The greenness hit me and I halted.
Despite the odd circumstances I had to stand there a moment to inhale…to just
be
.
The cool air was heavy with moisture. I’d probably grow mold if I sat still too long. Palm trees swayed and fluttered their fronds overhead. Ten or twenty of them had been planted inside the compound, or maybe they’d grown here by themselves? Somewhere over the high stone walls, birds whooped and clicked to each other and a distant murmur spoke of waves rolling in across a beach.
“Andreas!” Chris called.
I jerked and looked around. He’d parked underneath the two-story house and had the rear doors of the 4WD open. One end of the box had been slid up to the edge. Scrim was walking away, to the right, toward the first house.
This was it. Letting her out. Seeing what she would do, what he would do. What I would do.
“Coming.” I stepped in closer, surprised to find myself seized by a mixture of excitement and fear. I didn’t know her at all. She was an enigma. A woman in a box, like an out-of-season Christmas present about to be unwrapped. I shook myself. Weirdo.
Then it hit me. Shit. Obvious disastrous problem. “Him.” I jerked my thumb in Scrim’s direction, hoping the man didn’t turn around and think I was acting strangely. “What if he sees her?”
“Scrim thinks she’s here of her own volition.”
When had they discussed this? Before he got in the car? I held up a hand. “Wait. Wait. You told him there’s a woman in this box and he rode here without saying a
word
?”
“I had to tell him. He’s kinky too. This place gets used for lots of role play.” Chris turned and undid the first latch. “Just don’t go chatting to him. He’s a little odd but he’s going to stay out of our hair. If we’re careful and keep him away, it’ll be fine.”
“Uh.” I curled up my fists but nodded like I knew what he meant. I knew shit. How strange did you have to be to come here to re-enact kink like this, and yet for Chris to declare him odd? How could Chris be so cool about this when what we were doing was so fucking illegal? I shook my head. “Yeah. Look, no problem. I won’t talk to him anyway. Why the hell would I?”
“Good.”
The chance that I’d spill something that gave away the truth was probably astronomically huge. Already I felt nervous with this guy living here, while Chris did god knew what with Kat.
She looked an absolute mess. After we carefully extracted her from the box, hard to do when she wasn’t helping us much, we tried to get her to stand. The blindfold wouldn’t throw off her balance. She wobbled and fell back against the 4WD – sitting on the lip of the door opening. Her lips were slack and her sweat-matted scarlet hair swung across her face. The T-shirt and the little black panties Chris had put back on her did little to conceal her femininity. I’d seen her half naked at the last stop, and knew it was sick to look at her in this sexual way, yet for a few seconds, I did exactly that.
“You okay?” I tucked some of her wayward hair behind her ear.
“Hold her there.” Chris shut one wing of the rear doors while I supported her with an arm across her back. Then he leaned over in front of her. “She doesn’t seem to be faking it. Kat? Kat? You’d better not be planning to kick me in the groin.”
Nothing. She’d barely moved. Through the T-shirt I stroked her back. “Hey. Are you okay? Feeling sick?” I ducked my head to look at her face. “I think she’s still out of it. Are you sure you gave her the right dose? Didn’t you say it should’ve worn off?”
“Yes.” The frown said he was concerned too.
“What if she was taking some other drug? Half the country is on something. If she is, it might have an extra effect.”
He straightened and thought for a moment. “You could be right. It should still wear off with time. But we need to keep an eye on her. Let’s get her upstairs and get the tape off her eyes.”
“Uh.” I checked out how it wound over the back of her hair in a thick swathe. “How do we do that without ripping off skin or hair? Fuck, Chris, this is going to hurt.”
“I needed to make sure she was subdued.”
I bit back the urge to call him an asshole. How much did he care for this woman? Not much, it seemed.
“Scrim said there’s a bath here, upstairs. It’ll come off if we soak it.”
I eyed the stairs at the back of the garage, then her. “I’ll carry her. She’ll never make it up there on her own legs.” Crouching, I took her in my arms.
She was as floppy as a rag doll that had OD’d on valium. My wonky left arm almost crumpled under her weight but I caught myself.
“You sure you can do this?” Chris stepped in.
“Yes,” I snarled. “I can. My arm got chewed a bit, it hasn’t fallen off.” Fucking hell. The man had kidnapped her, drugged her, and now had the audacity to act concerned. I throttled back, swallowed. “Sorry. Yes, I’ve got her.”
His eyebrows twitched. “Good.”
Carrying her up the stairs then into the bathroom was hard enough. Figuring out how to get her into the spa-sized bath so her hair could soak was even harder. By herself she’d likely drown every fifteen seconds even if we sat nearby.
Which was how I’d ended up in the bath with her, with both of us in our underwear. Her red bra scooped low, showing off the upper curves of her breasts. I had her stretched out between my thighs with her head close to water level, so her hair would soak.
Letting Chris do this though, fuck it, not happening. We’d eye-dueled and I’d won. Though I was becoming ever more aware that Chris wanted to strangle me.
“Okay.” He massaged between his eyes. “I need to go talk to Scrim. You have to be aware she’s possibly faking it.”
“What? You’re joking.” I looked down at her where her hair floated around her head in a red halo. Only two seconds before I’d had to grab her so she didn’t slip deeper.
“Maybe. Just…take care. Of you as well as her. I’ll be back.”
“What are you talking to him about?”
“You. Partly. You weren’t supposed to be here. He may not have said anything, but you’re a glitch from his point of view. This place isn’t exactly a public amenity. I need to tell him you’re trustworthy. And figure out why there’s no electricity.” He looked up at the non-functioning bathroom light.
We had zero power. Luckily, there was a skylight, but the day was fading.
“I’ll be back soon. Then, we are going to talk.” He pointed at a bottle on the shoulder height shelf to my right. “Massage some conditioner into her hair. It might help dissolve the sticky stuff.”
I nodded and watched him walk out the door. I’d wanted to talk since soon after I’d slipped into his car on the ferry. Now though, I wondered what I was going to say to him.
For a few minutes, I concentrated on working some conditioner into her hair and beneath the tape as much as possible, then I drew her up a little higher onto my thigh.
And I watched.
The water might be cold but she was warm against my skin. I couldn’t help admiring her curves as I smoothed away the grime of all that had happened to her over the last day. A few times she stirred and pushed at my hand but I persisted. Her skin was pale, accentuating the red of her bra and black of her panties – color coded scraps of cloth that screamed sexual territory. All the best bits were underneath those. Her lips were plump with the promise of kisses. Long legs, female contours…
Damn.
I had a hard-on that wasn’t going away while I had her nestled into me like a little defenseless creature.
At last the tape loosened and I gently pulled the bits away from each strand of her hair, revealing her face. What color were her eyes? I turned her face upward and stroked her cheek until she opened them.
Gray. A pretty and liquid light gray.
“Hi,” I said softly.
She only groaned quietly and blinked.
When she turned her cheek away and nestled back into me, curving her back and drawing up her legs so the water swirled, I had to clamp down on a surge of emotion. Her eyelids drifted down again. She clung to my leg with both arms – determined yet weak. Her hair swept in lazy arcs against the masculine heaviness of my thigh.
Beauty personified.
I ached deep inside. What did Chris want to do to her?
The draw to protect her was so strong. I didn’t care what she might or might not have done. So cute all snuggled around me. I’d never had a woman do this. Ever. Not in such a vulnerable way.
“Hey, baby girl.” I stroked her cheek again. “I’m going to get you out of this.”
She stirred but her eyes stayed shut. “Not a baby. Fugg off.”
I chuckled and smiled. “Not a hope.”
Daylight was fading by the time we had her out of the bath and dried off. When Chris wrist and ankle cuffed her and collared her with black leather, I managed to stay quiet. When he attached a metal leash, I fought not to explode.
Maybe part of this was that I also found her disturbingly sexy all collared and leashed. That scared me.
Being able to touch her and comfort her in the bathroom had brought a temporary serenity. Now, my sense of wrongness was on high alert. But unless I wanted to send Chris to prison, I had to figure out the right way to do this. I had to talk to her, as well as him.
The back of the house had a wide, sailcloth-covered deck that looked out through straggly scrub and trees over a beach. A circular, generously padded chair seemed the best place for Kat. Chris left her in there, curled up like her namesake, a cat, and apparently sleeping while we drew up and sat in chairs around a rectangular table.
Little anomalies piqued my interest. For instance, her leash had been clipped to a chromed steel ring on the chair.
Launching straight into a discussion about the obvious bothered me. We talked small – the power switch, and the weather, of all fucking things, and other unimportant stuff. Chris went to the kitchen, to perform his microwave chef duty with cans of stew and packets of nacho chips. Both of us knew we needed to discuss Kat.
The dampness from her underwear darkened the beige upholstery of the chair. A sea breeze swept the deck, riffling her hair and the leaves of the potted palms that sat on the deck’s periphery. The rain must water them. With my forearms leaned on my thighs and my hands clasped, I studied our surroundings. This was a tropical beach paradise – what more could you want except a sex slave?
“Eat.” Chris slid a plate of food onto the table beside me. “Scrim said he’ll go back into town tomorrow for supplies now that the fridges are on.”
“Good.” I nodded and scooped food into my mouth, barely tasting it. “And her?”
“I’ll give her something to eat soon.”
I darted a look at him. Even those words had sounded tinged with threat. My imagination? “Good,” I ventured.
“You’re leaving tomorrow.” He waved his fork at me. “Now you’ve seen I’m not murdering her.”
“No. I’m not.” I laid down my fork. “I go when she does.”
“You’ll go if I say you do. Scrim can take you with him. He’ll organize a plane to fly you back.”
“No. What you’ve told me so far, it doesn’t justify this.” I shook my head. “I’m not sure what would.”
“Wrestle you for her.” Chris tossed down his own fork.
“She’s not a possession.”
Then she stirred. Maybe our words had woken her, or the drug had finally worn off. The cascade of the dusk light caressed her curves as she raised herself on her elbows.
I swallowed, struck for a microcosm of time by the allure of indeed owning her. “She’s not yours.”
“She is now. She’s mine.”
God, I hated him. Gently, I stamped my fist on the table. “You can’t own a person. Not in this time and age.”
“You have no idea. Slaves are a reality as much as they’ve ever been in history. It’s just a matter of beating the law. I told you before. Turn me in, or leave me be. This is something I want. I mean to have her.” He sat back in the chair and contemplated Kat. “You’re right, though. I can’t justify this. What my friend did, yeah, he had some justification. Me? Put me back in history at Rome and I could be a rich man with a troupe of slave girls or maybe a sheik with a harem. Legal, even the pinnacle of society. Here, now?” His eyes shone dark in the dying light. “I’m just a bad man with a good sense of timing.”
His blatant admission stunned me for a few seconds.
“A good sense of timing? Why the hell is this good?”
“She was going on holiday. Driving to the Outback. No one will miss her for a few days until the phone calls don’t come in.”
“Jesus,” I whispered. He
had
planned this. This wasn’t some distorted retribution. This was Chris being fucked up in the head.
“Now you know why you’re leaving tomorrow. There’s nothing more you can do.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered. “I’m staying.”
“If I have to toss you out on your ear, I will,” he grumbled.
“No.”
“Motherfucking hell!” Chris stood, skidding back his chair.
I stared. I’d rarely seen him angry. There was no way I could take him on. Martial arts expert versus me – oil rig engineer cross stock market fiddler, and with a bad arm? Uh-uh. The fresh white T-shirt he’d thrown on after his shower shaped to his chest and made him look like a pissed off Colossus.
Face set like stone, he sucked in rapid breaths. “I don’t want you being associated with this place…or with what I’m doing.”
Associated with? What did he mean? Kat was on hands and knees and looking back at us through her tangled fringe. What he was about to do to her… I shook my head. “You’re not just some Roman senator with a cute slave girl, Chris. You’re a mean fucking sadist.”
What did he mean associated? What was here? I eyed the metal ring on the chair’s rim that he’d clipped her leash to. There’d been another like that in the bathroom.
His words came out quieter. “And she’s always known that. She likes that part of me. Go. Please.”
I was in no way convinced, but what was the use in arguing? Yet I wasn’t handing Chris to the cops.
That day, out in the waves, when all around me had turned pink and red and water bubbled past my ears. I’d screamed then sunk again, flailing my good arm, twisting to see where my surfboard had gone. The shark was out there somewhere, circling to come get me again. My left arm, shredded and raw with pain. He’d saved me. He’d reached me before the shark did and somehow gotten me to shore by heaving me onto his board and paddling like crazy. My eyes watered a little. I blinked myself back to here, to the Daintree.