Vanquish (14 page)

Fainting wouldn't keep her under long enough for the thirty-minute drive, but the Roofy in the water would. Wrestling with her in front of the open door had been a gamble, but he knew the neighbors on either side were at work and the trees out back blocked the view from the other houses.

Still, it had been a risk that could've been avoided by simply pinning her down and forcing her to drink. But watching her struggle with the choice, seeing how far she'd take it, had revealed a lot about how her mind worked.

She'd convinced herself the biggest threat was out there, beyond her doors and windows, and the least amount of pain was in her house, with him. He was certain she would welcome a bullet before drinking the water, knowing the tranquilizer would result in her removal from the house. It was absolutely fascinating.

In his online research of Amber Rosenfeld, he'd validated she'd won countless first place prizes in prestigious contests in fitness modeling and beauty pageantry. Then, after a fourteen-year career, nothing. For two years, no news articles, nothing in the search results except a profile on an online crafts store selling leathercrafts. Why?

Only a year older than his thirty-three years, her firm figure and youthful face would've provided her a comfortable income from modeling. Yet, here she was, carving leather and drowning in debt. What the fuck had happened to her?

She had no social media profiles, and no friends or family mentioned in the public search results. She'd simply vanished from the spotlight with a disqualification from what might've been her fourth win in an international beauty pageant. The significance of the number four hadn't been lost on him.

He straddled her hips, anxious to dig into her complex mind and savoring the feel of her tight little body against his balls. Christ, all her struggling had wreaked havoc on his control. But he wanted to fuck her in his house, on his bed, where the surrounding acreage's dense timber would swallow her screams.

He stabbed the water with the drinking straw he'd found in the kitchen, sealed it with a finger, and trickled it down her throat.

She coughed, swallowing, and gasped awake. He had another strawfull waiting before she opened her eyes. She blinked, lips parting, and he emptied it in her mouth.

Her throat convulsed, her arms yanked uselessly at the restraints, and she angled her neck to look at her hands. Her eyes rounded, her fists clenched, and she roared, “You dirty, conniving” —she bucked her hips— “heavy-ass dick, let me go!”

He slapped a hand over her mouth and nose and howled with laughter. “I'm going to show you how dirty, conniving, and heavy my dick is. First, you need to take a long nap.”

Christ, she was cute, but it really wasn't funny. If the neighbors were outside, they might've heard her. He cocked his head and watched her struggle for air beneath the clamp of his hand. Time to get ugly.

Releasing her face, he reared back and slammed a fist into her stomach. Not enough to damage organs, but plenty of
oomph
to knock the wind out of her and get her attention.

She gulped silently, her body straining beneath him. Her lower lip rolled inward, trembling, as she bit down on it. Her eyelids fluttered, brimming but not quite shedding tears. When the pain faded from her eyes, she narrowed them at him.

He held out the glass and raised his brow.

Her lips formed a white stubborn line.

Slowly, he trailed a finger over the cotton covering her stomach, circling the hurt and taunting her until her pupils dilated with fear. She shivered, and sweat beaded along her honey skin. Earlier, it hadn't just been fear that prickled and dampened her flesh. She'd been aroused, too, by his fingers in her pussy, or maybe just from the feel of his erection at her back, from having a man attracted to her. But she'd fought it, fought him, and that had turned him on far more than the juices slicking her cunt.

His finger followed the line of her sternum, traced her collarbone, and roamed over her chin and cheek.

“What are you going to do to me?” The quiver in her voice teased the darkest pleasure centers inside him.

He leaned forward, and his touch caressed a path over her full lips, the bridge of her nose, and her slim eyebrows, drawing out her anxiety. When he reached her nose, he pinched tightly, blocking the airway. Her gaze flew to his, white-eyed and red-rimmed.

Holding her face immobile, he angled the glass beside her chin, using the mattress to balance it. As her lips opened to inhale, he poked the end of the straw between her teeth.

With his fingers clamping her nose, he used the heel of his hand to hold her head down and her jaw shut around the straw. “I'll let you breathe after you drink through the straw. If you pass out, I'll wake you up, and we'll do it again.”

Those huge brown eyes glared at him until the pressure of her lungs overpowered her stubbornness. Her throat began to work, swallowing the drug. Gorgeous, watery pools of desperation engulfed her lashes and trickled down her temples.

“Shhh.” He bent over her, without releasing her jaw and nose, and kissed the paths of her tears.

When air coughed through the straw, he set the glass on the table and lowered his face to hers. She drew heavy, greedy inhales, tucking her chin to escape him. He chased her lips, catching them with his own and sucking, teasing, enjoying the heave of her chest and her useless struggles to get away. Then he sat back.

She pulled on the restraints and gave up quickly, evidently exhausted. Her eyes slid over the room as if memorizing every detail and locked on the aquarium of mutilated awards. “I can't go outside. I can't.” Her voice crept over him, somber and resigned.

“Why did you quit?” He nodded at the aquarium.

She looked at him, her gaze wet and glazed, not really
looking
. “You'll see.”

He narrowed his eyes, wanting to press, but he only had twenty minutes before the Roofy took effect. So he offered the same obtuseness. “I'm going to fix you; then
you'll
see.”

Tuning out her objection, he strode to the closet. He yanked three duffel bags from the top shelf and stuffed them with the bulk of her wardrobe.

When she figured out what he was doing, she wailed more nonsense about not going outside until he gagged her with a balled up sock from the dresser.

He added her toiletries from the bathroom to the last duffel, followed by the empty water glass with the Roofy evidence, her powered-off phone, laptop, and his tablet.

Twenty minutes later, he found her sleeping heavily, made sure the airway in her nose was clear, and left the gag in place. Then he slid on sunglasses and entered the garage.

Empty. Not even a car. Guess that made sense since she didn't go anywhere. Snatching the garage opener from a bare shelf, he closed the doors behind him. Because it was daylight, he strolled down the street and around the block.

He returned five minutes later in a minivan, parked it in the garage, and shut the door. The van was a purchase he’d made the prior day. A dated model with tinted windows. He'd even gone as far as swiping someone's
County Maids
advertisement, the huge magnet now clinging to the passenger sliding door.

A hired house cleaner wasn't the best explanation for the sudden activity at a seemingly vacant home. Liv certainly wouldn't have bought it, but she was at the airport, instructing skydiving lessons, and Joshua was tied up in his coaching shit at the high school. While a nighttime capture was preferred, taking Amber during the day avoided the most suspicious neighbors.

He shouldn't have been taking her at all, but after he'd researched the disorders, an idea had formed in the back of his mind. Amber might have many uses, one being an unknowing tool in solidifying a relationship with his daughter. First, he had to redirect her attachments until all she needed was him.

As he strode down the hall and into her bedroom, his insides vibrated with excitement. When he freed her arms, removed the gag, and lifted her listless, vulnerable body against his chest, something strange shifted through him and settled around his heart. It felt warm and gentle and...uncontaminated.

Impossible. Besides, his daughter was the only person he would allow himself to nurture a soft spot for. Anyone else would jump on his weakness and twist it into something they could use against him.

He shook off the unnerving feeling and quickened his pace to the garage. He was a cold-hearted fuck with an appetite for blood, come, and tears. And he had the perfect girl to feed it.

A dreamlike blur of sensations sloshed over Amber. Thick darkness. The sluggish thump of her heart. A draft on her skin. The familiar scent of aftershave.

She blinked, tried to clear the haze, and her eyes met a veil of black. Why was her lamp off? She slept with it on. The mattress felt too firm against her back and head. And no pillow? That wasn't right.

Cool air whispered over her body. Her very naked body. Blood rushed past her ears as she tried to sit up, going nowhere.

Nude, dark, cold, she had to be stuck in a dream, tangled in the sheets. She always slept without clothes when no one was looking. No one would be there. Not in her room at night, in her safe place of flawless lines. If only she could see the order to ground herself in her symmetrical world.
Wake up.

She lifted her head and tried to get her bearings. Fabric rubbed her forehead, cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. Pinpricks bit at her hands. She couldn't move them, so she scrunched her face, wiggling the obstruction, and her eyelashes dragged against whatever held tightly over her eyes.
A blindfold.

She jerked, and nausea surged through her gut. Her arms and legs wouldn't bend. She yanked and kicked, caught in a web of restraints that dug into her wrists and ankles, pinning her in a spread-eagle position on her back.

A tremor awoke in her chest and exploded outward, shaking every muscle in her body until her limbs numbed and her jaw ached from clenching. Her mind spun through fuzz. She couldn't remember falling asleep, couldn't remember the last thing she did. The nausea, the disorientation, the pounding headache... Had she drank too much again?

Memories swirled in a mist of dizzy fragments. The fading rumble of Zach's truck. A water glass. The drape wrenched from the back door. A fist slamming into her stomach.

Van
.

Her heart rate spiked, and pain pounded behind her eyes. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. She let out an ear-piercing shriek that echoed around her, and she immediately regretted the outburst. She did
not
want to draw attention, couldn't bear for anyone to see her naked.

Her pulse redoubled. Where was Van? Was he watching her with sick amusement? She stifled her breath and listened. No reassuring hum of the A/C unit outside her window. No dripping from the leaking shower down the hall. Oh wait, her water had been shut off. But the mattress... It was too hard, too bare.

She wasn't in her bed. Her heart stuttered and stopped. OhmyGodOhmyGod. She wasn't in her house!

“No, no, no.” She jerked her head side to side, writhed against the restraints, and choked through panting breaths. “Where am I?”

The mattress shifted between her legs, and a tickle of wiry hair brushed her inner thighs. Then the press of hard muscle. Someone's legs. “You're home.”

She froze. His voice, oh God, it came from above her. He was kneeling between her thighs, where he could look at her stretched, godawful shame. She tried to close her legs and failed. The mattress was indented on either side of her shoulders, and she knew his hands were propped there. How long had he been bent over her, watching her, waiting? Or doing whatever he wanted to her while she was unconscious?

Her lungs slammed together, starving for air. Were the lights on? Jesus, fuck, they couldn't be on. He wouldn't want to look between her legs.

Something hard and slick nudged her opening, and his heavy body flattened her against the bed. Her mouth dried. No, this couldn’t be happening. She thrashed, pinned by his weight, unable to escape as objections gathered in her constricted throat.

In the next heartbeat, he shoved himself inside her, his girth stretching her hideous flesh with the brutality of the dry thrust. She bit down her tongue, tasting blood, as the invasion tore her open, plowing ruthlessly and igniting a scorching friction along her inner walls.

Her eyes watered behind the blindfold, the agony and humiliation of what he was doing seizing her heart. Her screech escaped without sound, and her body locked in paralyzing shock. Numb, breathless, her fear was stunned into silence, cringing in the corner of her mind.

“Scream,” he breathed, his thick exhale searing her ear.

A wail built in her throat, but he slammed into her, giving her no time to free it. No pause to catch her breath. No gentle coaxing to prepare her for his size. He fucked her harder, forcing her body to accommodate him, taking her beyond the point of pain and hurtling her into muscle-locking terror.

The straps chewed into her skin, grinding her bones. His fingers pinched and pulled her nipples, and the spread of her hips extended painfully beneath the unrelenting strength of his driving thrusts.