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I was still scared.
So I waited with my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest and my eyes fixed so hard on a spot on the floor in front of me it was a surprise it didn't burst into flame.
"Annie." His voice broke me out of my fears. "Stand up. Come over here. You may raise your eyes only to see what's directly around you."
Before I could ask, he added, "Don't look at my face."
I wondered if he could possibly be so arrogant to think my not being able to look at his face constituted punishment. I didn't quite stop the smile that came at the thought.
"Keep your eyes down," he snapped, and then, "Come over here."
Herewas beneath one of the jungle gym type racks, a frame of rolled metal with bars every eighteen inches or so. I'd seen someone hooked up to one in one of the San Francisco dungeons, spread-eagled and tied tight, his hands encased in something like leather mittens, as if he had any chance of using them when they were tied at the end of ropes.
Cole positioned me to stand in the middle, then told me to spread my legs wide. When I did he slid his hand between them, letting his fingers brush my folds.
His laugh was deep. "That's my girl," he said and I felt the flush and humiliation crawl through me. He held his fingers up, shiny with my juices, to show me how wet I was.
He made short work of tying my legs with heavy rope to either side of the square. His attention seemingly on something else, he came up behind me and removed the shirt, easing it off my shoulders like a boyfriend taking his girl's coat. He paused to run a hand over my shoulders and down the arch of my back.
Then he took first one wrist and then the other and bound them tightly with rope, feeding it up into the metal square above my head so that, when minutes later he finished tying off my arms, I was spread-eagled with my arms pulled upward and my legs well separated.
There was no way I could resist anything in this pose. No way to run.
Finally I'd have to stand and fight something.
He came around to stand in front of me. "Look at me."
He was beautiful. Cruel, strange, sadistic. But so pretty.
"Do you know why I'm doing this?"
Because there's something even more wrong with you than there is with me?
"To help me?"
He broke into one of his rare big, triangular grins. "Partly. Yes. But mostly because I can. I want to. It will help you kick the fentanyl but it's not completely necessary. I intend to break you down. I could do it in different ways.
"This is just the one I intend to enjoy."
After that he didn't talk and a part of me that was rapidly figuring things out knew better than to speak either. He came up behind me with a wide, thick, black scarf and tied it over my eyes and nose. Instantly I began to pant, breathing through my mouth, feeling my fear ramp up.
That seemed to suit him well.
He didn't give me any other instructions, just moved away from me. I concentrated, trying to see through the scarf, but everything was blacked out. There was nothing to smell or taste and the only thing I could feel was the cold floor under my feet and the rope around my ankles and wrists. Even my hearing was muffled because the scarf covered my ears.
He stopped moving then, probably just watching me, and I twitched, feeling like the moment had been going on forever.
What are you going to do?
He was so still for so long I thought he might have gone. I thought even in this insane situation I might be able to sleep, standing up, bound.
And then the first stroke of the riding crop cut through the air and into the flesh at the top of my thighs.
There was only a second's warning and I didn't know what I was hearing when it came. The crop made a whoosh of noise as it slashed through the air. Seconds later the back of my right leg exploded into fury. It felt like a wasp sting, so sharp and hot I yelped and waited for the instruction to stay silent.
It didn't come. Apparently he didn't care if I made noise or not. There was an interminable stretch of time while I tried hard to figure out where he was, what he was doing, when the next strike would come. My mouth was open wide, but I was barely breathing through either nose or mouth. My hearing was even worse now because my ears were ringing in some kind of situational tinnitus and my heart was pounding with a loud, hollow, metal sound, as if it were caught inside a locker and beating its way out.
The next strike came in the same fucking place and I made a sound that was sharp enough to cut through all the things blocking my hearing. I moved violently, or tried to, but the ropes kept me almost completely still. I started to pant faster.
