by West, Sinden
I was startled when he spoke, because I thought he had been asleep.
“You’re wrong,” he said in the dark. “I’m not being punished. He’d become a liability, and I hate being indebted to anyone. Now I’m finally free.”
I didn’t respond. Instead I thought about that spider web in my room in my mother’s house and wondered if it was still there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In the dark, he was different. I felt like he was savoring and devouring me. In the light, it was just fucking, but in the dark, it was something else. He kissed and licked my skin, nipping on occasion like he was marking his territory. He didn’t like kissing on the mouth, but that was something that I made him do. That was my small triumph. My mouth searched for his in the black of the room, and he’d try to turn his head away. But I would chase that mouth with mine until I managed to suck and bite at his lips until he opened up and let my tongue in to meet his. I liked how uncomfortable it made him, and that made me all the more determined to succeed at it. For once, I felt like I was the predator, and he was my prey.
He got his own back though. His hand would reach between my legs to play and caress me there. I’d try to push his hand away because that wasn’t what this was about. I would take his dick all he wanted, but I didn’t want that other kind of intimacy. He didn’t care though, and his hand would stay there, rubbing against me in the way that he knew would make me react how I didn’t want to. When I couldn’t stop it, and my body betrayed me, I’d turn my face into the pillow to muffle my moans. He wouldn’t let me do that either though, pulling the pillow away from me.
“I want to hear you,” he whispered, even though his own actions were so silent. Even as I shook my head in denial I couldn’t help the sounds that came from me, or the way my body jerked and shivered as I came. I was glad of the dark, but I still felt so exposed as he laughed quietly. And then we’d sleep, side by side but never touching. Sometimes he’d wake me by reaching for me, and we’d start our game again with me hunting for his mouth, and him caressing me for reactions I didn’t want to give.
The days were boring. He was busy on his cell and laptop, but I didn’t ask what he was doing. I cooked and cleaned until nothing else needed doing, and then he’d let me sit outside in the sun. I was untethered but he was never far away. Sometimes he sat beside me on the porch and we’d drink coffee together.
“What kind of animals did you have here?” I asked. I wanted to speak, my voice was mostly unused here, and I was scared if I didn’t speak I would forget how.
He sipped his coffee. “Cattle. But mostly they grew crops before they over irrigated and the land became useless with too many salt deposits.”
I ventured another question. “Did your family own it for a long time?”
“Decades. But alcoholism and religion turned it to ruin.” He stared out at our surroundings.
“Are you religious?”
His eyes darted to me, and a broad smile spread across his face. “No, Rachel. I’m pretty sure there’s no god worth believing in. Anyway, I learned some of my best tricks from the religious. That should prove that no god is looking out for anyone.”
“Oh. Were your parents horrible?” I held my breath as I clutched my coffee cup, wondering if he’d answer.
“My mom was okay, but my dad was a fucking psycho.” He frowned a little. “I bet that doesn’t surprise you though.”
I didn’t respond to that. “How did they die?”
The frown disappeared from his face; in fact, it was like an emotionless wall had come down on him. “It doesn’t matter. Come inside, it looks like it’s going to rain.” He got to his feet and went into the house. I slowly stood up and followed him inside. He was in the kitchen sitting at the table looking at his phone.
I hesitantly sat beside him. “Aaron?”
“Yeah?” His attention was still on his phone.
“How did you become…what you are?”
He smirked a little. “I thought I made it clear I didn’t want to talk about my family.” He didn’t seem angry though so I kept trying.
“I meant, how did you start doing what you do for a living?”
His placed the phone on the table. “After my uncle took me away, I went with him to live in the city. I got in all kinds of trouble, made the wrong kind of friends, got sent to a few juvie detention centers and made even worse friends. Eventually, I came to the attention of some people, and they liked how ruthless I could be.”
“Oh.”
“Happy now?”
I shrugged and pushed away from the table. “What do you want for dinner?” I moved to the kitchen counter, but I felt his eyes on me.
“Did you think I was going to say I was like you? That I was forced to do bad things?” I didn’t turn to look at him. “I wasn’t. I do them because I want to.”
There was no more conversation after that. We ate in silence, and I went straight to bed after I cleaned up. I lay in bed alone for a long time and was just drifting off when he opened the door. The scent of liquor hit me immediately, and I opened my eyes to look at him as he clumsily sat down on the bed and kicked off his shoes before struggling to undress. Then he crawled across the bed to where I lay with the sheet clutched to me.
He looked down at me with amusement. “Oh, come on, Rachel. Don’t play hard to get. I’ll even kiss you. You like kissing, right?” I let him gently push my hands down and the sheet went with them. He kissed me on the cheek, before moving over to kiss me with an enthusiasm I didn’t know he had. I kissed him back and felt him grin against my mouth before moving back from me.
“Is this how your boyfriend kissed you?” He murmured with an annoying, lazy smile on his face. ”What’s his name? Flip?”
“Finn,” I replied tightly.
He nodded, still smiling. “That’s right, Finn. And the girl he was screwing behind your back. Melanie? Melody?”
My eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”
“I do my research. I know lots of things. I know that you were going to his house when I took you.” His hand took mine, and that’s where his eyes fell as he slid his thumb over my skin. “Isn’t that a little pathetic?” he mocked. I didn’t answer. “Poor, pathetic Rachel,” he murmured. “You let anyone have you. You’re so broken, so fractured–“
“I’m not,” I said, not as steadily as I should have.
His hand lifted to my cheek, his drunken movements now more graceful. “But that’s okay. That’s why I like you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I grabbed his hand and tried to move it from my face, but he responded by pressing his lips down on mine once more. His tongue probed for entry, and I let it in, I let my mouth respond and react in unison to his movements even as his words echoed in my head.
Pathetic, broken, pathetic…
What I was doing with him made me all the more pathetic, and I hated myself for it but I didn’t stop. I kept kissing him back as his hands snaked into my hair so that he controlled the tilt of my head like he controlled everything. He drew back from my mouth that acted so desperate for him, only reinforcing my disgust for myself. He held my head still with firm hands.
“You like that, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer, and his hands gripped my hair tighter. “Answer me,” he said softly.
“I like that,” I responded in a cracking voice.
He smiled. “Be more specific. What do you like?”
“I like kissing you,” I mumbled.
“That’s right, you do.” He ran his thumb down my cheek and over my lips. For a moment, I thought he might pass out, but he didn’t. Instead, he pushed me down so my head hit the pillow and then he knelt over me with his hard cock pressed to my mouth. “Open.”
He pushed his cock into my mouth and rocked his hips, controlling how much I took in. I sucked and massaged him with my tongue until he came and then desperately swallowed down his salty cum. As he withdrew, some spilled onto my lips that he scooped up w
ith his fingers and held out to me so I could lick it off. “Good girl.”
Then he rolled over to the side and switched off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. I went to roll onto my side facing away from him, but his arms grabbed me and pulled me over, so I was hard against him. An arm wrapped tight around me, keeping me in place. I felt his fingers tug at the back of the collar I wore and then he nuzzled the back of my neck, just above where the loathsome leather sat.
“I like you wearing this. It makes it seem like you’re mine,” he murmured, his breath hot against my skin.
“I don’t know why you’d want me; you don’t even seem to like me most of the time,” I said into the darkness.
He stroked my hair. “I like you just fine. Get some sleep.”
We stayed locked in that position until we fell asleep.
The next morning he barely uttered anything to me, and he seemed to be struggling with the effects of his hangover. Without asking his permission, I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and took my coffee cup out onto the porch. I was content to sit there in the silence with the heat from my drink warming my hands. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard the door open behind me, and he made an appearance. I didn’t look at him, but I knew he was standing behind me. Finally, he sat beside me on the steps.
“Look at this.” One hand plucked the coffee from my hands and replaced it with a phone. I cradled it in my hands as the image of my mother showed on the screen. Her hair was cut shorter than last time I’d seen her, and she was wearing a dress that she’d bought a few days before she kicked me out. She was sitting in a bar, I swiped the screen, and more photos came up of her and Todd looking cozy together as they took tequila shots, they sure were having a good time without me.
I swallowed. “What’s this?”
He took the phone from my hands, looking smug. “Do you know how easy it is to get close to people who are unsuspecting? How easy it would be to have a shot fired straight through someone’s brain and to walk away before anyone even knew what had happened?”
I hugged myself. “Don’t.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure she’s worth your devotion. She looks like a bitch.”
I shook my head at him, knowing how stricken I must have looked as terror pulsed through me. “Please don’t hurt her. I’ll do whatever you want.”
He smiled slightly. “I know you will.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Come inside, I’ve run you a bath.”
I warily got to my feet and headed inside, making my way up the stairs with him close behind. As I went to enter the bathroom, he touched my arm. “No, in here.” I went into his bedroom obediently and had barely taken two steps inside when he was pulling me over to the bed. He made short work of pushing me down before he entered me swiftly. There was no coaxing, no teasing, no attempt at making me feel pleasure. I winced in discomfort but stayed silent as he thrust into me, one hand gripping firmly onto my shoulder. His breathing was ragged as he came, and he rested momentarily with his head against mine before releasing me.
“I just had to do that,” he muttered. I wasn’t sure why, it wasn’t an apology, or an explanation. I think he was talking more to himself than to me. “Go on, get in the bath.”
I got to my feet and moved past him, semen dribbling down my thigh as he followed.
The water was hot and nice on my skin; I’d longed to take a bath for so long, but this just felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. He pushed a bar of soap into my hands. “Wash yourself well.”
I lathered up the soap and started to cover my skin with it; it smelled like jasmine. He grabbed a shampoo bottle and dumped an amount on my head before pushing up his sleeves and getting to work massaging the shampoo over my scalp. When he seemed content that the shampoo was sufficiently covering every lock of hair on my head, he took the bar of soap from me.
“Sit up on your knees,” he ordered.
I did, and he worked the bar of soap over my inner thighs before pushing it up among my wet folds and finally in me. He worked it in and out like he was fucking me with it. My face flamed with humiliation, and then I felt myself pale as I realized what he was doing.
He was getting rid of any trace he’d left on me. My mouth went dry, and I struggled with what to say, but he didn’t give me the chance.
“Stand up.”
I struggled to my feet, all the more aware of my vulnerability by my unsteadiness and nudity. Water rained down on me from the shower head, and every bit of soap and semen washed off me and down the drain. My heart beat rapidly as I watched him survey me. When he seemed happy, he turned off the water and wrapped a towel around me. I couldn’t move as he rubbed at my skin. I felt like a doll as he moved my limbs to dry every part. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but no words came out. He didn’t seem to notice as he dressed me, pushing my arms into a top before pulling it over my head, then lifting my legs to pull up my panties and jeans. The last thing he did was to make me brush my teeth, this I could do myself, and I took my time dragging the brush against my teeth until I spat blood.
He pulled a comb through my hair with surprising gentleness as I cried silently. He paused for a moment, and then continued. My brain was telling me that I should be begging, should be doing something, but my body wouldn’t cooperate, so I stayed still as he braided my hair and fastened it.
I felt him move away, and that’s when I finally felt control of my body come back to me. I turned toward him to speak but stopped as I saw the syringe in his hand. I looked straight into his eyes and saw no emotion there. And then the needle drove into my neck before I could even sob.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I awoke with my mouth dry, head thumping, and sunlight trying to sting its way under my eyelids. I painfully cracked my eyes open to be faced with the cloth of a car seat. I was lying on the back seat with drool pooling from my mouth. The realization and disgust of that spurred me into action, and I groggily struggled upright, wiping at my mouth before looking around me. The car door was open, and I shuffled across the seat to edge my feet over the side.
It was a clearing with trees forming a border and several picnic tables scattered about. It was at one of these that Aaron sat, looking at something in his hands. I inched unsteadily out of the car and made my way over to where he sat, blinking against the sun. He was wearing sunglasses, but a small movement of his head told me that he’d heard me coming.
I sat across the table from him, the wooden bench seat hard underneath me. I saw what he had in his hands – the dog collar. My hands went to my throat to confirm that it was, indeed, gone. Aaron gave a small grin.
“Miss it already?”
My hands dropped. “No.” I looked around us; no one else was here. “Where are we?”
“It’s a twenty minute drive to the nearest town. I’ll put you on a bus and then in a couple of hours you’ll be home.”
I frowned. Was this a trick?
“But, I thought…”
“I know what you thought. Don’t do anything to make me change my mind.” He shoved the collar in his jacket pocket. “Let’s go over a few ground rules–“
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said quickly. “I know what you are. I know what you’ll do.”
He stared at me from behind his glasses, not saying anything for a moment. I wished I could see his eyes.
“I hope you do know, Rachel. For your sake, I hope you do.” He stood. “Let’s get going.”
I followed behind him and got in the passenger seat. My head hurt, and I squeezed my eyes shut and rested my head against the window. He didn’t speak the whole way, and only the radio provided any kind of noise. At one stage the announcer said the date, and I worked out that he’d had me for three weeks. Only three weeks but it felt like eternity.
I opened my eyes as we drove into a small town. It was weird seeing cars and people around as people went about their normal, daily business. He pulled the car to a stop in a small side street and opened his door.
“Get out.”
I did and watched as he pulled a bag, my bag, out of the back. He pushed it into my hands. “Your phone’s in there, but the battery’s dead.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, extracting a wad of cash.
“Here,” he offered the money to me and I took it. “That’ll be enough to get a ticket to your town. The bus leaves in about twenty minutes. Just walk to the end of the street, turn left and you’ll see it.”
I shoved the money in my jeans pocket and then held my bag securely to my chest with both hands.
“You better get going.”
I watched him as he headed back to the driver’s side of the car and opened the door. He didn’t look at me as he got in the car, and soon after the engine started. That was my wake up call, and I gripped my bag and started to walk toward where he’d told me. I heard the car drive off behind me.
That’s when it hit me. He was gone. Just like that. My legs kept walking, but everything felt surreal. When the lady behind the counter asked me where I wanted to go, I had to say the name three times before it made its way out of my mouth coherently, and then she had to prompt me to hand the cash over. As I walked away I heard her tsk to her co-worker about young people and drugs. Part of me wanted to turn back to her and set her straight, but I didn’t. It didn’t matter.
Aaron’s money more than covered the ticket price, and I bought a soda to soothe my parched mouth, hoping the caffeine would give me enough of a burst to think clearly. I took a window seat and spent the entire three-hour ride staring out at the world passing by and trying not to think about anything. A few people sat beside me, and one tried conversation but soon gave up at my monotone one-word answers and refusal to meet her eyes.