Sheer Torment Read online

  SHEER TORMENT

  (Sheer Submission, Part Two)

  Hannah Ford

  Contents

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  SHEER TORMENT

  SHEER TORMENT

  Copyright © 2018 by Hannah Ford

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  SHEER TORMENT

  (SHEER SUBMISSION, PART TWO)

  SHEER TORMENT

  (Sheer Submission, Part Two)

  AVEN

  I closed my eyes, willing myself not to scream, and my throat burned with the effort.

  But I needed to get out of this room, and screaming bloody murder in front of an insane man probably wasn’t the best way to make sure that happened.

  Blood pulsed through my veins and my head began to throb. Spots sparkled and danced in front of my eyes, and I blinked quickly, trying to clear them from my field of vision.

  From what sounded like far away, I could hear Landon asking me if I was okay.

  I bit back the scream that was still rising in my throat, and -- even though I had no reason to believe it would work -- said my safe word. “Champagne.”

  Immediately, he unlocked the handcuffs. I was up and off the bed, grabbing my dress and pulling it on, not even bothering to adjust my underwear.

  “Aven,” Landon said. He took a step toward me, the look on his face regretful and full of concern. “What –”

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” I said. I reached down and grabbed Violet’s scarf from behind his bed. “Why the fuck do you have my sister’s scarf, you sick asshole?”

  “What?” Landon looked confused as his eyes landed on the scarf.

  “This is Violet’s,” I said. “This is her scarf. She was here.” I was pushing past him down the hall, racing toward the elevator doors, pressing the button over and over until they opened.

  “Aven, wait – ”

  But I was already gone, the elevator doors closing as I mumbled a prayer that Landon wouldn’t come after me. He didn’t.

  When I got to the lobby, I walked quickly toward the revolving doors, catching sight of my reflection in the plate glass windows. My hair was a mess, my dress rumpled and disheveled. My skin was flushed, the color high on my cheeks. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and my body betrayed me as the place between my legs still pulsed, screaming for release.

  My heels still didn’t fit me, and I limped as I walked.

  Apparently I made no impression on the security guard, who barely paid me any mind as I left.

  Probably he was used to upset, half-naked women leaving Landon Sheer’s penthouse at all hours of the night.

  I walked outside.

  The night had turned cold, and I shivered. A light snow had started to fall, and I realized the back of my dress hadn’t been zipped up. It wasn’t something I could do by myself, and the skin of my back was exposed.

  Luckily, in New York City, this wasn’t anything that would cause someone to look twice. Anywhere else, a girl walking down the street with her dress unzipped and her hair disheveled would have earned a second glance.

  But here, it was nothing but background.

  I thought about hailing a taxi, wondering if the money it would cost vs. taking the subway would be considered a necessary expense. I didn’t relish the thought of being down in subway car with the back of my dress gaped open, but I also had to make my rent.

  I stood on the corner of 5th and Lexington and made a deal with myself. If I had enough cash in my purse that I didn’t have to use my debit card to pay for the cab, then I would go for it.

  But when I went to reach for my purse, I realized I didn’t have it.

  Shit.

  I’d left it in Landon Sheer’s hotel suite.

  I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” I swore out loud, and a woman walking by with her son shot me a dirty look.

  Her kid clutched his Lion King on Broadway mug, and I resisted the urge to rip it from him and smash it on the ground.

  I would have to walk.

  Forty-five minutes later, I got to my apartment. I didn’t have my key, so I crossed my fingers that Emma was home, and hit the buzzer.

  Immediately, her voice came over the intercom.

  “Yeah?”

  “Emma, it’s me,” I said, dizzy with relief.

  She buzzed me in right away, and when I got to our third floor walk-up – a mistake in retrospect, but we were so excited to have our own apartment that we’d somehow convinced ourselves that it wouldn’t be a big deal to have to walk up three flights of stairs every time we got home (“It will be good exercise!”) -- Emma was waiting in front of the open door.

  “Oh my God!” she said when she saw me, all disheveled. “Jesus, Aven, what happened to you?

  “I was with Landon Sheer.”

  Her mouth formed into an O, her green eyes widening. “What?”

  I nodded, not wanting to say his name again. Landon Sheer. The words burned against my brain, no, he burned against my brain, his touch, his kiss, the dirty things he’d made me say.

  “What happened?” Emma ushered me into the apartment and sat me down at our tiny kitchen table, then began bustling around the kitchen. “You want a sandwich?” She surveyed the meager contents of our refrigerator, pulled out a deli bag and sniffed it skeptically. “I think the ham is still good.” One of the drawbacks of having to walk up three flights of stairs to your apartment was that we didn’t do much grocery shopping – lugging bags up the stairs sucked. It was much easier to order in, and the city was filled with cheap takeout.

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “Right. Wine, then.” She pulled a bottle from the panty and uncorked it, pouring generous helpings into two paper cups and handing me one.

  I took a sip, grateful for the alcohol that burned my throat and yanked me out of the thoughts I’d been having, anything to erase the feel of his hands on me, the whisper of his words against my skin.

  And yet another part of me, a part that was ashamed, wanting to hold onto that feeling, didn’t want the feel of his hands to leave my body, didn’t want to wash the taste of his lips on mine from my mouth.

  I wondered if the spanking he’d given me had left marks, and I closed my eyes, wanting that more than anything, imagining myself standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom, twisting so that I could get a look at my ass. I pictured the way the handprints would look, big like his hands, the redness on my skin a reminder of what he’d done to me.

  My skin still tingled with his touch, and now that I was home and thinking about him, my pussy throbbed with want.

  “He texted me while we were in the diner,” I said. “It wasn’t someone about a job. He texted me and he … wanted to see me.”

  “About Violet?”

  “Sort of. He wanted to see me, but not just about Violet.”

  Emma’s eyes widened, and she reached for the wine and topped off her glass. “Go on.”

  “He took me to his suite, and we…we started hooking up.” If you wanted to call being thrown over his knee and spanked hooking up.
My hands tightened around my cup.

  “Holy fuck!” Emma said. She was practically swooning now, and she took my hands and grabbed them, swinging me around the kitchen. “You have to tell me everything. Is he a good kisser? Did you have sex with him?” The last question was laced with surprise, because she knew I was a virgin. It was also laced with hope, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she was happy at the thought that I’d actually lost my virginity, or because she thought I’d lost it to Landon Sheer.

  “No.”

  “No, he’s not a good kisser?” Emma stopped and dropped my hands, frowning. “Really? His lips are so… and his face, I mean, God, how could he not –”

  “I mean, no, I didn’t sleep with him.” When you talk about sex, you will call it fucking.

  “So he is a good kisser?” Emma gave a sly smile and picked her wine back up. She sat down at the kitchen table and hooked her ankles around the bottom rung of the chair. “I knew it. There’s no way with that kind of body he doesn’t know what to –”

  “He had Violet’s scarf in his suite.”

  “What?” Emma’s voice cracked as if she were having trouble reconciling the picture of Landon Sheer kissing me senseless with someone who would have my missing sister’s scarf.

  You and me both, honey.

  “He had her scarf. It was behind her bed.” I gestured to the scarf, which I’d set down on the counter when I’d gotten in. Emma had been so excited to see me she hadn’t noticed.

  “Are you sure it’s hers?” she asked now, crossing the kitchen and inspecting it.

  “Positive.” I swirled my wine around in my glass like I was letting it breathe in some expensive goblet instead of just holding it in a cheap paper cup. “It was the one I got her last year for Christmas, remember?” Emma and I had gone shopping for it together, and it had been Emma’s idea to get it monogrammed, a rare show of support for my sister, who she’d never really cared for.

  “Yeah.” Emma frowned. “I just – “

  The buzzer rang from downstairs then, and Emma and I looked at each other.

  “It’s probably Jeremy,” I said.

  Jeremy was Emma’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Right now they were off-again, which meant it was just about time for him to show up half-drunk for a booty call.

  Emma crossed the room to the intercom and pushed the button. “Hello?” There was the sound of a feedback, but nothing else. “Hello?” She frowned at the silence. “Must have been a mistake.”

  But a split second later, the sound of a sharp knock on the door made us both jump.

  Emma peered out the peephole, then turned to me, her mouth open.

  “It’s him,” she whispered.

  “Who?” I said, even though I already knew. My stomach clenched.

  “Landon Sheer.”

  “Aven.” His voice came through the door, rough as sandpaper and smooth as ice, and my core tightened. “Open the door.” The man might have taken my sister, and already he’d trained me to respond to his goddamn voice.

  Had he done the same thing to Violet, before he’d taken her?

  The thought of it made my blood boil, and anger pulsed through my veins, hot and angry.

  I crossed the room, pushed past Emma, and threw open the door. I’d been prepared to tell him off, to let him know that if he didn’t leave immediately, I’d be calling the police, but just as had happened to me at the party, my voice died in my throat.

  He stood there in front of me, all 6’4” of him, in the same suit he’d been wearing when I’d left him a few moments ago.

  Now he wore a long dress coat over it, something that looked deliciously soft, the kind of thing I could imagine rubbing my cheek against as his arms wrapped around me.

  He was holding my purse.

  “You forgot something,” he said. His tone was almost accusing, as if he were the one who’d been inconvenienced by me leaving my purse in his suite, like he’d totally forgotten the fact that I’d run out of his room because I’d found my missing sister’s scarf.

  “You could have sent it to me.” I reached out and took my purse from him.

  “Aven. ” He took a step into my apartment, and he smelled like the cold from outside, and the cologne I’d already begun to associate with him. Having him in my apartment felt like an invasion, like something intimate I wasn’t ready for. I’d never had a man here before, although of course Emma had had her fair share.

  Landon’s eyes landed on Emma. “Hello.” His tone was friendly, but his brow furrowed, as if he were disappointed to find someone else here.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Emma, Aven’s roommate.”

  “Landon Sheer.”

  “Yeah, I know.” A silence settled over the three of us, and Landon stared at Emma, his gaze withering, until she said, “Yes, well, I was just… I mean, I was just going to my room.” She slipped by me, leaving me standing there in the hallway, even though I’d just told her that I’d found my sister’s scarf in Landon’s room. Apparently she thought hot, rich, and a good kisser trumped any chance of being an abductor.

  “You shouldn’t have run out on me like that,” Landon said once Emma was gone. I listened for the click of her bedroom door shutting, and didn’t hear it. Good. She was keeping her door open in case he tried to kill me.

  “You shouldn’t have lied to me about knowing where my sister is,” I shot back.

  “I’m many things, Ms. Courtland, but a liar isn’t one of them.” He said it without bravado. I would have thought that a man of his accomplishments and wealth would have said he was many things in a bragging way, but he didn’t. Instead, he said it almost matter-of-factly and with a hint of sadness, as if the many things he was referring to included the negative.

  “Is kidnapper one of them?”

  “No.” His voice was low and solid, and he stood there in my doorway, his gaze leveled on me. His eyes traveled up my body, taking in my disheveled state, and I thought I saw the fire in his eyes, that same look of lust that lit up his eyes and turned them bright blue back in the hotel suite.

  “Thank you for bringing my things, Mr. Sheer.”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “No.”

  “That’s very rude, Ms. Courtland.” As his voice ran over me, admonishing, my ass cheeks burned. I could feel the sting of his hand against me. “You know how I feel about bad girls.”

  “You’re sick.”

  He leaned down to whisper in my ear, and I stared at the place where his hair faded into his neck, perfect and smooth. “Does it turn you on?”

  “The fact that you’re sick?”

  “The fact that I want to dominate you.”

  “No.”

  “Remember what I said about lying to me.” His hand reached out and pushed my hair back from my neck. Then he reached into the top of my dress, his hand palming my breast as he took my nipple in between his index and middle fingers and pulled gently.

  I gasped.

  “Your mouth may lie, but your body never will, Aven.” He twisted my nipple, so hard it hurt, and then straightened back up.

  My body was left wanting, pulsing, desperate for his hands back on me.

  “Thank you for returning my purse,” I said. “Although I’m not sure the police are going to be as understanding when I tell them about finding Violet’s scarf behind your bed.”

  “Have you talked to the police about your sister being missing, Aven?” He’d slipped past me into the kitchen now, and I was instantly self-conscious. Something about him being here, in my space, in my home, was extremely disarming.

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. I had talked to the police about Violet being missing. But the things that I thought made it obvious she was in distress – the fact that she was using emojis in her texts when she never used emojis, the fact that she wasn’t using correct punctuation when she was a stickler for things like that, the fact that she wouldn’t tell me where the hell she was – failed to impress them.

&
nbsp; The cop at my local precinct, a very sour woman named Officer Blankett, had looked at the picture of Conner Sheer I’d shown her, made a comment about how she would have run away with him too, and then asked me if I wanted to fill out a missing persons report. Which I did, even though I could tell the officer thought it was a complete waste of time.

  She watched me from her desk as I filled out the information – Violet’s name, her name, her date of birth, the last time I’d seen or heard from her, what those communications had been like.

  I could have lied, could have told them that she hadn’t been in touch, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Now, though, standing here with Landon Sheer, I had kind of wished I had.

  “And I’m sure the police will be very excited to hear about Violet’s scarf.” I tried to infuse my voice with as much confidence as I could, even though the truth was, of course, that the police weren’t going to give a crap.

  If they hadn’t cared with the information I’d given them before, they definitely weren’t going to care about a dumb scarf. A scarf that I couldn’t even prove belonged to Violet, and even if I could, couldn’t prove that it had been in Landon Sheer’s suite.

  Although his fingerprints would be on it. Would that be enough to make the police finally listen? Probably not. No, I needed more.

  “How long have you lived here?” Landon said, ignoring my comment. He was looking around the kitchen, taking in the tiny size, the breakfast nook with the table that had four mismatched chairs, the yellow curtains that didn’t match anything but cost five dollars for a full set.

  “A couple of months. Sorry it’s not a penthouse suite.”

  “Never apologize. For anything.”

  “Is that one of your rules?” I shot back.

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “Do you want me to want it to be?”

  “Is your mouth always so smart?” His gaze leveled me, and damn it if those blue eyes didn’t make butterflies swarm my stomach. I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that just an hour ago, his hands had been on me, that he’d spanked me and touched my pussy. When I blinked, my eyes stayed closed a second longer than was necessary, and I felt his hand on my ass.