Backing her into the wall, I lifted her up and pushed against her, refusing to let gravity have her back. Because she was my gravity, the very thing that kept me grounded. And I was hers, and I no longer wanted her to feel like she was falling. She was mine to catch. To steady. To hold.
I paused our kisses long enough to look into her eyes, giving her one last chance to back out, but all she did was smile and drape her arms above my shoulders for support, her arms bending up to run her fingernails across the sides of my scalp. She pulled my lips back to hers and I guided myself inside her slowly. She gasped just taking in the tip and threw her head over my neck. I paused, waiting. “More,” she whispered in my ear.
Yielding a wicked smile, I didn’t just give her more, but all of it, and I basked in the way her muscles trembled as she took me in, her audible approval reverberating inside my ear. After months of abstinence, I wanted nothing more than to rip into her and sate the intensified sexual urges that built up and topped out long ago. But I strained myself to go slow most of the way through, allowing her mouth to seek what it needed from mine between thrusts, only going faster or harder when she commanded it. Right now, I was willing to let it be all about her needs.
Later though…I thought, chuckling inside my head…I was going to need her to appease mine.
14
Something woke me in the middle of the night. I jumped to a start, throwing myself up in bed, snatching the sheet with a death grip. I gasped as I heard a thump! My chest suddenly felt like a jackhammer was pulverizing its way through bone, my heart beating so fast it was sure to break free. Overheating. Smoking. Heat suffocated my throat as I forced myself to release the breath I’d been holding. Was that a sneaker squeaking on the floor?! As my eyes fearfully fixated on the open door that led to that dark hallway, my hand crawled its way toward Nick.
Finally finding skin, I whispered, “Nick!” If he knew how often I didn’t sleep at night, then he couldn’t be as heavy of a sleeper as I thought he was. I shook his arm spastically, too afraid to move my eyes from the black abyss, too afraid a shadow would punch through and attack the moment I did. “Nick!” I cried with a little more ferocity. I went so far as to smack his cheek a few times, but nothing. He was dead to the world.
I gasped again. Dead.
My fingers fumbled around his neck, and I took in a sigh of relief as I found his pulse. He was alive, but I feared he was useless to me at this point. Drugged perhaps. And I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t in the same state.
I quietly crawled over him and leaned to open the drawer of his bedside table. When I didn’t find what I was looking for right away, I panicked and yanked the drawer harder, slapping my hand all around on the inside. The gun was gone!
I dropped to the floor as silently as I could, landing on bits of cloth. I grabbed at whatever was beneath me – it felt like my sleep shorts and Nick’s t-shirt – and pulled them on, not giving a crap if they were inside out so long as I wasn’t butt-naked any more.
I swallowed hard and crawled my way to the door. How I found the courage to peek out, I didn’t know, but my head slowly looked into the hallway. Nothing. All sounds had stopped. Even the normal ones. Like the hooting of the night owl that lived outside, and the chirping of grasshoppers. Silent, as if they held their breath in wait, too. Even the hum of the refrigerator seemed oddly silent.
Utter. Deafening. Silence.
Unless…
My eyes drifted back into the room. I couldn’t hear that gentle knocking the fan usually made as it spun indefinitely on its axis. Swallowing back the fear, I slid my hands up the wall as I wobbled to my feet. I closed my eyes and thumped my head against the wall – the switch was up. Flicking it up and down did nothing to change its frozen blades. Nick always slept with the fan on. And it was running as we made love that second time tonight.
The cool wall was soothing against my warm forehead, but it did nothing to ease the terror shaking my legs.
This isn’t happening. There’s a logical explanation, there is. The power went out. That’s all.
Even though it wasn’t raining. Or windy. Or a rolling blackout.
Fuck.
Refusing to believe it, possible scenarios ran through my mind. Maybe someone crashed into a power line pole somewhere. God, it was awful how much I wanted that to be true right now. That I would risk the life of a stranger if it meant that I was safe. That he hadn’t found me.
But I had a really bad feeling that wasn’t the case. Because Nick wouldn’t wake up. God help me, because Nick couldn’t. I had to find a weapon. I had to reach my cell phone. Goddamn it – both my gun and my phone were in my bag. In the kitchen. I thumped my head again, wishing I could punish myself harder and louder for my stupidity. The one night my phone wasn’t attached to my hip. The one f**king night I let my guard down, foolishly believing I could ever be safe.
And Nick usually…charged his on his table!
I rushed back to his bedside, my hands searching the table top. I had the urge to jump and scream for joy once I found it, but I managed to hold back. Activating his phone, I stilled. Who was I going to call? My parents, who were an hour away? Or the police, who would then have my new address in their system? That was how Zander found me last time.
But if he was the one in the house, he already knew. But what if he wasn’t, and didn’t already know?
My fingers swept through Nick’s contact list, coming to rest on my mother’s cell number. I hit the green button and waited. After ten seconds had passed, the call still hadn’t been connected. I cursed quietly and stared at the phone. No bars? Are you f**king kidding me? Since when?
I tucked the phone into the band of my pants and carefully made my way back to the door to the hallway. I was going to have to go out there for my gun and phone. And I didn’t like that idea. My body sure as hell didn’t like it either, as the trembles in my legs began shivering their way up the rest of my body. Anxiety attacked my heart, making it feel like needles were continuously stabbing at it from all sides.
I drew in a deep breath and slithered out the door, hugging the wall as I forced my unwilling legs to walk the length of the hallway. I hadn’t heard any sounds the last few minutes, and it was the only comfort that I had – that maybe whatever, or whoever, was making that noise was gone now. I paused just outside the opening to the living room, listening with all my might.
Silence.
Still, I tiptoed my way through the living room and into the kitchen, digging around in my bag. I found my phone, but what I really wanted wasn’t there. “No,” I whispered, frantically digging through a second time even though it was pointless. Two guns missing wasn’t a f**king coincidence. The shaking began with my lower jaw, then spread downward to my legs, which now how the stability of Jell-O. No, no, no, no, no, no…
My hands fisted, and I realized I held my phone in my right. Activating the touch screen, I was enveloped by its bright glow. “That’s not going to work.” His voice was calm and somewhere lost in the darkness, but I screamed anyway, because I could feel the fear deep within my bones awaken. I accidentally dropped the slim object and heard it shatter into more than one piece at my feet, surrounding myself in darkness again. Frantic, I retreated farther into the kitchen and reached for the knife block, yanking out the first thing I could grab, the metal making a swishing noise as I pulled it free. I held it out before me with a shaking hand, but the room was so eerily dark that I could see nothing.
“Oh, come now, Natalie. You act like I’m here to kill you.”
His voice was a little closer this time, but not fully in the kitchen yet.
Kill me? No, what he wanted to do to me was far worse. He wanted to keep me. To use me. To keep me away from everyone who loved me, who I needed myself.
“Get. Out.” I managed to say it forcefully, but my voice shook terribly. God, I was pathetic. My limbs were trembling. Even my jaw was quivering so fiercely the tendons holding it together ached. I couldn’t even hold the knife still. All those self-defense classes and I was still a feeble little girl shaking in her boots. Except right now I didn’t even have the luxury of thick rubber soles to keep me grounded.
He lightly chuckled, the sound getting closer and closer. Suddenly remembering Nick’s phone, I pulled it free of the band circling my h*ps and hit the power button to activate the touch screen.
“I told you,” he said calmly, his voice way too close now, somewhere in this very kitchen. “That won’t work. Neither will your computer. I’ve jammed the signal and cut the power to the house, so don’t bother with the landline either.”
He was right. I still had no bars. I was alone in my house with a f**king sex trafficker and the only person who could possibly help me was passed out in bed. And even in this powerless house, I was lit up like a f**king Christmas tree. Fearfully, I shined the brightness of the screen opposite of me. I gasped and accidentally lost Nick’s phone to the floor as well, the light instantly cutting out. Zander was right there. Though he was now shrouded in darkness once again, I knew he was still leaning comfortably over the island on the opposite side, amused by my every movement.
Think, think, think! I had to keep him talking. Had to keep him here. Maybe Nick’s drugs would expire and he could help me.
“How did you find me?” I asked fearfully. I thought I had been so careful. Shit, my entire family had uprooted their lives and it did nothing to keep this guy from coming.
What he said chilled me to the bone. “What makes you think I ever lost you?”
I silently gasped as my heart skipped several beats. “What?”
“I. Never. Lost. You. I’ve known your every movement since the moment you were extracted from my house.” His voice began to carry as he walked around the island, and I found myself walking in the opposite direction, keeping the same distance between us at all times as we circled. “I’ve had cameras inside and outside this house since right after you moved in. I’ve been listening to everything you say. You can never hide from me, love.”
The weirdest noise was coming from my throat. It was like it wanted to answer, but there were no words for what he just said.
“And why do you constantly bring a knife when you know I have a gun?”
“Because you f**king took mine!” I blurted. Both of them. Because with all the f**king cameras he knew exactly where we kept them.
“Put it down, love.”
I wasn’t his f**king love!
For some reason I thought shaking my head no in the darkness would suffice. It took me a long moment to realize it wouldn’t. “No,” I answered. Damn my shaky breath. “Get the f**k out of my house!”
He sighed heavily. It wasn’t lost on me that pissing him off would end badly for me. Unfortunately, nothing I said or did would ever be enough to get him to get up and walk out of my life forever. I held my breath and listened for him to continue to move toward me, but he never did. He was tormenting me for the hell of it. “Why the hell can’t you just leave me alone? Why do you have to keep coming back?”
“Because you’re mine.”
No, I was Nick’s, but I felt saying that would only remind him Nick was lying helpless in the bedroom.
“I’m happy here.”
He chuckled again, and it chilled me. “No you’re not. You’ve been miserable.”
Suddenly, I felt a little bolder. How dare he tell me how I felt! “If I have been, it’s only because I’ve been stressed over you!”
“Or, you’ve been miserable because deep down, it pains you to be separated from me.”
I about dropped my knife, too. My eyes seriously bulged. Too bad he couldn’t see how I was reacting to that ludicrous delusion. “What in the hell makes you think I want to be a prisoner in your home for the rest of my life?”
“What makes you think you have a choice in the matter?”
God I wanted to run. To take off, burst through the back door and take my chances in the woods even though I was hardly dressed and barefoot. But I couldn’t. Because Nick would be at the mercy of a man who would have none if I did that.
“The sad part,” he continued, “is that you’re the reason I’m here right now. I was willing to wait a little longer as I prepared to take you back in, but after what you said last night… Well, I couldn’t risk the chance that you’d find a way to be tracked.”
“Because you’d never get to keep me for more than a day?” I spat, angry that I’d never have the chance to fulfill the plan I was sure would save me.
“No. It’s easily taken care of if you know where it’s implanted. It’s because the moment people started messing around with your body, they’d most likely notice that I already had a tracking device buried inside you somewhere.”
I could feel the smile I couldn’t see, curling his lips in an evil manner, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end as the realization sank in. My breaths became heavy, my insides doing a horrible job at hiding the panic coursing through my veins now. He was tracking me. He knew where I was every second of every day. He could’ve taken me at any moment. There was no hiding from him, not even blanketed by a forest with zero neighbors within screaming range. My family uprooted themselves for nothing. Nick worked a job he hated for nothing. I lived in fear, afraid for weeks to even drive to my therapy appointments, because it risked me being seen in public. And none of it ever mattered.
Did it ever matter? He had claimed he used the police report to find me the last time. What if it was just a lie to keep this hidden from me?
“For how long?” my angry, shaky voice spat.
“Since I first acquired you. Did you really think I’d spend all that money perfecting your damaged body and not have a way of keeping you permanently in my possession? Granted I had to let you go for a while, but I’m confident we’ll never be parted again. You see, I’ve decided to step back in the industry for a while. Allow myself to fall off the radar as one of their men of interest. It’ll just be you and me in a little house no one will ever know about.”