Take Me With You

by Nina G. Jones

  I dip under again, swimming further away. Testing my limits, and his. I emerge again at the point where I can no longer hold my breath. This time he's waving me in, now the small shape of a man in jeans and a t-shirt. I look towards the other end. Maybe four or five more strong swims and I could get to the other side.

  “Come on!” I shout playfully, covering in my tracks in case I don't make it across.

  I dip under again and swim hard, harder than I ever did during my trips to Tahoe, where I learned to swim as a child. Where I almost lost the necklace. A necklace he still has. A reminder that no matter how many dresses, or records, or trips to the lake, I'm still his captive. So I kick harder, stroke harder.

  If I make it to the edge, I don't know what I'll do. But I have to try. I say I won't fight, but there's still something in me that won't die, that doesn't quite want the outside world anymore, but doesn't want this. If I could stay here, right in the middle of this lake forever, weightless, with Sam watching over me while skipping stones, I would.

  This time, when I break through the sheet of water, there is no one standing at the edge of the lake. There's just a tiny heap of pale yellow and blue—his t-shirt and jeans. My eyes race to the mild disturbance in the water. Small rhythmic splashes growing in size, coming in my direction. He's an incredibly fast swimmer. The predatory way he hardly breaks the water or rises for air informs me that I found his limit. I choke back the urge to beg for forgiveness or plead. Despite every primal instinct in my body commanding me to flee, I take a breath and swim towards the monster. This time, I don't glide through the cool water, instead my body feels as heavy as lead. No matter how hard I kick, it feels as though I'm barely making progress. Fear is real. It's not just an idea. It's heavy. Massive. Dense. It weighs me down, but I drag it and myself towards him. When he is a few feet away, I tread the water, and hope it will hide how I am trembling beneath it.

  “Boo!” I giggle when he launches his head and shoulders out of the water.

  Sheets of water glide down his face as he swipes his hair back from his eyes. He's panting, his eyes are focused and tense, the pupils two tiny black dots submerged in ice.

  I don't feed the monster by reacting with fear. Apologies and pleas would be a confession. I was just teasing him. He wouldn't come out here, so I had to find a way to get him out here. Like playful lovers.

  I splash at him, as if I could diffuse his anger like flames.

  “You're a fast swimmer!” I shout over the crashing water.

  It doesn't work. He grabs my forearms. The false smile melts off my face.

  “I know what you were doing,” he growls. I never know when he'll speak, but I do know when he does, it's rarely good.

  I try to yank my hands away, but his grip is immoveable.

  “I was just trying to get you to come out here and loosen up a bit,” I pout. “What was I going to do? Swim out of here naked? And what? Go back home with your child inside of me?” I snap with indignation. “I don't have a life out there anymore. Don't you get that? You, this baby, this is all I have now. You know my mother has already written me off as dead. And Carter—I can't go back to him. Not after what we've done. We…we have something I didn't have with him.”

  This is just a speech, I think as I recite the words. A way for him to let his guard down around me. But I never planned these words, they come from one of those hidden boxes that I sometimes hide, even from myself. As I say them, I know even I'm not sure where the lies and the truth diverge.

  “You wanted me. You dreamed about me. You told me the night you came to my house. About fucking me. Having me. Well, here I am! But you won't talk to me. You won't tell me your damned name. One minute you treat me like your girlfriend, the next you threaten me. You're the only person stopping yourself from having what you want.”

  This time when I snatch my hands away, he lets me go. I swim towards the shore, amazed that my little fit worked. This time I pace the swim back, exhausted from the sprint out and the wading. I don't look back, afraid to see his reaction behind me. As I near the edge, I stop where it's just deep enough for my shoulders to peek out of the water, listening to the carving of the water behind me. I don't want to leave the pond. It's been so long since I've been outside that despite the scene I put up, I am appreciative he brought me out here.

  I don't look back for him. I'm still nervous. All this time with him and I still can't anticipate his reaction. It reminds me of playing jacks as a kid, the way the little jacks bounced unpredictably along the ground. Whenever I throw something at him, I have no idea how it might fall.

  I close my eyes and take a soothing inhale as he nears me. He grabs my arm and turns me around to face him. There's still anger and mistrust in his face, but it's wrestling with a softness. One that might be sick of constantly questioning my intentions. But as he pulls me closer, the darkness takes over.

  He kisses me hard, biting my lip so that it smarts like a wasp's sting. I whimper, pulling back, and then tasting the blood, I do the same to him. Our lips covered in the metallic crimson, we make a silent blood oath as I wrap my legs around him. He grabs my ass and stands up, streams of water plummeting from our entwined bodies as he walks me to the shore, lowering us into the bed of smooth rocks beneath us.

  He presses his weight on top of me, squeezing my face in his hand, his lips tinted with diluted blood. Through gritted teeth, his throbbing cock pressing against me, he confesses, “If you leave, I'll have to kill you, Vesp. I don't want to do that. Don't make me do it.”

  He's killed me a thousand different ways. Stolen countless breaths and hopes. Slaughtered the girl who had plans to marry a nice doctor. Killed the dream of helping people for a living. Snuffed a piece of her soul by pulling her out of her little brother's life. Pillaged her pride. And out of those tiny little deaths, someone else has been born. Someone who sees that underneath his threats, there is vulnerability. He's begging me not to leave. It's not romantic or laced with syrupy sweet words. No, it's wrapped in barbed wire and cutting threats. But at its center is something he is protecting, something I have found a way to reach in and touch, even if it means being sliced and pricked along the way.

  “Then tell me—show me—who you are,” I answer against his lips.

  He grips my wet hair and pulls it taut so that my neck tenses. “I am—” He bites my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder. “I am—” He glides his tongue against my nipple, grazing the swollen bud with his teeth. “I am—” he works his way down my stomach running his teeth and lips against the spot that holds our creation.

  My clit throbs, hoping to be next. To feel his hot mouth contrast the cool water evaporating off of the sensitive flesh.

  He yanks my legs open. “I am—” he bites my inner thigh, sending shooting pain up to my center, followed by electric aftershocks.

  “Tell me,” he commands, “who you are,” hovering his mouth over my pussy. Taunting with heavy breaths that match mine.

  I don't know who I am anymore. I've been torn apart and pieced back together so many times, I don't recognize this pregnant woman lying naked on a shore, fucking with abandon like a forest animal.

  So I say the only thing I am certain of. The only thing that is completely true at this moment. The fact I am resigned to. There are many things that are uncertain, but there is one thing that is sure.

  “I'm yours,” I rasp.

  He tugs on one of my lips, plump and waiting to be relieved of the tension building between my thighs.

  “Again,” he grits.

  “I'm yours,” I gasp.

  The words light him like a fuse and he glides the tip of his tongue between the threshold of my opening, toying with his property.

  “Again,” he murmurs.

  “I'm yours,” I chant breathlessly.

  He runs the point of his tongue along my clit. I let out a moan, so he does it again. I try to wrap my legs around him, but he pushes them open again, reminding me who belongs to whom. He pushes them back, exposin
g my lower half entirely to him. Like meat on a spit, I am presented to him for his consumption.

  His lips and mouth lap me up, the sounds of his mouth fucking me contrasting the patterns of nature in the background.

  My moans elevate, my breath catches in my throat, as he buries his face in my ass and pussy. And then he stops just short of relief.

  I watch him helplessly as he rises to his knees, his cock tall and ready, and takes me by the waist, flipping me onto my stomach. The cold, smooth pebbles shock the skin of my breasts and stomach. He pulls me up on all fours, the hard rocks banging up my knees and digging into my palms.

  “You're right, Vesp. I've wanted you since I saw you. I could taste your cunt before I ever put my mouth to it. I could feel you wrapped around my cock before I ever fucked you. I could see your pretty eyes looking up at me while your mouth was wrapped around my dick, before you ever swallowed my cum.”

  He rubs the head of his cock along my pussy, already blooming for him, pulsing like a heartbeat.

  “And I thought I could have you once and it would make the hunger stop. But each dose just makes me crave you more. And the more I have the more I want.”

  He presses the tip of his head inside of me and pulls out. We both groan and heave together at the promise of what's to come.

  “I'm losing control, Vesp.” He rubs his hand between my legs and rubs his own cock, using my cream to stroke himself.

  “Who am I?” he asks in that voice, dirty and broken. “I am the person who has nothing to lose but you.”

  He pushes himself inside of me, and even though I am ready, it is so sudden and hard, I nearly cry as I gasp.

  “I am a man who has risked everything to have you.”

  He pulls out slowly and plunges into me again.

  “You are the only thing, Vesp.”

  He draws himself out and buries himself inside of me.

  “And you…are my obsession.”

  His obsession. Wanted. Needed. Craved. The most important person in his world. It's what I felt when his eyes first met mine. It's the most thrilling thing to be told you are precious. That you are so valuable it puts you in danger. Nothing of such high regard can exist in this world without causing a storm. When a man covets something so strongly, he is its greatest threat.

  He keeps himself deep inside of me, pulling me up tall so that my back is pressed against his chest. He holds one breast as the other travels past my womb and down to my clit. He weaves his hips against mine, the hand on my breast traveling up to my neck like a snake, the fingers coiling around my delicate nape.

  He squeezes; threats mixed with pleasure. My guardian and my stalker. My lover and my enemy. A stranger. The father to my child.

  “I want to make you feel everything, Vesp,” he grunts in my ear.

  “You do,” I eke out, already feeling countless contrasting sensations. “Give me all of it,” I beg. He closes his grip so tightly I can't speak another word. My muscles lock around his cock and burst around him, sending pulsing waves through my legs and belly. I wheeze against his suffocating hold on my neck, and it prolongs the intensity of the bursts that radiate throughout my body. He grunts as his warmth fills me, one hand staying on my neck, while the other secures me firmly against him. His.

  Night slides out of me, comes to his feet, and walks over in front of me.

  “Show me,” he says, his dick still not settled. I know his needs already. I know mine.

  I lick his thickness, coated in the mix of us as he softly caresses my hair. He watches me, his hazy eyes betraying the sexual dominance he displays.

  When he's satisfied, he pulls away, walking into the lake to freshen up. I watch him, naked, my knees red and marked with rock indentations, his cum dripping out of me onto the mix of stone and mud below. I look across the lake. Physically, the swim is a possibility, but the world beyond these woods seems like another dimension.

  I don't know if there is a world between that cabin and Sacramento. But I do know one thing: we are both hopelessly bound to the other, holding each other afloat. And if one of us snaps the line or sinks, the other will drown.

  When we've washed up, Night reaches for the blindfold and puts it in his pocket, gesturing his head back to where I assume we came from.

  “I, uh…if we're going to do this again, which I would love, I'm going to need shoes.”

  He nods in agreement, reaching for his notepad.

  Need a ride back?

  “Please,” I sigh with relief.

  He lifts me off the wet rocks, my long white floral dress draping along the ground. I wrap my arms around him. Unlike the walk out here, I'm not scared or distrustful. I'm hungry and tired, both more than usual with the hormones raging through my body, so I can't help but nuzzle my nose in his neck and rest my eyes.

  “Why is it,” I ask through a yawn, “you only talk sometimes?”

  His body tenses at the question. And as usual, he doesn't answer. His reaction, the way it's automatic like that, even after all that we have shared, finally helps me realize this is not some psychological warfare. It's another breadcrumb I have to find. There's a story there.

  I doze off in his arms to the gentle rocking of our bodies over the terrain, eventually feeling myself being lowered onto the bed. I'm utterly exhausted and drift into a deep sleep as he lays a sheet over me.

  It's not until I hear the door being latched a couple of hours later that I wake up. My stomach sinks when I realize I missed him. I'm finally discovering him, and it makes me eager to see him again to find if I can uncover new mysteries.

  I look up at the skylight, a dusty blue and orange haze swirls in the sky. My stomach growls loudly just as I notice the food he's left behind. A couple of sandwiches, tea, milk. But it's what's next to it that steals my attention: A copy of Green Eggs and Ham. It's old, the edges and spine peeling and tattered. A token of his childhood, perhaps? I nearly race to it, curious for another crumb. The book falls open where there's a note.

  Don't ask me that question again. You will never get an answer. But here is something I will give you. I flip the small paper over. There is no other writing. At first I think he's referencing the book itself. Maybe he considers it a gift. But when I look at the pages in which the note was tucked, I think I see the answer he is willing to give me. Circled in black ink are the words “Sam I am.”

  He's no longer “Night,” “My Captor,” or just “Him.”

  Sam.

  A name so innocuous and kind. One befitting the boy next door facade. Not the name of a monster.

  With each new puzzle piece he gives me, I am building a new picture of him. Over the one of the wordless, masked animal who hurt me. Slowly this new image is growing over the old one, making it harder to recall.

  Why did I take her?

  It was because I wanted her. More than I've ever wanted anyone. Because as much as I told myself she was one of them, I saw the way she acted with Johnny and knew there was more to her. I did it because having her felt good. More than good. Getting into her house and having her was the pinnacle of my craft.

  So if having her is what I've always wanted—what I combed houses and personal possessions for—why am I fighting it? If I am greed and she is my indulgence, why shouldn't I suck every last bit of juice from her? I've risked it all to have her, so I should get it all.

  The lake, just watching her out in the water, the pink flush in her cheeks from the air and sun, I fucking liked it. For a moment before I freaked out, it was nice to just skip rocks and be with her. But that part of me that can't fully believe she isn't just one of many who have set out to hurt me awoke fiercely. I had to threaten her, to watch the calm in her eyes morph into fear. Fear is the glue that holds us together.

  But there are other things that could keep her here. The baby. The sex. And something else—I can give her everything she needs. No one has ever taken care of her like I have.

  It's not like she has a choice, anyway.

  I'm tired of
fighting. Of not letting it just feel good. So from now on, if she doesn't give me a reason to, I won't bring fear to the table. It'll always be in my holster, but I will use it sparingly. After all, this was the goal, to break her down, strip her to a doll I could keep for my pleasures. But she hasn't become a shell, she's only evolved into something that can survive this, keeping all the best parts of herself and shedding the shit that disgusting world makes you carry around. When I sit there quietly, my mouth heavy with the words I want to say to her but can't, I feel it's me who's being stripped down.

  If I try to talk to her when I'm vulnerable, she'll hear my voice and the words will stagger and it'll ruin her illusion of me. But I decided I would give her something else. My name. It's the biggest risk yet. But it's a commitment. With that knowledge, she can never go back out into the world. It'll keep me from getting too complacent. And I want to hear her say my name.

  I pull out a few more records to bring to her cabin. She was right about needing stimulus. I think she's proven she deserves it. And I've seen how quickly being good to her has endeared her to me. I love music, and it'll be nice to share it with her.

  As I head out the door, my phone rings. I wait for the answering machine to pick up.

  “Hey Sam, it's me,” Scoot says. “Call me when you get a chance. I need to ask you something.”

  He always does that, leaves some vague message so I'll have to call back. I shrug it off and step out of the house.

  I walk through the woods, my flashlight shining the way to the little white cabin. At night, with no windows or light, it's nearly invisible out there. But I could find it blindfolded.