“Let me guess.” Her voice shakes. “I’m the night’s entertainment.”
I weave through the crowd with her, and the men give me a wide berth, none of them daring to get near her. Striker and the other guys who followed me out here drop back, mixing into the crowd.
No one comes near her, except Whistler, who reaches for her tits.
“Really?” I grab his wrist and twist it until it snaps, and he whines in pain.
She stares at him in shock as he cradles his broken hand. She glances at the crowd, and then looks worriedly at me. “Spider, you aren’t expecting me to…”
“No. No one will touch you but me. But you are going to provide a little extra attraction.”
“What does that mean?”
Letting her imagination run, I continue leading her across the back yard toward the hill.
“Where are you taking me?” She’s panicking.
I stop in front of the gnarled old tree. As I untie her hands, her eyes lift to a long rope hanging from one of the bare branches.
The blood drains from her face and her whole body shakes.
“Oh, dear god. No, you can’t.” She spins around and tries to shove me to the ground. Her hands try to claw at my face.
Whoa, what the fuck? I’ve never seen her lose it this bad. She’s like a wild animal. I grunt in surprise and grab her wrists, easily stilling them.
“You can’t do this!” she screams, thrashing. Tears stream down her face.
Holy shit. She’s terrified.
I could slap her to snap her out of it, but I’m not my father. I don’t hit women. Ever. Instead, I grab her shoulders and shake her once. She stills, and I put my finger in her face. “Don’t. Ever. Hit. Me again.”
Her face goes blank and her hands drop. Her eyes go to my feet. “Yes, sir.” Her voice is small.
Okay, what the actual fuck?
Stephanie’s eyes aren’t just staring. They’re utterly unseeing. It’s like she’s left her body, gone somewhere else.
That’s at least the third time she’s gone Stepford on me. It’s kind of freaking me out. She looks… A memory tickles at my back brain, but it refuses to form. I shake it off. Deal with it later.
I snap my fingers at her.
Her eyes jerk to mine and the glazed look vanishes.
She’s herself again, but fear has her whole body shaking. Her breathing is fast and shallow. She doesn’t seem to be aware that she did anything odd. I’ll have to get to the bottom of that.
“I won’t hurt you any more than necessary, but you have to learn. I don’t tolerate temper tantrums.”
Her eyes swim with tears of rage and indignation. She looks away. Humiliation pounds off of her, but at least she isn’t flipping out. It pisses me off that she was afraid of me. What the hell did she think I was going to do, hang her?
I push her carefully up against the tree and pull the rope down from the branch. Then I quickly go in behind her, pull her arms around the tree at her back and tie them in place.
“Wait, what are you doing?” She sounds confused.
And relieved, as if she was expecting something a lot worse. Worse, like what?
I wind the rope’s slack around her waist and the tree once, and tie it in back.
“Spider, what in God’s name are you doing?” She twists and bucks, but I force myself to ignore it and pull the ropes tight enough that she can’t move her arms an inch. Then I clamp my hand on her shoulder and put my mouth to her ear.
“My own personal brand of club justice, gorgeous.”
“What does that mean?”
I walk around in front of her, assessing my work with a smile. She looks delicious, naked with her breasts poking out from between the ropes, her nipples hard as bullets. Light bruising encircles her neck where my hand had choked her earlier. The sight of it nearly has me pounding into her right there.
“Almost perfect,” I say.
“Almost? Spider, what are you going to do?”
I shrug. “I’m going to join the party.”
“What? You’re just going to leave me here like this?”
Another shrug.
She rolls her head back as if in horror. “You… It’s hot as Hades out here. There are wild animals out here at night!”
Hades? Who is this girl?
I grin. “You have no idea how wild we get.”
“Spider!” She’s starting to panic again. “You can’t. There are serious predators out here. Coyotes. Poisonous snakes.”
I break the space between us until I’m pressed against her, until her nipples poke into my chest. The heat of her body burns. I lean in and trace the line of her jaw with my mouth, and her breathing hitches. One of my hands slides down between her legs, cupping her perfect pussy.
She says she hates me, but when I stroke her wet clit, she rubs against my touch.
A low, hungry rumble leaves me. “I can’t wait to feel your pussy around my cock again.” I stroke her once more. “And don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna bite you. Except me.” I nip her ear.
She tosses her head in rage. My dick turns to steel. I drop my hand and step back.
“What am I supposed to do if something tries to get me?”
“Use this.” I pull a whistle from inside my cut and hold it up. The whistle dangles from a rope. Stringing the rope around her neck, I push the whistle’s mouthpiece between her teeth and ignore her muffled scream, which turns into a shrill whistle.
“If anything nasty comes near you, whistle, just like that, but louder. Don’t blow it unless there is a real emergency, or no one will know when there is one. I won’t go far.”
She makes a livid sound in her throat.
“You’re hot when you’re pissed.” I touch her under the chin.
She glares.
“You might as well relax, Wildcat. You’re going to be there a while.”
She screams around the whistle in helpless rage.
I turn and walk toward the party with a smile on my face. If she thinks I’m evil now, she’s got another thing coming.
13
In the Arms of Sin
An hour after Spider left me tied to the tree, he shows no sign that he’s planning to release me anytime soon.
Still bound behind me with the tree at my back, my arms were aching along with my shoulders, but they’ve gone numb now, having grown used to the position they’re in. I’ve tried to pull my hands free of the ropes, but they don’t give at all. I shift my feet, trying to stop the throb in my legs from standing so long, but it only provides a few minutes of relief before I have to shift them again.
With my mouth around the whistle, my cheeks ache so that I have to hold it between my teeth, allowing me to relax my face muscles.
At least the temperature has dropped. It’s a balmy night, not too hot, not too cold. Occasionally, a light breeze kisses my skin, brushing across my bared sex and teasing my nipples. It serves to keep me cool, but it also provides a constant reminder of my situation.
I’m stripped naked, standing in enough moonlight that the whole crowd of partiers out back of Casper’s can see me in all my nude glory.
The weather is perfect for the predicament Spider has put me in, and it’s driven me to one conclusion. Since he’d taken me here, I’d begun to think there was no God, but now I know. There is a God, and he’s up there laughing at me.