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“I do it when I first prepare them so I won't forget.”
He couldn't stop himself from inhaling her fresh clean scent as she moved closer. Ari winced as she plunged the syringe into the muscle in his arm. The drugs burned in his veins. The scent of her shampoo hit him then, and it was all he could focus on.Raspberries, was his last thought before the room went dark.
Claire sat behind the monitor,watching him. The drug in the syringe had taken a few hours to wear off, though she wondered if he might be pretending to sleep for longer than was necessary. He was a fool if he thought she'd ever go near him unchained any time but right after the drugs first kicked in.
She knew if he woke unchained and she was in the cell with him, her life was over. The stakes were far too high to break the pattern she'd planned. She'd laid it all out so meticulously, and there could be no deviation from even the slightest detail. She would get her revenge, and then he would die. She tried not to think about the logistics of body disposal.
Except for the microphones in the camera that allowed her to hear him from the surveillance panel, the cell was soundproof. No one would hear the chainsaw. She didn't want to think about that right now. It was too grotesque. But if she didn't want to go to prison for the rest of her life she had to get rid of the body when she was done. She'd known when she'd taken him that there was no backing out of this once she started because even if he'd arrogantly forgotten about her and moved on, after this, it was kill or be killed.
He winced and stood, stretched, and began to pace like the caged animal he was. Blood from the whip lashes had dried on his back while he was unconscious. He stared at the bucket of water at the end of the cell and then up at the camera.
Claire flipped a switch on the control panel and spoke into the microphone. “Leave your clothes beside the door.”
He flipped off the camera with both hands, but started to take off his jeans, not particularly concerned with the prospect of nudity.
She took a deep breath and switched off the microphone. It was an expensive control panel. The microphone wasn't the kind where you had to be constantly pressing a button to talk. You just flipped the switch and could talk hands-free.
He put his shoes and socks and jeans and boxers in a pile next to the door.
“Will I be getting laundry service?” he asked.
Claire flipped the switch again and said, “You won't be needing clothes. You'll spend the rest of your life a naked animal, and then you'll die a naked animal in that cell.”
Her hands shook as she leaned back in her chair. She'd questioned this choice a thousand times. Even chained, him being naked felt like a real threat to her safety. But she wasn't going to wash his clothes. The thought made bile rise in her throat. She'd burn them when this was over. And even that short period of handling them would be difficult to stomach.
The simplest solution was no clothes and a daily bath. But it was still hard to justify that choice given how much violence she knew his body was capable of.
This was the clearest look she'd ever gotten of him. When he'd kept her in the basement he'd always blindfolded her when he'd... when he'd done things. He'd blindfolded her when he'd passed her around, too. She closed her eyes against the memory of all the men who had paid totake a ride on her.
She watched as he stood over the drain, sponging some of the water over himself, gritting his teeth and wincing again as the now-cold water slid down his back. Good. She hoped his skin burned like the hell he was going to when she killed him.
Then she watched as he took the soap and lathered up. A sudden throbbing ache started between her legs at the sight of the sudsy water running over the muscles of his chest and abs. She immediately looked away from the screen. What was wrong with her? She was sick. Objectively he was far better looking unclothed than she ever could have imagined. A truly beautiful monster. But she should react with revulsion at the sight of him, not fucking desire.
When he'd had her in the basement he'd never been able to turn her body against her. Not once. Neither he, nor any of the men he'd pimped her to had the finesse to make her body want anything they did to her or to feel even the slightest pleasure from their touch.
Part of it was because he'd kept her so drugged and starved and terrorized. But if she'd seen him like this, he might have made her body want him. And in many ways, that would have been worse.
He was succeeding now—not even trying. He made no lewd gestures or obscene statements now. He just bathed. And he was winning. He wasstillwinning—still breaking her down in new and different ways just by his presence filling up the cell.
It enraged her that seeing him naked created a visceral physical reaction. Did her body not know what this man had done to her? She wished like hell she could keep him dressed, but clothes got too dirty. The idea of doing his laundry was too fucking repulsive to her. And she couldn't handle the stench if she let him wear the same clothes day after day. It would remind her too much of the basement. She had to keep him clean. And the only way was this way.
22
Ari bit back a scream as he bathed and cleaned the whip marks she'd left on his back. In any other situation he would have taunted her. He would have stroked himself for the camera and said filthy things to the woman watching. But he wouldn't do that with this girl.
He had too much of an idea of what she must have suffered in order to bring her to this point of desperation. So he just cleaned up, rinsed out the sponge, and poured the remaining water down the drain. He shivered in the cell as he paced, thinking through everything. It had been a comfortable temperature with clothes on, but the room chilled him now that he was naked with water dripping off him.
He didn't have a problem with his own nudity. He wasn't particularly bothered by this girl seeing him naked. And he had no fears she would try to force anything sexual on him, not after what she'd clearly gone through. And even if she did try, he wasn't sure it would be forced. In spite of how fucked-up this situation was, he wanted her. The real problem now was, she was going to know that. And given her current emotional state, she would see it as a threat even if he couldn't touch her. It could go very badly for him.
Ari sighed and crossed the room to the metal table. He took one of the waters, broke the seal on the cap, and drank the whole bottle down in one long unending gulp. He needed to keep his wits and figure out how to outsmart her and get out of here. This girl knew she had to kill him. If she really believed he was the man who'd hurt her enough to drive her to this reaction, there was no reasoning with her or talking her into letting him go.
Behind the rage, he could see the fear. She'd obviously thought all this through very carefully. She'd set things up so he couldn't hurt her, but she was still petrified of him, even through the rage, even while he was chained up and at her mercy locked in a cell he had no hope of getting out of. She still feared him.
He took the hard plastic bottle cap and crossed to one wall and etched a faint white line. He needed to estimate the days that passed so he could keep up with the number of meals. He needed to figure out if there was a pattern to which meal she drugged or if it was entirely random. A pattern would be better for his escape odds.
He had no idea what time it was, or if it was day or night now, but he was exhausted. Cold and exhausted. He lay down on the hard floor and, in spite of everything, slept.
Ari jumped, ripped from sleep by a scream coming through the speaker overhead. For a moment he thought she was fucking with him with some kind of sleep depriving sound torture, but then he realized the screams weren't a recording. They were her.
