"You should reconsider," Jack says, shoving Irina's shoulder back with his booted foot. Some of the guards chuckle as she falls back against the wall. "Before - sundown, I think. Don't you think that's long enough, Eduardo?"
"More than long enough." Eduardo's eyes rake over her appraisingly. "You're taking it too easy on her, Ingo."
Sundown, Irina thinks. Katya will be here at nightfall. The game is over so soon.
When Jack leans down toward her, she flinches, making sure not to overdo it. Everyone observing them should believe that she is afraid, but by now they know she is no coward. That's not a role Irina has ever played, or ever intends to.
"I'll come down to you then," Jack says, a cold curl of menace in his voice that gives her chills, though not for the reasons anybody else in the room would ever suspect. His hand grips her chin, puckering her lips, tilting her face up to his. "And then we'll see what you have to say, won't we?"
His skin is soft, freshly washed. He smells like Katya's green soap.
Irina looks up into his eyes, sees everything she needs to see. When Jack pushes her roughly back into her makeshift cell, she barely notices her hard tumble to the ground; she has other things to think about.
The door swings shut behind her, and she can hear both laughter and argument: laughter from the men who enjoy watching a woman be manhandled, and argument from those who would like to abuse her themselves, and more savagely. Briefly Irina imagines the lust swirling from the outside into her cell, thick black smoke that drifts in beneath the door. But Jack can handle them. She has no doubt of that and feels as safe as if she were in her childhood home. No, it's what happens after sundown that concerns her now.
Jack and Katya didn't make love. She'd wager they didn't even kiss. Part of her is overjoyed and relieved to know this; that's the part Irina distrusts most.
On another level entirely, the level Irina has forced herself to operate on for most of her life, she realizes that this just prolongs the suspense. She brought Jack and Katya together for a reason. In a way, their refusal to comply with that purpose is more troubling than anything else. If they were going to have a meaningless fuck - a potential outcome, one for which Irina had already braced herself and planned accordingly - they'd have done it by now.
Outside her cell, voices are quieter. She can hear the low heart-thump of feet on the stairs; Jack's dispelled the danger, taken them upstairs. It is no more than Irina expects, and she stretches out upon the floor, slowly relaxing. She can fold her handcuffed arms behind her head as a kind of pillow. The cement is hard, but it's cool, and now, with the early-afternoon heat at its most searing, she needs that more than anything else.
Jack is - more or less - behaving himself with Katya. Katya has a remarkable tendency to convince men not to behave themselves. Therefore he is either doing this because he has made up his mind to bury his darker side down deep - not get rid of it, because he never could and knows it, but sink it in a cold, deep well, far away from the world -- or because he is still in love with his wife.
The latter possibility both moves and frightens Irina. The former intrigues her. Of course, both could be true.
She wonders how best to get at the truth, then asks herself if she really wants to.
For the moment, she doesn't even want to think. She wants to feel the cool floor beneath her back, and let her mind flow free, and hurry sundown.
**
The car slams into the river, the hardness of metal crashing into the hardness of water. White spray turns into swirling tide, muddy dark, creeping over the hood, lapping at the windshield wipers.
"What do we do?" Jack is in the passenger seat, staring at the floorboard where eddies are beginning to form. Irina feels cold damp creeping into her shoes.
"Breathe in deep," she says. She has talked herself through this over and over in the past few weeks, and so she knows all the other instructions: Let the car fill with water. Unfasten seat belt. Roll down window. Swim to a tire for air. But she can't seem to say those instructions out loud to Jack; a strange immobility has seized her, as surely as the river has seized her car.
They are sinking deeper; the windshield is almost completely covered, and she steals a look at the sliver of twilight sky still visible. It's the last sky Laura Bristow will ever see. The river is rising within the car, faster now, and she must stay calm. She must stay calm. For her daughter's sake she must stay calm.
"We have to get out of here," Jack says. He isn't panicking - her husband doesn't panic - but he's not happy. He looks so young.
"We have to stay. Just for a while. Not forever."
The cold water rushes over her lap, between her legs. The end of Jack's tie begins to float. Outside the car, she can see nothing but the flood she has created, illuminated only by the car's headlights; swirling twigs and bracken are caught in their sepia glare. The tires hit river bottom, and mud clouds up all around them like an octopus' ink.
"Let me get you out of here." Jack puts one hand on the door handle. "I can get you out of here."
"You can't. Nobody can." Irina draws in breath after breath, hyperventilating on purpose, as the cold weight presses against her chest. The green glow of the dashboard shimmers on the water's surface as it goes under - radio, odometer, the still-clicking turn signal. She is shaking from the adrenalin and the chill.
"Please." She almost can't hear him over the rushing water, which is nearly at her ears now. Irina turns her face up to the small, flickering light on the car's roof, the better to get the last gasps of air. The last thing she hears Jack say is, "For Sydney."
Just as the water frames her face, closing up over temples and chin, Irina gasps, "Sydney isn't here -"
Irina surfaces from her dream with a jolt, sucking in air, surprised that it's hot and sweat-thick, instead of cold and musty. Disoriented, she pushes herself up so that she's sitting against the wall. Two bad dreams in as many days - it's time to stop sleeping, at least for a while.
There's shouting outside, and for an instant she wonders if it's sundown and her escape is at hand. But no - it's still too hot, and she wasn't asleep that long. The men are arguing among themselves over trifles. She hates them. My God, how Jack must hate them.
Jack hates these men. She knows Jack's hate, its shape and its thorns. He has used that hate against her, as both his weapon and his shield; perhaps she can use it now.
The bad dream was worth it, because sleep has clarified her mind and her purpose. Adrenalin hits her bloodstream like vodka, like heroin, and Irina feels a grin spreading across her face. Her heartbeat quickens, thumping beneath her chest, in her wrists, along the column of her throat. It feels good to have a plan, to have something to do besides sit and wait. It feels very good.
She pulls one strap of her tank top down her shoulder, revealing the angle of neck and collarbone. Running her hands through her hair, she draws in a breath, then slams her fist against the door with all her strength. Beyond the glass panel, the guards jump and stare at her. Their eyes charge with a strange heat. Irina feels a jolt of fear - she wouldn't be human if she didn't - but she knows how to use fear as fuel. This is what she needs. What Jack needs, too, even if he'll never admit it. She'll have to show him.
In an instant, her face is a mask of terror. They know she is no coward, but panic they will believe. "Let me out!" she cries, first in Swedish and then in heavily accented Spanish. There's no point in letting them guess where she's from, even if this will all be over soon. "Let me out! I can't - the walls - I can't! Please, please, please -"
Irina hates begging, even as part of a masquerade. She'll have to do more before this is all over, though some promises to be more enjoyable.
Claustrophobia isn't one of her vulnerabilities, but Irina knows what it looks like. She paws at the glass, clutches at the doorknob and thrashes as she tries to pull it free from the lock. Although her peripheral vision reveals motion as the guards get closer, she doesn't allow herself to notice them. Right now, she can know nothing but these four walls pressing in on her; it's easy to pretend that they frighten her, that they pen her in, shut her away.
They pull the door open and she stumbles out, falling to her knees as if in relief in gratitude. The guards like that. One of them chucks her under the chin, and she jerks her head away, trying to use her tousled hair as a kind of curtain between them.
As she huddles on the floor, trembling in what looks like fear but is actually anticipation, Irina listens to them as they croon to her. One of them, in a dingy yellow wifebeater, tells her she is pretty, that she is not too old to be pretty. Silently she resolves to kill him first. The other brushes along her shoulder with the muzzle of his gun, no doubt thinking, as all such stupid men must think, that he is the first to conceive of this maneuver, with its clumsy, banal suggestiveness. The gun slides the other strap of her top along her shoulder, baring more skin.
Irina says nothing, just gulps in a few deep breaths and tries to crawl back toward the cell. The guards will have nothing of it; she's done what she set out to do. One of them pushes her back roughly, and she lets the force of it carry her to the floor as she shrieks.
Will Jack have heard that scream? Perhaps. If not, others will.
She scrambles backward, crablike, as the guards laugh and close in on her. By the time she's backed herself into a corner, they're thoroughly enjoying themselves, the teeth of their leering grins brilliant in the afternoon shadows. Irina tries to curl into a protective ball; that's what they'll expect.
Other men are crowding into the room now, eager to see what they're sure will happen next. The audience is larger than Irina had anticipated; seeing so many lustful faces surrounding her brings her excitement to a higher pitch, and by now she can feel her pulse along every inch of her body.
Eduardo comes in, his scowl disapproving at first. But as he sees her trembling on the floor, his face shifts into something altogether more dangerous. "What's she doing out of her cell?"
"She wanted out," one of the guards says with a shrug. "She wanted out real bad. I figure she can earn herself some time out."
"That's not your call to make," Eduardo says, glaring at the guard. "It's mine."
"I'll go back, I'll go back, I'll go back," Irina whispers, keeping the Swedish accent thick.
"Yeah, you will." Eduardo looks at her appraisingly. "In a while." He steps closer, and Irina feels the combined dismay and arousal of the guards; they know now that they won't get her first, that they might not get her at all, but they don't mind the prospect of watching.
And now, finally, Jack comes in the room. He must've been on the far side of the compound, not to make it until now. No matter. He's right on time.
"What's going on?" Jack's voice is as cold and flat as his expression.
Eduardo doesn't respond directly to the question. "I told you, you were taking it too easy on her." He casts an appraising look at Irina's breasts, and she takes a deep, heaving breath, as if in panic. "She's my prisoner. I make the rules - unless you have a problem with it."
Jack's eyes meet hers for half a second. All he wants to know is whether or not she engineered this. Irina watches his eyes change as he gets his answer.
The others are not so perceptive, though. So Irina still has some acting left to do.
"Not him," she whispers, a whisper calculated to resound throughout the room. Her face twists in revulsion and terror of Ingo Krauss, the man who has already beaten her in front of all these men. "Not HIM. Anyone - anyone but him -"
The guards all laugh. Jack knows his cue. He steps forward, a pace or two ahead of Eduardo. He says only, "Will you let this woman give you orders?"
"No." Eduardo's disappointment is reframed, put in terms of a balance of power, and now he is happy to grin at Jack. "She doesn't give the orders around here."
Jack comes even closer, kneels by her side. When his hand grips her chin this time, she cries out - a small, helpless sound that must arouse the men surrounding her. Probably it arouses Jack too, for all that he knows it's a lie. His expression is dark as he studies her. "Not me? What is it you don't think I should do?"
Irina is shivering now. Jack is so close, so close. She can see the haunted look in his eyes; he doesn't want it to be like this. He knows that she is calling to the darkness inside him, and he doesn't want to answer.
But he will. To save her, he will.
She jerks away from him, and he slaps her, hard enough to be convincing. The pain makes her skin tingle, and when she looks up at Jack, she is seeing him through heat-glazed eyes. The rumpled clothes and the thick scent of sweat are gone; she sees only his broad shoulders, his big hands, the hard, hot look in his eyes as his fist closes around her forearm. "Can't you speak?"
Eduardo says only, "If you don't want her -"
"I do," Jack replies, his gaze never leaving hers. "She's mine."
Jack's hand is in her hair, jerking her up, and she screams as if in terror. When his mouth closes over hers, she tries to pull away, both for show and because it feels so good to have Jack force her to him, to kiss her so savagely. Her teeth cut into her own lips, and she can hear all the men laughing, and the kiss flows into her like wine.
When she pushes back against him, he shoves her into the wall, then begins dragging her back toward her cell. Who is it he wants privacy for? He may think she wants it, but he's the one who needs it. Irina doesn't care. They'll all be watching through the glass, and the idea is making her hot and slick between her legs. As Jack will, no doubt, discover shortly.
He throws her into the room, slams the door shut behind them. As she'd guessed, the guards' faces are instantly pressed up against the glass; their breath creates little clouds of steam. Eduardo is in the very center, and his eyes are so piercing Irina is almost surprised the glass doesn't shatter. This might have happened without her planning, if he'd had any longer to think about it.
Jack must be acutely aware of their audience, but he does not acknowledge them. He pushes her shoulders back on the cold concrete floor, then pulls her handcuffed arms above her head. In Russian - a language no one outside will speak - he mutters, "What the hell have you done?"
In the same language, just as quietly, she replies, "Shut up and fuck me."
He roughly pulls up her tank top, the sweaty cotton peeling away from her skin so that the air almost feels cool about her nakedness. When her bare breasts are exposed, she hears groans outside, sees the flash of lust in Jack's eyes in the moment before he dips his mouth to her.
His tongue is hot and wet against her nipple, and it takes all Irina's self-control not to cry out in transparent joy. Instead, she forces her face into a contortion that could be shame or panic. Irina tries to wriggle away from him, but he shoves her down again and nips at one breast with his teeth. He doesn't bite hard - he bites just hard enough -- but she writhes as if in pain.
Jack makes a sound deep in the back of his throat. He doesn't want to enjoy this, but it's too late. He does.
They are shouting outside, beating on the door, cheering him on. Does Jack like that too? Impossible to say. He keeps working on her breasts - sucking here, biting there, teasing and hurting and all of it good - and she keeps twisting beneath him, creating the illusion that this is against her will, that this is about her humiliation instead of her pleasure.
He's not being rough enough with her, though, at least not yet. She'll have to change that. She wants him to be rough with her. To be with Jack again, she's willing to bleed.
Irina tries to bring her handcuffed arms down to push him away, and he pushes her back brutally. His face is hard as he rises to his feet, then tows her up so that her face is at his waist. "You know what I want," he says, loud enough for them to hear outside. "Do it well enough and maybe I'll let you go."
Oh, no. Irina forces tears to her eyes as Jack unzips; he has half-turned from the window so that they have a sliver of privacy, one wide enough for her to fake this if she chooses. She will not choose. And Jack will not let her go.
Her hands shaking, Irina takes Jack's cock from his pants, trying to act as though this is unfamiliar and unwelcome to her. But he's hard for her, and it's been too damn long, and the feel of his heartbeat through the thin skin against her palms makes her head reel. When Jack's hands clamp across the back of her head and tow her closer, she obediently opens her mouth and takes him inside.
Jack groans. His head is soft against the roof of her mouth, and she can taste the salt of him against her tongue. Irina wants to deep-throat him, take him in as far as she can bear and hear him shout, but that would give away too much to their observers - who are hush-silent now, each lost in his individual lust.
Each of those men is imagining her mouth on him, the way she'd blow them, how it would feel. None of them will ever know. This is for Jack. Only for Jack.
She traces slow, lazy circles around the head of his cock with her tongue, teasing the ridge, the cleft. Jack begins thrusting into her mouth - not too hard, for the purposes of their ruse not really hard enough - but she jerks her head back as though the motion is savage. As she starts sucking, Jack's hands tense against her scalp, each finger pressing hard against her head.
God, he tastes good. He fills her mouth so completely; the curve and angle of him are so right. Irina would know him in the dark.
When Jack tenses slightly, she knows he's planning on faking an orgasm - naturally, it wouldn't fool her for a moment, but it would work for the others outside. They can see only his movement, only the back-and-forth swaying of her hair as her head jerks. He means to leave it at that; this is his twisted idea of chivalry. But Irina's pulse is pounding inside her cunt, begging for him, and she will be damned if she's going to let him walk away this simply.
Irina pushes herself away, as if trying to escape. Her lips are still slick from him as she topples backward ungracefully, unable to catch herself with the cuffs binding her wrists. As she falls to the ground, the spell of silence on the men watching them breaks; they begin shouting, cheering, pounding on the door. They think she's trying to get away. They don't want her to get away. They want her to get fucked. Though none of them guess it, Irina agrees completely.
She risks a glance straight at Jack's face; his expression is drawn, even pained. He wants her - not that there was any doubt of that, even before she got her mouth around his cock - but this isn't the way he wanted it to happen.
But behind that hurt, she sees the dark and twisting shadow of want, of need. Jack is beginning to let himself enjoy this completely. He dreads that, and he craves it, and it's all mixed in together in his bloodstream like a drug. Irina imagines herself shoving the needle into his vein, watching his eyes dilate as the fix takes him over. That's right, she thinks. Take what you want. Take what we need.
Jack grabs the chain that connects the handcuffs and tows her to her feet; they are face-to-face for one second before he shoves her face-down onto the metal table in the corner. The steel is cold against her exposed breasts, but that just makes her shiver deliciously. When Jack begins tugging at her pants, pulling them away, her trembling becomes uncontrollable. The men outside no doubt take it for fear. It is anticipation. It is desire.
The edge of the table presses against her in just the right place. This position - bent over, with a hard surface beneath her belly - is the one way she's ever been able to climax without any other stimulation. Her thoughtful Jack. He remembered.
Jack's hands cup the curves of her ass, dip between her thighs, force her legs apart. She doesn't have to speak Spanish to understand the shouts from outside now, the things they want him to do, the things he will do. Two of Jack's fingers dip inside her first, testing her readiness so that the others cannot see. When he groans, she knows that the heat and wetness he found waiting for him have pushed him over the edge. Where they are doesn't matter anymore; neither do the fools watching them. This is him, and this is her, and the darkness inside him is nothing but the force that has brought them together.
He rams into her in one hard thrust. Irina cries out, not faking it, wholly taken in the feel of his body inside hers. Jack slides almost all the way out, taking it slow, then shoves back into her again, even harder this time. It takes all Irina's self-control not to move with him, to make it even rougher. She must lie there and take it.
One of his hands is at her waist. The other clamps around the back of her neck, as if forcing her down. The pressure is real. The slam of his body against hers is real. Jack is driving at her now, going hard, getting faster.
Irina wanted to set this darkness free, and now she has. Has he ever imagined taking her by force, making her pay for all the things she did to him? In the dark of night, one hand around his cock, his eyes screwed shut so that her face shone behind his eyelids? As Jack thrusts into her harder, then harder again, Irina knows he has. He is living that fantasy now. She has given this to him.
For her, the juxtaposition of power and powerlessness is beyond intoxicating. Irina lets herself scream now, lets the pressure between her legs build and build. She tries to brace her body with her cuffed hands to provide some kind of resistance. But Jack is too hard, pounding into her, harder and faster all the time.
Her skin is flushing hot - how can it be hotter? - and the men outside are howling in something that is half-drunkenness, half-hatred. Jack keeps bearing down on her, making no sound. But she can feel the sweat between his hand and her neck, and she knows it isn't wholly her own.
Then he shifts slightly - changing the angle just a touch - and Irina can't think about him, about the men, about anything at all. She can only feel Jack, filling her up, moving the way she needs him to move as she gets tighter and tighter and -
Irina comes, biting down on her lip so hard she tastes blood. The shiver that passes through her body makes Jack's breath catch in his throat; one more long slide into her and he's over the edge, shouting out one guttural curse as he empties into her. The warmth of him slips down her quivering thighs, and for one moment, Irina thinks she might pass out or cry. Maybe both.
Jack pulls away from her and pushes her down onto the floor. The men outside beat on the walls and door, at least the ones who haven't wandered away to jack off. They want her now, but when Jack looks over at them - Irina doesn't have to see the expression on his face. They turn pale and pull away. Irina is the property of Ingo Krauss, for now.
When their eyes meet, he looks stricken. He forgot himself; everything that happened at the end wasn't an act. Delighted to realize it, and still breathing hard from the aftershock of her orgasm, Irina lets the smile she can't show flicker just behind her face. He'll be able to read it. He always could.
He relaxes slightly, though the sight of her sprawled on the floor, his come on her thighs, is clearly still disturbing to him. "You'll stay inside this time, won't you?" he says. That accent he's affecting is going to be a turn-on for the rest of her life, Irina thinks. "Or you'll have to be punished again. Next time, it won't just be the two of us. We'll have company. How would you like that?"
Irina drops her head as she shimmies back into her pants, tugs down her tank top in a semblance of shame. Jack waits for no other reply, just tucks himself back into his clothing and goes out the door with a slam.
He doesn't order the others to stay away from her. He doesn't have to. Whatever authority he has in this compound goes that far. Irina's not sure how long his order would stand - but certainly it will last until sundown. Can't be more than an hour or two, now.
She curls on a ball in the floor, as if to weep. Her pulse thrums pleasantly between her legs; her nipples are still sensitive against the cotton of her shirt, still slightly wet from Jack's mouth.
Sleep isn't the only way of killing time, she thinks, and against her forearm her lips curve in a smile.
**
Read on to the next chapter.