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  The shower has gotten me clean, but there’s nothing to change into. I guess I’m sleeping naked. It feels vulnerable to slip into the bed without anything on, but the cool sheets feel good on my ass, and when I lie down, I find myself much more sleepy than I had imagined I would be. I figured I’d be up all night fretting, but the moment my head hits the pillow, I am fast asleep.

  Chapter Four

  It’s past midday when I wake up, exhausted from the long night before. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up in the afternoon, so having light streaming gently into the room at the particular angle that heralds dawn for wastrels and artists and programmers alike doesn’t immediately remind me how strange everything has become.

  It’s the pain that does that.

  Where the hell am I? Why does my ass hurt… oh. It all comes flooding back as I wake up. Yesterday was a hell of a day, and it has taken its toll on me. The skin of my ass feels tight and when I put any kind of pressure on it whatsoever, it aches and throbs until I roll off it again.

  Fucking Ethan Keller. Took me. Beat me. Fucked me. And put me in this room like… it really doesn’t bear thinking about. I am not a morning person, so waking up fills me with a native aggression that gives me all the impetus I need to make an escape.

  I pick my jeans and sweater up off the floor. My underwear is ruined. Filled with my juices and his cum, it’s crusty past the point of being wearable again. I leave it where it is and set about getting the hell out of here.

  I’m half expecting to find myself locked into the room, but when I go to the door, it’s open. I can’t quite believe it. Does he really expect me to just… stay? If so, he’s severely overestimating his charm.

  The place is huge, but I can retrace my steps easily enough. Back down the hall, left turn down the stairs and into the grandiose foyer. I don’t know if Ethan is in the house. It doesn’t really matter. Unless he materializes directly in front of me he can’t stop me from leaving.

  The guards are still present, strolling about in predetermined patterns like sprites in a video game. I could try to slip past them, but this is real life and I want to know what happens when I try to leave anyway.

  I walk down the long drive and find my way toward the gates. On my way down I meet a two-man patrol. They’re dressed in suits, far too formal for a midmorning stroll, but I guess Ethan likes his goons to look tidy.

  As soon as I approach the gates, the security men move in and shake their heads. The message is clear. I am not allowed off the property. Except they’re not actually stopping me. They’re not even speaking. They’re miming disapproval. I think I can deal with that.

  Ignoring them, I walk straight for the gate. As I suspected, nobody stops me. I simply leave.

  I walk down the manicured grass verge outside Ethan’s home, feeling nervousness course through me to the point that I feel like I’m escaping prison or something. To the casual observer’s eyes, I’m just a woman walking down the road.

  It’s a long walk back to the city, but that’s okay. Gives me time to think. I’m going to get out of town before I blow the whistle. I don’t want him coming and picking me up again once he realizes his secrets are out and there’s nobody to blame but me.

  Before I leave, I need to go and get some stuff. My car has probably been towed, but that’s okay. I have a backup phone and laptop at home. Ethan can keep the stuff he took from me. It’s all secondhand, and it requires extensive logins to find what he’s looking for, none of which are stored on the hardware, all of which are in the cloud.

  I’ll go grab that stuff, a few clothes, a bag, and get the hell out of Dodge. It’s a bit of a walk to anywhere I can hail a cab, but that’s okay. It’s a nice day and as my nerves settle, a feeling of freedom and glee begins to sink through me. That fucking asshole thought he could keep me locked up like an elephant at the end of a rope leash. He thought he could condition me into helplessness. He forgot that I’m an engineer. I test systems. Rigorously.

  It takes me well over an hour to get back to my place, a little apartment in the middle of a bunch of other little apartments. I’m half worried someone has already been inside it, and I don’t have my keys either thanks to Ethan Keller. What I do have is a spare, in the middle of the fourth garden bed, beneath a small rock shaped like a toad.

  I let myself in and I’m quickly reassured nobody has been in there. I keep my place kind of messy. Not that I like the mess, but when you’re working all day and night, totally absorbed by a screen, you kind of let the world around you slide.

  If anyone had been in here looking for anything, the mess would be more disturbed than this. As it is, it seems to be pretty much as I left it. Good.

  I grab an old laptop and an older phone, pull some clothes into a backpack, lock up and head out. The rent is paid up for another couple of months and hopefully by that time Ethan Keller has moved on to harassing someone else.

  The quickest way to get out of state would be to fly, but I hate flying and I suspect someone like Ethan is probably tapped into airline records, or could be pretty quickly. I need a less upmarket form of travel: bus.

  I figure I don’t need to get that far away. I just need to get somewhere rural. Somewhere the cops aren’t likely paid off. Idaho fits the bill perfectly. I have enough cash to hole up in some little town and stay well off his radar. I doubt he’ll put the effort into finding me.

  It’s a thirteen-hour trip to Idaho, but that’s fine with me. Time to catch up on some sleep, work on a little code.

  The ticket works out to be ninety-nine dollars. Small price to pay to get away from the brazen clutches of a billionaire. I’m banking on the fact that Ethan is so rich and so powerful, he’s probably forgotten about the myriad little, uncomfortable options that poor people have at their disposal. He lives in a world of toilets that flush by themselves. I make sure to pay cash too. I’m sure he has access to bank accounts. Evading Ethan is going to be all about going low-tech.

  Sitting in a crowded bus terminal, waiting for my bus to load, I think smug thoughts to myself. He’s never going to find me. And once I’m free and clear, I’m going to start making trouble for him. His little network of data-sniffing bullshit is going to come down. Hard.

  I’m going to expose him. I’m going to see him go down. He’s going to pay for every embarrassment he put me through. I’ll see him be arrested, just like I was, except when it happens to him, it won’t be for show. It will be for life.

  Boarding for Boise.

  I almost miss my call, I’m so busy congratulating myself on my plans, but when I see dozens of other people getting up, I follow them out to where the big metal steed that is going to take me away from all of this is idling at the ready. In a few minutes I’ll be gone. No electronic trail to trace me, no way to catch me.

  It’s going to be a noisy trip. There’s a young guy and girl arguing further up the line and a small family screeching with excitement behind me. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except…

  An arm slides around my waist, startling me. I look up to see Ethan Keller standing next to me. He smiles down at me with a dark, predatory smile. Those cold blue eyes bore into me, chilling me to my soul.

  “You had to know it wasn’t going to be this easy,” he murmurs down at me. “Come on, Casey. It’s time to leave.”

  “I’ll make a scene,” I growl under my breath. “Let me go.”

  “Make all the scenes you want,” he purrs back. “A disturbance will make it that much easier to have you removed from this facility. We can call the police again if need be…” A single brow rises suggestively down at me.

  Fuck. He’s got me.

  Chapter Five

  Ethan

  This girl is adorable.

  I left her door unlocked for a reason. It would be easy to hold her captive, but that wouldn’t teach her anything. I wanted a reason to punish her sweet ass again and of course she gave me one. This is a game she’s not even aware she’s playing. She is trying the most obvious r
outes of escape, but all the obvious routes are traps I’ve designed with the aim of being able to punish her when she tries them. Eventually she’ll stop trying, and then she’ll be trained.

  I was notified the moment she left my home. And of course she was followed. I didn’t even have to send an actual human to do it. There are cameras everywhere these days. Private and public, and both open to me if I want them to be.

  I watched her attempted escape while negotiating a new deal on a batch of processors. She seemed so proud of herself too, especially once she got to the toxic wasteland that she seems to call home.

  Maybe I should have had her picked up and brought back earlier, but it was amusing and instructive to see what she did and didn’t do. She didn’t blow the whistle on me, which was interesting. At least, it wasn’t the first thing she did. Her first instinct was to go to ground, because that’s what prey does. And now she’s freezing, just like prey does.

  I lead her out of the bus station by the hand. She follows me quietly, choosing not to make a scene. Good girl.

  I have a car waiting outside, one she gets into without any further argument. She’s actually quite compliant once I get hands-on with her. It’s when she’s alone and has time to think that the trouble starts.

  Makes sense. She doesn’t know me yet. She doesn’t know how serious I am about owning her, or how far I’ll go to make sure she stays mine. Right now, she’s a petulant little captive still looking for a way out. But there are no ways out. I could tell her that, but it’s going to be far more instructive for her to learn it on her own.

  “You knew that wasn’t going to work, didn’t you?” I ask the question as I slide in beside her. She’s so much smaller than me, but big trouble can come in small packages.

  She shrugs. “Was worth a try.”

  “You don’t know that yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there are consequences for disobedience, Casey.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this will be the last time you sit down comfortably in a very long time.”

  She looks at me, and I see the clockwork behind her eyes. I expect her to be angry and afraid. What I don’t expect, is what I get: a smile.

  I know she’s mad. I know she’s upset. And she’s sitting there with a smile that isn’t forced at all. It’s genuine. And it’s because a part of her is enjoying this.

  I don’t believe in accidents, and I don’t believe in mistakes. She’s here, right now, because she’s meant to be. She came to me. Walked into my lair. Is it the lion’s responsibility what happens when a sweet little sacrifice is thrown to him? She doesn’t know how restrained I’m being. She doesn’t know what I want to do to her really, how far I would go with her, given enough time and enough reason. Or maybe she does. And maybe that’s the reason she has the bravery to sit there and smile.

  * * *

  Casey

  His threats are supposed to scare me, but they’re only serving to excite me, because I’ve finally realized something that makes all these pieces fall into place: this is a game to him.

  He let me leave his office last night and again today, because he’s proving a point. He could lock me up and that would be the end of it. But Ethan Keller is a man who likes a chase. He’s looking for an opponent. And he’s found one.

  The first two rounds have gone to him. I paid for the first defeat and I know I’ll pay for this one too, but that’s okay. I’m coming from behind on this battle of wills, but I have resources too. I might be poor, but there’s more in this world than money. In the end, Ethan is going to pay for every single thing he puts me through.

  “What are you smiling about? I just told you how much trouble you’re in.”

  I shrug.

  He leans in and murmurs into my ear in rich, husky tones.

  “I am going to fuck that smile right off your face.”

  The most delicious shiver runs through me. Ethan is capable of pleasuring me with just his voice in a way most men can’t with their entire bodies.

  I hate him. Or at least, I want to. But my shock and dismay at being caught is turning into pure thrill.

  I hate him. But I want to fuck him.

  And he wants to fuck me. His pale gaze smolders as we pull away from the bus station. This is a large car, it has more than enough room to spread out on the back seat, and the driver is separated from us by a screen.

  “Take those jeans off,” he growls. “I’m going to burn those things.”

  When I don’t comply immediately, his hands go to my hips, flip me over on the seat. My body contorts to the car as his big hands grab the waistband and pull them down, the rough fabric scraping over the punished skin of my ass. I yelp, but I only feel it for a couple of seconds because Ethan has already ripped them off me with a growl of triumph.

  When I am naked from the waist down, he spreads my legs and lifts me over his lap, making me straddle his hips. I can already feel the hard ridge of his cock pressing at the fabric of his pants. He wants me badly. I can see desire written on every line of his face.

  “You’ve been a very bad girl, Casey,” he growls, his big hand sliding behind my head, grasping my hair, pulling me down to kiss him. His other hand is on my hip, his long fingers palming my ass as his tongue finds mine, lets me know that there was never any chance of getting away from him because I am his.

  I kiss him back. I hate him, but that doesn’t matter, because he has captured my body and my mind. He’s handsome. He’s the kind of hot the devil is, for all the wrong reasons. His hand rubs my ass, the other one settling around the back of my neck, holding me in a full body possessive clasp.

  “Very. Bad. Girl,” he growls against my mouth, his hand tapping my ass with each word, until the final one, where he slaps my ass hard enough to make me scream against his lips, my hips jerking forward against him, my pussy grinding over his cock in a reflexive motion that I can’t help but yield to, my hips dropping down so I am pressed against his hardness.

  “Dammit, Casey,” he breathes, breaking the kiss. His hand slides from the back of my neck and finds my chin. He holds it in place, looking deep into my eyes. “You are such a naughty girl.”

  It’s half lecture, half praise. He makes me feel naughty, even though I know he is the one who does wrong. He is a man who buys the law.

  “You’re a bad man,” I accuse in return.

  “Yes, I am,” he agrees, his voice husky as his lips part in an irreverent smile. He is still massaging my bottom, soothing away some of the ache he put there last night. I have tried to defy him. I have tried to escape. I still plan to expose him. And he must know that, but for this small moment, there is kindness.

  And then another slap lands, hard enough to make me cry out again. It hurts, but there’s more than pain. My pussy is starting to leave a slick trail over the front of his pants. I’m aroused because I’m caught in his grasp, held by his powerful hands. I’m wet because I know how this is going to end. I know he’s going to fuck me. I know he’s going to punish me. I know he’s going to make me pay.

  “This isn’t the punishment,” he grunts, slamming his cock inside my tight, wet hole. “That comes after.”

  He surges into me, fills me over and over. I can hear his cock pushing inside me with every stroke, displacing the juices that are being churned to cream between us.

  Every time he fucks me, I feel utterly depraved. I behave like an animal. There’s nothing civilized about the way I present my pussy, my hips arched to give him the access he wants to my soaked cunt.

  He wraps a hand around the back of my neck and draws me down to kiss him, his tongue lashing mine.

  Then I feel him pull out of my pussy. I haven’t come yet. Neither has he. What’s happening?

  The answer to that becomes apparent when he pushes his fingers inside my pussy, swirls them around to gather all the juices he can, and then smears the liquid of my arousal over my tight little anus.

  “No,” I gasp.
r />   “Yes,” he leers, his fingers now toying with my sensitive little hole. The one I’ve never let anyone get close to. The feeling of him touching me there is difficult to process. I think it should feel bad, but it doesn’t feel bad. My anus is more sensitive than I realized, and now that my pussy has been left bereft of any touch, everything is about that little aperture.

  “Ethan…”

  He’s starting to push the tip of a finger inside me. Tightening my bottom only makes it hurt.

  “Let me in, Casey,” he orders softly. “Let me fuck your bottom as punishment for being a naughty girl.”

  I’ve never had anal sex before. And I’m about to have it in the back of a car going sixty down the highway with a driver who I know must be hearing at least some of this. Those partitions aren’t soundproof.

  I let out a squeal of surprise as he yanks me off his lap and pushes me down on the long seat. Ethan handles me like I’m inanimate. Something to be moved around at his whim, put into position to suit his desire.

  “Hold your cheeks open,” he commands.

  When I don’t react immediately, he reaches for my hands and draws them back to my bottom, placing one on each cheek. “Open.”

  I’m glad I’m face down in leather, because I couldn’t stand for him to be looking me in the eye as I do as I am told with less reluctance than I’d like. Ethan Keller is a terrible person. I have no reason to like him. But when he says he wants my holes, something inside me makes me want to give him whatever the hell he wants.

  I do as I am told and for a long moment, he just looks. I can feel that cold gaze on me, taking my most intimate areas in as they lie on lewd display before him. This has to break a dozen laws. We’re not wearing seatbelts.

  It’s the wrong time to be thinking about safety. I feel him grasp a thick handful of my hair and then he lowers his head down to my bottom. I feel his tongue there, hot and wet between my cheeks and then… on my anus itself. I gasp and clench, but my hands keep my cheeks from closing as Ethan Keller’s tongue bathes me in the last spot I ever thought he’d dare kiss.