Claim Me (27 page)

A
uthor’s Note
:
Twist Me
is a dark erotic trilogy about Nora and Julian Esguerra. All three books are now available.

I
t’s evening now
. With every minute that passes, I’m starting to get more and more anxious at the thought of seeing my captor again.

The novel that I’ve been reading can no longer hold my interest. I put it down and walk in circles around the room.

I am dressed in the clothes Beth had given me earlier. It’s not what I would’ve chosen to wear, but it’s better than a bathrobe. A sexy pair of white lacy panties and a matching bra for underwear. A pretty blue sundress that buttons in the front. Everything fits me suspiciously well. Has he been stalking me for a while? Learning everything about me, including my clothing size?

The thought makes me sick.

I am trying not to think about what’s to come, but it’s impossible. I don’t know why I’m so sure he’ll come to me tonight. It’s possible he has an entire harem of women stashed away on this island, and he visits each one only once a week, like sultans used to do.

Yet somehow I know he’ll be here soon. Last night had simply whetted his appetite. I know he’s not done with me, not by a long shot.

Finally, the door opens.

He walks in like he owns the place. Which, of course, he does.

I am again struck by his masculine beauty. He could’ve been a model or a movie star, with a face like his. If there was any fairness in the world, he would’ve been short or had some other imperfection to offset that face.

But he doesn’t. His body is tall and muscular, perfectly proportioned. I remember what it feels like to have him inside me, and I feel an unwelcome jolt of arousal.

He’s again wearing jeans and a T-shirt. A gray one this time. He seems to favor simple clothing, and he’s smart to do so. His looks don’t need any enhancement.

He smiles at me. It’s his fallen angel smile—dark and seductive at the same time. “Hello, Nora.”

I don’t know what to say to him, so I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. “How long are you going to keep me here?”

He cocks his head slightly to the side. “Here in the room? Or on the island?”

“Both.”

“Beth will show you around tomorrow, take you swimming if you’d like,” he says, approaching me. “You won’t be locked in, unless you do something foolish.”

“Such as?” I ask, my heart pounding in my chest as he stops next to me and lifts his hand to stroke my hair.

“Trying to harm Beth or yourself.” His voice is soft, his gaze hypnotic as he looks down at me. The way he’s touching my hair is oddly relaxing.

I blink, trying to break his spell. “And what about on the island? How long will you keep me here?”

His hand caresses my face, curves around my cheek. I catch myself leaning into his touch, like a cat getting petted, and I immediately stiffen.

His lips curl into a knowing smile. The bastard knows the effect he has on me. “A long time, I hope,” he says.

For some reason, I’m not surprised. He wouldn’t have bothered bringing me all the way here if he just wanted to fuck me a few times. I’m terrified, but I’m not surprised.

I gather my courage and ask the next logical question. “Why did you kidnap me?”

The smile leaves his face. He doesn’t answer, just looks at me with an inscrutable blue gaze.

I begin to shake. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No, Nora, I won’t kill you.”

His denial reassures me, although he could obviously be lying.

“Are you going to sell me?” I can barely get the words out. “Like to be a prostitute or something?”

“No,” he says softly. “Never. You’re mine and mine alone.”

I feel a tiny bit calmer, but there is one more thing I have to know. “Are you going to hurt me?”

For a moment, he doesn’t answer again. Something dark briefly flashes in his eyes. “Probably,” he says quietly.

And then he leans down and kisses me, his warm lips soft and gentle on mine.

For a second, I stand there frozen, unresponsive. I believe him. I know he’s telling the truth when he says he’ll hurt me. There’s something in him that scares me—that has scared me from the very beginning.

He’s nothing like the boys I’ve gone on dates with. He’s capable of anything.

And I’m completely at his mercy.

I think about trying to fight him again. That would be the normal thing to do in my situation. The brave thing to do.

And yet I don’t do it.

I can feel the darkness inside him. There’s something wrong with him. His outer beauty hides something monstrous underneath.

I don’t want to unleash that darkness. I don’t know what will happen if I do.

So I stand still in his embrace and let him kiss me. And when he picks me up again and takes me to bed, I don’t try to resist in any way.

Instead, I close my eyes and give in to the sensations.

A
ll three books
in the
Twist Me
trilogy are now available (click
HERE
). Please visit my website at
www.annazaires.com
to learn more and to sign up for my new release email list.

A
uthor’s Note
:
Close Liaisons
is the first book in my erotic sci-fi romance trilogy, the Krinar Chronicles. While not as dark as
Twist Me
and
Capture Me
, it does have some elements that readers of dark erotica may enjoy.

B
reathe
, Mia, breathe
. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small rational voice kept repeating those words. That same oddly objective part of her noted his symmetric face structure, with golden skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones and a firm jaw. Pictures and videos of Ks that she’d seen had hardly done them justice. Standing no more than thirty feet away, the creature was simply stunning.

As she continued staring at him, still frozen in place, he straightened and began walking toward her. Or rather stalking toward her, she thought stupidly, as his every movement reminded her of a jungle cat sinuously approaching a gazelle. All the while, his eyes never left hers. As he approached, she could make out individual yellow flecks in his light golden eyes and the thick long lashes surrounding them.

She watched in horrified disbelief as he sat down on her bench, less than two feet away from her, and smiled, showing white even teeth. No fangs, she noted with some functioning part of her brain. Not even a hint of them. That used to be another myth about them, like their supposed abhorrence of the sun.

“What’s your name?” The creature practically purred the question at her. His voice was low and smooth, completely unaccented. His nostrils flared slightly, as though inhaling her scent.

“Um...” Mia swallowed nervously. “M-Mia.”

“Mia,” he repeated slowly, seemingly savoring her name. “Mia what?”

“Mia Stalis.” Oh crap, why did he want to know her name? Why was he here, talking to her? In general, what was he doing in Central Park, so far away from any of the K Centers?
Breathe, Mia, breathe.

“Relax, Mia Stalis.” His smile got wider, exposing a dimple in his left cheek. A dimple? Ks had dimples? “Have you never encountered one of us before?”

“No, I haven’t.” Mia exhaled sharply, realizing that she was holding her breath. She was proud that her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. Should she ask? Did she want to know?

She gathered her courage. “What, um—” Another swallow. “What do you want from me?”

“For now, conversation.” He looked like he was about to laugh at her, those gold eyes crinkling slightly at the corners.

Strangely, that pissed her off enough to take the edge off her fear. If there was anything Mia hated, it was being laughed at. With her short, skinny stature and a general lack of social skills that came from an awkward teenage phase involving every girl’s nightmare of braces, frizzy hair, and glasses, Mia had more than enough experience being the butt of someone’s joke.

She lifted her chin belligerently. “Okay, then, what is
your
name?”

“It’s Korum.”

“Just Korum?”

“We don’t really have last names, not the way you do. My full name is much longer, but you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it if I told you.”

Okay, that was interesting. She now remembered reading something like that in
The New York Times
. So far, so good. Her legs had nearly stopped shaking, and her breathing was returning to normal. Maybe, just maybe, she would get out of this alive. This conversation business seemed safe enough, although the way he kept staring at her with those unblinking yellowish eyes was unnerving. She decided to keep him talking.

“What are you doing here, Korum?”

“I just told you, making conversation with you, Mia.” His voice again held a hint of laughter.

Frustrated, Mia blew out her breath. “I meant, what are you doing here in Central Park? In New York City in general?”

He smiled again, cocking his head slightly to the side. “Maybe I’m hoping to meet a pretty curly-haired girl.”

Okay, enough was enough. He was clearly toying with her. Now that she could think a little again, she realized that they were in the middle of Central Park, in full view of about a gazillion spectators. She surreptitiously glanced around to confirm that. Yep, sure enough, although people were obviously steering clear of her bench and its otherworldly occupant, there were a number of brave souls staring their way from farther up the path. A couple were even cautiously filming them with their wristwatch cameras. If the K tried anything with her, it would be on YouTube in the blink of an eye, and he had to know it. Of course, he may or may not care about that.

Still, going on the assumption that since she’d never come across any videos of K assaults on college students in the middle of Central Park, she was relatively safe, Mia cautiously reached for her laptop and lifted it to stuff it back into her backpack.

“Let me help you with that, Mia—”

And before she could blink, she felt him take her heavy laptop from her suddenly boneless fingers, gently brushing against her knuckles in the process. A sensation similar to a mild electric shock shot through Mia at his touch, leaving her nerve endings tingling in its wake.

Reaching for her backpack, he carefully put away the laptop in a smooth, sinuous motion. “There you go, all better now.”

Oh God, he had touched her. Maybe her theory about the safety of public locations was bogus. She felt her breathing speeding up again, and her heart rate was probably well into the anaerobic zone at this point.

“I have to go now... Bye!”

How she managed to squeeze out those words without hyperventilating, she would never know. Grabbing the strap of the backpack he’d just put down, she jumped to her feet, noting somewhere in the back of her mind that her earlier paralysis seemed to be gone.

“Bye, Mia. I will see you later.” His softly mocking voice carried in the clear spring air as she took off, nearly running in her haste to get away.

I
f you’d
like to find out more, please visit my website at
www.annazaires.com
. All three books in the Krinar Chronicles trilogy are now available. Please click
HERE
to get your copy.

S
ometimes I think
I’m crazy. I’m sitting at a casino table in Atlantic City, and everyone around me is motionless. I call this the
Quiet
, as though giving it a name makes it seem more real—as though giving it a name changes the fact that all the players around me are frozen like statues, and I’m walking among them, looking at the cards they’ve been dealt.

The problem with the theory of my being crazy is that when I ‘unfreeze’ the world, as I just have, the cards the players turn over are the same ones I just saw in the Quiet. If I were crazy, wouldn’t these cards be different? Unless I’m so far gone that I’m imagining the cards on the table, too.

But then I also win. If that’s a delusion—if the pile of chips on my side of the table is a delusion—then I might as well question everything. Maybe my name isn’t even Darren.

No. I can’t think that way. If I’m really that confused, I don’t want to snap out of it—because if I do, I’ll probably wake up in a mental hospital.

Besides, I love my life, crazy and all.

My shrink thinks the Quiet is an inventive way I describe the ‘inner workings of my genius.’ Now that sounds crazy to me. She also might want me, but that’s beside the point. Suffice it to say, she’s as far as it gets from my datable age range, which is currently right around twenty-four. Still young, still hot, but done with school and pretty much beyond the clubbing phase. I hate clubbing, almost as much as I hated studying. In any case, my shrink’s explanation doesn’t work, as it doesn’t account for the way I know things even a genius wouldn’t know—like the exact value and suit of the other players’ cards.

I watch as the dealer begins a new round. Besides me, there are three players at the table: Grandma, the Cowboy, and the Professional, as I call them. I feel that now almost-imperceptible fear that accompanies the phasing. That’s what I call the process: phasing into the Quiet. Worrying about my sanity has always facilitated phasing; fear seems helpful in this process.

I phase in, and everything gets quiet. Hence the name for this state.

It’s eerie to me, even now. Outside the Quiet, this casino is very loud: drunk people talking, slot machines, ringing of wins, music—the only place louder is a club or a concert. And yet, right at this moment, I could probably hear a pin drop. It’s like I’ve gone deaf to the chaos that surrounds me.

Having so many frozen people around adds to the strangeness of it all. Here is a waitress stopped mid-step, carrying a tray with drinks. There is a woman about to pull a slot machine lever. At my own table, the dealer’s hand is raised, the last card he dealt hanging unnaturally in midair. I walk up to him from the side of the table and reach for it. It’s a king, meant for the Professional. Once I let the card go, it falls on the table rather than continuing to float as before—but I know full well that it will be back in the air, in the exact position it was when I grabbed it, when I phase out.

The Professional looks like someone who makes money playing poker, or at least the way I always imagined someone like that might look. Scruffy, shades on, a little sketchy-looking. He’s been doing an excellent job with the poker face—basically not twitching a single muscle throughout the game. His face is so expressionless that I wonder if he might’ve gotten Botox to help maintain such a stony countenance. His hand is on the table, protectively covering the cards dealt to him.

I move his limp hand away. It feels normal. Well, in a manner of speaking. The hand is sweaty and hairy, so moving it aside is unpleasant and is admittedly an abnormal thing to do. The normal part is that the hand is warm, rather than cold. When I was a kid, I expected people to feel cold in the Quiet, like stone statues.

With the Professional’s hand moved away, I pick up his cards. Combined with the king that was hanging in the air, he has a nice high pair. Good to know.

I walk over to Grandma. She’s already holding her cards, and she has fanned them nicely for me. I’m able to avoid touching her wrinkled, spotted hands. This is a relief, as I’ve recently become conflicted about touching people—or, more specifically, women—in the Quiet. If I had to, I would rationalize touching Grandma’s hand as harmless, or at least not creepy, but it’s better to avoid it if possible.

In any case, she has a low pair. I feel bad for her. She’s been losing a lot tonight. Her chips are dwindling. Her losses are due, at least partially, to the fact that she has a terrible poker face. Even before looking at her cards, I knew they wouldn’t be good because I could tell she was disappointed as soon as her hand was dealt. I also caught a gleeful gleam in her eyes a few rounds ago when she had a winning three of a kind.

This whole game of poker is, to a large degree, an exercise in reading people—something I really want to get better at. At my job, I’ve been told I’m great at reading people. I’m not, though; I’m just good at using the Quiet to make it seem like I am. I do want to learn how to read people for real, though. It would be nice to know what everyone is thinking.

What I don’t care that much about in this poker game is money. I do well enough financially to not have to depend on hitting it big gambling. I don’t care if I win or lose, though quintupling my money back at the blackjack table was fun. This whole trip has been more about going gambling because I finally can, being twenty-one and all. I was never into fake IDs, so this is an actual milestone for me.

Leaving Grandma alone, I move on to the next player—the Cowboy. I can’t resist taking off his straw hat and trying it on. I wonder if it’s possible for me to get lice this way. Since I’ve never been able to bring back any inanimate objects from the Quiet, nor otherwise affect the real world in any lasting way, I figure I won’t be able to get any living critters to come back with me, either.

Dropping the hat, I look at his cards. He has a pair of aces—a better hand than the Professional. Maybe the Cowboy is a professional, too. He has a good poker face, as far as I can tell. It’ll be interesting to watch those two in this round.

Next, I walk up to the deck and look at the top cards, memorizing them. I’m not leaving anything to chance.

When my task in the Quiet is complete, I walk back to myself. Oh, yes, did I mention that I see myself sitting there, frozen like the rest of them? That’s the weirdest part. It’s like having an out-of-body experience.

Approaching my frozen self, I look at him. I usually avoid doing this, as it’s too unsettling. No amount of looking in the mirror—or seeing videos of yourself on YouTube—can prepare you for viewing your own three-dimensional body up close. It’s not something anyone is meant to experience. Well, aside from identical twins, I guess.

It’s hard to believe that this person is me. He looks more like some random guy. Well, maybe a bit better than that. I do find this guy interesting. He looks cool. He looks smart. I think women would probably consider him good-looking, though I know that’s not a modest thing to think.

It’s not like I’m an expert at gauging how attractive a guy is, but some things are common sense. I can tell when a dude is ugly, and this frozen me is not. I also know that generally, being good-looking requires a symmetrical face, and the statue of me has that. A strong jaw doesn’t hurt, either. Check. Having broad shoulders is a positive, and being tall really helps. All covered. I have blue eyes—that seems to be a plus. Girls have told me they like my eyes, though right now, on the frozen me, the eyes look creepy—glassy. They look like the eyes of a lifeless wax figure.

Realizing that I’m dwelling on this subject way too long, I shake my head. I can just picture my shrink analyzing this moment. Who would imagine admiring themselves like this as part of their mental illness? I can just picture her scribbling down
Narcissist
, underlining it for emphasis.

Enough. I need to leave the Quiet. Raising my hand, I touch my frozen self on the forehead, and I hear noise again as I phase out.

Everything is back to normal.

The card that I looked at a moment before—the king that I left on the table—is in the air again, and from there it follows the trajectory it was always meant to, landing near the Professional’s hands. Grandma is still eyeing her fanned cards in disappointment, and the Cowboy has his hat on again, though I took it off him in the Quiet. Everything is exactly as it was.

On some level, my brain never ceases to be surprised at the discontinuity of the experience in the Quiet and outside it. As humans, we’re hardwired to question reality when such things happen. When I was trying to outwit my shrink early on in my therapy, I once read an entire psychology textbook during our session. She, of course, didn’t notice it, as I did it in the Quiet. The book talked about how babies as young as two months old are surprised if they see something out of the ordinary, like gravity appearing to work backwards. It’s no wonder my brain has trouble adapting. Until I was ten, the world behaved normally, but everything has been weird since then, to put it mildly.

Glancing down, I realize I’m holding three of a kind. Next time, I’ll look at my cards before phasing. If I have something this strong, I might take my chances and play fair.

The game unfolds predictably because I know everybody’s cards. At the end, Grandma gets up. She’s clearly lost enough money.

And that’s when I see the girl for the first time.

She’s hot. My friend Bert at work claims that I have a ‘type,’ but I reject that idea. I don’t like to think of myself as shallow or predictable. But I might actually be a bit of both, because this girl fits Bert’s description of my type to a T. And my reaction is extreme interest, to say the least.

Large blue eyes. Well-defined cheekbones on a slender face, with a hint of something exotic. Long, shapely legs, like those of a dancer. Dark wavy hair in a ponytail—a hairstyle that I like. And without bangs—even better. I hate bangs—not sure why girls do that to themselves. Though lack of bangs is not, strictly speaking, in Bert’s description of my type, it probably should be.

I continue staring at her. With her high heels and tight skirt, she’s overdressed for this place. Or maybe I’m underdressed in my jeans and t-shirt. Either way, I don’t care. I have to try to talk to her.

I debate phasing into the Quiet and approaching her, so I can do something creepy like stare at her up close, or maybe even snoop in her pockets. Anything to help me when I talk to her.

I decide against it, which is probably the first time that’s ever happened.

I know that my reasoning for breaking my usual habit—if you can even call it that—is strange. I picture the following chain of events: she agrees to date me, we go out for a while, we get serious, and because of the deep connection we have, I come clean about the Quiet. She learns I did something creepy and has a fit, then dumps me. It’s ridiculous to think this, of course, considering that we haven’t even spoken yet. Talk about jumping the gun. She might have an IQ below seventy, or the personality of a piece of wood. There can be twenty different reasons why I wouldn’t want to date her. And besides, it’s not all up to me. She might tell me to go fuck myself as soon as I try to talk to her.

Still, working at a hedge fund has taught me to hedge. As crazy as that reasoning is, I stick with my decision not to phase because I know it’s the gentlemanly thing to do. In keeping with this unusually chivalrous me, I also decide not to cheat at this round of poker.

As the cards are dealt again, I reflect on how good it feels to have done the honorable thing—even without anyone knowing. Maybe I should try to respect people’s privacy more often. As soon as I think this, I mentally snort.
Yeah, right.
I have to be realistic. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I’d followed that advice. In fact, if I made a habit of respecting people’s privacy, I would lose my job within days—and with it, a lot of the comforts I’ve become accustomed to.

Copying the Professional’s move, I cover my cards with my hand as soon as I receive them. I’m about to sneak a peek at what I was dealt when something unusual happens.

The world goes quiet, just like it does when I phase in… but I did nothing this time.

And at that moment, I see
her
—the girl sitting across the table from me, the girl I was just thinking about. She’s standing next to me, pulling her hand away from mine. Or, strictly speaking, from my frozen self’s hand—as I’m standing a little to the side looking at her.

She’s also still sitting in front of me at the table, a frozen statue like all the others.

My mind goes into overdrive as my heartbeat jumps. I don’t even consider the possibility of that second girl being a twin sister or something like that. I know it’s her. She’s doing what I did just a few minutes ago. She’s walking in the Quiet. The world around us is frozen, but we are not.

A horrified look crosses her face as she realizes the same thing. Before I can react, she lunges across the table and touches her own forehead.

The world becomes normal again.

She stares at me from across the table, shocked, her eyes huge and her face pale. Her hands tremble as she rises to her feet. Without so much as a word, she turns and begins walking away, then breaks into a run a couple of seconds later.