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Tovah

W hen Isaac got home, I was waiting for him in the kitchen, a beer in my hand. Isaac’s favorite kind of beer, to be precise. Which I’d doctored slightly by dissolving the pill of Vice that Sebastian had left for me in the fake library book.

I wasn’t planning on taking sexual advantage of him. First of all, I wasn’t a fucking psychopath. Second, Vice didn’t even work that way. While Vixen, the pill for women, could double as a fancy roofie, Vice was like the most intense Viagra someone could ever take.

That was all I needed, though. I wasn’t going to touch Isaac, but I was going to torture him until he had no choice but to tell me all of his family’s secrets. And it wasn’t that I didn’t feel guilty for drugging him, but every single time I’d considered abandoning my plan, I pictured my mom, driving across the country with only the stuff she’d had time to pack, worried someone was following her. I was doing this for her.

Sometimes you did horrible things to protect the people you loved. Or at least I did. And if that made me bad?

So be it.

“What is this, a truce?” he said, looking at the beer in my hand.

“Peace offering,” I told him, hopping off the counter and advancing toward him, making sure to sway my hips. “I was pissed at you for edging me, but I realized you can’t help what a possessive asshole you are.”

He snorted. “You’re right, I can’t.”

Taking the beer out of my hand, he tipped it against his lips and chugged it back, his throat working. An Adam’s apple had never been so attractive in my life.

“You aren’t drinking?”

I hadn’t planned to. But it would look weird, wouldn’t it?

“I don’t really like beer,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. Of course he did. “There’s wine.”

Walking around me, he trailed a hand over my back, making my whole body come to life.

“Red or white?” he asked.

“Red,” I said.

Nodding, he wandered into the pantry, coming back out with a bottle of Malbec.

“What’s a college guy doing with a wine cellar?” I asked teasingly, even though my heart was pounding.

From what I’d researched, it took a few hours for Vice to take effect. I needed him to drink the whole bottle of beer before I could enact my plan.

“My father raised me with the finer things in life, but I’m sure you found that out when you were investigating me. I know it makes me seem like a snob, but I prefer things finer. I never really was a fan of shitty keg beer.” He made a face. “Parties like that never really do it for me.”

“But you go to them all the time. You host them all the time,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But that’s just part of the Isaac Jones veneer. The fun, easygoing party guy with a heart of gold. I figured you more than anyone would realize it was just a front.”

I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. After all, I knew all about pretending to be someone you weren’t just to get what you needed.

That didn’t mean I’d veer away from my plan. Isaac poured me a glass of wine, handing it to me. We clinked glass against glass, and I sipped my wine as I watched him finish his beer.

“To showing someone our truest selves,” I said.

He shook his head. “How about, ‘to honesty.’”

I swallowed, my heart pounding harder. “To honesty.”

* * *

Hours later, I pretended to study in the bedroom, listening to Isaac’s groans as he masturbated in the shower for the third time. He hadn’t yet realized what had happened to him, and I felt a horrible mix of incredibly guilty and incredibly turned on.

Finally, I heard a not particularly satisfied moan, then the sink turned.

Isaac exited the bathroom, his eyes almost black, his pupils were so dilated.

“On your knees, Tovah,” he growled. “I can’t get my cock to go down, but I bet your tight little throat will help.”

“Why don’t you get on the bed?” I suggested, patting the spot beside me. “It’s more comfortable.”

Usually he would’ve been suspicious that I was being so agreeable. He should’ve been suspicious. Instead he climbed onto the bed next to me. I turned, straddling him, and his hard cock, encased in gray sweatpants, settled between my thighs against my pussy, sending waves of heat through my body.

God, I wanted him. It would be so easy to abandon my whole plan and swallow down his cock, or dry hump him, or?—

—But that would make me just as bad as he was. He might be mostly in control, and fully aware of what was going on, but it would still be taking advantage, and I refused to do that.

Still, I kneeled over him, running my hands up his arms, listening to him gasp.

“So sensitive,” I murmured. “What if we play a little game?”

“What kind of game?” he asked, his voice a low, lusty rasp.

Shifting his wrists, I reached for the cuffs that were currently attached to the headboard. Before he could realize what was happening and stop me, I cuffed them around his wrists, hopping off his body and off the bed, putting distance between us in case the cuffs didn’t hold.

They did.

“What the actual fuck, Tovah?” he growled, pulling at his wrists. But try as he might, he couldn’t rip them off the headboard. The wooden slats would hold.

Relaxing slightly, I moved closer to him, tracing little circles over his bare abdomen near his hip bones. He shuddered beneath my touch.

“Here’s how the game goes, Isaac. I dosed you with Vice?—”

“You what?!” he roared.

“—and from what I’ve heard, it takes between twelve and eighteen hours to wear off. I’m not going to touch you, and I’m going to keep you tied up so you can’t touch yourself. That is, unless you answer my questions. If you answer all of them satisfactorily, I’ll uncuff you so you can handle your cock until its rubbed raw, for all I care.”

He glared at me, his eyes promising retribution. “Funny that the woman who was going to expose me for distributing Vice and Vixen ended up using it herself.”

“Yeah, well,” I tossed my hair. “Fight fire with fire.”

“I’m not going to give you anything,” he said. “I can deal with having a hard cock for a while. But can you handle seeing it so hard without getting your pretty mouth on it? Fuck!”

His cock pulsed at his words alone, staining his sweats with precum. Or maybe actual cum. I couldn’t tell at this point, and I wasn’t going to risk getting close and checking, as badly as I wanted to. Because he was right, he’d trained me well, or I’d imprinted on his cock or something, because I wanted it badly, in my mouth, thrusting between my breasts, or sliding between my thighs. I wanted it places I’d never had a cock before.

Unable to resist, and aware that there was no reason for me to have to, anyway, I slowly removed the dress I was wearing and dropped it on the floor, taking off my bra and panties until I was naked in front of him. Crawling up on the big armchair that faced the bed, I started plucking at my nipples, staring at Isaac’s straining, desperate body.

“Maybe you can deal with having a hard cock, but what about having a hard cock and not being able to use your little cumslut to work it off with?”

The words did their job. Isaac moaned, deep and almost frantic, writhing against the cuffs as he stared at me.

“Are you admitting you’re my little cumslut, Tovah?”

“I was,” I said. “But right now I’m going to be my own little cumslut.”

“Tweak those pretty nipples for me,” he ordered. “Get them hard, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Hell yeah. Triumph, and his hot words, lit me up like a sparkler. I got to work tweaking my nipples, and the awareness of his attention on me made them stiffen quickly. I moaned, throwing my head back, my gaze on the ceiling as I made myself feel good.

But I had a job to do.

Lowering my head, I looked at him as I played with my breasts. “What illegal businesses are the Silvers involved in, beyond Vice and Vixen? Arms dealing? Human trafficking?”

“Fuck no,” Isaac growled. “My father might be a bastard, but he—we—would never traffic people.”

I hid my smile. I knew that the Silvers weren’t involved in human trafficking, but I needed evidence that Isaac would break and talk about his family. And by denying their involvement in trafficking people, he’d basically admitted that they were involved in arms dealing.

“Who supplies the Vice and Vixen to your family?” I asked.

But Isaac had clearly realized he’d given too much away, because he shut his mouth and shook his head, glaring at me.

“Isaac, baby,” I lowered my voice. “If you tell me, I’ll release you. It can be so simple. And doesn’t your cock need a little attention?”

“What my cock needs,” he enunciated slowly, “is to shove its way between your thighs and into that hot tight pussy that belongs to me. Or maybe into your tiny asshole. Have you ever tried anal, Tovah?”

I couldn’t stop the blush that spread across my face and chest.

He laughed, dark and dirty. “That’s what I thought. I’m glad I’ll be your first, when the time comes.”

“There are seventeen men who went missing from your father’s organization over the past ten years. Do you know what happened to them? What did your father do to them?”

“They left.”

“Left? Or were killed?”

“How the fuck do you expect me to know? I stay out of that side— damn it, ” he swore, realizing a little too late that I’d caught him again.

Unfortunately, nothing he’d said so far was usable. I wasn’t recording this because I’d implicate myself, too. But although he was giving me helpful information, I needed to ramp up the game and play harder and dirtier to get the confession I wanted.

Climbing off the chair, I walked toward Isaac, standing over the bed and trailing a hand down between my breasts, over my round stomach, between my hips, touching my mound, my slit, and finally circling my clit. I slowly slid a finger inside myself, and my touch didn’t do what his eyes on me did. I clenched around my finger, but it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t his.

Still, I popped my finger into my mouth and licked it like a lollipop.

“ Fuck, Tovah ,” Isaac said, his voice strained with desire.

“I’ll let you taste next, if you tell me if you’ve ever seen your father murder anyone. Or maybe your sister, Liza? She’s always seemed pretty violent.”

“What do you mean, always seemed violent? How would you know?”

Shit. I’d almost given myself away.

“It was obvious from all the tabloid coverage,” I said, switching back to the important topic. “Have you ever seen your father kill anyone?”

“Yes, fuck, damn it!” Isaac was sweating, his chest heaving, as he tracked my fingers circling my clit. “He made me watch when he killed one of our enemies. I was seven. The sound of the gun going off—I’ll never get it out of my head. Half his head was gone, and there was blood everywhere.” His throat worked, and I glanced down to see if he’d lost his erection, but the Vice was hard at work and so was Isaac. “Do you know what it’s like, seeing a dead man when you’re that young?”

I did, in fact. Sometimes at night, in the dark, I could still see my stepfather’s lifeless eyes as he lay crumpled over the kitchen table.

“My father looked me in the eye and said, ‘One of these days, Isaac, you’ll be the one holding the gun.’” Isaac looked disgusted. “I think about that all the time, you know. How no matter what I do, no matter how good at hockey I am or how kind and helpful of a guy I try to be, I’ll never be able to escape my fate. He’s right. One day, I’ll be holding the gun, and seventeen more men will go missing because of me.”

I froze, shocked. Isaac had given me what I needed. Maybe not all of it, but admitting his father was a murderer was close. But I couldn’t focus on that. Not when Isaac sounded so broken, so hopeless. This time I didn’t bother to fight the sympathy I felt for him. It was futile, anyway; there was no way the sympathy wouldn’t win out.

“I’ve tried so hard to keep the darkness at bay,” he told me. “I’ve done every fucking thing to be the complete opposite of my father. And I was succeeding—until I met you.”

I paused with the circles on my clit, looking at him. He was stretched out on the bed, chest heaving, cock hard and leaking cum all over his sweatpants, his hips twisted. But his eyes were on me and there was a rage in there I didn’t fully understand.

Until he explained.

“You showed up that day in the student center, your hair this bright, puke colored green…”

“Thanks,” I snorted.

He shook his head, “With those big brown eyes and those huge tits and hips and ass, looking more delectable than any dessert I’d ever eaten. And you were laughing at something some other guy was saying, so hard coffee came out of your nose. And this overwhelming urge came over me.”

“What urge?” I asked, even though I knew better. I needed to know.

“The urge to stomp over there, beat the shit out of him, and carry you away to somewhere quiet and private and secret where no one could ever take you from me. I was shocked at myself—I’d only ever kicked someone’s ass on the ice, and even then, I was considered the team’s pacifist.” He snorted. “And yet here I was, seriously considering violence and kidnapping and god knew what else. I told myself I had to stay away from you, but you were everywhere: games, classes, all over campus, your byline on the newspaper every goddamned day, and then you even showed up for the hockey party the night Jack met Aviva. And you were writing articles mocking the team, and me . It was like you knew what you’d done to me, and you were fucking baiting me.”

“Is that why you hated me?” I asked, staring at him, eyes wide in shock. I’d never known. He’d hated me because?—

“I wanted you that badly,” he admitted. “More than I’d ever wanted anyone or anything else, even hockey. And I hated you for it. You bring out this monster in me, and I’ve fought him so long. But I’m done fighting him. Done fighting it. I may be a monster, Tovah Lewis, but I’m your monster. And the monster has a message for you.”

I was so caught up by his words, his story, I wasn’t paying attention. Wasn’t ready. Not when he lifted his hands, only to pull them down—hard.

The chains holding his cuffs to the headboard snapped like they were nothing more than a silly pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs.

He slowly rose off the bed, towering above me, his whole body tense and powerful and terrifying in its beauty.

“ Run. ”