She turned to leave, looking at me before she left. "Eat," she said.
She'd been gone only a few seconds, before I reached for the water on the tray, gulping it down, feeling it fill my empty stomach. My stomach churned again as the water sloshed inside, and I took a few deep breaths, willing myself not to vomit. Being weak and dehydrated was the last thing I needed.
When I took the cover off the food, and smelled the curry, I could not stave off the memories of being here before. They washed over me like a tsunami, overwhelming and nauseating. I laid down on the bed, calming myself by slowing my breath, and it wasn't long before my eyelids began to feel heavy. I looked at the water glass on the bedside table. My brain felt foggy, and I wondered stupidly if I'd been drugged.
Being drugged is better than being here, I thought, as I drifted into oblivion.
When I blinked open my eyes, my first thought was that I was dead. It was illogical, I knew, but the hangover from whatever I'd been drugged with was making it hard to think. The room was pitch black, and when I tried to move, I felt my arms stretched out to the sides, attached to something.
I fought the acid taste of bile in my throat as I realized that my feet were restrained as well. Calm, I thought. Calm down.
The air in the room was cool, and I shivered, but I wasn't sure if it was the chill from the air or from the realization that I was naked, standing, my wrist and ankles chained to something.
Think of Ben, I told myself. Think good thoughts. Think of Hammer.
Hammer. I'd taken a huge risk, dropping the locket in the bathroom in the hotel. I held out hope that he'd find it, understand that I had not left voluntarily.
And what then? I asked myself. Do you really think Hammer is going to figure out where you are? Do you think he's going to come charging in, take down Aston, and carry you and Ben off into the sunset?
I was a wonderful fantasy. But that's all it was - a fantasy. Hammer was not coming to save me. No one was coming for me. No one was coming for Ben. What happened to me would happen to my son, and there was nothing I could do about it. Aston would sell me - no, I wouldn't get that treatment, after I'd betrayed him - no, he would whore me out to the worst of them, to the men who wanted to use me in horrific ways, torture me. And when the worst of those men were finished with me, he would sell me to the ones who liked to kill. Someone would plan a gruesome death for me and carry it out.
I knew what the rest of my short life had in store for me. I had no fight left in me. In a way, it was a blessing, what was happening now, being chained up like an animal.
Waiting to die.
At least it would end my life's misery. There had been only two times in my life when I'd felt happiness. The first was the period of time after Ben's birth, when the old man had banished us from the house and we were left alone. Just me and my son.
The second was with Hammer.
Everyone I loved was taken away. No, I hadn’t known him long enough for love. I was swept up in some lust-at-first-sight kind of thing. I was mistaking lust for something more, and that’s all it was. It was stupid and foolish of me to think it might be anything else. It was naive, this fantasy that he would swoop in and rescue me.
A fantasy, that’s all it was. And, of all people, I was not naive. I knew that there was no fairy tale for me, no knight in shining armor, no one who would take me away.
What I’d had with Hammer, it was temporary, a momentary shelter from the storm that raged around me. If I closed my eyes, I could feel him still, his touch still on my skin, his lips pressed gently against mine, the way he moved inside me.
At least I could hang on to that memory during whatever was to come. Aston could have my body, but he could never possess my mind.
In the darkness, I felt a hand on my shoulder, then on my arm.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Who’s there?”
Had he been here the whole time? I felt like I was slipping in and out of awareness, like my sense of time had somehow become distorted.
He didn’t answer. As his hand began to move over the expanse of my body, I closed my eyes. I thought about Hammer's touch on my skin. I would endure.
"Thanks for coming, man." Axe had gotten the first flight he could out of Colorado after I'd called him, and he'd just gotten to the clubhouse, where Blaze and I had set up a staging area in the back room. I clapped my arm around Axe's shoulder. "How's June doing?"