Bound By Desire (The Acadian Curse) Page 5

  Her heart sped a little at the sight of him. His arms were propped out before him on the wood railing. He was waiting for her.

  Of course he was. She’d expected trouble coming here tonight. That was why she’d brought ammunition.

  Sarah grabbed the brown paper bag at her side and swung open the door.

  “You drive too damn fast,” he said before her feet even hit the dirt.

  Sarah shrugged. “I’m usually in a hurry.”

  “Don’t you have a car of your own?” He came down onto the step, but kept a hand on the post.

  “I do,” she said. She dismissed his curt tone. “But it's no good on these roads. Besides, I kind of like this old truck. I learned how to drive in it."

  “It's old,” he said.

  Sarah’s eyes went wide as she arched her brows. A little laugh sputtered out from between her lips.

  “I didn't mean….”

  “Good thing, or I might be tempted not to share this with you,” she said, raising the bag in her right hand.

  “Is that from Maggie’s?”

  Sarah nodded and risked stepping up on the first stair. He didn’t stop her, even though she could tell a part of him wanted to.

  “What kind is it?” he asked.

  “Peach. Peace Offering Peach, I suppose,” Sarah said with a smile. He stared at her, silent. She let her eyes fall to the thick oak plank beneath her feet. A flush of embarrassment started to burn her cheeks. “Come on. You’re not going to leave me out here to eat this whole thing by myself are you? Because I am totally capable of doing just that.”

  The war within him was clear on his face, and Sarah knew it had nothing to do with the contents of the paper bag. Maggie’s pies were good, legendary even, but they wouldn’t make a man question his most deeply held beliefs.

  And that was exactly what she was asking Grant to do. She knew it. She’d wrestled with her conscience all day. Was it nothing more than selfishness and the promise of pleasure that had her craving to see him again? Maybe. But if it was solely that Sarah could have resisted. She wouldn’t have been happy about it, but she would have stayed home tonight. She had no right to put her own desires above another person’s welfare.

  But no matter she tried, she couldn’t convince herself that Grant was acting in his own best interest. She had no doubt he thought that he was. He thought he needed to be chained to wall in order to keep everyone else safe. And from the sound of the gossip around the office that day—and there had been plenty of it—his life wasn’t any better during the other twenty-eight days of the month. He hardly went out at night. No one had ever seen him out with anyone. And, while everyone made certain that Sarah knew what a nice guy they all thought he was, he hadn’t made a single close friend in the three years he’d been in town.

  He wasn’t just hiding himself away on the nights that he changed. He was hiding from life. All because he thought he was a monster.

  He wasn’t. Sarah believed that down to the bone. She’d stared into the eyes of both the man and his demon and had found no evil there. Intensity? Yes. Potency? Ferocity? Without a doubt. But not malice.

  She’d been the only one to have the chance to see both sides of him, and Sarah had no doubt that, if Grant had his way, she would be the last. She was the only one who could change his mind about what he was. She was the only one who could show him that this curse wasn’t as terrible as he believed, and that wonderful things could come out of the power within him.

  As she saw it, she had two choices. She could either come out here and try to prove that to him, or she could walk away and leave him to his misery.

  The answer had never been in doubt. Sarah McIntire was her father’s daughter after all.

  So she’d come up with a plan, flimsy and feeble as it was. She would have to arrive at the perfect time. Too early and he’d have time to think better of letting her stay. Too late and he’d probably already be locked away for the night. She’d been able to wait until seven o’clock to leave the office before her nerves got the best of her, but, even then, the sun still seemed pretty far from the horizon. She decided to stop by Maggie’s shop to waste a little more time. Besides, she figured fresh baked pie had never hurt anyone’s cause.

  The way Grant was staring at that bag now, as though either the means for redemption or damnation of his soul rested inside it, made Sarah think that she’d timed it just right.

  She risked another step. He looked up at her face. He didn’t need to say a word to stop her. His body was tense and still. The strange light was back in his eyes, rising and falling, growing then fading. Both sides of him were struggling for control, the same way they had the night before. Right now, it looked like a draw.

  For half a second, Sarah doubted her own resolve. She glanced westward. The sun’s edge was just barely touching the mountain line. It was now or never.

  “Let me inside, Grant. Please.”

  He stared at her, hard. His lips were pressed together so tightly that they had almost disappeared.

  Sarah slowly rose up the last two stairs. He made no move toward her or away. She lifted her hand and wiped away the sweat that had begun to bead on his brow.

  “Please,” she repeated.

  Sarah leaned in closer and brushed her lips against his. That was it. She wouldn’t push him any farther.

  There was more than a hint of glittering emerald in his stare when she pulled away.

  “Are you sure you want this?” His voice was thick and rough. She wasn’t sure which part of him was asking. It didn’t matter. They were both him.

  Sarah swallowed past the quickly swelling lump in her throat and nodded. It was her hands that were trembling now.

  “Then come with me.”

  Before we both change our minds. He stared at her, almost apologetically, before he turned and strode inside. Sarah followed. She set the pie down on the foyer table and locked the front door behind her. Grant was obviously past thinking about such trivialities. He was already halfway down the hall. The thin fabric of his T-shirt was now stretched so tight that she could see each muscle in his back working underneath as he walked.

  He threw open a door next to the kitchen and disappeared through it. Sarah sucked in a breath through her clenched teeth. She looked down at her hand. It was still wrapped around the cold metal doorknob. Apparently, she wasn’t as sure about this as she’d thought.

  But she was committed.

  “In for a penny…” she whispered to herself before she let go of her last chance of escape and raced to catch up.

  A flight of stairs led down to a basement. Below, another door—this one thick, dull steel—hung open. Beyond it, Sarah could make out bare walls bathed in a fluorescent glow.

  Her legs felt shaky as she took the first step, and it wasn’t just from excitement. Sarah hated basements, always had. In her mind they were always dank, dark holes in the ground, just like the one her grandmother had had. Her rational mind knew that Grant’s wouldn’t be anything like the rotted wood and flickering bulb basement of her childhood, but it didn’t matter. There would still be monsters hiding in the corners, only this time they wouldn’t only be in her imagination.

  “The door will shut in thirty seconds. Once it’s locked, it won’t open until dawn.” A deep voice carried up from the bottom. Grant’s voice was changing quickly now.

  The time for thinking was over.

  Sarah hurried down the rest of the basement stairs. Her feet moved deftly despite the weakness that had set up in her knees. She didn’t stop running until she was in the center of the room.

  The bunker he had created beneath his house was every bit as stark as she imagined it would be. It was smaller than she envisioned though, not more than a ten by ten foot square. The walls were the same dull steel of the door. The only concession to comfort was a thin beige carpet covering the floor. The light came from a single industrial-looking fixture adhered to the ceiling. A simple folding table and chair were pushed against the far w
all. On top of the table there was a pile of neatly folded blankets and a couple bottles of water.

  There was no rack of shackles screwed deep into the walls this time. Sarah figured it wasn’t needed in this reinforced cage. Instead there was only a single manacle about ankle height attached to the far wall. The thin chain it was attached to looked long enough to reach the center of the room.

  Grant had already peeled off his jeans, and T-shirt and laid them in a discarded pile at his feet. He stood in his blue plaid boxers—she was sure that they were loose when he had slid them on this morning, but they were getting tighter by the second—and Grant slipped his right foot through the manacle. It barely made it through.

  Sarah spun around as the door swiveled shut on its own. Even though she knew it was coming, she flinched a little when the sound of the bolt sliding home echoed around the steel walls.

  She swallowed down hard as he turned his gaze back toward her. The green was quickly overtaking the brown.

  “It’ll be all right,” she said. It would have to be. She felt a little guilty for her sudden nerves. She was the one who wanted this after all. She had schemed and pushed him to get here. And now that she had what she wanted, she had to admit she was more than a little nervous.

  Sarah turned her back to him, went over to the table and ran her fingers over the folds of the blankets. It didn’t feel much safer on this side of the room, but there was nowhere else to go. There was nothing else to look at—not even a clock on the wall for God’s sake—and she needed something else to focus on while she fought to regain her composure.

  She almost had her heart rate under control again when she felt the change come over the room. The air felt thicker, heavier on her skin. She didn’t need to turn around to know what had happened. She’d felt the same thing last night.

  Her breath hitched, and her hand stilled on the table. Excitement and fear warred inside her, and she wasn’t sure which would win. But either way she couldn’t stay like this, back turned, staring at a blank wall, all night.

  In for a penny…

  Slowly, Sarah turned around. The change was complete. His arms were folded over his massive chest. Both his back and his unchained heel were propped against the wall behind him. His posture could have been mistaken for casual if not for the hungry stare that he fixed squarely on her.

  Sarah shuffled back a step and stumbled as her hip hit the table. She managed to reach behind her and grab onto the lip before she toppled over.

  “I thought that you wanted to be here.” His voice sent shivers through her.

  “I…I did.” Sarah cleared her throat. “I do.”

  “It’s a little late for second thoughts.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  “Do you plan on spending the whole night cowering in the corner?”

  Sarah glanced over at the locked door. It would stay that way for another nine hours. Last night she hadn’t lasted an hour before she gave into the desire he stirred in her. How in the world did she think she would be able to last ten times that? And was she even sure that she wanted to?

  “I’m leaving all my options open right now.”

  He laughed at her, a low, rumbling sound that set her pulse racing. She knew he was mocking her, but she couldn’t help the little thrill of excitement that raced through her veins. God help her, she liked it. Not enough to push past her fear and throw herself into his arms, but liked it all the same.

  “Then why did you bother coming to me tonight, Sarah?” he asked.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not a hundred percent sure anymore. I thought I knew, but now…”

  “So you only came to torment me further, then?”

  “Further?” Sarah sat on the folding chair at her side. She even crossed her legs, hoping it would give her the appearance of being a little more at ease. His chain could only reach to the middle of the room after all, she reminded herself. There was a little reassurance in that…a very little. “I don’t remember you suffering much last night.”

  All humor left his face. He pushed away from the wall. Reflexively Sarah kicked her legs out, trying to move away. Her chair skittered backwards an inch before catching on the carpet. She threw out her arms to right herself.

  “Did you think that all I wanted from you is one fumbling blowjob while I was chained to a wall? That I’d be content just to come in your mouth while I couldn’t even touch you? While I couldn’t make you satisfy me in all the ways that I really wanted? Is that what you thought?”

  Sarah shook her head. She realized now that she didn’t have a clue what she had been thinking. Last night, with him chained tight at all four points, Sarah had been able to delude herself into believing that she had some amount of control. Looking at him now, feeling the unnatural power that was pouring out of him, she knew it had been nothing but an illusion. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t reach her with his hands; he was completely in control.

  “You’re a smart little thing, aren’t you? You knew I’m not someone you toy with. But you went ahead and did it anyway, didn’t you? All the while knowing that there would be consequences. That soon it would be my turn to play with you. That’s why you really came here. So get that little ass over here right now and get what’s coming to you.”

  Sarah shook her head even harder. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Her throat was dry, her breath coming in short gasps.

  “No?” His voice was fierce, but held a hint of satisfaction. He had hoped that she would act this way, that the combination of fear and nerves would make her defy him. Deep down, she realized that she wanted it too. They were both playing parts in this little game. Her disobedience left him only one option—to come after her. But, how?

  He leaned down and picked up one of Grant’s cowboy boots. His palm caressed the hard sole. He looked up pointedly at the fluorescent fixture on the ceiling. His arm reached back. He threw the boot with pinpoint precision. There was a loud pop, and the room was plunged into total darkness. She only heard the glass rain down onto the floor.

  Sarah stood. The chair collapsed beneath her. She stumbled backwards, wanting to put as much distance between her and the creature as possible. She pressed her back flush against the bricks. The hard points of the mortar stung, but she refused to pull away. She didn’t dare. He couldn’t possibly reach her, but now that the comfort of being able to confirm that with her own eyes had been taken away, she wasn’t willing to risk even an extra inch.

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was her ragged, panicked breath. Then there was a low groan. Sarah sucked one last gulp of air and held it. Her lungs began to burn as she waited for the sound to repeat, but as she slowly let the air hiss out, it came again. This time there was no mistaking the sound—the creak of metal pushed past its limit.

  No. No, no, no, no. It seemed no one was listening to her silent plea. The groan came again, louder this time. Then again and again, until, after a few minutes, there was a sharp crack.

  Sarah clenched her eyes shut—she wasn’t sure why, there was no difference between open and closed—and waited. Nothing happened. She strained to hear any sound of him coming for her—a hollow growl, a heavy footfall, the leaden chime of the chain moving behind him—but nothing came. Only the dull, percussive thud of her heart hammering in her chest helped her keep track of the minutes that passed.

  How long would he draw this out? Goosebumps covered her arms. She was trembling so badly that the bricks were beginning to cut into her back. A part of her wished that he would just do what ever he had planed and then be done with it. Surely, this anticipation was worse torture.

  It wasn’t until she felt a warm rush of breath over the exposed skin of her neck that she realized that he was next to her. She jumped and started to bolt. Fingers like iron wrapped around her arm before she could take two steps. He wrenched her back. Sarah crashed against the hard wall of his chest. His arms wrapped tighter around her, holding her against him.

  “Please,” she sa
id, her voice thin.

  “Please what?” His voice rumbled through his chest, so she felt it as well as heard it.

  Sarah didn’t know. Let her go so that she could hide in another corner? Push her down to her knees so that she could suck him off the way she had before? He’d already told her he wasn’t going to let her off that easy.

  He laughed at her silence. She was strangely grateful for the darkness surrounding them, so he couldn’t see the shame burning her cheeks.

  He leaned his face in close. His voice was a raspy whisper against her ear. “You bet Grant that I was no monster. Do you still believe that?”

  She nodded, even though it was more a hope now. Her left cheek brushed against his bare skin. She felt the power radiating out of him. There was no doubting his strength. He could snap her in half if her wanted too…or her could hold her down and give her what she had coming. Sarah’s pussy clenched at the thought of the latter.

  “You had better pray that you were right,” he said.

  He flipped her around in his arms so that the curve of her ass was nestled against his hip. She struggled out of instinct, but he simply tightened his grip on her, squelching her defiance before it had even truly started. His arms wrapped like bands around her chest and lower abdomen, giving his hands easy access to the most sensitive parts of her.

  Desire began to build inside of her as her thoughts ran wild. Her nipples tightened painfully at the idea of his hands clasping her breasts. Would he treat them brutally or tease them until she lost her resolve and begged for more? Would he pinch her clit or stroke it? And her ass…oh God, what would he do with that?

  But he didn’t make a move for any of those parts of her, not yet. He just pressed her against him and let her soak in the depth of his control over her.

  Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. A part of her rebelled against his show of dominance and started to squirm against him. His brutal hold didn’t allow for more than a fraction of an inch of movement, just enough to feel the mesmerizing promise of his skin sliding against hers. After a minute of this she was no longer sure if she was struggling to inch closer to his cock or away from it. She only wished that he would do something. Anything.