Mason

 

Clara Burton was my thief. I grabbed her arm and wrestled her into the metal chair where I intended to tie up my thief when I caught her. I pulled the ski mask off over her head, and when I saw the soft angles of her chin and jaw, her soft pink lips, and the cascading blonde hair falling out of the cap, I couldn’t believe it!

 

The rest of her outfit did nothing to give away her gender. Even when I grabbed her arm, I figured the thief who’d been stealing from us was going to turn out to be a man. I never expected a woman, but that also made the lone wolf theory a little more likely. I didn’t know anyone who employed women in our neck of the woods, not for jobs as dangerous as what Clara was doing.

 

I took my time tying her up to try to gauge how her body was built. I wrapped the rope around her wrists slowly, carefully, realizing how thin and frail they felt underneath my hands and underneath the ropes. I tied her to the back of the chair gently, observing the curve of her breasts, her flat stomach, and her narrow waist. I wanted to get her out of those clothes and into something more feminine. I tied her ankles to the legs of the chair and gripped her calf muscles to gauge how thin her legs were. The image I put together in my head was pretty good, but I wanted to see the real Clara.

 

I patted her knee several times during our initial conversation, just to be able to touch her and imagine what her skin must have felt like underneath the cargo pants she wore. She must have noticed my interest in her, because she taunted me. It seemed she wanted to use my attraction to her to get me to set her free, or to get close to me so she could milk me for information. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

 

Those blue eyes made it difficult, though. They were expressive and piercing. I could almost read her thoughts through them, or at least the thoughts she wanted me to see. It was such a shame we had to meet the way we did. I could have had a lot of fun with her if she’d just been another woman instead of the thief who’d been stealing my product and robbing me of my clients’ confidence.

 

She asked me to torture her, and when I told her I wouldn’t, she suggested doing other physical things to get her to talk. I didn’t want to hear her talk. I wanted to hear her moan. I wanted to hear her voice, heavy with desire, moan deep within her throat. I wanted to torture her with sex, to make her want me and not give it to her. I wanted to please her until she simply gave me all the information I wanted on who her boss was and where he was.

 

When I threatened to set her free and get word to her boss that she’d been caught, I could tell she grew nervous. She knew I would get word back to him pretty quickly that she was being sent back to him empty-handed, just as I’d gotten word to him about moving all of my heroin back to our empty basement at HQ, where I had her now.

 

I decided it was time to have a little fun with her.

 

“Still sure you don’t want to talk?” I asked her as I approached with a knife in my hand.

 

She just smiled at me and taunted me with those delicious lips and seductive eyes.

 

I pressed the knife under her chin.“See, at this point, I could use this knife to cut your ropes and send you running away from your boss, or I can use it to cut your tender flesh,” I taunted her, whispering in her ear as I pressed the point of the blade lightly against the skin under her chin.

 

She strained her head back, away from the knife. Her thin fingers clenched the arms of the chair. Leaning back, stretching her back along the chair, I could see her tits pushing out against her shirt over the ropes around her waist. Her neck wasn’t what I wanted to cut. Neither were the ropes. I wanted to cut those clothes off of her, to expose her.

 

Maybe a little exposure will do her good, I thought. I figured there were two possible outcomes that would be served by stripping her. Either I’d get the answers I wanted or we’d have sex. Either outcome was fine by me.

 

“You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” I asked. She wasn’t just gorgeous. She was fearless. I could see why her boss had hired her in the first place.

 

“Is there anything to be afraid of?” she asked in response, cutting her eyes to me and giving me a smug little grin.

 

I threw the knife to the side. It clattered when it hit the concrete floor, and the sound filled the room, amplified as it bounced around the concrete walls. I grabbed her underneath her chin and pushed her back, lifting the front legs of the chair off the floor.

 

“If you had any sense, you would be afraid,” I growled at her.

 

“Is that the best you got?” she spat back at me.

 

“Who the fuck do you work for?” I snapped at her.

 

Her eyes shifted away from me, looking straight ahead now to avoid the question.

 

“You’ll talk,” I told her. I pushed the chair back until I had her lying on her back on the floor.

 

“Or what? You’ll let me take a nap?” she smarted off again.

 

“You wanted to be tortured and beaten,” I told her, “so I’m going to start.” I placed a boot across her throat and rested my foot there. I wanted to threaten her. I didn’t want to actually hurt her. When she tilted her chin up to give me better access, I decided against it. I couldn’t imagine hurting someone as beautiful as she was. She’d obviously gotten in over her head by working for her boss, whoever that was.

 

“Do it,” she said. “Crush my throat, big man. You won’t get anything out of me, then.” She laughed mockingly.

 

“Dammit,” I cursed her, pulling my boot away and going back for the knife. I didn’t know what I was going to do to her. I wanted to make her talk, but I also didn’t want to use any of my normal tactics. I simply couldn’t bring myself to damage her.

 

Then, as I grabbed the knife from the floor, I got an idea.

 

“You were right,” I told her. “There are other ways to make you talk. I’ve got you in a pretty compromising position right now,” I reminded her.

 

“Yes, you do,” she agreed.

 

I grabbed her shoes and worked them off of her feet. I cut off her socks to reveal her feet to me.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Are you going to tickle me to death?”

 

“Oh no, I’m not going to tickle you.” I chuckled as I grabbed the bottom of her pants leg and started cutting.

 

“Oh, you want to do other things to make me talk,” she said with the corners of her lips slowly creeping up into a smile.

 

I cut her pants legs up to her knees and ran a hand along her smooth skin. She moaned as I touched her. My desire grew stronger for her.

 

“You keep this up, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know, baby,” she said. She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head back again, closing her eyes this time.

 

My heart pounded in my chest. My manhood ached in my jeans. Everything about this woman teased me. I wanted her. I wanted to cut her loose, tear off her clothes, and take her right there on the floor. I wanted to hear her moan. I wanted to make her scream and call out my name in ecstasy. But with a knife while she was tied to a chair? That wasn’t the way to let our first time happen.

 

I grabbed the chair and pulled her back upright.

 

“Change of plans?” she asked, meeting my eyes.

 

“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. I was sure she would see the bulge in my pants, but I didn’t care. I was going to torture her sexually since sex seemed to be her preferred method of getting people to talk.

 

I ran the blade of the knife along the curve of her breasts. She closed her eyes and sucked her breath in through her teeth. She gripped the arms of the chair, and her toes curled. “You’re teasing me, dear,” she said. “I don’t like men who tease. Why don’t you give me what you’ve got for me?”

 

I pressed the knife against where I imagined her nipple would be and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Not yet. I’ll give you what you want after you tell me your boss’s name.”

 

She opened her eyes and snapped her face towards mine. I’d rattled her finally. I’d jerked her out of her little fantasy, whatever it was. I’d shown her I still had the upper hand, regardless of how erect I obviously was.

 

She stared at me, wide-eyed, taking in every movement I made as I stepped back from her. She licked her lips slowly before saying anything. “I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t tell you.” She shook her head.

 

“Then I guess we’re done here,” I told her. She was good. I had no other way to break her besides resorting to outright torture, and I’d already told myself I wasn’t going down that road with her.

 

“Wait, you’re giving up? How is that any fun?” she asked as I walked back over to the work bench to grab my phone.

 

“It’s not, but you’re not playing along anyway, so I’m going to leave you with someone else.”

 

I texted Alec to come down and watch her while I figured out what else to do with her.

 

A few minutes later, the door slid open and Alec walked in.

 

“This is our thief?” he asked when he saw the blue-eyed blonde with tan skin and deliciously kissable lips tied to the chair.

 

“Yes. Alec, this is Clara. Clara, this is Alec. He’s going to watch you for a little while.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Alec,” she said.

 

“He’s off limits, Clara. Remember, you’re my prisoner,” I teased her.

 

I patted Alec on the shoulder and led him to the door.

 

“You don’t have to talk to her or anything,” I told him in a low tone. “If she starts flirting, drop it. She’s going to use that to try to get free.”

 

“Oh yeah? I bet it works more often than not,” he joked.

 

“Probably. That’s why I’m going to give her some time to cool off.”

 

“Why don’t we just torture her like we would anyone else, boss?” he asked me.

 

It was the million-dollar question, really. I couldn’t explain why I felt the way I did about her. There was something special about her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something deeper than how sexy she was.

 

“No, I told her I wouldn’t. Don’t lay a finger on her,” I warned him. “Call me if anything changes. I’ll send relief for you in the morning.”

 

I shot her another look as I walked through the door and closed it behind me. She looked like she was already working on another plan in her head. I decided as well to put someone at the top of the stairs in case she managed to get free under Alec’s watch. He didn’t have the strongest constitution among my men, but he was loyal.

 

Clara was certain to test him. That was a woman after my own heart, and that was probably what I liked about her so much.