Save Riley (6 page)

The darkness and the silence started to get to me after yet another hour passed. The sun had gone down and the moon was barely shining into the room. I had reached the point of sheer exhaustion and I knew what I had to do.

Endure.

But not like this
.
I took a few quick breaths and closed my eyes tightly as I began to pull.
Don’t stop. No matter how much it hurts, break your way out of this.

I did everything that I could to break free without terribly hurting myself. I arched myself up so that I could grip the chain as best as I could in my fingertips. I followed the length of it and realized that it was being held in place by a mere fish hook clasp at the end, so I stretched my left arm just a little further.
Almost ... just a little more ...

That’s when I felt it. My left shoulder popped and it was followed by a burning feeling of pain. I put my face against the carpet and tried not to cry out. I didn’t want him to know what I was doing because I didn’t know if he would think this an act of disobedience worthy of punishment. But now, because my arm had gone limp, it was easier to undo the chain and get out of this terrible position I had spent hours in.

I rolled over onto my back, the leather cuffs still around my ankles, and stared at the ceiling. Ten minutes, I was still trying to collect myself when I heard Jaxton making his way down the stairs again.

I got to my feet and looked around desperately for a place to hide. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bookcase I hadn’t quite noticed before and tiptoed quietly toward it. I managed to squeeze myself behind it somehow and did my best to keep my shuddery breathing to a minimum as the lights came on again.

His sharp gasp of shock was followed by quiet laughter.

“The one that got away,” he mused to himself as he turned the lights off and exited the room. I waited a while behind the bookcase. Because I couldn’t hear his footsteps from here, I only came out from behind it when I assumed it was safe enough that he would be in another part of the house.

I held onto my arm as I carefully snuck out of my hiding spot and made my way toward the doorway. I listened for a moment; complete silence. I took a few tentative steps into the moonlit hallway when the lights suddenly came on overhead.

I swallowed the scream in my throat when I saw Jaxton sitting on the stairs and leaned back, watching me in amusement. He looked at my arm and shook his head.

“You know what you remind me of? This dingo my father once broke and gutted when we were hiking in Cairns. See, he had given the damn animal plenty of opportunities to move on and let us by, but it was so
stubborn.
Like you, Riley. So when he saw the opportunity, he broke it,” he said with a smirk.

He’s fucking nuts. I’m stuck in a house with a psychotic person and I can’t get out.

“Now please don’t worry. I would never harm you physically, but I
will
break you if I have too,” he said getting to his feet. “Come here, please. I’d like to put that back into place for you.”

I took a step back for every step that he took forward until I found myself against the door.

“Riley, please. I’ve already said that I’m not going to physically harm you. Just let me put that back in place. I can wrap it after and have someone come take a proper look at it in the morning,” he said standing no more than a foot away from me.

One more day Riley; you can do this.

I took a deep breath and nodded. Jax came over to me and put a hand firmly on my arm and another on my shoulder.

“This is going to hurt, so please forgive me,” he whispered before he popped my shoulder back into place.

I let out a scream of pain and Jax pulled me toward him, wrapping me up in his arms. He ran a hand over my hair and shushed me. He told me that the pain would go away as suddenly as it appeared, but we would need to go upstairs so he could try to wrap my arm. I nodded and blinked back tears as he put an arm gently around my back, while still holding my left arm carefully. We walked up the stairs in silence until we reached the one door I never thought to look in because I hadn’t noticed it for some reason until now.

He pushed open a pair of double doors and led me into what I could only assume to be his bedroom. It was absolutely stunning; the walls were pure white and reminded me of snow. The carpet wasn’t as lush as the carpeting in the room I woke up in, but it was just as soft and black. He had a huge flat screen television on the opposite wall of where his king sized bed sat. There was one large bay window on the wall, which sat open and led to a balcony. Thin white linen (but I knew better) curtains were dancing lazily as the cool breeze drifted into the room.

“Do you like it?” he asked softly.

“It’s ... beautiful,” I marveled.

“Thank you. I need you to remove that now,” he said. I looked up at him questioningly and he chuckled. “I can’t wrap your arm over the shirt. I need you to remove it please. I promise no lessons tonight, since I think you’ve already taught yourself one for the both of us.”

I sighed and nodded again. He was right; it just bothered me that I was going to be standing in front of him feeling even more naked than I already was. I shrugged off the left sleeve after he let my arm go, then the right. Jax moved behind me and slowly removed it from my shoulders, letting his fingers trail down my back.

I shivered involuntarily and turned slightly to give him a dirty look, which he met with a smile before folding the shirt and placing it on the bed.

“Sit. Please,” he said softly.

I used my right arm to cover my breasts as I tried to get comfortable on the edge of the bed. Jaxton crouched down and placed a hand on either side of me.

“I want nothing more than for us to be equals, Riley. I want us to learn to please each other; sexually and emotionally. I can’t have you disobeying me, understand? I wouldn’t have left you in the living room all night, but I also don’t want to have to worry that you’ll hurt yourself to get away from me every time I tie you up,” he said, brushing my hair out of my face.

“I don’t want to be here,” I responded in a shaky voice.

“I know. But you will want to be here eventually. I don’t want to ... discard you, Riley. I would like to keep you for as long as possible because you’re the one that has intrigued me the most,” he said getting to his feet.

I watched him turn on the light in his walk in closet and disappear inside. I stood up and walked quietly toward the closet. I put my hand on the back of the door before I peeked around the side. His back was to me and he was rifling through a container of sorts.

Close the door! Lock it and jump out of the window,
my inner heroine yelled. It was a good enough idea to at least just try. I quickly swung the door shut and looked for a lock on it, but there was none. Instead there was the sound of a few beeps as the code pad reset itself. I heard his angry shout from inside the closet as I ran toward the window and out onto the balcony. I heard the sounds of beeping as he punched the code in.

“Riley!” he shouted racing toward me as I put my legs over the side of the balcony.

I made the mistake of looking down instead of just jumping. I had always been afraid of heights and even though this wasn’t exactly high up, it was enough to stop me for a few seconds.

Enough time for Jaxton to catch me before I could jump. Enough time to feel the unmistakable leather of a belt going around my neck and enough time to jerk me back so hard that I hit my head and lost consciousness.

W
hen I woke up I was in a room. A stone room that wasn’t necessarily big but not too small. I was lying naked ...
Naked?
Yes naked
,
on a bed that was sitting against the wall of the room. I sat up and immediately felt the restraints around my ankles. I glanced down and saw that there was rope tied securely around them and then again to the posts of the bed. My lower lip trembled as I glanced around the room, a feeling of absolute terror running through me.

Was this what happened to the others when they “disobeyed” Jaxton? He had mentioned about doing this before but he never said what happened to the other women.

I shifted uncomfortably on the bed and felt something under my left thigh crinkle. I lifted my leg and looked down to see a note with my name on it. I instinctively reached for it with my left hand.

“Motherfucker!” I screamed in pain. He hadn’t wrapped my arm like he said he would and the sudden movement had caused terrible pain to start radiating in my shoulder. I reached underneath my leg with my right hand and pulled the note out. I opened it and flattened it against the bed so I could read it and somewhat nurse my arm at the same time.

I
crumpled the letter angrily in my fist before I threw it against the wall. Those three or so seconds I spent hesitating on the ledge of the balcony cost me just as many days in this room. I should’ve just jumped; I shouldn’t have doubted myself.

I didn’t know how I was going to stand being in this room alone for three days. Would he at least bring me something to eat or drink? What if I needed to use the bathroom? What the hell had I gotten myself into?

The sound of beeping on the door made me sigh unhappily. I lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling stoically. The door opened and I heard him walk in, followed by the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and stopping next to me. But he didn’t sit down; instead he went back into the hallway to retrieve something else that he scraped across the floor, setting it by the foot of the bed. One more trip in and out and he finally closed the door behind him.

He cleared his throat as he turned on the television and slid a disc into the DVD player. Then he sat down next to me and propped his legs up onto the bed.

I turned my head slightly so I could watch him out of the corner of my eye. He had his hands crossed behind his head as usual and he was watching the television. I watched a smile slowly spread across his lips.

It was the same as it was when I first woke up in this place. He ignored the fact that I was there while he watched TV. The only difference was there were no bowls of cereal around and he didn’t mind scraping around in here.

“The first time is always the sweetest,” he whispered in an alluring voice I had not yet heard from him.

He raised the volume on the television set and I heard soft moaning. I rolled my eyes at the ceiling assuming he was watching some kind of soft core porn television show, until  the sounds suddenly stopped and he nudged me gently.

“You’re not paying attention,” he said in a playful tone. “I need you to watch this Riley. I need you to see how bad this can really get for you if you don’t follow the rules.”

I took a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh. I wasn’t interested in watching movies when I could be figuring out how to get out of this place once and for all.

“Riley, please sit up and watch,” Jax said again softly.

I won’t tolerate disobedience in my own home.
His words went through my head again and I knew that after being knocked unconscious, the best thing would be to just sit up and watch whatever the hell it was that he wanted me to.

“Could you help me please?” I asked quietly.

I felt his strong hands as he leaned over and slid them underneath my back. He pushed me up gently and instructed me to wait a moment while he gave the rope some leeway. I turned my face away, again at his instruction, until he told me to grip him as well as I could. With my right arm, I turned my body to the side slightly and put it as far around his shoulder as I could.

“I’m going to lift you for a moment, but don’t worry. I won’t drop you, Riley,” he said.

Jaxton was strong; something that was not only apparent by how he kept his body, but also by how easily he lifted me with one arm. He grabbed a pillow from under the bed and propped it against the wall before leaning me back on it. He gently set me down and gave the ropes a pull to make sure they were still secure.

“Comfortable?” he asked me with a smile.

I stared at him. How could he ask me something with such genuine concern for my comfortability when my shoulder still hadn’t been wrapped and I was naked tied to a bed?

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he said moving his chair back against the wall, sitting right next to me. “Before I start this again, I want you to know that I will understand your anger, humiliation, and whatever emotion it makes you feel.”

I looked at him questioningly.

“I also want you to know that I will enjoy every moment of it,” he said, the smile never leaving his face.

What the hell is he going to make me watch?
I wondered nervously. I simply nodded instead of replying. I was quickly learning that words didn’t work with Jax; he seemed to be more of an “actions speak louder than words” enthusiast.

“Good,” he said softly, running his hand down the side of my face. “You’re so beautiful, Riley.”

“Thanks,” I replied as I started to tremble at his touch. It wasn’t a “good” tremble; it was more of an “every time he touches me something painful or harmful happens to me” tremble. I had never feared someone so much in my life as I did Jaxton.

“I hope you like this,” he said, finally turning his attention away from me. Jax leaned forward and grabbed the remote. Once again, he propped his legs up onto the side of the bed and clasped his hands behind his head. “I’ve never done anything like it, but then again, I’ve never had anyone like
you
before. Are you ready?”

I nodded and leaned my head back against the wall. I found myself suddenly anticipating what he wanted to show me. Maybe it was the way he was building it up or maybe it was the way that he was building
me
up; either way I wanted to watch now. More than I ever had before, I wanted to watch.

Jax pressed the play button on the remote control and set it down on his lap. I stared at the television curiously.