Don't Let Go (9 page)

I’d never been able to do those things. I just chased after bad guys, like Carlos, and hoped they’d be as horrible as their reputations demanded. That was the only way I’d ever atone for not turning my father in sooner. It was the only way I’d atone for turning him in at all.

Survivor’s guilt
. That wasn’t the half of it.

“I’m going to break you,” he continued. “Until you look to me for food, for pleasure, for survival. And the truth is, I’m never letting you go. Not really. You’ll walk around outside this place, away from me, but no matter where you go, I’ll always be here.” He tapped my temple gently. “I’ll always be with you.”

Was that supposed to be terrifying or comforting? I wasn’t sure which way I felt either. Both, maybe.

“I’ll punish you for every lie you ever told, for everything you ever took that you didn’t really deserve. For every single thing you’ve ever felt guilty for. But there’s a price. You can’t be a regular person when we do that. We can’t hold onto decorum and manners and cut you open, raw and bleeding, can we?”

And I realized then that Mr. Hyde wasn’t really evil personified. He was a man without decorum or manners. He was raw and bleeding, all over. He was me, inside this cell. I couldn’t control this shift any more than Dr. Jekyll could. I could only react, only feel pain and anger and fear. And in the end, if the darkness ever lifted?

Dr. Jekyll hadn’t been able to live with himself.

Laguardia continued stroking my hair, softly, innocently. My eyelids grew heavy beneath the blindfold, my limbs relaxed in their binds. Exhaustion crept over me like night blanketing the earth, dark and peaceful.
Sleep
, his touch told me,
and I will watch over you until morning.
The same promise made by the moon. But neither Laguardia nor the moon would keep me safe. No one could promise that, least of all a madman, a man pulled by the tides of cruelty. I succumbed anyway, drifting in an inky ocean and lulled to sleep by a killer.

My killer.

I woke up choking, drowning. With a painful gulp, I swallowed my own spit, struggling to close my mouth around the obstruction and failing. A gag. Round, rubbery. I flicked it with my tongue, but it didn’t budge. My jaw already ached and I wondered how long it had been there, how long I had been out. Time passed like lights blinking through a tunnel, a flash and then another until they blended into each other. Fitting, because I was underground now, traveling at high speeds, forced to follow this path to its end.

Where are we?
I wanted to ask, but instead I just managed to mumble, “Mmmmf.”

A blindfold still covered my eyes, but it had shifted enough where I could see through the bottom. Yellow light concentrated to my right side. A lamp. On a bedside table, maybe. The room as a whole was dark, but when he turned toward me, I caught the impression of brown eyes, almost black. Of a shadow of growth on his jaw. Of a terrifying half smile on his lips. I shut my eyes quickly, not wanting him to catch a glimpse of my eyes open.

Too late. He tugged on the blindfold and my sight was gone. My cheeks heated from being caught. I squirmed in place. Air kissed my skin, awakening every sense. I was naked, while the part I most wanted uncovered, my eyes, were blind.

Powerless. He wanted me to feel powerless.

The part of me that had trained to deal with criminals like him tried to reason it out. To make a mockery of him the way he’d made a mockery of me. He clearly had a small ego if he needed to exert control over someone less strong than him. Maybe his mother had ignored him. Or he had a tiny penis and the boys at school had mocked. There was always a reason. It didn’t excuse his behavior, but it explained it. Like a puzzle piece fitting into place. I just had to find the crazy-shaped square and I’d stop feeling so fucking terrified. I’d stop trembling.

No one had ever hurt me, but that was about to change.

A brush against my ankle was almost too light to feel. But I did feel it, and I knew that my pantyhose were gone. When had he taken them off? I tensed, straining, focusing on the tender flesh. Light fingers ran up the arch of my foot to the inside of my ankle. Over and back, across the bone that jutted there.

“So pretty. So delicate. So easy to break.”

I jerked against the bonds, the ones that held my legs down and my arms up. Oh God. To break me as a person? To break my
ankle
? Either one was pretty horrifying. What a sick fuck. A really sick fuck with a tiny penis and an emo sob story. He was just like every other criminal on the fucking Most Wanted wall at the Bureau. He was
nothing
.

But that was a lie I told myself. Because I’d always known he was different. Smarter. More deliberate. He toyed with the FBI like a lion with a mouse, and even as the mouse stared into the jaws of its killer, it felt a little impressed. A little in awe.

The hand smoothed up my calf. His thumb and forefinger framed my kneecap and stroked it. Not causing me pain, but firmly enough to replay the words in my head.
So easy to break.
If he tried to torture information out of me, how long until I gave in?

Not long, I feared. Once a man gave up decorum and manners, it wasn’t a huge step to giving up honor too. His. Mine. It blended together in a flow of molten fear, incinerating everything in its path.

“Be a good girl for me, and no one gets hurt. Not you. Not, what was his name? Lance.” The pause felt heavy, poignant. His voice dropped. “Not your partner either.”

A shiver ran through me.
What did he know about my partner?
Knowledge could be dangerous. It could be used against me.

Did he know I cared about Hennessey?

“He’s very worried about you,” he said, taunting me.

At least that meant he was alive. Behind the blindfold, I could see his slight smile. Beneath the soft scent of roses, I could smell the clean-sweat smell of him. The ghost of him stood close so close I could feel him, right in front of me, and a small sound came from my throat—fear, frustration. Longing.

“Are you worried about him?” The air brushed my cheek as he leaned close. “You should be. He’s playing a dangerous game. One wrong move, and he’ll end up dead. But you don’t want that to happen, do you? Do you think you can save him?”

His broad hand cupped the inside of my thigh. Sparks radiated from his hand, sending small shocks through my leg, tensing my stomach. And
there
, I felt a strange and undignified heat begin to form. Physical awareness. Proximity. The body’s natural defense to an encroaching threat. A woman’s natural response to ten thousand fucking years of male dominance. I made excuses for myself, but in the end, I still felt guilty for the clenching of my cunt.

The term
survivor’s guilt
had never felt more appropriate than now. This was how I would survive. By preparing myself for him. By wanting it. And why shouldn’t I feel guilty for that? It was sick, and so was I. But as long as I was good for him, no one would get hurt.

Hennessey wouldn’t get hurt.

“The skin here is paler than anywhere else on the body. Do you agree?”

The muscles of my thigh bunched. God. I wished he’d do something extreme. Just beat me or whip me. Just get it over with. The waiting was torture. The gentle touching.

“So easy to mark,” he said, but before I could register the words, a blinding pain racked my body. I gasped, unable to breathe or think. Even when I felt the pressure ease, pain sang a red-haze song through my blood.

He touched the hot points of flesh where his fingers had dug in. “One, two, three. They’re red now, but I think they’ll turn black and blue before this is over. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To prove how hard you worked for it. You’d press them when I wasn’t here and get wet for me.”

You’re sick,
I wanted to say. “Mmmf!” A line of drool leaked from the corner of my mouth and ran down my cheek.

His fingers roamed upward, probing the lips of my cunt. Without preamble, they slid inside. I gasped, sucking in my own spit and swallowing to clear it. His fingers were blunt and unkind and knowledgeable. They knew the angle of a woman and the place deep inside to seek out. He finger-fucked me until I bit down around the gag and stiffened my body against the oncoming tension. Physical awareness. Proximity. The body’s natural defense. That was all it was.

He pulled out just as suddenly as he’d started, and my flesh closed around the space left behind. His fingers walked up my quivering belly, leaving wet dots from his fingertips, my own body’s response in humiliating points. Past my belly button. My anxiety rose with each small step, as his fingers dried on my skin. He walked his fingers until they reached the curve between my breasts.

I breathed so hard and so fast that I panted. I struggled to suck in air through my nose and around the gag. The world went hazy and dim. I was going to faint…but I didn’t. That would be too damn easy. Instead, I just lay there, having a nervous breakdown while he touched me in a single place. My breastbone, like pointing at someone, like accusing them.

Stop,
I wanted to say. “Mmmf…” A muffled plea, like a sheep bleating on its way to the slaughter.

“Yes, you’re right. Enough of that. We have things to do. Very busy.”

He stepped away, and I heard rustling. Dread sank in my gut. Whatever was coming next, it would be much worse.

In that hollow minute of uncertainty, an image of Hennessey flashed through my mind. What would he do in this situation? I couldn’t imagine him tied up or beaten, but he could have been, just as easily. If the timing were a little different. If Laguardia still wanted to torture a man instead of a woman. I had no doubt that he had tortured his share of men, turned them into Mr. Hydes against their will. Like the good, misguided doctor in the story, we’d drunk the potion, trying to protect mankind from the monsters within us. And created a new monster instead.

A sharp pain sank into my breast, and a sound of surprise escaped me. Surprise and anguish. And relief. God. Finally. It hurt worse than I was expecting, but then it was supposed to. That was what made it punishment. The second strike drew a gasp from me. The third, a soft whine.

I tried to distract myself by imagining what it was. A whip of some kind? No, it wasn’t long enough. A flogger, maybe. I could just picture one, with a blunt leather tip.

He worked his way over my breasts. Like a lover would, I realized. Kissing over the tops and working his way inside. Along the tender underside, making me squirm. Saving the tip for last. But there, he paused to caress the hardening nub with cruel heat-filled lashes. The stunted sounds of my pain filled my ears, a high note above the rapid beat of my pounding blood.

He moved down my belly, not pausing there, just slapping my tender flesh to mark the passage. I jerked against my bonds.
There?
No. God no. It would hurt so fucking bad…

But that was what made it a punishment.

There were lies people told you to get you to cooperate.
This won’t hurt. It will be over soon.
He didn’t bother with those. No. As far as I could tell, he’d told the truth every step of the way. Then again, there were plenty of things he hadn’t told me, and a lie of omission was still a lie.

He moved to my feet, and when he hit me again, he used some kind of implement. Something thin and reedy. It felt like the sole of my foot cracked in half, split with a wicked knife. But then he pulled back and the pain faded. And I knew it would come again.

It did. He used that goddamn horrible stick on my feet while my body jerked. It was the most painful thing I’d ever felt—
on my feet.
When my legs were moving spastically, out of my control, he held them down with one hand and hit them some more, picking up the pace. They would be broken, I thought dimly. They would be cut into ribbons.

But then he stopped and in the seconds that passed, the pain in my feet faded to a dull ache. It was a sharp and fleeting hurt, one that took my breath away and left before I reclaimed it.

The next slap was with his hand again, on my thigh, and I had to sigh in relief.
One, two, three.
Even without his words describing it, I knew he found the same places. I wasn’t the one obsessed with my bruises—he was. He moved to the other side. My body jerked away, and somehow toward him. It was confused, mistaking the pain for pleasure and the pleasure for affection.

The blindfold and my muteness served as a barrier between us. They were obvious signs of bondage and my captivity. But in another way they allowed me to pretend I was somewhere else. At home, maybe, and I’d finally found a date who could give me everything I wanted. One who’d spiked my drink and pushed me inside my own door. One who’d held down my hands and taken what he wanted. That date had never happened, because no one had ever hurt me.

But he did.

The skin closer to my cunt was more sensitive, and I couldn’t help but cry out. I moved constantly, a puppet on leathery strings. My toes curled in alternating pain and anticipation, and every time they did, I felt an echo of pain from my feet. A warm, lulling fog descended over my mind, hiding before and after, so there was only now, this moment, and all the ways he could make me hurt.

Here, too, he struck me the same way a lover might kiss me. Along the insides of my thighs to start. Then inward, closer. Finally, he moved up and down the lips of my cunt. He reached down to spread those lips and delved deeper with each stinging blow. When he snapped the wet leather against my clit, I screamed.

He hit me there again and again, until all the breath left my lungs, all the thought left my head. I was nothing but sensation, nothing but lights under the tunnel, flashing bright on each new burst of pain. My mouth was open, my body strung taut. I wanted to beg him to stop. But even when he unclasped the gag and pulled it way, my mouth remained open and mute. Accepting this. Needing it. He laid the damp strap across the most sensitive part of me, the only organ built solely for pleasure, and he made it pain.

I choked on my sorrow, my guilt. My moan mingled with his grunts, his low animal sounds on every strike. The strange thing was I sounded like a person being pleasured. The stranger thing was he sounded like someone in pain.

I wondered when he’d stop hitting me, hurting me, but maybe he never would. We’d be caught in a web of our own making, turned monster by a poison we’d created. There was no escaping the trap we had set for ourselves, no believing our own lies. This place was stripped of decorum and manners. All that was left was rawness and blood. My blood. It squeezed through tiny strips made in my skin on my breasts and thighs. I could feel it where the salt of my sweat burned.

Was he waiting for me to come? It would never happen. A sensual tension held me in its grip, but I would never let go enough to enjoy it. There was only pain for me, and that was all I wanted. To enjoy it would have been much worse, and I didn’t have to. My body had been played like an instrument. Like an object. And objects didn’t come.

Only then did I realize the mockery he’d made of sex. Using the flogger to mimic a lover’s exploration. Blocking my senses. Using an object on an object, like making a doll fuck another doll. Was that how he saw himself too, as a thing? Or was he a god, the one orchestrating us all? I knew the truth. Somehow I knew, the same way I’d known he hated the cold. And I knew because even something as cruel as this formed a bond of intimacy between us. The real reason he orchestrated this crimson dance was because it was all he could handle.