“I could. You’ll use your safeword if I freak you out?”
“I will if it gets too bad. I want to be scared, though.”
“Limits for roughing you up?”
“Uhh…my pants stay on. No sex. No cutting me or pissing on me. No punching me in the face or doing serious damage.”
“Wow. Okay.” He chuckled, as though I’d surprised him. “Can I kiss you?”
I blinked at him, not sure why he’d want to. “Sure, but I don’t know how that fits in with my scene.”
His mouth was on mine almost before I finished my statement—warm, soft lips that parted, his tongue teasing its way into my mouth. Instead of being captive and afraid, I was deliciously trapped. I melted against him, my breasts pressing against hard chest as I stood on tiptoe to deepen the kiss.
God, it was good.
As he pulled back, he hummed in appreciation while I was feeling flustered, breathless, and unbelievably turned on.
“Sorry. I just thought both of us should remember I actually like you as a person before we let ourselves tumble down this rabbit hole.”
He turned away and went upstairs, his steps measured, either to give me time to change my mind, or maybe just to freak me out.
The light overhead turned off with a crackling tink, leaving only a rectangle of light on the wooden stairs before he closed the door behind him. In the complete and utter blackness, I heard the key turn in the lock and withdraw with a metallic scrape.
I was alone. My breathing was loud in the stillness.
Zero had…kissed me. If my hands had been free, I might have touched my lips, which still tingled. It had been so sudden, and then he’d left and shut off the light. Now it felt like I’d imagined the whole thing, except my body was buzzing with anticipation. He was coming back eventually, and then what?
Then almost anything he wanted.
He wouldn’t ask me for my limits without planning to respect them, right?
How well did I really know these men?
We were in the middle of fucking nowhere. If I started screaming, they were the only ones who would hear me.
Considering what they wrote for a living, exactly how deviant were their minds?
I lowered myself to the floor, finding it difficult not to tip over in the dark. It had never crossed my mind it would be hard to fold in half and sit without using my arms for balance. The cold from the sand had felt nice against my feet when we’d come downstairs, but now it was leaching through my leggings, making me feel damp already, even though I was pretty sure the sand was dry.
The darkness was absolute. There was no ambient light down here at all—not a window, not a sliver of light showing under the door.
Okay. I was here to work, not freak myself out.
Focus.
Time to think my way into Jenny’s mind. What if Zero and Vandal were actual captors who’d kidnapped me from my apartment. From Jenny’s apartment.
I closed my eyes, then opened them, disturbed there was absolutely no difference. From down here, I couldn’t hear Zero’s music playing. I couldn’t hear the two of them talking. Then again, I didn’t think I was under the same part of the house they were in. I should have ensured someone was listening for me in case I freaked out. They would think to do that, right?
How long would they leave me down here? What if I had to pee?
My bladder decided to notify me I might need a bathroom at some point in the next few hours. What if they left me down here overnight? What if my circulation was cut off, and I had no way to wriggle out of my bonds?
I moved my wrists, testing the rope for slack and the accessibility of the knots. My fingers investigated, but there was no way to get the grip I needed to start trying to untie myself. I panicked, trying to yank my hand free and gave myself a serious case of rope burn, but without dislocating my thumb there was no way to slide out of Zero’s handiwork.
I was breathing hard, and my panic response made me feel trapped. It was also making me doubt the trustworthiness of the two men I barely knew who’d locked me down here.
What were they going to do to me?
Everything up to and including murder crossed my mind in a rapid succession of images. Of being murdered after years of being kept as a toy—being forced to give birth to babies I would never see again.
I was panting and feeling lightheaded, so I let myself tip over onto my side, taking the small force of the fall with my shoulder. I lay in the dirt, listening hard, wondering when he was coming back. Neither of us had mentioned a time, but maybe it had already been a half hour. Or hours? Maybe it had been days.
No—if it had been days, I would have pissed myself by now. I’d be hungry instead of just scared.
At one point I was sure I heard someone sliding their fingers over the door, but maybe it was my imagination. I tried to listen harder, for any sound other than my own—tried to see anything in the cold black nothingness.
I struggled to sit and then rise to my feet, almost tipping over once, determined to get to the door to see if I could get myself out if I tried. Maybe it wasn’t locked after all. Maybe the sound of the key in the lock had been my imagination. Maybe the only thing standing between me and freedom was the fact that I hadn’t even tried to get away yet.
Unfortunately, I found the first step with my shin, the bang painful even though I hadn’t been moving fast. I grunted in discomfort then ascended the stairs carefully, touching the handrail with the tips of my fingers to give myself some peace of mind. The stairs were steep and narrow, and I kept feeling like I might tumble down them at any given moment. The handrail wiggled alarmingly when I leaned on it, so I tried not to let myself do it, imagining it giving way.
How many stairs could there even be? The ceiling was low, so there was no reason for there to be this many stairs. Maybe the lowness of the ceiling had been an optical illusion? I leaned a bit forward, looking for the door with my head. When I found it, I realized there wasn’t enough of a top stair to stand on to turn around and try the handle, so I stood on the stair below and tried to lift my arms high enough behind me to reach.
I tried turning the knob with my arm, leaning against it for balance. It turned but failed to open. Grunting with effort, I tried to get my hand on the knob to make sure, but then the door opened cautiously behind me, and I fell backward in slow motion into the dark hallway and to freedom.
A dark figure pulled me to my feet.
“You’re going to break your fucking neck,” a man growled.
I couldn’t tell who it was, and found myself shivering internally, behind my ribs.
“I need to pee,” I lied.
The male grunted and hauled me away, bringing me into what felt like a smallish room.
“The toilet is behind you.” He didn’t turn on the light. He didn’t leave.
I was breathing so loudly I couldn’t make out which of them it was.
“You can go,” I told him.
“You’re a captive, and I’m not stupid.”
Embarrassed, but not wanting to complain, considering all of this had been my idea, I struggled to lower my leggings by pulling down on the back of them with my limited range of motion.
He grunted and tugged on the front of my leggings, then held my arm as I sat. I peed for a humiliatingly long time then got to suffer further humiliation when he put a wad of toilet paper in my hands where they were bound behind my back. I wiped the best I could from behind, then stood while he pulled my leggings back up, leaving them in an uncomfortable, haphazard twist.