ISAK & Red: An enemies-to-lovers Dark Romance Read online

  I wanted to whip her again, to make her cry and whine for dick, then I would fuck her stupid and watch the splatters of come run down her welted skin.

  Something… stopped me.

  I was messed up as to why I was doing what I had done to her, wasn’t I? I frowned at myself.

  The medication had derailed me. Creating a fucked-up Red could not have been my main aim today? I mean, I had already done that, in spades, so many, many times.

  I let her stay there while I admired this disheveled, panting female.

  A piece of art, even so, in my opinion. Worthy of being hung in an art gallery. One day I must do that.

  Red, swinging nude, tied up, and red from my welts, in an art gallery.

  Goals.

  I untied her and let her down gently, laid her on her back on the pile of her clothes. I spread her wide and shoved myself into her, listening to the music in that drawn-out muffled groan as I slid in and stayed there, balls squashed to cunt. I fucked her face to face, driving in hard, knowing I was going soft on her.

  Too gentle. This was almost shameful, except that I liked this. The flutter of her eyelashes. The huff of her breath as she took me. The jiggle of all her soft bits as I rammed in.

  How her lips felt and gave beneath mine.

  The feel of her body accepting my presence inside her.

  Sex made us one thing, one creature, one panting sliding, grunting animal.

  The whole time I fucked her, I was aware of the pain I caused with every thrust as her back and ass were driven, back and forth, across the ground and the cloth.

  Before I came, I held her throat and pinned her wrists in the vice of my grip. I stared into her half-closed eyes, with her spine curving hard and her heels scrabbling for a hold on the earth. She wanted release; she wasn’t getting it.

  Her last bit of penance.

  “No,” I grunted, before I speared into her one last time and crested that explosive wave of ecstasy.

  Her clenched internal muscles seemed to suck more come from me than was possible, but I pulled out and jetted the last spurts onto her belly, watched it pool and run off her as she frowned up at me, whining and searching within herself for that elusive orgasm.

  “No.” I smiled then thrust into her again. She wasn’t going anywhere until I was fully done with her.

  CHAPTER 14

  RED

  “Where are we going?” I asked this as casually as was possible, considering the hurts he had inflicted earlier, in tandem with memories of the unreached joy. Blue balls? I had a blue pussy, and even now I ached.

  While I gripped the wheel, I wriggled and shifted my sore ass on the seat.

  One cannot be without the other. Not with him.

  There were bruises, he had told me.

  Not surprised.

  After the punishment, he had left me churning with unrequited need, but he’d also taken the time to help cleanse me of all the icky mess. I might still need a shower, but he’d seemed to care for my wellbeing.

  He was more unpredictable than ever.

  His aim of learning how to be human felt flimsier by the hour. The longer I was unmuted, in the real world, the more my thoughts repeated a chant – you need to get away from him.

  “Why?” He stretched his arm between the seats and caressed the dog.

  Banjo had nudged his way forward. That big, boofy head seemed characteristic of these Aussie cattle dogs – maybe they head-butted the cows that trotted the wrong way.

  “I need a plan.” Daring of me to say so, I guess. Though his attitude was still as scary as a Chucky doll on Valium, I was getting used to the new, medicated Isak.

  He could be talked to… with, so long as I didn’t accuse him of being a child molester.

  The murder and torture of adults was apparently fine and dandy. Go figure.

  “A plan.” His parroting of the word gave me nothing. “Why?”

  “This…” I gestured through the windshield at the road. “Is aimless and likely to find trouble. Truthfully, I just feel we are going about this the wrong way.” I’d mildly stressed the we to remind him I was supposed to be his helper and not his piñata toy. “We’re leaves on the wind, as Wash said in Firefly. People need roots. If I am to show you anything, we should find a place to stop so you can learn to ummm empathize?”

  That was reasonable? My ass and tits begged to differ, reminding me of his tendency to reach for a belt when we had differences.

  He grunted, let the car run on for ages with the tires quietly eating road.

  For most, that last incident would have made them a little terrified. Me? He’d held back from his worst. There had been a moment when I had felt the swing of his intent from sadistic to… whatever this new Isak had within.

  And the fucking at the end had been nice too. Dayum.

  A pity that masturbating never worked without him allowing me to go all the way.

  Even so, I reminded myself, I should be terrified.

  I should be terrified.

  I turned that over and over and knew it to be true. The logic was there. Anyone normal would be wondering if they could survive being with him after that flogging. And yes, I did sometimes think that too, but I was not terrified.

  What had he made of me?

  I shook off those morbid thoughts.

  This vehicle had belonged to the lady vet. I massaged the wheel, thinking on that instead. Casual stealing was a part of this road trip. No one else could do this. He could convince a government he was something he was not, given time, opportunity, and access to the right women in bureaucracy. Convince people he was a legal citizen of Australia and get it documented. Computers were driven by people and data propagated once you had a fact altered.

  If I wanted to be free of him, I must do this – whatever it was he wished for.

  “The woman who was heading west…” Finally he spoke. “The widow. She had a property I can get from her. We can stop there. First though, we go look at that.” He pointed at a huge billboard we were approaching.

  It flashed by but I had read it.

  “Carnarvon Gorge?” The next exit led there.

  “Yes. See some of the country? Isn’t that what normals do?”

  “It is.” Tourism, here we come. Ordinary. I’d wanted that. This was certainly ordinary.

  The scenery on the billboard had looked made for goats. The mountains off to the side of the highway, poking at the sky, reinforced that notion.

  And there was swimming. More billboards filled in the blanks. A gorge, surprise, surprise. Walking paths. Camping.

  We left the dog at a small kennel in a town that catered for tourists traveling with pets. The rehoming idea seemed to have been shelved, because next door was the local council’s refuge for strays and unwanted pets, and Isak ignored that.

  He held the dog’s leash as we filled in forms with fake names and fake addresses, then paid in advance for the dog’s stay. A toddler with his mother and father emerged from the door that led to the boarding area with the cages and kennels. He sucked his thumb and made googly-eyes at Banjo as the dog sat laughing – wearing a doggy grin – and with his tail swishing to and fro. The family straggled by with their cat in a cage, heading for the front doors. The toddler managed to trail his hand over Banjo’s back.

  I moved swiftly, hand out to separate them. Strange dogs bite strange kids.

  Not this dog. Besides, Isak had drawn him aside and out of reach of the child.

  It struck me.

  This… this was like some weird family holiday time. Was I in a horror movie? Would the floor open up and eat us? Were the pets at this very moment turning into zombies? I blinked, taking in our amiable dog and the fact that I had a man by my side, and we were off on some day trip to a tourist attraction.

  Twilight zone.

  By luck, we finagled a place in a day tour heading to the gorge.

  Late-morning, we were on a rickety bus heading toward those mountains, along with about twenty people i
n family groups and couples. Children had run up the aisles screaming and claiming seats, with suffering parents trailing after them. Isak had shot baleful glares at them.

  We sat at the back on worn seats, and the air stayed warm, even as we headed toward what should be a higher altitude.

  Empathy, Isak needed to develop that, otherwise we would all be punching those who irritated us. People helped people who were strangers because of it. On news reports we often hear miraculous stories where people risk their lives to save others.

  This bus tour represented normal life. A rattling bus, shouty kids, tolerant parents, and an overly cheerful bus driver with weird random facts about koalas, gum trees, and goannas to share with us.

  I smiled and relaxed back into the seat.

  Except, as the tour guide mouthed off about history and nature, and the kids kept squealing and yelling, Isak greatly resembled stone.

  The bus reached the first visitor area where we were to disembark for a walking tour. A mother went by our seats with her son in hand. He gave us that big-eyed treatment children bestow on scary adults as well as on anything else that sparks their curiosity.

  We were the last to exit. As I rose, Isak’s hand gripped my wrist.

  “Answer me this.” His brow wrinkled, cleared, and he spoke slowly. “Am I an animal?”

  What. The. Fuck. Where had that come from?

  “Of course not,” I blurted, while trying to think of what I should say – being truthful was not on my agenda in that instant. This was a loaded question.

  What did he want from me? Was any sort of truth worth saying? Or would it get me killed, or worse?

  Not that I thought he would murder me on the spot. Mine was a visceral reaction to a disturbing question that had me stumbling as I went ahead of him down the bus aisle.

  He wasn’t an animal, I decided without voicing it.

  But he was worse than one when off the drug. Animals did not regularly hurt and kill for amusement, although predators in the animal kingdom might toy with their prey. They did not fuck for revenge or for fun. They did not fuck then kill.

  And I was never telling him this. Besides, he must know already. The thorns of prior murder, sex, and mindfucks pricked at me. Like the crackle of footsteps creeping up from behind in a horror movie. The axe in the dark. The mirror leading to Hell. Whenever I recalled his past, our past, I regretted it.

  After a light lunch, the group headed up an easy track. It took two hours of casual walking to reach the next camping ground. Group conversations sparked, rambled, wafted by us, leaving Isak and me as rocks in a sea of humanity. The children would all be older than eight or nine years? Any younger and they’d need to be watched constantly and carried.

  I heard the rumble of Isak’s voice, and my stomach contracted, because the start of his sentence harked back to that last question.

  “Not an animal?” he mused. “You lied.”

  Luckily, we were walking fairly separated from the groups ahead and behind us.

  “Fuck, yes, I lied,” I whispered, sotto voce and only to him. Something had burst within, forcing me. This was not a command from him, it was pent-up anguish and anger. “I did. How can you do what you did and not be labeled a…” I looked about. “A bad word. Animal is too good for you.”

  Done it, then and there. I just signed my death warrant.

  “You know I’m not going to kill you.”

  Startled, I looked at him.

  “Yes, I can sometimes guess your thoughts when they’re strong ones.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m not that now. Remember? Teach me.”

  Like teaching a rock or a corpse.

  I must not think that. He is a man. I can do this.

  We reached the next stop on the Great Walk through Carnarvon, and most had no intention of going further, but Isak decided to walk a little further and higher along with about half the tour group and the guide. We had an hour, no more, before we must return.

  I should be talking to him about morals or some such philosophical crap, but I simply could not. Not now. Not yet.

  The walk was tougher and ascended more steeply than before. We stopped at a small lookout with the others.

  Isak and I wandered further and sat a meter back from where a ledge dropped away past a guard rail. The forest floor and the gorge were a couple of hundred meters below. The few children who were with us talked excitedly and ran about pointing at things while chewing on snack bars. Birds tweeted or cackled echoing calls, and an eagle soared on the warm breeze. A little yellow-gray bird the guide called a weebill hopped about in the branches of a shrub.

  The view was stupendous.

  But the weight in my heart was greater.

  I was lost. What was I doing? What did he really truly want? He would not kill me, okay, fine, but I needed to be elsewhere. A million miles from him.

  He was a monster – not just an animal. Did he not see this?

  Maybe he couldn’t even understand what he was?

  I stared out over the ranges and forest below, at the river snaking its way into the gorge, glinting with sunlight, and yes, I despaired. Sweat stuck my T-shirt to my back, dribbled over my nape. I fanned myself with my new hat with the Carnarvon Gorge logo. This was a country I thought I could grow to love – vast and full of exciting and unknown creatures and nature, as well as sweat, and yet I was lost in a way that felt impossible to rescue myself from.

  Talk to him. Begin somewhere. Pretend this is a casual chat with a friend.

  Stupid idea. I tilted my head and eyed him.

  A baseball cap lay beside his splayed hand, propped on the rock, earth, and grass. A pair of bought, not acquired, sunglasses shielded his eyes. His ruffled, yet short, dark hair framed his face. He’d had it cut and dyed days ago. A muscular, fit, confident man, was what most would see. His long navy shorts were incongruous – revealing as they did the hair on the calves of his legs. It turned him innocuous and normal – a potential boyfriend, a lover, a man who would help granny across the road.

  The barely scuffed sports shoes were also the footwear of a dad and not a killer and torturer of women.

  Isak, the conundrum.

  “You want to know what anyone who knew your past would call you?” If they were asked. If they knew what I knew.

  His mouth twisted, but he didn’t look at me. “I can guess. I shouldn’t have asked you. That was weak of me.” He’d whispered the last bit. Now he looked my way. “I’ll choose a word. How about—”

  A scuffle of feet and the voices of two laughing boys caught my attention a second before one of them ran past, between us and the edge. He stumbled to a halt, giggling as the other boy rushed about behind us and made mock grabs.

  “Go away!” the first shouted, still laughing.

  This is dangerous.

  A parent yelled at them to get away from both the edge and us just as the boy chasing the first made another fake lunge. The grinning boy in front of us, stepped sideways, tripped, and fell backward. In his attempt to scramble from the edge, he hit a steel support with his head, then somehow tumbled through above the first rail on his back, and he rolled. On that small slope, his twisting attempts to stand only made things worse.

  By the time I was lunging forward, he was disappearing from view, and his legs were the last of him to leave this earth.

  A hundred-meter fall – he would never survive. His play partner shrieked, and Isak had thrown himself forward sliding on his belly beneath the railing, shirt rucking up, arm outstretched.

  Reaching…

  He caught him by the ankle. Caught the stupid kid. I was swearing under my breath, hands over my mouth, until I remembered to help. I lurched forward but already Isak was hauling him back to safety through the railings. The kid shook as he struggled to rise, with Isak and myself holding him and making sure he would not trip again.

  “Ohmigod, thank you!” A man ran over. “Thank you. Thank you. Ryan, you come here!” His face was drained of blood, a
nd he trembled as he tousled the boy’s blond hair. “God damn it. We almost—”

  Lost you? Yes. The father was contrite enough for a million sorries. I wished him well with his crazy hellion boys. Poor man.

  He shook Isak’s hand, nodded, and with a grim face he smiled at me, then drew his kid away along with his brother. The stern talk to his sons was still going on as the tour guide checked on them, and then on Isak.

  Isak had his hand shaken and back pounded by several others. The grazes on his knees and hands were enough to make a woman fuss over them and wash them with water. Bandages were suggested but Isak refused all those offers with a wry smirk.

  “No, I am fine.”

  Once that storm had passed, we joined the tail of the group. Heading back down was a priority now the guide thought we might kill ourselves.

  “Kids,” I muttered, still traumatized by how close that had been to death. Death on a Sunday afternoon, on a beautiful Sunday. At least I thought it was Sunday? The days blurred, and I had no watch or phone.

  “Yes.” His quiet introspective reply had me wondering what was going on in Isak’s mind.

  He had saved a life today.

  Was he more than I thought him? Was he salvageable?

  No one else could have moved that fast, of that I was certain.

  CHAPTER 15

  ISAK

  Once we boarded the bus, I sat us at the very back, still running that scene through my mind, remembering the sensation when I wrapped my hand about the boy’s ankle.

  He’d been in shock, I’m sure, as we pulled him to his feet.

  The touch of the child’s hand had been electrifying. The iron in his grip. The gratefulness in his eyes. It had been a long time since I had touched another person like that. I’d saved the boy’s life, and I had no idea why I’d been so galvanized, so driven to lunge for him.

  Yet I had done it.

  The touch lingered.

  The memory of the weight of the hand, the softness, the hardness of bones inside flesh. The smallness of a child. Was this a connection all humanity felt? My palm looked the same as ever, where I held it relaxed beside my knee.