Reckless Endangerment (closed)

[saysalice]

"Are you breaking up with me?" her voice was louder than she intended as she blinked at him incredulously across the scarred and water-cracked table. A bull-necked bald man with a large black tattoo across his throat and his shaggy, heroin-thin female companion rolled their eyes to look at her.

He pressed his lips together tightly, like he did when he was trying not to lose his patience, and just shook his head slightly, taking up his glass to drain the last of his beer.

"You're breaking up with me." Not a question, this time. Regan pressed her palms hard against the table, feeling her world becoming unstable. She tried to match his maddeningly composed demeanor, but her voice was shrill and her mouth felt too loose on the words. "Why? What did I do, Keith? At least tell me that!"

He sighed and tossed a twenty onto the table, and leaned across to grab her wrist as she reached for her glass, murmuring quietly, "You've had enough. Let's go home and we can talk about this. Let's not do this here."

'Here' had been her choice - for convenience, more than the romantic ambience. The apartment was just a block and a half away: "within stumbling distance", she liked to say with a grin when their friends raised their eyebrows - which they always did. They stood out like a handful of sore thumbs, a bunch of pretty kids dressed in H&M and A&F walking warily around the row of bikes out front and pushing through the heavy doors to wade into this sea of black leather and dirty denim, of hard men and harder women, nasty drinks and greasy food and songs none of them knew the words to, that left your ears ringing when you stepped out into the crisp fall air for a filtered cigarette. You brought your own lighter.

They always got looks - the ol' stink-eye, Keith liked to say - but were never approached or challenged, never even spoken to by anyone but the lanky pierced bartender who took their drink orders and their money with the same weary courtesy he showed to everyone else. They liked the thrill of this perceived brush with a world more dangerous than the one they knew, and whispered amongst themselves over cheap pitchers the stories they'd heard in the news. Gang members and drug dealers and pimps were known to frequent this bar, but Regan had never witnessed so much as a heated argument, in all the times they'd come here for a watery beer or a plate of cold fries. And now her raised voice was the one getting stares.

She pulled her arm away angrily with such force that her elbow jostled her glass hard enough to slosh. "I don't want to talk! Why not here? After all we've been through, you just wanna dump me? No, don't - touch me!!" as he reached for her hand again. She was aware of the lull in the rumbling background noise, of the faces - some of them smirking, others impassive - turning in their direction. But she couldn't stop, it was one of his complaints about her: she didn't ever know when to quit.

"You want to go? Just go! No, I'm not coming - leave me alone! Get away from me, Keith, just leave me alone!! I can't believe you're doing this to me!" Tears burned and blurred her vision as she glared at him over the rim and defiantly choked down her beer, then spun on the chair in her lace mini skirt and shook her glass at a passing waitress. "More, please - start a tab."

She turned her red eyes back to him as he stood and pushed his chair in to the table, she smirked up at him as savagely as anyone else, tossing her short bangs out of her eyes. "My shithole boyfriend just dumped me, so what's my fucking hurry? Might as well get drunk!"

She watched him leave without another look back, and she raised the glass that came with a trembling hand to her lips, blinking and swallowing and swallowing. Fuck him, anyway.

 

[ezwriter]

He was on his third when the shouting started. He gave the feuding college kids a quick glance and returned his stare to the corner of the room. He had the leather coat, the worn black jeans and the Marlboro stench, but, like the Milennials, he didn't quite belong in this biker shithole either. When he was in town, he'd stop in for a few. The price was right. And no one fucked with you if you minded your business.

But this drama showed no sign of letting up. Usually fights here ended up in the alley with someone pulling a knife or a chain or a gun. But this little spat was just fucking laughable. The cranky little bitch was going off, and you could tell her dude was seriously scared of her. I mean, shit, he runs off and leaves her in this place. Late. Close to closing and now this little what - art major? education? whatever is throwing down shots to make a point. Even if you're broken up. You don't leave trim like that all by herself. That's just fucking pathetic. Some people, he thought. Some people get what they deserve. Some people don't.

He had another. And she did too. Sitting now. Sad and slumped. Her anger smouldering cold and dull, fingers struggling to bring the glass back up to her lips for her next swig. The waitress came by to check on her... when she pushed her glass forward for another, she shook her head and slid her tab between where her elbows rested.

By the time they settled up with her Visa card, he was out in the cold stark cast of the sodium lights. Just three bikes left parked facing the curb. Cabs and trash trucks sped past scattering wrappers and leaflets. He zips his coat and wanders up the street a bit, slowly, slowly, keeping an ear out for the door to open.

Here she is, stepping tentatively into the cold. No coat, just that purplish top, the mini skirt over the tights. He turns, her footing or her direction unsure. She pauses a moment supporting herself on the brick.

He straightens himself. Approaches. "Excuse me, Miss? Let me give you a ride." He's standing over her, by the doorway, she cranes her neck up to look at him. He smiles. He inhales and parses the components of her fragrance.

"Looks like you had a few in there. Really. My car's just around the corner. It's no trouble."

 

[saysalice]

Her glasses slide down her nose as the cold brick leaches her body heat through her thin sweater. She has to wink up at him to keep from seeing two. She hiccups. She's been crying. It's the first time she's ever been cut off. The street is busy, for this dark hour - the cars sweep past her in dizzying streaks of light. She doesn't want to go home yet...but she shouldn't go with him.

Pushing off from the wall, trying to straighten up, she takes a step and turns her ankle in one heel, stumbling into him just a little. His smooth leather under her fingers is chilly in the night air, but his smile is nice. She rights herself and shakes her head absently. You don't accept rides at a place like this, you definitely don't. She hiccups, moans a little. "I just - gotta go home. I can walk, it's not far."

It all looks different, at night. She takes a wide, wobbly step in the direction she thinks it is, and then stops. Turns her head to look back at him, searches waveringly until her gaze finds the crosswalk. She offers him a lopsided smile to show him she's fine, and totters to the corner, hugging herself as the cold finally begins to penetrate.

She waits, swaying slightly as car after car zips by, inches from where she stands, not slowing. The light doesn't change - oh, has she pressed the button? It's like a nub of ice against her fingertip. She ventures another glance at him over her shoulder, rubbing her knees together for the warming friction. It's only a block and a half, two minutes by car, and it would sure be warmer. She shouldn't go with him, but he doesn't look - bad. He'd said excuse me, he'd called her "Miss". And won't Keith just shit himself, waiting up as she's sure he is, to see her get out of another man's car? The thought brings a grim smile to her lips, but makes her feel ill, at the same time. Her head aches. She just wants to go home.

The light still hasn't changed. She turns with a shuffle of heels and smiles at him resignedly, pushing her glasses up carelessly, leaving fingerprints. "This corner? It is pretty cold...thanks. It's just Church Street, you know where that is?"

She walks more carefully, trying not to stagger, coming back to him. He shouldn't know how wasted she really is.

 

[ezwriter]

He watched her approach in the harsh light, her boozy, tear-swept eyes squinting. Her gait was unsteady despite the concentration she affected for the effort.

"That walk home would have been an adventure," he laughed. "I'm right around the corner. You need a hand?"

She declined. And did her best to keep up as he turned onto a side street. Deserted, grim, industrial. "So you live around here, huh? Guess that answers the question what a nice girl like you is doing in a dive like that. This neighborhood's coming up huh? Students, artists moving in?"

They walked a bit more.

"This is it. Sorry, it's a piece of crap I know. Saving up though." They approached a 70 something Chevy something that he bought Thursday from some lot for $200 cash. Two doors, gray or brown or primer. It was hard to tell in the dim crappy fluorescent from the lone streetlamp still working. He opened the passenger door and steadied her as she settled into the tattered seat.

Then he came around, got in and started up the nostalgically powerful engine and pulled a U-turn back to Hemlock. She reminded him of her address as he got to the intersection.

He pulled through the Stop sign and hung a left. Off her objection, he chided. "Come on, you don't want to go home yet. To him? I know a place that's still open." He continued north on Hemlock, but the neighborhood only got grimmer, seedier. Up here there didn't seem much chance anything was "still open" or even that it would open come daybreak. Borderline slum turned into gritty industrial - warehouses, car lots, razor wire and corrugated security gates.

" 'You should probably get back'? The fuckhole dumped you. Come on we'll have a couple of drinks. Let him sweat."

They were by the river now. Not even the ghost of commerce out here. A shitty pothole road beneath the highway. And now the muffled ringtone of her phone inside her purse. She snatched for it on the floor of the car. And suddenly cobra-like, or was it her addled senses, his right hand was around her wrist pulling up and toward him. The phone display read KEITH and below was a picture of the two of them embraced and mugging for a two-shot. He kept her arm still until the ringing stopped and then watched the message window readout KEITH 3 calls.

He pried the phone from her fingers. "Give me that." And accessed the message playback. "Hey, stopped by the bar. You were gone. Maybe you're at Cindy's. Call if you want to talk."

"That fuckhead. Leaves you at some shitty bar. And now he's worried about you? Fuck him. What kind of scumbag is that? There's crazy fucking people out in this world. You hear about those girls? And now he's all worried. Guys like that I want to slice their mouths open. You don't need him. You stay with a friend for a few days, okay?"

He stuck the phone on the wide flat dash and pulled off from what was almost a road onto what wasn't much of a shoulder.

"Fuck him. You've got a new guy now, right?"

He took her right hand again and drew it downward to the floor beneath the seat. His grip powerful on her forearm as his other hand sought something else on the floor nearby and then... a metallic CLONK and the cold hard cuff around her slender wrist.

Doubling her over in the seat, her lap belt pressing her tight back, her hand locked to the metallic seat mount beneath. She yelled into the shitty, moldy, floormat.

His hand was pincerlike on the back of her neck.

"Is there gonna be yelling? Tell me now and I'll take care of it." His thumb and forefingers like bolts in her neck. "I hate fucking yelling while I drive."

She heard him get out of the car and walk a ways and then possibly a soft splash in water and then his footfalls returning. The trunk opening and slamming shut, and turning to look up at him before tossed a thick scratchy wool blanket over her back. Doubled to the floor beneath the dashboard - even if anyone could see they'd wouldn't know what was in the passenger seat.

The engine started back and pulled back onto the road - every pothole and bump and violent jarring encounter now.

"You know those new cel phones like you had. They have the GPS so you can find them if someone steals them. That blows my fucking mind."

A series of turns, banking. Now what seems like an elevated roadway... a graceful, banked on-ramp, acceleration and now merging onto the interstate. The interstate. The interstate...

 

[saysalice]

She smiled as she fell in beside him, her heels clicking frenetically on the sidewalk - he walked fast. She didn't worry so much about weaving and swaying, now that he wasn't standing there, watching her walk to him. The wind cut through her sleeves and raked up the backs of her thighs. She tripped and skittered over a raised crack in the concrete, but shook her head when he offered to help her. Yes, she was in no shape to walk home. Nice of him, to offer the ride. Gentlemanly.

He kept up a pleasant chatter that distracted her from the desolation of the gloomy side street. If she'd been on her own, she would never have turned down this way, but she felt safe walking with him. His questions came too quickly for her sluggish brain, but she tried to murmur the right responses. He knew it was a dive, and he knew that she was a nice girl - it confirmed that he had some class, in her mind. She was beginning to relax a little. It couldn't be much further. Her legs and her breasts were like frozen meat. She couldn't wait to have his warm car around her, maybe even heated seats -

Her mouth fell open slightly when he stopped. This - this was a car? Oh boy. He knew enough to apologize for it, anyway. She smiled politely, folding her lips over her dismay. He opened the door for her, took her hand just to help her inside. It reeked of cigarettes and other things, and was no warmer than out on the sidewalk. At least it would be a short drive.

It felt good to sit, though. She even closed her eyes for a minute, feeling spinny, as he came around to get in on the driver's side - but opened them again when she heard his door slam. Her polite smile felt permanently affixed to her face. It was still nice of him. The engine came to life with a deafening roar, and she squealed, startled, at his sudden U-turn, and gripped the door handle. Showing off a bit, probably - trying to impress her. He must know she was out of his league.

"Church Street," she made a point of saying again, "just past Morris. I appreciate this." But it wouldn't do, to be too chatty now, too friendly - not in his car. He might get the wrong idea.

She turned away from him, politely, looking out her window. Her thighs prickled in her tights as they began to thaw. She'd just go straight to bed when she got in, she thought. She couldn't deal with Keith tonight - she had a lot she wanted to say to him, but it was too hard to concentrate, right now. She just felt bad, and sorry for herself. She'd be ready for a fight in the morning.

He made a left where he should have gone right. She blinked in confusion as they passed several lamp posts. "Uh..." He must not know this neighborhood as well as she'd assumed he did. "This - this isn't the right way."

His answer wasn't completely surprising to her - she'd been half expecting some sort of proposition, but had held out hope that there wouldn't be time for it. To be honest - except for the car - she was almost tempted...to put off going home, to have another drink, to enjoy his pleasant company - he wasn't even bad looking. She could be seen with him...especially in this part of town, she thought, twisting in her seat as the lights became fewer and fewer, looking back down the street to see the stop sign he should have turned at disappear into the night. She was starting to get a little nervous.

She smiled again - she could afford to be kind in thanks for his help. He was just trying to make a play, she didn't blame him for trying. "Ahh, no. I've had enough, I think... It's really late, I should probably get back."

His sudden, crude profanity shocked her, made her press her lips together. He'd heard them fighting, then - heard her swear, too - maybe he was just trying to be chummy. He knew she was newly single. Her knuckles were white on the door handle as the terrain grew darker and more isolated. She didn't know what to say - he wasn't stopping, he wasn't taking the hint. She didn't know where they were, and he wasn't even slowing down..

A faint tick - tick - tick reached her ears - something wrong with the car? Then a syrupy, undulating drone and finally a muffled, tinny exclamation: "Oppan Gangnam Style!" Her relief was almost painful in her chest - she'd forgotten she owned a phone, she wasn't in trouble - and she scrambled for her purse. She had barely closed her fingers around the case when he had her by the wrist and jerked her up across the seat. She let out a sputtering little shriek and tried to pull away, the adrenaline screaming in her veins, but he was so strong - she couldn't move him. She watched helplessly as her bright phone display went dim, and the surreal strains of the pop song looped and looped and then ceased abruptly.

She held on with all her strength, but he pulled her fingers off easily as she wailed very close to his ear and the car never slowed, never swerved. She was snivelling as he played the message from Keith. It hurt her heart to hear his voice - he sounded tired, defeated. He would think she was ignoring him, being pissy, punishing him. She'd given him every reason to think it. She'd done it before.

The man behind the wheel sneered, and every swear he said scared her a little more. He wasn't even pretending to be a gentleman. But he was still on her side, right? Crazy fucking people. She looked away at once, at her faint, scared reflection in the window. Slice their mouths open. Her eyes were too wide, and she couldn't smile anymore. But he was saying she should stay with a friend - would he let her do that? The car was slowing finally, he was pulling off the road. She began to shudder. When he was finished with her?

"Fuck him. You've got a new guy now, right?"

She went cold all over. Stared straight ahead at nothing.

His hand clamped around her wrist again, and she broke and screamed raggedly, fighting him as he pulled her arm down to the floor - down to the floor - she didn't know what he was doing, this wasn't what she was expecting - and then she felt the metal encircle her bony wrist and understood. She screamed again, desperate now, out of breath with her knees digging into her chest, wrenching her back as she struggled to pull free. Her glasses fell and bounced on the rubber floormat, her voice was loud around her ears in this little hollow, but it died in a whimper as she felt his hand at the back of her neck, hurting her.

I'll take care of it. She shook her head and kept her lips closed, but couldn't keep from whining.

Then he left the car. She heard him in the gravel, walking away - was he just going to leave her here? Maybe he got off on it, abandoning a random girl to an uncertain fate in the middle of nowhere. It might be days before anyone found her, but as his footfalls grew fainter she felt a shaky, tentative relief settle over her.

He was coming back. She couldn't contain a low, fearful moan, and strained to turn her head, squinting, myopic through her bangs as he appeared in the doorway again. She whimpered as he threw a blanket over her and started the car again. Remarked about her cell phone. She tried to curl herself into a smaller shape, crushing the air from her lungs under the blanket. Her glasses clicked against one of her heels as they bumped over the pitted road, but she didn't try to reach for them.

"Please..." she mumbled, but very quietly. He probably didn't hear it - she didn't know if she wanted him to hear...to plead with him would be to recognize what this was. He was still playing sort of nice.

Momentum pulled her this way and that on the turns, and she felt the road surface change under them. She thought she was no longer interested in where he was taking her - under the blanket, huddled in the dark, chained by the wrist, it was easy to sink into a quiet despair. Then she felt the ramp, felt his speed and could hear the cars - highway sounds - and her whole body shook with her hopeless blubbering.

"Please!" she moaned a little more loudly - but not loud enough to be called yelling. She was afraid to follow it up with any further requests. "Anything you want - anything...just let me go, after. I won't - say anything, I swear I won't tell anyone. Please."

She was sliding the fingers of her left hand around the two-inch heel of her left shoe while she spoke, hoping the movement just looked like trembling, with the blanket over her. She pulled it off her foot and squeezed her fingers tightly around the tapered, blunted point until they ached. Better than nothing. He would have it off her in half a second, if he saw it, but - maybe she could surprise him.

 

[ezwriter]

The loosely draped blanket admitted only the faintest evidence of her shifting and sobbing. Only the tenor of her imprecations. He slid a palm to the flat of her back and caressed her soothingly.

"Shhh ... Shh... now baby. It's alright. We're almost home."

She would have heard his restless search for radio stations - through dial and pushbutton, AM and FM, not much this late - sports talk, God, country, news.

He lit another cigarette and rolled the window down to vent the smoke - the bitter wind-whipped freeway air rattling the glass.

His hand was large and warm against her back. He'd feel her desperate private breathing and the shudders. And now the hand was gone and she'd feel it moving near her head, reaching. And now she could hear the rattle of keys inside her purse as he pulled it up to his lap, the clatter of girl purse detritus as he fished through. Her mind imagined the delicate click of her wallet clasp opening. And now she heard him reading her name off her driver's license, claiming her in a new, ineffably horrid way. He stashed her wallet back in her purse and tossed it in the backseat.

"Ten more minutes," he announced. She'd feel the deceleration as he eased off the gas, the car drifting toward the right. Which highway was it? Which direction? How long had she been driving? Here it was - their exit. In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night.

 

[saysalice]

He had utterly ignored her entreaties, her bargains, but he touched her. Well, he would touch her. The movement of his hand, pressed into the scratchy wool blanket, chafed her bare skin where the back of her sweater rode up. It was meant to be comforting. She couldn't stop shuddering. He would touch her - why take her, if not to touch her? She couldn't think of another reason.

He was calling her "baby" and it disturbed her. We're almost home. You've got a new guy now, right? Was he delusional, was he really crazy, that he thought of her as his girl, already? She thought back through the haze of her intoxication - she felt absolutely sober, now - he had been so courteous, until he got her into his car and well away. He'd had the handcuff and the blanket ready, he'd tossed her cell phone...these were calculated actions, not the impulsiveness of a besotted man simply believing she felt the same. He wasn't simple. But did he feel that he owned her, now? Almost home... What might be waiting for her, there?

She adjusted her hold on her shoe, under the blanket, as she heard him flip through the radio stations - she listened for the name of a town, but he was impatient - all she could catch were monosyllables, a word here and there. Nothing helpful. She practised relaxing her left hand to look natural, fingertips just brushing the sole, like it had come off and she didn't care - then snatching it up with the heel between her fingers to strike. He would need to open the cuff down by her ankles, when they stopped, he would have to get close. She couldn't hope to surprise him if he caught her holding it like a weapon.

She wondered if she dared. She remembered too clearly the feel of his hand, his strong fingers pinching into the back of her neck when she'd screamed...what might he do to her, if she tried to hurt him?

What would he do, if she didn't? She had to try.

She heard him open the window - highway sounds, louder now - they were going fast. She couldn't fathom how far they'd travelled. His hand left her back, but moved over her - past her, reaching around on the floor, and she held her breath, wondering if he'd guessed, about the shoe. Her fingers curled around it possessively, and she slid it back as far as she could reach. But no, he had grabbed her purse. She could hear him rifling through it, and was confused - was he robbing her, too? There was no money, she paid for everything with plastic.

"Regan Kimberley Carlisle."

She froze. It was uniquely unsettling, to hear his voice say her name - her full name - as if he knew her intimately. He'd found her ID, of course. She felt a stab of knee-jerk panic - her address was listed - and then realized almost as instantly, but with no real comfort, that it didn't matter. She'd told him her address. They weren't going there. They were going home.

She heard the rattle of her purse as it hit the back seat, tossed carelessly. Ten minutes, he said, and she shifted nervously, dragging the shoe out where she could reach it. She could put her glasses on, but knew they would fog under the blanket, and she might not have time for them to clear. She could see well enough to know where his face was, where his neck was. She could feel her heart pounding against her knees. She'd never in her life had to attack anyone, before. She slumped over and let her arms hang limp - let him think her despondent, resigned. This might be her only chance.

 

[ezwriter]

He slowed the car to make the turn off the ramp, but then quickly accelerated onto the two-lane state road that headed up. She'd feel the gradual gain in elevation as the traveled up into the foothills, the headlights piercing the impossible darkness. And now twists in the road as they wound eastward. And here the gravel began as they reached unincorporated county, the chunks of hardscrabble kicking up against the underside, tires spinning occasionally on a sandy patch.

"Regan, huh?" he finally mused, the car lurching and skidding, winding up into the scrub oak. "I'd say you were more of a Cordelia."

Here he turned down a new road, juttering here across a cattle gate and a short while later he slowed and stopped. Leaving the engine running though, leaving the door open. Stepping just a few paces to unlatch a swinging fence, swinging it open then returning to pull through before stopping to return the gate to its latch.

Starting up again. "Yeah, that Regan was some fucking bitch."

They drove up a winding sandy trail, cresting a rise, he stopped in front of the cabin. Cut the engine. Cut the lights. A brilliant spray of stars hung over the moonless night.

"We're here," he announced. "You'll like it out here. Fresh air and all. Be good to get away."

He opened the driver door and she'd feel his weight rise from the shot-spring seat, slamming the heavy door behind and walking through gravel as he came around. He opened the driver side, fishing the cuff key from his front pocket before settling onto his haunches to unlock them. She remained motionless under the drab threadbare shroud. The sobbing, the incessant jabbering had stopped for now.

"We're here, baby," he repeated, reaching deep beneath the seat to unlock the second cuff that was secured to the seat support. Reaching past her shoulders drawn down and back beneath the seat. The dome light was useless, the spacing cramped. He let out a disgusted sigh as he dropped the key again. Reaching in with both hands he felt along the floor until he found the telltale cold of the key. Taking the small flat tab in one hand, steadying the twisting cuffs with the other he slid the key into its channel and turned. The cuff released and his captive's arm went slack.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's go inside."

 

[saysalice]

She felt him leave the highway, and then the incline and the change of pressure in her ears as they went up and up. She felt the rough, bumpy, unpaved road and the tires skidding every now and then - dear God, where was he taking her?

She tried not to let panic take hold. Focus. Visualize how he would open the door on her side, unlock the cuff, and she would rise up and strike at him with the shoe. She could do it.

"Regan, huh? I'd say you were more of a Cordelia."

His voice interrupted her thoughts with this cryptic comment. What the hell was he talking about? Buffy fan, or something?

Her teeth chattered as they went over the cattle gate. In the face, or in the neck, she wondered. Face would be better, blind him if she could. The car was slowing again. She tensed, her fingers closing around the shoe. With difficulty, she made herself drop it as she felt him stop. But he never cut the engine - she heard the door open, heard him walk away a few steps and the squeal of a rusty hinge, then he returned and shut the door. The drove perhaps two feet and he repeated the process. A gate, then - she'd have to remember that. When she ran.

"Yeah, that Regan was some fucking bitch."

She shifted uneasily and said nothing. Did he mean her? Maybe he'd done this to many girls - other Regans, Cordelias - and what had happened to them? She wished she could follow his train of thought. Her life may depend upon it.

Their progress was slower in the sand and on the curves - up again, so she would be running downhill, she thought - that would make it easier. She fumbled with her toes to kick her other shoe off. Limp until he unlocked her, and then up, before he was ready for it. In the face. Just once, and then run - follow the road down.

The car stopped and he confirmed that they had arrived. Be good to get away. Yes, she emphatically, silently agreed with that statement. Regan could feel her nerves thrumming, singing like plucked guitar strings as he turned the car off and got out. She could hear the crunch of his boots in the gravel as he came around to her side and opened the door. It took all of her willpower to remain still as she felt the nearness of him, crouched beside her, heard his voice so close, calling her baby.

She had a bad moment when he dropped the key and she could feel him groping for it between her ankles. Her hand tightened on the shoe again. She fought the mad urge to strike now, drive it into his wrist - but she made herself let go, made herself wait, barely breathing, until he found the key again and she felt him fit it into the cuff.

She feigned sluggishness to buy herself some time, his endearment setting her teeth on edge as she rose up slowly, pushing the blanket back with her right hand, letting it slide over one shoulder to conceal her left. She wouldn't have the strength or the control that she would have in her dominant right hand, but she could keep her left behind her for longer. She could do it. She turned to look up at him, remembering with distaste how she had looked at him earlier and decided that he wasn't bad looking, that he had a nice smile. He was blurry, just a silhouette in the dark. She forced a little smile for him and extended her right hand to allow him to help her out of the car, keeping her left under the blanket.

Do it. Now. Hard as you can. Then run.

When her toes touched the gravel, she sprang up on a surge of adrenaline and brought the shoe up with her left hand, faltering at the last second and jabbing the heel at his neck, into his collar, where his neck met his shoulder. She felt the impact all the way up her arm. Without waiting to see if she'd injured him, she wheeled around, tugging her hand out of his, kicking up gravel, screaming, "Help - someone help - please - someone help me!"

 

[ezwriter]

He was a little nervous this time. That's why he'd been so quiet in the car. He'd never had a girlfriend this pretty. Regan. Regal. A princess. There was something sophisticated about her. Her clothes weren't fancy, but they looked nice on her. Styled. Her leggings under the miniskirt. The sexy top. And those shoes. Those were expensive. He remembers her hesitation when she saw his car. She was used to better. But he had a house in the country and once they got inside everything would be fine.

She even smelled special. He inhaled her perfume or shampoo or whatever - a fragrant cloud trapped beneath the blanket as he struggled with the cuff key. And when he rose and slid the blanket off her, he saw her short lush brown hair splayed against her bare pretty back where her collar opened, the chain of a pendant and the two parallel straps of her brassiere stretched over her shoulders. She remains hunched over as he had bound her, her chest hard against her knees, but extends a hand to him.

Her pretty hand, in his now. Cold from the long drive, but tender and soft against his. The nails were manicured and painted the color of pomegranate. He wondered if, yes, there were her toes in a matching shade. Her shoes he wondered now. Those shoes. They must have//Her hand came up in a blur in the dark. And the flat sharp heel broke through skin above his collarbone, puncturing his flesh into the muscle. The shoe dropped between his feet.

FUCK!

He reached up instinctively, his fingers coated warm with blood. He knew it was bad.
Seeping, staining the collar of his shirt

FUCK! FUCKING CUNT.

She was gone in a burst, bolting from his grasp and sprinting off yelling into the windy night. "Somebody help me!" It was miles to the closest house. Soon she realized her screaming only told him where she was, following the road back toward the gate. Barely visible in the moonless night she hobbled barefoot through the loose stones and sharp chunks of gravel in the sandy trail. A trail that switched back below the bottom of the hill. He silently, swiftly carefully made his way through the scrub grass gopher holes and soft sandy gopher mounds.

He was there crouching down in the culvert as she rounded the bend, her breathing and footfalls approaching. He slid his jacket off and clutched in his hand. His wound oozing more slowly now. He waited for her to pass, then sprung.

Like a tiger, quick and savage, he was on her, the jacket over her before she could turn, catching her head, her shriek, in the recess of his arm hole and slipping his elbow tight under her chin, capturing her head like a football and dragging her back up the road. Her legs struggled to find footing, bouncing scraping along the jagged ground.

His furious breathing punctured the air, as he pulled her up the hill, snarling, "Treacherous cunt. Filthy cunt. You think you're the only one who knows how to hurt? Is that what you think? So pretty too. It could have been so nice for you. But now now now Miss Regan, it's going to be so fucking not nice for you!"

 

[saysalice]

She ran aimlessly at first, scanning the darkness for a light - any light: a streetlamp - headlights - a house - a corner store...there was nothing. The night was like ink. She stopped screaming abruptly. There was nothing, no one to run to. Just run away. Just run. She watched the path under her feet; she could hear him in the gravel behind her, but she had a small head-start on him, and as she began the sloping descent down the hill, inertia or panic carried her - her feet could hardly keep up.

If he has a gun - if he has a gun, I'm dead, she thought, but wouldn't let herself think it, wouldn't listen for the blast behind her or anticipate the feel of a bullet between her shoulderblades. Just run, bitch - run, bitch - run. She wouldn't listen for the roar his awful car starting up again, wouldn't look over her shoulder to be blinded by the angry red glare of his tail lights, like the eyes of a demon as they descended on her. Her lungs ached, her thighs burned, she was tearing her feet up - run.

She rounded a bend in the path and realized gradually that she couldn't hear him anymore. She would not slow at the thought, but a pinprick of bright hope winked in her darkness - maybe...oh God, maybe - She ran toward it.

She didn't hear him, and he took her clean off her feet when his thick forearm caught her around the neck, the momentum nearly choking her as he curled his arm around her, and the smell of him - smoke and sour sweat - enveloping her as he caught her up in his coat. Breathing him in this inpenetrable, suffocating darkness, she howled piercingly, "Noo - nooooo!" shredding her vocal chords on a final desperate scream: "HELP me!"

Skidding on her bare heels, slowing him not at all as he dragged back up the hill and called her cunt and spoke furiously about treachery and pain, Regan dissolved into whooping, hysterical sobs under his arm. Her words degenerated into vowel sounds - she was no longer crying out for salvation or release, but for mercy. "Please - please - plee-heease - eee-hee - heeese - heee..."

In a final burst of mad spirit, she pinwheeled her legs in a frenzy, kicking wide, hoping to trip him up. Her heels cycled uselessly in the empty air. She felt the ground level out and knew he would have her in the house in minutes. She drooped in his grasp and felt the lining of his coat press slimy against her face and lips, soaked with her tears.

 

[ezwriter]

Her screams were feral, a desperate animal snared, while her legs flailed and dragged and bounced. Her arms were partially pinned beneath the coat gathered tight in his grip. He crossed past the parked car, her pricey shoe askew in the sandy ground. He kicked the heavy door shut with a thud and continued at a brisk pace out past the cabin to the shed.

Fishing his keys from his pocket with his free hand, he unlocked the padlock from the hasp, hooking the lock back in the ring. He threw the deadbolt open and turned the knob of the heavy steel door, kicking it open, flipping on the light. Fifteen by fifteen. Cinder block walls on a slab. An 8 foot high plywood ceiling. A pitched roof above, gable vents. Bare bulb fixtures in the ceiling. It was simple. with the furnishings, the fittings he'd added over the years. It served its purpose.

He flung her onto the bed - heavy, steel, peeling - some institutional castoff. A dirty sheet covered a cheap bare mattress. The legs at the foot and head extended up in flattened arches that framed a row of vertical bars at each end. Dropping onto her before she could wriggle, he dug out her wrists from beneath the coat and yanked them up to the head of the bed - the one wrist still secured in the handcuff, the other free, now tight in his grip as he brought the chain through the bars and fastened the other cuff tight.

When she was secured to the bed he crossed to the full length mirror affixed to the far wall, pulling down his blood-crusted collar to inspect his wound.

"Filthy cunt," he seethed once more. An irregular puncture wound. It would never heal properly he knew. Not really. "Look what you did. Fuck. I hope you enjoyed your little moment. Now it's my turn." And then storming past: "Don't move!" He left the shed and headed back to the car. Her shoes. Her glasses. He gathered them. Was there anything else? The purse.

The car door shut again and he returned, this time letting the heavy steel door close behind him. He moves past her on the bed to the cabinet against the other wall and drops her belongings on top. He unlocks the drawers. There's rustling, rattling as he secures what he needs, then he returns to the bed and lays the items beside her.

"Let's have a look at you," he announced, settling in beside her torso, wary of her legs still untethered. He lifts the jacket... pulls at the sleeve that he'd yanked down over her head and looks at her face for the first time since she'd been beside him in the car. Her eyes - and only her eyes - adjust to her new surroundings.

"Look what you fucking did!!" he shrieked pointing to his neck. His disregard for the volume of his shouting was just as chilling as the violent tone. There was no one, no one for miles but the two of them.

"Sorry?!!! You just moved to sorry, you vicious cunt. No more mouth for now!"

He snatches something from the bed beside her and now there is a flash of peacock blue satin. His hand goes to her nose and pinches it shut. The fabric is at her mouth now balled in his fist

"Open!" She has to, and he stuffs them in, fills her cheeks with the fat girl's panties, all satin and elastic and what she prays is menstrual blood. And now the harsh staccato tearing of duct tape and a wide, long swath that seals her mouth shut.

"Let me look. Let me see what we have here." He reaches up to the waistband of the lace miniskirt and stretched the elastic out and down, slipping it over her leggings.

"And no kicking or I will shove something much much worse inside that mouth. Got me?"

Now he reaches across the mattress to take hold of a pair of long sharp scissors - shiny, almost new, professional, for tailoring maybe. He takes her closest ankle and draws it to him, gripping the cuff of her leggings between his thumb and forefingers to create a gap, and sliding the blade of the scissors beneath, slices the fabric open in a straight line up her leg, continuing past her knee, straight up through the waistband. And then on the other side, working with focus to rend the material until he's sliced up the legging to the hip through the waistband on the other side. The material falls away or he pulls it away to reveal her bare legs and the V of her panties. He allows himself to touch her there for a moment and then to graze the smooth flesh of her thighs, his fingertips listening to something within.

He brings the scissors next to the bottom of her sweater which her outstretched arms have pulled above her navel. The thicker cotton weave crunches under the slicing jaws, her chest, her belly shuddering with her racked and huffing breath. He slices it open to the collar. And then at each shoulder line slices straight up each bound and straining arm, slicig the sleeve to the cuff until her top falls away to the bedding beneath.

The night-cold scissor blade slides in along her breastbone under the join of her brassiere cups and with a slow deliberate squeeze, he brings the blades together. Snip. Snip. Snip. Her bra is shredded and her breasts fall free on her chest. He lays the long sharp scissors on the flat of her belly and takes her tits in his hand. Cold nipples puckered in the winter air.

"Keith will miss your pretty breasts, Regan. Keith, asshole. They're for me now."
He laughs and watches his hands knead her, the contact somehow precious. And now, as if remembering something, he picks up the scissors again and slices through each side of her panties, peeling them off, revealing her trim, cropped bush."

"Oh Keith. You'll never do better than this. She's out of your league. This is my pretty pussy now." His fingers are grazing the wisps and stubbles of her pubes, now pressing his fingers flat against it, now combing his fingers through the hairs.

"This is mine now."

 

[saysalice]

Fear quieted her sobs as she felt him stop and heard the jingle of keys and the sound of one turning in a lock - but it was the wrong sound. Other noises she didn't recognize, and then his weight shifted as he kicked the door open and crossed the threshold and threw her down without warning. Her breath was knocked out of her as she hit a bed, not the floor. A bed...who keeps a bed just inside the front door?

Then he fell on top of her and Regan squealed - she had not expected this so soon - and fought compulsively as she felt him reaching under his coat. He caught up her hands, the metal cuff bit into her wrist as he pulled it through the cold bars of a metal headboard, stretching her arms up over her head, and clamped the open cuff on her other wrist. This was bad. Her breathing was loud and labored inside the arm of his coat, but she resisted making noises. She felt the mattress bounce back as he stood up and took a few steps across the room.

His tone was vicious and she shuddered and drew her legs up close to her body, trying to make herself small. The sounds were off - it was a small space, and chilly - perhaps a mud room at the front of the house. Just large enough to accommodate a bed on which to conveniently drop and secure a resistant house guest.

Look what you did. She could not look, but she took the words to heart, to mean all the events of the night. She'd brought this upon herself. His fury and his vague threat chilled her and she stifled a whine. She must have hurt him. Stupid move, all the way out here, unless she could have been sure about taking him down. She had no doubt that he would return the slight in kind.

Don't move! She didn't. She listened until she was fairly sure he had left the room, and only then jerked hard on the handcuffs, twisting until her wrists ached and the chain scraped against the bar with a hollow sound. It held solidly. Even if it hadn't, what would she do? She'd run once; he'd caught her and brought her right back. She heard the far-off sound of the car door slamming, and stopped struggling at once, still and docile as he came back inside.

She heard the heavy door being closed, and then the clatter of objects on a surface above her head. Drawers opening and closing impatiently. His weight on the mattress beside her - it took all of her will not to recoil, feeling him so close. He pulled the jacket off her and Regan felt the cool air against her damp face as she winced and squinted against the stark light of the bare bulbs. Not a mud room, or a guest room or anything like it - the walls were concrete bricks. This space had been furnished and maybe even built for a separate purpose. Regan was suddenly very afraid that she couldn't begin to imagine what that was.

He was screaming at her, thrusting his face next to hers until she could feel his breath on her neck, could almost smell the blood. She started violently, her chains clanking loudly in the small room, and strained to turn her head as far to one side as possible, afraid to look directly into his angry face. Whimpering automatically, "I'm sorry..." and cringing at his jeering response.

With her gaze averted, she saw a blurry smear of blue before his fingers caught her nose in a bruising pinch, and she cried out and felt him mash the slick fabric into her lips and teeth before she obeyed and allowed him to stuff it into her mouth. Even before he slapped the tape on, she was retching forcefully, doubled over as far as the handcuffs would allow, heaving as tears filled her eyes and dripped down her chin. They were panties, she thought, choking on the realization, retching again until her stomach cramped with her efforts. She could taste them - whose panties? What had he done to her? She was sweating, she couldn't catch her breath - she had to make herself stop, hold her jaw wide until it ached and not swallow. She gagged again before she got herself under control. She couldn't stop quaking.

He had got her black lace skirt down around her knees. No kicking, he said, or he'd put much worse in her mouth. Tears streamed down her face and she watched helplessly as he opened and closed a long pair of shears and she felt her flesh being exposed, inch by inch. Not just stripping her, he was cutting her clothes up - a very final gesture - she wouldn't wear them again. Regan struggled to keep her shoulders from shaking as she sat in her own black panties and felt the pieces of her sweater fall away between the cold blades. She couldn't look at his face - not while he looked at her.

She closed her eyes and made small whimpery noises through her nose as he cut through her matching black bra and laid the scissors against her stomach. Snuffling in jerky sobs when she felt his cold hands cupping her pert breasts and squeezing, thumbing the nipples.

Keith will miss your pretty breasts, Regan.

She stiffened and her eyes flew open - it sounded gruesomely ominous - the shears were too close. But she heard the ring of triumph in his next statement, his possessiveness. She had to hope he wouldn't take apart what he had claimed as his own.

She clenched her jaw, grinding into the wadded satin as he took up the scissors again, only able to breathe when he lowered them to cut through her panties. Her chest heaved as he pulled the scraps away and moaned his approval and announced his claim on this, too. His casual touch made her skin crawl, but she held herself very still and locked her throat against a protesting cry. He still had the scissors. He would touch her.

 

[ezwriter]

He strokes her with a leisurely, appraising touch, enjoying the young supple flesh as much as he enjoys his claim to it. There'd be time for everything.

His left palm is open, the thumb sliding down the top of her right leg his fingers beneath it as his hand traverses the contour of her thigh and calf, her slender ankle. Her foot was even beautiful, he noticed. He touches the soft pink pads of her heel and ball, the sensitive arch, stroked the line of pretty painted toes.

"It could have been nice, Regin. Making love on the bed. That's what I wanted for us. But you're a hurting girl. So you have to learn. That's your fault. That's not my fault."

He grabs one of the cuffs laid out beside her and fits it snugly just above the ankle, pressing the velcro securely. They are black, about 4 inches wide with a sturdy D-ring secured in one side. The nylon-reinforced fabric is padded but will feel firm against her skin. He winds a second narrower strap over the velcro seal and cinches it through a buckle.

As he wraps her other ankle in the same fashion, he explains,
"These are temporary. When you earn your speaking privilege back we'll talk about what kind of cuffs you want."

Her ankles cuffed, it is time to clamp her tits. He's chosen the tweezer clamps for tonight. They'll hold without tearing. He plucks Regin's tender coral nipple and sets the slender jaws behind her aureola, sliding the ring up to lock them in place. The cold steel chain slithers over her belly as he works the other clamp in place.

"Just a little pinch, hmmm? For now. These are so pretty," he grins down at her, his fingertip grazing the tips of her distended squashed nipple. Ever had your nipples clamped before, Regin? Huh?!! I'm talking to you bitch! You look at me!"

He rises and moves to the headboard to unlock the handcuffs. Then he reattaches one of the rings to the bedframe for later. Seizing her wrists he pulls her to standing.

"Arms behind your back. Grab your elbows."

"Grab. Your. Elbows." He has to show the dumb bitch how. Yanking her arms behind her back until her manicured fingertips clutched the knob of her elbow. His big powerful hand holds her like that, arms pinioned behind her, while he grabbs a sleeve fashioned in the same manner as the cuffs. He wraps the sturdy nylon length around her doubled arms, securing it snuggly with a velcro fastening and then cinches it tight with straps and buckles at either end.

The position presses Regin's spine forward, presenting her clamped breasts to pleasing effect.

"Come on, sweetheart. Now it's my turn."
Her bound arms a handle, he moves his captive toward the back wall, between the bed and the mirror. Embedded in the floor about three feet apart are two parallel rows of sturdy nickel eyelets set at regular intervals. He positions her between the two rows.

"Here. Spread your feet." He stands behind her, the instep of his boot roughly guiding her cuffed slender ankles until her legs are opened to shoulder width.

"Don't move."

Kneeling now at her feet he clips a short length of cable from the D clasp of each cuff to the eyelet in the floor, trailing a few inches of slack. As he rises, his hands slide up the backs of her thighs. Her arms bound, she is already less steady on her feet against the firm insistent contact of his hands.

If her gaze weren't directed to the ground she'd have noticed the eyelets and hooks mounted in the ceiling as well. He is in front of her now, on his tiptoes to feed one hooked end of a bungee cord through a metal ring above her. When it catches, the other curled wire end dangles a few inches above her head. He takes hold of it and grasping the chain of the nipple clamps, hooks it through one of the links, attaching the chain to the elastic cord, stretching her tits until she comes off her heels.

"I bet you wish you had those high heels now." He holds them up to her face, pressed them to her cheek above her taped gagged mouth. "I bet you wished you'd kept them on your feet, huh?"

He throws the shoes to the concrete floor with a clatter, moving to the cabinet once more and returning.

"You're not such hotshit anymore, are you, princess?" He mocks. "Here, want to see?"
He opens her glasses and slides them onto her nose, standing aside so she can see herself in the mirror. Gagged. Bound. Spread and cuffed to the ground. Her nipples stretched to the ceiling.

She glances briefly at her captor in the mirror in the new light. His jacket off now. He is dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans. He is tall - not slender but taut. His limbs and features a bit longer than seemed right. She'd felt his strength already - not muscular as much as the power of a bow or drumskin stretched tight. His green eyes are sharp and close-set, the skin of his face a bit sallow from smoking. And he wears his straw colored hair close cropped - a style somewhere between military and punk.

He stands before her now and took her hair in his fist, jerking her head so she can see what she'd done. His neck. The bleeding staunched but the wound angry and oozing. It is warm and throbbing. He should dress it, he knew. She can wait. But he wants to feel the pain fresh, while she pays for it. "You see what you did?"

He lets her hair go and reaches to the cabinet, taking up the length of lamp cord. Eight feet. Doubled. And begins.

 

[saysalice]

His touch - tender, lover-like, disturbed her, made her feel sick. He'd promised vengeance, violence, pain. He'd chained her to this bed and cut her clothes to shreds, and now he was touching her as even Keith had never - never quite touched her. Caressing her slowly, lightly, as if admiring every part of her. It made Regan feel even more naked and vulnerable. He would touch every square inch of her, if he liked. He would do anything to her. Who would stop him? Who would know? She'd been afraid, from the moment she realized she was on a bed, that he would fall on her and ravage her, tear into her, and then - ? Kill her, probably. Cut her up into pieces and drop them in the river with her phone.

Now, all of a sudden, she was even more afraid that he wouldn't. This room...

He was speaking, and she tried to listen. Not angry, for the moment - he sounded almost sorry for her. Making love on the bed. She felt sick to her stomach - or was it just the taste in her mouth? But she'd scotched that...a hurting girl, he called her. She was so afraid that she would be. That's your fault.

Cuffs. She watched silently as he secured them around her ankles, stifling a shiver as she pictured herself, spreadeagled across the bed. The cuffs bothered her, too. She was so hopelessly his, in this little prison, so thoroughly dependent on him, naked in his isolated hilltop kingdom - he must know, as she did, that he didn't need to cuff her to take anything he wanted. What did he want to do to her, that he'd decided they were necessary?

She couldn't keep from shying away when he brought the clamps up and reached for her again, but she didn't get far. Her nipples were hard from the cold and the fear, and she watched helplessly as he captured one between the long, rubber-tipped prongs and adjusted it until they pinched the pink nub firmly. She felt the blood rush hot to the constricted bit of flesh as he fitted the other in the same manner, and let the chain hang between them, cold against her midriff. It felt very heavy, pulling on her breasts, though she could see that it wasn't. Regan flinched as he ran his fingers across the tips of her nipples, now very sensitive to his lightest touch.

Just a little pinch, he said - for now. Her gaze flitted away when he turned his attention to her face again - she didn't know what he meant, and she was afraid that her expression would be the wrong one - and earned herself another angry ejaculation. She held her eyes wide and looked at him, breathing hard over her mouthful of panties. Shook her head briefly. No, never had them clamped. Keith would not have dared.

She was surprised when he got up and opened the handcuffs. She'd thought this would be her place, that she would live chained to this bed - she was surprised to find herself being pulled to her feet. It only confirmed that she could not guess what he wanted of her.

She didn't understand his instruction, at first, and her hesitance irritated him, made him turn her ungently and force her into the position he desired - she didn't like him to have to repeat himself, she decided. His impatience made her nervous. Her shoulders ached almost at once as she struggled to hold her arms behind her as he had placed them, and felt him wrapping her forearms into another long cuff and binding them tightly. She was growing more and more wary - secured like this, she would have no use of her hands or arms, and the whole front of her was left horribly exposed...he didn't need to do this. It worried her tremendously that he chose to have her so vulnerable.

Come on, sweetheart. Now it's my turn.

Regan felt it in the pit of her stomach: the cold dread, the feeling like she might pee herself as she tiptoed clumsily after him, stepping gingerly over a blurry line of rings screwed into the floor, and spread her legs as he directed her. Not wide enough - she felt him kick her ankles apart and felt her heart racing in her chest and stood very still, watching as he fastened her feet to the floor through the rings on the cuffs. What did he want to do? She'd made him bleed, tried to really hurt him. An anxious snuffling moan betrayed her as he stood and she felt him run his fingers up the backs of her legs, and she wavered unsteadily at this first touch that she could not escape even if she tried.

In front of her now, and she couldn't tell what he was doing, at first, but felt a stab of apprehension as a bungee cord dangled in front of her eyes, hooked on another ring in the ceiling - did he want to strangle her, hang her, did he get off on that? She forgot the restraints completely and almost fell trying to step away - and then hurt herself considerably, nearly dislocating a shoulder, struggling against the arm binder and making harsh, pathetic noises through her nose.

She knew a moment of short-lived relief when he pulled the cord down between her breasts to hook it into the chain between her nipples, but shrieked inwardly when he let it go and it snapped up again, pulling her small tits up in a double jolt of pain. She rose instinctively up on her toes, as far as the cables would allow, but could not gain enough slack to lessen the ache in the undersides of her breasts, or the throbbing heat in her stretched nipples.

Two tears were squeezed out between her lashes as he held her shoes up to her face, taunting her before he tossed them aside. Stupid, stupid girl. She grunted with each breath, trying to adjust to the terrible sensation that her breasts were being slowly torn from her body. Want to see? She didn't, but her glasses were the tiniest comfort as he put them on her face and the world was all bright sharp edges again - a modicum of control in all this helplessness.

He stepped aside then, and she looked at herself in the full length mirror and despaired once more to see herself in such a sorry state. It wasn't control, at all - he wanted her to see herself as he saw her. The pale face grimacing over the band of duct tape didn't look like her own - she'd never seen herself make this face. Her breasts were thrust forward and cruelly distorted, shivering with each small movement, each breath. Her legs were held wide, and she was so very, very naked - she could see the parting of her pink labia just below her trim bush.

She looked away from the mirror and took in the sight of him, as if for the first time in the bright light and her dire sobriety - and then he had her by the hair and she felt the clench of terror around her heart as he pulled her close to show her the blood still wet on his neck - yes, she'd really tried to hurt him. She could barely nod in his tight grip as the tears ran down her cheeks.

In perfect foreboding clarity now, she could watch him walk to the cabinet, could see what he took from it, and the look on his face as he turned back to her, pulling the cord through his fists to get a workable length, and the wild whites of her eyes in the mirror as a keening muffled whine escaped her throat, before he loomed in front of her, blocking out everything else.

 

[ezwriter]

There. Now. Her slender young body postured just so. Contorted in no position she would choose and one that takes every ounce of her focus to maintain. That was beautiful. The restraints that he has applied, rendering her his. He decides he likes her in her glasses, so she can see. What she has done. What he is doing.

The lamp cord - parallel lengths of 12 gauge copper wire, sheathed in insulating plastic - is pliant when held still, falling in a loop by his side as he approaches her. But the weight of the wires when drawn with a quick jerk of his wrist gains a sudden and violent momentum, whipping with a WHHHFFFF through the space between them and landing sharply midway up her inner right thigh.

She jerks against the restraints with a muffled yelp - the third note in a repeating phrase that fills the otherwise still silent shed. WHHHFFF. Crack. Mmmmfff. Peppering her thighs and flanks with lashes from the doubled cord. Her toned smooth flesh turning pink then violet. He remembers when they met, how she was running her mouth at the bar, breaking up with her last boyfriend. "I'll give you something to cry about," his father used to say.

He's moved behind her. He likes to watch her in the mirror better. The cringing, the desperate struggle to maintain balance, the recoil and anticipation of the next blow, now stinging the backs of her legs. "My princess now!" he thinks or says. WHHHFFF. Crack. Mmmmfff.

But she looks so little like a princess at the moment. Terror has that ability to transform us and that he finds beautiful, which is why he doesn't stop after the number of lashes he'd determined were appropriate. There is an ineffable loveliness to be found in her trembling - as much from her vulnerability as the tremor of her impossibly taxed musculature. Eyes wide, chest heaving. "My rabbit now."

The cord is returned to the sideboard. He's behind her. His pants are down and he's reaching for her sex with his hand. He likes to see his hand in the mirror slide over the trim cropped wisps of her bush, to feel it on his palm. She is warm against his fingers as they insinuate their way roughly inside her cleft, penetrating.

He'll need spit to lubricate himself. To take her. Steadying her slender hips as he presses the knob of his cock inside her. Her welted, tortured legs singing hot and radiant pain as he slides in until he is buried to his balls. He will not last long inside her pretty girl vagina but there will be other times for this he knows.

He wonders, should he make her open her eyes and watch as they make love in front of the mirror. He will tomorrow. For now, he takes a handful of her hair to draw her head back so he can kiss her face while he finishes - grunting, seething, pressing up deep and high inside her.

 

[saysalice]

The first blow of the electrical cord is like nothing she's ever felt before. She's had gentle lovers - only a few - and for the most part, they have worshipped her, indulged her, treated her like a - yes, a princess. Keith had once had the misguided inspiration to slap her ass lightly, during sex - something he'd seen in some disgusting porno, no doubt. Regan had ended the sex abruptly, there and then, leaving him in a sorry state of frustration, and had treated him to the cold shoulder for days. No man was going to hit her; no man was going to confuse violence for a sex act.

So, although he has been promising pain, it is the shock of it, as much as the startling harsh bite of such a simple implement that makes her gasp and shriek into her mouthful of panties. In spite of all the horrors of this night, there is still a deep-down part of her that can't quite believe she is being treated this way.

Each stroke stings and burns and cuts into the soft, tender flesh of her thighs - if she couldn't see him, she would believe he was slashing at her with a long blade of some kind - but she can see. He steps behind her and Regan can see herself writhing and trembling in the mirror, the ugly red and purple welts stark against her white skin. She has a moment to be sickly fascinated by the sight of them, then catches the movement of his arm behind her an instant before the cord cracks down again, catching her across the backs of her thighs, and her knees buckle and she is only kept upright by the tearing pain of the nipple clamps, straining on the bungee. She struggles to straighten up again, feeling blow after blow tearing into her from behind.

He is speaking to her, saying things, but she can't hear him or register over the overwhelming pain and her screams - muffled as they are - and she is disheartened by how muffled - how her voice is nothing here, even screaming like she has never screamed in her life. It goes on and on, she is sure he is flaying the skin from her - maybe he's into that...she can't know what he's into. It's a thought that keeps her shuddering.

She is wet all over with sweat and tears when he stops at last, but there is no relief - she hears the sound of his jeans hitting the floor, and she squeals and twists on the chains, hurting herself, as his hand curls between her thighs until she can see his fingers in the mirror, cupping her sex, claiming it. She is grunting and howling into the panties as she feels him shove his fingers rudely into her - she is bone-dry; of course she is.

Her surprise and her outrage is unexpected, heightening her distress - she has been telling herself all night that this would happen - why is she so shocked now, to feel his hands on her hips, positioning her over the tip of his hard cock, why is she sobbing and squealing to feel him forcing himself into her, barely lubricated by a thin coat of his spit? She has known this would happen, that at least, he would rape her - even when he didn't, and didn't...

It hurts - he is thick and she is unwilling and it hurts as he shoves himself deeper, relentlessly, until she can feel him thumping into her core. He begins to move, and she can't help herself, she is crying out, "No - no -" with every thrust - with the panties and the tape it becomes a guttural: "Oh...oh...oh..." a disturbingly appreciative sound - but she can't make herself stop.

He's excited, she can see it in his face over her shoulder, in the mirror, and feel it in his jerky movements and the way he holds her to keep himself deep. She can't watch this. She won't. She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling the tears course down her face, feeling him pull her to him so he can kiss her, and a despair worse than when he pushed his cock into her. It isn't long, but there is no comfort in it, as she feels him stiffen and hears his breathing change and the sounds he makes as he comes suddenly - inside her - grunting as he empties himself into her, and her shoulders are shaking helplessly - there's nothing she can do to stop any of it.

 

[ezwriter]

His hands are on her ribcage, steadying her, steadying himself, as he savors the moment. His need is sated and his anger vented, so he has time to enjoy what he has. Her skin is so smooth, her body lean and toned. He imagines she works out at a gym like they have in the city. He can see her in a black leotard with earbuds, patches of sweat between her breasts and at the waistband.

But now she is sobbing in his hands, her shoulders shuddering - the convulsions yanking her nipples against the restraints. She's hurt enough for now. He reaches to unhook the bungee cord from the clamps so she can stand on her feet.

"There, that better?" he asks. His palm brushes the dark, matted hair from her cheek. Her glasses have slid down her nose so he slips them back up to the bridge. His hands on her smooth upper arms now, trying to calm her. Her shoulders and arms would be aching by now from the rigid pinioning. He can adjust this now. But she had to learn. She had a fierce spirit that needed taming. It was just the first day. She'd learn.

"You'll learn, rabbit," he tells her, unbuckling the straps of her arm restraints. His hands are strong on her aching, cramped arms, bringing them around in front, to be cuffed and bound once more.

"It'll be nice here, but you mustn't ever run. And you mustn't ever lash out. Do you understand, rabbit?"

His fingers and thumbs press the clamps open, releasing them. The heavy chain falls into his hand and he tosses it to the cabinet.

"You see? That's better right?" Saying that even as he engages the hook of the bungee cord into a D clasp sewn into the arm cuff so that her bound forearms are drawn upward. Better than the spring chewing at her nipples.

"You see. I can be nice or I can be angry. I always want it to be nice."

He touches her again. Between her legs, where his ejaculate is trickling out of her.

"You think about that tonight. And tomorrow, maybe things will start getting nicer for you. Okay?"

He moves away to a corner and returns. There's a dull metal clank as he sets something on the floor between her legs.

"There's your bucket." He plucks her glasses from her face and crosses to the cabinet. The slide of a drawer opening and then he's behind her stretching a thick knit sleeve over her head. From a track suit, cut in a two-foot length. She was so tired, running those hills in the west county, no one for miles, pretty up here huh? Regan can breathe but can see almost nothing.

...As his footsteps retreat and there's the click of a light switch plunging the room - the space - the enclosure - into blackness.

"Goodnight, pretty rabbit."

The door shuts heavily. A deadbolt is thrown to and then the metallic creak of a hasp fitting over a ring. Now a padlock. A solid click as it snaps shut.

 

[saysalice]

Now that he has stopped whipping her and has finished raping her, easing his wet cock out of her and only caressing her gently, now - strumming the ridges of her ribcage, tickling along her spine to the small of her back, tracing the curve of her firm ass - she tells herself, snivelling, that this is worse. That his affection, this sham or psychotic affection, is harder to bear than his rage or his lust or his torture...but it may not be the truth.

She keeps her eyes closed as she feels him moving, stepping away from her, and now in front of her - it is terrifying, to keep her eyes closed and know he is looking at her face: dark feathered bangs lank with sweat and falling in her face, starry eyelashes stuck to wet cheeks and smeary with mascara behind her glasses, nostrils flaring with each wild breath over the band of duct tape. But she won't open; she's afraid to look him in the eye, and afraid of seeing herself in the mirror. She tells herself that it doesn't matter what else he does to her. This might also be a lie.

There is a brief painful twitch and tug at her nipples, and then the terrible tension is relieved and she drops to her heels again, eyes flying open in spite of herself. He is so close. She can feel his leavings creeping out of her, cold and wet like a slug. She nods - it is better. She feels an intense, unexpected swell of gratitude, even as she struggles not to flinch away from his fingers against her face as he pushes her hair away, adjusts her glasses - these chilling little courtesies.

His light touch, running lightly over the spasming, burning muscles of her shoulders and upper arms, seems a deliberate gesture, emphasizing his ability to choose what she feels, his control over everything. When he unbuckles the sleeve holding her forearms together behind her, Regan can't contain a grateful moan. Her arms are stiff and sore and useless - she couldn't fight him if she wanted to - she doesn't resist as he brings her arms to the front to restrain them again.

She nods again, pink nose twitching, pink-rimmed eyes timid as a rabbit's over the tape when he says she musn't run, mustn't lash out. Foolish - maybe fatal, not to agree with him, in this room with him, after the things he's done. But in the very back of her mind, in the darkness, a tiny spark of defiance still glimmers, too faint to be reflected in her eyes. Fat chance, psycho, she thinks.

The sudden rush of blood and sensation to her crushed nipples makes her gasp sharply as he opens the clamps, and she staggers in the ankle restraints. She nods and nods - she doesn't know if it's better, but it's the response he is looking for. Her brows knit for just an instant , to see him pulling the bungee cord down again to attach to her arms, but she is quick to mask her disappointment. She nods and nods, obediently, but she is thinking again that his idea of "nice" - ah - as he slips his fingers between her thighs again, smearing the thick wetness, and she mustn't recoil - his niceties make her skin crawl.

You think about that tonight.

Is he leaving her? Like this? She turns her head to watch him move around the room. Blinks at the bucket and then cringes with understanding as he sets it between her spread legs. Her bucket, as a final indignity - no, not final, she is probably wrong about that, too. He takes her glasses and she is trying to determine if he means for her to sleep like this, standing up, when in the blur he pulls a snug hood over her head, covering her face. She is stunned - it seems so unnecessary - especially when he snaps off the light, and yes, he's leaving her like this. Perhaps it's just another gesture meant to make her feel how helpless she is. It works. Pretty rabbit, he calls her on his way out. She says nothing, listening to the door being shut and secured.

The darkness here is enveloping and complete. She is in a vault, a tomb - she tries not to wonder how much air she has to breathe in this concrete box, should he decide not to come back...but in her heart she believes that he will. It won't be so easy. She wonders if she can ever sleep, standing up like this. It is punishment, she has no doubt - the bed is right there. It could have been nice, she thinks. Maybe if she continues to behave...she shakes her head, dizzying in the dark. She can't start thinking like that.

She wonders if she will choke on the panties, if she falls asleep. She wonders again whose panties they are, and what might have happened to that girl - was it nice, for her? Did he build this room for her, or has it had many, many occupants? She is trembling, she can feel it in the rubbery tension of the bungee. She can't start thinking about that, either.

She thinks about Keith - but it hurts too much, she has to push his face away, too. He'll think she's left him, run off with some other guy - and, hasn't she? He'll be hurt, and he'll worry - or maybe he won't...he was dumping her anyway, remember? Oh, she can't think like that!

Sleep is impossible tonight, though her body hangs wearily from the bungee and her legs shake with fatigue. Like a pinball, her dark thoughts snap and bounce off the corners of her troubled mind. The one thought she keeps coming back to is that she will run, she will fight, if there is ever another opportunity. To just accept that this is her life now is as bad as laying down to die - to disappear from the world, to exist only for his pleasure. She will not accept it - she will escape...somehow...

There is no thread of light in the darkness he has created for her. There are no sounds except for her own close muffled breathing, the clack of the cables when she shifts position, and the occasional ponderous, tinny plop of his semen dropping into the bucket. There can be no peace. She waits for his return.

 

[ezwriter]

He pockets the padlock key and heads back to the car to drive it around back. In the morning, he'll wipe it down with cleanser, vacuum it, sprinkle some catfood around and leave the door open so if the hair and fiber people ever do find it, they're picking through raccoon, feral cat, rat, gopher and squirrel. If she's smart she would have cut herself on the cuff to bleed onto the floormat. He'll burn those along with her clothes tomorrow.

Back inside the cabin, he checks his wound again. The scabbing is fragile, oozy. Sensitive to his touch. Her ferocity surprised him. And maybe, thinking back, he was too harsh in his response. But she had to be taught. And her hurt wouldn't be anything permanent. He'll go for ointment in the morning. He'll need supplies anyway now that he has a visitor. He'll take the truck. But for now, sleep.

He drifts off, spent. The remnants of her sweet girl scent linger on his hands. Savoring them with each drawn breath, he makes plans for tomorrow.

•••••

How he has bound Regan forces her to stand shoulder width, her pinioned arms drawn upward to the ceiling by the bungee. What she has discovered is that to keep her shoulders from being stretched uncomfortably she can rise up on her feet and use her weight to stretch the elastic. But this position - up on the balls of her feet, the one he'd fucked her in, puts strain on her legs, making them ache and tremble. To take the stress off her legs, she can lower herself onto her knees. But this draws her doubled forearms up over her head in the sleeve, pulling up on her shoulders. Alternating between the two harrowing postures was the best solution.

And this is how he finds her the next morning as he opens the multiple locks to her shed. Switching on the light, he sees her - naked and hooded, elbows at a 90 degree angle as she lowers herself to kneeling once more, ever cautious not to tip her bucket. And now freezing in position as his footsteps approach.

Her legs. He sees the welts have blossomed and her lithe body moves under its own power in a struggle that he himself has choreographed.

He'd woken early thinking about her. Hard again. But he promised himself he'd wait until daybreak and busied himself with a few household chores.

"Good morning, pretty rabbit," he calls to her. He knows that she cannot answer him, but he hopes she hears the warmth in his greeting.

Today is different than last night. Daytime always is. But it will still be night for her beneath the hood. He approaches and lifts her to standing with his hands against her ribs. Then he lowers himself and unclasps the hooks that bind her ankles to the floor, gripping her calf tightly in case she decides to try kicking.

He rises now. She would hear the click of his jeans unclasping and the muffled metallic rustle of his zipper lowering. His approach. Pants lowering. And now some thick liquid thlup. He's brought lubricant this morning.

His hands are under knees, supporting her weight, her arms still suspended above her head as he moves between the thighs he's spreading and lowers her onto his slippery gorged knob and down and down until she's fully enveloping him. His cock sheathed to the balls. And with his hand under her thighs he guides her hips to meet his thrusts, reaching up occasionally to handle her bruised and tender tits.

And yes to kiss her through the dense stretched fabric of her hood over the duct tape mask that seals a wad of panties. And kisses her and kisses her as he thrusts deep, thrusts deep and releases inside her again. Holding her now against him, supporting her weight on his hips. The stretch of the cord on her arm slackened as she's held up off the ground.

"Good morning pretty rabbit," he says once more, his voice, misty in his blissful release.

"Would you like some breakfast?"

 

[saysalice]

For the longest time, she didn't realize that the bungee would allow her to bend her knees and change position. Perhaps leery with the recent memory of the prolonged, impassive tug on her nipples, she didn't even test the limits of her restraints, but accepted that she must stand on her stiff legs for weary minutes or hours or days - she has no way of knowing how long.

But it can't have been days. Her bladder aches and she knows it's the same night, it's the beer. It seems like a week has passed since she sat at that rickety little table alone and tipped back glass after glass out of sheer spite - spite! She can't even remember what spite feels like.

She would rather not use the bucket. It seems like it will be a concession, an acceptance of her predicament - everything, so far, has been forced upon her. But she knows, rationally, that it is foolish and stubborn to think of it as a question of will, or even a question of dignity - her body will take over, eventually, and the bucket is her only choice, unless she wants to go on the floor. And he will torture her plenty, she believes. She should be kind to herself.

With that thought, exhausted and rather absently, she sinks into an automatic crouch over the bucket, and realizes for the first time that she can do this. True, her arms are stretched over her head until they burn around the armpits, and the welts across her thighs sting with the sudden movement, but it is such a relief to bend her knees and even to perch gingerly on the cold edge of the bucket. She just sits for several relatively blissful minutes until her body pipes up again, reminding her what she came down here to do.

More comfortable than she's been in hours, she even manages a light doze, nodding in and out, sometimes startling awake to brief disoriented confusion - but the hood and the darkness and the silence make it easy to drift back into a dreamless sleep, her only escape. Finally, though, the pain in her arms becomes too intense to ignore, and she pushes blearily to her feet, lifting up on her toes to relieve as much of the tension as she can.

Now she's awake, if not fully alert, and now with nothing else to focus on, her little discomforts become all she knows. She tries to maintain one position for as long as she can, hoping to sleep again, but her tired muscles can't take the strain and she is bobbing up and down every few minutes, it seems, like the deep squats she used to do in her pilates class. Going to have a great ass out of all this, she thinks inanely, humorlessly, beginning to lower herself again, feeling her thighs trembling with fatigue...

...did she hear something? Is she dreaming? No. The clatter-clack of the padlock makes her jolt in alarm; the thump of the deadbolt, and then a change in pressure and a waft of cool, fresh-smelling air as the door opens and Regan stops, mid-crouch, insensible to the taxed muscles screaming at her indecision. Like a small-brained animal, she wants to believe that if she is very still, and if she can't see him, he won't see her.

Is it him? She wonders, suddenly. She has not imagined the possibilities - that it might be several men, up here, that he might have friends or relatives who will want to partake...she doesn't think it's so, but with nothing but the sound of boots on the floor for a clue, she can't be sure. Or (wild, fleeting hope) it might be the police - someone heard her screams in the night, and now he's the one in handcuffs, and in a moment she'll hear the urgent shuffle across the floor to help her down, and: Are you all right, miss? She doesn't believe that, either.

Good morning, pretty rabbit.

Her hopes and fears evaporate as the light comes on, bright pinpricks through the firm weave of the hood. She doesn't move, doesn't rise until she feels his hands, chilly from the fall morning on her bare skin, taking her on either side to guide her back up to standing. She hears him drop between her legs, and wonders for just a moment, then feels him working to unclasp the cables from her ankles. Oh God - is he - letting her go? No, stop that. But letting her out of here, surely. Taking her into the house, or back to the car for another drive? She shivers. Or will he march her out into the yard and just shoot her, execution style, now that he's had what he wants of her? The hood takes on a morbid new meaning she hadn't considered.

He stands again and she waits for him to unfasten the bungee - her aching arms - and hears the woeful sound of his pants opening again, the purr of his zipper making her cold all over. Oh, no - no. Not again.

She squeals in surprise as he lifts her abruptly from behind her knees, the welts from last night's whipping coming alive under his fingers, hoisting her into the air just to waist height, and then plunging her down on his waiting cock - so easily - all the way down, to the hilt. He's made it slick with lubricant, and she is unsettled at the sensations as he moves smoothly in her now, as if she's wet for it, as if she wants it. He works her body to take him deep with each thrust, and Regan leans her head back through her arms, eyes squeezed tightly shut under the hood as he fondles her sore breasts. He is obviously enjoying her body tight around him, but without a face or a voice, she is hardly more than a masturbatory device...except that he knows, he must know how he is making her feel.

His kisses are unbearable, she can feel his hot breath and the fervent pressure of his lips and his open mouth, even through the hood. She wants to pull away, but she knows not to - he's in a better mood, this morning. She aches inside as he bounces her on his cock. Why is this so unexpected, she asks herself again, angry at herself - what else did he take her for, if not to use her, any time, every time he feels the slightest urge? His breath is harsh near her ear and she imagines she can feel him twitching and spurting inside her as he holds her to him, especially deep. He is kissing her, coming inside her, and all she can think is that she'll have missed her first birth control pill in years, as of this morning. It's a dreadful, singularly long-term thought. Perhaps she should focus on getting through today.

He's holding her now, murmuring to her like a lover - about breakfast, like it's just a lazy Saturday morning. She is trying to stop shaking. She's not the slightest bit hungry, but knows she should eat when he wants to feed her. Maybe he will take her into the house, and she can get a better picture of the man she's dealing with. At the very least, it will mean he has to take the hood off, take the panties out of her mouth. She can talk to him, appeal to him, somehow...though she can't conceive of what she will say.

She nods, glad for the hood - without a face, he can see her as the sleepy, dreamy, post-coital girlfriend. She'll have to be very careful about her face and her tone, when he takes it off, when he lets her speak. She wants his good mood to last.

 

[ezwriter]

He holds her there, his dick growing flaccid in her velvet grip. She feels so nice against him. Her smooth skin. Her taut young breasts. He clutches at her lean toned legs, pulling her knees up against his hips.

Yes she'd like some breakfast. He can show her he wasn't a monster. He can show her things about him that she'd never know. Girls like her never gave him a second look. She didn't, when he caught her eye at the bar last night. And he smiled. And she just dropped her eyes to her beer. But everyone deserves a second chance.

When his cock slips out of her, he holds her legs bent for a few moments longer, then tells her he'll be right back. He lets her down onto her feet. Leaves them unshackled and lifts the handle of the bucket.

"I'm taking your bucket, rabbit. I'll bring it back."

He leaves and leaves the door open to a chilly November morning.

He is back in ten minutes. He sets a tray with her breakfast on the sideboard then returns outside to retrieve the bucket and sets it back behind her with a dull empty thud.

"Do you want to sit, rabbit, while you eat?"

Be polite. No reason to be angry with her now.

He fetches the chair from the storage bin. A metal folding chair, the hinges rusty as he opens it. He unhooks the ring of the arm cuffs from the bungee and guides her to the chair.

Standing over her, he slips the hood off of her, her hair flying static-y in the cool dry morning, her bangs lying in angles across her eyes she cannot adjust. He slips her glasses back on so she can see him serving her.

"I'm going to take your gag off. You'll speak when prompted to, do you understand? Other than that, you can say one word. If you're good, you'll earn another word. If you're a naughty rabbit, you'll be punished, okay?"

He carefully works the duct tape off of mouth. He drops it in the bucket. DNA. He proffers his hand to her mouth and she opens her lips so he can withdraw the wad of spit soaked satin now. He'll keep this for later.

He takes the bowl from the sideboard and stands in front of her chair, offering a spoonful to her lips. "It's all I have for now." He's ashamed to be feeding his pretty princess his stupid Lucky Charms, but she needs her nourishment.

He holds the glass of milk for her, turns the straw to her lips. He asks her, "What do you like to eat? I'm going for groceries. Tell me what you like to eat."

 

[saysalice]

He spends another moment just caressing her, just holding her up against him, and she can feel his softening cock on the outside, now, just nestled between her wet labia. It is all to be endured, she can't think about it in detail: that he now counts as one of the small number of men who has fucked her, the only one she hasn't chosen for herself; that he will fuck her again - and again, for as long as he wants to; that he may very well be the last man to ever fuck her. She snuffles quietly, not thinking of it, as he finally lets her down gently.

She hears the slap of liquid in the bucket as he lifts it, and then - hears him walk out of the room. The door does not bang closed behind him, she can feel the cool breeze coming from that direction. Her ankles are free. She waits and listens, and hears the splat of his come dropping to the floor between her legs. He didn't say how long he'd be gone...if he's gone to cook breakfast, it could be a while. He's left the door open - is it a test? Is he standing just outside, ready to catch her, or is he merely so confident that she can't get free, or can't get far - or that she just won't try it - that it doesn't concern him?

Can she get free? It's just a bungee cord, nothing complicated. She might - if she raises up on her toes, like this - get some slack and then shake the hook loose...maybe. And then what? The hood, if she can get it off with her hands still bound in front of her. She thinks she can. And then - run. No time to hunt for her glasses, so half-blind again, but just run. It's morning, she can find the driveway again.

And then what? She tried this last night, and didn't get far. Today she is completely naked, for one thing - but won't someone know immediately that she's in trouble, if they see a naked girl running, screaming, covered in welts? No - probably not screaming. If there is anyone...there wasn't, last night. Also, she's been on her feet for hours. Adrenalin might carry her some of the way, but how long before she just can't run anymore? It's November, and she's naked - how long before she freezes to death? And he still has the car - if she could get his keys, it would be a different story...

She remembers that moment, under the blanket in the car, when they first arrived here. When he was groping under her for the handcuff key - the nearly irresistable urge that had come over her, to strike at him with her shoe - because he was there, because she could. And she'd made herself wait. No good to wound him - in the hand, in the wrist - if she was still chained to the seat and had to waste precious seconds trying to free herself. She'd waited, and a better opportunity had come - though that hadn't gone the way she'd planned, either. Still, this is like that other moment. The overwhelming urge to do something is almost enough to make her act recklessly and do something incredibly stupid. There are too many ways it could go wrong. She's better off to wait until the right opportunity presents itself - and to hope that she will know it when she sees it.

Anyway, he is back - much sooner than she was expecting, and Regan can feel herself shaking at the thought of what she almost attempted...and how he would have reacted, if he'd caught her at it. Does she want to sit? Yes, she nods. Her trembly knees are barely supporting her, now. A screech of rusty metal and then he unhooks the bungee - so easily - and helps her to a chair, cold under her bum.

He pulls the hood off, and puts her glasses on her face as she sits blinking in the bright light. She resists the impulse to glance at the open door, and makes herself look at him, instead. The man who has raped her twice, who has taken her and seems set on keeping her. Still not so bad looking, though now it all seems part of his terrible ruse - nice guy, nice smile - just get in the car and let him take you home. She tries to keep her loathing from reaching her eyes. He's not smiling now, as he explains the conditions of taking off her gag.

She nods obediently - but on some level it's interesting to her, that he won't let her speak, except when spoken to - except for one word. Is he only exerting his control, making the rules, teaching her submission...or will her pleas genuinely upset him? He must know that her first instinct is to plead for her life, for her release - what else could she have to say to him? But he doesn't want to hear it. He's been so caught up in this girlfriend fantasy...but then, he's been calling her "rabbit" since he got her home, more often than "princess". She'll have to think about it, and she'll have to be careful. It's all she knows about him.

Her lips are left tender as he peels the tape off, and she retches one last time as he pulls the panties out of her mouth. With her glasses on, she gets a much better look at them, and looks away quickly, wishing she hadn't. He is almost apologetic, as he offers her a spoonful of the cereal, and she smiles up at him and stores this observation away, as she opens her mouth. It's like a mouthful of pebbles, and too sweet after the texture of wet satin for hours and hours, but she chokes it down - she has to eat. She takes the straw gratefully and makes herself sip at the milk - she's thirsty, she hasn't realized how thirsty - then sips again to buy herself some time as she considers his question. It's the most bizarre thing to try to answer. What would she like to eat? Here? With him? It's hard for her to think...but he's waiting for an answer.

"Fruit?" she blurts finally, "Eggs...toast..." She can only think of breakfast foods. She looks up at him and manages another smile, shrugging her thin shoulders.

"I'd like to try the things you like to eat..." One word, she gets one extra word. It's a gamble, and she hopes she's right. Dropping her gaze. Quietly: "...sweetheart."

 

[ezwriter]

"Sweetheart," he hears. The word, but more the tone, catch him off guard. Catch him vulnerable when she is sitting across from him, are arms doubled in restraints. They are connected by a spoon his fingers hold at one end, her mouth at another. And she has called him sweetheart. And she has offered to try the things he likes to eat. Like she's moving in. He parses it as part of the response. Like a couple.

He touches where he's covered his throat with a Band-Aid. It's black and oozed through already. He's sorry he whipped her, but he catches himself before he says that out loud. She's eating and drinking, accepting his food. That's good.

"Fruit. Okay. I'll get a lot of things. He spots her purse laying on the cabinet. When she's finished the cereal and milk, he wipes what's dripped from her lips with his tee shirt. Sets the glass and bowl down and retrieves her clutch - just what she'd need for a night at the bar. He sits on the edge of the bed and empties the contents. Lipstick - the deep fruit color of her nails, her wallet, keys, assorted receipts.

He fishes through the wallet and finds what cash she has - three singles and some change. Even with beer cheap she'd drank a lot and wouldn't have brought a lot of cash to a place like that. The bank card and credit cards worse than useless, they could track his location, run the surveillance video and give a physical i.d. He took the long shears from the night before and snipped them repeatedly into thin unrecognizable strands.

"Niemann Marcus? Fancy. Saks... Only the finest for my princess. Fitness club... Drivers license... 1121 Church Street. Maybe I should pay Keith a visit?" He twirls her ring of keys once on his index finger and then pockets the ring. "...Teach him a thing or two."

"I'm going out. I'll be back later." He rises and grabs a cable hanging doubled from a hook in the wall. Each end terminates in a locking clasp on a firm spring. He tethers one end to one of the hooks in the floor and the other to the D clasp on the underside of her arm cuff. There is exactly eight feet of slack.

"You can sit or lie on the bed or use your bucket," he explains, gathering up the shards of her plastic existence, sweeping them with his hand into her cereal bowl. He crosses to the door and turns back.

"You didn't use your word. Do you want to use your word?

 

[saysalice]

She swallows hard - has she misstepped? He says nothing, and she ventures a glance up to watch his face, but it's so hard to guess what he's thinking. She sees him touch the bloody spot on his neck, and she looks away again. Has he guessed that she hasn't - that she can't have - changed her mind so dramatically about him, in such a short time? Has he guessed that it's just a play of her own? She's not even sure what she's doing.

He doesn't respond to the endearment. He's still talking about groceries, as if she never said it. She finishes the cereal, and leans in to let him wipe her mouth with his shirt - an intimate gesture. But then he's taking up her purse, emptying it as she watches, and sorting through the contents.

She doesn't like him touching her things, all these little personal bits of her life, and while she isn't terribly surprised when he begins cutting up her cards, she finds it unexpectedly upsetting. As if he's destroying her past. She is careful to keep her lips from quirking with emotion as he comments on what he finds, but she stiffens when he reads out the address on her license. Says he might visit Keith there. She's only been thinking of herself, but he knows where to find Keith, and she can't warn him. She wrestles with the expression on her face as she watches him slip her keys into his pocket, and almost disobeys him with an unsolicited, protesting: no!

But it won't do, to seem overly concerned for her ex-boyfriend...it's possible that he's testing her now, suspicious of the "sweetheart" - it might have been too soon for that. Or he might feel he needs to avenge her, in some way, for the perceived slights of last night's argument. What had he said, in the car? Scumbag. Guys like that I want to slice their mouths open.

He says he's leaving again, before she can think of what to do. She watches as he moves about the room, fastening a cable to a ring in the floor and clasping the other end to the ring in the cuff around her arms. It's an improvement - a significant improvement, she notes, as he explains to her that she'll have enough slack to lie down or to use the bucket. But he's going out. She's afraid he'll come back with Keith's blood on his hands, or his heart on a plate - and two forks - well, she has no idea what he likes to eat! Maybe she should have thought about that answer.

He turns back abruptly, surprising her, and she blinks up at him when he says she hasn't used her word. So sweetheart doesn't count, sweetheart's a gimme. Her mind is racing - she should say something, she should be smart about it - but sweetheart was her whole play. She can't say nothing.

Inspired suddenly, she offers him a shy, hurt little smile - just the barest suggestion of puppydog eyes - don't overdo it. She leaves the chair and takes the few steps to sit on the bed, and gestures with her bound hands, managing to look a little bashful behind her bangs, murmuring sweetly, "Stay?"