Dark Days (Written Pictures #2) (13 page)

Part 3

The Games Begin

CHAPTER XXX – Readiness

She rolled over in that sumptuous state somewhere on the edge of sleep and immediately regretted it. God it hurt and with a groan, Raven rolled back, wrapping herself tighter in the scratchy sheet. Murphy’s Law dictated that any time she had rolled into the wall, she had rolled right against her damaged shoulder. Clutching it to try to stem the throb, Raven cried out her opinion of her in defiance, “Bitch!” before wincing again and gripping still tighter as if to hold herself together.

It was difficult to get comfortable. Burrowing her head into the flat pillow, she slipped her hand underneath to try to gather what there was of it but the ridge of the thick metal cuff around her wrist soon had her discard that bad idea.

A moan of disapproval passed her lips in her semi-waking state. Raven smoothed a leg lower, searching for a refreshing cold spot in the bed to cool her sweating body on a hot night, while the cuff locked around her ankle snagged and entwined the sheet.

In sleepy frustration, she rolled onto her back, first flailing an arm to beat the useless pillow into shape, then gathering it in a bunch on which to cradle her head. It still throbbed from when it had struck the floor and growling, she pressed the pillow tighter to try to stem the pulses of pain which threatened to fully wake her up.

It was the first time in what seemed like forever that she had been allowed the luxury of a night in a bed though, crude as it was. Another change to routine. Yet try as she might, there was no way to get comfortable. The chain locking ankle to bedpost saw to that and replays of the day churned as she tried to understand just what had happened to her.

She had called Alexei ‘Master’ before but things felt different now. Initially said in desperation, something to tick a box of expectation, now it felt somehow connected to her, somehow real. Raven recalled how she had mentally reached out to him in that fleeting moment when their eyes had met through yellow smoky latex. It was then that she had felt something rise within her even as shame had tried to wash away the last remnants of a persona so carefully constructed.

Raven. It was a name she had gladly adopted, seemingly encapsulating all she aspired to be. Intelligent, sinister, on constant watch. Free to fly at will. It had fit so perfectly and, in due course, had resonated in the world through which she had risen. A name to be shouted, a name to be feared but more than anything, a name to be respected.

Respect. It had been all about respect. As her mind trawled deeper into her past, the pieces of the puzzle slid into place. The usually unshakeable bond between mother and daughter had been shattered but not by her hand – that had been the first displacement of her sense of self-worth. Fragile though it had been, some had lingered on, ever hopeful, ever optimistic. Lingered that is until that day when the man she since tried to forget had walked out with all her possessions and any hope she had left.

Her sleep-slowed mind tiptoed through a minefield of memories, calling up evidence and examining it, before placing it carefully back where it belonged. Raven had been necessary. After all she had had no other choice but to weld a hard shell around her damaged heart.

Now though, here, with him, she wasn’t enough. There was a new way, perhaps even a better way.

He was strong enough for both of them. ‘Strong but vengeful, dangerous and intolerant,’ interjected her voice of reason. Drifting back and forth on the edge of sleep, Raven threw herself over onto her pain-free side, cocooning in the sheet in the process.

A growl escaped her lips, an outward sign of her inner turmoil and she kicked at the clinging sheet only for her ankle to be snapped back by the chain.

His legs appeared beside her in her head as she drifted again. Muscular and tanned, they were the very embodiment of his strength. She was looking up at them. Looking up. The realisation dawned that in her head, she was always looking up. Looking up from her knees, looking up as she hung from the pier, looking up to his antique chair. Her mind wandered closer to the present and she paused with the one time she had looked down. From her perch she had looked down on him and looked into his eyes. Was that significant? Had he placed her high to pour scorn or pore over? That feeling she had had been so real, so intense, so…

A moan passed her cracked lips as she pictured him again, thoughts frozen in that moment when their eyes had met and reached for each other, then fast forwarding to a tender kiss, but it was more dream than memory.

This was not some silly Stockholm Syndrome. It couldn’t be, she was Raven after all. She knew all about the condition. Shit, she had even used it to try to break Katarina. That had shown it was nothing more than a load of psychocrap. After all, Katarina had been the one who had hammered the nails into her crate, readying her for shipment to this incarnation of hell.

What if it
was
real though? What if those endless days had dulled her usual sharpness and warped her reality? Raven had been manufactured. She had been a lifeline. Strong, sassy, sexual and with an overarching sense of self-preservation, Raven had risen inexorably.

But that rise, had it always been doomed to fail? Was she now merely the phoenix floundering as it raised itself clear of the past’s dark flame? Fate’s furnace had forged a hard shell but was it no longer necessary, no longer needed? Was this an inevitable destiny? Was it destiny to find someone who could first match and then outmatch her, showing her a mirror image of what she had become?

She thrashed again, landing this time squarely on the painful reminder that was her shoulder.

“Fuck him, no fucking way,” she cried out loud, as if trying to convince herself. She wasn’t a victim any more. She would show him, them, everyone, that she was still Raven and always would be. And yet as she slipped back into a fitful half sleep, the image of him strode back into her head, muscular legs sliding down to be by her side, drawing a smile across her parched lips as they arrived.

CHAPTER XXXI – Waking Moments

Her shoulder jolted Raven halfway awake again but when she stretched her leg, the ankle chain pulled her up short. She snapped fully back to reality, her keen mind cartwheeling straight into analysis as it always did after a vivid dream.

God she was messed up. All that surety of self had been called into question during a torturous night. Not the classic conflict of good versus evil, it could never be that fucking simple with her could it? Her dreams on this night were more the battles of risk against reward. Past against future.

Normally her dreams sorted things out in their own circuitous way and gave her a launchpad she could push off from to attack the day. Not today though. Day after day of the same routine had been very precisely dripped onto her, offering some bizarre structure to the chaos of her once carefully-ordered world.

Today already felt somehow fresh, almost like a new start and while that held her sense of adventure, it also pricked at her sense of foreboding at the unknown. The unknown was where threats always came from and ever since she had been assaulted by her mother’s meal ticket all those years ago she had tried to make damn sure she anticipated and controlled as much as she could.

Could it really be a new start? The thoughts and images had segued from her dream and still wrestled with the apprehension in her head. She was the same person, or at least the same person as she was yesterday. But then what exactly had she been yesterday?

He was different now. Still Alexei; brutal, wildly dangerous, as the cold blooded shooting of Tomas had more than amply demonstrated, but she had seen more. There was the kiss - at least she thought there was but maybe that was just part of a dream too? She had been allowed a fleeting peek into what lay beneath, hadn’t she? Damnit.

“Stockholm Syndrome, you stupid bitch,” Raven said out loud, rebuking her own wavering. Even as she did though, another, more softly spoken voice within her suggested that perhaps the order of being a slave to him wouldn’t be quite so bad. She didn’t surface often but sometimes her more conservative self did have a point. Her more adventurous side drooled at the thought of something new.

Elegant hands clutched at the thin sheet in utter frustration, balling the cloth within her fists. “Stupid fucking bitch,” Raven growled again, repeating the one thing she still knew for certain.

== ~ ==

If Alexei concentrated hard, he was sure he could still taste her lips on his. Sleepily, his fingers travelled across his mouth, perhaps to trigger more of the memory, perhaps to seal it as his.

He had kissed her to make absolutely sure she was alive hadn’t he? That was how he had since rationalised it, but as his lips had first touched hers he had wavered, shocked by sensations that had instantly electrified his body, before he had exhaled reviving breath into her.

It shouldn’t be like this; it had never been like this before. She was the very embodiment of all he hated and had been acquired as the lightning rod for the storm that was his vengeance. He had taken other sluts. So eager for his attentions, he had broken them apart and discarded the pieces. She was just another in his steady stream of toys. There would be others, he was Alexei and as much as anything else, it was expected of him.

Others. The others he’d had were nothing but girls though. Hair, tits and smiles. Legs, ass and laughter. They had been fucked and if they were lucky, paid off, sold on if they weren’t. Natalia was always so thorough. This one though, this Raven, this American, this one was something new.

She was his pinnacle. She was the single perfect peak to which his ascent had led and his realisation was already growing that there would be nothing to aspire to beyond her. Sure, he would take his vengeance and vent his wrath but that would be more show than self-indulgence. Natalia expected that. Hadn’t she been the one after all to suggest an American first?

It was no longer about just drenching himself in her for the slaking of a long-held thirst for vengeance. It was no longer the cheap thrill of watching a female body try to cope with all he had to inflict. From this one, he would be rewarded with more, much more. Her body was his
bounty. She was his to play with, his to pummel, even his to pamper if the whim took him - he was sure it would. His thoughts and more surged and his imagination flared, but it was the unfamiliarly soft edges to his lust that stopped him dead in his tracks.

== ~ ==

She had never seen him pause before in all her thirty-five years and that scared her. Laying there, scrutinising the expensive cornicing above her bed, Natalia’s concerns stole her sleep.

She idolised her elder brother as any younger sister would. In her eyes, with his imposing stature married to his strong sense of family and purpose, he could do no wrong. She would do anything for him, and had given everything just to be there for him and his ambitions.

Her eyes drifted down the wall to the exquisite, pink doll’s house that was perfectly placed on a white table near her bed. Focussing on it, Natalia inspected the precisely fashioned guttering and trailed her eyes down the downspout before wandering across a ground floor window to the porch-guarded front door.

How many times had she played with that house? How many fantasies had she enacted in there, fantasies she had sacrificed in real life to follow her brother’s ambitions instead?

She had never been with a man because that may risk diluting or deflecting her dedication. In her small house though she had been with many, or rather with one many times. Somehow, she still felt the comfort from the sanctuary of playing with it and looking at it now through reddened eyes, the intricate furnishings she could make out inside reached out to her and gave her solace again.

Stretching out, Natalia ran a finger lovingly over the apex of the whitewashed porch, noticing as she did how bitten down her fingernails were. ‘Not like
hers,’
she sneered, ‘
hers
are perfect. Or at least they had been.’ Natalia smiled with smug satisfaction at how her carefully thought-out program had slowly eroded their captive.

The other one, the one with a cheap tattoo and plastic tits, had been barely looked at. Alexei had a penchant for that look but she was already completely ignored. The black-haired woman represented a danger though, a threat to the order that was her intimately structured world. She had even made her brother pause with that
womanly
body and feline grace, which still managed to sashay right through Natalia’s meticulously choreographed unravelling.

Natalia could feel bile rise in her throat. She had always been by his side. She had sourced the women for him, prepared his sluts and tended to them after he spat them out the other side. She swept up the mess he left and ensured he continued to soar without having to look back.

It had been her idea to give him a strong American woman on which to feast and inflict the poison of his vengeance, fearing it would otherwise fester and eventually hold him back. And so she had hunted, contacting people in dark places, in low places and ultimately in the right places. Following a suggestion, that was how she had found the middleman known simply as ‘The Algerian’.

They say a person can link to anyone else in the world via six degrees of separation but to get to The Algerian, Natalia had only needed four. Contact had been made and later a negotiation concluded. That had been necessary or so she thought, after all, Alexei’s interest in the auctioned woman would only last for so long.

The auctioned woman. Raven. How wrong she had been. With the election coming up, Natalia couldn’t risk providing her brother with local girls anymore – too close to home, too likely to be found out. It had been obvious what needed to be done and, with gentle persuasion and sordid suggestions of what could be enjoyed, Natalia had made sure her dearest brother had secured the woman in an auction that had threatened to spiral the cost toward insanity. He hadn’t paused though, Natalia’s suggestions had made sure he had been thinking with his dick.

Within twenty-four hours, the woman that would lance the unsightly boil of his septic need for vengeance and sate his carnal greed was en route. Two birds with one stone. Tidy. Efficient. Perfect. He would need more though. A pipeline of bitches. How ironic.

With the woman secure, the trusted Tomas had been despatched to search for the Algerian – he was always the hand where Natalia was the head, clinically carrying out her bidding with diligent discretion.

Natalia paused, fingering the minute door of the doll’s house that was her bedrock, while pushing a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. He was dead now and that in itself was just wrong. She had once even thought that Tomas was someone she could be with, eventually of course, once her brother had achieved everything he desired. He did bear a passing resemblance to Alexei after all.

She had tried to flirt with him once but it felt awkward and clumsy. The heels she had worn just for the occasion meant that she spent more time worrying about standing than seducing. At least they had made her brother laugh.

She never tried to repeat that mistake. Tomas had been killed by Alexei but it was the woman’s fault, not his. She had confused her brother with that body and that way of hers. She had caused it as sure as if she had pulled the trigger herself.

Natalia had always been by her brother’s side and there was no way she would allow him to be steered off course by anyone, let alone her
.
Yes, the American woman would have to be watched, possibly warned, and certainly dealt with as necessary when the time came. Drawing one of the tiny dolls to her chest, Natalia closed her eyes - Alexei was still hers, and would remain so.