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She dove beneath the wood frame to see what the chain setup looked like. She found four sets of coils, with leather bands for the wrists and ankles.
Without being told what to do, she rose up, stripped the bedding off the bed except the bottom sheet, then pushed Marius to lie on his back. He’d started to shake all over.
She grabbed the strap and tied up his left wrist, then his left ankle.
“Good. Dammit, hurry, Shayna!”
She flew around the foot of the bed and grabbed the wrist strap from under the bed. She had to work to keep him steady enough to tighten the strap.
By the time she was working on his right ankle, he’d started thrashing and the sounds of the jangling chains scared her more than anything else. As a result, she lost control of his powerful leg twice. Capturing it a third time, she almost had the strap in place when he kicked out and threw her backward several feet.
She plowed into a chair and now she’d have a lovely bruise on her shoulder and back.
She stood up, knowing by his wild movements that she’d be in trouble if she didn’t get the leg secured.
Marius’s back started arching as though he was in terrible pain, his face twisted in agony. He started shouting incomprehensible things at the ceiling. His leg swung from side to side.
He’d kill her if she got too close. For just a handful of seconds he grew quiet, then the whole thing started again.
All she could do was stand back and watch him thrash though she still held the strap in her hand.
He arched and cried out repeatedly as though in great pain. But after a few minutes, she watched then timed those moments when everything slowed down and he looked as though he’d passed out.
She started practicing buckling the strap around the base of the chair leg. She did this over and over until she could do it at lightning speed.
When she felt ready, she siphoned Marius’s power and focused on the leg. The moment his limb settled down, she moved in, wrapped the leather around his ankle, and buckled.
She stood up, lifted both arms, and shouted in triumph because now he really was contained. She would have shouted again, but that’s when the horror really began.
Marius, now unable to move his legs, began straining with all his might against each of the bindings. He screamed and sometimes cried out, “Stop hurting me! Why are you hurting me?”
Shayna started moving backward until she hit the wall near the fireplace. Tears streamed from Marius’s eyes and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore.
She sank to the floor and wept.
It was all too damn much.
She hadn’t asked for this, to be taken into some freakish world where vampires existed and bad men tried to kill her, where sadists enslaved, raped, tortured, and killed thousands of human females, and where her abductor lay strapped down on his bed shouting and cursing because he had to go through some kind of withdrawal that she didn’t understand.
She hugged her knees to her chest and covered her ears with her hands.
She sobbed. She was frightened and alone and didn’t know what to do.
She stayed like that for a long time, tears flowing down her cheeks, using her shirt to wipe her nose, feeling damn sorry for herself.
After probably a good half hour of meltdown, her tears finally dried up.
She had a strange view from the floor and could only see one arm flail and one leg. She watched his muscles tense up in what must have been painful cramps. He still wore leather pants, which must have been unbearably hot because he was sweating.
Thank God he’d gotten his boots off. They sat askew near a side table next to the bed.
She rose to her feet and saw that he rolled his head back and forth as he moaned. The flushed, deep-red color of his skin alarmed her. Maybe she didn’t understand what he was going through or why this was suddenly her fate, but she already knew that Marius was a good man, who worked hard on behalf of his world.
And right now, he needed her help.
A door on the other side of the bed led her into a bathroom. She had to make do with a large plastic container beneath the sink, something she would have used to soak her feet. She put it beneath the faucet and filled it with a couple of inches of water.
Hunting through the drawers, she found a stack of washcloths and a pair of scissors. The latter she’d use to cut his clothes off. This would be tricky, of course, because he moved so much, but she knew she had to cool him down.
