There was a hidden meaning in there somewhere, but I didn’t have the brain capacity to figure it out right now. Or I was scared to. “Can I see him?”
“Sorry, love,” he answered softly, resuming the gently tracing, this time on my scalp, making me sleepy. “He’s indisposed at the moment. He’s been quite the cranky brute lately, so I’ve been dosing him with sort of a happy cocktail to lift his spirits. But don’t worry. I’ll be going in there in a bit to check up on him again. I’ll make sure the happy part of that cocktail doesn’t go to waste.”
“What?” I asked confusedly.
Even his laughter was soft. He leaned over and whispered, “Sshhh. Just go back to sleep and rest. Nick and I can manage one more day without you.”
25
Why was everything so f**king hazy all the time now? How many times had he shot me up? I swear to God, every time I turned around I lost another day. Or did I? I couldn’t keep track anymore. I had the window, but I couldn’t ever remember whether it was light or dark out when I fell asleep last. It all seemed to run together now.
He loved showing me that first video of us rubbing our na**d bodies together, but he hadn’t shown anything since. How long had it been since the first time? God, he shoved himself on me three times a day. If he was drugging me and doing that just as often… Why couldn’t I remember? And f**k. Why did I want to remember?
I was on the bed again. I’d woken up here several times now, dazed and confused, my hands strapped down. And f**king butt naked. Not even a sheet to cover up with. My mouth was really dry. Stale. Cottony. I wanted to swallow and hydrate, but at the same time, I wanted it to remain tasting like ass for the next time he forced his mouth on mine.
Was this what it was like for Megan in that basement? Drugged, dazed. Knowing something happened to you while you were asleep but not quite sure of the details? Like a thought on the tip of your tongue that never found words. I could tell by the fact that my c**k seemed happy that’d he’d been screwing with me again. Just not actually screwing. That I could tell hadn’t happened yet, and I swear to God if it ever did… Bastard. Would. Die. He was going to anyway after everything he’d done to Megan. I was going to make sure of it.
Not again. I heard the beep before the door slid open. I’d fake sleeping, but with the camera aimed my way, there was no point. “Don’t you ever get tired or sleep or f**king go to work?” I snapped before he could even cross the threshold.
“My, my, my,” he teased, almost singing a tune. “Looks like someone might need me to relieve some more tension for him.”
“Fuck off,” I immediately barked.
“You know, Natalie used to say that kind of thing to me before too.” He leaned over the bed, his hand reaching down to encircle one of two spheres I wished he’d forget about. I tried not to cringe because he always fed off it. “But then she realized how much it turned me on and that she always ended up f**ked.”
“Well, lucky for me you don’t like to f**k men.”
“True.” His hand fell away. “But there are plenty of other things we can do.” He pulled another syringe and stabbed my ass. I hissed, because whatever he gave me this time actually stung.
“What was that?”
“Something to make you sleep for real. As much as I’ve enjoyed punishing you by making you squirm and feel disgusted for being sexually eager with a man, Natalie woke up yesterday. Hopefully she’ll be as much fun to screw with moving forward as you’ve been.”
I wanted to tell him so many things, so many ways he could go f**k himself, but my mind was jumbling fast. My eyes were losing the battle to stay open as numbness shot through my limbs and engulfed my head. I was mere seconds from drifting off, and all I could think of were all the things he could do to her while he kept us apart.
26
I never realized before how the air itself could have an echo. That there were hidden sounds I just didn’t hear until this moment, locked away in a silent house, my ears settled beneath the water, taking in a cacophony of intense vibrations and melodic waves. It was better than the dead silence above the water line. Here I was distracted, my head so heavy with pressure that I couldn’t focus on reality as easily, couldn’t focus on what my life had become.
I was a goddamn pleasure slave. I couldn’t even call myself a sex slave anymore. Because it wasn’t just sex that he took from me. He took pleasure in trapping me, manipulating me, enticing me. He made me feel things I was ashamed to admit even to myself. The things he did to me…they aroused me, no matter how much I fought them.
And I was stuck here. I knew that now. I think I’d always known that. Third times the charm. He was off the radar, staying clear of anyone in the business to better hide from authorities. We were in the middle of nowhere, so even if I managed to get outside this house, he had a damn tracker in me, so I’d never even find a road before he caught me again.
I was his now.
And all I could think was how much I needed to get Nick out of here. Zander didn’t really want him – I could convince him we were better off without him. Nick could still move forward in life. I knew he’d hate me for getting him pushed away, because he was under this delusion that he could protect me, save me. But I wanted to do the same for him. And out of the two of us, he was the only one who had a chance of getting out of here. Being strapped down and drugged every day of your life was no way to live. Trust me, I know.
So that was my new goal now. Not an escape for me, but for Nick. To get close to Zander in a way that would convince him we only needed each other. I could make that sacrifice. Zander was getting what he wanted from me anyway. I could do it. Let go, that was. I could stop allowing myself to fight, stop trying to reiterate in my head what he truly was and had done to me. I could let his touch arouse me from the start, like it did eventually anyway. I could be his, even though I’d never love him, never truly want him. I could do it all for the one I did love, for who I truly did belong to.
I could shut myself down and let it happen.
And I could start today. Because even one more day that Nick was drugged and chained in that bedroom was one too many. Because Nick was the kind of guy who would never stop fighting. He’d never make it here. Zander probably slowed down his rebellion by beating on me, but it would only inhibit his will to save me for only so long. He needed to be gone before that need seeped its way back into him.
A tightness settled in over my chest, making my muscles ache, making it hard to breathe. This bath suddenly didn’t feel so relaxing. I pulled the plug and stepped out, walking across the bathroom for the towel I forgot to grab earlier. I didn’t bother trying to be modest and cover myself up. There was no point. He’d seen everything a hundred times over, had videos of me in far more seductive moments, so I doubt he got a cheap thrill watching me walk across a room anymore. Besides, why should I cower into myself and cover up the pale, shimmering lines that still marked my chest in a way? The way he looked at them sometimes, and the way he’d tried to correct them with laser surgery, proved a part of him regretting scarring me like this.
Let him see them. Let him see the green and yellow splotches that still lined my lower back. He was keeping me medicated with pain killers because he felt guilt. Maybe I could use that guilt against him. Play with his emotions the way he’d been playing with mine.
I dried and slid on a purple slip from the top drawer. I couldn’t go out there in anything more. I wanted to make him realize I was ready to move forward, but I didn’t want to be completely obvious about it.
He wasn’t in the bedroom when I stepped out of the bathroom, but that wasn’t really surprising. I went up to the main door and slammed my hand against the cold blockade three times, then called out his name. I didn’t shout, because he always seemed to know when I was stirring. I looked over to the camera. It was facing the middle of the room, which was where it was usually pointed, and I knew he could see me.
A minute later the door beeped and swished to the side. He stood before me in a t-shirt and pants. It was still weird seeing him in such plain clothing, when last time he was usually dressed in more business attire. I hadn’t seen him wear anything of the kind since he took me again, a clear sign that he really had retired from whatever he did before.
His hands went to the frame on each side, blocking me in, looking down at me with curiosity.
“Please. Can I come out there with you? I feel cooped up in here.” His eyes narrowed just a smidgen, thinking it over. I lifted the inside of my wrists in the air before him. Several days unconscious and unbound allowed them to heal. He must’ve been treating them for me. “You can bind me, I don’t care. I’d just like a break from this room for a bit.”
His left arm fell away and stepped back, motioning his head for me to walk ahead of him. Not finding it necessary to restrain me, I didn’t hesitate to obey and move into the hallway, refusing to acknowledge Nick’s closed door as I passed by. I could tell by the lack of natural light up ahead that it was early evening.
Awesome. He’d want to go to bed soon.
I stepped down the two stairs into the living room and turned right. I’d noticed before that he had a bookcase in the far corner. My feet were already leading me there as he returned to the end of the sofa, where a heavy metal reading lamp brightly lit up his book and glasses. He put on his glasses, so thin-rimmed that it didn’t even appear there was one, and opened his book. He stretched out over the length of the sofa in a way that screamed he didn’t consider me a threat. Though he angled his head to read the novel, I could still sense his eyes on me as I scanned his list of titles.
Seeing an entire shelf of popular classics kind of floored me. Captors-slash-killers read Ulysses, War and Peace and 1984? I couldn’t help but grin as I pulled out the first book on the next shelf down. Holding it up, I bit into my smile to keep it from growing too big. “You haven’t read this, surely?”
He lazily gazed over, dipping his head to see over his glasses, to see The Complete Novels of Jane Austen. He didn’t smile as he calmly replied, “No. That’s from your shelf.”
The smile fell off my face as I spun back to the bookcase. I had a shelf? As I scanned the spines, I realized they were all mostly classics too, but more appropriate for me than him. Titles like Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair. I turned back to him in shock, the book weighing heavy in my hand. He was watching my stunned reaction.
“Are the titles to your liking?”
Dumbfounded, I barely got out the yeah. I had read a few, but all were novels I had an interest in reading someday. And with the amount of free time I had in this house, I’d probably have this shelf done in a month. Jesus, a month. I took the book with me, but I doubted I was actually going to be able to read it tonight.
My shelf. My part of the closet. What else in this house was mine that I had yet to discover?
I found myself standing next to the fireplace, staring at it. After a moment, it whooshed and fire sparked to life from the gas burning logs. I stumbled slightly back because I wasn’t expecting that, and I when I peeked his way, I saw him placing his phone aside, already picking up his book again.
Was there anything that phone couldn’t do? I half expected Rosie from the Jetson’s to roll out and offer to make me a second dinner for tonight.
The fire burst to flames quickly. My eyes were hypnotized, my skin sensitive to the heat that pushed through the grate. Fire billowed on the ceiling, reaching down, down, down… The putrid air choked my throat, singeing my insides, licking its way down to my lungs. Acid bubbled and churned in my stomach, and heat rose up from the bottom of my throat. My lungs suddenly felt suffocated with heat, my pinkened forearm tingling. I stepped back, the book slipping from my grip. I tripped over the large square coffee table topped with multi-colored stones, my butt landing atop it, my arms reaching out to grip the edge tightly.
The flames withered away to nothing. My breaths were going through my mouth, my heart not sure whether to panic or calm. The fire had been real, but the images in my head were long over. I won’t burn…
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were emotionally sensitive to fire.”
Only my head turned, my body refusing to believe the danger had passed just yet. He was hitched up higher on the sofa, awaiting my reaction. He actually seemed…concerned. This was that moment when I should’ve rushed over and let him comfort me, to prove I was becoming his, that he was the one I needed to hold me. But I was frozen. Because that horror a moment ago was incredibly real to me, not something I was manufacturing to trick him into sympathy.
I wasn’t able to throw myself at him, but I did find the strength to stand and retrieve my book. Then I made my way to him, dropping to the area rug in front of him, lying my head down on the edge of his sofa cushion. Several moments passed in silence. He gave up on his book and tossed it to the table. What he did with his glasses, I didn’t know, but he didn’t toss them as carelessly as he did The Brothers Karamazov.
When he shifted sideways on the sofa and began rubbing my head, I softly asked, “Why wouldn’t your brother sell me to you? I was just a girl in a basement. Anyone could play that role. Why keep me if he knew you wanted me?”
I knew it was dangerous to bring up the subject of Charles, but with what just happened with the fire, my time in his brother’s basement had to have crossed both our minds. At first I didn’t think he was going to answer me, because it took so long for him to respond.
“He was trying to hurt me.”
Curious, I twisted my head along the cushion, until I found the set of hazel eyes already watching me. “Why would your brother want to hurt you?”