Captive (Social Experiments #1) (8 page)

I sent a half dozen worried text messages to Yvonne’s phone, asking if I’d done something to piss her off. I called her parents the following evening to ask if she’d gone home to Salem. Lying came easier on the phone when Marie couldn’t make eye contact and see through my dishonesty. Once I finished deceiving them, Mr. Mitchell vowed to call the police.

Naturally, the authorities dropped by the brownstone first. They asked if they could come in to discuss Yvonne’s disappearance. I wiped my sweaty palms against my jeans and invited them in.

“You seem a little nervous, Mr. MacFadden,” the balding police detective said.

I hadn’t expected a detective. A cop or two who might ask questions, but not an actual investigator. Her father must have pulled some strings.

“I’m worried about my roommate. Of course I’m nervous.” I was equally nervous about my cover story or stumbling over a lie. Thankfully, Yvonne’s past had already provided ample justification for her absence.

“She give you any reason to think she might leave?”

“Nothing more than her usual behavior,” I replied. I didn’t have to lie. Yvonne was a wild card, the sort of girl who could smile sweetly one second and flip a table the next. I blamed Marie’s head games. “It’s been a rough week for Yvonne. I guess she’s kind of on a split from her boyfriend, and then she argued with her mother again over dinner a week ago. It was pretty bad,” I understated. Marie was downright vicious. She never missed a chance to sock it to her daughter.

The men glanced at one another, communicating in nonverbal cop language. The taller, more athletic one with the greying hair smiled at me. “And what are you to Miss Mitchell?” Detective O’Malley asked.

I expected that question and easily gave the honest response. “A friend. Yvonne and I went to high school together in Salem, but I moved here after graduation to help take care of my grandparents until they died.” I gestured with one hand.

I felt like a character in a crime drama. Confronted by the stereotypical fat cop and his handsome partner, I had no choice but to put on my best performance.

“You manage this building by yourself now, son? What about your mother and father?” Detective Sterling asked. He didn’t appear as stoic as his partner, and seemed less distrustful. His watery brown eyes scrutinized me.

“This one and next door. My father died for his country when I was a kid, but I don’t remember much about him. And then cancer killed Mom a year after I moved here. She never told anyone she was sick.”

Sarah MacFadden, my deceased mother, hadn’t wanted us to worry. Didn’t want me to drop out of school and come fuss over her. She suffered and died alone.

“Sorry,” Sterling replied, abashed. My somber history received that reaction from most people.

I forced a wan smile. Without waiting for the next question, I supplied what I suspected both cops wanted to know. “After my grandparents died, Yvonne asked to move in while she finished the nursing program at UMass. She argues a lot with her mom. Her mother is Bipolar, and I think Yvonne is too,” I explained. “Anyway, Marie hates her kid one day and loves her again the next. They always had the worst screaming fights when we were growing up together because Yvonne didn’t want to continue riding show horses or any other activity her mother dreamed up for her.”

Leave it to her fucked up family to make it easier for me to deceive with the truth. Once I satisfied their questions and the cops left my home, I took dinner down to Yvonne. I’d missed my noon visit with her lunch and knew she had to be starving.

Chapter 6

I wiped pizza grease and diced ham off my face with my t-shirt. Yvonne had one hell of a slinging arm. Once the drugs were out of her system, I had to deal with her typical spitfire attitude. It’s a wonder she didn’t bust Greg’s balls when he slapped her around at the party. Of course, she was also desperate for Greg’s approval. She didn’t feel the same way about me, a mere friend.

I’d pressed my luck. I had to show her who was boss.

“I’m not giving you another slice, Yvonne. Once you’ve decided you’re hungry, you can eat that shit off the floor,” I told her irritably. I settled on a collapsible chair a few yards away and ate my own slice on a napkin. Her belly rumbled all the while despite her stubborn insistence. She huddled in the cage, its door wide open.

I consumed my pizza with deliberately slow bites, drawing out the process of eating every morsel. While she pretended not to watch, I dipped fresh bread sticks into homemade garlic butter and inhaled half a liter of Coke. Mama Maria’s, a fantastic little pizzeria around the corner, offered the best pizza in the city.

It came down to a matter of determining whose willpower would hold. Who would outlast the other?

“Jake, please,” she finally whispered. “I’m starving.”

“I served a slice to you, Yvonne. You tossed it on the floor.”

“There’s more pizza in the box.”

I pulled another piece out, stretching cheese and practically dripping sauce. The heavenly aroma of bacon penetrated the room. Honestly, I didn’t have to pretend that it was an amazing meal. It was. I exaggerated my enjoyment, closed my eyes and savored the sweet and tangy tomato sauce. Slivers of onion provided a perfect counterbalance to the tender pineapple pieces.

“I hate you!”

I ignored it and shut the box. “Man, I’m stuffed.”

“Jake,” she whined. Her eyes followed the box as I set it aside.

Thanks to some summer garage sales, I had an assortment of blankets, afghans, and quilts lovingly made by old ladies across the city. While she slept off her Ketamine high, I’d brought down those, a comfortable hammock, and a few other amenities to make her new life convenient.

“Come out then.”

Yvonne hesitated within the cage, as if it had become a safe haven from my insidious intents. I had raped her once, a fact I fully acknowledged, but I didn’t intend to force myself on her physically again. I couldn’t. Once was enough.

“It’s safe, Yvonne. Come out.”

She emerged from the cage, crawling on her hands and knees to leave the opening. Her stiff joints protested her attempt to rise to her feet, and I had to catch her when she wobbled. Some misguided sense of modesty made covering her breasts and her groin more important than maintaining balance.

“I’ve seen it already, Yvonne. Remember? You’re fucking gorgeous, and you don’t have anything to hide.”

She didn’t say much and pulled away from me once she had her feet beneath her. Her gaze darted for the doorway but she didn’t make a run for it again. Not after the last time.

“Could I have some pizza now?”

As if I would make it that easy. She still expected to get things her way. I’d change that.

“Spread a couple of those blankets on the ground,” I ordered.

“What?”

“You heard me, Yvonne. Spread the blankets on the floor,” I repeated patiently.

While she silently worked, I admired the curve of her bare ass, her lithe legs and supple thighs. She had a gorgeous set of tits, large enough that she required double support whenever she jogged with me. Contrary to wishes of most women, bigger was not always better. Yvonne struggled to find shirts that fit her generous bust.

When she finished and turned to face me, she couldn’t meet my eye contact.

“Stand tall, Yvonne. Look at me when I’m talking to you.” I stepped close to cup my palm around one large breast and slide the other hand between her legs. My fingers curled in, groping her crudely. “You’re mine now. I’ve pampered you and let you take advantage of me for years. If you want your pizza, you’ll have to earn it, baby.”

Heat spread across her skin, warming her cheeks and painting her face in the color of her humiliation. “What do you want?” she asked warily in a whisper.

Everything. But the best things came to those who waited, and I had time. First, I tended to her necessary comforts.

“I’ll tell you soon.”

The trickiest bit had been getting a toilet in place. I didn’t have the plumbing know-how to install new sewage lines, so I had looked for alternative methods. The composting toilet looked just like the normal thing and I’d set it up behind a small screen.

I allowed Yvonne to handle her business without staring her down, though I heard her grumbling about the cheap, rough toilet paper. The soft stuff would be another amenity she earned through good behavior.

She returned, appearing far more relaxed. The small bit of respite seemed to calm her nerves, but she still regarded me as a mouse would a cat. That needed to change.

“Feel better?” I asked stroking my hands down from her shoulders to her wrists. “Come here and lie down.”

With a little effort, I guided her down to the blankets. The stiff young woman initially resisted my attempts.

“Lay down, Yvonne. Don’t fight me.”

“I don’t… is there any other way?”

“No,” I replied tersely. I gave her a pillow to rest beneath her head once she lay upon her back. Since she’d ruined my t-shirt with pizza sauce and grease, I tossed it aside and exposed only my torso to her. The sweat pants stayed on.

Yvonne quivered beneath my touch, but I loved the smooth contact with her skin. Eventually, she’d adjust to my hands crawling over her body as I pampered her, but for now, I settled for the way I made her feel in the heat of the moment.

“I’ll do my best not to hurt you, Yvonne. Do you know what a safe word is?”

“Yes.”

“Make one now. I want you to give me a chance here, but if at any point I go too far, if you hate what I’m doing, or if I hurt you, I want you to say your word. I’ll stop and you can eat as promised.” I wasn’t beyond reason. This was coercion, but I’d found a way to receive my fair chance while also placing some choice back in her hands. I had to remain confident that Yvonne would accept me after this.

“A safe word?” She seemed to consider it. The cool air stiffened her nipples, both pink tips standing erect atop her glorious breasts as she lay before me. I didn’t touch them yet despite my desire to explore.

“Yeah.”

“Hockey,” she decided.

I dragged the basement pleasure chest over closer, as I had dubbed the toolbox of sex toys and gadgets in my head. In its bottom shelf, I kept an assortment of bondage-related novelties, in the upper compartment, lubricant and milder toys beneath the narrow metallic purple vibrator. I also purchased a mini vibe with a rubber studded surface on the tip of the finger pad. I inserted my index into it and turned it on.

The cool air and her nerves prickled her skin in gooseflesh. I teased a playful circle around her pink areola and barely skimmed past her erect nipples. She didn’t look at me. Her body reacted to stimulation, but she avoided making eye contact again. Shamed. Utterly at my mercy. But she didn’t speak the safe word.

“By the end of this, I swear, you’ll be begging me to let you come,” I promised her.

My lips touched her throat and felt the speedy rate of her pulse.  Was it arousal or fear of me that brought the skip to her heartbeat?

I gathered her right breast in my left hand and kissed the weighty globe. I treated her body as if she were an altar, bowing reverently above her. In this, I would make her feel like the queen Greg had denied so many times. I took my sweet time, devoting the occasional lick around the puckered skin surrounding her taut nipple, and by the time my lips sealed around stiff flesh, she no longer recoiled from my touch. The buzzing finger vibrator skimmed the other nipple while I coaxed her thighs to part for me. That proved to be the most difficult.

“Open up for me, Yvonne. I won’t hurt you. I’m not Greg. I didn’t bring you here to beat you… or to punish you. Let me make you feel good this time. You’ll have your meal once we’re done.”

Her head finally turned, casting her green eyes toward my face. She searched my features with tear-filled eyes and reluctantly opened her legs. She spread them shyly until I touched her bare skin. A single second of contact with her folds imparted pleasing vibrations - she jolted and gasped out loud in surprise.

Her snatch was wetter than I anticipated. My middle finger glided between her folds with ease, but she remained as tight as I remembered. Greg’s pencil dick hadn’t made a dent in her apparently. I stroked one finger in and out, occasionally flicking my vibe against her aroused clit.

An entirely new kind of tension seemed to overcome Yvonne. A kittenish, soft cry escaped her parted lips, and again, she turned her head to avoid looking at me.

“Touch your tits, Yvonne. Squeeze them,” I snapped at her. She jumped again, flinching, but her hands eventually raised to her breasts. She squeezed a handful of each tit and closed her eyes - I dared to imagine she pictured Greg above her, so I shattered that attempt by lowering down to growl out, “I’m the one planning to fuck you until you scream. Not Greg. Greg’s history; he doesn’t give a fuck about you. Hasn’t even come by to ask about you or where you’ve gone. Your pussy belongs to me now.”

Her sob hitched in her throat, the sound a moan of pleasure blended with angst. I circled her clit again, aware of the tension it drew to her limbs. The way her head tilted back, her eyes flared open, and the tiny pearl victim to my teasing became ripe for taunting with the vibrator. She was so close that her legs shook.