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I tried to track the time by cataloging meals Jacob delivered to my cell. It was always the same: grits for breakfast, pea soup for lunch, and dried chicken breast with potato and peas for dinner. Each meal was accompanied by a bottle of water, and I learned quickly to not gulp the fluid down as soon as it arrived so it would last longer.

I forced myself to eat every scrap, and when Jacob asked me to post my empty bowls through the hatch, he would always call me a good girl for eating the food he had provided. I hated his praise to start with, but as my captivity dragged on, I found myself desperate to earn his praise.

It didn’t take long for my energy to be zapped, and while I tried to make myself exercise by doing yoga or pacing the cell to prevent my muscles from stiffening, I soon lost all motivation to move from the cot bed.

My energy levels weren’t helped by Jacob, who had stuck to his word and upped the dose of whatever drug he put in my food. I never knew if I slept for hours or days; all I knew was that when I woke up, I was in my cell, with a fresh change of clothes, the dirt cleaned from my hair and body, and the same uncomfortable throbbing between my legs.

After confronting Jacob, I refused to engage in any form of interaction with him. Gone was my plan to earn his trust; I didn’t want anything to do with him.

During every visit to the cell, he tried to coax conversations from me, but when he didn’t get any answers, he would sit outside the door, talking about all kinds of random things. What the weather had been like for the day, what Wallace had cooked for dinner, and the latest news from across the world.

I tried my hardest to ignore him, be that by lying on the cot bed with the blanket over my head, or sitting against the wall with my hands covering my ears. But the problem with being locked in a cell for what I was beginning to think was now close to two weeks was more isolating than I could have ever imagined. Boredom had long since set in, but that wasn’t what bothered me.

It was the loneliness.

It was the endless silence I was subjected to whenever Jacob left me.

It was only having my internal thoughts for company.

The anger I harbored toward Jacob for everything he’d done to me slowly started to fade. Instead, I began to crave his company, even if I didn’t speak to him. I yearned to hear his voice whenever he wasn’t sitting outside my cell.

Worse than all of that, though, was the need for human touch. More specifically, Jacob’s touch, which wasn’t helped by the knowledge that he would touch me when I was unconscious, and I had no recollection of it.

So, when I’d finished my most recent evening meal, while Jacob sat outside my cell talking about how beautiful the sunset had been, I gave up on my mission to never speak to Jacob again, my voice croaky from lack of use. “Jacob.”

Several beats passed before he answered, almost as if my calling his name had taken him by surprise. “Yes, angel?”

I swallowed a mouthful of water, clearing my throat. “How long have I been in here?”

“Ten days.”

“Huh. I thought it was longer.” A weird mix of disappointment at learning only ten days had passed coursed through me, merging with relief that it hadn’t been longer.

“I missed hearing your voice, angel,” Jacob said softly. “I hate you not speaking to me.”

I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the door. Anger attempted to spark under my skin, doused instantly by the need to hear more from Jacob. “I miss you,” I whispered so he couldn’t hear me, before adding louder, “Will you let me out now?”

“Do you understand why you are in there?”

“Because I tried to run away.”

“Because you hurt me, angel. Watching you climb into the boat broke my heart. I was so worried. Why, angel? What did I do that was so bad you had to risk your life?”

If I had the energy, I would have rolled my eyes. Talk about deja vu; we’d had this conversation before. “I told you. I ran because you hurt me.”

“Did I? And before you answer, take a moment to think, angel,” he replied, cutting me off before I could open my mouth to tell him that he did hurt me. “Yes, I spanked you because you swore, but did it hurt as much as you think it did? Our minds can often catastrophize an event and make us think something was worse than it actually was. I mean, if it hurt as much as you remember, then why were you able to come so easily when I pleasured you after?”

My gaze was fixed on the wall in front of me, but not really seeing it as I thought over his words. Was he right? Did it hurt as much as I remembered?

“I’m not denying that it caused you some discomfort, Charlotte, but your cunt was soaking after,” Jacob continued, his voice a soothing antidote to the turmoil living in my body. “And I can’t help but wonder if maybe you’re confused about pleasure and pain. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. Some people get turned on by pain, and I think that happened to you, but because you’ve never experienced something like that before, you assumed you were hurt.”

I replayed that night in my head for the millionth time, only now, I was seeing it in a different light. He had spanked my ass so hard that it felt like a thousand bees had stung my skin, but I couldn’t deny what happened after, when he made me come harder than ever before.

Maybe he was right. I hadn’t expected him to put me over his knee, and perhaps the shock of it had made his strikes seem worse than what they had been. Maybe I did have a kink where pain caused me pleasure.

Embarrassment heated my entire body. I’d reacted so quickly, thinking he had hurt me, when maybe I was just confused about what he’d made me feel. If I hadn’t run, we could have spoken about it. He could have explained to me what he’d just said, and maybe we could have explored whether I did enjoy a bit of pain with pleasure.

This was all my fault. The reason I’d been locked up in the cell for ten days was because I hadn’t stopped to give him a chance to explain. Not only had I put myself through the torture of the last ten days, but I’d hurt Jacob too.