Yield (18 page)

“It’s not the end, Mister Glass but it is time to involve the police.”

Optimist. Normally that was me too. He was probably faking it too. During this past day, I’d gotten to know Hugh well. Tight minded, he didn’t let you in to see what he was feeling often, or even what he was thinking. But he loved Wren, in his own way.

Slowly, I stood, feeling as if I’d gained ten years and a mountain of weight. “I’m sorry.”

Hugh stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. “Not all your fault. Our opponent is ahead of us. By the way, we found a tracking device on your previous vehicle. It’s why I had you dispose of it. My men have also caught two men surveilling us. On extensive and somewhat brutal questioning, we obtained their client’s details. All fake. He knew you were here, Glass. He’s been watching you, Wren, and probably me when he could. Possibly since PNG. Whoever this is, he still has plenty of money and he has the brains to use it well. We need to get her back. Fast.”

“Yes. Of course we do.” Shit, my eyes were stinging again.

Hugh was assuming she was alive.

She is. She is.

“I want to kill this
fucker
same as you. I want her safe.” Hugh looked at me, teeth bared in the first uncivilized gesture I’d seen him make. “I may not like what you are, but in this we’re united. You go hide. Tell me where. We can see what we can do while the cops crank up their investigation. Expect a tidal wave of journalists to descend on this town.”

I nodded, turned, and headed for the car, in a reverie of pain and regret. Where the hell were we going to aim ourselves with all that happening? Sitting on my backside, waiting, was not me. But here I was, with nothing to do.

What was
he
doing to her right now?

If she could get away from him, send a message somehow, we could find her. I bet she was trying. I needed to be here in case that happened. Getting bored was a minor inconvenience.

Until that time came, I’d wait, if waiting were all I could do. If.

The days wore on. The police knew there’d been a man with Wren at the beach and my need for anonymity became even more important. Though Pieter was raring to go and furious that Vetrov had perhaps taken Wren, my girl, as he now called her, I couldn’t even let him join me. There was no point in endangering him too when the cops would undoubtedly have a sample of his DNA on file from the slave house in PNG.

There was nothing I could have him do.

The house used as a holding area for slaves, that Pieter had been to in Far North Queensland, I found it using his description. After a few days of watching the media and the police infesting the island and the media circling the town like vultures, I gave in and left to raid the house – myself and three of Hugh’s men. Only to find it’d been pulled down and the property sold months ago. A new house was being constructed on the site. Something posh, from the looks of it. We turned our backs on beautiful Cow Bay with its now defunct undercurrent of human slave trafficking, and returned to the island.

Any skeletons buried at Cow Bay would have to stay buried.

Another dead end. Whoever had been on the property documents, they weren’t going to be more than another placeholder for Vetrov, though Hugh was going to hand the info to the cops anyway. They’d been told she was searching for her father’s murderer, just not who the mysterious stranger was accompanying her, except that I was someone helping her who was very unlikely to be the kidnapper.

The cops might connect me. It was a risk I had to take if we were to let their investigation be at all meaningful.

Despair fought with frustration as the days accumulated.

Too long.

Too fucking long.

She could be in China by now. Dead. Anything. I wasn’t a man for the past and regrets but I damn well would’ve given my soul to turn back time and be holding her hand on that evening beach walk. My poor Wren.

Wren

Last night, he’d yet again hurt me with various implements, this time while strapped onto one of his benches, before fucking my mouth. I knew the taste of his cum so well I could’ve started an ice cream stand and called it the ten flavors of the mystery man’s cum. It had been, by my calculations, eight days that I’d been here.

The butt plugs had increased in size every few days until he seemed to have run out of sizes. I’d taken to screaming when he inserted the latest size. It was huge and I figured deafening him was a good payback. And I couldn’t help myself. That too.

The pity of it was that he liked me screaming. Liked me crying too. I hated it. I hated him, even more, every time he made me give in and call him Sir, or scream, every time he made me orgasm.

Hating him was my opening mantra each morning. Call it planning ahead. Establishing a baseline. On most days, he would get under my skin and make me give up a piece of
me
. With my mantra of hatred, I reclaimed that part of myself. Or that was my aim.

It was all in the mind. Look on the bright side, glass half full and all that – while I was his, I couldn’t sleepwalk. Even if knives were an even bigger fantasy than ever. I thought about sticking one in him often.

I jolted.
His?
Cut that shit.

Damn.

I’d never sworn, even in my head, so much as I had recently. Guess I had excuses though.

I lay there on my side, feeling the leather of my collar absentmindedly and staring at the ancient Greek-style mural on the far wall, to the right of the entrance. It was the one thing of beauty in here, apart from the small pool that I’d never been allowed to use. This room was perfect for torture. He’d said so himself. A white canvas to echo back my screams, to show the spots of blood, to act as a backdrop to any activity so every detail was trapped in his eye.

Poetic bastard. The blood though, thank god, hadn’t come true. One thing to be grateful for.

His blood would be okay though...come to think of it. I thought of how that would look on the floor, spreading.

The door opened. I sat up, tugging into place the white bra he’d returned to me with the matching lace panties. Wearing the bra while sleeping was uncomfortable but better than being naked.

He was in jeans, black shirt and boots. Did the man have no sense of villain decorum? It was the mask that added that necessary ingredient of monster. He’d done something new to it. Lenses reflected light off their surface. Cold slithered in, spiking when I sensed he truly focused on me. He’d added goggles to the mask? Why?

Anything new bothered me. It was the unknown. It was creepy.

As he approached, I went to my knees on the floor. Habitual now as well as sensible, even if I despised myself for submitting. His punishment for not kneeling had only been repeated twice before I decided my act needed adjusting. So now I kneeled. I was a poor actor. Every unexpected piece of humiliation he inflicted made me rear up and spit in his eye, figuratively speaking.

Today was the day I was kicking his teeth in. Resolution of Day Eight. Yeah, baby.

He was getting lax. I was almost sure of it.

“Good girl.” He smiled and surveyed me a moment, a lanyard dangling from his hand, before walking to the wall point and detaching the leash using, yes, the key. Note to self: he has the key on him.

This happened at least twice daily when he took me to the showers and toilet. So far I’d had no opportunity to take him down. He never fully turned his back, and if I failed with a kick the consequences would be traumatic. I needed him unaware so I could do a full bodyweight kick to get him on the ground, then stomp on him and do some head kicks, throat kicks. Hits that would incapacitate the man. If I missed my mark, that leash would be my undoing. Long hair was a disadvantage in combat. A leash was far worse. One yank on it and I’d be down on the ground and at his mercy. The bodyweight disadvantage was a horrific problem up close...unless I had surprise and a weapon.

I practiced kicks and strikes most nights, sometimes hauling myself out of bed despite exhaustion. The tinkling of the leash as I moved, the smack of my hand or foot on the leather, I couldn’t disguise that. I could only pray he wasn’t watching me.

“Today, you’re getting a treat.” The switch from thinking about deathblows to treats was jarring, but I listened attentively.

“I’m taking you to the courtyard and letting you exercise and swim. I know you like swimming.” He wound the leash into his fist and tugged. “But first, crawl over here.” Then he sat on the bed and beckoned.

What was this? Wary, I crawled to him then between his spread legs.

“Hands at your back. Just let me touch you.”

Words quietly said and so they shocked me. He’d done many crazy things to me and I was always off balance and suspicious.

“Nothing sinister, Wren. Now, please. And bow your head.”

Please? A word he used rarely. I did as he asked and clasped my hands behind me.

His hands slid into my hair and began to comb it out, over and over. My anxiety lessened when he did nothing else.

“See. Nothing bad. Good, in fact. I like touching you, just touching. You’re a beautiful woman and sometimes touch is what I need. Perhaps you too?”

Touching him? Hell no.

Still...after a few minutes, his fingers brushing over my scalp felt like magic. The incessant rhythm of his words and the slide of his fingers along the strands of my hair hypnotized me. I half-closed my eyes. Previously, I’d only had this sort of care after he’d done mean things.

“Up here now.” I heard him pat his leg and looked up. “On my lap.”

Fuck. This was too much like being a lap dog. My mouth twitched but he caught my thoughts, no doubt from my grimace, and tapped my cheek in a mini slap. I jerked, blinking up at him, disconcerted by his eyes being hidden behind glass.

“Just a reminder of who is in charge.”

Self-evident but, as always, it brought me up short.

“Up.”

Sighing, I crawled onto the bed and lay half across his lap. I curled up my legs into his side to get comfortable. He turned my head into him. I grimaced again but this time he couldn’t see. My face was far too close to his cock for this to be relaxing.

The touching resumed, except now he massaged the muscles of my neck and back as well as sometimes playing with my hair, rocking my head and my body with the strength of his fingers, while talking about nothing much. I may have groaned in pleasure once, though I bit it off when I heard him go
mmm
, as if he liked me liking this. Oh the mindfuck in that.

I didn’t like that he liked giving me pleasure anymore than I liked him enjoying giving me pain.

And yet...resisting was useless.

It went on and on. I relaxed and let the pleasure sift through my body. The murmur of his voice was never-ending and a background noise like the splash of a waterfall. This sort of gentle intimacy was more difficult to defy than his harsh discipline and kinky sexual mastery.

“That will do,” he said at last. I roused from drowsiness. “We’re having breakfast in the courtyard first. It’s a sunny day and I’ve wound back the shutters.”

Sunlight? Ohmigod, I needed sunlight. How I needed it.

My smile arrived despite him watching. He only nodded.

I followed him from the room like a happy puppy. A courtyard on the outside. Wow. Inside
m
e was a bubbling mass of what ifs. Most of them revolved around one idea – escape.

All that intimacy we’d exchanged was nothing compared to the pain and humiliation he’d caused me.

First time outside. Courtyards had access to the sky. I could scream, I could climb walls. To swim he’d have to disconnect the leash. So many possibilities. I might not need the key after all. All I needed was to knock him out for long enough to get away and over the walls.

All this churned in my mind as we walked. I’d never even left the room before. My bare feet enjoyed the cool of the tiles of the corridor we walked down. The leash tinkled and there were no other sounds in this house. How quiet it was. Where was this place? We went up a flight of stairs then along another corridor. White doors led away, to either side. Closed though. Who did all the damn cleaning?

An open space to the left expanded into another enormous room with the far wall mostly thick glass. Beyond was a breathtaking vista of the sea and blue sky. I dragged my feet, slowing, to take it all in. In the center was an open square of inward-facing sofas where I glimpsed some sort of sunken area.

“I’ll show you that another day. My Pit of Despair.” He smirked in that evil way that said he found something amusing because it would not be amusing to me if I tried it. Oh man, I knew the way he thought.

“A pit of despair? You’re joking? Is there a Mount Doom in your back yard too?” Joking with him, at him, was my one outlet of freedom, my one bit of equal expression. So far he’d allowed it, as long as I didn’t insult him.

“Not yet. Give me time.”

We continued on, him a little ahead but never enough to be sure he couldn’t see what I did...like if I tried to launch a kick. One attempted on the fly wasn’t good enough. The slight pause for set up would give me away, if he was watching. It was nerve wracking, forever looking for that opening. If I failed, a shitstorm of sadism awaited me.

And what if I missed it, the big chance, the one and only, because of nerves?

I never wanted to think back and regret not trying.

I bit my lip and eyed his broad back and the muscles of his arms. Nothing could change the fact that he was bigger than me. In the darkness of night, my resolve had been known to crumble. I’d curled up and wept a few times, because those bits of me he took, I wasn’t sure they were the same after. I felt as if I was changing, atom by atom, brain cell by brain cell. Pavlov’s bitch, that was me. After only eight days of this, I was worried he might eventually train me to like what he was doing.

We emerged onto a sheltered patio, the timber door huffing shut behind us, then went forward to the edge of the shade.

I looked up and around, daunted.

Oh boy.
He was more than rich, this man was rich as hell. Maybe not as rich as me but enough to let him spend money on things the average person would find amazing.