His breath touched my belly through the thin fabric of my nightgown as he spoke, “I’m not asking, Kitten.” I was about to say I didn’t feel right sleeping next to Celia when his hot mouth closed over my puckered nipple, and an unbelievably hard tug inside me quickened my pulse and made the lips of my sex swell.

He let go quickly, but the damage was already done. The residual wetness left by his mouth continued hardening my nipple as the air touched it. My breath was seemingly harder to come by, but Caleb seemed calm and in control.

“Now,” he said over the roar in my ears, “are you going to get in this bed and go to sleep, or are you going to give me a reason to torture you in a thousand different ways that don’t hurt?” A whine escaped my throat.

He coaxed me toward the bed, but I dug in my heels and gently refused to move. Caleb sighed deeply.

I knew I was testing his patience, but I wouldn’t relent. “Please make her go,” I whispered.

“Wouldn’t that be mean?” he teased me from previous conversation, and I smiled in spite of myself. He regarded me for a few moments, then rolled his eyes playfully and yelled, “Celia!” I jumped. Celia woke with a start and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“Sí, Señor?” she said, alarmed and groggy.

“Go back to your room.”

Chapter Thirteen

Matthew sat in silence for a few minutes, trying to soak in the story. What could he say? There wasn’t necessarily any relevant information to be gleaned, but he was beginning to become curious about Caleb and the kind of man he was.

Caleb seemed like a very conflicted person. To Matthew’s thinking, the conflict didn’t excuse Caleb’s actions, but as he sat in Olivia’s hospital room struggling not to notice the throb of arousal he experienced every time he shifted in his seat and thought of Sloan, he wondered if he didn’t share something in common with the man. It wasn’t a comforting thought by any stretch, but there it was. He was curious.

As Olivia spoke, he recalled their earlier conversation about whether or not monsters were born or made. He believed they were made, as did Olivia, but Matthew had trouble with the notion that cruelty, justified further cruelty. Or a lust for it.

In Matthew’s case, he felt he should be able to subjugate his need to be humiliated and dominated sexually. His desires were a remnant from a childhood spent taking care of a weak woman and getting verbally and physically abused by an even weaker man. That Matthew had become a strong-willed and self-assured person was a blessing, but his need to be abused from time to time was a curse he struggled with in every romantic relationship he had.

Matthew wondered if the situation were reversed between him and Caleb, if it would have made any difference in how either of them turned out. Would Matthew have been a kidnapper? Would Caleb feel the need to submit instead of dominate? Or were certain aspects of a person’s personality ingrained in them from birth?

A loud ping from his laptop snapped Matthew out of his thoughts. He received an email from Agent Williams. It was probably rude to open it, but he was glad for the distraction and the information could be important.

“Sorry. I have to read this email,” Matthew said.

“Can you tell me what it says?” Olivia asked. She seemed to also need a distraction.

Matthew’s finger scrolled through the email. His brows furrowed as he went over bits of information, his mouth quirking in different expressions depending on what he read. “I suppose. It might be helpful if you can tell me anything new.”

“I can try,” she said and Matthew realized he believed her. He still strongly believed Olivia was suffering from Stockholm’s Syndrome, but it didn’t mean she was trying to stop him from doing his job.

“Demitri Balk has gone through a lot of trouble to cover up his past. According to this, prior to 1988 he was known as Vladek Rostrovich. Allegedly, he was a small-time arms dealer out of Russia,” said Matthew.

“He disappears after ’88, and then reappears as Balk in ’98. In 2002, his company goes public and he becomes a billionaire seemingly overnight.”

“What does that mean?” asked Olivia.

“I’m not sure,” Matthew said. He obviously couldn’t give Olivia all the details. She didn’t have a need to know. However, he hoped giving her some of the information might lead her toward divulging information she was either keeping or didn’t know she had.

Given the information, Matthew surmised that Pakistan, like many of their neighbors, bought weapons from Russian arms dealers in the 1980’s. It was the most plausible explanation for Rafiq and Vladek crossing paths. For a moment, Matthew wondered if the bad blood between Rafiq and Vladek revolved around the sale of weapons to enemies of Pakistan, but that didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would justify a vendetta spanning twenty years. It had to be personal.

At least now, Matthew had a timeframe for when it might have occurred. Also, given the fact Olivia had been kidnapped for the purpose of human trafficking and not drugs or guns, there was a large piece missing from the puzzle.

“Did Caleb ever mention why he and Rafiq want Balk dead?”

Olivia cocked her head slightly to one side and looked up toward the ceiling as if answers were written there. Matthew recognized the behavior of someone trying to remember something. He found it interesting how people, with all their differences, were still inherently the same. Olivia finally responded, “Yes and no. The night Caleb told me he was…,” she suddenly looked sad.

“What is it?” Matthew asked.

“I think you’re right, Reed,” she said, her voice rough at the edges. “I’m going to need a lot of therapy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and meant it.

“Me too,” she whispered and took a deep breath. “Anyway, the night he told me he planned on selling me, he said something about Balk needing to pay for what he did to Rafiq’s mother and sister. Apparently, he did something to Caleb, too. I remember because later I wondered if that’s where Caleb got the scars on his back.”

“Is it?” Matthew asked.

She looked away, getting choked up again. “No. He said it was some guy named Narweh. He wouldn’t tell me much; just that he was the one who whipped him when he was younger. Caleb said his life was hell until…Rafiq rescued him.”

Matthew wrote everything down, hoping all the pieces would fall into place for him soon. Every piece was valuable because he knew alone they meant nothing, but together they would lead him toward realizing the whole picture. That’s what he loved. It was all he lived for: solving the puzzle.

“Did he say anything else about this, Narweh, person? Do you have a timeframe?”

Olivia shook her head, “Sorry, no. I know Caleb was younger than me when it happened.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. We…we became very close by the end, Reed. Last time you were here and Sloan had just left, I was scared that maybe I made it up. I was scared that what I feel for Caleb was my way of surviving. Then I think about all the things he told me. I think about the way everyone gave him shit for being soft with me, and I…. I just don’t think I made it up. It’s real. The way I feel for him is real.” Olivia said.

“I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.” Matthew shrugged, “My job is the case, not to determine if your feelings are real. Not to say your feelings are irrelevant, it’s just no one can answer that question but you.”

“I know, Reed. I just….”

“I know, Miss Ruiz,” said Matthew. “When this whole thing started, my job was to get your statement and bring someone to justice. It’s become something much larger than I, or my superiors had anticipated. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, or discount them, but the bottom-line is: Someone has to stop that auction. Everything else? I’m not sure,” Matthew said. He had done a lot of talking with Olivia over the last week. He’d learned a few things, but whether or not it would lead him to the auction was still unclear.

Luckily, he had a team working on it now.

“Why don’t you tell me the rest?”

Olivia was staring off again, but she nodded. “Yeah, why not”

***

My attachment to Caleb was evolving, but it wasn’t just that. I found myself anticipating his needs and learning the meanings behind his many silences. Some days, he was brutal and I scrambled to obey his every whim as flawlessly as I was capable. Other days, he seemed content just having me near while he attended to mundane things.

Caleb liked to read, but when I asked, he never let me know what it was he was reading. When I mentioned how much I liked to read, he gifted me a copy of Shakespeare’s, Hamlet. I thought it was ironic he gave me a story about one man’s obsession with revenge and how it literally poisoned everyone around him. He didn’t seem to find it amusing, but let me keep the book anyway. I wasn’t sure what to make of the gesture.

I thought a lot about the night he had sex with Celia in front of me. It was a painful memory for many reasons, but the worst seemed to be my nagging sense of jealousy. No matter the circumstance, I found having Caleb near was always better than not having him around. It wasn’t only his presence I came to crave, but also the man himself.