Me...I’d left bruises on Elenor but she’d wanted them. Disgust was too good a word for me, except when I remembered how I’d felt then, in the moment.
It wasn’t surprising she was confused since I’d totally fucked over my own head.
I’d never had a high like yesterday and I’d never before felt so destroyed after an S and m session, or whatever you called what we’d done. Abuse, probably. Guess this was karma’s retribution.
“Think they’ll bring us breakfast soon?” She fiddled with her fingers as if nervous. “It’s crazy, but I’m starving.”
“I hope so. You need it. They left you a dress.” I fetched the little blue scrap of cloth from the bottom of the bed. The sheets were spotted with her blood. “I suppose you think you can get this on without help? It’s going to hurt you.”
“Yes. I’ll do it.” She put out her hand.
Ja. Stubborn, but it was her call.
With the iodine on the scratches, she was a spotty patchwork of orange-brown, red, blue, and pale skin, as well as the darker triangle reappearing at the juncture of her thighs.
Of course, if they’d given her a razor, I’d have fashioned a weapon from it.
I saw more than bruises.
The curl of her ear enticed me, as did the delicate pout of her lip, the sadness in her eye and the sensual curve of her breasts. I was getting a little lost in admiring her and I realized that I wanted her to want me to touch her and in more than a purely sexual way. More than a “let’s have a comforting hug” way. I wanted to find out who she really was.
She shook out the dress and turned away from me, as if uncomfortable with me watching.
Before I could be some creepy admirer, I needed to fix what was wrong and get us out. I didn’t look away. That quirky inclination to see her as mine tainted things. What did it matter when next time in the Room I could do what I liked?
It matters because it’s the decent thing to do.
For all of a second, I looked away.
Watching her put the dress on when she was obviously hurting from bending this way and that, was an exercise in agony. My hands itched to do something. When the hem fell in place, it only grazed the back of her thighs, revealing a hint of butt, same as the previous dresses. Damn she was pretty. I’d never get tired of looking at her, whether perfect or blemished. Besides, some of those marks were mine. Some of them when she’d screamed through those orgasms.
No man could forget that. It had left an imprint on my mind.
The door rattled.
Jaz flinched enough that even her face twitched. She backed away and crawled onto the bed, then curled up near the wall.
“Breakfast! Here, Pieter, boy.”
Mocking me seemed to have become a sport. They thought me safe, but I went obediently to be manacled. Getting angry was pointless. I needed to be good. The manacles clicked on.
Jaz had perched on the bed and was absentmindedly swinging her long legs. A nonchalant act, perhaps. I was beginning to know her. Like anyone, she got scared. She just hid it well.
I went over to the far wall, as they let the cleaning lady in. Same woman, plumpish, with dark curly hair at neck length. She never did more than glance at me though with Jaz she sometimes smiled or exchanged a word.
Three guards out there covering the door. Breakfast had arrived with the lady. She bustled about doing a perfunctory clean and changing the sheets. Jaz helped her with that as if this was some family place and an aunt was fixing the bed linen in our room.
The paper plates held a fried mix of meat, tomatoes, and potatoes, and an apple for us each. They fed us, though not enough. I’d lost muscle mass.
After eating, with me sitting on the floor and her on the bed, I washed off my plate and dried it. This one was a keeper. I needed it.
I’d boiled my strategies down to me rampaging through this place killing people after somehow, miraculously, getting out of the room, and then of course I’d die.
Or there was me and her somehow escaping the room and then reaching the jungle, or a vehicle. Or, last and best, getting word out to my friends who were ex-military and here in PNG for the same reason as I was – looser country borders and policing, less chance of being arrested for past crimes. Some of the cops here were bought. My friends were not.
“Let’s play spin the bottle.”
Jaz lowered her head and peeked at me. “What? There’s only two of us.”
“It’ll be fun, and I get to probe you for all your dirty secrets.”
The cogs were turning. I’d bothered her. “We...don’t have a bottle.”
“We have this.” I twisted the plate into a long curled mess. “It’ll do as a pointer.”
Sitting down in front of her on the floor annoyed her. Her mouth twisted and there was evil in her glare, but she shrugged.
“Fine. No kissing though, or anything, as prizes.” She drew her legs up and crossed them. “Not sure I have any dirty secrets.”
“No? We just have to answer a question.” I lifted my brows. “We all have dirty secrets.”
Some of mine were so dark I’d not tell her in a million years, but some of the others, I was strangely looking forward to spilling. A fact landed ker-thud in my head. It wasn’t likely we would ever leave here. Bleak but true. I wasn’t giving up but I knew the odds and they were poor.
She snorted lightly. “I guess.”
At the least, I wanted to get to know my pretty roommate. More of her than I did now. I might know the color of her nipples, but I wanted more, before we came to whatever end Gregor planned for us.
“Mm-hmm. Scared?” I grinned.
Jaz had this little blank expression that flitted across sometimes, like now. What did a librarian have to conceal? I flipped that. Maybe she was just scared. As if that was new.
Watching her making the bed and exchanging little smiles with the lady had brought back memories of me and Elenor, back when I had a home...back when I had a wife who would smile at me or, when I got too silly, throw pillows at me.
I missed that so much.
Life has a way of giving you stuff you barely knew you appreciated, snatching it away and then going see that was what it was all about.
“Let’s do this. This squidgy end is the pointer.” I spun the squashed plate.
“It’s you! Good! Tell me something funny.”
I pulled a face. “About?”
“Hmm.” She wriggled her feet, with her hands on her ankles, looking every bit like an excited teenager. “Your childhood?”
“Okay. Let me see. One morning, when I woke up baboons were in our kitchen. Somehow they’d gotten in through an unlocked door. My mother had to shoo them out with a broom.”
Jaz giggled. “Baboons?”
“Yes.” I nodded, trying to look wise. “The mess in the kitchen was so smelly our dogs went crazy.”
“Baboon shit. I’ll never beat that.” Her grin was big and infectious and I could’ve watched her forever.
Being creepy again. Even if it was in a good cause.
I spun. “Your turn to cough up a secret.”
“Jeez. Rigged. I get to spin next time.” She peered down.
Good. If she did that she’d be halfway on the floor. At the least I’d get to look down her cleavage, and why that was appealing when I’d just seen all of her was a baffling secret of female attractiveness.
“Rule. When you get a question it has to be connected to the last one. So tell me something from your childhood.”
“Ugh. No baboons there. I got lost on the way to school. My mum sent me off on my bike in Grade five. New school in an outback town, middle of Australia.”
How old was she in Grade five? Eleven? “Where’d you end up?”
“The library. I was playing hookie. I hated new schools.”
When they came to get the breakfast leftovers, we’d likely get to keep this plate, and maybe the paper cup of coffee dregs. I needed that too. Writing in the dark was going to be hard to do, but I’d
manage.
I’d thought a long while last night and this morning. It all depended on the cleaning lady. What I planned could save us or it could bring Gregor’s anger down on us.
Giving Jazmine hope had been my first gift. Even if I did have a plan, it was by no means as sure as I’d told her. It had been worth the lie to see the brightness transform her face. Lies to me were like payments to the devil. Hated them. A lie had killed my brother.
My second gift to her was to do everything to keep her well. I wanted to earn some gold stars for my poor battered soul. I was so fucking tired of hating myself. I’d told her that I could forget things but it wasn’t true. Short term, yes. Later, no. The past came back and chewed me over, made me feel like every part of me was so wrong, so bad, and that I’d never be a good person again.
Enjoying what I’d done in the Room had guaranteed a year of guilt.
We went through more questions and I slowly gave her more of me and began to doubt how much of her I was really getting.
It was unfair but...if she was lying, I guess I understood. I still hated it. I wanted her, not lies.
“Tell me something that you regret.”
Ah. Now that was a nasty one. I felt compelled to tell a truth, if not the whole truth. “When I shot a man in the face, and killed him.”
“Oh.”
She looked as if her stomach was as sickened as mine.
I’d said a stupid answer, but I’d have done it again. Killing the boy guard was more recent. Funny how that made me numb more than sad.
The pointer was on her again. “Tell me something about being a librarian. Something cute, funny, amazing.”
“About being a librarian? Amazing? Seriously? Okay. The day I managed to pull a whole bookshelf over on my head. Talk about embarrassing.”
The flatness in the telling made me wonder if that was true. How many questions had she answered that had made me go, was that really the truth?
Who was this woman?
I hated lying, but the more she did it, the more intense my curiosity.
“You might want to stop crossing your legs. You’re flashing me every so often.”
“Oh.” She brought her legs together. That bright red blush was part of why I wanted to know who she really was. That she could still blush after all that had happened, it spoke of a naivety around men and that just...appealed. Might be my kinky imagination but I could roll with it.
That night I sat down on the bed, in the faint moonlight, and attempted to write a message with coffee on a paper plate. If she just threw this away we were fucked. I had no idea where else to go from here.
Gregor ran this place like a clock. A nasty, malevolent fucked-up clock.
Chapter 20
There were days I wanted to be so close with Pieter that our skin would merge. He was big, powerful, a rock of serenity in the middle of this mad place. Then there were days I’d look at him and remember what he’d done, how good he was at killing, and I’d recognize my previous foolishness.
He didn’t understand how most every little thing he told me about himself was reinforcing my fear of him.
I didn’t understand why he could nevertheless make me catch my breath when he stripped off for a shower. Or like now, when he’d looked at me through those dangling untidy dark locks while doing push-ups. With his... fucking shirt off. Swallow thy tongue. The little octopus on the back of his shoulder gleamed and writhed as his muscles slid.
Yep. He affected me not at all. Trying not to look hot and flushed, I shifted my legs and stared at the paintwork instead.
Pieter was my own private tiger and I was locked in the cage with him.
Drooling at men wasn’t new. Having a thrill run through me at the potential for a man to grab me and do something unexpected to me – that was new.
Yet even when he told me about his ex-wife my throat closed in. Why? Who the fuck knew. Perhaps because all these details made him real, like someone I could date, and that was terrifying. Not in a million years would I ever date him. Silly reaction, though. My mind needed to catch up on the news. I might die tomorrow.
My teensy window up high was acting all cheerful again, letting in an actual visible shaft of late sun along with golden, whirling particles of dust.
“Wish I was Tinkerbell so I could fly on a sunbeam.”
He grunted, pausing at the top of a push-up. “Yeah?”
“Must be windy out there.” A breeze was getting in past the seals. The glass rattled. My sunlight faded, vanished.
Despite doing more push-ups, Pieter replied. “The weather is pretty dirty. A storm might be coming.”
There were places out there where people were free. “Last night, I heard a woman crying. The poor thing.”
“Ja. It was bad. You have a kind heart, Jaz.”
“I do?” Guess I was soft at times.
“You think of others. Even when you are worse off.”
Funny but I’d always thought myself self-centered. Anyone could empathize though. I was bad at really doing anything that changed things. Maybe thoughts counted?
I put my hand on my heart and wished us all home, every single one of us captives. Zoe. I remembered her. I prayed she’d escaped.
Even those many lonely nights when I’d eaten takeaway in my apartment by myself or walked past restaurants and cafés and looked in at loving couples, I’d pay almost anything to have those in my reach. I wanted to be ordinary again.
Please, please, if there’s a god up there. One of us deserves to have our lives back.
Tears filled my eyes and threatened to spill. I wiped them away with my forefinger.
What was there left for Him to do to me? What came after barbed wire? My mind went straight to the bleeding wreck of a man that Gregor had created with his knife.
If it was that next, could I kill myself? I had no clue how anyone suicided without drugs or a weapon. I might manage shooting myself in the head but anything else seemed unlikely.
How bad had things become that I contemplated this?
How many people would have done it already?
I dropped my gaze to the bed. The guard had poked these sheets through the hatch and they’d come back with dark spots. Their laundry methods hadn’t washed out my blood.
Yesterday, after three days without seeing her, the cleaning lady had returned. My opportunity, or so Pieter had whispered. I gave her the plate with an apologetic smile and a here’s some rubbish you missed. What were the chances she would read it? She’d looked at the writing, frozen, and then I’d crumpled it again and tossed it into her bag of rubbish.
Please help us. They killed a young boy here. They torture me. Go here. Say Pieter sent you. Say where we are.
Below that was Pieter’s signature, an address, and a note that said to give her a large amount of money – a coffee-flavored message. It was weird. Like hiding a hacksaw in a cake.
She’d gone and now I could only wonder. What if? I’d had a nightmare last night where Gregor burned us alive. If he found out what we’d done, he would punish me. I’d seen that possibility from the moment Pieter suggested this.
“Are you okay?” Pieter was at my side, panting, looking all sweaty and male.
I shrugged. “Just thinking.”
“I’ll have a shower then and join you in that thinking.”
“Mmm.” We shared a bed at night but I’d made clear to him that he wasn’t to touch me sexually anymore. That he obeyed was amazing. I eyed him sideways as if dubious. “I guess thinking with me is fine.”
He shot me one of those inscrutable frowns that had the potential to stop my heart. I’d figured out I could either act daunted or flippant when he did this. Acting frightened was stupid, like blood on the ground to my tiger. Besides, I found I liked living on the edge and teasing him.
So I grinned.
“Ja, it sure is bloody fine. Don’t go away.”
That he now said the Aussie bloody instead of the South African blêrrie was cute.
<
br /> I counted days. Was it Saturday? “Gregor’s back soon.” Breathing became a forgotten thing.
That I’d said it aloud registered a second later.
In mid-stride to the shower, Pieter turned back, his lips compressed. “Yes.”
Even if the cleaning lady went to his soldier friends, it might be too late. Dread arose from the ashes of my thoughts.
They’d do something awful to me tomorrow. It was always worse.
The shower came on. I blinked then rearranged myself on the bed and looked the other way so I wouldn’t have to see Pieter’s toned butt or any of his other interesting bits.
A guard banged on the door. “There’s a cyclone coming! Should be here tomorrow. If it doesn’t knock the place down, you should be fine. Don’t expect food for a couple of days. Fill these up with water.”
He shoved a few plastic containers through the hatch, old milk bottles from the looks of them, and then a bag of apples, a few packets of cheese, and some bread. They thumped and scattered onto the floor.
A cyclone. That was why the high winds. Fuck.
As if on cue, rain speckled against my window and a super-big gust shook the glass again.
We might drown or...or anything.
And if the building fell over, I didn’t give a shit. Maybe we could escape even. I flopped back onto the bed and grinned at the ceiling.
No Gregor. Yes!
Chapter 21
“This place is concrete above,” I pointed at the ceiling, “and there. Concrete walls, steel door – not a hope it’ll blow down.” At Jaz’s crestfallen expression I rummaged for something heartening. “If a tree fell on us, maybe, just maybe, a wall might crumble.”
But I doubted it. More likely we’d drown if this place was near a river or the guards would forget to come back and feed us. There were two locking mechanisms on the door and one of them was a bar they lowered on the outside. The hatch was an inch thick, slid to one side, and had some fastening on the outside that I couldn’t get to. I’d looked at shifting that on a few nights.
Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) Page 13