm afraid I'll burst before I’m completely full. He guides
himself slowly deeper, and when I shift to try and hurry his
progress, he pushes me against the wall again, holding me
immobile.

He makes it only about halfway inside of me
before he stops. It's all I can do not to whimper in tortured
frustration when he begins to draw out of me again. He's doing this
intentionally. He's driving me mad on purpose.

He withdraws from me completely, then pauses
for several long, excruciating seconds. It's the encounter in the
gallery all over again—he's getting off on my desperation.

He begins to move into me again. My fingers
curl into fists and then uncurl again as he pushes slowly along my
passage. Every moment is agony, yet I've never been so aware of my
body before. Every time Calder shifts, a thousand new nerve endings
respond. I'm intensely aware of every adjustment my body makes for
his, every tremor of my flesh, every firm, hot inch of his
arousal.

I'm half-delirious when he stops and
withdraws the second time. I nearly sob in desperation, but I'm
afraid that if I don't remain silent—if I refuse to play by his
rules—he'll leave me in this horrible state forever. If he releases
me now, if he leaves me empty and unfulfilled this time, then I'll
dissolve into a puddle at his feet.