Authors: Vonna Harper
A collar. Made of leather. Not as thick or stiff as what circled her waist but equally horrifying.
“
It keeps getting worse for you doesn’t it?” He patted her cheek. “For the record, I’m nearly done for now. The only thing left to do is making sure you stay in place.”
I’m dead. He’s going to kill me.
She barely noticed what he was doing as he slid the collar around on her neck. He slapped her cheek. Brought back into the moment, she whimpered.
“
Just making sure you’re still with me. Sometimes captives check out, but I won’t let you do that. The more aware you are, the more complete the lessons. Like I said, time for us to get underway.”
He hooked his finger through what had to be a ring in her collar and pulled her closer to where the truck bed and cab joined. An ominous clicking sound at her throat told her what she didn’t want to know, he’d chained her to the vehicle. She could turn her head from side to side but the truck had become her prison.
Not again! Not the past coming back to life.
She’d been shaking since the nightmare began and was close to losing bladder control. What she’d been through as a teenager hadn’t prepared her for this, nothing could.
Masculine hands massaged the back of her shoulders. Dreading what he’d do next, she held her breath. From time to time her old man had owned what he called guard dogs. Instead of letting them run loose so they could keep an eye on what passed for the family’s property, he’d kept them chained to dog houses. That’s what she’d become, her captor’s pet.
Pet?
Worse than that.
After massaging her for several seconds, he left her. The moment she realized he’d climbed out of the truck, she scooted back desperate to learn how much freedom he’d left her with. She’d belly-inched only a few inches before the collar tightened. Sobbing wordlessly, she pushed herself forward to take the pressure off her neck. After a while she tried to roll onto her side, but her deeply bent elbows stopped her. She next tried to slam her free leg against the floor in an attempt to draw attention to her but couldn’t put any strength behind the effort.
Sick at heart, she lay still. He had her.
Could and would do whatever he wanted to her.
Reality was different, far different from her naive fantasies.
Chapter four
Pulling off the capture called for skills Reno had honed over years of doing a job only a few were capable of. He knew what had to be done and when without needing to think about the steps so why was he taking so damn long tonight?
The answer came as he headed for the trailer where the subject had left her tools. He wasn’t at the top of his game because no matter how much he wished it wasn’t so, he hadn’t fully recovered from the motorcycle accident that had nearly killed him. When he’d been actively engaged in securing her, he’d managed to ignore his left leg. Now the deep ache reminded him that he’d nearly lost it. It would never be the same. Managing pain and compromised mobility took a lot out of a man.
A sex slave trainer.
At least the accident hadn’t compromised his vision. He could still see better than most people, particularly at night. Teeth clenched against the throbbing crawling through his thigh muscle, he hurried to the trailer with the probably still sleeping couple and picked up the tool bag. It was heavy enough that he admired the subject’s ability to carry it the way she had.
The veins in his temple started pulsing, forcing him to stop and wait for his blood pressure to back off. His hearing was as acute as his eyesight, enabling him to catch the reassuring snores from inside the metal can. Having this particular RV with those particular owners in this remote space had made the capture possible. That and the lack of security lighting. If not for those fortuitous elements, he’d probably be half way home while trying to shake off the memory of the one who’d gotten away.
She hadn’t.
She was his.
To do what with?
The unexpected question stopped him half way to the office where he intended to leave the tool bag. Damn it, he was like a dog that had been chasing sticks all his life. He shouldn’t be asking himself why he was chasing them.
Teeth clenched, he silenced the mental questions. He was damn good at what he did, and tonight was a prime example of his skills. He was back in the saddle so to speak.
Because he’d been watching her, he knew where she’d gotten the bag from. It hadn’t occurred her to lock the office door which made putting it back in place easy. He pulled a cloth from a back pocket and wiped off both the bag and door knob. He debated locking the door but decided it didn’t make any difference.
At the beginning of his career, he’d been eager to spend as much time with a subject as possible, but the years of work and too-long hospitalization had taught him patience. He’d take a few minutes to look through the shoebox sized trailer where she lived. She’d keep.
Once he was in it, he took advantage of the light from the TV to check out his surroundings. He grabbed her cell phone and the small back pack she used as a purse. Leaving her car behind might arouse someone’s suspicions but maybe not if he took most of her clothes. That way people might conclude she’d taken off with some man with a vehicle that was in better shape than her beater.
She had taken off, just not willingly.
It surprised him to discover she didn’t have a laptop. He could check her cell phone for information about family and friends. Until or unless he learned different, he’d assume she wasn’t hooked into social networks.
Was indeed the loner instinct had told him she was.
Sometimes the stars aligned perfectly.
Like now when he needed to feel alive.
#
No surprise, the subject was where he’d left her. If he was doing this by the book, he would have truly hog tied her so there was no way she could make enough noise to alert someone to what had happened to her, but tonight was about living dangerously. Remembering what had given his life purpose before a sharp turn and water on the pavement had—
Not going there!
He tossed her belongings near her, then closed the canopy door and got in the cab. His bad leg screamed at having to briefly support his weight but at least his right was in shape for handling the gas and brake pedals.
Likening himself to a hunter who’d just bagged a trophy kill, he started the engine and put the truck into Drive. He felt disloyal to the rig because he’d briefly left it in this sad metal graveyard, but anonymity was the name of the game. On the off chance someone wrote down the license plate number and reported it to the police, the cops would discover it had been taken off a twenty year old sedan.
After putting some ten miles between himself and the campground, he pulled over and stopped so he could examine his captive’s cell phone. To his surprise there were only two numbers in her address book. The only saved message was nearly three weeks old and consisted of a short comment about how well she’d handled a space renter’s bounced check. He concluded her boss had left the message. That number was one of the two in her address book. The other had an out-of-state area code.
Both satisfied that hoards of friends wouldn’t be looking for her and unexpected sympathy because she was so isolated, he wiped off the cell and chucked it out the window. He took a moment to massage his leg then got on the road again.
#
Reno put a good fifty miles between him and the capture site before he started looking for a place to stop. It was after midnight and he was deep in the mountains but more to the point, he hadn’t encountered another vehicle for at least fifteen minutes. He didn’t often take this route between his cabin and his closest
work
site because it was the slow way, but he’d been in no hurry when he’d started for home this morning. In fact, for the first time since he’d built the cabin, he hadn’t been eager to return.
As he recalled, there were a couple of gravel roads in this area that led to fishing lakes. Fishing had never interested him, but he didn’t intend to go to the lakes anyway. When he spotted a wooden sign pointing to the right, he took the pitted single lane road, driving as slow as possible because the ruts made the truck bounce, jarring his still-repairing body. Too bad he couldn’t see the subject being tossed about. He’d have to check to make sure she wasn’t getting choked.
A little uneasy because he was in unfamiliar territory, he nosed the truck as far off the road as possible and put it in Park. He’d been driving with the windows down and the heater on. As a result cool air almost immediately enveloped him. The smell of pine, pitch, and dirt brought back peaceful memories of the place he called home, and he relaxed.
Damn but he loved the log structure. The explanation for his reluctance to return home was simple, he had cabin fever—that and memories of how hard getting around had been since checking himself out of the hospital against doctors’ orders.
Experience had taught him how long a subject could be kept in one position without risking damage to the merchandise, and this one was getting close to that limit. Much as he wanted to lean back his head and sleep, he didn’t dare.
He’d known he’d pay for it when he exited the truck. At least as near as he could tell, today’s unexpected exertion hadn’t set him back physically. He could live with aches and pains, they were nothing new.
Feeling more upbeat than he remembered feeling in too long, he walked around to the back and opened the camper door. He couldn’t see, but his well-honed senses left him with no doubt that his captive was where she was supposed to be. Her quick breaths reinforced what he already knew. He’d left enough slack in the chain hooking her collar to the truck so that as long as she didn’t lose her mind, she’d be able to breathe normally. Of course the position was far from comfortable but that was the point wasn’t it?
Breaking them down slow.
For a reason he wasn’t interested in exploring, his upbeat mood faded. When the question of why he was doing this tried to break free, he shoved it aside. He crawled in with her and felt his way to her head. From the moment he’d spotted her at the ice cream parlor, he’d realized she was in decent physical condition. Wrestling her into submission had added to his admiration of her body. Now he expanded his knowledge by running his fingers under her sleeveless T-shirt at the waist and inching up her backside. He’d taken care to make sure her clothes were out of the way before putting on the waist restraint but deliberately hadn’t touched her upper body. Some of his fellow Carnal Incorporated
employees
went at controlling a subject as if they were branding a calf. He had his own tried and true way which called for the slow approach. Messing with their minds before turning to their bodies.
Keeping himself under check wasn’t easy. He hadn’t fucked since shortly before his accident. For the first month, sex hadn’t been on his radar, but then his dependence on pain killers had decreased, and his body started reminding him that he was accustomed to having sex as often as he wanted. The opportunity hadn’t presented itself when his days revolved around physical therapy or later when he’d holed up in his cabin, and he’d made do with jerking off.
Women’s forms were amazing things. No matter how many he’d handled, and there’d been a lot, they still turned him on. He loved their soft flesh, quivering muscles, hard bone. The sound of one in distress spoke directly to his cock which he took as proof he’d chosen the right career—or it had chosen him.
This one smelled of sweat and fear. He’d been prepared to smell urine, but to her credit she hadn’t lost bladder control—yet. Thinking of her need to pee reminded him of the same need, but he continued to stroke her back. The top was trapped under her, and he couldn’t reach all the way to her shoulders, but he still felt her straining muscles. Because he trusted his instincts and experience, he hadn’t given much thought to how he’d restrain her. Once he’d realized how flexible she was, he’d hit upon placing one wrist over the other behind her back. The position forced her breasts out. He wasn’t ready to start exploring them, but it didn’t hurt to give her a taste of what she was going to experience.
Fighting the horny beast just below the surface, he raked both sides of her spine as thoroughly as he could with her arms in the way. She shuddered and whined into the gag. He debated marking her backbone the same way, then decided to make her wait. Make both of them wait.
Reminded of the need for self-restraint, he stopped his pleasurable task and reached for where the neck chain was fastened to the truck and unhooked it. Wishing he could see what he was doing and what she looked like, he pulled her toward him.
“
This is your leash.” He shook the chain. “The way I’m going to keep you under control. I know I’m pointing out the obvious, but I believe in letting a subject know some of what’s happening to her.”
Not a subject but a sex slave, something you’ll figure out in time.
He reeled in some more until her head rested on his good thigh. She strained to put distance between them, but he had no trouble keeping her where he wanted her. He patted her cheek.
“
I trust you’re trainable. In fact, I’m damn sure of it. Call it one of the benefits of being in my particular business for as long as I have. Believe me, you aren’t going to like it if you don’t go along with the program.” He chuckled and patted her cheek some more. “Come to think of it, there’s probably only one thing you’re going to like about what will take place for the foreseeable future.”
A muffled protest from her gagged mouth distracted him from what else he’d been going to say. He reminded himself not to hand her too much information, then slid the chain under his knee which freed both of his hands. Her head still rested on his thigh only he had no doubt she wouldn’t use the word
rest
.
It didn’t matter. He had work to do.
Because he always used a square knot, he easily untied the leg rope from her waist restraint. She sobbed when he straightened her leg. He waited until her breathing settled down, then tugged on the rope to remind her that it was still around her ankle.