Open World (8 page)

“Husbands and wives shouldn’t have a problem performing for each
other,” he rumbled. “Just listen to the music and let it move you.”

She closed her eyes and pictured women at a strip club. If she
could mimic what her mind imagined they did, perhaps that would please him, and
she wouldn’t be so afraid. She shifted and turned and undulated to the beat
coming from the speakers. A satisfied groan came from the bed. She snuck a
peak. His eyes were hooded and full of a look she couldn’t put a name to. She
froze.

“Did I tell you to stop? No, I didn’t. You call yourself a dancer.
Some dancer you turned out to be. Get moving.”

She shut her eyes and resumed her movements. Minutes later, she
had slipped out of the top and panties and was about to undo a garter
attachment when he stopped her.

“Stay as you are and come kneel before me. I want you to free my
cock and go down on me.”

“Go down on you?” she asked rooted to her spot, her nipples
hardened from a draft in the room.

“Woman, why do I have to explain every God damn thing to you? Get
your ass over here, unzip my pants and suck my cock.”

The alarm and fear she experienced from before returned. Not
wanting to undergo a wrath from him she could only envision, she knelt before
him, undid his pants and pulled his sex out from under his clothing. The
appendage was long and thick. It throbbed hotly in her hand, and only for a
second did she wonder how it would fit in her mouth. Since she didn’t want to
dally at this task and risk him becoming
angrier
, she slipped the silky organ into her mouth. Above her, Buzz
sucked in a stream of air. He grabbed the back of her head and directed her in
what needed to be done.

“This is the one and only time I will tell you how to do this,” he
continued. “I want a willingly submissive wife who knows how to please me.”

She stroked the shaft with her tongue, teasing the rim of the
head. After several moments of enticing it in such a manner, she took it fully
in her mouth and drew on it as one would drag on a cigarette. She continued the
ministrations, as he instructed, for what seemed like an eternity, and wondered
how much longer she could keep up the act.

As if reading her thoughts, he gripped her hair tighter in both
hands and pushed himself in further. She gagged several times as he continued
to thrust and, just as she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he pulled out
and excreted a sticky, white substance onto her face.

“Go clean
yourself
up,” he ordered,
taking off his shirt.

She wiped at the thick jizz, trying not to cry in front of him,
and went into the bathroom to weep and wash off his fluid. When she came back
out, he was in his underwear asleep on the bed.

So much for a
wedding
night
.
Hope dressed herself
in her t-shirt and lay down on the bed. What she did to him, she had wanted to
do to Alden as her first, but she counted her blessings. At least she was still
pure for when she was able to get away and get back to Alden.

 
The next morning and for
the rest of the tr
ip,
she didn’t speak to the man who, in all respects, had
kidnapped her. The next night he had her pleasure him again at another dodgy
motel. A few times she thought of asking him why he didn’t take her as a
husband should, but with the way he had been so irate, she didn’t want to
provoke him further with questions.

In the middle of nowhere, he pulled up to a two-story, white house
and said, “Welcome home.”

“You have a place in the middle of nowhere?
How
lovely.”
No one would be able to mistake the sarcasm dripping from her
voice.

“Put a lid on it and get inside.”

Inside,
she looked around the furnished residence. The place was simple and modest and
nicely decorated. She went to the back of the house into the large kitchen.

“There’s no phone anywhere,” she stated with concern. “What if
there’s an emergency? What if I want to call home?”

“We don’t need a phone,” he replied. “I have my ways of contacting
people. This is your home now a
nd,
like I told you before, your family doesn’t expect to hear from you. In a few
days,
I’ll let you use my communication device to contact
them. As for an emergency, there won’t be any.”

How could he possibly know there won’t be any problems? “How far
are we from anywhere?” Distressed about her new residence and phoneless
situation, she shuddered. Outside the long, vertical windows of the breakfast
nook, all she could see was the Nevada desert landscape and a few pine trees in
the distance. If she escaped, she’d most likely end up dead out there.

“You don’t have to worry your pretty little head about that. But
since you’re wondering, we’re several miles from… How you put it?
Anywhere.”

“Well, okay.” Hope continued to stare out the window at the open
terrain. “But what do you expect me to do out here while you’re off doing
whatever it is you do? There’s no phone, no television, no computer.”

“I’ll pick up some stuff for you. For now, go take a shower while
I make dinner. There should be some clothes on the bed, a white blouse and gray
wool skirt. Put them on and join me here when you’re done.”

The meal he prepared was a bright point in the otherwise horrible
past few days. She munched happily on the
bruschetta
appetizer which was divine, as was the main course of
lasagna, even though they came from the boxes that littered the counter top. He
had supplied a fresh container of the cider to go with the food a
nd,
even though she tried not to drink too much, he kept filling her glass.

She sipped on the sweet drink and became disorientated. In her
haze, the words Buzz spoke in his low, sultry voice came through as if she were
in a dream. As he droned on, she began to make out what he said and realized he
was serious, her predicament was real.

“…bondage. You’re not to speak unless spoken to. You will answ
er me with yes, love and no,
love. You will wear the clothes I set out for you, no more a
nd no less. I expect you to submit to me and obey me in all
matters without question, lest you be punished. I may feel the need to punish
you anyway, if only to remind you of your place. You will feel no need to
venture from this house, or to call anyone, or to have any friends. Do you
understand?”

What the hell?
Bondage?
Submission?
Have I ended
up with a sadist?
She wanted to shake her head, but in her groggy, hypnosis-like
state, she ended up nodding.

“Good. Now remove your shirt and bra. I wish to look upon you as I
finish my meal.”

She unbuttoned the blouse she wore and took it off along with her
bra and laid the items in her lap. Buzz smiled at her for the first time in
days, and responding on autopilot, she smiled back.

PART THREE

Faith’s Dreams

Chapter
Seven

Faith’s
parents’ house was subdued, the shades drawn against the mountain vista, making
the atmosphere within dark, quiet and somber.

When
Tavis had heard the news of Hope’s abduction, he’d hurried over to the house.
Of course they all thought he was someone else—a thespian named Big T who had
to cover his face with thick pancake makeup.

The
deception suited him and Alden. There was something funky going on with the
game.
The fewer people who knew who he was, the better.
He’d be able to work to discover what was going on. As for Alden, he somehow got
stuck in the Player versus Environment board, and it’d taken him a while to
make it to the Role Playing board. They really needed to determine what the
glitches were, but finding Hope’s whereabouts became a priority. The family
didn’t know it yet, but each of them had an important role to play. The sooner
they all settled into their characters and the Endless Night world, the sooner
they’d find Hope and become who they needed to be.

Tavis
observed each member of the family as they gathered around and sat down at the
dining room table. Grace appeared as if she wanted to cry, Cassandra and Faith
had glazed, vacant staring eyes. James sat hunched and downtrodden at the head
of the table. In his opinion, the father seemed to have aged twenty years in
the week since Hope disappeared. The whole family was still in shock over her
abduction. James seemed stunned he’d been duped by a man he’d liked and
trusted.

“I
can’t believe I can’t pick up on Hope’s trail,” Alden uttered, sorrow evident
in his voice. He sank into a chair at the other end of the table.

Hope’s
intended appeared as distraught as the older man, from his matte green eyes to
the dull sheen of his light brown hair hanging limp on his slumped shoulders.

His
heart went out to the family and Alden. Alden was beside himself that his mate
had been taken from him. He was amazed the warrior in Alden hadn’t reared its
characteristic wrath and gone all out in the search for her, armed and ready to
beat the
bastard abductor
to a pulp.

When
Faith told him about the stranger who’d ingratiated himself with her father, he
figured the man was part of the prince’s clan, maybe the prince himself. Den
said he shouldn’t get his hopes up, but he knew deep down Den wanted the guy to
be the prince. Their secret mission was to take down the Prince of Clan
Caesachapel and anyone else in a position of power there so the true royals
could reign. Faith, Hope and Cassandra were members of the true ruling houses
and had bonded lifemates—except they didn’t know all that yet. It sucked he and
Alden couldn’t tell them either. They needed to figure out their parts on their
own.

Buzz
had become very powerful in the game if he and Alden couldn’t get a trace on
Hope. He didn’t know if he would have been able to control himself as well as
Alden was restraining himself if Faith disappeared.

He
smiled at Faith who gazed back at him with sad, hazel eyes. He wished he could
ease her pain and make her happy, as happy as he, despite the current
circumstances.

He
was ecstatic to have found Faith, his lifemate. He only wished she’d remember
who she was and where she came from. But no matter how much he couldn’t stand
his charade anymore, how tired he was of wearing all the makeup and the ski
masks, he couldn’t force the enlightenment process on her. She had to come to
her truth, her self-discovery on her own terms, in her own time. No matter how
much he wanted to, he couldn’t speed up the process. But once she reached the
next stage, he’d finally be able to tell her he was...

“I’ll
continue to do what I can to help find Hope,” Alden stated, interrupting
Tavis’s thoughts. “I’ll need to take off for a while, though, to meet with some
of my sources and to see if I can dredge up any leads.”

“But
the trackers have said the trail is cold,” Faith supplied in a weak voice.
“They’ve said you’ve helped them all you could…unless you’ve been holding
something back,” she uttered, her voice rising. “Have you been holding back
information that could help my sister? Huh? Have you?”

“Faith,”
her mother admonished. “I’m sure Alden hasn’t held anything back from us or the
police.”

Faith
glared at her mother, then eyed Alden suspiciously.

“No,
Faith, I haven’t held anything back. I’ve told them all I could. I will confer
with my contacts and, perhaps through our brainstorming, we will come up with
ideas on how to locate Hope.”

Tavis
shifted in his chair. It squeaked under his pressure. The noise brought Faith’s
attention around to him and, when her eyes caught his, he held her gaze and
willed his thoughts to her.
It will be
all right. Alden loves your sister and will find her. There is no cause for any
of you to fear
.

Perhaps
it was wishful thinking on his part, but she seemed to acknowledge him with a
slight dip of her chin, the movement almost imperceptible, yet there.

“Big
T will be around though,” Alden continued. “He’ll help to keep an eye on things
here. I trust him.”

“I’m
happy to hear, Big
T, that
you’ll be around.” James
tipped a nod in his direction. “And that Alden trusts you. Alden is a good man.
I value his judgment. I can’t help but feel Hope’s abduction is my fault.”

“Oh,
James,” Grace mewled. “Please don’t blame yourself.” She placed a comforting
hand on his forearm.

“I
know.” He patted his wife’s hand then left his on top of hers. “But I can’t
help it. I can’t help but think if I hadn’t been so hard on the girls, maybe they
wouldn’t be so prone to getting in trouble and that Hope wouldn’t have left
with that…that cad. Hopefully it’s not too late for me to change my ways, which
brings me to a favor I need to ask of both you men. Grace and I have another
diplomatic meeting. We really would hate to have to cancel it, especially now
that our first treaty…” James’s words trailed off as he slipped in to thought.