Finlay gave me a nasty grin. He was enjoying this. Bastard.
“You'll dump the girl if you have any sense. You don’t need the publicity. Just imagine if the tabloids got hold of the story:
Nina's Daughter Dating Suspected Killer
. They'll never leave you alone.”
With that parting shot, he left.
Griff
My head was a complete mess. Hadley was alive. She was probably in some kind of danger, even though she denied it.
Rory was a fucking liar.
These two big, unexpected ideas were smashing into each other in my brain, each trying to get the upper hand. As for my emotions, they were all over the place. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, except that I wanted to smash something.
What the hell was I supposed to do now? I still didn’t know where Hadley was. Did I still care? She’d made it clear that she didn’t give a shit about me. She probably never had.
What did I owe her? Last time someone in my family attempted to rescue someone, he'd ended up underground. I wasn't afraid of that. Down into the depths was where I'd been headed for quite a while. I'd thought once I could escape that fate. Work myself up and out of it, but that hadn't turned out so well, had it?
Hadley had tried pulling me into her dangerous, edgy world before, and I'd resisted. But I got it now. I got how seductive the darkness could be.
Screw Hadley.
What about Rory? She had lied to me. All along, she had pretended to be someone she wasn't. Part of me fucking hated her for that.
The front door slammed. She was back.
I was waiting for her in my bedroom.
“Rory? Come in here.”
She did her thing of hesitating on the threshold. I knew what she was thinking. She was wary about how I had received the news that Hadley was alive. She hadn't expected that. When she'd gone scouring the internet for what had happened to my old girlfriend, she hadn't fully thought it through.
Not quite as smart as you thought you were, huh, Rory? She hadn't believed she would actually
find
Hadley.
“Are you OK?” she asked. “That must have been some shock, talking to Hadley.”
I gave her no answer. I had pulled a certain bag out of my closet and set it on the edge of the bed. I was rifling through it. Rory hadn’t seen most of the stuff I had in that bag.
“I talked to Silas Marks. He was outside in his big fancy car. He and I made a deal.”
I stiffened. The thought of her talking to Marks, who had touched her…hurt her just stoked my fury hotter.
“What kind of deal?” I snarled.
“He’s gonna send me some stupid puzzles to solve and in return he’s going to use his influence to make sure you’re fully exonerated. In the press, I mean. So everybody knows you didn’t kill Hadley. Who is not, in fact, dead.”
“Puzzles? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t know exactly. Probably like that thing Microsoft supposedly used to do when you applied for a job in the nineties—calculate how many tennis balls could fit inside a Boeing-747. Come up with a mathematically accurate but creative solution. These geeky guys love that shit.”
I didn't get why Marks wanted to give her puzzles, but I didn't care, either. Fuck him. Fuck everybody.
I didn’t say anything, and for a couple of moments we just stared at each other. Then Rory bit her lip and said, “So I guess you want me to leave, right? Well, spring break’s just about over anyway. I can probably get back into my dorm.”
“You're leaving?”
She smiled at me, but her bottom lip trembled and it looked as if the rims of her eyes were a bit red. “I guess. My work here is done.”
She couldn't just leave. I'd gotten used to having her around. But at the same time I wanted to shove her into my car and toss her in a ditch on the side of the fucking freeway. Lying bitch.
“I’m gonna take the train back to Boston.” She paused, blinking at me. “I'm sure you're anxious to get rid of me. I mean...now that Hadley's alive, and all.”
I said nothing. I was staring at her through eyes that saw everything differently. I could see the resemblance now. Finlay was right—Rory didn't have her mother's extraordinary beauty. Her features weren't quite as perfect or symmetrical. But she had Nina's smile. Was that why it had seemed familiar to me?
I think she was crushed that I didn't deny wanting to get rid of her, because she sagged a little in the doorway. Then she squared her shoulders and did her usual thing when she was nervous—she kept right on talking:
“Anyway. I've got to start thinking about my classes. Spring break's almost over, and I haven't done shit. I've got books to read, papers to write, exams to prepare for. I was planning on getting a lot of this semester's crap finished this week, but I didn't, so now I'm behind. I hate that. I need to keep on schedule if I expect to keep my 4.0 average.”
“Come here.”
She did. I think she was relieved by the order. She wouldn't be relieved for long.
“What's in the bag?”
“Strip,” I said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But, Griff—”
“Now,” I barked at her.
Slowly, looking uncertain, she pulled her top over her head. Seeing her obey me gave me that same powerful thrill I always felt with her, and my dick turned rock hard.
She wasn't wearing a bra. As I gazed at her breasts, she slid down her pants, getting jaunty about it as her confidence rose. When she got down to her panties, she was almost smiling. They were the plain cotton briefs I'd seen in her backpack on the first night, but she shimmied and twirled for me as she removed them.
My eyes must have been devouring her sweet body, because she began to blush in that adorable way she had.
I blew out a tight breath. “Good girl.” I removed a couple pairs of leather cuffs from my bag. “Now put these on.”
She swayed, staring as I laid out some of my toys. “I'm not sure this is the moment for—”
“Do it.”
She bowed her head. I'd seen hints of it before with her—if aroused, she would submit. Clumsily, she slid her wrist into one of the cuffs. It fastened with Velcro, as she figured out quickly enough. 204 IQ. I put the other one on her other wrist and tightened them both.
As always, touching her, smelling her, feeling her close to me made me ache with lust. I wanted to piston-fuck her until we both collapsed with exhaustion.
I locked cuffs on her ankles too, and got out my already-cut lengths of bondage rope.
“Now lie down in the middle of the bed.”
She did it. She was blushing all over now, a faint pinkish glow of combined embarrassment and sexual excitement. I bound her arms and legs to the four bedposts. I probably seemed calmer and more controlled than I was. Being with her, seeing her lovely body, touching her, even hearing her voice excited me past the point of reason. I wanted to ram the daylights out of her.
“This feels amazing.” She favored me with her smile—the seductive one. But I could tell she wasn't exactly sure about this. She pretended to be, though. “Why are you still wearing clothes?”
I stripped off the T-shirt, but the jeans were staying on for a while. If I took them off, forget it, this thing would be over in about ten seconds.
“Should I writhe around or something?”
“You'll writhe around soon enough.” Reaching over her body, I pulled open the top drawer in the bedside table and removed the blindfold that I sometimes wear to help me sleep. It was a good one, soft and thick and impossible to see through no matter which way you angled your eyes. I slid it over her head, covered her eyes, and tightened the Velcro binding. A few strands of her luxurious brown hair clung to my fingers as I worked.
“Whoa. Not sure I like that.”
“Tough. My game, my rules.”
“It’s just that I prefer to see you.” She pulled a bit at her wrist restraints. The rope stretched to its limits and she stopped. “I like to watch you watching me.”
“Too bad.” I slowly stroked my hand up one of her legs, from her ankle to her thigh. I stopped before reaching her sex and stroked down the other leg to the ankle cuff. I loved touching her, but I was damned if I was going to admit it. I caressed her ankle and then her foot. I slid my index finger along the sole of her foot until she shivered and gave a breathless laugh.
I thought about snapping a rattan cane against the tender flesh of her foot. She wouldn't be laughing then.
“Griff, why are you doing this? I’d like to talk to you first. I’ve got stuff to tell you.”
“Say anything more and I’ll stuff a gag down your throat.”
She swallowed, looking uncertain. But she didn’t speak. I wasn't sure if she was obeying orders or evaluating my sanity.
“I like that you can't see what I'm doing.” I moved my hand up until it was hovering over her breast. “You won't know where I'm going to strike next.”
I let my hand fall onto her flesh and caressed her. Just as I felt her starting to relax into the caress, I pinched her nipple between my thumb and index finger. Hard enough to surprise her. She let out a sexy little moan. I had nipple clamps in the bag, but I wouldn't use them yet. Not while she was wearing the blindfold. I wanted her to watch when I applied those.
From my bag I took a long, pointed feather. It was wrapped in cellophane, which I stripped off. Brand new. Leaning over her, I touched the feather to the tip of her earlobe, pushing her hair out of the way first. Then I glided it along the side of her throat, turning it slightly back and forth so the feather could brush her different ways, producing different sensations.
She shifted in her bondage. “What's that?”
I slid it down to her collarbone and traced its ridge. “You tell me.” I drew slow concentric circles with the tip of the feather around one of her breasts. Switching to the other, I grazed the nipple delicately.
“A feather?” She was breathing hard—her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Both her nipples had stiffened into pointy nubs, suitable for teasing. I leaned over and kissed her breasts, enjoying her sweet-salty taste.
“That MIT brain is good for something, after all.” I moved the feather down over her belly, brushing, caressing, poking gently with the tip. I kept guiding it lower, inch by inch. “You know where it's going, don't you?”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
By the time I reached the mound of her sex, her body was well into the writhing I'd predicted. The feather skipped over and moved to the inside of her thighs. She moaned, and I knew she was torn between relief and disappointment. The feather was much more effective at arousing than at giving pleasure. It could be quite maddening, in fact, as I proceeded to demonstrate.
I only allowed the lightest stimulation of her labia. When I touched it to her clit, her body arched and she strained to break free. I soothed her with my other hand, stroking her pussy in a pleasanter way until she relaxed a little.
Then I applied the feather again, tormenting her dripping slit for several seconds before closing in once again on her clit.
She was twisting dramatically in her bonds. “You want me to beg, don't you?”
“I sure do.”
She was breathing hard. “Not. Gonna. Happen.”
Bending over, I kissed her there and worked her clit with my tongue. She ground her hips, beautifully aroused, deliciously wild. When I sensed she was about to soar into an orgasm, I stopped. “Did I mention that you're not allowed to come?”
Her groan was considerably louder this time. “If you think that's going to make me beg...”
“Sooner or later, yeah.” I bent to my task again, sliding my tongue inside her, fucking her with it. Then I replaced my tongue with my finger and went back to sucking her clit. When her whole body tightened, I stopped again, holding her there, right on the edge.
I stripped off her blindfold and let her see that my head was just a couple inches above her, my mouth maddeningly close. She gasped, straining to reach me, desperate for my tongue, but the bindings prevented her from closing the gap.
I smiled. Yeah, I was feeling cruel.
I pushed up from the bed and dropped my pants. She was watching me now, panting with frustration, so I stroked my cock, which was thick and heavy. I felt a bit drunk, partly with my power over her and partly because all the blood must have rushed from my head to gather in my genitals. From my stash I selected a riding crop, black and long.
Rory's eyes went dark with alarm. I’d spanked her with my hand several times, but I’d never used an impact toy on her before.
“I might need a safeword for that.”
“Does that mean you're using a safeword? Or that you want me to give you one?”
“Um...”she hesitated, looking between my face, which can't have been too comforting, and the crop. “It's just...no, I'm not using one. Not yet, anyway.”
I slid the leather tab at the end of the crop over her nipples. I tapped lightly, staring down at her breasts, fascinated by the way her nipples, which were already peaked and hard, turned stiffer under the impact of the crop. “This too intense for you?”
She shook her head, but she was definitely wary now. I loved that she wasn't trying to stop me. That she was willing to go where I wanted to take her, even if it scared the shit out of her. Silly, brave girl.
I got back on the bed, straddling her hips. Her flesh beneath mine was almost too much for me to bear. She was trembling a little and I think I was, too. Why did she still feel so good to me? I reached for a condom and rolled it on.
My cock jerked when I touched myself, and I was literally aching to shove myself inside her. I wasn't sure if it was Rory turning me on so much or the rush of the scene itself. She looked amazing lying there spread out for me, and I didn't want to think about anything beyond how beautiful she was and how much I wanted to join my flesh to hers.
But the mind is a treacherous place, and something very dark had its claws in me. So I pushed just a tiny bit into her, leaning forward so she would feel the pressure of me on her clit. I was going to fuck her all right. I was going to mind-fuck her.
I pressed in a little more deeply, and as I did, I brought the riding crop down sharply against her breast. It wasn't a hard strike, but it startled her. She arched off the bed, restricted by the tension in the ropes holding her arms. Good. I struck her again, harder.