The Swan & the Jackal (In the Company of Killers 3)

I shove Gwen to her knees on the carpeted floor where she doesn’t dare move. I can sense every part of her body already opened up to me, desperate to feel me inside of her. She’s played this game before. She knows how to be the submissive. She likes it. And any other time I’d accommodate that desire and enjoy it myself, because I am a man of control. But the truth is that I’ve never respected a woman completely submissive to me. I like a woman to put up a fight, not to bark when I tell her to bark, or suck without argument when I put my c**k in her mouth.

Not even Cassia, as soft and fragile as she is, who I know would do anything for me, would subject herself to that. And it only makes me care about her that much more.

Cassia…

I look toward the small camera hidden on the dresser across the room. I wonder if she’s looking back at me.

Why do I hope that she’s not?

I shake it off quickly when I feel Gwen’s hand moving between my legs over the top of my pants. She looks up at me suggestively—and quite surprised—her almond-shaped eyes softened by willingness, heated by hunger.

If only Seraphina was here to be in on this. She was the only one who could ever make a submissive girl exciting to me.

I wrench the back of Gwen’s hair in my fist again and pull her to her feet.

“I’d rather you on your knees on the bed.”

Letting go of her hair once she’s standing, she does exactly as I tell her, just barely looking over her shoulder at me, telling me with her eyes that it’s OK, that she wants this the way I want it. Only, this isn’t the way I want it and I continue to pretend.

Gwen crawls onto the edge of the bed and I step behind her, placing my hand against the small of her back and pressing her body forward to raise her ass in the air. My dick twitches when I touch her with the back of my middle finger, sliding it length-wise between her wet nether lips. Two smacks zip through the air when I slap each of her butt cheeks hard enough to make her whimper.

“Don’t move,” I tell her as I step over to the nightstand, sliding out of my pants on the way.

After shutting the nightstand drawer, the condom wrapper is on the floor seconds later and I’m behind Gwen again.

“What was that?” Gwen raises her face from the mattress, her eyebrows drawing inward as she concentrates to hear the cry that I pretend not to have heard.

But I did hear it. Cassia’s side of the basement is directly beneath my room, precisely where I’m standing.

Suddenly, I feel more of an urge to check the video feed from her room on my cell phone, than to continue what I was doing.

“A condom,” I say, pretending.

She turns her neck at an angle so that she can see me. “No, I thought I heard something…like crying.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I say. “Might’ve been the TV in the basement.”

Gwen accepts my answer and presses her cheek against the bed again.

I try to ignore my thoughts of Cassia, grabbing Gwen’s thighs firmly in my hands and pressing myself against her. But I can’t ignore her and I become irate with myself, digging my fingertips into Gwen’s flesh.

“Oww! Jesus! That f**king hurt…,” She sounds angry. But just a little.

Was that defiance?

Suddenly, I feel like I might get the violent sex that I need, after all.

Then I hear Cassia screaming my name and although faint and muffled through the floor, it rips through me like a hot poker burning a hole through my chest.

I don’t think Gwen heard it that time because when she looks back at me again, it seems only out of curiosity. She wonders why I’ve stepped away from her, why I’m not already inside of her by now.

She’s as confused as I am.

I look at the hidden camera again, wishing that I could see her through it just as she can see me.

“Are we gonna’ do this, or—“

“You need to leave,” I cut in.

She blinks, stunned, and then turns around on the bed.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

She blinks several more times as if trying to reset her brain because maybe she didn’t hear me right, and presses the palms of her hands against the edge of the mattress. Her arms and shoulders become rigid as she lets her body slouch in-between them.

She cocks her head to one side and grins.

“Is this part of your game?” she asks teasingly and then cocks her head to the other side. “I’ll play whatever game you want me to play, baby.”

Concerned for Cassia, I’m growing more impatient and intolerant by the second. Reaching out, I take Gwen by the elbow and pull her from the bed.

“Just f**king leave, all right?”

She’s speechless. And pissed. And humiliated. Her mouth falls open partway, her eyes draw inward harshly and it looks like I just slapped her across the face.

“I’ll call you a cab,” I say, but she puts her hand up in front of her, indicating she doesn’t need or want my help.

“No thanks, ass**le,” she snaps, stomping naked across the room toward the bedroom door. “I’ll call myself one and wait for it at the gas station on the corner.” A few minutes later, after Gwen has gotten dressed in the living room and found her purse, the house shakes as the front door slams shut.

I’m numb. Completely numb inside and out. I haven’t moved from the spot in my bedroom since Gwen stormed out of the house. My chest aches for Cassia.

What is happening to me?

Shuffling around inside my pants pocket for my cell phone, I grab it and pull it free, dropping my pants back on the floor. I open the feed to Cassia’s room to see her curled up in the fetal position on her bed—not in the corner—crying softly into her delicate hands. And I watch her for a moment, still trying to sort through the disarray that my mind has become.

My heart aches. Everything aches. But this time I don’t fight it because I don’t have it in me anymore.

I toss the condom in the trash beside the dresser and step into my black boxers before rushing into the basement to fix what I broke.

Chapter Sixteen

Fredrik

Taking the steps one at a time, I make my way slowly into the basement with a boulder sitting in the pit of my stomach. The concrete is cold against the bottoms of my bare feet, the air getting cooler as a winter storm begins to bear down on the East coast. I make a mental note to be sure to turn the heat up significantly when I go back upstairs so that Cassia stays comfortable down here.

But all of these random thoughts are just my way of shoving the inevitable moment I know is sure to leave me reeling into the back of my mind for as long as I can before I’m forced to confront it.