The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Fifteen

Fredrik

We’re at my house after a ten minute drive. Gwen talks a lot. Maybe she’s just nervous after getting into a car late at night with a man she doesn’t know, but I couldn’t care less what she has to say or what she might be thinking. I brought her here for one thing and it isn’t conversation.

“Wow, this is a nice house,” she says when she steps through the doorway. “From the outside, I never expected it to look so…expensive.” She looks back at me with dollar signs in her eyes as I pull her coat off from behind. “Not that the outside looks bad, it’s just…well, very different.” She smiles.

I don’t respond to the mating ritual. Already this is beginning to feel like the start of a dating relationship—even if it’s just with my money. And I don’t date. In fact, I don’t do ‘normal’. This is very awkward for me.

I wish she’d just stop talking.

I needed a house under the radar to make it more difficult to be found by the Order. So, I chose an old, small brick house and redesigned the inside to fit my expensive lifestyle. But the large basement, it got the most treatment. I wanted Cassia to feel safe in my home…despite the imprisonment.

I pull both of my coats off and break apart the buttons of my dress shirt. Gwen watches me with vaguely concealed lust in her eyes, and a little concern, which won’t go away until she’s sure I only brought her here for sex.

“How long have you lived here?”

Kill me now.

“Take off your boots,” I say, just to derail the pointless chit-chat.

“Huh?”

I tilt my head slightly to one side.

“I said take off your boots.” My standard expression never falters.

Gwen’s eyes grow a little wider. She bites down on her bottom lip again.

I pull my shirt off and drape it over the back of the nearby leather chair.

Finally, to ease her fears and get this night underway, I lean in toward her mouth and say, “I won’t force you to stay”—I graze her lips and slip my hand up the bottom of her skirt. She gasps—“but if you’re going to stay, you’re going to do whatever I tell you to do. Is that understood?” My middle finger presses between her nether lips over the top of her wet panties. A small moan vibrates from her lips into mine as I slip my tongue into her mouth. Breathing in deeply, I kiss her with predatory intent and when I pull away, it takes a moment longer than it should for her to open her eyes again.

“Now take off your boots,” I repeat.

She steps out of them without reluctance this time, and then her close-lipped mouth turns up at the corners seductively as she waits for my next command. But what I really want her to do is to tell me to go fuck myself. I want her to be defiant and aggressive, just like Seraphina often was. I want her to hit me, but still want me to despoil her with lust and violence. That’s the kind of sex I need tonight, but I know I can’t have it because only Seraphina can give it to me the way I crave it.

But, this isn’t about me. This is all for Cassia.

I reach out with both hands and finger the buttons on Gwen’s shirt, slipping it off once the last button is undone. Her generously-sized breasts are practically busting out of her black, lacy bra. The chain she wears lays neatly between them. I reach behind her and clasp my fingers around the back, unfastening it on the first try. Her eyes are looking into mine, but I’m not ready to return the gesture. She needs to earn it.

Her bra falls around her bare feet with her top and she stands before me halfway naked. Almost all traces of nervousness gone, leaving only anticipation and desire. She appears demure with her eyes lowered in a submissive fashion.

That frustrates me, but I ignore it.

Fitting my fingers behind the elastic of her skirt, I slide the material slowly over her hips and down her thighs. The fabric pools around her feet. Once she’s fully naked, I wind my fingers within the back of her hair, jerking her head back, shocking her into full submission. Her eyes grow wider, unsure, even a little afraid. But she says nothing and I walk her toward my bedroom down the hall, flipping the overhead light on as I pass the switch by the door so that Cassia can see everything without shadows and darkness impeding her view.

I shove Gwen to her knees on the carpeted floor where she doesn’t dare move. I can sense every part of her body already opened up to me, desperate to feel me inside of her. She’s played this game before. She knows how to be the submissive. She likes it. And any other time I’d accommodate that desire and enjoy it myself, because I am a man of control. But the truth is that I’ve never respected a woman completely submissive to me. I like a woman to put up a fight, not to bark when I tell her to bark, or suck without argument when I put my cock in her mouth.

Not even Cassia, as soft and fragile as she is, who I know would do anything for me, would subject herself to that. And it only makes me care about her that much more.

Cassia…

I look toward the small camera hidden on the dresser across the room. I wonder if she’s looking back at me.

Why do I hope that she’s not?

I shake it off quickly when I feel Gwen’s hand moving between my legs over the top of my pants. She looks up at me suggestively—and quite surprised—her almond-shaped eyes softened by willingness, heated by hunger.

If only Seraphina was here to be in on this. She was the only one who could ever make a submissive girl exciting to me.

I wrench the back of Gwen’s hair in my fist again and pull her to her feet.

“I’d rather you on your knees on the bed.”

Letting go of her hair once she’s standing, she does exactly as I tell her, just barely looking over her shoulder at me, telling me with her eyes that it’s OK, that she wants this the way I want it. Only, this isn’t the way I want it and I continue to pretend.

Gwen crawls onto the edge of the bed and I step behind her, placing my hand against the small of her back and pressing her body forward to raise her ass in the air. My dick twitches when I touch her with the back of my middle finger, sliding it length-wise between her wet nether lips. Two smacks zip through the air when I slap each of her butt cheeks hard enough to make her whimper.

“Don’t move,” I tell her as I step over to the nightstand, sliding out of my pants on the way.

After shutting the nightstand drawer, the condom wrapper is on the floor seconds later and I’m behind Gwen again.

“What was that?” Gwen raises her face from the mattress, her eyebrows drawing inward as she concentrates to hear the cry that I pretend not to have heard.

But I did hear it. Cassia’s side of the basement is directly beneath my room, precisely where I’m standing.

Suddenly, I feel more of an urge to check the video feed from her room on my cell phone, than to continue what I was doing.

“A condom,” I say, pretending.

She turns her neck at an angle so that she can see me. “No, I thought I heard something…like crying.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I say. “Might’ve been the TV in the basement.”

Gwen accepts my answer and presses her cheek against the bed again.

I try to ignore my thoughts of Cassia, grabbing Gwen’s thighs firmly in my hands and pressing myself against her. But I can’t ignore her and I become irate with myself, digging my fingertips into Gwen’s flesh.

“Oww! Jesus! That fucking hurt…,” She sounds angry. But just a little.

Was that defiance?

Suddenly, I feel like I might get the violent sex that I need, after all.

Then I hear Cassia screaming my name and although faint and muffled through the floor, it rips through me like a hot poker burning a hole through my chest.

I don’t think Gwen heard it that time because when she looks back at me again, it seems only out of curiosity. She wonders why I’ve stepped away from her, why I’m not already inside of her by now.

She’s as confused as I am.

I look at the hidden camera again, wishing that I could see her through it just as she can see me.

“Are we gonna’ do this, or—“

“You need to leave,” I cut in.

She blinks, stunned, and then turns around on the bed.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

She blinks several more times as if trying to reset her brain because maybe she didn’t hear me right, and presses the palms of her hands against the edge of the mattress. Her arms and shoulders become rigid as she lets her body slouch in-between them.

She cocks her head to one side and grins.

“Is this part of your game?” she asks teasingly and then cocks her head to the other side. “I’ll play whatever game you want me to play, baby.”

Concerned for Cassia, I’m growing more impatient and intolerant by the second. Reaching out, I take Gwen by the elbow and pull her from the bed.

“Just fucking leave, all right?”

She’s speechless. And pissed. And humiliated. Her mouth falls open partway, her eyes draw inward harshly and it looks like I just slapped her across the face.

“I’ll call you a cab,” I say, but she puts her hand up in front of her, indicating she doesn’t need or want my help.

“No thanks, asshole,” she snaps, stomping naked across the room toward the bedroom door. “I’ll call myself one and wait for it at the gas station on the corner.” A few minutes later, after Gwen has gotten dressed in the living room and found her purse, the house shakes as the front door slams shut.

I’m numb. Completely numb inside and out. I haven’t moved from the spot in my bedroom since Gwen stormed out of the house. My chest aches for Cassia.

What is happening to me?

Shuffling around inside my pants pocket for my cell phone, I grab it and pull it free, dropping my pants back on the floor. I open the feed to Cassia’s room to see her curled up in the fetal position on her bed—not in the corner—crying softly into her delicate hands. And I watch her for a moment, still trying to sort through the disarray that my mind has become.

My heart aches. Everything aches. But this time I don’t fight it because I don’t have it in me anymore.

I toss the condom in the trash beside the dresser and step into my black boxers before rushing into the basement to fix what I broke.