Wicked Ways (Dark Hearts Book 1) Read online

  My thoughts clamored to be heard but, no, I needed to be alone to do that.

  Years ago, as a young, shy, lecturer, I’d been scared to hell and back of speaking in public. Before that, during teenager times, there’d been the sexual assault and attempted abduction. I’d not sat still when that happened either. The fucker had paid for it, had found out I was no daisy ASAP. I dipped my head, sucking in a breath. Remembering that shit on top of this? A bad idea, perhaps.

  Still, I’d not let my fear beat me, those times. I’d made myself change. I’d set aside my fears and doubts and pretended I was superwoman.

  I needed that skill now, like never before. My hands shook. I willed my mind closer to serenity. I’d come through hell before and survived.

  He wanted me back.

  Focus on Grimm. Think of only now. Breathe.

  He poured the tea and brought me a cup, placing it on the bedside table after I failed to reach for it. I said nothing, only twitching my lips as he sank into my one armchair.

  “Zorina... Zorie. Why no police?”

  Tell him nothing. Those words from him leaked from my memory.

  I wanted so much to say everything. Couldn’t. They were so near to my tongue, so close to being vomited forth. Nothing came. Though I still couldn’t fathom my need to obey the words, I had to.

  “Because I’m fine. What happened was fine.”

  “Uh. What? Fine? You’re a successful woman and I know that doesn’t mean you can’t have a wild side but we talked for ages at the café. To want that sort of treatment you’d be a psychological mess. You...weren’t that.”

  But I was now?

  Tell him. Tell him.

  “I’m fine.” A headache popped up, stuck a nail into my forehead. This wasn’t going to work. The more I tried to tell him, the sicker I felt. “I think you need to go.” I rubbed my temples. “Please.”

  “I know the smell of cum. Tell me you like men coming on you, fucking you, throwing you away like rubbish. That man boasted about what he’d done to you in that text. Tell me that and I’ll go. We need to get the police involved but I need your words.”

  As he’d kept going, the tension had built.

  “Tell me that.”

  “Stop,” I whispered.

  “That dress and your word that this was rape. The text message. My evidence too. I can skew it so you’re clean. We can get him, them, charged. I can do that.”

  My toes were so small down at the end of the bed.

  Tell him nothing.

  “Well? I think you need my help. It’s here. I’m happy to do this. I want to.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, and had a fleeting glimpse of myself speaking honestly, for the first time.

  Memories exploded into my head.

  All the sex. His words, his unsaid commands, they were tangled up with the lust, woven in so they strangled any possibility of speaking the truth.

  I needed to lie. I had to get Grimm out of my room and the only way was to be more in his face, to be normal. My need told me that answer.

  I bounced to my feet and went to him, wearing a cheerful expression.

  In that moment, his eyes matched his name – grim. Dissecting too, as if he was trying to learn what had happened by staring. Or maybe he didn’t believe me? Maybe he thought I was every bit a slut, after all?

  Fuck this. He wasn’t much more than a stranger.

  “I can see you won’t change what you think but I need you to go.” I stood, hands on hips, studying him from a yard away. “Go. Please. Thank you for your help, but you have to go.”

  When he only regarded me warily, I went out the bedroom door and gestured at the stairs leading down.

  “Go. Please.” The next words were going to kill me to say. “Or do I have to call the police to get you out of my house?”

  If this took too long would I implode from the lies? The need compelled something so opposite to my real inner persona that it threatened to make me snap and fall in a heap.

  Stern-faced, he rose to his feet like a judge leaving court then walked to me and past me, stopping when he reached the head of the stairs. “I don’t believe this. I’m a good judge of character. Am I really that wrong? Will you at least tell me who he is?”

  Which part didn’t he believe? That I was a slut or that I was fine?

  This man was so...so perfect. But I wasn’t for him. Not anymore.

  “No. I can’t. Goodbye.”

  “You will tell me. I don’t give up easily.”

  Neither did I.

  I didn’t follow but I watched as he walked down then went to the front door and left. He closed the door and it shut with a final clonck.

  Now there was only me, and the shadows of my fears.

  Chapter 13

  “The best things in life make you sweaty.” - Edgar Allan Poe

  Zorie

  How many days had I been with him? I lay in bed blinking at the date on my phone. A week or more? It’d blurred. He’d made me answer messages and I barely recalled any of it. I’d even talked to someone on the phone, once, while he’d fucked me slowly.

  I pressed the mobile phone to my forehead while desperately trying to remember. Brainwashing cults had nothing on him.

  Due to the hot weather, I hadn’t jogged for weeks, but now I had to. Anything to sweep away all the crap. I pounded around the footpaths in the park, went around the mini lake three times then headed back home. Without letting myself think about what I did, when the door had shut and with sweat still dribbling down my abdomen beneath my exercise top, I picked up my phone, and I called the police.

  By the time I reached a human, I had my mobile in a death grip. Say something to them. Say it. Tell them.

  I couldn’t. My tongue had locked down. My throat refused to breathe out the words. For several seconds, my head was filled with just...blankness.

  Eventually, I managed to tell them I was fine and had rung the number accidentally.

  Fine. I was beginning to hate that word.

  I ended the call and went and showered then slipped on a strappy summer dress. Plan, I needed one of those. Ugh. How? My eyeballs felt as if they’d been bathed in acid. I needed sleep, serenity, and some masked avenger to come wipe him off the earth.

  The gun lay on my sofa, stark metal, full of deadly promise. I halted, stared.

  My car was in my garage now. They’d left it parked outside the house. When I’d reached under the passenger seat, the gun had been there.

  The resistance of the trigger as I applied pressure, the kickback of force, it was all there in my head.

  If only...

  I sat in the armchair then reached across and picked up the pistol, to lay it on my lap among the pink, impressionistic flowers on my dress. Cold and heavy on my thighs. Such a simple way to hurt someone. Bang. I pressed my lips together.

  If only I could do it.

  I was resting mindlessly in the armchair with my head flopped back, when the urge to leave the house arrived in tsunami fashion. Slosh. There went my peaceful thoughts.

  I gasped and sat up.

  Like Reuben, not Reuben. Someone else.

  Someone else who could grab me and fuck me at will?

  What was I? A damn magnet? I wouldn’t move.

  A headache arrived. My muscles grew stiff.

  Tears squeezed from my eyes. Thick tears, and I dreaded wiping my eyes in case those tears turned out to be blood.

  The need heightened and I whimpered. It was surely someone nearby, a stranger inside my house or just outside.

  “No!” I whispered. I drew up my legs, tucking myself into a doubled-over position with my head on my thighs. The gun slid off my lap to slip between my body and the arm of the chair.

  No.

  Trying to resist threatened to crack me open, to split my forehead. Who was this? This was mind rape.

  Fuck...fuck.

  I flung my arms wide, gripping the armrests, groaning.

  There was zero point in resisti
ng.

  Whoever this was, I didn’t just want to be with them, I had to be there. One fucked-up roiling mess of desire.

  Sighing, I stood and collected my handbag. Wait. With a sideways jump in my thoughts, I found the gun on the armchair by feel alone, without looking...just in case, just in case. I slid the thing inside my handbag, shuffled my feet into my sandals, and headed for the garage.

  I found myself driving to the Hilton.

  Walking into the foyer dressed in a cheap summer dress and sandals was a little odd when most wore suits and ties and couture clothing, but no one spared me more than a glance.

  My sandals clopped on the pale marble floor of the foyer.

  The enormous sandstone columns that rose to ceiling height, and the sheer space that was unoccupied by more than a dozen guests – it gave that instant hit that said luxury at a price. What I wouldn’t give to stay here a few nights and pretend the world was mine. What I wouldn’t give to refuse this compulsion.

  My body kept me moving toward my appointment with this mystery man.

  Or woman? No. It was a man.

  I thought about that, the sexual identity attached to this compulsion, and was sure this was a man. I sneaked into the elevator on the heels of a guest and travelled smoothly to the twenty-fifth floor then walked along the carpet-muffled corridor to the correct door.

  Whoever this was, he expected me.

  I, on the other hand, expected a monster.

  Who would this man be and what was his purpose? What would Reuben do if he found out?

  My life was already chaos.

  I put my hand to my heart to calm it then knocked, or rather I raised my hand to knock and the door opened an inch before I made contact.

  “Come in.”

  When I placed my palm on the luxuriously smooth, gray paint, I heard him walk away and had to push hard to stop the door closing automatically.

  All I saw was his pale ochre shirt and wavy black hair as he entered the room to the left. Not shoulder length but not short. Unruly hair yet deliberately so, I guessed. He didn’t seem a man who would care if his hair looked uncombed.

  I could tell that from the way that he walked. Not a stalking sort of walk. Just him, casually dominating the landscape he walked through.

  What was I doing? I gulped. This was a stranger. I’d entered the room of a stranger. I had no clue what he wanted, except he commanded me, the same as Reuben did. Surely he couldn’t be worse?

  This was a large suite, with a bedroom and bathroom to the right, branching off the entrance anteroom. I went left and paused as the man turned as if to sit in a red armchair. The two sofas were red also, and the room décor was in muted colors that contrasted well with the red.

  His back was broad. So far, he was no monster. Just a man, until he turned fully and his face swam into view. Blinking, I strived to focus. Reuben had compelling eyes that leaked horror, because I knew his intentions. This man’s eyes connected to me like power conduits.

  Compelling. Dark. So damn dark.

  Breathing, thinking, went far, far away.

  “You can call me Mister Black. Answer me, please.”

  It broke the spell. I swallowed and breathed. “Okay.”

  A minor word but I’d answered.

  “Come in further, Zorina.” He beckoned as he sat. His words rumbled into my heart and took up residence.

  Not good. I needed to shake this off. And couldn’t.

  The man was confident, like a businessman assessing a new worker, where Reuben was often derisive, because, I guessed, fucktoys had little worth.

  Mouth dry, uneasy, for this could head into hazardous territory so quickly, I entered. I stepped as carefully as he had, until I reached the center of the room. The sofa? Should I sit?

  That I’d even asked myself this dismayed me. Where had my own confidence gone? I rustled up my lecturer persona and made for the sofa.

  “No.”

  Or not. I halted. Such a good puppet I’d become.

  His knees a little apart, with his hands together on his lap and his fingertips touching, he watched me. “Does Reuben have you well in hand?”

  He knew Reuben? In hand said, under control. Horrible words. Reluctantly, I nodded.

  “I believe I will have you kneel, after all.” He dragged a pillow from the sofa and tossed it to the floor in front of me.

  There I was, relegated to a lesser status, again.

  Kneeling on a pillow reminded me of that first dinner, and I hesitated. The most subtle nudge at my thoughts swung me around and I kneeled, finding the softness of the pillow comforting. Oddly, looking up at him was calming. I’d been fidgety while standing.

  That nudge. Was that from him? I tried to meet his eyes again but couldn’t and I dropped my gaze to his hands instead.

  This was wrong but I was trapped yet again.

  My unnaturally heavy handbag weighed down my hand. It threatened to slip to the floor.

  Concentrate on... The shape of his large fingers. The dark weave of the cloth of his pants.

  Carefully, I laid the innocent handbag on the floor next to the pillow.

  I should be panicking, except he wasn’t, yet, like Reuben. Mister Black gave off a curious sense of solidness, as if he knew the world would wait for him no matter how long he took to accomplish any task.

  He took a square glass from the coffee table before him and sipped the amber liquid. Ice cubes clinked.

  He had an accent that gave some of his words an odd flip at the end, but it was a mixture and maybe retrained, therefore difficult to pin down. Spanish? Greek? European definitely.

  “Early in the day for drinking. Ten o’clock. But I find I ignore society’s conventions more as I grow older. Zorie... May I call you that?”

  Being asked things was unnerving after so many days being an it. “Yes.”

  “I know Reuben has been fucking you.”

  Funny how that word sounded so coarse, as if I wished this Mister Black didn’t know.

  “Tell me.” He leaned forward. “I’m wondering how he treats his women...”

  His gaze lowered and I could almost tell when he assessed my figure, my breasts, and further down. This man was perhaps only doing what any man might do but with these men, it was an invasive act. I had to force myself not to shift on my knees.

  “I think...he treats them badly. You also?”

  I stared at the coffee table.

  “Answer,” he snapped.

  Fuck. I’d jerked. “Yes. He does.”

  I could say this to him. It was almost a relief to know I could tell him.

  “What has he done to you?”

  He wanted this in detail?

  “Tell me.”

  I blurted, “Does he know about you?”

  Silence, while I counted blood beats. Thump thump.

  “You ask me? You aren’t the same as other women.”

  Wasn’t I?

  “Other taken women don’t ask questions.”

  Making myself stand out seemed dangerous. I pressed my lips together.

  “Tell me what he did to you.” That had been enunciated so slowly that I knew it would be trouble if I didn’t reply.

  “Uh.” I shut my eyes while the command ate at me. My willpower was being nibbled at, chewed up, spat out, shredded away to...

  Nothing.

  “He fucked me in front of others. Made them do it to me too, while I was tied up.” Wetness trailed down my cheeks from my eyes. “They left cum all over me. Left me in a dumpster. I don’t really know how many watched them do it. Maybe none. Maybe a lot. I heard clapping afterward.”

  “He has a fetish for degradation then. Not as bad as some. Perhaps not as bad as I was, once upon a time.”

  Not as bad as he was?

  The monotone delivery of his statement made it chilling. My nipples tightened – as if my body liked that he made a joke about his badness. My reaction scared me. I was falling ever-faster down some steep slope of depravity.

/>   “I wanted an excuse to have him killed and was thinking of getting you to do it. I don’t think that is a good reason.”

  What? Had I heard right?

  “You should be free of Reuben, eventually, Zorie. We tire of our acquired. I know I do. That’s probably a mercy.”

  He tapped his drink.

  “You won’t be able to speak of any of this to him or to anyone.”

  A word slipped out. “Maybe.”

  I hadn’t been able to resist. For so, so long I’d wanted to do awful, homicidal things to Reuben, whenever my mind was able to imagine, and this man had said he might want to kill him.

  What if I’d lied and said Reuben had done worse to me?

  “You think you could speak about it? Really?”

  Those words knifed in.

  I’d said too much.

  “Even to have that desire is unusual. Are you dangerous to me, Zorie?”

  To him? I gulped. “No.”

  “What do you want to do to Reuben?”

  I clenched my jaw. Again a little nudge made words spill. “Kill him.”

  His exhalation was audible then he took another sip from his drink.

  “You interest me, Zorie. You’re a lecturer in biology. Intelligent. Middle-class. Well-off but not rich.”

  All statements. He didn’t seem to want a reply. The chair made small soft noises as he leaned into it.

  “Is there anything else remarkable about you?”

  The vagueness of that let me veer away from that one thing I didn’t ever say to anyone. It was too painful, even after all these years, and to him it would surely be unremarkable. To him, all women would be merely prey. He thought killing someone was a minor thing. My mind did that weird little familiar side step. “No.”

  “Most people have something they boast of.”

  Boast? Hell no. I stayed mute.

  Mister Black had shiny black shoes, I realized. All of him was businesslike – even his shirt seemed one he’d wear beneath a business jacket. The creases and shoelaces and buttons were precise. Maybe he was here to tidy me up, to sweep me into a dustpan and into a bin. Maybe he was Reuben’s man?