1
It hadn’t taken long to strip off the sexy skimpy panties.
They were lacey and barely there. Just the type of lingerie he imagined the sultry Lana would wear.
Even he had to admit, it was a little eerie having her so lifeless on the carpet before him. He wanted to look into her big blue eyes and see his own reflection.
Hisreflection, no one else’s.
She was his from the second they met, even if she didn’t want to accept it.
The duct tape around her wrists made her skin tinge with a cold shade of blue. He knew it was a too tight, but it was necessary. Having Lana, was necessary.
Squatting beside her pretty face, he teased the blonde locks away from her pale cheeks. Her lashes fluttered, fighting against the pull of the sedative. Her limbs were limp and her mind on shut down.
A few hours had passed, and he was becoming impatient. Being stuck in the same room was taking the edge of his thrill. Any time now, Lana would wake from her dream and he could finally tell her how it was going to be.
They were together now.
She belonged to him.
This was what she wanted from the start.
2
Lana’s heavy eyelids slowly blinked open. A blurry haze clouded the room. When she swallowed, her throat felt like sandpaper.
A tingling spread to tightly bound wrists pulled behind her lower back. Her left cheek rested on pale carpet that smelt like Rory’s aftershave and her chest pressed into the floor.
Goosebumps shot down the exposed skin on her restricted arms and legs. In a muddled state, she realized the jeans she had worn had been removed. She licked cracked lips, blinked rapidly and strained to focus on the surroundings.
Craning upward, she scanned the clothes and shoes that littered the floor. The tan court shoes she bought for a dinner party last month poked out from under a pair of jeans.
Her narrowed eyes flicked back and forth, noticing Rory’s old alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand. The red digits were visible, telling her it was 4 p.m. She had been unconscious for a few hours.
What the hell had happened in those few hours?
Her tingly fingers waggled as she tried to regain feeling in her hands. Tugging for freedom was pointless as her wrists wouldn’t budge and when she tried to move each leg, both ankles flipped up, wrapped tightly with silver sticky tape.
Lana was wearing the lacey black dress that had been meticulously laid out on the bed before she arrived, the same dress that had caught Marcus’s attention in Verto Veneri. While the drug had blanketed reality, her captor removed her clothes, including her panties and had somehow dressed her limp body in the lacey garment.
To finish, he’d wrapped duct tape around her wrists and ankles, and her hair had been freed from her ponytail.
A throaty cough came from the left followed by a plume of cigarette smoke.
“Oh, thank fuck, you’ve woken up. I must have gotten the dosage wrong for the sedative.” The voice was smooth yet hinted concern.
The stiffness in her neck gripped her shoulders like a vice when she tilted her chin. A pair of shiny black brogues came into focus.
Hazy memories of his face flooded back. The same guy she propositioned at the club, Verto Veneri—the guy she asked to fuck her.
“Why…Carl?” she stuttered, her lung capacity restricted.
A low growl was followed by a shift in the brogues at her eye level. “Did you like the flowers, Lana?”
Her eyes squeezed shut and she groaned.
It had been him all along.He sent the stupid yellow flowers to her office and left them in Rory’s bedroom for her to find.
