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“Good,” he murmurs, and in the dark steel of his eyes, I see a reflection of my own confusion, of the conflicting desires that make no sense. How could I want to be free of this man yet feel anxious to get closer? How could he love me yet want to hurt and punish me as well?
“Why?” I ask unsteadily as he frames my face with his large hands, his thumbs gently stroking across my shower-wet cheeks. Reaching up, I wrap my fingers around his thick wrists, feeling the strength of sinew and hard bone. “Peter… why are we like this?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Because love isn’t always pretty and simple, ptichka,” he says softly. “Nor is it with whom you would expect. We don’t get to choose our hearts’ desires; we can only take them and pervert them, mold them into what we can survive.”
“I don’t—” My voice cracks as my throat tightens. “I don’t love you, Peter. I can’t.”
To my surprise, his lips curl slightly and he dips his head, dropping a kiss on my forehead before drawing me against him in a hug.
“You can,” he murmurs, one hand gently cradling my neck as the other one strokes my spine. “You can and you will. Someday soon, you’ll stop fighting, and you’ll see. Because it’s too late for you, ptichka—you’re as deeply ensnared as I am.”
Part IV
37
Sara
Over the next three weeks, I do my best to prove Peter wrong, to distance myself from him, but it’s a futile endeavor. Every time I erect any barriers between us, he breaks them down, and the perverse connection between us grows, aided by a physical attraction so strong it rips at the last shreds of my resistance.
Now that he’s had me every way, my captor knows no boundaries with my body, and our sex is more intense than ever—and our condom use ever more sporadic. I don’t understand how that happens, how my brain just shuts down at his touch, making me miss something so important. I don’t want a child with Peter—I dread the mere thought of it—but when he sweeps me up in his embrace, pregnancy is the last thing on my mind.
So far, I’ve been lucky, with my period coming last week as usual, but I know better than anyone that all it takes is one slip, one careless moment. And I’m not sure that Peter is being careless, exactly. He still uses condoms when I manage to remind him, but there have been no more morning-after pills—not after that one time.
“I’ve read through all the medical literature on the topic, and I don’t want you exposed to those hormones,” he stated when I begged him to get the pills for me again. “You’re extra sensitive—you said so yourself—and I’m not risking your health on the off-chance we might’ve gotten pregnant.”
And no matter how much I tried to reason with him, pointing out that I’m an Ob-Gyn and can assess the risks myself, he wouldn’t budge.
I’m beginning to suspect that Peter wants me pregnant, and that, more than anything, is what again turns my mind to escape.
This time around, I bide my time, carefully planning every step. I’m almost certain that Peter spoke the truth when he said the mountain is ringed by cliffs, but on our hikes through the forest, I’ve seen cliffs where the slopes are less sharp and the roots provide convenient handholds. The mountain is definitely inaccessible by car, and going up would be next to impossible, but a hiker who knows what she’s doing could possibly get down.
At least I’m hoping that’s the case.
I begin by deciding on the provisions and scoping out their locations. I can’t stash them in advance without getting caught, but I pay careful attention to where everything is stored. Rope, a sturdy knife, a backpack, nonperishable food, bottles of water—I keep a mental checklist of the essentials so that when the time comes, I can gather everything in a few short minutes. It helps that Peter and his men are neat to the point of OCD; everything in the house has its place, so all I have to do is remember where that is.
I also contemplate stealing a gun. The men are careful around me, stashing their weapons out of sight, but I’m pretty sure I could get my hands on something if I really tried. I haven’t tried, though, because by the time I learned where they keep them, I’ve gotten to know each of my captors and can’t imagine hurting them. The healing instinct is too deeply ingrained in me. I could probably pull the trigger under some circumstances—if my life was in danger, let’s say—but these men don’t pose a mortal threat to me. On the contrary, they’re nice to me, each in his own way. And taking the weapon to bluff them into letting me go would be stupid; they’d instantly see through my pathetic threat and take the gun away.
