Mountain Captive by Cassie Mint
Five
Natalia
If my body weren’t singing with scrapes and bruises, I’d think this was a dream. The kind I have sometimes on slow summer nights when my bedroom is too warm and I prop the window open for a breeze. When I sleep on top of the bed covers with only a thin sheet pulled to my waist, and my nipples harden beneath every brush of my camisole over my skin.
A good dream.
A gooey, aching dream.
Except if I were driving this fantasy, my kidnapper wouldn’t tease me so badly. Everything else he’s done tonight, he’s done with ruthless efficiency. Quick and deft and then done. But this, he takes his goddamn time. It’s enough to make me slam my head back against the pillow.
He unwraps me like the most delicate of gifts. Which sounds lovely, but is really a drawn-out torture of fingertips brushing over my heated skin. He peels my clothes off one piece at a time, moving slower than dripping honey. His movements are cruelly tender, and when he finally cups my hip bone in his palm, my stomach muscles are shuddering with desire. I rock to the side, pressing into his touch, and finally, finally, he squeezes me. He kneads the swell of my hip, scowling at the curves of my body like they’re a personal insult to him.
I might be self-conscious. I might want to cover up, feeling unattractive. But it’s so crystal clear that he wants me badly, that he’s furious about it, and instead I stretch and preen like a smug house cat under his intense gaze.
Look, I want to tell him. Look at the trap you’ve made for yourself.
He wants me. He won’t—he can’t hurt me.
I know that now. And I can use it against him.
“Stop it.” He shakes my hip, but I wriggle closer, pressing against him. He blows out a shaky sigh, dropping his chin and muttering something under his breath, and all the while his fingers are kneading me. Rubbing burning circles into my skin. I’m soaking wet between my legs, throbbing and pulsing down there in ways I’ve never felt before, but he’s undone too.
He jerks his head up, a hard glint in his eye.
“Is that how we’re playing this, princess? A battle of wills?”
I turn my head and run the tip of my nose up his forearm.
He curses darkly, lurching off the bed, and stands over me, chest heaving. I spread my legs wider, only flushing slightly darker at my bareness, and glare at him in challenge.
No one has ever laid eyes on me there. My most secret parts. And now the first man to see all of me is a rough stranger in the mountains—a man who stole me away in the night and lashed me to his bedpost. But I am truly my father’s daughter, wicked and wild, because the thought only makes my pussy flood wetter.
“You’re soaked, Natalia.” He traces a circle onto my ankle bone, then draws a line up the inside of my calf. “I can see it from here. You’re glistening.”
His finger reaches the inside of my knee, lingering for a second before swooping up my thigh. It’s so ticklish, so sensitive, that I actually huff a laugh around the gag. His mouth twitches, but his face smooths back to careful blankness.
“Has anyone ever touched you here before?”
I have.If he hadn’t gagged me, I’d tell him so. I’d tell him all of it. But he did gag me, so he doesn’t get to know those things. I simply shake my head. And something warms in my chest when relief flits through his expression.
“Good,” he rasps. “Good girl.”
Oh.When he calls me that, my pussy clenches down on nothing, on the horrible emptiness that I’ve never noticed before. It makes the ticklish feeling down there worse, and a faint sound escapes around the gag. It’s wounded and desperate, and a cruel smirk plays over the man’s face before he relents and slides his finger along my slit.
“So wet.” His voice is ragged. “So eager for me, princess.”
I wish I could argue. Could proclaim that it’s not for him. But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? It’s all for him. Every drop and whimper; every crackle of sensation on my oversensitive skin.
I’m open and ready and waiting for him. And suddenly, I want more than his touch.
I want all of him.
This time, I’m glad for the gag. It saves me from myself. From my twisted desires. And I bite down on the fabric, musty and rough in my mouth, as his broad fingertips play through my folds. He’s relaxed, exploratory, not trying to ease my ache. Not yet.
Not until I weep with frustration.
I’ve wept so many tears for this man already tonight. Tears of shock, of fear, of fury.
These are tears I will be glad to weep.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and I’m so relieved to hear the rough edge to his voice. He’s coming undone too, his calm exterior cracking, the strain showing in the set of his shoulders and the muscle ticking in his jaw. He moves his fingers with more purpose, dipping just slightly into my center before sweeping up to my clit. He traces circles around it, light then firm then light again, and I pant against the gag, kicking my legs as my muscles twitch.
“Easy,” he murmurs, working me faster, and I growl into the fabric. I lift my hips, trying to urge him on, to take him inside me, but he’s true to his word. His fingers dance out of reach, always teasing, never bringing relief, and the constant, unrelenting onslaught of sensations winds me tighter and tighter. I’m coiled and trembling, stomach muscles shuddering as sweat dampens the backs of my knees. Still, he taunts and teases me, until I scream in frustration against the gag.
“There.” He flicks the pad of his thumb over my clit, bearing down with the pressure I need. My hips thrust off the mattress as an orgasm rolls through me, fierce and somehow sharp. It scratches the itch he’s set under my skin, but barely, and I’m still so on edge that my jaw aches from clenching my teeth. I collapse back onto the bed as the last waves pass through me, and I scowl up at him weakly.
“Not enough?” His mouth quirks with amusement. I shake my head once, hard. He knows. The bastard knows what he’s doing to me. “Poor needy princess. With such an aching cunt.”
His words should shock me. Should rile me up and make me hate him. But instead they soak through me like sunshine, and I sigh and preen.
“Fuck.”
The creak of the bed springs is my only warning.
The man leans one knee on the foot of the bed and slides both hands under my ass cheeks. He lifts me easily, bringing my pussy to his face as I squawk and slide down the mattress.
His first lick is long. Hard. A broad swipe of his tongue. And the groan that shudders out of him rattles all the way down to my bones.
My kidnapper eats my pussy like a starving man. Like he’s on death row and this is his last meal. There’s no part of me that he doesn’t lick and suck and nibble, and there’s no finesse in his movements. He’s too hungry. Too desperate.
I shudder and cry out against the fabric between my teeth, thrashing as I fight to get closer to him, the bed rail creaking as I tug on my ties. Finally, I lock my thighs around his neck and squeeze, holding him there, forcing his tongue deeper inside me. The metal bed rail thunks to the side but we keep going, keep moaning, and I only realize that one wrist has come free when my fingers wrap around the metal rail of their own accord.
My breath catches. I force my wrist back into place, trying to think straight as I hover on the edge of oblivion.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he growls into my slick flesh. “Don’t deny me, Natalia.” A single crack of his palm against my ass sends me toppling over, spiraling down and down and down until pleasure sings through my nerves and my body stiffens in his arms. He cradles me like something precious as I shudder and gasp, licking me steadily until I’m done.
He lays me gently on the bedspread. When he lifts his head, his chin shines slick in the lamplight. There’s something in his expression—something like awe, something like regret—but then he blinks and it’s gone.
“Sleep well, princess.” He pushes to his feet and leaves the cabin, the door slamming shut behind him.
I wriggle my newly freed fingers. He never rechecked my ties.
