Hear Me (10 page)

It was surprisingly easy to sneak into the US undetected. I had heard all of the stories about hiding in one-hundred degree trucks across the border, but apparently it helped that my speech was so clearly American or that I was Caucasian. Of course, it also hadn’t hurt that Sam had spotted me several thousand dollars and the name of a shipping business happy to take on an extra hundred and twenty pounds of cargo. They even helped me slip undetected through the airport, although their own asses would have been on the line if I’d been caught.

Now I was on my own, in this city that had been home, and wondering why, why? What was so special about here? All these people rushing around, and I had nothing to do. Nowhere to go. I had a vague recollection of a white-walled apartment. A slightly stronger memory of a desk where I had spent most of my days and many of my nights, offering subservience to a corporate master alongside thousands of other drones.

But I couldn’t just walk back into the apartment or show up at work. I had been gone for so long, probably reported missing at some point, but by whom I didn’t know. I didn’t even have keys or any identification at all.

A woman jostled me, shooting back a dirty look before she resumed her path and her phone conversation. I looked down at myself, wondering what she thought of me. I wore another light dress from Sam’s endless arsenal, this one a light pink with white piping around the edges. It had felt feminine when I put it on. Now its bare arms and short hem felt perverse, like I was on display as some sex object.

Ironic, considering.

I rubbed my hands along my arms, trying to ward off the chills. It didn’t matter what I looked like because no one was really looking. I could fade away, and no one would notice. No one would care. Faced with such cold indifference, the cruel attention of the men who had hurt me took on a softer light.

Lifting my hand, I hailed a cab. The dark-skinned man behind the wheel leered at the scoop of my neckline. “Where to, miss?”

“The nearest police station, please.”

His eyes widened for a second of concern, before his lids lowered to complacency once again. It only took a few minutes and a couple of turns before we pulled up at a run-down looking building. Precinct 45, it said.

The little monitor was blank. “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

“It’s on the house,” he said gruffly, not turning around.

Embarrassed by his help, by my obvious need of it, I murmured my thanks and left the cab. For endless minutes, I stood outside the police station, deliberating. Did I have to go inside? There was nowhere else to go. And what would I tell them? I had nothing to offer but the truth.

A man stopped in front of me, wearing a rumpled suit and holding a steaming cup of coffee. I didn’t have time to be afraid, because his posture was clearly so reluctant, as if he hoped I would walk away before he had to intervene. I looked up into his hard face and kind eyes and burst into tears, overwhelmed by the growing certainty that this was my life now and that it would always be this lonely.

He ushered me inside the station and into a small room with a table and a few chairs. His name was Detective Hines, he said, but he would find someone who could take my statement. Probably someone female, I understood.

“No, please.” I didn’t want to face the knowing in another woman’s eyes. The sympathy laced with relief that it wasn’t her who had been hurt that way.

Though it was clear he’d rather be anywhere but here, he agreed. Notepad in hand, he began asking questions. The first few were straightforward: my name, my age, what I remembered of my life. The
before
was implied.

There was a gap in my memory then, around the time it happened. Not just in the immediate moment when I was taken, but in those weeks, months, who knew how long? It was like squinting into a muddy whirlpool—it made me dizzy to even try.

Talking about my time in captivity was harder. My memory there was spotty as well, but I remembered more than enough details to get the point across. Detective Hines was thin-lipped through my more graphic descriptions but all business, without any of the pity that would have made me fall apart all over again.

I described the day when everything had changed. They were moving us. It was clearly sudden, not well planned. We were outside, naked but not chained. In the mayhem, another man came and told us to follow him. I didn’t recognize him, but we were like sheep—we all would have jumped off a cliff just to obey. People were shouting; I was so scared. I hid in a bush, cowering, waiting for someone to find me and punish me. When no one did, I gained enough awareness to realize this was my chance. I ran.

“I just… kept running, until I reached a town and they gave me these clothes and helped me find a plane that would bring me back.” I spread my hands, pretending they didn’t shake, wishing I could look at him while I lied. “So that’s what happened.”

He had stopped writing during the last, and when I dared to glance up, his expression made it clear that he knew it was bullshit. His voice was even. “That was a pretty lucky break, then.”

“Yes.” My eyes fell shut, then I looked at him directly. “What happened to me was horrible, but I can honestly say I was lucky after that.”

He tapped the pen to the notepad, clearly considering. He nodded, as if he’d made a decision. “All right. If that’s what happened, all right. I’ll need to look into this of course, but without any specifics about where you were, I doubt we’ll find much. Still, we’ll definitely investigate your case. That might be the best clue we have to finding them…and helping those other women.”

I swallowed against a gnawing guilt that I had made it home when they hadn’t. “Anything I can do to help.”

He grunted with something like approval before flagging down a couple of younger cops and barking out orders. The detective escorted me personally to a hotel, where I would have to stay until they had gone over my apartment once again. They had also taken some of my DNA to reinstate me as the real Melody Cole, since my fingerprints had ever been taken and apparently I had no immediate family to confirm.

That part was depressing. I had been nervous about the prospect of some unremembered boyfriend or even husband who would expect my love and loyalty, when I had none to give. But I had been hoping for someone, a mother, a brother, someone to help ease the way.

I stared at the thin walls of the hotel, sat on the thin bedspread and breathed the thin air. What was a home without people you loved but an empty box anyway? Detective Hines had paused before he’d left and said, “It will get better.” But how could it when every second was another one without Sam? I finally allowed myself to think about him, allowing myself to mourn the loss I recognized in his face at the end.

What would he think of the city? Too congested, maybe. I thought he would like Detective Hines.

What would he say if he were here?
Spread your legs, subby.

With a private smile, I slipped beneath the covers and obeyed his imaginary commands.

Touch yourself.

No, slower.

We have all night.

There was probably a psychology student somewhere writing a salacious thesis on women like me. Abused, confused, we couldn’t even help it. We paid with sex, we coped with sex, everything was sex to a poor liberated slave. But my body didn’t care about political correctness, and my mind wasn’t too broken up over it either. This was Sam’s gift to me: my sexuality returned, pleasure sharpened.

The timbre of his voice reverberated deep inside me as my fingers stroked my clit, like touching a memory. I climaxed to the brush of his breath, the ache of his hands, the warmth of his praise.

I came back to myself as the AC switched off, casting me in a bittersweet silence.

Chapter Ten

“Are you sure you don’t want to go? You don’t have to play. Just have a few drinks.” Anya frowned. “It’s been two months already.”

Two months of working at this job, though I hadn’t yet figured out why it was so important that we made the regional top sales lists. Two months of returning home to a cold, empty apartment. But the thought of going out into a crowd was even worse.

 I stood up from my desk and stretched. “I’ll take a rain check.”

I still didn’t remember how I had ended up in the hands of those men or why I had been targeted. For all I knew, it could have been a random drugging at a kink club just like the one she was always pushing me to accompany her to.

“You need to relax. Have a good time. You can meet a guy who can give you one.” She gave me a suggestive smile. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Rape and torture, though I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t risk my friendship, however two-dimensional it was, with Anya, when she had been so willing, even eager, to reconnect with me. Everyone else I met in the hallways had avoided me since I got back, as if my presumed psychological trauma were contagious.

“Look.” Her face softened while her eyes took on a strange glint. “You can tell me what happened to you. Maybe it will help you work it out.”

There was something about the way she focused on me, her posture…

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s kind of hard to talk about.”

She laid her hand over mine. “I know, but I won’t judge you. No matter what they did to you. Seriously.”

A shiver ran through me as I recognized her expression: anticipation. Like she might get off on what I told her. No, that couldn’t be right. Probably just some sort of clinical paranoia shit, keeping anyone from getting too close. She wanted to help me.

And I did want to be wrapped up tight somewhere, safe somehow. Maybe a Dom could give me that. The thought of being under a stranger’s control made me nervous, even though I knew that not every man was like them.

I glanced down the hallway to make sure no one was nearby. “Well, it’s hard for me to imagine being with a man… that way. Not just sex, but giving over my power like that. And to someone I don’t know or trust. To be honest, it’s really scary.”

“Exactly! You’ll be afraid as long as you don’t do it. Fear of the unknown. You need to face your fears. Once you find an awesome Dom, one who knows how to treat you right, you’ll be fine.”

I was skeptical but nervous about disagreeing with her outright. I may have been uneasy enough to keep the specifics of what happened to me, especially regarding Sam, to myself, but I was lonely enough not to cut off contact with her completely. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really just… not ready.”

She turned away but not before I saw her roll her eyes. God, I wished I could be back to normal. Back then we had gone out, had a couple martinis, woken up in strange beds in pricey high-rise condos, and compared bruises the next day at work. It was a good time, wasn’t it?

I shook off the feeling that I was being watched in the parking garage. It was a leftover feeling from being held captive, I told myself. Not real.

Dropping my bag in the entryway, I stood in the middle of my apartment. A chic blue sofa sat in front of a flat-screen television. A fake white daisy sat in the windowsill. Though I had quickly fallen into the routine of my work, I had never felt comfortable here. The cool air felt stale, the 600-threadcount sheets dusty.

Maybe I should move, though the thought of packing up all this impersonal stuff made me glum. Maybe I could find a cute little house. Something with trees, where I could see the stars. Somewhere I could breathe again. That brightened my mood, even though I’d have a painful commute.

I wandered into the bathroom, brushed my fingertips across the expensive cosmetics. I had found them unopened in the cabinets, as if I’d been stockpiling for the nuclear holocaust with organic astringent. The countertops had been empty… I paused. There hadn’t even been a toothbrush.

So what had I used before I’d been taken?

A chill ran through me, but it was just that overzealous AC again. Not like the cool moist air by the water, the smell of trees and rain…

She doesn’t belong here.
I shivered, as if I heard Brendan’s voice right beside me.

As if unlocked, more disembodied words played in the same dreaded voice, the sound hollow like a lone wolf’s howl.
Don’t you love me? Don’t you
trust
me? I’m doing this for you, not just me. You want to be the best submissive. I want that for you too. I’ll be so proud of you.

I do want to be a good submissive,
came my fervent voice.
I just don’t understand why you can’t train me. What will they do that you can’t?

You don’t understand. This is hardcore, not the kind of thing we can do in public or in my condo.

Well, I don’t see how I can leave my job for a whole month.

You won’t work when you’re with me, anyway. Stop being selfish, Melody.

God, that was creepy. And not real at all. Brendan had never said any of that to me. My mind had taken my darkest insecurities and deepest hopes and set them to a damn scary tune. I felt bad about leaving Sam to return to my life here—that had to be where this was coming from. But that’s all it was: a soundtrack to a nightmare.

Just forget about all of that, Anya had told me over lunch while I stared out the window, seeing only glass and concrete and smog. Then she scolded me for not paying attention when she was helping me. A rueful smile tilted my lips. If anyone was going to scold me, I’d rather it were Sam. At least he would give me a spanking afterward.

That was exactly the kind of thing that would set her off again.

Sam had abused my weakened state, she said. That wasn’t real BDSM.

Well, he had abused something all right. My ass.

Traumatic bonding, she had read online somewhere.

We had both agreed that sounded kinky.

Well, she was probably right about my mind being all messed up. But maybe it didn’t matter. If I wanted to be with Sam and he liked me this way, it should be enough. Every day, I believed a little bit more. It could be enough.