“I’m not going to,” I said. “I trust you.”
He held my stare, matching my intensity. “Are you sure?” he asked.
His jaw tightened. Did I trust Grant?
He had protected me. He hadn’t hurt me yet.
But did I trust him, right now?
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said.
We were silent on the elevator ride, both of us nodding at the concierge as we exited the building. Right before we got to the car, he hurtled me to the side, almost knocking me over. I tried to steady myself, but he wrestled me until my wrists were cinched together behind my back. I struggled to swing my arms as fast as I could, trying to elbow him, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. “Fuck,” I yelled. I panted, not realizing it was startingnow, but in a few quick movements, my hands were in metal cuffs, pulled tight. He shoved me in the backseat, then rested his weight on top of me, putting a blindfold around my eyes, pulling my hair in the process.
“What the fuck?” I hissed.
But he said nothing. Kept working to bind and blind me. Soon, the shifting of his weight, the crunch of the interior, were the only things I could hear. I couldn’t see a damn thing.
We drove. I don’t know how much, but we drove. In circles. On the highway. Turning each direction. He was smart; the blindfold covered my eyelids completely, so I couldn’t see anything, not even the lights from the other cars. We must have been driving for over an hour.
And Grant didn’t say a word.
For a moment, I wondered if he was taking me back to the desert. But then we were out of the car, and up the stairs, and into an elevator. His breathing and his hand on my back were the only reminders that he was beside me. Otherwise, he didn’t touch me.
A click of a lock, then an open door. Cool air breathing on my skin. Wherever we were, it smelled new, like fresh paint. I didn’t know if it was dark or bright in there. The only thing I knew was that we were alone.
Hazel, what are you doing? I thought. This doesn’t make any sense.
And it didn’t. Not one bit of it. Why did I trust him, when I knew he could easily kill me? If it was an order. If it pleased him. But my gut instinct knew that he was telling the truth. None of this was a job to him. I wasn’t a job to him. It was just us.
But what did that mean?
The thuds of his boots circled the floor around me. He unlocked the handcuffs.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
The words disturbed me. Breaking the silence.
I stepped on the backs of the sandals to pull them off. Then with leisurely movements, I unbuckled my pants and slid them down my thighs. I stepped out of my pants, and when I straightened, his hands were on my stomach, warm, even through the thin material. He gripped my shirt in his fists and pulled, a loud rip crashing between us, the fabric digging into my skin. My jaw dropped, and I could feel his breath on my chin.
He was close. So close.
He pulled the string of my thong, then let it snap back into place. I took the hint and got out of it, leaving it and the scraps of the shirt in a pile on the ground.
The natural braid of rope slid around my limbs, no doubt working into an intricate design. My breasts squeezed together, protruding between the ropes. Each ankle was pulled tight inside of a binding, then he pulled my ankles apart, the sides of my feet resting against a structure of some sort. Possibly wood. Each wrist was the same, tied tightly to the structure. I held onto the rope, but there was no give.
My legs were spread. Arms wide. Bound. Blinded.
For minutes, I could hear tiny hints of what was happening. His boots moving across the floor. The adjustment of an instrument. The faint twinge of metal against metal. But nothing distinct. Nothing I could be certain of. Each second ticked by, and I tried to think hard. To analyze the clues.
We had gone somewhere. I didn’t know where we were.
I was bound. Helpless.
The other facts that I couldn’t ignore: Grant had helped to abduct me only a few months earlier, then abandoned me at a clinic.
A stalker was out there. What if Grant had simply taken me to him?
