He’s unsatisfied with everything I pull over my naked body. Everything.
His jeans are too baggy, so they hang low on my hips without the support of a belt, revealing my stomach. His displeasure comes in the form of some hissed curse words, and the destruction of a bedside lamp.
If it were up to him, he’d dress me in a marshmallow winter coat, and pants that eliminated the shape of my curves completely.
He decides on a pair of nike sweats that he ties as tight as he can so they stay put, before he has me sliding on a baggy sweatshirt that practically eliminates my boobs.
He cups his chin, stroking it contemplatively, before his jaw tenses, those sexy muscles dancing in anger as he clenches and unclenches it before his phone vibrates.
He pulls it out of his pocket, now dressed to the nines in a dark gray suit that makes him utterly irresistible. Glancing down at the screen, he glares at it, before he snaps his gaze back up at me, and I know it’s time. The inevitable is here, my date with destruction.
“We have to leave. Now,” He states, with a clipped tone, before he grabs my wrist, and hauls me after him out of his room towards the stairs.
“Levi,” I address, hoping he’ll stop for a moment, and reassure me everything is going to be okay, but he’s just as on edge as I am, if not more. Alarm bells pierce my skull, and I know that fear inside of me, clutching my organs, making it harder to breathe, is here to stay.
He doesn’t even respond to me as we get out front and he yanks open the passenger side door and roughly releases my arm.
“In,” he barks, before he moves to his side of the car, and slides into the seat beside me.
I regard him curiously. My eyes roaming over his stature as he grasps the steering wheel tightly, and pulls out of the driveway. His anxiety is just as violent as the rest of him.
Unlike him, mine is scattering. It’s hard to think straight; to focus. He’s the only thing that combats it. Because Levi is a man not easily ignored.
The ride is long.
Long by my standards. It doesn’t help that he is silent for most of the way. Silent and brooding.
“Who are these people? The ones you had in your living room?” I press, when the silence becomes too much, and I fear the tension that’s resulting will suffocate me atop this leather seat.
“That is your first problem, Sasha. And it is the only one I will address. You do not ask who these men are. These men don’t exist in your world,” He chides, caution in the gaze he flits to me.
“W-Will they hurt you or something?” My voice quivers, concern lining every syllable, and I know he’s heard it; know he’s letting it simmer inside of him, as if he doesn’t believe it’s presence.
“Hurt me?” He says, amusedly, before he jerks the car down a dirt road, that has the car bounding unevenly toward our destination. “Their definition of pain differs from yours, Sasha.”
I furrow my brows, confusion moving onto my face as I assess his words.
I guess to a man like him, pain is nothing but foreplay.
Something to get you started just before you sink your merciless cock into someone.
The thought makes me shiver, and cross my legs. I notice his eyes glancing at my thighs, which causes him to inhale a sharp breath. Our minds have reached the same place of pleasure and pain, but this moment is not one to enact our desire.
“I still don’t understand, Levi,” I admit, but it’s too late. We’ve arrived. Hell looms before us, an illusion of propriety greets us in the form of a manicured lawn, and a gorgeous mansion made of stone.
“This place is impressive,” I murmur, in awe of the attention to detail in the structure.
“Don’t be enticed by the aesthetic. These walls are built by acts you can’t even imagine. Things that would haunt you for the rest of your fucking life,” He replies, his voice causing a chill to roll down my spine. The home exudes the heavy weight of sinister intent.
“Oh,” I reply, because it’s the only word that’ll leave my trembling lips. I’m scared. Horribly scared. Crippled with panic. There’s no going back.
I’ve made my bed. Now here I am.
I firm my lips into a thin line, willing myself to obey Levi so I come out of here alive. Because by the way Levi is acting - the tension and reluctance that I see causes his muscles to bulge and contract stressfully - I may not walk out of here.
But I shouldn’t expect it to be beneath Levi to prove a point by any means necessary - if putting me within reach of sadistic human beings will teach me to never use suicide as a means of escape - he’ll do it.
Because control is learned.
In the harshest way.
He has a body full of burns and scars to prove it. Although, I don’t think I’ll ever admit this, but the scars are beautifully chilling.
They are him. And I am fascinated by every one - except for those in which I’ve inflicted. That I still have trouble coming to terms with.
He parks along the giant circular driveway that borders a grand fountain, and shuts off the car.
“Ready?” I question, trying to make my voice sound light hearted and more cheerful than I’m feeling.
“The more important question is, are you?”
My small forced smile falters, as my tongue goes dry, and he shakes his head. He shoves open his door quickly and I follow suit, careful to scurry close behind him up the stone front steps.
He walks with a confidence he’s just managed to snap into place, as if in the car he wasn’t about to freak the hell out. This man is trained. He knows how to slither amongst the other snakes, quick of tongue, impressively deceitful.
“Do not speak. Unless I tell you to,” he comments just as we reach the front door. I’m making a mental note of it, but just as I go to stow it away in memory, the door is opened by a fair skinned woman.
Her expression is soft. She ushers us in with a cordial smile, before she closes the door behind us.
“Please come in. Mr. Dashnaw is expecting you. Please follow me.”
I’m too busy admiring the stylish, expensive decorum of inside of the home, that I fall behind a little. The interior is all sleek and modern, with a touch of accent pieces here and there of the home's original character.
It looks like a cozy place to live, apart from that feeling of dread I can’t ignore in my gut.
I look up, now noticing that Levi is facing me, the woman - who I believe is the maid - is peering at us with her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she’ll receive a lashing with a whip if we're late.
Based on Levi’s words, it wouldn’t be too far fetched.
I apologize quickly before I move after them once again, careful to avoid any sudden halts that may end up with me slamming into Levi.
She leads us through the back of the house, and finally we get to a set of double doors. She gestures with her hand at them, before she bows her head and bids us farewell.
Levi inhales a sharp breath, before he casts one more scrutinizing gaze my way, and he pushes the door open.
It’s a study. The kind you see in movies with men who attend cigar clubs. Old fashionable leather couches, a chaise lounges. A book shelf that lines one wall, and a giant mahogany desk angled perfectly to face the door.
That’s not what makes my steps falter, so I trip and almost face plant as a first impression. It’s the men that reside in the room. Some with stony faces, that portray they’re here for business, but it’s the others, with that amusement in their eyes that truly scare me.
Levi catches me with a quick jerk of my arm upward. Pain stabs in my shoulder and I wince, but I don’t make much more of a fuss than that.
There are none of the men I saw in the living room. These aren’t subordinates. In fact I suspect the opposite. Levi is the subordinate in this room - if not to all Five men, at least one of them.
The one sitting at the desk in which others surround.
He’s older. Probably a few years older than Levi. He holds an authority that no one else has. No one but Levi, and yet, I know he is the one I’ve been warned of. The one Levi fixated on when he mentioned these walls were built by egregious acts.
The man arches a brow, disapprovingly as he looks at me.
“Levi,” the man at the desk says. Levi tenses immediately but it’s barely visible.
“Jesse,” Levi acknowledges, and nods his head.
Jesse clasps his hands together, tapping his tongue against his top lip peculiarly for a moment.
“You’ve brought a woman,” Jesse comments, nodding to me as we stop a few feet before the desk, right at a leather chair, and Levi roughly shoves me down into it.
“Yes, I have,” He agrees. I rub my sweaty palms lightly against my thighs, wishing the chair would swallow me whole, but I’ll be granted no such luck today.
“Do you insult us? This is a business meeting. It’s no place for women.”
Ouch.
And… we’ve now been thrown back into colonial times.
Jesse regards me with a disgust fueled by misogyny.
“Judas informed me you had the company of another woman.”
Something flickers in Jesse’s eyes that makes Levi grit his teeth.
“Have you brought her beneath my roof to share with the men here today?”
I swallow nervously, scanning the crowd once again, silently praying that wasn’t his true intention.
If it is, I’ll run.
Run and scream.
But Levi doesn’t give me that impression. Granted, I can’t always read him. He can be unpredictable.
So who am I kidding.
Before Levi can answer, two men apprehend me, and yank me up from the chair. I’m too startled to scream. All that comes out is a choked gasp.
I stare at the side of Levi’s face, wondering if he’ll step in like the club, if he’ll show his outrage in that menacing way he usually does, but what he does surprises me.
In the worst kind of way.
He laughs.
The men around the room look shocked at his humored expression.
He side-glances me, and I plead with him with my expression, but he’s unreachable. He doesn’t care to acknowledge the fear in my eyes or the way I’m shaking in the grasps of these strange men.
Jesse nods again, and a third man approaches me, before he pulls a knife out of his pocket, and a scream begins to stir in my throat.
“W-what are you doing? Please no! Stop!”
I anticipate the sting of the blade on my throat as it’s raised in front of me, but it’s not my throat he cuts. It’s the sweatshirt on my body.
It tugs the knife down it, ripping it open, revealing my breasts, which all of these men eye hungrily, like they’re seconds away from tearing them off with their teeth and savoring them the way animals do.
“So Levi, it amuses you, the idea of her sucking the cocks of my men?” Jesse narrows his eyes. “You have a history of letting women interfere with business, so maybe we shall let them be involved. Let her get her hands dirty…”
Levi finally opens his mouth to speak, and what he says terrifies me.
“Go ahead. Have a taste. I’d prefer if you did.”