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

  Boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend?

  The ex, from the screamed words I caught. Most of the patrons stopped eating, drinking, and celebrating to watch.

  As he was dragging her toward the entrance, she managed to smack his forearm, knocking it loose. He punched her to the floor. Half a dozen men rose from their seats, a couple punched him, then a bouncer moved in and he was thrown out. Rex was his name. Reminded me of a dog.

  Tammy was helped up by two women. The bouncer talked to her and them for a minute before leaving them be.

  “You okay?”

  “Do you need a lift home?”

  I listened to it all, watched them check her for damage, heard the discussion about whether it was safe to leave when the ex was outside. Finally, Tammy and her new friends, all of them women, left via some back exit.

  Such wonderful community spirit.

  I took that as my signal too, and slid off the stool. I used the front door, noting that Rex, who really needed a non-doggy name, was down the street next to a van getting talked to by three hefty-looking, cowboy-hat-wearing dudes. He did not sound or look happy, especially when they took to slapping then punching him, but he was not my concern.

  I headed around the back where a car park was located, and found Tammy and her new friends.

  Of course, it was easy.

  They followed me, out to the main street and along a walkway to a large park with ample trees to shadow it. The streetlight at the roadside barely illuminated more than a spits worth of the grassy area. Since this was nighttime, no one else was crazy enough to frequent a park. No sane woman would follow a strange man to one.

  Unless that strange man was me, the Pied Piper of women.

  I turned and held out my hands. “Welcome.”

  What to do with my catch? Six girls in sweet dresses, short shorts, low-cut tops, jeans that cupped their asses, and one Tammy.

  Getting them naked would be a good beginning. I always had ideas. I was a conductor of an orchestra where the instruments were lust and tits and cunts and asses, and they were always fun to play. Even when the instruments screamed. I should remember to gag those. The nearest houses were a fair distance, but it would be annoying to be disturbed, even if they told everyone how they’d volunteered to fuck me.

  This was what I wanted. I inhaled.

  Choice was doing one thing even when the other one tempted you? Her words.

  There was another saying. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, did it even fall?

  Red would never know.

  But I would.

  “You…” I began, except there was a slide of hesitancy in my voice, that was still going wait up, what if… should I really? Do I really want this?

  I felt him coming before I saw him – blotting the air with anger. He strode in with the demon in his eyes, his murderous intent tearing the atmosphere. I read women, and it seemed men also when they were this fucking obvious.

  Rex was walking in with a big knife hidden at his side. Had I seen the glint of metal? Maybe.

  Hell. Not nice to mess with my plans.

  I sighed and felt a bump of something inside me that I recognized a second later as relief.

  He was coming up behind the group of women. I gestured, and Tammy ran to me and kneeled. She reached up to unzip me. A distraction was in order. Rex, poor boy, was not going to be a simple take-down since he was armed and bloody dangerous, as an Aussie might say.

  Ladies A through to E were milling by then, watching him coming, though not distressed since I had them under control.

  “Stop right there.” I held up my hand and tried technique one on Rex, douchebag ex-boyfriend. Also known as talking to him.

  The rage was steaming off the pouty boy, and blood streaked his face, though with the poor lighting it was difficult to be sure of the latter. He’d had fists smashed into him, that I did know. Same as I knew Tammy was black and blue where he’d punched her.

  I actually found that annoying and wrong. He dared to fuck with her? In a way, she was mine. Though not mine the same as Red.

  He kept coming, rage steaming, knife concealed but obvious to me. His voice began with a low snarl. “I leave you, bitch, you come back and dare to give this asshole a BJ? Slut. Whore!”

  He raised the knife.

  Innocent and somewhat beaten Tammy, hand still on my crotch, half-turned and met his eyes, because I wanted her to.

  Ladies A to E swamped him, hands slapping – nothing too violent, yet.

  He swung, cursing them, unsure if he should stab anyone he didn’t have a personal hatred for, which was a big mistake. I stepped in and kicked him in the gut, twice, then grabbed his knife hand, wrenched at him and flipped him down, while the females dragged him all the way to the ground.

  The knife had spun away.

  They gagged him first by jumping his head into the dirt. I stood on that part of him while the sheer mass of them let them bring him to heel.

  His yells were mostly muffled by earth.

  Tied up with whatever the girls found to use – belts, bras, shirts, he was then strangled. Though his last breath had been taken, still they held him, garroted, muffled, legs twitching. His body shook into silence, forever. I handed them the knife after wiping it of fingerprints, then watched as he was hauled away to a car one of them fetched.

  “Well done, ladies.” I pursed my lips.

  Tammy? I let her remain kneeling.

  This was not the way it had been meant to pan out.

  Clearly.

  Messy night. Murder. I’d sworn off murder, though since this was a male, perhaps it didn’t count?

  And I should go too.

  I watched the car full of ladies, and one dead man who would soon be buried, stabbed, and whatever they felt like doing, disappear in the direction of the outskirts of town.

  Quiet in Borgeman – if you were this far from the pub. I did a slow circle, looking up at the bright stars above this piddly little town.

  The properties around here were vast. They’d find somewhere to put him, and who would suspect dear little Tammy? Every man and his dog had laid a hand on that guy tonight. The women would alibi each other.

  My eyesight had adjusted to the night, and I saw how the meagre grass was dotted with dandelions. Nothing belonging to him had been dropped. No one had followed him. Would anyone suspect this as the site of his demise?

  It was a pretty neat murder. Not that I planned to become some sort of vigilante who saved women.

  I assessed my feelings. I closed my eyes.

  If I’d done as I had planned to, I would feel dirty right now. The pills were giving me a conscience, even if I didn’t like listening to it.

  “You may go,” I said to Tammy, flicking my fingers and not even looking as she left.

  Trees had fallen in the forest, this night; choices had been made.

  I liked this way of doing things… almost as much as I liked the other way.

  CHAPTER 11

  RED

  He stripped off his shirt, and slipped into bed well after midnight. I was half asleep and had been thinking about this entire, I-control-you problem. He might not let me go, and what could I do; how did you hold a man like this to an agreement? He had made the vet give us her house for the night, and I had zero clue as to where she was now.

  These powers of his were insane, fearsome when I tried to imagine what he might do. He could bring down governments, start wars. Anything. And here I was worried about myself.

  Teaching him was what he’d asked of me, and only now did I understand the burden of responsibility. The complications had been spinning through my brain for ages, and trying to go to sleep had involved much tossing and turning.

  Weirdly, his return made me feel relieved, which might be because I was afraid of what he’d been doing.

  A tank top and panties were my entire attempt at PJs, and I felt vulnerable in his presence.

  “Where have you been?” Yes, that was a dumb question.
It’s what a wife asks her returning husband.

  Pfft, I raspberried my own subconscious.

  In the light leaking in through a side window, I could see I had amused him – his mouth curved the smallest amount. On anyone else that would be nothing. On him? A smile? Hallelujah.

  “I’ve been doing good deeds.” That growly rumble, I knew it so well, and it seemed as if he’d really said bad good deeds.

  I wasn’t sure what those were, but my muscles wanted to run. That voice had often heralded orgasmic sex, terrible acts, and general mayhem.

  “Your pill is due.” Overdue really. It was on his side table, along with a glass of water.

  He propped himself on his side, drank the water, and swallowed the pill without protest. Then he turned over to face me.

  Gravity, that minx, made the sheet slide to his waist, revealing a daunting array of muscles. Strands of hair fell lazily across his face, and I’d never figured out why that appealed to me, but… dayum, it did.

  My ovaries did a tango, and I gave the quietest sigh. Fear and lust, such a contradiction.

  “Good deeds? Is that the truth?”

  “Of course. I would never lie to you. Hand on heart.” He did it too – put his hand there.

  Liar. He would lie. He would definitely lie.

  His eyes drifted lower, to my chest. “Hmmm.” The purr of his voice and his scent did more wrongful things.

  “What good deeds, exactly? You wanted me to teach you how to be human. Let me judge.”

  “I did say that. How about this aphorism instead? It’s the thought that counts, right?”

  What a big word you have, sir. Once, he had let slip that he had trained as a lawyer. I could hear it in his vocabulary.

  “Look.” From somewhere unknown, he produced a flower and held it before me. His fingers slowly twirled it. The dandelion gleamed with yellow as it revolved in the headlights glancing through the window.

  A mesmer offering a flower? Again. I wondered what this gesture meant to him.

  “It is the thought that counts,” I murmured. I chose my next words with care, licked my lips. “Could this possibly mean that you did something bad, accidentally?”

  “I said it was a good deed. Maybe you shouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth?”

  “So many prover—”

  He dragged me over to him and under him.

  The kisses alone were enough to arouse me. His lips were on mine, opening me up, toying with his tongue. I loved the unusual playfulness. I was stirred, shaken, and wet, and beneath his weight and spread legs. The kisses worked their magic, then he dragged my hands upward and pinned them to the pillow. If my reaction had been some mesmer auto-response, it was no longer a surprise, and I decided I no longer cared.

  Or not right now.

  I loved it…

  His hand wrapped about my throat as I writhed beneath him, with his erection pushing at me through our clothes. And I… I acted like a whore and wrapped my legs around him and ground myself at that hardness.

  He paused, leaving me breathless and with him wearing a malevolent glare. “It’s not enough.”

  What?

  That hand tightened on my neck, and his teeth showed. He shook me, squeezed his palm across the furrow where my blood pulsed. A little more pressure and I might not be able to breathe.

  Fuck. I shivered, knowing the fear he provoked was hot too. It seemed I had a fetish for being scared the fuck to death.

  “I’m to do good deeds?”

  I nodded and tried not to make choking sounds.

  “Hmmm. You’ll stand at the wall then, panties off, shirt off…” Meticulously, he circled one areola through my top. “Naked for me.”

  For once it was not merely an order. He towed me off the bed by my wrist, drew me to the wall, and leaned over me with his forearm planted above. His finger pressed on the center of my chest.

  “Stay, little bitch.”

  Little. I panted, waiting, hoping for more of this.

  He stripped me, had me spread my legs, then gave my pussy an open-handed slap that jarred loose a startled pleasure. “Don’t touch yourself.”

  How dare he. But I was gasping as he walked away and out the door.

  Mouth open, eyes lowering, I stayed, palms on the wall, feeling where his hands had been in the lingering heat and the ghosts of lust feathering and throbbing from below. Below, where he’d slapped my pussy.

  He returned with a chain leash tinkling in his hand. At the end of the leash was a bright red collar with a price tag attached. He snapped off the tag and sent it fluttering to the floor. As he halted and studied me, his thumb ran across the blunt spikes on the red collar.

  “You stayed. Good girl.”

  His glare and the strict line of his mouth warned me to remain as I was and not to move. If his eyes had gleamed demon red, I would not have been surprised. Nervous, I slid my hands to my outer thighs.

  Though it seemed impossible they could get any more erect, my nipples tightened and began to ache.

  With a dark smile, he slid the collar around my neck, gentler than expected, turned me to face the wall, slapped my ass, once, and buckled the collar. Then he spun me again and clipped the chain leash to the front of the collar. It was left to dangle over my breasts.

  The accidental brush of the side of his hand on my nipple made me whimper. The whimper locked his gaze to mine.

  “Stay.”

  Using both hands, he explored from the collar to my breasts, cupping me there, pushing the cool chain aside so it rolled across me and jangled. With a hand on my neck, he pressed me backward. My head bumped the wall. Casually, he looped the chain into a circle about one breast, then pretended to tie it, let the knot slip free, and began again.

  Lip caught in teeth, sucking, I watched, greedily.

  My breathing deepened, becoming ragged as he played, crushing my flesh in his fist and biting that breast, pushing my chin up, so that I could see little.

  I could feel, though… I could feel, and I squirmed at his rough touches.

  Then he tightened the long chain and properly knotted it into a circle. The leather handle swung and tapped across my belly button, then slid down further, to where my clit ached. The slightest tap of it there was excruciating in how it edged me higher.

  My bound breast ached with trapped blood then began to throb.

  “Stay,” he repeated, releasing his hold on me and with a finger dragging downward and digging into my navel. “Fuck. That’s hot. Do I spank you or fuck you? Hmmm.”

  I doubted he wanted an answer, and I stayed as he backed away. His eyes never left me.

  “Both?” I ventured with a shake in my voice, half from trepidation but mostly from desire.

  His chuckle was deep. “On your knees, girl. Crawl to me.”

  He shucked his drawstring pants, kicked them aside, and I lowered myself to my knees, eyeing his erection as he fisted it. He crooked a finger.

  “Crawl, so I can see your tits coming, see that mouth coming. I need to fuck somebody tonight. You are it.”

  The word it made this demeaning.

  I inhaled shakily, swallowed. What was wrong with me? As I crawled, my upper thighs slipped wetly against each other where they brushed my pussy.

  “Open.”

  At the word, I opened my mouth and kept on crawling, embracing how much I wanted him inside me, though not there – at the other end.

  My mouth would do for now.

  It wasn’t far to his dick, but the world had shooshed to a murmur, and each movement and sway took forever. There existed only the floor beneath my knees, the chain dragging and tinkling, Isak staring, and the invitation of his erection.

  When my mouth was almost touching him, I paused.

  From here, his cock looked enormous. A drop of wetness glistened.

  Isak grasped my hair, twisted it in his fist until I squeaked and gasped, then he hooked the leash into his other hand. My breast felt the tug and jerk of the chain. A mome
nt later, he dragged me forward and was pushing inside my mouth. He began to fuck me, slowly at first.

  At the hiss of his pleasure, I tried to stare at him.

  There came a harder twist on my hair, and with a hand grasping chain to the side of my face, he thrust again and distracted me – cock sliding into my mouth, over teeth, over tongue, going deeper.

  Another five or six strokes and he sped up, he shoved in harder, faster, then he stayed in longer.

  I bore it all until he pulled out and growled an instruction to turn. My wetness was smeared along my slit with the side of his hand, chain taut, then cock prodded at my ass and edged in with a shocked gasp from me.

  My head was spinning with awakened desires, with pleasure coursing, solid and thumping. His hand cupped my pussy as his cock inched in further.

  “Getting ass-fucked tonight, because this is my other good deed.”

  “Oh.” Gulping, tongue prodding at my parted lips, I felt the squeeze of a cock that should be too large to fit nevertheless run in further, pushing past muscle and bodily resistance. My palms hit the floor and slid on the rug.

  “Fuck.” He tunneled inward, hit bottom, my ass against his balls, and then…

  Slid all the way out.

  The next thrust was harder, then harder again, rocking into me, rocking me forward, making me arch, spine almost cracking – or so it seemed.

  “Oh. Fuck.” I said a multitude of swear words, confused by pleasure, filled, wriggling a little, butt squirming as he left me once. Then a second later he was inside again.

  I ended up flattened to the floor, almost gone into unconscious lust. The rise and rise of that was inevitable as the rise of the sun, and the drive of him inside me.

  His come flooded into me with the spasm of muscle and my shuddering into orgasm. My mouth teething my forearm, sweat slipping belly on floor… and my tied breast awakened to the ache of pooled blood needing to be allowed out.

  He turned me over and loosened the knot on the chain, mouthed my breast and sucked, stirring me with mesmer powers and a palm between my legs, smirking as I bowed upward half-choking at the renewed climax that thundered in. I clutched at nothing, then found sweaty shoulders, his hair. He slipped away, and I squealed with eyes shut, as teeth met above my clit and hung on.