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The last several days have been nothing but a series of whys and today is no different. Why did I stay lying beside her? After several hours of no sleep, why did I quietly climb off the bed in an effort not to wake her? Why, instead of leaving the room, did I remove the lock from her chain, bolting her to the floor? Why do I even care?
I don’t have any answers to these fucking questions. Normally, a question I couldn’t answer gets ignored. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t fucking matter. I asked the question a lot. When I was being held captive in South America—why are they doing this to me? Why haven’t they killed me yet? Why did they take such pleasure in hurting others? Why were their screams from the other room? Why did those screams stop?
I shake my head as I pad down the hallway. Instead of going right into my home gym, I continue left into the living room. The clock on the wall tells me that it’s four o’clock in the morning. That doesn’t surprise me. I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep but last night has to be the worst night I’ve had in as long as I can remember.
I never sleep well. Clearing my mind enough to be restful is an impossibility for me. It has been for years even in a house with only one door and no windows. I can’t completely eradicate the feeling that I’m unsafe. I don’t know why I thought lying in bed beside her would make it different.
I don’t know how it’s different for her. I don’t know how she’s been sleeping peacefully for the last three hours. I don’t know how she didn’t startle when I got off the bed. I don’t know how she didn’t jolt and sit upright on the mattress when the combination lock clicked against her chain. It’s not like she was pretending, like I was last night.
I knew when I spoke and told her to go to sleep that she thought I was already asleep. She can’t possibly feel safe with me. Although there’s a certain thrill and wanting to convince myself that that’s true, I know what it’s like to figuratively sleep with one eye open. I know what it’s like to jerk and startle and be so exhausted that you can’t help but fall asleep.
But every sound, every clink, every voice, every scream wakes you up. It sets you on high alert. It forces adrenaline through your blood and even the crash of that isn’t enough to allow for a peaceful night’s rest. Was it my promise that gave her comfort? Was it my promise that let her sleep peacefully? Or is it the fact that she believes she’s too important to worry herself with being afraid?
I grit my teeth as I open the refrigerator door. There’s nothing that I want. There’s nothing in the fridge that I’m hungry for. The only hunger I feel is for her. It claws inside of me, begging to be released. But feeding that monster, giving it what it wants, isn’t an option. I don’t hand out promises like they’re nothing.A man’s word, a foster dad told me once when I was five or six,a man’s word has to mean something. His did. When that foster dad used the wordsor else, I learned very quickly about his word meaning something. I learned that he didn’t waste words. If he said I’m going to beat your ass, he delivered.
I shake my head. My thoughts are all jumbled—what I need to do, what I should do, what I could do, what I can’t do. All of it mixes and swirls together. All of it makes me want to arrow down the hallway, wake her up and demand that she tells me what it is about her that is making me this way.
Knowing I can’t give the monster exactly what he’s begging for, I pull breakfast ingredients out of the fridge. I know she hasn’t been asleep long, but I also feel different from the man that crept out of the bed in order to allow her to sleep. The sun’s not going to be up for another couple of hours, but there’s purpose in what I’m doing. I need her off balance. I don’t want her to know whether it’s day or night.
That makes me frown at the breakfast. I just don’t have the energy to cook a steak or make a sushi roll in an effort to try to convince her that it’s a different time of day. Breakfast consists of toast, oatmeal, eggs, and bacon. It’s not fancy. There’s not a sprig of parsley in sight. Feeling spiteful, I make only one cup of coffee. Either she’s gonna stare at me while I drink it, wanting some of her own, or she’s going to be annoyed with the smell of it filling the air. Either way she won’t be pleased.
This is one more way for me to control her. I need control over her but at the same time, it irks me relentlessly that she’s so quick to obey. It’s as if she’s biding her time, as if she knows something I don’t know. It’s as if she has information that I’m not privy to, and that’s another thing that drives me crazy.
She’s sitting up on the bed when I bring breakfast into the room, the light flowing in from behind me lighting up the bed. She blinks rapidly from the sudden onslaught of light. I don’t know how long she’s been sitting here on the bed in the dark. But it doesn’t look like she’s moved a muscle.
I hit the light switch with my elbow before crossing the room and placing the tray of food on the table in front of the small sofa.
“I have to go pee,” she says timidly.
I angle my head toward the bathroom before pointing down at the untethered chain. “Go ahead and go.”
She looks down and I can tell the instant she realizes that she’s been semi-free. She woke up in the dark room alone. She didn’t test her restraints. She didn’t move a muscle. I’m not stupid enough to think, or even try to convince myself, that she wants to be here, but it says something that she didn’t try to leave.
It doesn’t stop the regret from swimming in her eyes. Regret that she didn’t try. I smile at her when her lip begins to quiver. “Don’t tell me you’re tame already, Raya,” I taunt.
She must recognize something in the look on my face. “You promised not to hurt me.”
I shake my head. “I promised not to rape you,” I clarify. It doesn’t set her off. It doesn’t anger her. It doesn’t spark that argument I can see forming in her eyes. It’s exactly what I’m looking for.
She’s okay with being abducted. She’s perfectly at ease, being told what to do all the time. She may be accustomed to obeying. She may have rules that she follows because her dad is a politician and always in the spotlight but there’s fight in this woman and that’s what I’m looking for. Raya Reed will never be her true self until she loses complete composure.
She continues to watch me silently, like always. I wonder if this is part of how she’s trying to control me. I’m waiting for the explosion. I’m waiting for her to lose her shit and just rail on me. But each time she complies, each time she obeys, I have mixed feelings. I like it because I want it and that is the end game. But at the same time I want the fight. I want her to stand up for herself.
Eventually, she climbs off the bed and heads into the bathroom. I hear the toilet flush then the water in the sink comes on. Then I hear the shower. I’m annoyed because she didn’t ask permission to shower. It doesn’t take me long before I’m standing in the doorway, watching her. I never promised her privacy, and she’d be a fool to expect that from me.
I see the second she realizes that I’m standing there, but she doesn’t shy away. She doesn’t try to cover herself or angle her body in a way that I can’t see her. She’s just bathing. She’s not washing in a way meant to entice me, but that doesn’t stop the arousal and the desire from rearing back to life.
I don’t pull my sweats down this time. I don’t stroke my cock watching her, but I’m left feeling like I’m missing out on something when her shower finishes and she reaches for the knob to turn the water off.
“Don’t,” I snap.
She turns around to face me, questions in her eyes that she’s either too afraid or too confused to ask.
“You know what to do,” I tell her. All I see is relief in her eyes. There’s no fight. There’s no argument. There’s no hesitation as she runs her slender little hand down her belly and goes to work. She doesn’t look up at the ceiling this time. She doesn’t cry. Her lips don’t tremble. She doesn’t fight it. When she locks eyes with me as she comes, if anything, she looks relieved. It says she needed it, but more importantly, it looks as if she needed me to tell her to do it.
Chapter 16
Raya
