SCARLET
I watched Tristan and Seb drive away from the front window. I could feel Elliot standing behind me, watching my every move. The silence in the house was palpable. The further away they got, the thicker the tension grew between us. I felt him lurking behind me, his gaze as heavy as the damn house we were in. It was crushing me.
“What now, Grumpy?” I asked once the car was out of sight. I turned around and faced him. He had a smirk on his face that went straight to my pussy. It was a look that promised violence, and after the week of pampering I had received from Seb and Tristan, I needed what Elliot could give me.
“You have them wrapped so tightly around your little finger, you know that, Scarlet?” He began to slowly advance on me. With every step he took towards me, I took a step back. “Was that your plan all along? To infiltrate us? Get on our good side? Make us weak?” He took a step towards me with each question until we became a crude version of ring-around-the-rosy.
“Oh,” I said when it all clicked in my brain. “You think I’m a mole.” He smiled and took a few more steps towards me. When I took another step back, I ran into a wall. He advanced on me quickly, grabbing me by the neck and crushing my windpipe.
“Poor little mouse, caught in a trap,” he said, his face inches away from my own. He smelled like toothpaste and bodywash. His hair was still wet from his shower and hung down over his face and into mine as he leaned closer. “We’re going to have some fun today, Scarlet. Just the two of us.”
“Promises, promises,” I wheezed, smiling right back. He had to have known I got off on the violence. He had watched me come after stabbing someone to death, for Christ’s sake. The thought of a little torture from Elliot already had me soaked. As he squeezed my throat tighter, I moaned at the heat spreading through my body.
He glanced down and watched me make a show out of rubbing my thighs together. His eyes skimmed back up my body, taking in every piece of me. I was only wearing one of Seb’s shirts and a pair of Tristan’s boxers. They both liked to see me in their clothes, and I didn’t like to play favorites. His eyes finally met mine, and they mirrored my heat. I knew his was from anger, but I could still see the desire lurking under the surface. I just had to pull it out.
“I should’ve known after the stunt at the warehouse that this shit would get you off, princess. But this isn’t about pleasure,” he said, gripping my throat even harder and lifting me up the wall and off the floor. “This is about getting some fucking answers.”
I moved my hands to his wrist, trying to get him to loosen his hold. A shiver of real fear made its way down my spine when I realized how truly alone we were and how angry he actually was. I was still healing from the multiple beatings I’d taken, and I had barely gained any strength back. The look in his eyes told me he didn’t care.
Even though I was scared of what he could do to me, I also desired it. I craved it. I needed him to know that I could handle him and his demons. I could take whatever it was he needed to throw at me. And once that shit was done, maybe he could finally move past whatever it was he was holding against me and fuck me already.
“Well?” I asked after he had stood there holding me up by the neck and staring into my eyes for a long moment. My voice came out as a rasp, but it got the point across.
His free hand swung up to collide with my face. Since I was held in place by my neck, I couldn’t look away to lessen the blow. The entire side of my face lit up like a Christmas tree. The sting made my eyes water, and I could almost taste blood. Instead of showing him that it had hurt, I just looked into those dark eyes and smiled.
“That all you got, precious?”
His face turned red, and I could tell he could barely see me through the rage flooding his veins. With little regard to my still-healing ribs, he grunted as he threw me over his shoulder, making me wince. I gulped down air and then smacked his ass as he carried me off in the direction of the garage.
“Knock it off,” he growled.
“Are you taking me to the garage? Doesn’t that seem a little careless? Won’t the neighbors hear? There’s got to be horrible insulation in there compared to the bedrooms.”
“I don’t want to get blood on the carpet,” he answered. “And you’ll be gagged.”
“How do you expect to get answers if I’m gagged? I feel like you really haven’t thought this through, pal.”
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?”
“I know a way you can make me,” I countered. He groaned and slammed the door shut to the garage after we entered. I couldn’t really see anything other than Elliot’s ass. Not that I was complaining with those buns of steel. The man was a beefcake. He worked hard for that ass, and it deserved to be bitten. I laughed at the thought and pressed myself forward, opening my mouth and grabbing a chunk of his bum in my mouth and biting hard. He was wearing gym shorts, so it was easy to get a good hold on him.
“Bitch!” he shouted and smacked my ass hard enough to leave a mark. I cried out in shock before he dropped me down onto the floor like I was a sack of potatoes. My ribs did not like that, and tears welled up in my eyes before I could stop them. I didn’t want him to see me as weak. He needed to know I could take it without falling apart.
“What’s first on the torture agenda?” I asked, trying to discreetly hold my ribs as I sat up.
There were storage shelves along one of the walls filled with black plastic tubs with yellow lids. He walked over to them and started pulling them down, opening them and searching for the one he wanted. When he finally found it, a sadistic grin formed across his lips. That little smirk had me clenching.
Fuck,he was sexy when he wanted to hurt me.
“Sit,” he commanded when he sat a folding chair next to me.
“Please?” I chided. “Jesus, did no one teach you manners?”
“I’m about to show you the type of manners I was taught as a kid, Scarlet. For the love of God, just shut the fuck up, be a good girl, and sit on that fucking chair.”
“Anything to be your good girl,” I teased as I climbed up off the floor and onto the metal folding chair. “Hopefully you don’t have an electroplay kink because this metal chair would be the perfect conductor.”
“Oh my god, Scarlet,” he said as he stalked over to me. “Shut the fuck up.” He grabbed my jaw, forcing it open, and shoved an old rag into my mouth before ripping off a piece of duct tape with his teeth and placing it over my lips.
Well, this is annoying, I thought to myself as he made his way behind me to tape my wrists together. Next, he tightly taped my ankles to the chair’s legs. There was something about being restrained and spread open with broken ribs and still-healing stitches that made a girl feel a little vulnerable.
“That’s better,” he said, making a show of stretching and popping his knuckles before pulling another chair to sit on in front of me. “This is how things are going to work, little one.” He pushed the hair that had fallen into my face over my shoulders and then leaned back in his chair. “I am going to ask you questions. They’ll be simple yes or no questions, like a lie detector test.”
Okay, I thought. Does he not realize polygraphs are only eighty to ninety percent accurate?
“They’ll be easy at first,” he continues. “I’ll ask you questions I know the answer to, and then we’ll escalate until we get to the questions I need answers for, okay? Oh, and every time you answer a question and I think you’re lying? There will be punishment.”
I tried to put all of the anger I was feeling into the look I was giving him. He could not be fucking serious. How was I supposed to convince him I wasn’t a mole if he wouldn’t even let me talk? He met my angry eyes and smiled. Fuck, it was annoying how hot he looked when he had death in his eyes.
He pulled his hair out of his face and into a messy bun on top of his head before settling in and leaning forward, folding his hands together in a falsely patient gesture.
“Let’s begin.”