Beautiful Captivity (The Club #1)

by Ashleigh Townshend

  “Willow,” I say, and succumb to blackness again.

  HIM

  …

  We have twelve more hours, at most. He already should have left, and the other girls are going to come looking for me. By the time they realize I’m gone, and by the time his driver returns to pick him up, it will not take long until they put it together. I used a fake name and the kid at the counter didn’t look like he cared. He didn’t even glance at my license, which is why I chose this place. I need to get rid of my car, and get Nichole to a train or bus station so she can get far away.

  I hate to wake her, since she’s struggling, but she needs to get cleaned up. I picked up hair dye and it says it works fast. I hope so, because time is running out.

  I give her another thirty minutes to sleep, and then I stir her. She blinks and looks confused, memory slowly slipping back into her mind. Her eyes grow wide.

  “They’re going to come after me,” she says.

  I nod. “And me. We need to get you into a shower and then dye your hair. I got us both a change of clothes. I took whatever cash we had in the safe, which is a lot, but we’re not going to have much time. We need to get far away, as soon as possible.”

  “I need help,” she says. I let her lean on me as we walk to the shower, and I strip her robe off. The bruises are already yellowing and I cringe. If I could go back and kill him again, I would.

  I help her wash up and then dye her hair while she sits on the toilet. While it takes, I shave my own. She looks at me, a little said, but it has to be done. By the time her hair is colored and we are ready to go, I’m hopeful, and exhausted.

  It’s a while to the train station, but I don’t want to leave the car there. Instead, I call a cab to pick us up at a diner we passed on the way here, and park in the lot to wait. We leave everything behind and get in the taxi, hoping there is still time.

  There are plenty of trains leaving, even though it’s a suburban station. I realize I have no idea where home is for her, and I turn to face her.

  “Where are you from?” I ask.

  “Outside Atlanta.”

  “So… where to?”

  She looks at the upcoming departures. DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit.

  “Detroit.”

  “Why Detroit?”

  “Because no one goes there,” she answer simply.

  And so I buy us two tickets to Detroit, help her into the train car, and let her fall asleep against the window, as the train eventually leaves the station. I have no idea what will be ahead of us, but I don’t doubt that no matter where we go, someone will be looking.

  Her

  …

  Detroit is an ugly city, a city of death and decay. However, it seems like a good place to disappear, and when we step out of the train station, I look to Zane and take his hand.

  “Nichole, I’m sorry I even got you in this mess.”

  I shake my head. “It’s Willow now, isn’t it?”

  He looks sad. “I don’t think you can use either. Time to start new?”

  I nod. “Sonya.”

  He laughs. “Sonya?”

  “I always thought it was pretty. And you’re Griffin.”

  “Okay, Sonya.” He shakes his head and takes my hand. Even in the despair of the city, I think maybe we will be okay. If we never look back. If we keep running. Zane has enough cash to rent us a place for a month and we find something quickly. It’s an ugly triple decker and it’s not on a safe street, but I have no intention of leaving. The anonymity of the area is actually what we need right now.

  It’s furnished, but the furniture is worn, ugly. The entire place smells like smoke and rot. I think about my life, about who I was. It feels like something I read in a book, not this, and I realize it’s probably only been a couple days. How did things get so out of hand so fast?

  “I need to know, Zane. What are we facing?” I ask him.

  He sits on the couch, and a gathering of dust shoots up from the cushions. He coughs and pats the cushion next to him, sending up a smaller plume. “It’s complicated.”

  “I figured.”

  He begins to tell me his story, and he talks about Bella, the girl he loved. He talks about his anger at women, his frustrations with his job, realizing he needed to take anything – and the opportunity that came up.

  “I was angry, and I was broke. At first, I felt nothing for the girls, but when they began to send me photos of girls who were fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, I drew the line. I didn’t care about them necessarily, but they were children. So I told them our establishment would only be for legal girls.”

  “Legal girls you paid to abduct,” I point out.

  “Nichole, sex trade is going to continue. Even now. Even without me. The men who do the dirty work, the men we buy from? They are not associated with me, or my colleagues. They don’t send me the young ones, but that doesn’t stop them from taking them. They just find someone with less scruples on the other end. The same goes for the clients. If we closed the house, if I let every girl go, even if someone would not hunt you all down to kill you before you talked, those men? They have money. There is always someone willing to take money, and they will do whatever they need to.”

  “So there are other houses? In New York?”

  “I know of over a hundred in the New York area. Houses, rings, whatever. And that’s just one city. In one country.”

  “But where do you get all these girls?”

  “Where did they get you? A club? A beach?”

  “A club.”

  “They find women when they’re vulnerable. A few drops of something in a drink, and the girls wake up elsewhere. They generally find a buyer first, in order to minimize the time the girl is captive, because each group works in the same region, and the less they can be tracked, the better.”

  “They found you before?” I’m surprised.

  “They took your picture?”

  I remember it. So that man… he sent my photo to Zane, who in turn, what? Decided I was a worthy investment?

  “Then what?” I ask.

  “I knew you would sell. I had you up on the website and R’s bid won within a few hours. He paid more for you than any girl I’ve seen in my time doing this.”

  “You have a website? Wouldn’t someone track it?”

  He shakes his head. “I just run the house. I’m the little guy. There are men in charge. I don’t know who most of them are. It’s a business, and they don’t tell us who’s at the top. Information and money comes from them, and I return it to an associate of theirs.”

  “If you don’t know who they are, how will we be sure they’re not tracking us?”

  He takes my hand. “We won’t be.”

  HIM

  …

  I watch her while she sleeps. I want to take care of her, to make things okay, but what happened with Reagan… although she’s physically strong and survived it, and he never actually got to do what he wanted, I imagine the emotional trauma will be great.

  I want to touch her, to comfort her, but I worry she’ll flinch from my touch, afraid, angry. Instead, I look after her, and try to figure out how we can stay gone forever. If we could start over, just us… maybe she could love me. Maybe I could love her. Maybe we could survive.

  Her eyelids flutter when she wakes and she smiles. “Griffin.” It’s a ridiculous name, but it makes me happy that she wants me around to give me a name.

  It’s stupid of me. I should have put her on a train somewhere, let her disappear, and taken my punishment. I could have made something up, said she ran, said I shot him and chased her. But I didn’t. I followed her, making her more of a target now. Because they will find me. They didn’t even know her name.

  “Good morning,” I say. “We should eat something. You haven’t eaten, other than those crackers on the train.”

  She’s already weak from the attack and I know she’s nauseous from the memory, but she needs her strength.

  “Bring me something,” she request
s.

  “I need to leave, go to the corner to get food. Will you be okay?”

  She looks nervous, but nods. I know she’s worried I won’t come back. I don’t think they could have tracked us this fast, and I’m trying to stay off the grid to make it harder, but you never know.

  “I promise I will come back,” I tell her. “What do you want?”

  She shrugs. “Anything. Just come back. Please.”

  I almost kiss her goodbye, but we’re not a couple. This isn’t love. This is stupidity.

  Taking my key, I walk to the store. The neighborhood is rough. Many of the houses are boarded up, although a couple are serving as crack houses. It could be good for us, since we will blend in, but it also means everyone around here is used to violence – and if someone comes for us, we’re on our own. No one is calling the cops here.

  The store isn’t very well stocked, but I manage to get the basics. Bread, water, milk, peanut butter, cereal, and some snacks. I hesitate, and grab beer as well, because Nichole might need a drink at this point. The cashier doesn’t look at me and I take my bag back to the apartment.

  Nichole is up and dressed, washing dishes. “They looked a little grimy,” she explains.

  I show her what I got and we settle down for our first meal together. Raisin bran, toast, and water. I forgot to get butter or jam, so the toast is plain.

  “I did a pretty bad job,” I say as I watch her eat her toast.

  “It’s food. That’s good enough.”

  We eat in silence, and I want to ask what happened. What she remembers. But I don’t want to remind her, either. She looks at my expression and I think she knows what I’m wondering.

  “He hit me. A lot. He realized I wasn’t a virgin, and he threatened to kill me. I tried not to ask you for help. But he would have killed me, Zane.”

  I nod. “I know. It’s okay. We were stupid. I shouldn’t have-”

  She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. “I wanted to. And I’m glad you did. I couldn’t have. He was awful. It would have ruined me. I’m scared, and I don’t want to be in this mess, but I’m so happy it was you, Zane. And when I’m better, I hope you’ll do it again.”

  “I’m in deep, Nichole. I’ll do anything for you.”

  Her

  …

  I think he loves me. Keith used to tell me he loved me, but only when he wanted something. I think Zane loves me, and I think he’s scared of it. I’m scared of it. Because I think I might feel something for him as well.

  He cleans up the cereal bowls and plates, and then goes to the living room. We don’t have cable, so the TV doesn’t work, and there are only three books in the house. One is a plumbing manual. The other two are mystery novels. Zane picks one up and begins to read. I don’t know what to do, so I sit beside him, and think about school, about getting here, about everything that’s gone.

  I was so excited to move on. My mother took the day off work to help me move to the dorms, and she talked for the entire ride up about letting go, about leaving Keith behind. I knew she was right, but I wasn’t ready. It only took a few days, though, of constant calls and Facebook messages, him saying that now I had no excuse. By the time he came to visit, I was angry, and he didn’t even last one night before he ended it, angry that I wasn’t interested.

  Keith was my boyfriend in high school, but he was the kind of boyfriend you have because you have nothing else to do. I never really connected to him, and I wasn’t even that attracted to him. When we would make out, or when things got a little heavier and he would ask to finger me, it was always sloppy, boring. I didn’t feel excited about having sex with him, although I actually did want to have sex. I just hadn’t met someone who made me want to have it with them.

  After he left, I cried. I didn’t want to sleep with him, but I didn’t want to break up, either. Having a boyfriend mattered to me. I wanted to be in love. I thought maybe I could learn to love him. My roommates comforted me, but they decided I just needed to learn to have fun, to leave behind all the strings that came with sex. I couldn’t do it, at least not all the way. I wanted it to be special. But when I went to the club, I thought I would experiment, see if I could learn to enjoy sex, learn to want to be with a man. I didn’t understand it, but I just wasn’t attracted to anyone sexually. I couldn’t picture sex being pleasurable.

  Now, it seems so strange. I’m not happy that they took me, but with Zane, I realized that nothing was wrong with me. It was only that one day, but thinking about his body, thinking about the way he touched me, I get excited again. I never felt like this before, but I want Zane to do it again. I want to do more with him.

  Zane gets up to take a shower, leaving me alone on the couch. I picture him naked under the water. It’s arousing, thinking of him. I wonder if he’s touching himself, if he thinks about being with me again. I wonder if he liked what we did.

  I think about his belt. I imagine what it would feel like on my naked skin. It can’t be normal that I want to feel that. That I grow wet picturing him hitting me with it again, hard on my ass, right before he enters me.

  The thought burns at me, and I take off my pants, lying back on the sofa. I don’t know how to be this attracted to a man. I never really touched myself growing up. I couldn’t think of anything that got me wet, but picturing Zane, remembering him inside of me, imagining him hitting me with his belt again, calling out my name, I need to feel something.

  I reach my fingers under the elastic of my panties. My pussy is hot. I didn’t know it got this hot. It’s also drenched, making it easy to slide a couple fingers inside myself. It isn’t like it was with R. That was terrifying, but when I think of Zane, his beautiful body, I let the fear go, and touch myself. I explore the inside of my cunt, running my fingers along the walls, pushing against the spot that makes me wetter. I touch my clit, teasing it, desperate for Zane and his cock.

  I don’t hear him come back in the room until he speaks.

  “What are you doing?”

  I’m embarrassed, but as I look up, I see that he is only wearing his towel from the shower, and his erection is prominent.

  “I was remembering being with you. I…” I can’t say it. It’s humiliating. I should not want him this badly.

  He drops the towel and grabs his shaft in his hand. “Keep touching yourself, Nichole. But take off the panties. I want you to spread your legs and show me how wet your pussy is. I want to see the place where I belong. I want to look at it as you prepare it for my cock.”

  I can’t get my panties off fast enough, opening my legs and spreading myself for him. He moves his hand fast over his cock and I watch the liquid that starts to gather at the tip. His eyes don’t move.

  “Tell me what to do,” I beg.

  He moves closer, his hand still on himself, but he doesn’t touch me. He just looks at me, watching my fingers move in and out of my cunt. It’s so wet and I want him. I want him to tell me what he wants, what to do.

  “I want to own you, but I want you to want me to own you. I want you to give yourself to me completely, to let me show you what you want,” he says.

  “I want the belt,” I say, turning my eyes to the floor. I shouldn’t want that. I shouldn’t feel this need to be punished, but I move my fingers faster, and I can already feel the sweet sting.

  “I want your ass to belong to me, Nichole. I want to make you remember me inside you when you move,” he growls.

  “I’ll do anything,” I say. “Just tell me what. I’m yours, Zane. Take me, please.”

  HIM

  …

  “I’m yours, Zane.” Even the words make me wild for her. I watch her fingers as they move. They glisten from her pussy and I have to restrain myself. I need to be inside of her, to feel her wrapped around my cock, to own her. I am the only man who has been there, and it is a privilege. I want to keep her safe, but I also want to keep her here because I don’t want to think about another man touching her, of another man making her come.

&nb
sp; “You’re mine,” I tell her. “Come with me.” I lick her fingers clean and then lead her by the hand to the bedroom. It’s not the nicest room, and after the luxury of the house, she may be disappointed. However, I intend to make her forget everything but my cock.

  “I want you on the bed. I’m going to hit you, but only because I know it turns you on. You can ask me to stop if you want me to stop, but I promise, baby, I will make all the pain go away as soon as I’m done.”

  She bends over the bed, lifting her perfect ass to me. I hate seeing what Reagan did to her on her body, but I want to help her. I want her to associate sex with pleasure, pain with pleasure. I want her to know what it feels like to be under my control, willingly.