Abduction (3 page)

Stripping off her soiled rags, she wound them into a ball and stuffed them into the waste can next to the toilet.

She stepped into the tub. The water that had felt fine to her hand was too hot. It hurt and felt comforting—sterilizing—at the same time. Slowly she eased herself down, submerging herself. The cuts and scratches on her body—her legs and arms, her back, her hands, stung as she immersed her body in the steaming water.

Her poor, tired body had been tense for days, endlessly struggling to detect, perpetually ready to spring, to run. Now she was in the warm, silent womb of the tub—

just the tub—the bathroom, the cabin, the woods were no longer part of her consciousness. Her muscles went slack. There was no sensation but the heat, no sound but the expanding throbbing of her warming blood, and the darkness of eyes closed against darkness. She lay there for a while, fell asleep, and woke again when the water had turned cold. She pulled the stopper from the drain, stood, and toweled off.

She caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the door.

Entranced she approached that strange girl. Her reflection. The moonlight drifting in through the small high window above gave her a ghostly appearance, her pale body glowing dimly.

It seemed a stranger’s body. The body of a woman. Corporeal. Material. Of real, feeling flesh.

Her breasts.

She had looked at her breasts many times since puberty, first watching them swell and grow, watching monthly to see what their shape would be, and when they had seemed finished, noting with a kind of indifferent detachment that they were plump and round, that her aureole and nipples were rather dark, and that this darker, different flesh stood out raised in delicate cones, making her breasts look a little pointed, making them appear always aroused.

Now that they had been touched, excited, her nipples made stiff and tingly, now that she had felt the connection between them and her sex, she no longer felt indifferent to them. They were hers in a new way—not merely features of her physical appearance, but intimately hers—part of her experiential self. But she could not look at them, now, without thinking of him.

Her sex.

He had changed that, too. She looked at that V at the center of her, her soft pale sex. As with her breasts, Devan had felt an objective sort of curiosity about her little difference, but it had neither disturbed nor pleased her. It seemed to have no relevance to her life.

But now it was hers. It was her. She had felt it throb and ache and yearn and convulse with terrible pleasure and had felt how this very small part of her had played a part in who she had become. It had been soft and wet and yielding for him when her mind had been hard and closed to him. When she had said no, it had said yes. It had betrayed her. And yet she now loved this part of her that had been a stranger, as she loved her mind and her heart—as herself.

Her hands. Hands that touched and gave pleasure.

Her legs, legs that spread and revealed.

Her belly that clenched with fear and was filled with bubbles waiting to burst in a thousand tremors of pleasure.

Her feet that had saved her from him and brought her here.

She could not see her body’s reflection in the mirror without imagining his hands on it—his hands curved over her breasts, his fingers teasing, tugging, pinching her nipples, his hands' small movements between her parted thighs. She wondered if that would always be.

Her eyes moved up.

Her wet black hair clung close like a shroud around her pale face. Her alien face.

She did not recognize it. Drawn to her own strange visage she stepped closer to the mirror until she was nearly nose to nose with her estranged twin. Each feature was recognizably hers. Her fine arching eyebrows. Her gray eyes, like a child’s in their proportion to her face, slightly too large. Her nose. Straight. Unremarkable. Her mouth, almost round in its narrow fullness. All hers. Yet as she regarded herself she seemed somehow shockingly changed. Or perhaps she had never really seen herself before.

Exhausted she abandoned the girl in the mirror and put on the stranger’s clothes.

She rolled up the cuffs of the sweat pants that were too long for her, but let the sleeves of the enormous sweatshirt hang past her hands, keeping them warm. Stumbling with the fatigue that was now permitted she found her way to the bedroom with the empty dresser and the empty closet, climbed into bed, and fell asleep.

When she awoke the next day it was late afternoon. As she got out of bed her stiffened muscles pained her with every movement. Sore in every limb, in her back and 22

shoulders, she shuffled to the bathroom and gratefully, after days in the woods, used the toilet.

Later, clean, rested, and fed, she began to think beyond instinct. Was there a phone? She set the bowl aside, pulled her blanket shawl around her again, and began to look around the cabin. No phone. Electricity. But no phone. And no idea where she was. Downriver from there. But no idea where there was, either. Three days in the woods, and this cabin was the first building or sign of human beings she had seen. She had heard no traffic sounds, seen no road. Not even any litter.

Maybe there was a map, somewhere in the cabin, that might tell her where she was. She scanned the shelves of the large bookshelf by the fireplace, but saw nothing entitled “Hiking in the obscure backwoods of the Pacific Northwest” or other books about the region, no trail guides or atlases. She began searching through drawers, hoping to find a road map. No luck. But there were stacks of opened letters. She seized one. Maybe an address might give away the name of a county she might recognize.

Filing through them, though, they all either had Seattle addresses or the name of some town in Spain. She tossed them back into the drawer.

Something caught her eye. Not a map. But on the desk was a notebook, bound by a spiral wire between cardboard covers. She touched it contemplatively with an index finger. Not picking it up she used that same, single finger to tentatively lift the front cover, then to turn the imprinted facing page. The first lined page was blank. She lifted the notebook and flipped a few more pages in. Blank. Empty. She took it, and a pen.

Forgetting her search for the map she plunked down at the dining table and, almost as if in a trance, began to write. She wrote for over an hour, and when she had finished her 23

hand was cramping painfully, her heart was racing with renewed fear, and her cunt, her treacherous, defiant cunt, was wet and aching. Familiar self-loathing mingled with her anxiety and prodded her back to her task of getting herself out of these woods and back to safety. Reality.

She returned to the sofa, curling up under her blanket, to think. She should stay at the cabin a couple more days to rest and recover from her days of privation in the woods. She would put together a pack with food and other supplies, and when she was ready she would head back to the river and follow it downstream until she found a town.

It couldn’t go on forever, after all, this unpopulated wilderness.

Shivering, she contemplated the dormant fireplace. Could she risk a fire? Maybe after dark it would be okay; smoke rising into the air, which might be detected from far off, would be nearly invisible in the overcast night sky. Later, when darkness had swallowed up the little cabin and the woods around it, with the help of the matches and the newspaper left by the fireplace for the purpose, she started a fire. When the blaze got going she sat cross-legged on the floor before the fire, reaching out to feel the warmth with her hands, feeling the heat on her face, comforted by the dancing light. She wished there were curtains to pull over the windows, but she tried to push the feeling of being watched, of being so lit while someone could be just outside, cloaked in darkness, out of her mind.

Huddled there in her blanket, as the flaring and waning flame moved before her eyes, in her mind different images consumed her. Images and sensations from her time with him interspersed and merged with those from her dream in the woods. His hands on her. His mouth on her. Her terror. Her longing. His tenderness and his cruelty. The 24

gentleness of his caress as he had taken the tears from her cheeks with his fingertips, the teasing lightness of those same fingertips as they had glided between her parted thighs, the heart-rending, aching closeness she had felt as his mouth, his body pressed to hers, the irrefutable fear of being in his power, the pain of his violation.

Shaking, she longed to cease this stoking of her fear. She needed something to think about, something other than this wearing anxiety, other than him.

She went to the bookshelf. In the dim firelight she could just make out the titles on the spines.
Crime and Punishment
. She had read it before; somewhere below conscious thought, the idea of being in the mind of the criminal appealed to her. She took her novel back to her spot in front of the fire, and read for hours, occasionally adding a piece of wood to the fire. Eventually she grew sleepy. She started a little fire in the wood burning stove and went to sleep, thinking of Raskolnikov, of the old pawnbroker woman, and of him.

When she awoke it was still dark outside. She felt instantly, intuitively, that someone was there with her. Heart pounding, breath rushing, she sat up, searching anxiously among the shadows of the vaguely moonlit room. A soft voice spoke from the darkness and her eyes tracked the sound to find a dim form by the window. She froze.

The shadowy man shape came nearer with a slow, softly thudding tread.

“It’s all right, Devan. Don’t be frightened.”

Conrad. Or was this another dream?

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I just had to see you. See that you were all right.” Conrad’s voice was gentle, like a father’s voice at the bedside of a sick child. He sat on the edge of the bed, with simple calm, as if she could have no objection. She 25

watched him without moving, feeling the tilt of the mattress as it took his weight, her heart still banging fiercely, her lungs still puffing with terror, but a terror she felt was already, somehow, waning.

“Devan.”

In the moonlight he seemed to smile as he gently put her hair back from her face, taking in the sight of her. She was surprised to find that the touch of his warm hand stirred no fear. It was strangely comforting.

“You’re not hurt?”

“No.”

His look, his body seemed to go soft with relief. Then his eyes narrowed in a sudden look of utter caddishness. Her heart gave a heavy thump.

It wasn't fear. She felt a little pulse in her sex, a throb soft and small that gathered strength moment by moment, swelling and rising into her whole body. Oh, that devious grin of his. She was stirred to see it, and through her astonishment she felt she wanted to reward it. She wanted to do what he wanted her to do and she wanted, for once, to do it unbidden. To give it to him.

She pushed the covers down, off her body, and rose up onto her knees, settling back on her heels. Conrad watched, showing no sign of surprise as she slipped the hem of her tank top up, bearing the smooth softness of her belly, her navel a little pool of shadow in the dimness, up, ribs showing in bands of light and shade like ripples of sand in the desert, up until he could see the pale swells, heavy, full and firm, up, until her nipples peeked out from under the veil of rising cloth and up, over her head, then down, down, down onto the floor somewhere to her right.

He had asked her before. He had made her. But never had she shown herself to him freely. His eyes on her made that throbbing, swelling ache roll through her over and over, surging to a thrilling pressure at the moment she felt her breasts bare to his gaze.

He raised his eyes to hers now with, she thought, a look of approbation. Then fierce desire under cold restraint. She wanted him to touch her, thrill her now the way he had before when she had resisted, been afraid. She was not afraid now. She ached for him to put his hands on her. He sat still, silent, waiting to see what she would do. Testing her.

She could not just sit there, under his scrutinizing gaze, her breasts bare. Her nudity still embarrassed her, and it embarrassed her that her excitement and the chill air of the room had her nipples so taut and eager. Her hands trembled as she lifted them, watching his eyes follow as they came to the soft under-curves of her breasts. He seemed pleased. She ran her palms lightly up, over her breasts, feeling her palms and fingers brush over the smooth soft skin, and felt painfully selfconscious when that hot thrilling bolt shot into her sex when she grazed her nipples. She went on with her gentle caress, bringing her hands up, then out and down. Oh, she so wanted him to put his hands where hers were, to take over this caress. She wanted to feel his mouth on her, wanted him to kiss, lick, and suck. She felt shy, touching herself as he watched, but she wanted desperately not to let that look of arousal fade from his eyes. She felt her face flush as she gently squeezed her tits, making her soft flesh swell out from her hands, her nipples thrusting forward toward him, hard and jutting. Then she relaxed her hands to a gentle cradle and her breasts went round and soft once more.

Her sex. Her cunt. Aching terribly. Wonderfully. Just sitting there, still, she knew she was drenched. This embarrassment always excited her.

He went on watching her, a challenge in his look. She would have to push herself, really entice him, before he would release her from her shame, give her his caress, his kiss. But she felt at a loss, too embarrassed to choose how to touch herself.

He had always told her what to do. But she could see that he was enjoying her embarrassment as much as the sight of her touching her tits for him, and he would not diminish his pleasure by making it easier for her, telling her what he wanted. Much more delicious to make her reveal what she wanted.

Her face and her pussy burning she began teasing her nipples, the first gentle pinch making them stiffen and driving a hot throb between her thighs. Conrad’s breath came a little louder, a little faster, and his arousal goaded her on. She rubbed over the darker, textured flesh around her nipples, feeling that flesh constrict in a pleasurable little tug under her fingers. Oh, she wanted his touch so badly, she wanted to squeeze her breast in her hand and press it to his mouth, beg him to suck it, to rub his tongue over her hard nipple. A little twitch at the raised corner of his smug grin made her wonder if he had read her mind. Finally he spoke.