Captive (Social Experiments #1) (10 page)

Her skin was soft to the touch and I stroked my fingers down her back. I skimmed the curve of her ass, teased my fingers over her damp crotch, and then traced the path upwards again.

“Yvonne?”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me what you like in bed.”

“You want to know?”

“Yeah. I do. I never mentioned this before, but I always heard you and Greg through the ceiling. You never made those kind of sounds with him…” My words trailed off as I reached for a blanket to tug over her back.

“You heard us?!”

“Almost every time. He sounds like an angry bear when he blows a load, but you’re quiet as a church mouse most of the time.”

“I wasn’t…” She paused to exhale. Evidently, lying didn’t set right with her despite the rocky status of our relationship. “I faked it a lot for him. I don’t know what it is… but I have trouble sometimes. Maybe all the horseback riding and gymnastics shit my mom made me do is responsible for it, I don’t know. But it takes me a while.”

It didn’t seem like a while to me, but maybe it had taken too long for Greg, whose primary concern lay in his own cock. I shook my head and kissed her ear. She recoiled only slightly but relaxed into me again. Her body became languid and loose, molding closely once more.

“Time well spent, baby. So what do you like?” I repeated.

“I liked sucking you off.”

And so did I. “You did amazing, but I asked what you like.”

“Well… I like that little finger vibe you use. And… and…”

“And what? You can tell me anything. I’m here to make this enjoyable for you, too.”

She wiggled on top of me. “My ass… I like to be fucked in my ass. It feels, well… it makes everything else feel more intense.”

“Yeah? And how often do you do that?”

Yvonne quieted and a hint of color rose to her ivory skin. Her sudden, uncharacteristic shyness piqued my curiosity. “Greg and I got really drunk one night… and uh… I blew him while he let one of his frat brothers fuck me in the ass.”

Her confession caught me by surprise. I stared at her initially until the visual swept through my overactive imagination. I could picture her positioned hands and knees, her upraised ass pounded by some gorilla in a polo shirt while she sucked Greg off. Despite my disdain for Greg and his pals, my cock twitched with renewed arousal. It was a pleasing image as long as I placed myself in either role.

“How did you like it with them?”

“It made me feel good. Really good,” she confessed. “His friend was a prick but… we did it a few times.”

Bingo. I knew there was something more about my sexy girl, but I hadn’t anticipated a fondness for anal. “I never tried it before,” I admitted. But I was willing to learn. It couldn’t be too hard as long as I used lube and took things slow. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met who admitted to liking it, I guess. I’ll try it for you one day, alright?”

The silence returned between us, but it lacked the same awkward quality. It felt more relaxed, borderline comfortable and uneasy all at once.

Somewhere deep inside, I had begun to doubt in my ability to accomplish my task of freeing Yvonne from her train wreck lifestyle. Now, in as little as a few words, she had granted me confidence again to continue. With her affectionate kisses to my unshaven jaw, she encouraged and uplifted me.

Kidnapping her hadn’t irreparably damaged our friendship after all. She needed me, just as I needed her. As we drifted into silence and engaged in explorative touches, I lay beside her, precariously balancing a trio of personas: her rapist, her captor, and her friend.

Chapter 7

During my break, Harrison called me out of the training center where I worked magic with naughty puppies and rehabilitated older dogs. We offered discounts to senior rescues and shelter canines since their owners were doing the world a favor by adopting them.

Ever since Mr. King placed fliers and vouchers inside the Boston SPCA, I’d been swamped. We needed two more trainers for this workload, and he was taking advantage of my summer schedule to work me 40 hours a week instead of the usual 20. Our class sizes were growing, his pockets were filling, and I was becoming increasingly fatigued. Now that I had my Master’s degree, I planned to look for a better paying job somewhere in research. Maybe it wouldn’t be as satisfying, but it would certainly wear me out less quickly each day. Better benefits, good pay, and a stepping stone to getting where I wanted to be.

Harrison didn’t want me to go, because it would be the end of their fun. Unfortunately, I’d already turned in a half dozen resumes across the city.

“C’mon, Jake. Come out and have fun with us. You never leave the damn house these days.”

I gestured around me, indicating the store. “You were saying?”

“Okay, you never leave the house unless it’s to come to work.”

“You took me to the casino.”

“Man, that was weeks ago,” Bobby muttered. He was another of our friends, but he worked in the vet office and hung out with the group as infrequently as I did. Short, stout, and built like a shaved black bear, he was usually called first to pin down and muzzle a big dog needing to be sedated, vaccinated, or claw trimmed. I was second. We heavy-lifted together at the gym, but I’d never acquire that kind of bulk on my frame without doubling my hours and intensity.

“You missed one hell of a party,” I replied amicably.

“Wish I’d been off to tag along. Anyway, you don’t have anything holding you up now,” Bobby said.

“He has a point, dude,” Harrison agreed. He cracked open a Red Bull and chugged it, as if the high caffeine content and taurine would remedy his apparent hangover. “You don’t even play ball with us anymore.”

“I don’t have the time to play ball, man.” My friends mean well, but none of them have a captive woman waiting in their basements. A very naked woman who eagerly waited for the chance to suck dick. I guarantee that if Harrison had a girl of his own willing to emulate Yvonne, we wouldn’t see him again until he had a beard rivaling that guy on Duck Dynasty.

“Shouldn’t you enjoy the last days of your freedom before beginning your wage slave job for some research center? You’re going to miss this,” Harrison said.

“I’m not going to miss your dad’s penny-pinching. I can’t live off 9.75 an hour man.”

“You don’t. You have rent coming in off six tenants!”

I rolled my eyes. The guys all knew that I obsessively poured the money back into maintenance and repairs. I had Gramps to thank for instilling that belief. “The building is falling apart, Harrison. I’m not a slum lord, and I won’t hoard money while my tenants have needs.”

“Okay, what about those investments your mom made?” Bobby asked.

Wrinkling my nose, I fixed Bobby with a look of discontent. All the guys knew my mom had died of ovarian cancer, and all of them knew that she’d left me relatively comfortable, too. I guess after my dad died in the military, she took his benefits and some of the insurance and made some good investments. Unfortunately,
most
of those awesome investments were all tangled up in accounts and beyond my reach. I didn’t know the first thing about accessing the money.

So I pretended it wasn’t there and skimmed a little interest off the top each year to help me along.

“I don’t know the first thing about them.”

“Why don’t you let me look at-”

“No,” I said firmly to Bobby, interrupting him. “I know you’re getting your accounting degree, but if you fuck up my mom’s hard work, I’ll kill you and hide your corpse in my basement.”

They laughed. I laughed the most because they didn’t know how true it was.

The sun conure on Harrison’s shirt leaned toward me. The animal clearly wanted to bridge the gap and relocate to another perch, so I sighed and moved near enough for it to change humans. “I’m going to miss these guys though.” But if I got the job I wanted at the research study group, I was guaranteed fifteen bucks an hour. Better still, if the psychiatrist hired me to work as his clinician. It required a little more study, but I could fill in the role as his assistant in the interim.

Not the big bucks, but it would hold me over until I completed my PhD.

The chime above the automatic doors ringed loudly. Harrison straightened up quickly and cupped a hand in front of his mouth to check his breath. “Hot chick alert.”

Maggie and Catelyn, two of Yvonne’s good friends from the RN program at UMass, approached once they sighted me on the floor. I groaned inwardly. Too late to run.

“Jake!” Maggie called. Her impish, dimpled smile seemed too bright to be true. She rocked on the soles of her pink Skechers and shared a quick glance with her taller, redheaded friend.

There’s something you need to know about Yvonne’s classmates and pals. Most of them are nuts. I couldn’t tolerate more than five minutes of conversation with Catelyn after their pinning ceremony and Maggie was the biggest ditz I’d ever met. She was a nice girl, with her heart in the right place, but she never knew when to shut up. I needed a crowbar to get her away from me and then a creative excuse to leave early.

Maggie hugged me. A little too tightly and inappropriately to be a greeting between acquaintances. She embraced me like we were the best of friends and pressed her considerably small tits against my chest in an attempt to show me they existed.

“Uh… Hi,” I greeted cautiously.

“Hello,” Catelyn said, a little more reserved than her cohort. She didn’t like me, ever since I ducked out on a heavy conversation about psych nursing. According to Yvonne, it really hurt her feelings.

Yeah well, fuck her feelings. She needed to get thicker skin if she wanted to be a nurse in a psych hospital.

“Hi, Jake!” Maggie exclaimed brightly. “Getting off work?”

No, thank God. I had three hours left on the clock. I planned rush home as soon as the shift ended to let Yvonne out of her cage. “Uh. No. I have a good while to go,” I said mysteriously.

“Three hours only,” Harrison corrected.

Fuck you, man, I internally seethed, hating him enough to want to pound him in the face. Maggie’s eyes lit up, and for a moment, I thought she’d plan to return then just to pester me.

“Three hours? Well, we could-”

The other girl interrupted Maggie. “Right. Anyways, we came to see if you’d heard from Yvonne.” Catelyn crossed her arms and pointedly ignored Bobby’s obvious look-over.

“I sent her some text messages a few days ago, but she didn’t reply.” I shrugged.

“I tell you, Cate, she’s on a beach somewhere having a laugh,” Maggie laughed.

“Can she even afford that?” Catelyn asked.

“Her dad paid the rent for the summer,” I offered. “Plus her grandparents and dad gave her a lot of cash as a graduation gift.” All true. I hadn’t lied to them yet.

“Oh,” Catelyn said. She studied me, as if she could see through my half-truths and discern the omissions lingering beneath the surface. Uncomfortable, I looked away.

“I better go back to my job. I have clients arriving soon to pick up their dogs.”

I escaped into the training center and hid. Fortunately, Maggie didn’t loiter or return three hours later at the end of the work day, so I made it home without suffering any further interrogation. I even clocked out under Harrison’s nose, but he fired a pissy, passive aggressive text at me that arrived as I parked my truck.

I’d make it up to them later.

“Hi Jake! Look what I made!” Sam pounded down the sidewalk and stumbled to a halt before he crashed into my legs. I reached out to steady the kid. His mother followed a few steps behind. She smiled apologetically.

“What’s that, pal?”

Sam brandished a wooden boat for my appraisal.

“Nice,” I told him. I turned the boat over in my hands a few times. The kid needed to work on his sanding, but he had the overall shape down to perfection. According to our last conversation, he wanted to learn to be good with his hands like me and build his mother a house one day.

“I still need to paint it, then mom says we can go sail it at the pond.”

“Maybe I’ll work on one of my own and we can call it a race.” I grinned at him. I’d always wanted a younger sibling, and in some ways, Sam felt like one. Growing up as an only child was a lonely sort of life, and a similarity shared between us. After I handed the boat back to him, I mussed his brown hair.

“Wicked!”

Cassie greeted me courteously as usual. “Good evening, Jake. Sorry about the enthusiastic welcome. C’mon, kiddo, we need to get you cleaned up if you want to help make dinner.” Cassie smoothed her son’s hair back down.

“Mom makes the best chicken pot pie. She even makes the crust,” he said with pride. “You should have some. Can he have dinner with us mom? I can show him my paints!”

“Jake is more the welcome to come up if he doesn’t have plans.”

“Uh.” I glanced at the opaque cellar window, a reminder of the things awaiting me beneath it. Yvonne probably had to pee like a racehorse. Otherwise, chicken pot pie would have been amazing. Too bad I had other responsibilities requiring my attention first. “Sorry, Sam. I have to finish some job applications,” I explained. It wasn’t too far from the truth. Yvonne offered to help me spice up my resume, and we had plans to watch a movie, too.