I really need to consider my replies before responding to a deranged man. The flare darting through his eyes announces he took my warning as more of a challenge than a threat, not to mention the quirking of his lips.
“What are you doing?” I ask for the second time when he releases my mouth from his grip, my voice hitched with unease. I thought he would shovel food into my mouth until I had no choice but to swallow. Instead, he gobbles up the chunky product before he crushes it between his teeth long enough it couldn’t be anything more than mush.
When he arrows his head toward mine, his cheeks extra plump thanks to the slosh in his mouth, my sluggish brain finally clues on to what is happening.
After swallowing down the chunk of meat I stuffed behind my back molars, I furiously shake my head. “You can’t feed me like a baby bird. Do you have any idea how unhygienic that is? You could have anything in your mouth…” My words trail off when a faint memory trickles into my head. We’ve done this before. Many times. It’s how he kept me alive for three days. He fed me like a mother bird would her baby.
He spat in my mouth.
And for some inane reason, acknowledging that out loud isn’t as distressing as it should be. I may have died if he didn’t feed me, and although I wish he could have prepared my food with a mortar and pestle instead of his teeth, it’s kind of hot knowing how desperate he was to keep me alive.
“Okay, okay! I’ll eat!” I scream when his mouth narrows in so close to mine his beard tickles my chin and neck. It isn’t as rough as believed. It reminds me of a cashmere sweater that’s been worn too many times over the winter, so it isn’t as soft as it once was. “I’ll eat,” I promise when he notches back an inch and lowers his eyes to my lips. “See?”
After wrangling one of my hands free from his firm yet painless grip, I fish out a chunk of the meat from the bowl balancing on the flat space between my breasts I wish my chest didn’t have when I’m lying flat on my back, then pop it into my mouth.
“Uh.”
Confident his grunt is encouragement for me to eat another piece, I dig out a second generous portion, then slide it between my lips. It isn’t a hard decision to make considering how juicy and delicious the meat is. It is so tender it melts like butter in a sinfully hot mouth.
“Haw.”
And so the cycle continues until the bowl is empty, and my stomach is so rounded, the stranger has to distribute most of the weight of his large frame onto my pelvis to allow room for my stomach’s growth.
I don’t know what cut of steak he used, but it was extremely tender. So fresh, it’s as if he purchased it from the butcher only minutes before cooking it.
I freeze when a disturbing notion enters my head.
There are no markets nearby. No cabins. We arecompletelyisolated.
So where the hell did he get a fresh cut of steak from?
The sloshy contents in my stomach rush up my food pipe when I recall the murderous hut at the side of the cabin. It’s filled with animals—deadanimals.
“What did I just eat?” My stomach doesn’t give the stranger the chance to answer. It’s so eager to evacuate the foreign matter puffing it out, it sits at the base of my throat before I can announce to the stranger that I need to be sick. “Sick.”
He huffs and arches a brow as if to say,I’m not falling for that trick again.
Sadly, my squidgy stomach doesn’t wait for no man. It heaves on repeat, and before its gurgling rolls can be deciphered by the stranger as legitimate, it burst through the cracks of the fingers endeavoring to hold it back.
“Ught,” the stranger groans when the splatters of vomit project far enough to dot his chest. He unpins me from the mattress by climbing off me before he uses the knife dumped halfway between the kitchen and the ‘bedroom’ to cut through the vine holding me hostage to the bed. “Hunn…” he adds, distracting me from considering another escape attempt.
I would have given it another shot if I didn’t have chunks of vomit down the front of my shirt. If I turned up at the local sheriff’s office looking like this, I’d most likely be put on a twenty-four-hour mental hold. Since that could unearth my fear paralysis, I let the stranger guide me into the bathroom instead.
“Uhn?”
I’m not sure when I learned how to speak caveman, but I nod my head to the stranger’s question before stepping away from the vanity sink holding almost as much of my stomach’s contents as the bed. “You should warn a person before feeding them a foreign product. I could have been vegan.”
The woes of my stomach seem nowhere near as bad when the stranger huffs. It wasn’t a gruff, menacing puff of air. It was hinged with laughter—laughter that vanishes when he takes in my stained shirt.
“It’s fine. It’s hardly noticeable.” I breathe heavily out of my nose when he whips off my shirt in one fell swoop. I could argue, but really, where would it get me? I’ve learned pretty quickly I either do things his way, or he’ll force me to do it.
My logic is disregarded when his hand moves for the waistband of my panties. They’re untouched. The vomit didn’t get anywhere near them. So why the hell is he taking them off?
I lose the chance to ask when the removal of his clothes soon chases mine. He strips out of the sweatpants he’s wearing sans underwear before he drags his shirt over his head in the familiar back-of-the-neck gather and pull.
The memories that have trickled in my head the past twenty-four-plus hours are proven accurate when my eyes rake the stranger’s body. He is as big as a beast but without the shrinkage you’d expect if he were a steroid junkie. His muscles are as naturally sourced as the dark hairs spread across his chest and the meal he just fed me.
Although his body is a work of art, it doesn’t change anything.
