by Skye Warren
A sudden warmth bathed my insides, the salt stinging the raw flesh. I shuddered at the pain of it, the price of my own pleasure. He rested his weight on me, and I absorbed his contented sigh with my body, cradled him as best I could while facing away. At length, he pulled free.
He gently rubbed the abused skin in the crevice of my ass. Slow strokes, tender strokes.
“Feel better?” he asked.
I would have expected that to make it worse. It had already been pummeled. This would be like pressing on a bruise. But his touch was sure and knowing, and some of the tension eased.
“Yes. How did you know?”
My speech came out slurred, and only then did I realize how tired I was. Strange, since I had slept for so long. It was a stupid question, too. Of course he had done this before, had sex with women, some willing, some not. He was only taking care of me because he wanted to use me again, putting away his toys so he could play again in the morning.
Everything seemed fuzzier, softer. He’d drugged my drink again, I realized, but I couldn’t summon up the will to care. Here in this place there was no pain or fear, and the whole idea seemed just grand. Yes, keep me and play with me. Do the things I never would have the courage to do on my own and keep me safe in the process.
“Because it always helped me,” he said in a low voice.
It took me a minute to realize he was answering my question. This had been done to him. Had he liked it? Who’d done it? But the questions were too heavy on my tongue, and I drifted away to sleep. The last thought before I lost consciousness was to wonder if he had been willing.
Chapter Six
The longest vertical drop is over 165 feet.
The next time I woke up, my head was much clearer. Unfortunately, my body was coming apart. I felt every bump and rattle of the truck from my pounding headache to the rumble of my stomach. But that only fueled my determination.
What was happening to me? This needy girl, desperate to please with sex and obedience—that wasn’t me. I wanted freedom, but freedom wasn’t worth much if I let other people take it away with a snap of their fingers, with a passive-aggressive threat or a pill dropped into a soda. I had escaped once before, from my mother’s house, and I would do it again.
This would be even easier because I didn’t care about Hunter. It would be nothing at all to hurt him and get away. So as we bounced in an uneasy rhythm along some unseen highway, I tried to gather some strength into my tired limbs, some awareness into my dark-dampened mind.
When he opened the back of the truck, I staggered out. It was so bright. So…much. Even the air on my skin felt overwhelming. Only a small amount of time kept away from it had weakened me. I scanned the treeline, looking for an escape route. His hand clamped onto my shoulder.
“Not so fast, sunshine. You stay with me.”
True to his word, he led me into the bushes. We stopped at a patch of grass, and I understood this was where I should do my business.
I raised my eyebrows at him in a tacit plea for privacy.
His face was implacable. No.
Miserable, humiliated, I squatted down and sent a warm stream of liquid into the earth. He handed me a wipe from his pocket. After cleaning myself, I clutched it awkwardly.
“You can leave it on the ground. Those are biodegradable.”
Oh great, an eco-conscious kidnapper. I tossed the wipe against the base of a tree and then realized his hand had left my shoulder at some point. We weren’t touching at all, and suddenly, the air between seemed like a question—will you run? I stood still, indecisive. I knew I wouldn’t get away like this. I could never run fast enough or fight him off. It was a question of obedience.
“You surprised me yesterday, being such a good girl,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “Don’t stop now.”
For a minute, I was distracted from his words. Yesterday? It seemed like only hours had passed. I was losing time here. That was somehow scarier than anything he had done to me. I had lost enough time trapped in my mother’s house. I couldn’t afford to give away any more. I hoped he wouldn’t drug me again. It occurred to me that he might not, if he thought I wouldn’t run. That was when I registered what he had said about being pleased with me. And he hadn’t led me to the back of the truck, but to the cab.
I stumbled out of the leaves-strewn ground, allowing myself to be tugged toward the road. Suddenly he stopped, and I ran right into his side. He yanked at my wrist, pulling me behind him.
Startled, I peeked around him to see a large cat with black and orange stripes.
A very large cat.
“Is that…?”
“A tiger. Yeah.”
Though the size was abnormal for a regular housecat, it was the eyes that were different. Both more beautiful and colder. Crueler. A predator who was considering her attack. On the one hand, it seemed silly to worry over an animal physically smaller than us. On the other hand, I felt her ferocity in her stare, her stance, and I had no doubt she could cause either one of us considerable damage if she wanted to attack.
She hadn’t moved a single paw since we’d arrived in her clearing. Only her whiskers twitched, gathering data from the wind.
I whispered. “Should we—”
“We’re just going to walk real slow around her. She won’t attack unless she feels threatened.”
“Right, but—”
“Just move. Nice and easy.”
We shuffled around her. In a shocking act of chivalry, Hunter was careful to always stay between the cat and my body.
When we’d made it to the other side, I quickened my step and snapped a twig. The cat’s ears flicked. She lowered her head.
“Easy,” he said sharply. Then softer, “Go easy. Nice and slow all the way back.”
We shuffled in a sort of dance back into the rest stop where the truck was parked, continuing to move slowly and keep facing the woods until we reached the cab.
He opened the passenger door, and instead of waiting for me to climb in the tall steps, practically threw me inside. He circled the truck and got in.
“Shit,” he said.
I swallowed. “She was gorgeous.”
“Yeah. Good thing I didn’t have to kill her.”
My face scrunched up. “Could you have? I mean, if she had attacked?”
“A tiger’s pretty vicious when they want to be, even a little undergrown thing like that one. But a gun is better.”
I gasped, eyeing him up and down. “Where?”
“My boot. Don’t leave home without it.”
“So wait. Why didn’t you get it out then? We could have died.”
“Nah, probably not. She’d have launched herself, I’d have blocked, and she’d have caught my arm. It would’ve got torn up pretty bad, but that’s it. She was too malnourished to do much. That’s why she’s so close to a rest stop. Must be near to starving to chance it.”
I tried to calm myself though inside I felt shivery, bordering on hysterical. “Okay. Here’s a question. Why was there a tiger in the woods? In Texas.”
“There’s more tigers in Texas than in India. The old travelling circuses let them loose when they disbanded, and since then they’ve maintained a steady population.” He reached back and rustled in some bags behind the seats. “Most people think they’re large cats. I’ve seen them before but never that close.”
He tossed big slabs of jerky packaged in shrink wrap onto my lap.
“Open those up.”
Without a word, I tugged at the little slit in the corner and pulled out the savory meat.
He drove up to where we’d reenter the freeway but rolled a little ways onto the grass. He hit the button and rolled down the window.
“Throw it out there. Far as you can.”
I stared at him for a minute, but he just waited. Sighing, I turned and tossed one of the pieces of meat onto the grass.
His exhalation was derisive. “That as far as you can get it?”
I scowled at him, then reached back and t
hrew the next piece. It landed a few feet farther. I unlatched the seatbelt so I could turn my whole body. The rest of the pieces landed only a few feet from the treeline.
The meat rested there, small pockets of brown amid the grass.
I glanced back. “Will she find it?”
He chuckled. “Oh, she’ll find it. She’s just wishing we’d get the hell out of here.”
With that, he gunned the engine and we sped back onto the freeway. He used his radio to tell someone about the tiger and they messaged him back something about a wildlife rescue organization going out to set a trap.
Only as the minutes ticked away did the events fall in order for me. The way he’d protected me, yes. Even more interesting, the way he’d protected the tiger. He could have shot her and been done with her. Instead he’d risked his own life for hers, he’d fed her, he’d sent help for her.
And maybe most shocking of all: I was riding up front.
He glanced over, seeming to follow my train of thought. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Are you going to make me go back there?”
After a moment, he shook his head. “Good girls get to ride up front.”
The words were humiliating but stirred something inside me. I was beginning to recognize that tension as lust. Dirty, wrong, but undeniable. It was spacious in here. The seats were a soft black leather. Like the waitress had said, very comfortable.
I huddled against the door, staring straight ahead. My exhilaration from the encounter with the tiger morphed into excitement. I was in the truck! Inside the truck. I didn’t want to mess this up. And maybe I would have been excited even without the kidnapping. This was like an adventure. A slightly perverted adventure of questionable consent, but beggars like me couldn’t be choosers.
As the truck rumbled forward, I noticed the swaying of a necklace roped around the rearview mirror. No. I looked closer and realized it was a rosary. Pale cream beads and a silver cross. I wondered if it had belonged to someone he loved, like maybe his mother. It humanized him a little bit. There must have been someone he loved, before he had turned into this, a man who had to force women into staying with him.
We drove for several minutes in silence. I stared out the window, watching the farmland rush by. The sky was a brilliant green-blue like I imagined the sea would look, though I had never been. I blinked up at the clouds that seemed to hang above us, even as we sped eighty miles per hour down the highway, even as the clouds themselves must be floating along in a different direction.
On Earth, it was much more dismal. The farmland was brown and flat. Even someone as clueless as I knew that was a bad sign in terms of producing crops. And there were no houses, no people. Not that I could jump out of a moving vehicle even if I saw someone. We were so high off the ground, almost flying, with a tint strong enough that no one would see me wave for help.
I had traded one prison for another, this one mobile but absolute. Inescapable even as it sliced through the countryside. Neither my mother’s home nor this eighteen-wheeler were gilded, but I preferred the view in this cage.
Except to the left of me, where Hunter sat, tapping the wide steering wheel in a restless beat. His legs were long, reaching leisurely to the floor. His whole body was slouched slightly, clearly quite comfortable. In contrast, my own knees were pressed together, my fists balled together right on top.
“So tell me about yourself, sunshine.”
Tell him…about me? He couldn’t really care, and I couldn’t really want to tell him—could I? Sadly, I wasn’t so sure. I had spent most of my twenty years with one person. Here was a new one. The novelty was too much to resist.
“I’m not sure what there is to tell. I’m not…anyone special.”
His insouciant expression slipped slightly as he looked at me. “How about you let me judge that? Tell me what you do. You in college?”
He kept that gaze trained on me, even though we were hurtling over the road. Nervous, I glanced ahead. We were still in the lane, still steady, and he seemed unconcerned.
“Um, not anymore. I graduated…but just with an associate’s degree. In graphic design.”
“Oh yeah, you an artist?”
“No, it was just something good to do from home, because…” Because I was a loser who had listened to my mother for far too long. And I had stopped listening at the one moment I should have heeded her safety advice. I couldn’t seem to win.
I stared at the rushing pavement as it slid under the truck. “But I was moving out. I was going to Little Rock, Arkansas. I had a job there at a camera shop.”
My voice had lilted up at the end in a small challenge. We both knew why I was no longer on my way to Little Rock. I didn’t even know where we were anymore, but I wasn’t on track to Niagara because of him. Bringing it up had almost been an accusation, the closest I could come to things better left unsaid: Why did you take me? When will you let me go? How could you do this to me when I had finally broken free?
Terrified of his anger or retribution to my impertinence, I slid my gaze over to him. He didn’t look mad, just thoughtful.
“A camera shop, huh? You ever been there before?”
“No.”
“You know anyone who works there?”
“No.”
“You like cameras?”
Despite my fears, a small smile played at my lips. I liked scenery and majesty. I liked angles and lighting. I liked seeing in a photo what I yearned to see for real. I wanted to take a picture of Niagara Falls.
“Yeah,” I said. “I like cameras.”
“Yours looks pretty fancy. Heavy, too.”
My eyebrows snapped up. Had he looked through my stuff back at the hotel? Of course he had. And he must have been disappointed to find less than a hundred bucks. What did he think of my book?
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Got no destination.”
I blinked. I had expected him to have some delivery or route or something. Wasn’t that the point of an eighteen-wheeler, to transport things?
He chuckled. “I like to drive. Sometimes I do jobs, but in between them, I keep driving.”
It seemed…well, inefficient. It also seemed wonderful, like a ball without friction, with nothing to slow it down, just rolling around, seeing everything in every direction but not having to participate. Not really being able to join in, always separate.
How lonely that must be. Almost as lonely as I had been, locked up in my mother’s house. That was when I realized—if this was a cage, then he was caged too. Even though he could go wherever he wanted, he couldn’t escape these steel walls. My mother was trapped too, even if it was by her own fears.
Maybe we were all held captive by something.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I was just thinking…” I paused, wondering if it was wise to speak so openly with him. He didn’t seem to get angry with me when I did, but it could be I exposed myself this way, made myself weaker by my own speculation. “I was thinking it seemed a little lonely.”
He was quiet so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “Sometimes we do things only because they are better than the alternative.”
“The lesser of two evils?”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
And I thought, what could have been so bad to make him avoid all human contact?
He was not so unlike my mother, and that thought should have made me hate him, but instead just made me sad.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” he continued. “I know a lot of people. People who live along some of the main lines. I’ll stop by for dinner or even overnight. I know the other truckers, and I can talk to them over the radio or my cell phone, if I wanted to.”
My heart beat a little faster, although I struggled to hide it. A radio? A cell phone? Methods of communication, means of escape. There was no obvious device on his dashboard, just a high-tech panel of flat screens, currently black, and buttons. Where would he keep his cell phone? His poc
ket? Somewhere else? Luckily he didn’t seem to notice my frantic plotting.
“Besides, I have you to keep me company now.”
Something about the extra emphasis on the word company raised the hairs on the back of my neck. He grinned, and I closed my eyes against the lust that glimmered there. But even with my eyes closed, I could feel the charge in the air, setting off little sparks against my skin, strumming awareness into body parts that had been well handled recently.
“If you’re going to stay up here, you might as well make yourself useful and keep me awake. Tell me something new about you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said caustically, “I haven’t had a very interesting life so far. That was what I was trying to do before you—”
“Fine. What’s the deal with your book? About Niagara Falls.”
I didn’t want to tell him what it meant to me, how it had been my goal for so long and how it tore me up inside to be battered off course.
“I can tell you a story from the book,” I offered. “It’s called the Maid of the Myst. A Native American myth. Have you heard it before?”
“Why would I have heard it before?”
“Right. Well, the people used to listen to the thunder, and it would teach them about the world, how to grow food and be kind to each other. But then they stopped listening, and the god of thunder grew angry and went to live under the waterfalls.”
“So he just left them. Kind of immature for a god, huh?”
I ignored him. “The people suffered and they decided to sacrifice this girl, but she ran away. She takes a canoe down the river, but the rapids take over and she can’t control it. As the boat fell over the waterfall, the god of thunder caught her in his arms and saved her.”
“Very romantic.”
“Yes, it was romantic. They fell in love and lived together underneath the falls.”
“Hmm. Happily ever after, just like that?”
“Well, not exactly. She wanted to see her home one last time, so she convinced the god to let her go. There she realized how much she missed it so she decided to stay. In his anger, the god of thunder destroyed his home, flooding it with water from the falls.”