“Okay, okay,” I rasp.
He releases me and crosses his arms, waiting while I yank off my clothes.
Hands shaking, I let every stitch fall to the floor. Spider’s eyes burn into me with every move I make. His face is cold and unfeeling, except for the hunger that flashes in his gaze.
I’m not going to receive any mercy from him.
Unwilling to turn my away to him, I crawl backwards onto his bed.
What I expect him to do once I’m lying there, I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s not what he does.
Spider goes to his dresser and pulls out four twines of rope. In an instant, he’s climbed on the bed, straddling my waist.
The weight of him pressing me into the mattress startles me, heightening my panic. “Wait, what are you—”
“Shut up.” He grabs my wrist, wrapping one of the ropes around it, then lifts it toward the headboard.
Oh, no.
I’ve never been tied up before, but I don’t have to have been there to understand his intentions.
The memory of Sarah being tied to that whipping tree for stealing food flashes across my mind. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen a woman bound, right before she got five lashes across the back. Spider obviously isn’t going to whip me. I’m facing the wrong way for that. But he could do any number of other sick things to me, and if my wrists are tied to his headboard, I won’t be able to stop him. The idea of being rendered so vulnerable to him, and all while naked as the day I was born, is more than I can bear.
Survival mode kicks in, stripping away all sense.
“What are you doing?” I snap, yanking my arm while he ties my wrist to the bed knob. “Let me go!”
Saying nothing, Spider pulls the rope until there’s no room for me to wriggle free. Not enough to pinch the skin, but enough that my wrist is held tight with my arm stretched out. He works quickly, doing the same with the other wrist, tying it to the bed knob on my other side.
I twist violently on the mattress. He climbs off of me without a word, strides over to the left side of the footboard and grabs my ankle.
“You can’t do this!” I kick at him, aiming for any part of him I can reach. I miss entirely, and he swats my foot away. “Get off me!”
“Scream and cry all you want. You’re not getting out of this.”
I thrash again, and he twists my hips so that I’m half rolled onto my side. His palm crashes into my butt, a single hard slap. Fire spreads across my butt cheek. I cry out, half anger, half pain.
It hurts like a mother, but the pain also does something else. It reaches into me, way down deep, calling to that same twisted part of me that seems to crave his touch, to lap his pleasure and his pain up like a cat with a saucer of cream. The sting strokes between my legs, making my sex ache.
Before I know it, he has me lying flat to the mattress again and he’s tying my ankle to the footboard.
“I’ll be gone a while, which means you’ll have plenty of time to think about what’s going to happen to you when I get back.” He winds the last rope around my right ankle, securing it to the other bed knob.
“Oh, you have to be kidding me! You’re just going to leave me here like this?”
“Yes.” He leans on the footboard, his eyes drinking in the sight of me spread eagle across his bed, naked and helpless. His eyelids drop to half-mast, giving him that hungry, sleepy, sexy look.
My nipples bunch under that lustful gaze, the ache in my core intensifying.
As though he’s aware of his affect on me, he reaches out one hand and his fingers stroke my exposed sex as if it’s his right to touch me however and whenever he likes.
I jolt, that single caress making my core feel as if it’s on fire. When I twist and buck in attempt to escape his touch, he smirks and pulls his hand back.
“Little Wildcat.” His voice is low and throaty and carnal. “You’re so fucking perfect. If I didn’t have to leave, I’d be all over you with your pussy milking my cock.”
“Let me go!”
Coming around the bed to my side, he puts his fingers in his mouth and sucks away my juices. Then he gathers up the clothes I was wearing, tosses them in his closet and locks it.
Locking away any hope that I could dress if I could get out of these ropes.
Last, he puts the two bottles of water from his vest on the nightstand beside me. Where I can see them, but where they’re also hopelessly out of reach.
“I hate you,” I grit out.
His eyes twinkle. “Don’t go anywhere now.” He taps my nose.
Rage wells up, white hot. I toss my head, bucking so hard I bounce on the mattress. “You can’t do this! Let me out of here, or I swear I’ll kill you!”
Grunting a laugh, he strolls to the door and opens it, turning to me. “I’d love to see you try. Be seeing you soon.”
Then, just like that, he’s gone, locking the door behind him.
As soon as the door to Spider’s bedroom closes and the lock clicks—as soon as I’m left alone in the silent room—familiar fears and doubts settle deep in my chest.
These fears and doubts I’ve felt before—once. Once, when I was in the isolation shed in the Colony. Alone, in the dark, without any human contact for hours. For days.
True, here, I’m not in the dark, but I’m still locked in. Bound to his bed, I’m still trapped, unable to get out. Powerless.
I shut those thoughts down, squashing them flat. If I break now, it’s over. If I let my fear consume me, I’ll lose myself, becoming the helpless automaton I worked so hard to avoid becoming. Someone without purpose, without a reason to keep fighting.
Drawing a deep breath, I glance up at the ropes on my wrists, then down at the ones on my ankles. Trying to twist my limbs, to wriggle them free. The ropes chafe, cutting into the skin, and none of them move an inch. Spider’s tied them tight enough to restrain without cutting off the circulation.
Hatred for him seeps in, and I grunt and huff, yanking my arms, twisting on the bed. If I can just get one hand free, I can untie the other, and then my legs, and then…
And then what?
It’s not like I can escape again.
Even if I could get to the window, I won’t be able to crawl out of it again. Men’s voices drift from outside the back of the clubhouse. They’d see me if I tried to escape that way, and since I already tried once, Spider would probably make sure someone stays out there at all times until he returns, keeping an eye out. And even if I could crawl out that window, it wouldn’t do any good.
Spider’s locked the closest, so I can’t dress, not even in his clothes. If I got out, I’d be running in the desert, not only naked, but without shoes. Escaping in the nude might be better than lying here waiting for whatever sick things he might do to me when he gets back, but the sand would burn my feet. It would be too hot to walk on.
I wouldn’t be able to get out the other way, either. Even if I could get the door to the room open, which I couldn’t, there’s who knows how many men in this clubhouse, walking the halls or sitting in that barroom. Worse, Pip’s right outside the door now. Once in a while, someone stops in the hall and I hear him talking or laughing with them.
I won’t be going anywhere for the moment. Maybe not for a long, long time.