She stirred and groaned a little bit. She still wore her biking clothes, spandex shorts and top and black shoes. Roger decided to loosen the tape around her ankles, and then he took the tape off of her mouth. It made a ripping noise and left a nasty red stripe across her soft, freckled skin. Roger felt bad because he had hurt her, and she already had a bruise forming on her cheek where his fists landed.
He studied her face carefully. She had a small nose and dark eyebrows, and in the sunlight that came through the bedroom windows, he saw small, almost invisible hairs along her jaw line. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a tight ponytail, although some of the strands were coming loose, and he reached out to smooth them back behind her ear when she started moaning some more. Her eyes fluttered open, and Roger pulled his hand back like he'd touched a hot stove.
Her eyes darted around the room, then settled on Roger.
"What the...what are you doing? Fuck you, you creep."
She thrashed like a beached fish. Her movements were awkward because her hands were still tied, but she kicked wildly with her newly freed legs, and one of her kicks caught Roger in the stomach, knocking the air out of him and making him gasp. She kept thrashing and cursing, and even though there were no neighbors within a mile, Roger didn't like the noise and the awful words she was saying, so he jumped forward, using his body weight to pin her legs and stop the movement. His right hand easily covered her mouth. It covered half of her face, and the cursing and the thrashing stopped.
He held his hand in place, waiting.
The girl's face was pressed against the mattress, and he could only see one side of her. Her left eye widened, the brown iris rolling to the side to get a better look at Roger, and the fear he saw there made her look like a spooked animal.
"Stop it," Roger said. "Stop it, and I won't hurt you."
She moaned again, like she wanted to say something, but he didn't trust her not to scream. Then he thought of something. He looked at his big hand and the little bit of her face that showed. He was covering her nose and mouth, and maybe, he thought, maybe she couldn't breathe, so he slipped his hand down a little, freeing her nose.
He heard the air whistling through her nostrils and thought her eye showed relief.
You almost blew it right there, you big dummy. You almost blew it again.
But then he didn't know what to do. He'd known what to do with the other girl. They had a routine. She was his wife. But now he had a new girl, and she was different, so obviously different, and he didn't know what they were supposed to do to get used to each other.
"If I take my hand away, will you scream?"
She nodded her head up and down, her eye still wide.
"Why do you want to do that?"
She started squirming again, wriggling around on the mattress like an eel.
"Be still," he said. He leaned against her, adding more weight. "Be still."
She stopped moving. Roger waited, then eased up.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said.
The girl grunted.
"I only hit you in the van because you fought me. I had to do it."
She didn't make any more noise, but Roger could feel her hot breath against his hand.
"I'm going to take my hand away, but I want you to promise not to scream." He started to move his hand but stopped. "No one can hear you even if you do. There aren't any neighbors or anything."
He took his hand away slowly and wiped his palm against his pants leg.
The girl took in several deep mouthfuls of air. She turned her face away from the mattress so that Roger could see her straight on. She stared at him with something flashing in her eyes, a combination of fear and anger.
"Let me go," she said. "Let me go, you fucking creep."
"Don't talk to your husband that way."
Roger raised a hand to strike, but when he saw the girl flinch, he stopped himself. He held his big hand up in the air, the flat of the palm exposed, then let it drop to the bed.
He didn't want to hit her. He had already hit her more times than he ever hit the last girl. He needed to control himself. He had the plan. The plan had worked.
"My husband?" the girl said. It sounded to Roger like she spit when she spoke. "My husband? What in the name of God are you talking about? I wouldn't marry you if you were the only man on earth. Now let me out of here. Cut me loose and let me out of here."
Roger raised his index finger as a warning, and the girl stopped talking. It crossed his mind that he might have made a mistake, that maybe he should have taken the time to study the girl longer to see if she was the kind he would want to have as a wife. But he quickly chased that thought away. He knew this was the right girl. The clearing told him to go find her, and there she was, riding down the road. The plan wouldn't have worked so well if she wasn't meant to be the one to come and live with him. He knew it was her.
"You have to stay," Roger said. "You're going to live here, and we're going to take care of each other and not be alone, just like my mom and dad used to do. Just like the other girl used to before she got sick."