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My stomach pinches violently, and I wince a little as he shuts the lighter and my arms go around my middle.
He takes my silence as acquiescence, pockets his lighter, and walks me over to the bathroom door. He opens the door, steers me through it, and helps me out into the hallway with one arm around my middle to keep me upright.
Why does he smell like campfires?
And why doesn't it scare me as long as the scent is coming from him?
Why does it make me want to be even closer to him?
Fuck, I might be losing it this time.
"You look like death," he remarks, as we head down the hall.
"At least I don't look like you," I tell him, and it's a piss-poor insult, but it's all I can come up with at the moment.
Whoa.The world wobbles again.
He steers me down the hall and to the stairs. I manage them with one hand on the exterior wall and my other hand on him. He is solid and steady beneath my palm.
Faces blur.
Walls blur.
The entire damn world blurs.
Yet we keep moving forward until we walk through a pair of tall double doors and enter a dining hall. The place smells like too many calories, and he points me toward a table in the middle of the room. Everything's too white in here, too bright. With both hands on my shoulders, he directs me to sit at the table and gestures for someone. A moment later, a cup of clear liquid is deposited in front of me.
"Drink," he orders.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Water," he says, but when it hits my tongue, I know it's a lie. It's too sweet and too carbonated to be water. I choke on it, wanting to spit it out, my mind drowning in the calorie count, but I don't know what it is, not exactly, or how much is in the cup or what's sloshed over the sides already and hit the table. The creep sneers before he grabs me by the jawline, forces my mouth open, and tilts my head back.
Then he snatches the cup from the table and brings it to my lips.
"Drink it," he commands before he starts to pour it into my mouth, and I choke on the liquid as it hits the back of my throat. I sputter and spit, trying to breathe, but his grip is ironclad. He won't let me move my head. I claw at his arms, but it's like he doesn't even feel it. He keeps pouring, and I can't get away.
"Drink. It," he repeats, and it's either swallow or choke to death. Liquid pools at the corners of my mouth and trickles down my chin. He doesn't stop, though. He just keeps pouring, and I have to swallow or else I'll suffocate.
I swallow once, then twice, until I'm drinking the entire cup. My mind races, trying to remember the calories in a can of Sprite, but I'm still dizzy and I don't exactly know what it is or how much he's given me. I can't keep up.
Fuck!
Finally, when my lungs burn and the ache stretches, sending stinging tentacles across my entire chest, he pulls away. I am coughing and wheezing as he grips me by the chin and forces me to look at him.
My blue eyes meet his black soulless gaze as he hisses, "You're going to eat everything I give you, Firefly, and if you try to fucking purge it, I'll make you drink it out the goddamned toilet myself."
Surely, he wouldn't.
I don't want to believe him.
But as he stares down at me, his expression thoroughly blank, I find that I do.
Disgust, rage, fear, it all weaves together inside of me, solidifying until I feel sick. I can't throw up, though, not right now at least, and that scares me more than anything.
I don't know how I can live with myself if I do and he makes me lick it off the nasty, dirty floor.
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