I could hear the fan was on, which might have been why he felt safe making sounds. If I hadn’t been awake, I wouldn’t have heard him. Forcing bravery I didn’t really feel, I pressed on the latch to open the door. I gripped the latch in my fist until sweat seemed to squeeze between my fingers. The shower was to the left of the door, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to see without opening it fully and making my presence known, but there was a mirror to the right where I might be able to see his reflection. I could only pray he wasn’t directly facing the door or mirror.

The door opened, just a crack, barely enough to get a finger through, but my heart felt crammed into my throat for those breathless seconds. I waited, hoping not to hear him yell at me or make a startled sound. I heard his heavy breathing and those same groaning sounds from before, accompanied by a wet staccato rhythm. I knelt on the floor, not trusting my legs to support me as I pressed my cheek flush with the door and peeked inside. The room was steamy and it aggravated me to no end. I waited while some of it cleared, but all I could see was a shape in the mirror.

I dared to open the door a little wider, my adrenaline pumping through me in proportionate degrees to the opening in front of me. More steam drifted out of the room and settled on my face and neck, dripping like sweat into the well of my breasts before being absorbed by my shirt. The mirror was much clearer and finally, I could make out the image in the shower.

I gasped, but Caleb didn’t hear me. I was sure he couldn’t. He was much too absorbed in what he was doing alone in the shower, only a few feet away from my prying eyes. I should have felt embarrassed or guilty but there was no way I could feel those things. All I could feel was the throbbing between my legs and the sharp pang of lust that punched me in the belly. He was fucking…perfect. Sooo fucking perfect.

He was facing the shower so I could only see him in profile. His skin was pink and white from the intensity of the water. One arm was braced against the wall, his long legs spread for balance as his head dipped toward his chest and he panted. His other arm was rigid; the muscles tense while his large hand held his enormous erection in his hand. I swallowed hard and licked steam from my lips.

The head was thick and a deep dusky pink as it slipped through his fist. His shaft got thicker toward the base, until his fingers had to grip hard to keep him contained. I remembered his weight in hand.

He didn’t shuttle his hand up and down the length of it. He rocked his hips into his fist, making the well-muscled globes of his ass hollow on each side as he thrust forward, his large, heavy-looking balls swaying between his splayed legs in a fluent rhythm. His cock was the arrow and his fist, the quiver.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away, didn’t even try. I wondered how much come he held inside those large balls and if he’d given me all of it when he’d come in my hand and on my breasts. I thought about the only time he’d been inside me and I could remember the sound of them slapping against the wet flesh of my pussy as he held me bent over and drove his meaty cock into me. The throbbing between my legs was intense. My own thoughts had me panting and wet. My thoughts were dirty and sexy and they flooded my body with every sensation imaginable.

“Make him love you,” Ruthless Me, whispered. “Make it so he can’t live without you.”

“I can’t,” I whispered back. “I tried. He said my attempts are laughable. He doesn’t care.”

“He will.”

“Uh…mmm…come on.” Caleb’s eyes were shut tight; his beautiful mouth open and the sexiest sounds I’d heard in my life were coming out of him. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if it could be me. Could I be the one driving him toward this frenzied display of lust?

“Yessssss,” Ruthless Me shuddered.

My nipples were tight and painful, scraping against the suddenly rough fabric of my shirt. I wanted to take them out. I wanted to touch them against something cool. I pressed my body against the door, rubbing them against the hard wood as I continued to watch Caleb in all of his masculine and somehow vulnerable glory.

I leaned back and pressed the palm of my hand against my mound rubbing in tiny circles I feared wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go nearly quick enough. I didn’t want to get lost in my pleasure. I wanted to watch Caleb. I wanted to see him come. The thought made me press against my clit even harder, the circles smaller, tighter and faster. I felt a flutter in my belly, then a warm tingle spread from my spine out to all my limbs until finally I felt my pussy clench tight, then release and clench again. I let out a small cry before I sucked in my lips and bit down on them to keep in any other sounds. It hardly sated me. It was a sneeze compared to how Caleb made me come, but it was enough to force my focus toward Caleb.

His hips were thrusting faster, the cheeks of his ass flexing up and down as he put real effort into reaching his climax. He leaned his body forward resting his forehead against his forearm as he gritted his teeth and pumped that monstrous thing he called a cock back and forth through his wet fist. Rivulets of water fell from all over his gorgeous body and I was suddenly so thirsty. I wanted to kneel at his feet and lick water off of him, especially his impressive cock. I wanted to lick water off of it and suck it.

I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do when he let out a grunt, followed by a painful whine as ropes of thick semen burst out of his dick and covered his large hand before dripping down toward those heavy balls and eventually the shower floor. It was a lot of come and yet his balls didn’t seem any smaller.

Caleb was panting hard, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort. His beautiful face was red with exertion, but if possible, it made him look even more handsome. I wanted to continue to admire him, but doing so felt like a betrayal – of me. The facts were still the facts. He didn’t really care about me. He was using me.

My passion was quickly cooling and finally, I slowly shut the door and crept back into bed to nurse more than my physical injuries.

Sometime later I heard the bathroom door open and the soft scrape of Caleb’s feet against the carpet as he made his way toward the bed. I felt the bed dip as he got between the covers, making sure no part of him touched any part of me.

“I woke up and you weren’t here,” I whispered, with my back toward him. I knew he tensed, but I can’t say how, perhaps it was the air between us that was tense.

“Have you been up long?”

“No, just a few minutes.” I felt him relax into the mattress.

“Another nightmare?”

“Yes,” I lied, but felt completely justified as his warm chest, covered in soft cotton, met with my back and his fingers, the ones covered in his semen only minutes before, traced along my arm to soothe me. A vision of his powerful, sleek body straining toward orgasm made its way into my mind’s eye. His fingers were long, influential and still damp as they charted their course along my flesh, leaving me tingling in their wake. I touched his skin. “You’re wet.”

He sighed heavily, “I’m sorry Kitten. I needed another shower.” His voice was low, dopey with fatigue, but sincere nonetheless. One mention of the word shower and my throat was dry thinking of all the water sluicing off his perfect body and from that beautiful organ. I wondered what he would taste like.

“It’s okay.” I whispered. My throat was hoarse.

“Anything I can do to make you feel better?” All sorts of answers flitted around in my lust filled head. It was tempting to fall back on reliable tactics and pretend things were…perfect. To pretend he was only a boy and I was only a girl and we desired each other. I wanted him to hold and kiss me and pretend he would do anything to protect me. I wanted to pretend he felt a fraction of the things I couldn’t seem to stop myself from feeling for him.

My heart hurt. As much as my shoulder and ribs screamed with pain, they were eclipsed by the sorrow in my heart. I couldn’t pretend anymore. The time for it had passed; there was only the reality of things left to deal with.

“Yes, Master,” I tried not to sob, “There’s so much you can do to make me feel better.” His body pressed deeper into mine and for a moment I just let him be close. “You could not sell me… I could stay with you… be with you?” Caleb gripped me tight, not because he wanted to hurt me, but because I’d shocked the hell out of him. I’d shocked myself, too, but I’d been through too much not to just tell shit the way it was. He swallowed audibly, fingers tentative, as they loosened their hold.

“Kitten…” his forehead pressed hard against the nape of my neck, “you ask for impossible things.” I wanted to ask which parts were impossible, but I knew the answer. He couldn’t let go of his revenge, but he could let go of me.

Chapter Six

Matthew tried very hard to concentrate on the computer screen in front of him, but as he typed, his mind couldn’t help but wander off. Olivia Ruiz was most certainly suffering from Stockholm’s Syndrome, pining over her lost lover, her kidnapper and abuser. Matthew didn’t care for abusers – not one little bit. They were all the same. His mother used to try and apologize for beating him by taking him to the park. The best abusers could make you believe they felt guilty for what they’d done, right up until you got in their way.

Still, he would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, Olivia’s storytelling abilities were quite…compelling. For four hours he’d listened to her talk about her relationship with Caleb and he’d watched as her cheeks had colored and her skin flushed with what he knew was arousal. How could he not be affected?

Yes, he’d grown hard, painfully so, but he didn’t like it. What kind of person got a hard-on while listening to a victim talk about her abuse? It made him feel sick. He was sick.

And it wasn’t necessarily a new problem. He had a long history of strange sexual proclivities. It was the reason he was thirty-one and still single with no viable prospects on the horizon. He was afraid of someone seeing him for what he was. Being alone didn’t mean he was lonely, not really. He kept very busy with work at the Bureau. However, he often thought it would be nice to have someone to come home to, someone he could talk to that wouldn’t make him feel like a freak – even though he knew he was. And like, attracted like.

He was attracted to damaged and fractured women as much as they seemed to be attracted to him. Olivia Ruiz seemed to be no different. She was drawn to him for some reason, he could intuit that much, but he knew it was an attraction that could only run the one way. He would never compromise an investigation, never take advantage of a witness, and never try to save someone who was so obviously broken. He’d learned his lesson all too well.

He would do his job. That’s why the Bureau kept him on board; because at the end of the day he could be counted on to do what needed to be done. He was a closer. Nothing got in the way of that. No one got in his way.

Bringing his attention back toward his screen, he continued to type up Olivia’s statement about her time in captivity. He tried to remain impassive as he typed, but certain sentences continued to jump out at him:

“He made me beg for food…”

“Spanked me repeatedly…”

“…forced me to come.”

His report was reading more like an erotic novel than a case file. His mind was beginning to wander again, this time toward his last girlfriend, the one who couldn’t come unless he called her a whore. He was starting to get hard again—Stop!

He saved the file and decided to take a much needed break from Olivia and her relatively useless memoir and opened his browser to search for more information on Muhammad Rafiq. He was the lynchpin of the entire investigation.

According to the witness, Caleb had reported his involvement with Rafiq began because they needed to kill Vladek Rostrovich, A.K.A. Demitri Balk.

“Why?” Matthew whispered to himself and then remembered the comment about Rafiq’s mother and sister. Were they dead?