Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Then he jerked forward, fist reared back and aimed at her. Expecting it, she dropped in a crouch, dodged his punch, and slammed her shoulders into his knees.
The .22 clattered to the floor, a deliberate maneuver to distract him. He wobbled, skirting around her, and scrambled for the gun. She let him. After all, it wasn’t loaded.
As he bent to retrieve it, Van pressed a boot on his back and shoved the loaded revolver against his nape.
From a small trunk by the box, she gathered locking metal cuffs and a coil of chain, the clanking drawing his attention. “Van’s gun is loaded. Yours is not. Go ahead. Check.”
He did, wrinkles forming on his forehead. After a second check of the magazine, he set it on the floor and slumped under the weight of Van’s foot.
“In the box.” She kicked the .22 out of reach as he climbed in, his movements wooden.
The cuffs went on first, cinching tight. Next, she wrapped the chain around his wrists until the full length was used. The excess binding was more psychological than practical.
He allowed her to move his limbs where she wanted them, his eyes squeezed shut. What was he feeling? Frustration, denial, hope of rescue, utter terror? Her time in that box had covered the gamut.
With the ends of the chains hooked together, she raised his bound arms above his head and locked the cuffs to one of the many eyehooks lining the wood slats.
The box was a device in repression, used to send a degrading message. She controlled his actions, down to every sensory detail. In twenty-four hours, he would emerge sleep-deprived, hungry, and, with no access to a bathroom, humiliated. Weakened and at the mercy of her commands.
She removed his socks and repeated the shackling with his ankles. He stiffened each time her finger brushed his skin, likely repulsed by the feel of her. She swallowed around the knot in her throat. She didn’t blame him.
A yank at his arms and legs confirmed the detainment. She stepped back, followed Van to the door, and entered the code.
As he pushed it open, he swayed toward her, slanting his cheek against hers. She tensed. With his mouth so close, would he kiss her or bite her?
His nose slid through her hair, inhaling her scent. “I’ll let Mr. E know we’ll be ready for the videos in five.”
The gentleness in his tone and the meaning of his words loosened some of her stiffness. On nights like these, when they watched the footage together and he shared in the assurance it delivered, she could feel the tender caress of affection poking past her deepest bruises and curling around her heart. She nodded.
The door clicked behind him. She hurried back to the boy.
On his back, muscles bared, bound, and stretched the full length of the box, he was an erotic picture. She was a criminal, and as ashamed as she was by that, the disgusting, fucked-up part of her anticipated spending the next ten weeks touching every inch of this man. Boy.
She dragged her gaze from his body to his face, and guilt slammed into her.
He stared up at her with so much pain in his eyes. “Don’t hurt my parents.”
Her gut twisted. She knew that pain, lived it every day. She leaned in, lips hovering a breath away, and repeated what Mr. E had said to her. “That’s up to you.”
Resolve hardened his face. She knew that emotion, too. Her time in the box was permanently carved in memory, which had made Van’s threats of returning her there an effective form of control in her training.
Tendrils of resentment coiled around her throat. To dwell on her or the boy’s predicament would only bring irresponsible hesitation. So she did what she always did to distract her thoughts.
She reached into the cold place inside her, searching for something yearning she could sing with dispassion. The beginning verses of “What It Is” by Kodaline fell past her lips and shivered through the room. She sang with an icy pitch as she removed a blindfold from the trunk by the box and tied it over his wide, glaring eyes.
To deprive smell, a swimmer’s nose plug went on next. He could breathe through his mouth, and the cracks in the box allowed airflow, but it wouldn’t feel that way to him once she shut the lid.
The skin on his face was hot and damp, the muscles beneath jerking against her fingers. She continued to sing as she cuffed headphones over his ears, plugged them into the tablet outside of the box, and activated the timer. Twenty minutes of heart-hammering silence.
The music in her voice strangled, stopped. Twenty minutes alone with his thoughts. Then the misery would begin.
“It’s just the way it is,” she murmured with an ache in her throat.
His body was motionless, but she didn’t miss the goosebumps creeping across his skin or the slight tremor in his cheeks. The sudden desire to comfort him drew her closer, bending her at the waist, until her mouth brushed his, softly, unjustly. His lips pulled away in a quiver that she felt throughout her body.