Lily
I know what he’s thinking. He’s a man. Of course he’s thinking that. I’m not stupid. I’m young. They’re not the same.
It’s not like I haven’t been with men either. Most of them were technically boys, but it’s the same process whether a guy is sixteen or sixty. I’m not a virgin, and if sex is what it takes to keep Cason from killing me, why wouldn’t I?
He’s not hideous, by any means. In fact, once I saw him standing there in his bathroom in only a towel barely clinging to his hips, I made up my mind to use what my father likes to call feminine wiles. The way he usually talks about them makes it sound like they’re bad things, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Now I just have to figure out how to approach him.
These thoughts bounce around in my head as I climb the stairs toward my room. I don’t have any sexy clothes to change into. Looking down at my green T-shirt and black yoga pants, I can’t help but be worried that I’m not looking my best to seduce a man holding me hostage. If only I had a dress that showed some skin, I’d feel better about my chances.
Maybe someone left clothes in one of the bedrooms. I can’t check the closet in Cason’s room, but there are a bunch of others, so hopefully a woman stayed here at some time and left behind a nice dress. Much of the house looks like a female had a hand in decorating it at some point. I just hope she didn’t take everything when she left.
I start with my own room, but when I open the doors to the walk-in closet, I’m disappointed by the emptiness in front of me. Not even a single hanger left on the rod. A check of the dresser drawers offers the same.
Nothing but empty space.
Oh, well. Onto the next room.
I make my way to the pointy geometrical design room and open the door as doubts that any woman would want to spend a single minute in this room fill my head. Certainly, this room wasn’t designed with any female in mind. That’s for sure.
The closet is in the far corner of the room, so I head there as I silently comment about how ugly this room is. The pattern of triangles and rectangles is bad enough, but the brown color makes this a bedroom I could never sleep in.
One glance inside the closet and my guess is confirmed. Nothing for a woman to wear, but there is a single black and green striped tie draped over a wire hanger. It looks like the kind of tie my father wears to funerals.
Just the thought of someone dying makes my situation all too real once more. Before I close the closet door, I run my fingertips down along the tie and quietly plead with my father to pay Cason’s boss before it’s too late for both of us.
“Daddy, please do the right thing. For once, do the right thing,” I whisper into the silence around me.
I feel the tears begin to form in my eyes, but I push them away, shaking my head. No more crying. I have work to do because even if my father pays his debt, I need to ensure Cason isn’t going to kill me like he killed that person this afternoon.
Just as the first bedroom I checked, this one also has a dresser full of empty drawers. Didn’t anyone ever leave a stitch of clothing behind when they left this place?
Room after room offers nothing but empty closets and dressers, and with each one I check, I lose a little more hope that I’ll be able to have anything other than the clothes on my back to lure Cason to feeling more for me than he does right now. As it stands, I’m little more than a nuisance who talks too much. I need to change that if I ever expect to be able to save myself.
By the time I reach the last bedroom, I’ve convinced myself all I’ve done is enjoyed a tour of the house and not much more. Other than an ugly tie, I haven’t found anything else, not even an old winter coat left behind.
The final closet has another singular tie much like the other one I found, except this one is red and blue striped. It sort of looks like someone bought them both off the same table at a discount store. Not exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to find in a house this nice.
I pull out each dresser drawer to find the same thing in each one. Nothing. Bending down, I check the last possible place someone could have left anything and see a white T-shirt crumpled up in a bottom drawer. I grab it and shake it out in front of me. It’s a wrinkled mess, but it’s clean.
Lifting it to my nose, I inhale a deep sniff to make sure it doesn’t stink. The last thing I want as part of my seduction is body odor. So not sexy. Thankfully, it smells like it’s fresh out of the dryer. This can work. A T-shirt and underwear combo is much sexier than what I’ve been wearing all day, and I’ve never met a guy who didn’t love seeing a girl wearing that.
A quick but very hot shower will take the wrinkles right out, so I hurry down the hall to my room and strip out of my clothes quickly. Hanging the T-shirt over the towel rack, I turn the water on and step into the glass shower enclosure.
I close my eyes and let the water hit my back, pricking my skin with the scorching heat that makes me flinch. It feels good in some distorted way, but I imagine it’s turning my skin beet red. As long as it makes the wrinkles disappear from that T-shirt, I don’t care.
A lick of excitement jumps inside me as I remember what Cason looked like in that towel. I knew from being tossed over his shoulder that he had a great body. His muscles and cut abs didn’t surprise me. Him being covered in tattoos and his pierced nipples did, though.
My first boyfriend was pierced like that, and I don’t know why it thrilled me so much since I didn’t even have my ears pierced because my father wouldn’t let me do that, but from the moment I first saw those silver barbells through his skin, all I wanted to do was fuck him. Fifteen year old me sneaking out to be with a nineteen year old I knew my father would kill me for dating couldn’t get enough of everything about that guy, and his being pierced only added to my need to do whatever it took to have him.
I turn around to face the water and my eyes fly open at how hot it feels on the front of me. Quickly, I move to adjust the handle on the cold water to make it cooler before my face turns bright red. With no makeup here to fix that, I need to avoid that problem. Blotchy skin isn’t going to help me with what I’m trying to do in a few minutes.
The momentary shock of the burning water behind me, I soap myself up as I return to thinking about Cason. I know I shouldn’t even consider trying to seduce him. He’s clearly someone who’s had many women in his life. No man with that body hasn’t slept with dozens of women in his lifetime.
Maybe hundreds?
I shake my head to push that intimidating thought out of my head. It doesn’t matter how many women he’s fucked before. This isn’t about love or even him liking me.
It’s about him not being able to kill me if and when the time comes. Nothing more. I have something I can use to protect myself, and damnit if I’m not going to put this body to work to make sure I’m alive next week when he and this whole thing are just a memory I want to forget.
It could be worse. I could have to sleep with a man my father’s age to save myself. Even worse, I could have to sleep with someone like Cason’s boss.
A half hour later, I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror trying to make my hair do something more than just hang straight. Perfectly straight, like not a single wave to be found. No matter how many times I scrunch it, my blond hair falls right back where it was, straight as an arrow.
I look down at the white T-shirt that thankfully isn’t as wrinkled as it was before my skin-peelingly hot shower. Oddly sexy, it’ll work. It has to.
With one last look at my naked face, I thank God for getting my mother’s eyelashes that are naturally long and lick my lips. “It doesn’t matter, Lily,” I mutter to my reflection. “Men will sleep with anything willing. You know that, so use it to your advantage. You can do this.”
I have to do this.
After repeating that mantra another half dozen times on my short walk to Cason’s room, I stop in front of his door and listen for a moment. I hear nothing coming from inside. Is it possible he decided not to watch TV after all?
Disappointment makes my shoulders sag, but I still knock on the door and hope he hasn’t fallen asleep or gone out. What kind of guy lets his hostage just stay in a house alone? Yes, the property is guarded, but more than once I’ve wondered if his electric fence claim was all just to scare me.
As I ponder whether it’s possible that I could actually escape this place without getting fried, the door opens in front of me. Standing in jeans and a black T-shirt, Cason twists his face into a look of confusion, as if he can’t imagine what I’d be doing knocking at his door.
Like he seems to all the time, he doesn’t say a word, so I quickly fill the dead space with my own. “Are you busy?”
Instead of saying yes or no, he answers my question with one of his own. “What happened to your clothes?”
I smile and smooth the T-shirt against my body, making sure to push my breasts out so he can see I’m not wearing a bra. “I’d been in those clothes all day, so I figured when I found this T-shirt that I’d wear it to bed. So you didn’t answer my question. Are you busy?”
His eyes narrow as he shakes his head. “No. What do you want?”
Perhaps I was wrong when I said men will sleep with anything. I know I don’t look my best, but is he actually planning to send a young and very willing woman away instead of taking the bait I’m dangling in front of his face?
Undeterred, I smile. “I was bored. What are you doing in there?”
He doesn’t give me a smile in return. Instead, he leans in close to me and takes a deep breath in, letting it out slowly as an ominous hum reverberates in the space around us. “I don’t know what you’re doing, little girl, but trust me, you don’t want to tease a man stuck out alone in the country.”
“You’re not alone. I’m here.”
Cason’s gaze travels down my body and back up again to meet mine. His lids heavy, he looks at me hungrily. “You’re playing with fire here, Lily. You’re going to get hurt.”
My knees shake at how intimidating he sounds, but I press them together and flash him my best fuck me smile. “I’m not a child, Cason. It’s not like I don’t know things.”
“And what do you think this is? Do you think if you get me to fuck you that I won’t want to kill you when the time comes? Is that what you’re thinking?” he asks in a low voice, his warm breath drifting over my ear with each word he practically hisses out before he steps back away from me.
My heart sinks at how callously he dismisses my plan, but I can’t let him see how frightened I am at this very moment. This can work. I know it can. I just have to see it through.
So I take a step closer to him, close enough that I can feel the heat coming from him through that black T-shirt that fits so perfectly over his toned body. I look up into his dark eyes and swallow hard. “What I was thinking was I didn’t want to be alone, Cason.”
The words hang in the sliver of space that separates us as I wait for him to respond. He just needs to say yes and I can do this.
He looks down at my T-shirt, and then his hand touches my hip, sending need dancing through me. “I’m not one of those boys you tease to get your own way, Lily. This is your one last chance to go back to your room and pretend this never happened because if I let you come in, the word no doesn’t exist in here.”
Every word drips with a threat of something he thinks I can’t handle, but I don’t care. Whatever he is inside that room, at least I’ll be alive there at the week’s end.
“Okay.”
I don’t know what else to say. Unlike in the movies where women always seem to say something snappy, I can’t think of a single clever thing at this moment. All that fills my brain is a mixture of fear, desire, and curiosity regarding the man in front of me.
Cason doesn’t answer and steps back to open the door and let me in. I walk across the threshold with the sense that something has changed the moment the door shuts behind me. The blue-green walls and matching rug look the same as before when I stood in that room and filled my eyes with the vision of him wearing only a towel, but unlike then, I don’t feel like I have the same ability to leave now. He hasn’t said I can’t, but there’s a sense all around me that he controls what happens in this place, and I will play my part in whatever that is, willing or unwillingly.
“So what do you want, little girl?” he says as he stops behind me.
Staring straight ahead, I fix my gaze on the slightly wrinkled bedspread that shows all he was doing was sitting around before I knocked on his door. “I want you to stop calling me little girl,” I answer softly before turning my head to look back at him.
His eyes meet mine, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, his strong hands slide around my waist and then drift down to my hips. When he pulls me back against his body, I nearly stumble at the feel of his hard cock pressing against me.
“Feel that? I can’t deny you have an effect on me. But I like things rougher than those boys you’re used to. You should have thought twice about coming in here.”
A shiver races down my spine at the first touch of his lips to the back of my neck. His mouth is soft and teases my skin with things to come, but his words rattle around in my head as his hands tighten their grip on my hips with each second that passes.
My head flops forward when his tongue touches me, the tip of it flicking against my skin. I close my eyes and don’t even try to conceal the moan that escapes from my throat. There’s no use. Whatever this is in this room, whatever we are to one another here, I have to see all of it through to the end.
My life depends on it.
I feel Cason’s hand slide up over my left breast and then clamp around my throat, making my head snap up instantly. He chuckles behind me, moving his mouth away from me to speak.
“You had fair warning, Lily. I told you I wouldn’t be like those boys you’re used to.”
“I’m not afraid,” I squeak out as the pressure of his fingers pushing into my skin sends waves of need coursing through me.
His other hand slides up my body from its place on my hip, and he pinches my right nipple between his thumb and forefinger. I press my lips together to stop the moan that wants to come out so badly and squeeze my eyes shut as I struggle not to look so inexperienced that a single touch from him can arouse me this much.
“Your fear is coming off you in waves. I can practically taste it on your skin,” he whispers ominously against the back of my head. “What are you afraid of, Lily?”
That you won’t care what I do and still will kill me at the end of this week.
That I’m not enough to make you want to save me.
Those thoughts race through my brain, but they’re quickly replaced with another more urgent fear I can’t deny.
That you’re not like all the others and will use that against me.
“I’m not afraid,” I lie for a second time, but my words come out shaky and unconvincing, even to me.
His fingers pinch my nipple again, harder this time, and I can’t stifle the moan the pain forces out of me. It sounds like pure need, and I can’t help but be embarrassed.
“Maybe it’s not only fear I’m smelling after all,” he says like he’s amused by my reaction.
He takes a deep breath in and holds it, letting it out with his own moan. “No, fear doesn’t smell like that. I’ve smelled fear and it definitely is different from what’s coming from you right now. That tells me all I need to know.”
I try to stop myself, but a single word slips from between my lips. “What?”
Tightening his hold on my throat, he presses a kiss against my ear and answers my question. “That if I slipped my finger inside you that you’d be fucking dripping wet already. Right, Lily?”
A shudder moves through me, and I close my eyes. He’s right. There’s no way I can deny it.
My silence confirms his assumption, and he hums his satisfaction. “Nothing to say now?”
I open my mouth to speak, but instead of words a sigh comes out. “I’m not sure what you want me to say to that.”
Behind me, he looms large, like a presence that controls everything that’s happening between us. I want to sound unafraid, but my fear pours out of me without my permission, confirming all he believes about me.
His fingertips press against my throat, exciting and terrifying me. It would take nothing to stop my breathing, yet in the same vein, he can thrill me merely by his touch. My body fights against trying to escape and craving more of him.
Slowly, he turns me around, and for the first time I see his entire face since I walked into this room. He looks different now, like a darker version of the man I’ve spent the day with. His gaze roams over my face, studying me as if I’m some strange creature he’s never encountered before.
“Tell me, Lily, what do you want coming here tonight?” he whispers just inches away from my lips.
Just the way he says that makes me feel like I’m drowning in humiliation, and from somewhere deep inside me where fear of him doesn’t exist come the words I never would have believed I could say.
“If you don’t want me, just say so. You don’t have to be cruel at this too.”
For a moment, he stares at me. I feel like he’s memorizing what I look like right before he follows through on every threat he’s made to me today.
In a deep voice that hits me like a fist to my chest, he says, “I’m nothing but cruel. Now you get to see the real me.”
