Captive in the Dark Read online

  After a few moments, my voice trembled, “Who are you?” No response. “Where am I?” My words and voice seemed to be on some sort of delay, almost sluggish, like I was drunk.

  Silence. The creak of a chair. Footsteps. My heart hammering in my chest.

  “I am your master.” A cold hand pressed against my sweat-slick forehead. Again, a nagging sense of familiarity. But it was stupid. I didn’t know anyone with an accent. “You are where I want you to be.”

  “Do I know you?” My voice was raw, stripped of anything but my emotion.

  “Not yet.”

  Behind my eyelids the world exploded into violent streams of red; my dark vision drowned in adrenaline. Acid fear ate down my synapses carrying Danger. Danger. Run. Run!to my limbs. My mind howled for every muscle fiber to contract. I willed everything to fight all of the constraints: I twitched.

  I gave way to fits of hysterical crying. “Please…let me go,” I whimpered. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Just like that a sea of despair dragged me under its crushing waves. His voice was devoid of so many things: compassion, inflection, emotion, but there was one thing that wasn’t missing and that was certainty. I couldn’t accept it, his certainty.

  He smoothed my hair back from my forehead, an intimate gesture that filled me with foreboding. Was he attempting to soothe me? Why?

  “Please,” I cried as he continued petting me. I felt his weight on the bed, and my heart stuttered.

  “I can’t,” he whispered, “and more than that…I don’t want to.”

  For a moment, only my crying and deep, anguished sobs punctuated the silence that followed his statement. The darkness made it all the more unbearable.

  His breathing, my breathing, together, in empty space.

  “Tell you what I will do, I’ll untie you and get these bumps and bruises cleaned up. I didn’t want you to wake up in a pool of water. I’m really sorry about the hit to the face,” he stroked his fingers across my cheekbone, “but that’s what happens when you fight without thinking of the consequences.”

  “A pool of water?” I jittered. “I don’t want to get in any water. Please,” I begged, “just let me go.” His voice was too calm, too refined, too matter-of-fact, and too… reminiscent of Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs.

  “You need a bath pet.” Was his terrifying response. Hello Clarice….

  All I could do was cry as he untied me. My arms and legs were stiff and numb: they felt too large, too heavy, too far away to be a part of me. Was my entire body asleep? Again I tried to move, I tried to hit him, to kick him. And again my efforts reflected in twitching, jerky movements. Frustrated, I lay inert. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to run away. I wanted to fight. I wanted to hurt him. And I couldn’t.

  He kept the blindfold on and lifted me off the bed, carefully. I felt myself rise and become suspended within the dark. My heavy head draped over his arm. I could feel his arms. Feel his clothes against my skin.

  “Why can’t I move?” I sobbed.

  “I gave you a little something. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off.” Scared, blind in the dark, his limbs wrapped around mine, his voice took on texture, shape.

  He shifted my weight in his arms until my head lolled against the fabric of his shirt.

  “Stop struggling.” There was amusement on the surface of his voice.

  Halting my struggle, I tried to focus on details about him. He was perceptibly strong and he hoisted my weight without so much as a strained breath. Beneath my cheek I could feel the hard expanse of his chest. He smelled faintly of soap, perhaps a light sweat too, a masculine scent that was both distinct, but only distantly familiar.

  We didn’t walk far, only a few steps, but for me each moment seemed like an eternity in an alternate universe, one where I inhabited someone else’s body. But my own reality came crashing back to me the moment he set me down inside something smooth and cold.

  Panic gripped me. “What the hell are you doing?”

  There was a pause, then his amused voice. “I told you, getting you cleaned up.”

  I opened my mouth to speak when the initial burst of cold water hit my feet. Startled, I let out a skittish yelp. As I pathetically attempted to crawl out of the tub by rolling my body toward the edge, the water turned warmer and my captor hoisted me back against the tub.

  “I don’t want to take a bath. Let me go.” I tried to remove the blindfold, repeatedly smacking my own face as my lethargic arms countered my purpose. My captor did a horrible job of stifling his laugh.

  “I don’t care if you want one, you need one.”

  I felt his hands on my shoulders and mustered my strength to attack. My arms flew back haphazardly landing somewhere, I think, on his face or neck. His fingers speared through my hair to force my head back at an odd angle.

  “Do you want me to play rough too?” he growled against my ear. When I didn’t answer he squeezed his fingers tight enough to make my scalp tingle. “Answer my question.”

  “No.” I whispered on a frightened sob.

  Without delay he loosened his grip. Before removing his fingers from my hair, his fingers massaged my scalp. I shivered at the utter creepiness of it.

  “I’m going to cut your clothes off with some scissors,” he said flatly. “Don’t be alarmed.” The rush of the water and the beat of my heart thundered in my ears as I thought about him stripping me down and drowning me.

  “Why?” I let out frantically.

  His fingers caressed the column of my tense throat. I shivered in my fear. I hated not being able to see what was happening, it forced me to feel everything.

  His lips were suddenly at my ear, soft, full, and unwelcome. He nuzzled in further when I attempted to bend my neck and twist away. “I could strip you slowly, take my time, but this is simply more efficient.”

  “Stay away from me you asshole!” Was that my voice? This ballsy version of me really needed to shut up. She was going to get me killed.

  I braced for some act of revenge, but it never came. Instead, I heard a small burst of sound, like he was laughing. Creepy son of a bitch.

  He cut my shirt off slowly, carefully, and it made me wonder if he was savoring my panic. The thought took me places in my mind I willed myself not to go. Next, he removed my skirt. Though I struggled, my attempts were pathetic. If my arms were in the way, he held them away with little effort. If I lifted my knees, he simply pressed them back down.

  He hadn’t put the drain stop into the tub yet, the water hadn’t been rising. Cold overwhelmed me as I sat there in my underwear. He reached for my bra and I stopped breathing, just shaking uncontrollably.

  “Relax,” he said soothingly.

  “Please,” I managed to say through sobs. “Please—whatever it is you think you need to do, you don’t. Please, just let me go and I won’t tell, I swear…I swear it.”

  He didn’t answer me. He pressed the scissors up between my breasts and cut my bra open. I felt my breasts slide out and I started another fit of crying.

  “No-no, don’t touch me!” Immediately he grabbed my nipples and pinched them. I screamed in shock and surprise, sensations flooding me.

  He leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “You want me to let go?”

  I nodded, unable to form words.

  “Yes, please?” he pinched my nipples harder.

  “Yes! Please!” I sobbed.

  “Are you going to be a good little girl?” came his voice, once again imbued with a cold indifference that was contrary to the gentleness he tried to convey earlier.

  “Yes.” I whined through clenched teeth and managed to place my hands over his. His hands were huge and they held me firmly. I didn’t even attempt to tug his hands away. There was no way he was letting go.

  “Good girl.” He replied with sarcasm. But before he let my poor nipples go, he rubbed the sensitized and tender buds with his palms.

  There was seemingly
no end to my tears, as I forced myself to succumb to his more merciful side. I sat quietly and tried not to earn another dose of punishment. As he removed what remained of my bra and cut off my panties, I could feel the cold metal slide against my skin, the sharpness cutting through cloth, and maybe even me if I pushed too far.

  After spraying my body with what could only be a detachable showerhead, he finally put the stop in the tub. The water was warm enough, better than the air against my exposed skin, but I was too terrified to feel any relief that I was still in one piece, relatively untouched. Each time the water got to a cut or some area I hadn’t realized was damaged, it stung, making me wince.

  I tried to control my crying and speak calmly. “Can you please just take off the blindfold? I’d feel better if I could just see what’s going on.” I swallowed, throat dry. “You’re not going to hurt me…are…you?” My teeth chattered as I waited for a response, still blind, still trapped.

  He was quiet for a moment, but then he said, “You have to leave the blindfold on. As for hurting you, I’d only planned to clean you up for now. But understand there are consequences to your behavior, that when you do wrong, you will be punished.” He didn’t wait for my answer. “So keep still and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  He set about washing my body with a soft liquid soap that smelled of mint leaves and lavender. The darkness bloomed with the scent; it filled the room, wrapped around my skin. Like his voice. I’d once enjoyed the smell of lavender. Not anymore, now I loathed it.

  When he passed over my breasts, I couldn’t resist the compulsion to once again try to trap his hands in mine. Without a word, he slipped one soapy hand free and squeezed my wrist until I released the other.

  Later, he slapped my thigh when I kept closing my legs and wouldn’t let him wash between them. This part of me was private. No one had seen it but me, not since I’d been a child. No one had touched it; even I had not explored it fully. And now a stranger, someone who had done me harm was acquainting himself with…me. I felt violated and the feeling was reminiscent of a past I had tried long and hard to forget. I fought, but with every touch, with every invasion, my body belonged a little more to him than it did to me. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  And then it ended. He pulled the stop out of the bath, pulled me out, dried my skin, combed my hair, rubbed ointment on my scrapes and gave me a bathrobe to wear. I was terrified, embarrassed, exhausted, and blind, but was still glad to feel clean – on the outside at least.

  His voice was a soft breeze against my neck as I stood without assistance in front of him. “Come with me.”

  Unable to do otherwise, I allowed him to take my hand and guide me blindly out of the bathroom.

  TWO :

  Caleb led his beautiful captive toward the center of the room. Her steps were hesitant, frightened, as if she expected him to push her off a precipice. He urged her forward only to have her push back against him. That was fine with him. She could push back against him all night as far as he was concerned. Offering no resistance, he let her collide against him, barely subduing a laugh when she let out a gasp and sprang forward like a cat avoiding water. Or in this case, his hard-on.

  Caleb reached out to gently grasp her arms, she stilled, obviously too frightened to move forward or back. Lust rolled through him. He finally had her—here—between his fingers, under his control. He closed his eyes, heady for a moment.

  She had arrived over three hours ago, slung over the shoulder of that waste of a human being, Jair. She was bruised, dirty, and reeking of bile and sweat, but that hadn’t been the worst of it. One of them, and he didn’t have to wonder at whom, had struck her across the face. Heat crawled down his spine the moment he saw the blood on her lip, and the purpling bruise swelling her left eye and cheek. He resisted the urge to kill that motherfucker on the spot. He doubted he had marred her as a last resort. She was a woman, how difficult could it be to pacify her?

  At least she had managed to kick his face. He would have paid to see that.

  The sound of soft but deep breaths returned his thoughts to the present. The desire that had settled warmly in his stomach sunk heavily to his balls and engorged his cock painfully. He trailed his fingers across her shoulders while shifting to her left side. He wanted a better look at her. Her pink lips were parted just slightly, whispers of breath rushing through them.

  Caleb wanted nothing more than to remove her blindfold, to stare into those bewildering eyes of hers, and kiss her until she melted beneath him – but they were a long way from there.

  Like a falcon, she needed the dark to understand who her master was. She would learn to trust him, to rely upon him, to anticipate what he wanted from her. And like any masterworth his salt, he would reward her for her obedience. He would be exceedingly firm, but he would also be as fair as he could be. He had not chosen the instrument of his revenge at random. He had chosen a beautiful submissive. And what was a submissive if not adaptable –if not a survivor?

  He leaned in close, inhaling the light scent of her skin beneath the lavender. “Would you like some ice for your face?” he asked. She tensed sharply at the sound of his voice; soft and low.

  For a moment, it was comical. She shifted around from foot to foot, nervous, blind, and incapable of choosing a direction. Her hand floated up to her face and he knew she itched to remove the blindfold. He made a sound of disapproval and instantly her curious fingers went back to clutching her robe.

  Caleb, feeling what passed for pity, sought to guide her once again toward the bed. She gasped the moment his fingers curled around the lapel of her robe grazing hers in the process. “Easy pet, there’s something behind you and I’d hate for you to get hurt again.”

  “Don’t call me pet.” Came the shaky, yet firm command.

  Caleb went absolutely still. No one talked to him like that – least of all, blindfolded, nearly naked women. Instantly, he pulled her forward until her soft cheek pressed roughly against his own. He growled, “I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want - pet. You belong to me. Do you understand?”

  Against his cheek he felt her infinitesimal nod, and against his ear, heard her small squeak of capitulation.

  “Good. Now, Pet,” he urged her back a few inches, “answer my question. Ice for your face, or not?”

  “Y-y-yes,” she answered in a tremulous voice. Caleb thought that was better, but not yet settled.

  “Y-y-yes?” he mocked. Caleb pressed into her assuredly, dominating her with his size. “Do you know how to say please?”

  Her head craned, as if she could see him through her blindfold, and a grimace contorted her full mouth. He would have laughed, but the moment was abruptly no longer comical. Her knee collided with his groin, hard. What was it with women and kicking men in the nuts? Throbbing pain crept upward, knotted his intestines, hunching over his body. Whatever food he’d eaten threatened to come back up.

  Above him, his captive continued to fight like a hellcat. Her fingernails dug into his hands as she tried to pry him loose from her robe. When that failed, her frantic elbows landed repeatedly between his shoulder blades. He managed to suck in a breath, though to her ears, it probably sounded like an animalistic growl.

  “Let me go, you fucking asshole. Let go.” She yelled between frantic sobs and screams. She twisted and turned in his grasp, weakening his hold on her robe. He had to get her under control, or she was going to run herself into a much worse situation than his retribution.

  Thoroughly riled, Caleb forced himself to stand. Towering over her, his angry eyes met hers. She’d removed the blindfold and now she stood completely still, eyeing him with a mixture of horror and shock. She didn’t blink, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe, she simply stared.

  He stared back.

  He spun her around and pinned her arms to her sides. Anger raced through him as he tightened his arms around her, forcing the air from her lungs.

  “You?” The question slipped past her lips in a rush of expelled air. The single word seem
ed to ride on a wave of despair and an undercurrent of raw anger. He’d known this strange moment would come. He was no longer her hero. He never was. She struggled for air, panting like a dog, and the idea mildly amused him.

  “Fuck!” he exclaimed as her head collided soundly with his nose. He released her on instinct, his fingers pressed to either side of his nose.

  She moved quickly, a flutter of long dark hair and bathrobe flying toward the bedroom door.

  Caleb growled deep in his chest. Lunging toward her he held a fistful of her robe, but as he pulled back, she simply spilled out of the fabric. Nubile flesh assaulted his senses.

  As her hands reached the bedroom door, finding it securely locked, his fingers speared into her hair and made a fist. He pulled back sharply, causing her to tumble backward onto the floor. No longer taking her vigor for granted and no longer amused by her flailing limbs, he sat squarely on top of her.

  “No!” she screamed desperately, knees once again seeking his groin, nails fixated on digging into his face.

  “You like to fight don’t you?” He smiled. “I like to fight too.” With more effort than he would have thought necessary he wrapped his legs around hers and trapped her wrists above her head with his left hand.

  “Fuck you,” she panted, chest rising defiantly. Her entire body was tense beneath him; her muscles fought, unwilling to give up, but that burst of energy had cost her. Her eyes were wild, crazy, but she was weakening. He held her easily now.

  Slowly, the realization of her warm, trembling body pressed so intimately against him flooded his senses, intoxicating him. Her delicate pussy was pressed against his belly, with only the soft fabric of his shirt separating him from her. Her full and decidedly warm breasts heaved under his chest. Just beneath them he felt the hammering of her heart. In her struggles, her heated skin moved against him with greater friction. It was almost more than he could stand. Almost.

  Holding her wrists in his left hand, he reared up and slapped the underside of her right breast with his palm, then the underside of the left with the back of his hand. Instantly, choked sobs erupted from her throat.

  “Do you like that?” Caleb barked. Again he slapped her breasts, and again, and again, and again until her entire body let go, until he felt every muscle beneath him slide loose, and she simply wept into the crook of her arm.

  “Please. Please stop,” she croaked, “Please.”

  She was warm, undone, and afraid beneath him. Her lips moved quickly, silently, spilling words not meant for him to hear. Caleb swallowed thickly, old memories gaining purchase. He blinked, pushed them back under lock and key. A reflex, usually quick and easily done after all these years. But he felt it this time, as her fear and his passion battled as much as mingled, congesting the air and filling the room. It seemed to create a new person, breathing along with them, and watching them, invading the moment.

  His anger evaporated. He stared down at the girl’s beautiful breasts; they were deeply pink where he had struck her, but it wouldn’t leave a lasting mark. Gingerly, he released her wrists. His thumb unconsciously sought to smooth the red mark of his grip. He frowned down at her.

  He hoped she was out of surprises.

  The moment she felt his grip loosen from around her wrists, she crossed her palms over her breasts. At first he thought she was attempting modesty, but her kneading fingers suggested she was more concerned with alleviating the pain.

  She kept her eyes closed too, unwilling to acknowledge him straddling her thighs. Most people didn’t want to see the bad thing coming. The moment was perhaps unbearably worse because she recognized him. He had recognized the look of betrayal in her eyes. Well, she’d have to get over it – he had.

  His captive subdued, Caleb slowly removed his weight and stood above her. He had to be firm, there could be no indication that such an act of clear defiance would be met with anything but swift and thorough punishment. He pushed the beautifully rounded and supple curve of her bottom with the tip of his boot. “Get up.” His tone was commanding. It brooked no argument or misunderstanding. Her body recoiled at the sound of his voice, but she refused to move.

  “Get up or I’ll have to do it for you. Trust me, you don’t want that.” Her will to resist notwithstanding, she removed her right hand from her breast and attempted to push herself up. Slowly she pushed her weight onto her arm, but her struggle was obvious as her arm shook under the strain causing her to collapse.

  “Good girl, you can do it…get up.”

  He could help her, but the lesson would be lost. Four months was not a lot of time when it involved training a slave. He didn’t have time to coddle her. The sooner those survival instincts kicked in, the better – and he didn’t mean the kind where she kept trying to kick him in the nuts. They had six weeks together in this house. He wouldn’t waste them on fending off childish antics.

  She scowled at him, injecting as much loathing as was possible into a look. Caleb resisted the urge to smile. He guessed she no longer thought he was cute. Good. Cute was for pussies.

  Summoning her strength, she pressed the heel of her hand into the carpet and straightened her elbow. Her breath was labored, her eyes winced with pain, but her tears had dried up. Forcing herself onto all fours, she attempted to stand. Fully upright, Caleb reached for her, ignoring her staunch protests. She tugged her arm loose from his grasp, but kept her eyes trained on the ground. He bristled, but let it pass and guided her without touching toward the bed.

  She sat precariously on the edge of the bed, her hands covered her breasts and her head tilted forward hiding her in a veil of tangled ebony waves. Caleb sat next to her. He resisted the urge to push her hair away from her face. She could hide from him for now, just until she calmed down.

  “Now,” he said pleasantly, “would you, or would you not, like some ice for your face?”

  He could almost feel the chilling anger rolling off of her. Anger, not fear? He could barely reconcile it in his mind. While he did expect some anger, he did find it particularly odd that she had yet to acknowledge her stark nudity. Shouldn’t she be more frightened than angry? Shouldn’t she be begging her way into his good graces? Her reactions to him refused to fall between the usual and predictable lines. It was as bemusing as it was intriguing. “Well?”

  Finally, between clenched teeth she forced herself to say the words, “Yes. Please.”