He is my captor, not my savior.
“Enjoy your shower. I’ll wait for you out there.” I whine like a child when my attempt to leave the bathroom with my morals intact is thwarted by the unnamed man banding his arm around my waist and drawing me back.
I try to act oblivious to the large chunk of fleshy muscle brushing my backside, but try as I may, my libido picks up on it long before my astuteness shuts down the inanity. “This is wrong. I’m a taken woman. You can’t force me to shower with you.”
With ignorance his strong point, he walks us into the shower stall, switches on the water, then holds me under the spray to clear the chunks of vomit my shirt missed. What the water can’t budge, his hands take care of. He glides them over my breasts, down my arms, and around my stomach, only stopping when the tip of his pinkie finger reaches the apex of my sex.
“Why stop?” I push out with a half sob, half groan. After peering up at him, I say, “You’ve already taken awayallmy rights, so why act all high and mighty now?”
I’m angry, and rightfully so, but not all my anger is for the unnamed man. I’m mad at myself as well. My body should be repelling from his touch. Just the thought of him touching me should make me sick, but for some stupid reason, it doesn’t.
That has me as confused as I am angry.
“Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you to deserve to be treated this way?” When he angles his head and draws together his brows, signs I’m getting through to him, I ask, “Did I hurt you? Am I responsible forthis…” I thrust my hand around his cabin before guiding it down his body. When he shakes his head, I ask, “Then why are you hurting me? Why won’t you just let me go?”
With the water left running and towels nonexistent, he marches us back into the main half of the cabin. His flaccid cock swings in his legs’ brisk movements when he places me onto the solo dining room chair before he searches the numerous drawers in the kitchen.
Since his back is to me, I could make a run for it. I don’t. Not just because I’m naked, but also because curiosity is strangling my senses. He’s acting as if he has the answers to all my questions in his cabin, but he’s only just remembered that.
I sit a little straighter when he pivots around to face me over a minute later. He’s clutching a worn-out piece of paper, and his eyes are wide and bright.
Too curious for my own good, I attempt to hobble to his half of the kitchen. A hiss of pain barely whistles between my teeth when he ends my campaign by coming to me instead. After forcefully placing me back into my seat, he hands the newspaper cutout to me. Although he endeavors to keep his eyes on my face when I drop mine to the article that is two decades old, they occasionally lower to the gentle rise and fall of my breasts. It isn’t my intuition telling me this but the puckering of my nipples from his heated gaze.
I’d call him out on his wandering eyes if portions of the story about a local Cataloochee woman didn’t require my utmost devotion. Although her traffic accident was over twenty years ago, some aspects of the article have my heart pumping. She sailed over almost at the exact spot I did and crashed into a tree as big as the one that ended my ping-pong down the range. Her car also caught fire shortly after impact, but she wasn’t pulled from the wreckage in time. She died in the inferno.
“Who is this woman? Was she your mother?” When the stranger shakes his head, I mumble out, “Wife?” He balks before he once again shakes his head. “A family member?” When he continues shaking his head, his aggression growing with every denial, I blurt out, “I don’t understand what you’re showing me. Yes, our stories are similar, but what does Rosie’s accident have to do with me?”
He jabs his finger at the image of Rosie’s burned wreckage with so much hostility, he almost stabs his finger through the frail paper. “Ugh. Ugh.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” I shout after taking in the picture with more diligence. “Rosie died. I didn’t because you saved me, but that doesn’t automatically make me yours. You can’t claim someone because you saved their life. That isn’t how things work.”
I stop talking when he snatches the newspaper clipping out of my hand. He crumbles it in his hand so firmly, I’m worried it will represent nothing but ash before he storms to the far corner of the room.
I watch him when he commences getting dressed, torn between copying him and fleeing from him. It’s clear he has aggression issues but tell me one person with a communication difficulty who doesn’t. They have a reason to be cranky. My hearing was only affected for a couple of days, but the frustration about not being able to communicate effectively has never left me. It’s why I learned sign language and brail.
I had no clue how much I relied on speech to express myself until I couldn’t hear the words of the people around me. It created a massive barrier between medical staff and me that I refused to hand to my patients once my hearing returned.
My ability to interreact with my patients no matter how they communicate is what made me the doctor I am today. I love helping people, but it’s even more special when I get to go the extra mile for those already doing the hard yards, and the reminder of that has me stepping into the panties the stranger fans out at my feet instead of using his crouched position to my advantage to stage another daring getaway.
ChapterNine
Just like the night he walked us to the cabin deep in the woods, the stranger carries me on his back for our adventure outside this time around as well. We’ve been trekking through the densely treed property for almost an hour, and we’ve yet to stumble onto a single morsel of life. We’re completely alone, and I’m torn as to how I should reply.
Before moving to Florida, I spent the majority of my schooling years between California and Australia. I didn’t understand the complications that come from a snowstorm until I got stuck in the middle of one. I thought snow days were about marshmallows floating in hot chocolate and an endless number of hours to read. I didn’t consider the isolation, power outages, and the damage little snowflakes can cause.
The ground doesn’t just get suffocated by it. It causes accidents—bad ones—and proof of this stares me in the face when the stranger carefully guides us down a terrain significantly damaged by something plowing through it.
My stomach launches into my throat when he skims us past a large pine tree. There’s a massive graze down one side. The paint embedded into the gouge deep enough for me to lay in it matches the color of my once beloved car.
This must be the tree that flipped my car around, forcing me to finish my travels in reverse.
My heart that I’ve only just coerced back into my chest cavity beats erratically when the twisted remains of the vehicle I once thought displayed my importance to the world sneaks into my peripheral vision. It is a twisted mess of metal and glass and proves without a doubt that the envy of others will never come close to feeling loved and protected.
It is as ugly as my heart became after witnessing Cedric’s betrayal.
After taking a moment to reel my emotions in, I survey the area. There are no flashing lights in the distance or the frantic calls of volunteers searching the dense woodland for me. It’s just the stranger who saved me and me, and for some insane reason, the acknowledgment of that doesn’t scare me as much as it once did.
I should be dead.
