Never Have I Ever

by Clearwing, August

  If ever Ethan was a Dom the way Noah would have me believe, all remnants of the qualities a Dom should possess had long since vanished. He was nothing more than a psychopath; a sadist to the core soaked in hubris. It was a brand of insanity even Anya probably never saw firsthand; cold and calculating, biding his time to put pieces into place in just the right way to maximize his payoff.

  The payoff hurt. It hurt so, so much.

  “Color me impressed,” said Ethan as he peered around to look at me. “I thought for sure you would pass out there for a minute.”

  All I could do was glare at him.

  “Oh, the fire is still there. Good for you.” He unhooked my wrists and spun me around to face him. The cuffs were then reseated onto the hook. I winced with further discomfort. “That’s better. Now you know just how serious I am, don’t you?”

  I looked down. Blood—my blood—splattered beneath my feet, making it that much more difficult to stand the way I was made to without slipping. I felt it streaming down the small of my back and my pants. My blouse was in tatters, barely recognizable as clothing after the barrage of whip strikes.

  “Nothing to say? No clever retorts or wise words for me?… No, I didn’t think so.” Ethan walked to the table to retrieve his phone, casually dialed a number, and put it to his ear. “I’m ready for you now.”

  He hung up and let the phone tumble back onto the workbench from a leisurely grip. Moments later, the door behind him opened to a dim hallway and a pair of men of roughly similar height in matching bland blue jeans and T-shirts. Their faces were covered by black ski masks like they stole them out of some shitty television show.

  After instructing them to close the door, Ethan tossed a set of keys to one of the men. “She’s all yours, boys. Though, you might want to clean her up first.”

  My eyes grew wide. I wanted to fight them. Ethan made sure every inch of my body was wracked with pain so I couldn’t. Any movement at all resulted in renewed agony. I hung limp against the chains as they approached me, unable to stand on the balls of my feet any longer without my legs quaking.

  The men paid no mind to my whimpers and cries, my subtle movements to back away from them despite having nowhere to go. Off to the side, Ethan pulled one of the chairs forward and sat close by so he had a good view of the show. I expected Ethan to force himself on me for sure; I expected that from the moment I noticed the chains. I even tried to prepare for it by warning myself; more or less coming to terms with it. I certainly didn’t expect he would sit back and watch as others defiled me.

  What sort of people, I wondered, were so fucked in the head they got off on defiling an already beaten, bloody woman?

  These men, obviously.

  I wouldn’t have put it past Ethan to pay them for the fun they were going to have at the expense of my suffering.

  Their eyes stuck with me most of all. They struck me with such vivid clarity. A pair of deep brown and a pair of ice blue eyes. Both knew exactly what they were doing. They disregarded any scrap of humanity within them to raise Hell into such a small room.

  If you’re going through Hell, keep going.

  That was the quote, right? There was no other choice in my case. No other options presented themselves. Forward, through Hell, as a one way street.

  Ethan, for his part, drank my despair as if it flowed from the Holy Grail. I averted my eyes from all of them, yet I still felt their eyes on me.

  Scoring me.

  Objectifying me.

  Dehumanizing me.

  The men took their time to soak in my fear. A pair of emergency medical scissors was retrieved from the table to cut away the tattered remnants of my blouse. Strips of cloth were embedded in the gashes on my back. I barely managed anything above a whimper as the cloth was pulled from the sticky wetness of blood beginning to dry. It didn’t seem to bother the men, which only made me want to vomit all the more. They made a show of slowly unbuttoning my pants, and then yanked them down to cut the fabric free at my knees.

  Before they began their assault, Ethan offered up one more direction to them. “Make her remember every second.”

  From that moment on he never moved much. He never spoke, either. Hazel eyes, too reminiscent of Noah’s for comfort, merely gazed on as if watching a thought-provoking stage production.

  Time went nebulous, as it is want to do in such situations. What was probably minutes, at best, on the clock stretched into hours in my head. Over and over, it stretched into actual hours. Speculation on time was all I had, and it didn’t get me very far. How long, I wondered, would it be until Ethan grew tired of the freak show playing out for his amusement?

  To my mortification, I did remember every horrendous second. I remembered their calloused hands, the variances in their weight and muscle mass. I also remember I cried until my head split with a migraine the size of a small planet and I became too exhausted and too dehydrated to produce any further tears whatsoever. I struggled until my veins propelled plasma through my heart. And then I struggled some more.

  Neither of them were gentle; I was a puppet to get their rocks off with, nothing more. At some point the men removed my gag to make use of my mouth. They never had cause to worry about screaming, and for that matter didn’t appear to. My voice was all but gone, my jaw too sore to manage much beyond catatonically holding it open or closed. The taste of iron, saline, bitter semen, and uninviting musk permeated my very being. Any time they thought I might be a little too comfortable for their liking they would change up their routine. One of them dug his nails into my ass so hard when he fucked me I felt it bruise in an instant and break the skin.

  The names they called me ran the gamut of uninventive insults to the point I almost became insulted they couldn’t think of anything more creative outside of “slut” and “whore”. Still, their choice of limited vocabulary served the purpose of making me loathe the words whereas before, when they came from Noah’s lips, I relished them. Now I never wanted to hear them spoken by anybody ever again.

  Predictably, I grew numb. There came a point wherein the throbbing pain overwhelming me dulled into nothingness as my mind disconnected. I saw the events unfold as if through a paned glass window or a film. I stopped feeling altogether. The sensations of alien hands and alien bodies forcing themselves onto me, into me, and around me merged half past the point of oblivion. Fatigue won out eventually, though I highly doubted my passing out deterred them from continuing in the slightest.

  {CHAPTER TWENTY TWO}

  I am not certain just how long I was out, what with time having gone biggledy on me and all. When I woke, one of the last people I expected to see in the world was sitting Indian style on the floor in front of me. At first I thought I was dreaming. The twinges of pain, the soreness of muscles trying to twitch to life, and the wasteland in my mouth convinced me otherwise.

  I was on my stomach with my left arm acting as a poor substitute for a pillow. My right wrist remained chained to the left. The cuffs on my feet had been removed, the chain tethering them to the wall moved to my wrists instead. My eyes were still heavy. I barely tilted my head to glance at the woman with dark hair and a pleasant smile. I barely blinked despite my shock at Selene sitting mere feet from my ravaged body. The irony amused me more than anything given my state. I began to wonder exactly how long I really had been out.

  For a while she just sat there, watching me in silence. The litany of words to scream at her rolled endlessly through my mind. Too bad I didn’t have energy enough to speak most of them.

  “No—” I coughed to clear my throat—“Noah went looking for you.”

  “I know. I was gone by the time his plane landed.”

  “Figures,” I croaked.

  “You got what you wanted, Piper. I’m here with Ethan now. He brought me home with open arms of forgiveness. I should be thanking you.”

  I picked a dot on the wall behind her to stare at. “Pardon me if I don’t jump up and down with elation.”

  “He will be happy a
fter all, together with me. But, you won’t be. You can’t be. He won’t allow it. There’s something to be said about listening. You really should have listened.”

  I groaned out a twisted whisper, a phantom of my own voice scarcely recognizable to my ears. “Selene… you’re an idiot if you think anyone could be happy with that monster.”

  She smiled a smile which shook me to my bones. It was like she smiled at me as an old friend, not as a psychopath following the footsteps of another psychopath. “You don’t know him the way I do. He’s never raised a hand in anger to me.”

  I didn’t care about her reasoning. At that point I didn’t care about anyone’s reasoning. I cursed God and Ethan alike. I cursed her, too.

  “Fuck you, Selene. Fuck you.”

  “I know.” She reached over to move a small bunch of sweat-soaked hair from my face. I jerked away from her touch, the sudden action shooting lightning throughout my nerves. “Shh, it’s almost over. They’re going to take you away from here now. You’re going to leave Los Angeles. You’ll not look back because, after all, there’s no way you’ll ever win against Ethan. His lawyers are of the highest caliber.”

  I fell quiet, unable to fathom thinking anything anymore. Mine was another life ruined because of her selfishness. I contemplated killing her myself. Probably would have were it not for the heaviness of my body and limiting mobility of my chains. To a degree I was relieved at the news the plans to kill me were off the table. Part of me wanted death just to kill the pain with it.

  The little nugget of self-preservation instilled in my genes that the human body can take a myriad of abuses and survive prevented all of me from wholly wishing to die. At least there was still that.

  They collected me sometime later. I was pulled to my feet on shaking legs, unhooked from the wall, and led quietly out of the room. They directed me in all my nakedness quickly into an open garage and the back of a black Lincoln SUV. The sun was out. It must have been late afternoon or early evening. The instant the thought to make a break for it entered my head and my muscles tensed to pull in the direction of the street out front, my arms were seized tighter to shove me inside the SUV.

  Ethan climbed into the passenger’s seat while the same burly man who’d helped kidnap me to begin with sat uncomfortably close to me in the back seat. He produced a blindfold to tie around my eyes and instructed me to keep my head down. The woman who accompanied him in my abduction now got behind the wheel. I caught a glimpse of the clock on the dash before the blindfold took the afternoon away from me. 5:48 p.m.

  Keeping my head low turned out to be a blessing. I couldn’t sit up straight even if I wanted to. My back hurt far too much for that. The slightest brush against it sent me reeling. The scent of gasoline wafted from somewhere in the vehicle as they took me wherever they planned to take me. It brought my migraine screaming into existence again. Traffic rushing by on either side of the car was the only sound I heard during the whole drive. Doubts of their decision not to kill me didn’t enter my head until the noises of traffic faded in favor of a rocky gravel road some miles off a random highway, in which time I severely began to wonder if they would take my life. Otherwise, why drag me out so far?

  The blindfold came off when the Lincoln rolled to a stop on that gravel road. It gave me just enough time for the clock on the dash to tell me we had been driving for almost forty five minutes before I was whisked out into the bright California sun beating down on an alcove of trees and brush sparsely dotted with rocky dirt.

  After being stopped a few yards out I finally saw the source of the gasoline smell. The burly man left me to pull a red gas can from the trunk space of the SUV along with a brown backpack which looked to be more empty than full. He walked over and placed the gas can at Ethan’s feet pointedly. Its contents sloshed against the inside.

  “I trust Selene explained to you what is going to happen,” Ethan said. “I will have eyes on you just as I always have. Not that further initiative is required; however, if you fail to make yourself scarce in a timely manner I’ll see to it everything and everyone you love is burned to the ground. Do you understand?”

  I nodded a little.

  His eyes roved to the gas can, then back to me. “Say the words.”

  “I understand,” I replied robotically.

  Ethan motioned to Burly, who took the cue to drop the shackles from my wrists. They were red and swollen, tender to the touch and bled where the metal had bitten into my skin.

  “Farewell, Miss Minogue,” said Ethan.

  The bastard all but threw the backpack at me, turned, and walked back to the SUV. His entourage followed suit.

  My everything hurt. Muscles I didn’t even know existed screamed at me from my ankles to the insides of my thighs. Bruises made a Picasso out of my torso now that they were lit in the California sun. One look at the mess of dirt and blood coupled with the black and blue and the glaze over my eyes would tell any passersby I just survived a fucking horror movie. I did, in a way. Only it was by no stretch of the imagination fictitious for me.

  After discovering a clean change of clothes inside the backpack provided, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to just get back to my feet. Jeans one size too large would have to suffice for the time being. Ethan conveniently forgot to include a pair of shoes. Or underwear. Mostly I wanted to just sit there and cry. I wanted to scream at the world for failing me. Yet, somehow, I summoned the strength to stand up, having convinced myself I’d be worse off if I stayed where I was until the sun set in roughly two hours. I gingerly slid the shirt over my shoulders just so I had something with which to cover up. Not-quite-dry blood stained the light purple of it in varied degrees of red and off-bronze within seconds. The cotton bit into the gashes across my back and I almost pulled it off again. Walking into civilization barefoot would be difficult enough, though; I wasn’t willing to add more insult to injury by revealing my torture to the rest of the world too.

  The sun was on its way to setting just off to my eleven o’clock. At least I was in a general Los Angeles-facing direction. If I could reach a gas station I could call for someone to pick me up. But, who would I call? Hell, who would I allow to see me in my current state? The last thing I wanted was to explain myself. It was a bridge I’d cross when I arrived at wherever I was going, I decided.

  It was slow going as I started off down what loosely constituted a road. I decided to keep hold of the backpack just in case I needed it in my immediate future, though made a point to kick the gas can left at my feet over before I left the spot. Ethan would never see it; it just made me feel better. As I expected, it hurt like the devil with every step. It only frustrated me more that I was so parched that I couldn’t cry to release the pain.

  I may have been on the road a quarter mile or so, having just crossed onto something a little more paved, and began searching for a sign or highway marker when I heard someone call out my name.

  I would’ve ignored it except that it came again. And then a third time. I looked up to see Howard Cartwright dashing from the driver’s side of a parked blue Toyota Avalon down the otherwise deserted road.

  “Cartwright?” My voice was too far gone, cracked and disjointed from screaming, for him to clearly hear me.

  He raced the distance to me faster than I ever saw any man run before. I dropped the backpack at once and found myself trying to speed up my pace to reach him as well. An expression of empathy mixed with anger and relief on his face as I threw my arms open and slammed into him. I was so sore I hardly noticed the extra pain his comforting embrace caused to the whip marks on my back and shoulders.

  “I’ve got you, duckling,” he soothed. “You’re safe.” He tightened his arm around my shoulders and placed his hand at the back of my head to bury my face close to his chest. Despite my lack of tears, I was so grateful to see a friendly face I clung to him and cried with dry eyes. He kept reminding me, “You’re safe now. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  I coughed out a sob, losing all abi
lity to organize myself at that point, and shook uncontrollably in his arms. “He took it from me. Noah’s collar. My dignity. Everything. He took it all from me!”

  Howard held me like that for a while. He allowed me my deserving moment to collapse in on myself until he shifted his stance to begin guiding me towards his car. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay now. We’ll take care of you.”

  He more carried me than walked me to his car, and deposited me with care into the passenger’s seat. I hated being an invalid. Up until that day I was always perfectly capable of taking care of myself to the point of being ready to walk however long was necessary just to prove to Ethan I could. It sickened me that I was forced to rely on someone else for stamina that evening let alone the duration of my recovery. That part hurt worse than the physical injuries themselves.

  Once I was secure in the car, I leaned sideways against the door and rested my head on the window. I still couldn’t sit back in the seat. Howard passed me a bottle of water from the back seat, which I took in earnest and greedily drained in a manner of seconds despite his warning to take it slow. I would have liked him to be in my position and drink it slow. It was nigh impossible. My body craved the hydration too much to allow a meager sip or two at a time.

  We drove in comfortable silence for the first ten miles back into the city. Every so often Howard would cast a glance to me, and to the blood clinging to the back of my shirt like gory zebra stripes.

  Before he could start in on the interrogation, I asked, “How’d you find me?”

  He gave me a reassuring, however melancholy, smile. “How else? Noah. I didn’t think Ethan would be stupid enough to take you to his own house. By the time I got there he was leaving with you. I’m so glad I stayed far enough back to keep out of sight.”