Captive Beauty: A Reverse Harem Dark Romance Read online

  “No,” I admitted quietly. Blood rose in my cheeks. Nobody had expected me to succeed, apparently.

  “As I expected,” the third one said, sounding contemptuous.

  “What do you expect to gain from this?” I asked, aware of their gazes on me. I couldn’t even cover my chest with my arms, since they were pinned to my side by the stern first man. “My family doesn’t have any money to pay a ransom.”

  “We have time enough to talk about that later,” the older man said. There were crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes, and the hair at his temples was beginning to grey. He couldn’t be much older than thirty, I thought, but he looked like he worked outdoors.

  “First, you should get cleaned up and have a bite to eat.”

  “What?” I asked numbly. “Aren’t you going to kill me? Or hold me prisoner?”

  The second one barked out a laugh.

  ‘Why would we kill you when we have so many other plans for you, sweetling,” he said.

  “Forgive Killian,” the oldest one told me. “He’s always like that. You’ll learn to ignore him soon enough. My name is Derrick.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me? It won’t make me trust you,” I told him defiantly. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “You will learn to trust us, Belle,” he said, looking up straight into my eyes. “And you will learn other things as well. Obedience, compliance, pleasure…we’ll teach you everything.”

  “And if I won’t learn?”

  Derrick smiled, and I felt a prick of foreboding. “Believe me,” he said gently. “We can be very persuasive if we need to be.”

  And somehow, I was inclined to believe him.

  “Time to eat,” Killian grunted, apparently deciding the conversation was over. I stood with my hands by my side even as the first man let me go and moved to sit at the breakfast table as well.

  “Don’t just stand there, Belle,” Derrick chided. “Come eat. You must be starving.”

  “I’m not,” I said automatically.

  “Don’t be stubborn,” Derrick said, and there was a warning in his tone that wasn’t there before. “Gunner,” he added, imbuing that one name with a lifetime’s worth of meaning.

  “Yeah. Come on,” the first man said crisply, dragging me to the rustic breakfast table without another word.

  So his name was Gunner. That meant that I knew the names of three of the four so far.

  I had an ominous feeling that their letting me know their names spoke to their absolute and unshakeable confidence that I’d never escape to tell the police about my kidnapping. I stared into space, numb and afraid as they settled down to eat around me.

  The air was filled with the smell of sizzling bacon, which abruptly snapped me out of my trance.

  “Here you go,” Derrick said, flipping some sausages and bacon onto my plate. “You must be hungry.”

  “I’m not,” I said automatically. Just then, my stomach decided it was the right time to growl, loud and long. I flushed, cursing its timing.

  “You should eat,” Gunner said, fixing me with his hard, unyielding stare. “You’re too thin.”

  His expression was neutral, but I could sense a great sea of unnamed emotion roiling beneath his mask of indifference.

  If I didn’t know better, I would almost have said that he cared about how much I was eating.

  I huffed at his words, forgetting my fear for a split-second. “No I’m not,” I mumbled.

  But my mouth was salivating anyway when I stared down at the place. They ate well, these men. And they were clearly getting their food from some town nearby. I had no idea where we were now, but if I could persuade them to take me along with them on a trip to civilization, maybe I really would be able to escape.

  Heartened by the beginnings of a plan, I dug into the food without guilt. I could forget the trouble I was in while I swallowed the crisp, salty bacon and ate the bowl of creamy porridge dotted with blueberries and nuts.

  When I looked up from my plate, finally sated, I found that the four men were done eating as well. Worse, they were looking at me, expressions amused and knowing.

  I pushed my plate away guiltily. I bit my lip to prevent myself from blurting a ‘thank you’.

  I wouldn’t thank them.

  I couldn’t.

  “We’ll put some meat on you yet,” Derrick said approvingly, snatching my plate up to rinse.

  “I can—“ I offered, half-getting up from my seat.

  “Stay,” Gunner said, raising his palm. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do,” I said, and sat back down.

  The food had given me courage, I felt more able to face the four huge, hulking figures in front of me who controlled my fate. “Why did you kidnap me?”

  “I told you,” Gunner said. “Your father owed us a debt. So we decided to take the only other thing he had of value: you. ”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said hoarsely. “He would never get mixed up with people like you.”

  “Tell me then Belle, do you really believe I’m lying? You know the kind of person your father is.”

  I wanted to disbelieve him so badly. But there was a small thorn of truth that pricked my mind, and it told me that what he was saying was entirely possible.

  My father liked the fine things in life, and he liked to be seen around the rich and famous. But I could believe all too easily that he would associate with dangerous thugs for enough money…especially in the last two years, when he was spending money like water, and getting into scandalous debts that he could never hope to pay.

  My father wasn’t fond of me. He wasn’t fond of any of my sisters either. He always said that having three girls was the way God found to make up for the success he’d had in all other areas of his life. Of course, when he lost everything, the same girls he considered a curse were the ones to take care of him, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “Fine,” I gritted out. “I’m paying his debt. What do you intend on doing with me?”

  “Don’t you know?” Killian asked, smirking at me. I shuddered unconsciously.

  “I won’t do anything like that,” I warned them in a wavering voice. “You’ll have to think of some other repayment.”

  “You’ll be singing a different tune soon enough,” Killian said, ignoring my weak protestations. “But I’ll enjoy breaking you in.”

  “Speaking of which,” Derrick said, clearing his throat. “Didn’t we agree that I would go first? I know better than any of you how to gentle a scared filly, and there’s the matter of this morning.”

  What matter of this morning, I wondered, but my train of thought broke as he crouched next to me and rose up in an instant with me in his arms. The breath left my lungs from surprise. He’d done it so quickly that I didn’t even have a chance to react.

  “Put me down!” I demanded, batting at his shoulder, but it was no use. He was every inch as big as his brothers, and my strikes had as little effect as a kitten’s paws on a boulder.

  He carried me upstairs, into a different room than the one I’d woken up in. It was sparsely furnished, with a wall of windows and a large bed in the center of the room.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said calmly, after he set me down.

  “W—what?” I exclaimed, heating up all the way down to my neck. He followed the path of my flush and quirked the corner of his mouth up.

  “You hear me, Belle,” he said seriously. “Take off your clothes, or I’ll have to take them off for you. But I won’t be gentle. You don’t want that pretty nightgown of yours to turn to rags, do you?”

  “You wouldn’t!” I said, backing up. I was thinking about what he’d said. Unwillingly, the image of me walking around completely bare entered my head, and when I thought of how Killian for one would react to it, I felt a hot curl of something between embarrassment and fear.

  “I wouldn’t test me if I were you, Belle. I’d hate to think of you distracting Killian with all that bare skin,” he said k
nowingly, as though he’d read my mind.

  For a beat, we stared at each other in a contest of wills. When I realized he would absolutely, definitely not relent, I let my shoulders drop in defeat.

  I unbuttoned my nightgown one button at a time, gazed locked on Derrick’s face. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but his expression of barely-banked desire was unexpectedly…pleasing.

  I let the thin material puddle around my ankles and stepped out of it, entirely bare. I couldn’t cover my triangular thatch of neatly-trimmed curls and my breasts at the same time, so I settled for covering my crotch with my hands.

  “Never hide yourself from me,” Derrick said, chiding. He walked closer, step by step, and I backed away in concert like it was a dance. But my mouth was dry, and my neck was prickling. Nothing about this was light-hearted like dancing implied.

  When the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed, I bit my lip. I was cornered, and Derrick knew it.

  He took my wrist, and moved it away effortlessly, pinning it to my side. I bore his searching look that seemed to see right through my skin into my core.

  “Beautiful,” he said softly, and tucked a lock of dark hair behind my ear. “But I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  In fact, nobody had looked at me the way he was right now, like I was something pure and beautiful that he was going to taint with his touch. His face tightened. I’d somehow made him angry.

  “It’s a crying shame that I should be the first one to say it, then,” he said in a low tone. “Are you a virgin, Belle?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, trembling. I’d been touched before, by greedy, careless hands, but they hadn’t deflowered me. I knew what was coming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  “Don’t cry, Belle,” he said, and caught the lone tear that escaped my eyes on the edge of his finger. As I watched him suck it into his mouth like it was the finest caviar, I found that I was experiencing something unexpected: arousal.

  “You might not understand now, but one day, you’ll thank me for this.”

  “I don’t think so,” I whispered, and blinked back more tears. I couldn’t tell him how my body tingled when he touched my face, how his nearness set me alight. “Your brother said you were going to break me.”

  “Yes,” he said, and my heart plummeted. “We are going to break you, Belle. But we’re also going to put you back together after.”

  Without another word, he captured my mouth in a searing kiss. My heart was fluttering like a butterfly in my chest, and I felt the steady thrum of paralyzing fear…but it was slowly and steadily being replaced with hints of pleasure.

  No, I thought to myself frantically, I couldn’t be enjoying this! This was the hulking brute of a stranger who had kidnapped me against my will. What was wrong with me? What was this hunger that this man had awakened, that threatened to consume me unless he touched every secret part of me?

  He chuckled and broke the kiss, but stayed close. There was barely an inch of space between us, my bare nipples rubbing against the coarse material of his shirt as I fought for breath.

  “There’s no shame in enjoying it,” he said, and I shook my head frantically.

  “I didn’t enjoy it!” I said, lying through my teeth.

  He ran a rough, callused hand down my soft curves, until his hand hovered over the nest of curls at my core. When he pressed a finger into me, I moaned softly. I was shamefully wet and slick, my hole waiting for his thick rod to plunge in and claim me.

  “Your body tells me otherwise,” he said, chuckling. “What do you think you deserve for lying to me, Belle?”

  I felt about two inches tall. He was so grave and disappointed in me for lying. I flushed guiltily. I was about eye-level with his chest, the ridges of his hard pecs clearly visible.

  I raised my gaze passing over his greying stubble and met his eyes, which were creased at the corners. He gave no indication of being angry, but I couldn’t help noticing his size and the obvious strength of his arms. He was almost bursting out of his thin plaid shirt. He could snap me in two without any effort if he wanted.

  “I deserve...to be punished,” I said, licking my lips. My mouth was dry with reluctant excitement. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me...I was completely at his mercy. I’d given up any hope of control long ago.

  “I’m glad you admitted it,” Derrick said, and sat back on the bed with his legs spread wide. I tried not to look at the obvious bulge in his jeans.

  “Come sit on my lap,” he said.

  “What?” I asked, voice going high with disbelief. “You’re crazy--I’m not going to act like your pet!”

  “You’re stubborn and willful,” Derrick sighed, but he didn’t seem too annoyed. “It’ll just make breaking you that much sweeter, I suppose.”

  He got up off the bed, quick as a cat and lunged before I could even draw breath to scream. In a split second, he had me across his lap, ass in the air and holding me in place. His arms were like a cage, immune to my cries and struggles.

  “Don’t think about screaming,” he said sternly. “It won’t do you any good. Besides, don’t you want to be good and make me proud?”

  ‘No’ was on the tip of my tongue, but to my surprise and shame, I murmured “Yes,” weakly and nuzzled the rough material of his jeans. He smelled like laundry detergent and motor oil. It was a strangely comforting scent.

  “Good girl,” he said softly, and caressed the soft skin of my ass. “This will only hurt at first.”

  Without any other warning, he brought down his hand in a hard, stinging smack on my round ass. I screamed in shock, but before I could recover from it he landed two more stinging slaps. I moaned and wriggled, trying to get out of his grasp, but he held me in place firmly.

  When he didn’t stop, I started to sob, letting the tears run down my cheeks. I didn’t stop struggling, even though the pain was slowly transmuting into a dull, low ache in my clit, and sending little lines of fiery pleasure and pain mixed through my body.

  “Will you try to escape again?” he grunted to me, sounding slightly out of breath, even as he continued smacking one ass cheek and then the other. I could feel the skin heating up, and knew it must be red by now from his slaps.

  “No,” I said weakly, hanging my head. I should have known that I wouldn’t get away with something like that.

  “Will you disobey me or my brothers again?”

  “No!” I cried, and he made a low sound of approval, laying three more burning slaps to my ass before flipping me over.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked gruffly, stroking my hair and letting my sob into the crook of his shoulder. “Don’t make me punish you again, Belle.”

  “I won’t, Derrick,” I said, my voice catching on the last few sobs. I knew my face must have looked red and ugly from crying, and my ass was still feeling the aftermath of the spanking, but strangely I wasn’t upset.

  I felt...cleansed, like the punishment Derrick dealt me had gotten rid of something ugly in me.

  I was so occupied in trying to understand the change he had wrought in me, that I almost didn’t notice his clever fingers stroking the cleft of my ass cheeks until he rubbed the rough pad of his thumb over my puckered hole.

  “What are you--oh,” I said, squirming against him as he rubbed harder. My hole sucked his thumb in, but didn’t let his finger go past the ring of muscle. He was too big.

  “So tight,” he said, voice sounding strained.

  “I’ve never--I don’t like it,” I said, shifting my hips and trying to get his finger to slip out. He only nudged further inside, and I made an inarticulate sound of protest against the intrusion.

  “Stop,” I whispered, cheeks heating up. No one had ever touched me there before...the one high school boyfriend I ever had wasn’t into anal.

  “We’ll soon teach you how much pleasure can be gotten from this little hole here,” Derrick growled. “But first, let’s see how wet your cun
t is.”

  I was soaking wet, I very well knew. And I was rubbing my mound insistently against the rough material of his jeans. It should have embarrassed me beyond belief, to be almost humping him like a bitch in heat, but somehow it didn’t.

  I let him run a finger along my folds. My quiet, choked-back gasp and the obscene sound of slick skin on skin were the only things I could hear.

  “Good girl,” Derrick crooned as he stroked my heated flesh harder and harder. My clit ached from the need to be touched, and I tried to spread my legs wider, straddling his hips as I attempted to rub my bud on his evasive fingers.

  “Derrick, please,” I begged and cajoled as he refused to touch that one spot which would send a lightning jolt of pleasure into my core.

  “What will you do for me if I make you come, Belle?” he said, letting his hand cup my mound.

  “A-anything,” I said, letting my head hang.

  “Then call me Daddy,” he said, “And beg me.”

  “No! I—I can’t,” I said, moaning in protest as his hands left me.

  “Belle,” he said chidingly.

  “It’s too—dirty,” I whispered, and looked away.

  “Nothing you do for me could ever be dirty, Belle,” he said firmly, looking grave.

  I hated to disappoint him. I hung my head.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Yes what, Belle?”

  “Daddy,” I said, and my mouth fell open when he finally rubbed his thumb over my clit. I tried to ride his hand, but he wouldn’t let me. He held me in place by the hips as his fingers fluttered over my clit. Feather-light curls of pleasure went through me, but refused to coalesce into anything satisfying.

  “Please, Daddy!” I said, arching into his touch. “Please Daddy, I’ll be good, I promise!”

  He gave a deep rumble of approval, and I moaned as he touched me--properly, now, rubbing his thumb into my clit with a near-punishing hardness. Nothing about it was gentle or loving, but I found myself in a haze anyway, balanced perfectly on the edge between pleasure and pain.

  I was wet, dripping wet, and I could feel the damp spot I was leaving on the front of his jeans.