Permanent. A very scary word to a woman in my position. Permanent damage would mean he never planned to send me back. It was a death sentence.
I squirmed again, wishing I didn’t have to pee so badly at such a dire moment. It was very distracting. They don’t explain that part in all the dramatic climaxes in plays. When the Phantom of the Opera kidnaps Christine and ties her up, they don’t show how she used the facilities or when. An oversight, surely, because now that I was here, these struck me as vital plot points.
I must have dozed off, but finally, a sound pierced my hungry, painful fog. A creak. Like the door, but even that sounded different. The steps inside, different.
What if it was someone else?
There was silence, but I felt him watching me. I felt more acute fear in that moment than I had the entire time. Realizing I could get left behind. Having no idea who was looking at me.
Hesitant fingers pulled at the knotting behind my back. My fingers were released, and a thousand needles shot through them. He undid all the rope, at my ankles and beneath my breasts. The numbness turned to a raging fire of pain, and I whimpered. His hands went to my arms, no longer unsure. He massaged my muscles…
And I realized I was free.
No restraints held me down. Even he wasn’t holding me down, just touching me. Caressing me. Had I heard the door actually close? I wasn’t sure.
I lay still, but not too still. It was important not to project. Keep breathing. Don’t move.
“Please,” I murmured.
He stopped.
I didn’t have to pretend my throat was dry. My lips were chapped. “Water,” I whispered.
The bed moved as he stood up. It had to be a trap, but I heard his footsteps move away. It had to be a trick, but the faucet squeaked and water rushed. It was too good to be true, but I believed in it anyway. I rushed up, ignoring the fiery pain in my limbs, tilting sideways as the blood rushed to my head. There was no way it should have worked, but it did.
The room came to me in flashes of light. An open-air unfinished space with metal rafters. A raw wooden floor. Neatly organized implements in the corner. A triangle of light spilling out from the bathroom. Only seconds to get there.
Then I was standing in front of the bathroom, yanking the door shut. For a split second, we were face to face. I stared into startled brown eyes. What I saw there was soulless and cruel, like looking in the mirror. I imagined hurting him. Killing him. I imagined he was my father, and I finally paid him back for what he did to me.
But I’d never had a taste for violence, not really.
I slammed the door shut and shoved the bench underneath it. This bench I had been draped over when he spanked me and fucked me with a dildo. That was the lock to bind him.
The door shuddered as he rammed into it from the other side. He didn’t bother yelling for me to undo it. He was smart enough to know better than that.
Something about the situation was off. It was too easy.
Too simple.
Not what I wanted at all.
But I did what every good little captive girl should want to do. I walked out of there in my bare feet with a soft white sheet draped around my naked body, my clothes and confidence long gone. I found a payphone and called 911. I fell asleep curled up beside a Dumpster before help arrived.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For three days I’d woken up on a soft bed that smelled faintly of roses. Not the sickly sweet scent that got passed off as roses in perfumes, but the real earthy smell of rose petals wafting from cotton sheets. But now a sharp chemical tang burned my nostrils. That was the first thing I noticed, with my eyes closed, my mind still sluggish and half-asleep.
The second thing I noticed was the constant drone of noise. No expectant silence. No lilting strains of La Bohème. Instead, machinery beeped and voices sounded muffled in the distance. This bed was hard, the sheet rough and paper-thin between my fingers. I opened my eyes, then immediately shut them. The air felt like sandpaper against the surface of my eyes. An irrepressible groan of pain emanated from my chest.
“Shhh,” came a voice from my side. “Take it easy.”
For a moment, panic beat in my chest. Was it him? Was I still his captive? And if so, I must have done something wrong to end up here instead.
This was punishment.
He’d taken away my only luxuries, the soft bed, his tender touch.
He would hurt me now, he would…
“Samantha.” Sharper now. My name spoken in a command pulled me back. And I recognized him.
“Hennessey.”
“That’s right. You’re okay now. Just rest and take it easy. You don’t have to get up right now. You don’t have to do anything.”