Restrain (Siren Book 3) (9 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

“Mil? You up for a walk? I want to show you something?”

She looks at me, eyes trusting, and my gut knots. Her knife hangs heavy in my pocket, freshly recovered from where I hid it when she stripped me to clean my wounds.

“Yeah, sure. Is it far? A lot of stairs?”

“Not really. I didn't think your leg was still bothering you.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Only when there's lots of stairs involved. But it did that
before
. Stairs may be good for my butt, but they suck for the rest of me.”

How can she play nonchalant? Why is she
here
?

“This way.”

I lead her by the hand to the cistern, and she helps me drop down into it as Allen did yesterday. “This is kind of precarious. You guys find something here worth showing me?”

I put my hands on her hips and press her against the wall, my dick hardening against her stomach. “What if I just wanted you to myself, and there's privacy? Is that worth showing you?”

Her arms loop around my neck confidently, a soft smile spreading across her shapely lips. It's not the look of a woman who's relieved a fight's swept away with the past, but the look of a predator taunting its prey. “Are you kidding?”

Now that I know what I'm looking for, I can see that the enthusiasm in her voice and face doesn't reach her eyes, and that her body's tense with fight-or-flight.

“I'll take it that's a yes?” I shove her toward the opening. “You go on in first. I'll be on your heels. Allen knows that he doesn't want to see this.”

She laughs. “Works for me. I don't really want to be
seen
, with everything I'm gonna do to you.”

I'm a bad,
bad
man.

*              *              *

She straightens, inspecting the room as I crawl after her, a little slower. “This is a nice find. Cozy, one might say.” She turns back toward me, and with a cheeky grin pulls her shirt over her head, followed by her bra. Her nipples perk in the air, though the space holds heat and is several degrees warmer than the main area we were in before, at least the bottom portions of it. Her pants and underwear follow as she urges me to hurry up and get in here, get on with it.

“I know, right?” I can't keep the smile on my face, and it doesn't go unnoticed. I discreetly fish the closed blade out of my pocket as I discard my pants. I don't want her to catch on yet, so I keep the blade behind my back, ostensibly so I can lean on the wall.

“Calder, something's wrong. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. It's fine. Do you trust me, Mil?”

“Why is that even a question? Do I have to close my eyes, while you shove your finger somewhere gross, and make me smell it if I say yes?” Despite the nonchalance in her demeanor, the muscles under her eye tighten very faintly; she knows something foul is coming.

“Answer me, Mil. Please,” I plead, not eager for what's gonna happen next.

“Of course, Calder. Seriously. What's with you, lately?” She plays it off as annoyance, but the set of her mouth reveals what's beneath it—fear.

“Okay. Then answer me honestly.”

A very pink tongue runs across her lower lip. “Sexy 'have you ever'? I'm game.”

Goddamnit
. She's
entirely
too good at appealing to my cock; no
wonder
the rest of me always followed.

“Have you and I ever met, before you woke up here?”

Her face sets in a look of bullish annoyance and confusion, but she takes a step back. Only a small one, but still. “No, of course not. Why would you—”

I pull out her old knife, and open it, popping the blade free from the handle, and her eyes widen. There's no fear, only surprise. “That was gonna be question number two: do you recognize this. But I see I've got my answer. Now answer the first one again,
Rachael
.”

“
Where the hell did you get a knife? What the fuck is this about, Calder?
” she asks, most of the way to a yell. She hopes that Allen will come looking. But I warned him away, and last night, I even took the time to warn him it might get loud, now that we had the space to do it. “You know
damn well
my name.”

“So which is it? Camilla, or Rachael?” I plant myself in front of the crawlspace, the knife between us.

“Who the
fuck
is Rachael?” she asks, her voice rising rapidly, and her eyes fixed on the blade.

“You tell me. And stop waving a fucking
knife
at me. Are you
crazy
?”

“You tell me,
Rachael
. You want out of here, you know the safe word.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?” A month ago, I might have mistaken this for panic. But her eyes have the same calculated, primal light in them as when I tied her up. She's not gonna use the word. She's not gonna acknowledge her secrets. But until she does, I can't let her out. Maybe I just have to up the stakes a bit.

“Where'd you get the knife, Rachael? How long have you been able to slit our throats in our sleep?”

She starts crying, the performance of fear getting painfully real. My gut knots harder, and it's all I can do not to throw the knife away and gather her into my arms. “What's wrong with you, Calder? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I know the knife is yours. I know you lied about your name before you fucked me, back in the wide world. And unless you admit that, and tell me
why
, and why you've lied in here, we're gonna have a problem.” I fight to keep my face still, and let her own emotion fray her. But with each outburst, I become more and more convinced that the motion I'm seeing is only the one she wants me to, not what's there, beneath her skin. She cries, backing up to the wall, shrinking in on herself, but still, her eyes don't leave the blade.

“Talk to me, Rachael, Camilla,
whoever
you are.”

Her hands tremble, and her chest heaves, and as I take a step forward, she falls to her knees, coughing and retching. I step forward, concern ripping through me, despite myself, and when I'm halfway across the room, she lunges to her feet and dives toward the entryway I left. I seize her midjump, and throw her to the floor, bringing the knife to her throat, and pinning her limbs down with my full weight.

“
You know how to make this stop.
You know the safe word. Now, if you don't tell the
truth
for once in your life, and
tell me the safe word
, I'm gonna cut you ten ways 'til tomorrow.” I swipe the blade across her midsection lightly, just to let her know I'm serious; she has to believe that I'll really do it, or else this is just a game of chicken. Blood wells from a shallow cut across her formerly pristine stomach.

“
What
safe word, Calder? We've never
had
a safe word.” Tears spill from those beautiful eyes, and she keeps her eyes on mine, but it's obviously not
me
she's seeing. They're a little too wide, focusing on the center of my forehead to make me
think
we're eye-to-eye.

“Don't lie to me, Mil,” I plead. The knife at her throat obviously isn't enough. She's gambling
everything
that that's all I can bring myself to do to her. “I know you can take it rough. And unless you tell me that's
not
what you want, with the safe word you used the first time we fucked, it's gonna get
real
rough. You can stop this. All you have to do is say the word.”

“Calder,
please,
” she sobs. “You don't have to do this.
Please
—” Her lips quiver, but her hands are scrabbling on the floor for something she can use to fight me. Maybe she thinks she can entrap the knife in our clothes. I punch her in the face, and shove them away from her grasping hands.

The sound my fist made reverberates in my head, sickening me. Insecurity courses through me that maybe, just maybe, she
is
innocent, and it's all a horrible misunderstanding.

But I remember the way she looked with that knife half out of her pocket, and the way she looked as she lied about recognizing it.

She's let me into her head, and no matter how she twists, she can't get away with any more lies.

She sobs, struggling to flail, but I've got her pinned forward enough that her legs kick uselessly at the air, only pushing her stomach into my crotch. I can hardly keep my dick hard, keep the threat in place, seeing her tears. But she has the safe word. Whatever this game of wills is, I have to be the one to win. If I lose, I die.

I jerk the shirt back over, and force her hands into one of mine, before wrapping her shirt around them, trapping them there for the time being. I still have to keep the fabric taut, but she's easier to control, utterly powerless before me.

“Is this what you want, Rachael? Tell me the goddamn safe word.”

I trace the fingers in my free hand down her chest, and twist her nipple as viciously as I can. She yells in surprise, and when she meets my eyes, for a moment there's nothing but malice in their murky blue-green depths. Not even the malice of a woman who fears being raped. It's deeper than that; it practically burns me. If I believed in demons, I'd believe her possessed. I pick up the knife again, putting the flat of the blade against her chest, cold metal against warm skin.

“Who are you? Why have you been lying?”

She yells, most of the way to a scream, but Allen seems to have taken up residence in the highest of the catwalks, where he'll never hear her. Thank fuck. If he comes to investigate, I'm not gonna be able to explain this to him. Not with her under me, naked and bleeding.

She plants her feet on the ground, and arches, trying to buck me off her hips. All it does is jars my sore calves when they collide with the ground as she gives way beneath my weight.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Rachael.” I can't call her Milla. I just
can't
. It becomes real the moment I do. Her tears, that perfect skin I dreamed about for so long, marred with blood and bruising... I have to believe that she truly
is
Rachael crying for mercy, not the caring, tough-as-nails woman I've grown to need like oxygen.

“
Please
, Calder,” she sobs brokenly. “Why're you hurting me?”

I press the knife to her throat a little harder, begging her to put an end to this, begging her to just give
in
, acknowledge everything. But beyond the tears, and the sniffles, and the fighting, her eyes are fixed on me, and that demon is still lurking in their depths. She's waiting for me to fail,
knowing
I'll fail.

And that's what gives me the courage to go through with it, climbing between her legs to wedge them apart, one hand reaching for my cock, trying to remind myself of every other time I was only too
happy
to sink into her. Our eyes meet for a frightened second—
will I or won't I? Will she or won't she?—
but her eyes are completely devoid of tears, the glassy sheen gone. Her sobs intensify, and warm liquid spurts against my knees, running along the smooth metal floor.

Shit
. A moment of panic overwhelms me, and my grip on her hands falters. She doesn't lose a second in punching me and crawling away, toward the opening. I seize her knees and drag her back, putting one knee on her shoulders, and the other on her leg until I can gather her hands behind her back and wrap them in the shirt again.

“You're not convincing me, Rachael. You know the word. You know how to end this.
Tell me the truth
.”

“
Stop calling me Rachael
,” she screams, the noise echoing eerily in our confined prison. It rings in my ears, and permeates my soul with her pain. At least
that
part is real.

“So your name
is
Milla, then. Why did you lie?”

She jerks her hands against the restraints, and one of her feet kicks against my ass as she tries to wiggle free, unsuccessfully. I press her face into the floor with only a moment of regret that her nose is in front of her own wet spot. “I don't know what you're talking about! Why are you doing this—” The words lapse into more frenzied sobs, but again, there's no tears in her eyes. She's trying to stay calm, but doesn't want me to know how in control she is.

I lean my forearm across her shoulders, and her breaths wheeze tighter in her lungs. Once again, I kick her knees apart, trying not to think that the soft flesh I'm about to abuse was once wrapped around me affectionately, maybe even
lovingly
. She screams again, wordlessly, as I fight to get my cock hard enough to make our battle cross that last line, the one she obviously believes I won't.