He was still the man who had hired ruthless men to kidnap me. Still the cruel person who had locked me in the dark for weeks, forcing me to become dependent on him, crave him, rely upon him until even my own instincts stood no chance. He was the man who had saved my life, and the one who had put it in danger. Finally, he was still the man who planned to sell me as a sex slave. A whore.
He’d had his own reasons for wanting me back and they’d had nothing to do with my well-being and everything to do with revenge. Did I know why he wanted revenge? No. Trust did not run both ways between us. There were certain things I had no choice but to trust him with: keeping me alive, fed, safe, and unless it was him – untouched. It didn’t leave much, but I refused to trust him with the most important thing of all, my future.
I guess things between us were the same and the differences didn’t matter.
What mattered is I was different. The naïve girl in me had been bitch-slapped into womanhood. I’d been razed by pain, grief, loss and suffering, and honed by lust, rage and an acute awareness of my need to survive.
I understood things I couldn’t fathom before. I understood Caleb’s need for revenge: because the seed had been planted in me. I recognized how he often turned my body against me: because the desire for him had always been there. Above all else, I had learned the one thing every person has to learn to make it through life: the only person you can truly count on is yourself.
I was still reeling from Caleb’s display of dominance over me when he finally laid me down to sleep. I should have been angry with him, and in a very real way, I was, but the way he had unleashed on me made me realize how thoughtful and gentle he had been before. Dealing with Caleb was all about perspective. You couldn’t appreciate his kindness until you’d felt his cruelty. I had felt it, but even I, was smart enough to know he’d still taken it easy on me.
He didn’t have to explain himself to me – he’d made it plain. However, I knew he wanted me to understand the danger I was in. He wanted me to think before I acted. He wanted me to pick and choose my battles, even if those battles were with him. He wanted me to survive. He’d told me as much in the car, but then he’d shown me. For Caleb, that was kind. He dosed me again and I drifted, thoughts swirling in my mind and none of them comforting. Then Caleb was there, and his long, warm body was like a prayer I held onto as I tried to stay awake and did not succeed.
I woke up crying. I could hear the shower running and it was sickening how the relief washed through me, knowing he was close. I forced myself to lie back down, to find a position less aggravating to my injured shoulder or cracked ribs.
I didn’t feel comfortable without his arm around me. I couldn’t sleep without knowing he was near. He’d done this to me. He’d made me afraid. He’d made me need him. And if he thought he was suddenly going to abandon me and clear what was left of his shriveled conscience, he was sadly mistaken.
A strange noise drew my attention away from my thoughts. Regardless of my renewed fear, it was a welcome distraction. I wondered for a moment if Caleb had hurt himself, slipped in the shower or something, but there was no loud crash, only a muffled sound. I listened intently, waiting for the noise to repeat itself and was annoyed by the apparent loudness of my breathing.
“Uh!” That was the noise. Like a grunt mixed with a whimper. “Uh!” Something inside my belly tightened, muscle memory. I should have ignored it, but I couldn’t. In spite of everything that had happened to me, and everything Caleb had put me through by deed or design, I still thought him the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Min fadlik!” he sighed loudly, but I didn’t know what it meant. Whatever it was though, it sounded…needy. What did Caleb need? And why did I find the idea of his need so intriguing?
I needed him to touch me, not want, because I didn’t want him to, I needed him to. Only his arms wrapped around me could make the nightmare dissipate, only the smell of him made me forget the fetid breath of the men who had attacked me. Only his. I was always grateful for his presence and resentful of it.
More sounds came from the bathroom and I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t stop the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins urging me into some kind of action, anything that would reveal to me what was happening behind the closed door. What if he’s fucking someone in there? The thought stopped me cold, a wave of something akin to nausea clogging my throat and tightening my stomach. “He wouldn’t,” I whispered to myself in the darkness of the room. For whatever reason I just couldn’t make it a possibility in my mind. He’s done it before. Remember? Remember him fucking that woman while you were tied up in the other room. The voice in my head was cruel. I had to know! I had to know if he would do something like that to me again. Bastard!
I forced my steps toward the bathroom door, my body trembled and my palms were wet with sweat, but I couldn’t stop myself from knowing.
“Fuck…” The obscenity was little more than a whisper beyond the door as I pressed my ear against it. “Oh…yes baby” then something in another language, then “open your pussy.” I nearly fell against the door as my knees went weak. Between my legs I felt a gentle throbbing keeping pace with my heart. Please, please don’t be fucking someone else.
I could hear the fan was on, which might have been why he felt safe making sounds. If I hadn’t been awake, I wouldn’t have heard him. Forcing bravery I didn’t really feel, I pressed on the latch to open the door. I gripped the latch in my fist until sweat seemed to squeeze between my fingers. The shower was to the left of the door, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to see without opening it fully and making my presence known, but there was a mirror to the right where I might be able to see his reflection. I could only pray he wasn’t directly facing the door or mirror.
The door opened, just a crack, barely enough to get a finger through, but my heart felt crammed into my throat for those breathless seconds. I waited, hoping not to hear him yell at me or make a startled sound. I heard his heavy breathing and those same groaning sounds from before, accompanied by a wet staccato rhythm. I knelt on the floor, not trusting my legs to support me as I pressed my cheek flush with the door and peeked inside. The room was steamy and it aggravated me to no end. I waited while some of it cleared, but all I could see was a shape in the mirror.
I dared to open the door a little wider, my adrenaline pumping through me in proportionate degrees to the opening in front of me. More steam drifted out of the room and settled on my face and neck, dripping like sweat into the well of my breasts before being absorbed by my shirt. The mirror was much clearer and finally, I could make out the image in the shower.
I gasped, but Caleb didn’t hear me. I was sure he couldn’t. He was much too absorbed in what he was doing alone in the shower, only a few feet away from my prying eyes. I should have felt embarrassed or guilty but there was no way I could feel those things. All I could feel was the throbbing between my legs and the sharp pang of lust that punched me in the belly. He was fucking…perfect. Sooo fucking perfect.
He was facing the shower so I could only see him in profile. His skin was pink and white from the intensity of the water. One arm was braced against the wall, his long legs spread for balance as his head dipped toward his chest and he panted. His other arm was rigid; the muscles tense while his large hand held his enormous erection in his hand. I swallowed hard and licked steam from my lips.
The head was thick and a deep dusky pink as it slipped through his fist. His shaft got thicker toward the base, until his fingers had to grip hard to keep him contained. I remembered his weight in hand.
He didn’t shuttle his hand up and down the length of it. He rocked his hips into his fist, making the well-muscled globes of his ass hollow on each side as he thrust forward, his large, heavy-looking balls swaying between his splayed legs in a fluent rhythm. His cock was the arrow and his fist, the quiver.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away, didn’t even try. I wondered how much come he held inside those large balls and if he’d given me all of it when he’d come in my hand and on my breasts. I thought about the only time he’d been inside me and I could remember the sound of them slapping against the wet flesh of my pussy as he held me bent over and drove his meaty cock into me. The throbbing between my legs was intense. My own thoughts had me panting and wet. My thoughts were dirty and sexy and they flooded my body with every sensation imaginable.
“Make him love you,” Ruthless Me, whispered. “Make it so he can’t live without you.”
“I can’t,” I whispered back. “I tried. He said my attempts are laughable. He doesn’t care.”
“He will.”
“Uh…mmm…come on.” Caleb’s eyes were shut tight; his beautiful mouth open and the sexiest sounds I’d heard in my life were coming out of him. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if it could be me. Could I be the one driving him toward this frenzied display of lust?
“Yessssss,” Ruthless Me shuddered.
My nipples were tight and painful, scraping against the suddenly rough fabric of my shirt. I wanted to take them out. I wanted to touch them against something cool. I pressed my body against the door, rubbing them against the hard wood as I continued to watch Caleb in all of his masculine and somehow vulnerable glory.
I leaned back and pressed the palm of my hand against my mound rubbing in tiny circles I feared wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go nearly quick enough. I didn’t want to get lost in my pleasure. I wanted to watch Caleb. I wanted to see him come. The thought made me press against my clit even harder, the circles smaller, tighter and faster. I felt a flutter in my belly, then a warm tingle spread from my spine out to all my limbs until finally I felt my pussy clench tight, then release and clench again. I let out a small cry before I sucked in my lips and bit down on them to keep in any other sounds. It hardly sated me. It was a sneeze compared to how Caleb made me come, but it was enough to force my focus toward Caleb.
His hips were thrusting faster, the cheeks of his ass flexing up and down as he put real effort into reaching his climax. He leaned his body forward resting his forehead against his forearm as he gritted his teeth and pumped that monstrous thing he called a cock back and forth through his wet fist. Rivulets of water fell from all over his gorgeous body and I was suddenly so thirsty. I wanted to kneel at his feet and lick water off of him, especially his impressive cock. I wanted to lick water off of it and suck it.
I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do when he let out a grunt, followed by a painful whine as ropes of thick semen burst out of his dick and covered his large hand before dripping down toward those heavy balls and eventually the shower floor. It was a lot of come and yet his balls didn’t seem any smaller.
Caleb was panting hard, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort. His beautiful face was red with exertion, but if possible, it made him look even more handsome. I wanted to continue to admire him, but doing so felt like a betrayal – of me. The facts were still the facts. He didn’t really care about me. He was using me.
My passion was quickly cooling and finally, I slowly shut the door and crept back into bed to nurse more than my physical injuries.
Sometime later I heard the bathroom door open and the soft scrape of Caleb’s feet against the carpet as he made his way toward the bed. I felt the bed dip as he got between the covers, making sure no part of him touched any part of me.
“I woke up and you weren’t here,” I whispered, with my back toward him. I knew he tensed, but I can’t say how, perhaps it was the air between us that was tense.
“Have you been up long?”
“No, just a few minutes.” I felt him relax into the mattress.
“Another nightmare?”
“Yes,” I lied, but felt completely justified as his warm chest, covered in soft cotton, met with my back and his fingers, the ones covered in his semen only minutes before, traced along my arm to soothe me. A vision of his powerful, sleek body straining toward orgasm made its way into my mind’s eye. His fingers were long, influential and still damp as they charted their course along my flesh, leaving me tingling in their wake. I touched his skin. “You’re wet.”
He sighed heavily, “I’m sorry Kitten. I needed another shower.” His voice was low, dopey with fatigue, but sincere nonetheless. One mention of the word shower and my throat was dry thinking of all the water sluicing off his perfect body and from that beautiful organ. I wondered what he would taste like.
“It’s okay.” I whispered. My throat was hoarse.
“Anything I can do to make you feel better?” All sorts of answers flitted around in my lust filled head. It was tempting to fall back on reliable tactics and pretend things were…perfect. To pretend he was only a boy and I was only a girl and we desired each other. I wanted him to hold and kiss me and pretend he would do anything to protect me. I wanted to pretend he felt a fraction of the things I couldn’t seem to stop myself from feeling for him.
My heart hurt. As much as my shoulder and ribs screamed with pain, they were eclipsed by the sorrow in my heart. I couldn’t pretend anymore. The time for it had passed; there was only the reality of things left to deal with.
“Yes, Master,” I tried not to sob, “There’s so much you can do to make me feel better.” His body pressed deeper into mine and for a moment I just let him be close. “You could not sell me… I could stay with you… be with you?” Caleb gripped me tight, not because he wanted to hurt me, but because I’d shocked the hell out of him. I’d shocked myself, too, but I’d been through too much not to just tell shit the way it was. He swallowed audibly, fingers tentative, as they loosened their hold.
“Kitten…” his forehead pressed hard against the nape of my neck, “you ask for impossible things.” I wanted to ask which parts were impossible, but I knew the answer. He couldn’t let go of his revenge, but he could let go of me.
Chapter Six
Matthew tried very hard to concentrate on the computer screen in front of him, but as he typed, his mind couldn’t help but wander off. Olivia Ruiz was most certainly suffering from Stockholm’s Syndrome, pining over her lost lover, her kidnapper and abuser. Matthew didn’t care for abusers – not one little bit. They were all the same. His mother used to try and apologize for beating him by taking him to the park. The best abusers could make you believe they felt guilty for what they’d done, right up until you got in their way.
Still, he would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, Olivia’s storytelling abilities were quite…compelling. For four hours he’d listened to her talk about her relationship with Caleb and he’d watched as her cheeks had colored and her skin flushed with what he knew was arousal. How could he not be affected?
Yes, he’d grown hard, painfully so, but he didn’t like it. What kind of person got a hard-on while listening to a victim talk about her abuse? It made him feel sick. He was sick.
And it wasn’t necessarily a new problem. He had a long history of strange sexual proclivities. It was the reason he was thirty-one and still single with no viable prospects on the horizon. He was afraid of someone seeing him for what he was. Being alone didn’t mean he was lonely, not really. He kept very busy with work at the Bureau. However, he often thought it would be nice to have someone to come home to, someone he could talk to that wouldn’t make him feel like a freak – even though he knew he was. And like, attracted like.
He was attracted to damaged and fractured women as much as they seemed to be attracted to him. Olivia Ruiz seemed to be no different. She was drawn to him for some reason, he could intuit that much, but he knew it was an attraction that could only run the one way. He would never compromise an investigation, never take advantage of a witness, and never try to save someone who was so obviously broken. He’d learned his lesson all too well.
He would do his job. That’s why the Bureau kept him on board; because at the end of the day he could be counted on to do what needed to be done. He was a closer. Nothing got in the way of that. No one got in his way.
Bringing his attention back toward his screen, he continued to type up Olivia’s statement about her time in captivity. He tried to remain impassive as he typed, but certain sentences continued to jump out at him:
“He made me beg for food…”
“Spanked me repeatedly…”
“…forced me to come.”
His report was reading more like an erotic novel than a case file. His mind was beginning to wander again, this time toward his last girlfriend, the one who couldn’t come unless he called her a whore. He was starting to get hard again—Stop!
He saved the file and decided to take a much needed break from Olivia and her relatively useless memoir and opened his browser to search for more information on Muhammad Rafiq. He was the lynchpin of the entire investigation.
According to the witness, Caleb had reported his involvement with Rafiq began because they needed to kill Vladek Rostrovich, A.K.A. Demitri Balk.
“Why?” Matthew whispered to himself and then remembered the comment about Rafiq’s mother and sister. Were they dead?
Doesn’t matter, he thought. The important thing was the auction, everything else was inconsequential. So why couldn’t he get it out of his head? Why did the story seem relevant? It was motive, sure, but how did it lead to the location of the auction in Pakistan?
Matthew let out a deep sigh and got up to pour himself another cup of coffee. He’d heard the local cops gripe about the coffee on an almost daily basis, but unlike them, he actually enjoyed the coffee in the office. It was likely true the coffee machine had never been cleaned, but maybe the grit added something. He smirked. Back at his desk he grabbed his notepad and started digging through his notes to find a starting point for his research.
Olivia’s jerk-off story didn’t provide much of a jumping off point, but he did manage to learn min-fadlik meant ‘please’ in Arabic. Caleb apparently spoke Arabic with so much ease he used it in private. He would guess people typically spoke their native tongue while alone and certainly while engaged in that particular activity. Lord knew he’d never yelled out in Mandarin while in the throes of ecstasy. Of course, he didn’t speak Mandarin.
He flipped through more of his notes and found Caleb also spoke Spanish and his English was spoken with a strange accent, one characterized as “…a mix of British, Arabic, and Persian…maybe on the Persian.” Matthew pulled out a map of Pakistan and tried to narrow down an area with such a mix. It seemed highly unlikely he would find it. Still, an accent meant Caleb was either born or immersed long-term in an area where he’d have heard those languages on a daily basis. Afghanistan, India, and Iran all surrounded Pakistan and each of those would certainly have similarities in demographics and social conventions. The Brits obviously had influence in each mentioned country, but he knew their influence would be more pervasive in India. Caleb was obviously not Indian, and if he had grown up there, he would have picked up the dialect.
He needed to narrow the list of possible locations for the auction and he had little more than experience, old case files, and the internet to work with. Pakistan was making strides toward reducing or eliminating the number of human trafficking crimes committed within their borders, but they were very much a long way from succeeding in any way as to impact their society or their politics. Slavery was very popular there, though most of it came from an indentured work force made up of women and children.
People were bought, sold, and rented in an almost casual way in Pakistan and it was about time the U.S. Government started to take notice and work with the U.N. to do something about it. Matthew was not naïve; he knew the reason the U.S. had decided to take point on the change throughout many Middle Eastern regions had more to do with the resources abroad. Still, if it meant less women and children were sold into sexual slavery or bonded labor, then he was all for it. Oil and freedom for everyone.
The Sindh and Punjab provinces were large hotbeds for human trafficking activity, but he temporarily opted to exclude them, as the area was mostly agricultural and the slavery predominately bonded labor. Certainly not the location for the world’s elitist playboys and terrorists to arrange for a lavish pleasure slave auction.
Fuck! It was going to be a very long night.
Matthew checked his watch and decided to order his dinner before his favorite Chinese restaurant closed for the night. He was practically salivating over the thought of garlic noodles and crunchy eggrolls. There had been a time when he’d have ordered for two, but it had been nearly a year since he’d had a partner to share the long investigative hours with; these days, he worked alone. It was just as well since he wasn’t really good with people. He was much too honest and people just didn’t appreciate him for it.
He was good at his job and people respected him, but it didn’t mean they jumped at the chance to work with him or wanted to go out for beers after work. Still, they did what he asked them to do and he couldn’t fault them. If he’d asked one of the analysts to stay behind and help him do some research, they’d have begrudgingly done it and kept their disparaging remarks to themselves until the next time they found themselves in better company.
Matthew had asked for a special task force to assist on the case. There was a potentially short turn-around and the possibility of an international incident if they had a raid in Pakistan. Still, his boss refused to get a decent task force together unless Matthew had concrete proof suspected terrorists and political targets would be at the auction.
If he didn’t know any better, he’d accuse the Bureau of purposely letting this case fall between the cracks. Olivia Ruiz’s face was splashed all over the news, complete with grainy surveillance and camera-phone videos of her standoff with the border patrol. Something like that didn’t go away easily.
He scrolled through the information he had available on Muhammad Rafiq and his accomplices. He was a Pakistani military officer and a high ranking one. He had fought beside U.S. forces as part of the coalition during Desert Storm. He was highly decorated and was rumored to be very close to the former Major General who assisted in the 1999 coup that overthrew Pakistan’s president. In short, the man had some very powerful people in his circle.
If he wanted someone dead, he couldn’t imagine it would be difficult for him to carry it out. Of course, he would have to do it without embarrassing himself or his superiors in front of the international community. Could his involvement be the reason the Bureau was hesitating on attacking this case full force?
Matthew picked up his pen and wrote down a list of things he needed to gather information on: military bases in Pakistan, air strips near or on such bases, customs locations and refueling stations. One thing was for certain, Rafiq wouldn’t be flying in or out through commercial means, he’d need a private plane, one that wouldn’t have to contend with customs officials. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
The intercom buzzer startled him. His food had finally arrived. He took the elevator to the first floor and met the delivery guy, gave him a healthy tip and trudged back upstairs to enjoy his greasy, delicious treats.
Several hours later, Matthew decided to call it a night and drive back to his hotel. He planned on getting up early in the morning and going to visit Olivia in the hospital again. She’d be expecting news on her request to join the witness protection program and he had no additional news to offer, but he still needed to get the rest of her statement.
If her information delivered the results he had proposed to his superiors, her request would likely be granted, but not for the right reasons. What the girl needed was justice. She needed the men responsible for her kidnapping, rape, and torture to pay for their crimes in the public arena. She needed for those men to be judged and found wanting of basic human decency, only then could she pick up the pieces of her life and move forward.
However, if he was correct in his assumptions, the Bureau would be more interested in the national security elements, rather than justice for one eighteen-year-old girl. There would be no official arrests, no public trials, because the information she could provide and the covert op that would garner evidence of involvement in human trafficking by wealthy and powerful military leaders, heads of state, and billionaire moguls would be an invaluable asset in the hands of the U.S. government.
It was somewhat of a moral conundrum as far as Matthew was concerned. Olivia was running away. She didn’t want to face her former life or its inhabitants and it was a sentiment Matthew understood well, but couldn’t agree with. At the same time, he was the last person to give advice on how a person should move beyond their personal traumas. He was still damaged, still sick in the head, no matter how many therapists he had talked to as a teenager. His records had been sealed