Wicked Ways (Dark Hearts Book 1) (5 page)

“Yeah, I did. Forgot to tell you that I’m addicted to punishing girls.”

His hand formed a loop in the rope.

“Life is full of fan-fucking-tastic surprises. Like you. Tie her hair back, Dirke.”

My chest constricted as Dirke came around the table toward me, some ribbon or thin cord in his hand. He scared me more than Reuben, though I wasn’t sure why. Standing behind me, he scraped my hair into his hands and tied it up, high.

The scent of man was in my nostrils.

Then Reuben moved in. “Your mouth, stays open.”

The first double loop of the hard rope went around my head at mouth level. He nestled it between my lips. When he drew it tight, the loop dug into my mouth at the corners, gagging me. He went around my head once more and knotted the rope at the back. With his fist on the knot and my ponytail, he pulled on my head, making me lean back until I over-balanced and waved my hands about, searching for a hold. My back met his leg and he stared down at me for ages – at my face, my breasts, everywhere.

I coughed, getting used to the feel of the rope jammed up between my lips and over my tongue.

His lips curved. “
Tsk.
Tsk.
You like shaving it all off except that little strip of hair? Told you, you’d be pretty with rope in your mouth. I like it when women can only gurgle and drool. Let’s go teach you what happens to bad girls.”

One dark thought persisted. Where were all the other women he’d had done this to? Were they dead or alive?

Mister Black

The London skyscape was foggy, dim – nothing like the clear skies of Australia. From the eightieth floor it was like arriving on a plane some mornings. The steam of my breath on the thick glass blurred everything. I was going to her. No choice.

My electronic eavesdropping friend had informed me her phone location had matched with Reuben’s. Tracking her down from the hotel booking in Darwin had been simple, but it seemed Reuben hadn’t planned or thought well. Now, somehow, a whole year later, he’d found her again.

I was sorry it had come to this, despite my knowledge that she was still the only acquired who had ever successfully run away. The only one who had even tried.

With my hands at my back, I stared blindly outward.

Sydney then. Maybe there I would find my little assassination tool. That was all she should ever be to me. I’d left her alone out of pity. I’d known that was stupid. If not Reuben, another mesmer would’ve found her eventually.

Blake and Reinhardt could take care of my clients.

I tugged my shirt cuffs into place, adjusted my tie then turned and walked across the carpet toward the bedroom to finish packing.

“Normal people have no idea how beautiful the darkness is.” – Anon

Zorie

Reuben pulled me to my feet using the trailing rope. He’d gone from crazy admirer to emotionless in one second, and now he walked ahead with that rope in his hand, not even looking back. There was no command in my head.

That made it worse.

I could react, move, think freely. My hands were free and my legs, but I could go nowhere with three men surrounding me, no clothes on except for a bra, and with a rope tied about my head. The way the rope distorted and squeezed my flesh seemed to reduce me to some unbeautiful, non-human slave creature. A deliberate act by Reuben? He’d said I was pretty. Maybe to him I was, like this.

As if that mattered.

If I could break free and get the rope end in my hands, I could run. If something distracted them...how far did his influence go? What point was there in running, if I made it to the front door only to have him grab me using his mind? Reuben was the key and the man I needed to incapacitate.

Hit him with some heavy object first? By then the other two would be on me.

Whatever punishment they had in mind now, I dreaded what they’d do if I injured one of them badly.

From the light coming through, the opaque glass door ahead led outside. This would be the courtyard. I slowed and almost stopped. One of the two men behind me grabbed a large handful of butt cheek. He squeezed hard enough to draw a gasp from me and make me go up on my toes.

“Keep going.” That grating voice was Dirke’s.

At the noise, Reuben turned. Only a small grunt betrayed that he’d seen. With the rope firmly wrapped around his hand, he dragged me to the door, opened it, and drew me out and across to the middle of this square courtyard that was paved with hefty terracotta pavers. Pots of large ferns and shrubs decorated the periphery next to the house walls. To string me up meant something overhead, and the only structure that qualified was a birdcage-like metal structure in the center that was the size of a small room. A gazebo...an evil gazebo.

Whoever these neighbors were, there was only one side that wasn’t loomed over by Reuben’s dwelling, and that was straight ahead, far to the back, where a forest of gum trees and thick foliage grew. I glimpsed another building in palest gray concrete.

“They’re watching you,” Reuben murmured from near my ear. “Let’s put on a show for them.”

Imaginary?

Running was forever on my mind.

But there was nowhere to go.

He led me through a door in the cage gazebo.

At the first sign of panic, at my muted grunt and my tug on the rope, he clamped down on my mind. Peace blanketed me, and I stood quietly, blinking, while he threw the rope over something above that resembled a perch in a cage, then paid out the free length and tied it to an anchor point on the birdcage bars yards away. Ivy grew on the outside of the steel and fronds twirled down; the finer ones seemed clear as glass when sunlight shone through their greenness.

His last few turns and knots around the anchor point placed more and more tension on the line and on my mouth. I was on the flats of my feet. With the slightest increase in tension, it would pull on my head, and I’d have to go up on my toes.

The rope tasted so bitter it was getting soaked by my saliva.

The command filtered away, leaving me bereft.

Peace disintegrated, was ripped away.

Fastened in one place by a rope between my teeth, mostly naked, and lost.

No one who cared for me knew where I was.

I wanted to reach back and undo the knot, but was afraid to try and certain it was impossible with my weight on the rope. Instead I merely flexed my hands and shuffled my feet. Not for comfort, no, just to do...something.

He was coming.

“Now.” Reuben halted within arm’s length. “That is so much better. Hello, little Zorie.” His smile had teeth, white, perfect teeth. “I gather you’ve forgotten much of that night when we had you. We’re going to teach you again.”

I could hear the other two moving in behind me. Their hands began stroking me, pinching down my spine then pulling at my ass cheeks. Someone’s knee wedged my legs apart. Doing that made me drop an inch or two toward the ground and the rope pulled taut, jerking my head upward.

Desperate to lessen the pull, I grabbed at the nearest thing – a man’s shirt, Reuben’s.

Reuben grinned. “Now you see where the fun is. Let go of me.”

I did so and with my head caught in rope and rigid, I eyed him, whimpering when he planted his palm over my mons. The impact went beyond touch. A sexual fire enveloped my lower body, branding me with a yearning to orgasm, reminding me of that night when he’d made me come, so easily.

Where did I put my hands? They hung at my side, useless.

Another man slapped up onto my pussy and asshole – Dirke. Then he unclipped and took off my bra. I glimpsed Madoc patrolling the outside.

Whimpering and off balance, I was shocked again and again by the effect of Reuben’s touch. Dirke’s muscular arms crossed my chest and he grabbed at me, pulling me into his body and hanging onto each bared breast as if they were trophies.

“Can I fuck her first?” I could hear the grind of his teeth, feel the dig of his jaw on my head and smell him. Dirke’s body scent was as strong as a feral animal’s.

When he tightened his hold, I gasped. The rope creaked from the strain and my mouth stung from the burn of the rope. He’d deliberately pulled my body downward.

Madoc circled beyond Reuben, fascinated, his gaze roving over every aspect of the scene but coming back again and again to my mouth where the rope etched into the corners of my mouth. The small sharp fibers of the hemp were wearing away skin.

I tasted blood and groaned, trapped, absorbed in the surreal weave of pain and pleasure evoked by his ability. They could do anything and I would like it. Giving in to that was hard to do. My body, yes, but the logical part of my mind was sobbing at the dichotomy of this humiliation that was tearing me in two.

Madoc had stripped, as had Dirke. Hard cock slid along my seam then nudged at my ass.

That I was wet enough to make that feel good, to make me hear the slippery sounds – that seemed the worst of all this, that Reuben could arouse me so easily.

Rapt in what was being done, and in my reactions, he’d not looked away, once.

“Yes. Go ahead. Fuck her ass. Dry.”

I sucked in a shaky breath.
No.

The chuckle from Dirke was evil. “I would if I could, but she’s too wet.”

Eyes shut, I felt him probe at me again. A shock from Reuben’s hand seemed to liquefy my groin. When Dirke’s cock slid into me, forcing wide my asshole to what seemed its very limits, I whimpered and tried to bow my head, only to be stopped by the rope. My gasps sawed at my ears. The pleasure was extreme and ratcheted upward fast, as he shoved further inward. A climax threatened. My legs shook. My hands grabbed at air and I whined through teeth, past sodden rope.

Reuben slipped two fingers into my pussy, exploring me while whispering dirtiness.

“That’s it. Take it. Take that big cock in your ass. Your ass is ours.” He kissed me turning his head and biting my lips and nose and chin while he piled on more words. “Our slut. Our wet cunt. Our asshole. You can come now. Come. Now.”

He crammed more fingers into me, maybe a thumb too, stretching my entrance, scratching me, but nothing mattered, and I strained, gasping, nothing mattered except the pulse from his hand that sent me...

I jerked frantically into a full-blown orgasm that lasted ages and had me shuddering, my heart pounding like a rockstar drummer. My ass and pussy squeezed down onto Dirke’s cock and those mind-bendingly, amazing, fucking fingers.

I moaned, eyes shut, mouth feeling torn, with Dirke’s cock inside me triggering more tiny climaxes. If he let me go, I’d hang lifeless, begging for more.

“Madoc.” I heard him say. “Come here. Fuck her too. When you’re done, we’ll give the neighbor a treat.”

As I opened my eyes to summon a protest, Reuben’s glare shut me down. Cloth was wrapped over my head, over my eyes, and knotted roughly. My sight was limited to what I could see between the buttons fastening a man’s shirt.

They hoisted me up, with their hands beneath my thighs. A man, Madoc, it must be, found my entrance with his cock and began to fuck me there. The only part of me still held by Reuben was my arm, which he had by my wrist. That possession of me, along with being blinded and tilted into whatever position they wanted me in, it muddled my head. I’d have trouble telling up from down.

They alternated shoving in, Madoc with his arms beneath my thighs, taking my weight, exposing me so they could both reach me. When they speared into me to the very deepest, at the same time, I shuddered, and a second later, writhed squeaking and choking into yet another orgasm.

While the men continued to fuck me, I calmed into a shivering wreck. Their thrusts thumped into my flesh and I heard their gasps, muffled by the cloth, as their own pleasure mounted.

“You’re getting so well fucked, ass and pussy.” Reuben’s voice, dripping with lust. “Unstick yourselves, you two. I want her down and tied over there, by the neck.”

Thankful for the respite, rasping in air past the rope and finding cloth suctioning onto my nose and mouth, I let them manhandle me. They untied me from the perch and led me blinded, over a few yards of the pavers, before forcing me to hands and knees.

Where drool fell from my mouth, the shirt was thoroughly wet. The rope slithered from my mouth. I exercised my jaw. A husky
thank you
fell from my lips before I realized the ridiculousness of saying that.

Someone chuckled. Already they circled my neck with the rope and were cinching it tight enough to hold me in one place. To either side, my forehead butted the bars; my temples pressed against cool metal.

“Open your mouth,” Reuben commanded from in front. He must be on the other side of the birdcage.

I opened. Someone fiddled with the shirt then ripped the gap wider where it was buttoned near my mouth. They put my mouth to the bars then tied my head in place.

The rope at my neck... If they did that badly...

“Keep it open.” Reuben entered my mouth, pushing inside me an inch, surprising me with the taste of a man in my mouth. My sexual places reawakened, as if I was a machine that only needed this,
him
. “Do her ass again,” he added, hoarsely. “Fuck. Your mouth...”

“Mine this time.” Madoc. Demanding his right. I knew their voices.

An unnatural lust possessed me. I arched my back, offering myself, wriggling my butt. Where was my shame? But I craved, I needed.

Unnatural. Perverse. I spluttered and sobbed around his cock, shaken, exhausted, but wanting to be used so much.

“Good little slut.”

“She’s in the zone,” someone said softly.

Fastened in place by my head bound to metal, my mouth filled, I drifted in a haze of euphoria. My legs and arms trembled.

The rustle and slick sounds of a condom being unwrapped and rolled on accompanied Reuben’s impatient and rhythmic invasion of my mouth. Seconds later, my asshole was penetrated, slower than Dirke’s fucking of me there, but the cock was bigger.

At my groan and my teeth clamping onto his shaft, Reuben must’ve reached through the bars. He grabbed my hair and some of the shirt in one fist. “Careful, my little cunt. I know the man is big but you’re not to bite me...much.” He laughed and slid in farther, cutting off my air.

I wriggled, gasping, accepting I was a sacrifice to their carnal needs and could only take what they gave me – one cock plundering my mouth while the other violated my ass.

“Don’t you dare come,” Reuben muttered.

Oh.
I whimpered but obeyed, as they fucked me and came and withdrew.

The end was accompanied by slow and distant sound of clapping. Had someone been watching? They unraveled rope and shirt from me, wiped me down, then left me curled on the warm but gritty pavers, exhausted, quivering, and hurting.

Blinking slowly, unfocused, I stared along the ground.

There was blood mixed with the cum and drool smeared on the paver before my nose and I was so far gone I had no idea where it had come from.

“I think we’re finished with her,” someone said.

“For the day,” someone else added, voice ripe with amusement.

“Yeah. For today.”

I shivered. He’d had to tell me not to come. Where was I going? What had I done? Would any shred of my soul be left when they threw me away?

There must be more than this in my future.