Her Savior_A Dark Romance Read online

  I started to watch every car behind us in the side mirror, looking for telltale signs that we were being followed, but I had no idea what I was looking for. Black cars?—the bad guy always drove sleek, black cars in the movies, didn’t they? Or what about cars that stayed too close, tailing us? Was that a sign of imminent danger? Because I counted three black cars at various distances behind us, and the old lady in the car behind us seemed dangerously close to riding on our bumper. Somehow I couldn’t envision her as one of Marcos’ loyal disciples, but could she be?

  I stopped looking out the window.

  I needed some kind of distraction. I glanced at the radio console in front of me, but I couldn’t quite bring my hand to turn it on without permission.

  “Did you want some music?”

  “Yes, please.” How did he do that? Was it some sort of extra-sensory, mind-reading ability? What else could explain the way he seemed to know everything I was thinking?

  Instead of turning on the radio though, he waved his hand in front of the console, motioning for me to put something on. My anxiety level soared through the roof. I had no idea what kind of music he liked now. I’d grown accustomed to having no choices, to having every decision made for me. Picking a radio station felt like a monumental task. Would he punish me if chose wrong?

  Stop it, I chastised myself. He wasn’t going to punish me. In the motel room, he’d made it quite clear he was never going to do anything like that again. The same disappointment I’d felt then washed over me again, and chaos reigned supreme. I was terrified of his punishments one second, and longing for them the next. Perfect. I really was going batshit crazy. Someday soon, I was going to need a whole lot of therapy.

  When I made no move to turn on the radio, he did it for me and then flipped through the stations.

  “Wait,” I blurted out when he pressed the button to skip past a song I remembered him listening to often in his room a long time ago. I covered my mouth, but instead of getting angry, he pressed the button to go back to the previous station. The notes of ‘In the End’ filled the car. I couldn’t help but smile sadly, remembering him sprawled out on the floor in his room, homework in front of him and singing along with Lincoln Park.

  “You remember this?” he asked, a new kind of tension in his voice, though I had no idea what had sparked it. Anger? Memories?

  “Yes,” I whispered, trying to make myself as unobtrusive as possible. He said nothing else. He cranked up the volume and turned his attention back to the road. He didn’t change the station when the next song came on or the next. We listened to the music in what passed for contented silence.

  Three hours passed that way, and by the time he pulled off the highway and into a gas station, it was taking all my concentration not to fidget in the seat. My bladder was ready to explode.

  Instead of pulling up to the gas bar though, he passed it and parked in front of the small store where the attendant was.

  “Wait here,” he said and left before I could respond.

  Oh god, I should have told him I needed to use the bathroom because there might just be a puddle on my seat by the time he returned.

  Fortunately, I was still hanging on when he came back a moment later and opened my door. He reached for my hand expectantly and I went with him when he pulled me out.

  “Sorry, I should have stopped sooner,” he said with an apologetic grin while he guided me to the door marked “Ladies” behind the store.

  One of these days, I was going to find a way to keep something from him, but right then I was grateful for his intuition. He unlocked the door but stepped ahead of me when I went to walk in. I followed behind him, more than accustomed to this lack of privacy.

  As I moved to the toilet though, he slipped back toward the door and opened it. A new punishment? A new humiliation? I tried to swallow back a sob while my fingers lingered in the waist of my pants.

  “I just wanted to make sure it was safe. I’m going to get some gas and I’ll be right outside when you’re finished.” He kissed the top of my head and left, closing the door behind him.

  I followed him out a couple minutes later after taking an extra minute to splash some water on my face. True to his word, the car was right outside the bathroom and he was leaning against the passenger side door. God, he looked sexy as hell.

  It didn’t escape my notice that I wasn’t the only one thinking that. I caught a young woman gawking at him from inside the store out the corner of my eye, and another one was standing at her car, gas pump in hand, just staring at him.

  A tiny thrill shivered down my spine knowing he was mine—this man who no doubt drew appreciative glances from women everywhere he went.

  How long would I be able to keep his attention though? Was I just a toy he would one day grow tired of and move on? Even if I was more than that to him, I had no illusions that Derek had a wealth of sexual experience. He hadn’t gotten that from a monogamous relationship.

  And then he crossed the distance between us and kissed me so deeply, so thoroughly, I felt it all the way to the tips of my toes. By the time he let me up for air, the looks on the women’s faces had turned to jealous glares. I couldn’t help but smile smugly.

  “Satisfied?” he asked with a cocked brow and a smirk.

  Damn him! He knew exactly what I’d been thinking. I was tempted to glare at him, but I smiled sweetly instead while he opened the door for me. I turned to slide in and felt the stinging slap of his hand against my backside a second later. I let out a squeak—yes, I admit I sounded just like a mouse—while ripples of desire surged between my thighs. God, I didn’t want to like it when he spanked me, but I really fucking did.

  “What was that for?” I asked breathlessly.

  “For thinking, you had any reason to worry about those women or any others,” he whispered against my ear, presumably to keep ‘those women’ from overhearing him.

  A delicious shiver raced down my spine in response to his nearness and his breath against my heated skin.

  “Now, get your hot little ass in the car and take your pants off,” he demanded in the same whisper.

  Right here? In the parking lot with people all around?

  I slipped into my seat obediently, taking this one step at a time. He looked at me, cocking an eyebrow expectantly. My breathing was coming faster, but I could tell it wasn’t entirely a result of fear or embarrassment. The idea of him taking me right here, with those women watching and seeing how thoroughly he belonged to me…

  With conflicting emotions, I slipped my fingers into the waist of my pants and arched my body up to slide them down.

  He closed the door and it was only then I remembered the windows were tinted. The only one that wasn’t was the windshield and the position of the people around meant they would have a very limited view. Once again, relief and disappointment surged through me in equal measures. Would anything ever be simple again?

  I kicked off my shoes and slid off the pants, leaving them bunched on the floor. He opened the driver’s side door and got in so fast he had the door closed before anyone could have seen my state of semi-undress.

  Instead of touching me though, he revved the engine and shot out of the parking lot. We were back on the highway two minutes later, and I was just as confused as ever.

  “Touch your pussy, Pet,” he said.

  My mouth gaped open even as my obedient fingers moved to comply.

  “I really want to touch you and taste you right now, but I have to drive, so I want you to finger yourself until you come and then give me your wet fingers.”

  I should have been flaming with embarrassment, not sliding my fingers between my lips and delving into my center. But that was precisely what I was doing, and I was already wet with arousal. I slid a finger into my sex over and over again slowly while I watched him. His eyes moved back and forth between the road and the apex of my thighs.

  “Open your legs wider and put your feet on the console,” he said, his voice already huskier.

/>   I complied and the exposed position granted me better access. I picked up my pace, pressing the ball of my hand against my clit with every thrust. We went over a bump that slammed my hand hard against my clit, and a loud moan filled the car.

  It wasn’t long before my pace was frantic, slamming instead of plunging inside me. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I was gripping the seat with my free hand while my feet tried to dig grooves into the console. It shook me hard and fast when my orgasm tore through my body and blazed a trail from my core to the top of my head and the tips of my toes.

  I was just leaving the tight sheath of my sex when his hand shot out and grabbed mine. He pulled it to his lips and sucked my finger into his mouth, lapping with his tongue to clean off every drop of me there.

  I started to lower my legs back to the floor of the car, but he stopped me with a shake of his head. I didn’t understand why until one of his hands left the wheel and replaced where my finger had been. He groaned with the first stroke inside me, and then slid out until only his fingertip remained inside. Back in, and then out, while the aftershocks of my orgasm continued to grip him rhythmically.

  “Do you have any idea how sexy you look when you come?”

  “Yes, Master.” I couldn’t deny that the girl in the headboard mirror earlier had been a sight to behold.

  His finger stilled inside me and he closed his eyes before I realized my mistake. Of course, his expression was impossible to read, though it didn’t look like his arousal had diminished any. Feeling bolder and not wanting him to stop I wriggled further down to impale myself on his finger.

  He groaned, but his finger withdrew from me. He placed his hand on his thigh and kept his attention on the road. I wished I could disappear into the seat, but I remained there, unmoving. I wanted to at least close my thighs and put my legs down, but he hadn’t said I could. So, could I? Was this a punishment for slipping up and calling him ‘master’? Had he simply forgotten the position he’d had me assume? Or was he expecting that I’d figure out on my own I could put my legs down? If that was it, obviously he’d never been on the receiving end of his belt before.

  So, I sat there in the obscene position, staring out unseeing at the scenery that whizzed by. My eyes were blurry with tears, but I held them there.

  “You can put your legs down, Scar. You don’t need my permission,” he said gently. He didn’t sound angry with me—that was good.

  I did as he said, realizing it was exactly that—I was doing what he said to do, not making the decision for myself. But since what he was telling me to do aligned with my own wishes at the moment, I wasn’t going to quibble over the details.

  I went back to staring out the window, still glancing occasionally in the side mirror for signs of followers. I figured though until I saw a guy leaning out his car window with a gun aimed at us, I probably wasn’t going to be of much use as a lookout.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Scar, put your pants back on before I drag you over here and fuck you senseless,” his voice boomed in the otherwise silent vehicle and I jolted in my seat. Thank god we’d stopped for a bathroom break already.

  A ripple of arousal coursed through me at his words, but I did as he said because I didn’t imagine it would be terribly safe to drive and fuck at the same time.

  I fidgeted in the seat once dressed, still finding clothes uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait for the next time we stopped for the night and I could take them off again.

  “Tell me about you,” he said in a tone that was moderately more controlled than it had been a moment before.

  “What is it you want to know?” I asked, not certain how to respond. There really wasn’t much to tell.

  “Fuck, I don’t know. What’s your favorite movie?”

  My favorite movie? It was such a normal question it caught me off-guard. “Lord of the Rings,” I blurted out without having to think about it. The movie was good, but it was the characters that made the film. Each one of them, no matter how small their role, could warrant a featurette of their own.

  Then I ventured to return the question. “What about you? What’s yours?”

  “I haven’t watched a movie since I was barely thirteen years old. I do recall my favorite at the time was any movie with breasts.” He grinned devilishly.

  I giggled—yes, just like a schoolgirl. But what he said brought my thoughts back to that time, to the reason he’d stopped being a normal kid who watched movies on Friday nights. He was an adult now though, not subservient to anyone. And yet, he hadn’t watched a single movie?

  Right. The reason hit me hard. He’d had far more entertaining pastimes to bother with mundane things like movies—such as turning girls like me into pleasure slaves. I couldn’t help but imagine him with them—hurting them, kissing them, touching…fucking them.

  My head filled with doubts, not only because I couldn’t possibly keep his attention for long, but because of what it was that might draw it elsewhere. What if that life had been a part of him for so long that he couldn’t just walk away from it?

  “Help keep me focused here, Pet,” his voice broke through the panic, but the words were fuzzy.

  “What?”

  He chuckled. “Favorite book?”

  OK. Books. Oh, but how could I possibly answer that? “I don’t have a favorite, or, they’re all my favorites, I suppose.”

  “You really like to read.” His eyes were slightly unfocused as if he was remembering back to something, but I had no idea what.

  “Yes,” I admitted, feeling like I was opening up some part of me to him. I hadn’t realized there was anything about me left to open up. He’d controlled everything, even making my body respond when I hadn’t wanted it to. It felt like he’d taken every part of me, but it turned out I’d been wrong. There were still pieces of me he’d never seen, most of them small and meaningless on their own, but significant when all put together.

  Did I want to show those things?—hand over the private parts of me, he’d never accessed? “They were like best friends.” I felt my mouth form the words and heard my voice speak them before I’d made a conscious decision. No point in holding back now. “They would tell me their stories, and I’d live every high and low with them.” I shrugged, trying to downplay the significance of those—my only—friends.

  “I read your journal,” he blurted out as if the words had escaped unbidden just like mine had. “I shouldn’t have done it, and I’m sorry. And I know it’s completely fucked up to be apologizing for that after everything else I’ve done to you…”

  My cheeks flamed, remembering all too clearly the things I’d written in that book. Still, nothing had forced him to tell me. Nothing could force Derek to do anything he didn’t want to do. “Thank you.”

  “What?” It was his turn to look dumbfounded for a change, though he had it covered up in three seconds flat. Still, it was a victory. More than worth the cost of the privacy he’d invaded. And a victory I was damn well going to savor. I didn’t even try to fight the Cheshire cat grin.

  “You didn’t have to tell me, but you did. It mattered to you that you felt you’d invaded my privacy.”

  “It was all true, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice quiet again, almost as if he hoped I wouldn’t hear him.

  My smile faded. Of course, it was all true, but I figured I knew what he was really asking. I’d only written about Derek’s father once in that stupid journal, but if he hadn’t known about the things the man had done, it must have come as a shock, possibly one he wished he could disprove. I could do that, couldn’t I?—tell him it had been a lie? It was tempting. I didn’t want to shatter the image of the only family he’d ever known. After the hell he’d been through, didn’t he deserve that image?

  He nodded before I’d said a word. “That’s what I thought.”

  Damn. Damn. Damn. If the man wasn’t so god damned perceptive, I could have given him that image.

  The conversation died away after that. I was caught up in memories of that
damn book, all the things I’d written in it, and the day my father had found it. I’d been late coming home from school in my senior year. I’d stayed afterward at the teacher’s request to discuss college applications because he’d noticed I hadn’t applied anywhere.

  By the time I got home, my dad had ransacked my room looking for an explanation of my whereabouts. It would have taken one-hundredth of the effort to pick up the phone and call the school, but there’d been no point in making mention of that. He’d tossed the one lipstick I’d worked up the nerve to buy into the trash can and he stood in the doorway to my room, holding my journal open in one hand.

  He’d made me stand there and listen while he read aloud every line, and then he hadn’t said another word to me for weeks. He wore the same disgusted expression every time he looked at me though.

  Lulled by the gentle vibrations of the car engine, I must have fallen asleep at some point because when I opened my eyes next, we were at another fast food stop and Derek was opening the passenger door. I’d been dreaming, and it took a moment to separate myself from the images in my head. I hadn’t been dreaming about James. I’d been dreaming about Derek. He had me shackled to the bedpost, whipping me before he dropped the whip on the ground and shoved his cock into my sopping wet sex. He was my captor again, but I never wanted to escape.

  He reached into the car to take my hand, but as I shifted my thighs to slide out, it was clear that my body’s response hadn’t been confined to the dream. I could feel the slippery proof of my arousal on my inner thighs as I stood up.

  He led us to the washrooms in the store first, and he insisted on checking the stalls, but then he left me to use the men’s room next door. Afterward, he ordered our food to go like before, but we didn’t drive far again before pulling off the road into some secluded area. I looked up at him, perplexed, but it seemed as if he was deliberately not acknowledging me there. His jaw was clamped tight but there were no other outward signs anything was wrong.