He hisses but doesn’t release me.
“You know you can save us both. Just say your safe word, and I’ll say mine as well,” Beckett moans in my ear as I feel little droplets of his blood dripping from his hand.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t know my safe word. I won’t read it until the final round.”
He gasps. “Fuck.”
I feel him loosen his grasp, and I try to scramble away. My hair starts to slip through his fingers, almost to the end before he tightens his grip again.
Beckett’s decision has been made. He’ll do this for as long as he can, until he’s pushed to a limit that Langston would kill him for crossing.
We both look at each other through the smoke. It’s the last moment that we aren’t truly enemies. From this moment on, we will hate each other. We will never be able to look at each other the same.
I’m done begging. And he’s done talking.
He yanks me hard until I fall to my knees, and then he resumes dragging me. Once again, I try to dig my nails into his hand, but I end up just grabbing onto his wrist to keep him from ripping my hair out as he drags me.
Suddenly, he stops.
I know why.
Fear builds inside me like a windstorm. If only I had magical powers that would allow me to release the storm inside me on this room. I could destroy everything so much easier that way.
I know Beckett has to release my hair to grab my arms, my legs. So I wait patiently for my moment.
He releases.
I try to run. I scramble onto my feet and start to dive.
But he’s smarter than me. He anticipates my move and kicks my feet out from under me. As I’m falling, he grabs one arm and twists it behind my back so forcefully that he’s about to pop my shoulder out of its socket.
I can feel the tears welling, the pain radiating through my arm and down my spine.
“Give me your other hand,” he growls.
No. I won’t give in.
“Break my arm if you have to, but I won’t ever submit to you.”
My other hand reaches out, trying to find the chains I know he plans to tie me to. Maybe if I grab one, I can use it as a weapon against him?
I find a chain.
I sling it as hard as I can at Beckett’s head.
I feel the weight hit him.
But he’s like me. He must be used to the pain. He doesn’t even react.
Instead, he once again kicks my feet out from underneath me. I reach out with the hand he isn’t holding to try and catch myself from hitting the ground.
No.
I feel the cold metal clamping around my other hand.
He won.
I can keep fighting, but there is nothing I can do now. I can’t break the chains holding me.
With one arm encapsulated, he grabs my arm on the floor and yanks me up. I try to kick, to fight, I even spit to try and get him to stop. He’s relentless.
My free hand goes into the next handcuff over my head, and finally, my arms are locked in a wide V over my head.
I get in several vicious kicks as he slides down my body and moves to grab my ankles. But I’m weak compared to him. He attaches a chain with a metal cuff to each ankle until my legs are spread apart, and I can’t move.
And then he’s standing in front of me looking solemn. I know what comes next, and it’s the worst. He still won’t look beyond my eyes to my naked body. I stripped myself of clothes rather than have someone else strip me, but that was the only control over the situation I have.
“Please,” I say, one last time.
I can hear him swallow, hear the pain in his throat, see the heartbreak on his face. But he won’t stop.
We both know it.
Then I feel the gag against my mouth. I open—I’m the one making this decision, not him. He ties it tightly around the back of my head.
One more sense gone.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I try to turn off my hearing before he places the earplugs into my ears, cutting off all sound.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I can’t hear.
There is one step left, and it’s the worst of them all.
I close my eyes—trying to gain my composure before the blindfold goes around my eyes. Once it’s on, I open my eyes. I can’t see anything.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I can’t hear.
I can’t see.
The only sense left is smell, and I’m pretty sure they’d cut that sense off too if there were another way for me to breathe.
He’s taken everything from me. I no longer have any control over my body. The only thing I could do is try to cry out a safe word. That would get my gag removed long enough to see if I was using my safe word or not.
But that would only be a temporary solution. Once they removed my gag, and I didn’t call out my safe word, they’d resume.
I take a deep breath through my nose, trying to gain any knowledge of who is in the room or what’s going to happen next. I don’t smell anything except smoke. I never got a good whiff of Beckett, so I don’t know what he smells like. I’ll have no idea if he’s the one touching me or someone else.
Right now, no one is touching me.
The not knowing, the waiting—that’s the worst part of this all.
I try to meditate in my head, but I’ve never been very good at meditating. I can feel my pulse rushing, my body warming, sweat bubbling on my forehead and neck.
And then it starts.
Hands…
So many hands touching my body that I can’t keep track.
Being sensory deprived like this makes it impossible to tune out the touching, the feeling. It all becomes more intensified. A light brush of a
