Puppet On A String (14 page)

      
One look at the man and her eyes opened wide with shock.

      
“Ohmygod!” The breath was practically knocked from her body.

      
Before her stood her handsome Padraig – not the man she expected.

      
“Padraig! Oh, my god!” With her body suddenly functioning again, she jumped into his arms, tears streaming down her cheeks.

      
“Aye, lass, you look like the prettiest rose on the vine.”

      
Then at last, the reality of the man, the muscles, the brawn, the Irish in his voice, and her head began to clear. She finally pulled back enough to see his strong and placid face. Nothing had changed about that. She set her feet back to the floor and pulled him inside the room, closing the door behind them.

      
“How did you know?” she asked.

      
“What? That you were missing…? Christine called me when you didn’t arrive in
Vienna
. I contacted the State department…the last few weeks have been a nightmare…”

      
“Oh, my, how you must have worried!”

      
“Yes. Worried like I have never been in my life.”

      
“But how did you get to
Vienna
?”

      
He laughed. “A plane. I hardly had the wings to fly.”

      
“But, I thought you didn’t have any…you know…money…” she was reluctant to even mention this.

      
“I borrowed the fare from a friend, no worry, my girl. You think when you were missin’, when we thought you were dead that I’d miss the chance to see you are alive an’ well?”

      
“You have no idea?” she shook her head.

      
“You, doan need to say a word,
Shelby
. I’m just here to hold you.”

      
That was what he did for a good long while – simply hold her in his arms until it was clear to her that there was no going back to the brothel, or Jessup or the cruelty of her last months’ captivity.

***

Why did it disturb her that Padraig was there to take her home? Perhaps because there was so little she wanted to tell him about her incarceration. She could sense how much the kind of cruelty she suffered would hurt him. What would he think if she told him she’d fucked dozens of men in a whorehouse, or was brutally whipped, or had been the center of vicious gang rapes? What would an Irish Catholic boy think of that? Worse, what would an Irish Catholic boy think of her response to the work of sadists? Could he even fathom that, being a natural masochist – something of which he was unaware – that she could walk away relatively unscathed by the rough treatment?

      
No,
unscathed
was not exactly the word to describe her response to her ordeal. She’d been brutally abused, her body marked; her pussy had seen too many cocks, and what’s to say those cocks were clean and she wasn’t taking home some sexual disease? The doctors seemed to think that she was fine. But what about her soul? Had they been able to inspect that, would they have seen the wounds there? So what if she’d been an unknowing party to the take down of a massive slave and porn ring. Small comfort that was, when the tight hold on her psyche that kept her emotions in check finally began to give way. The real truth of her mortal fright surfaced, disturbing any sense of peace she’d managed to cling to. Even as bad as it was with the man who’d trained her at nineteen to be a submissive sex slave, she’d never felt so unsafe and insane as she had been in Col. Jessup’s detention facility. She had been condemned by her own desires at the same time she was saved by them.

      
Even so, this shouldn’t have happened. No, it
should not
have happened. Not to her or any woman.

      
And she couldn’t tell her dear, sweet Padraig
Finnian
any of it. The man just wouldn’t understand.

      
Shelby
had hoped that before she left
Vienna
, she might have some time to herself, time to put the pieces of her life back together. Maybe then, when she returned home, she might go about her life as a coffeehouse waitress, and
Padraig’s
fresh-faced girlfriend. She’d let time handle the rest.

      
But she didn’t have the luxury of time. Her worlds – the masochistic one and the normal Shelby Ryan world – had suddenly collided in a hotel room in
Vienna
. The sex slave Shelby was no where near restrained as she should be. Not back in her box, not safe inside that sheltered place inside her psyche. She was not back to normal, not yet the pleasant young woman she always appeared to be in Padraig Finnian’s company. Nothing could have been more comforting than having Padraig there to hold, and nothing could have been more unsettling.

***

That first night, they ate in a pleasant restaurant, sipping wine and enjoying divine food.
Padraig’s
treat.

      
“You must be holding out on me,”
Shelby
declared, suspiciously. “This is going to cost a fortune.”

      
“So what if it does? It’s money well spent, lass. I imagine that you didn’t get food like this when you were…” he did not want to finish the statement. His head was bowed and cocked to the side, his eyes peering up at her, smoldering, sexy and sincere.

      
“No, I didn’t get food like this.” The silence that followed became uncomfortable. “You want to know about it, don’t you?”

      
“Not if you don’t want to tell me, I don’t. You tell me you want to put it in your past and walk away, I ‘ave no problem with that. I just doan want it troubling you.”

      
“Padraig, I can’t talk about it. I can’t. Not now. Maybe sometime. But not now… It’s just too fresh, too vivid, too awful to think about. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I mean, you have the gist of it…but the emotion is a raw wound. It’ll take some sorting out, some distance. I’ll have it handled, I know I will. Then maybe…”

      
He nodded, pacified enough, at least for the moment. “All right,” he said, although he seemed to be inspecting her the way men had been inspecting her for weeks, as if he was trying to crack open her skull and pick out a piece of her brain where her memories lay unguarded. How far he got, she could not be certain. What he surmised on his own from what he’d been told, she had no idea. But this terrain was too dangerous and she too vulnerable to walk down those precarious roads without some perspective. Only time would give her that.

Back in the hotel room,
Shelby
was tense and edgy. Maybe it was the room, the Petit Maison with its gold and gilt and fancy linens, and the fact that Padraig was a common working man with simple tastes that made him look so out of place inside this luxury
 
The two didn’t mix. If she’d been home it would have been easier to handle her boyfriend’s presence and find the intimate place they often shared. Only a few short weeks before there’d been no trouble connecting. In fact, they’d been separated for months at a time, and could still find their way back into each other’s arms. The sexual bond between them had seemed to heal whatever pulled them apart, always strong, never shaken.

      
Yes, the sex always came back first.

      
Until now. There was more awkwardness than erotic feelings between them in the
Vienna
hotel room. Once she kicked off her shoes and motioned her boyfriend to the couch, she stared around the room, nervously. She was grateful to be staying in a two room suite where the bed was safely behind the bedroom door. No unspoken sexual messages that way.

      
“Would you like another glass of wine?” she asked.

      
“Rather have a beer,” he answered.

      
“Sure.” She looked through the small wet bar, and pulled out a German brew. Not his Guinness, but it would be better than wine. She held it up for him to see.

      
“Why not?”

      
His cool reserve was killing her. The way he looked at her with the square jaw, insightful eyes – his presence more enigmatic than ever. Was he speculating about her incarceration? Searching for clues, picking her brain again with unseen fingers? Maybe she should just have told him everything – but she couldn’t bear to talk about Jessup, the sleazy guards, Madame Pavlenco and the rest…

      
“I’m taking you home tomorrow,” he finally broke another awkward silence with the bold announcement.

      
“That’s good,” she said, settling down in the chair opposite. “I want to be home. I want to be in my own bed.” She sighed heavily, then tentatively took a sip of wine. “But maybe you want to stay here and see the sights? It’s a beautiful city—”

      
“I’ve seen enough. I want you home not here. This place gives me the creeps.” He quickly scanned the frilly femininity of the room, then downed half the beer and slammed the bottle on the coffee table a little harder than he’d planned.

      
“Me too,”
Shelby
said with a nervous laugh.

      
She could feel a simmering fire in her belly warm her as she continued to drink the rich merlot. But too much in one night and suddenly it began to sour her stomach. Her head began to ache. She set the glass aside and popped up from her seat, too anxious with him just staring at her waiting.

      
“Maybe we should see if there’s a soccer match?” she said.

      
She turned toward the TV, but he stopped her. “Maybe you should come sit with me?”

      
His words sounded more like a command than a suggestion. Not unlike
Padraig’s
direct style, but the bravado seemed a little strong even for him. Then again, maybe she was unjustly thinking of her brutal masters – seeing their rough commands as his too. Padraig didn’t give orders, and yet, she felt compelled to obey him. How little time it took to revive the habit Mr. Darcy had trained in her; taking orders had become second nature again. The practice was comfortable, safe, even with Padraig.

      
Sitting next to him on the couch, his arm immediately went around her. The snug feeling was significant, even his familiar scent welcomed her inside his space. This was not half as difficult as she thought it might be; all the small things she loved about him were still in place. Who’s to say that recent memories had to prevent her from being close? That her weeks of captivity had to still clutch at her harshly? She relaxed back and for a moment pretended to be Shelby, just Shelby,
Padraig’s
Shelby.

      
And when he sat up and turned around to look her in the eye, the connection between them she once enjoyed came back, shaky at first, but still there.

      
As if determined to wipe away that recent ugly past, he leaned in and kissed her hard against the mouth, then immediately pulled back.

      
“If I come on to you too strongly, it’s because I want you back with me so badly. If those bastards hurt you, I would tear them apart if I could get to them. I never should have let you go.”

      
“Let me go? You had no idea. This is not your fault!”

      
“That cannot stop me from feeling that way.”

      
He kissed her on the mouth again, then swiftly had the buttons on her blouse opened, his lips and tongue making their way to her breasts, devouring her in a way that shocked her system back to life. Each nipple turned hard and throbbing inside his mouth and her soft flesh proved as malleable as ever.

      
“What’s this?” he sat back and stared at the small tattoo, the JPX7.

      
She looked in his eyes, almost afraid to speak. “They had no plans to let me go, Padraig. I was to be sold.”

      
His eyes steamed with anger. She thought he wanted to rip the tattoo from her body.

      
“I’m going to have it removed soon as we get back.” Her eyes were tearing, as she wondered if this explanation would satisfy him. Did he wonder the unthinkable: how many hands, how many men, how many cocks had made use of her?

      
But then, Padraig suddenly seemed to calm and his face broke out in a smile. He was remembering to be gentle and non-threatening, and she could almost see his brain working toward that end. “It matters nothing to me. I swear to you, it does not.”

      
He continued his kissing, covering each breast with his lips and then moving down her torso, stripping away her skirt and arriving at the fragrant love nest between her thighs. He suckled her there, bringing back feelings of old, a raw, steamy almost angry arousal rising to the surface in them both. When they changed positions so he could have her crotch more easily,
Shelby
lay back savoring his loving attention as he devoured her body with a force quite unlike his past sexual performance. She grabbed his head and held on, loving him for his constant ways, his steady determination, the way he skimmed over the truth of her incarceration, ignoring what would have been impossible for most men.

      
If he could forget all that now, so would she.

      
“I need you inside me, Padraig,” she murmured, clutching him more fiercely than ever.

      
“As if I wouldn’t.” He came up for air with a wry smile.

      
“You are so very good. So very good to me.”