He grabs my chin in his hands and glares down at me, and I recoil inwardly at the utter hatred in his eyes. “I was gonna go easy on you, but I guess we’re way past playing nice, wouldn’t you say?”
Asher kneels back on his heels and grips his cock in his hand. I know that despite having just come, my body is nowhere near prepared for the pain he’s about to inflict on me.
My blood runs cold when Asher smiles a bitter smile, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out I was right.
Chapter Five
Three weeks…
It’s been three weeks since Asher first raped me. I’ve lost count of how many times he has since. I look over at his sleeping form. His hand with the lily tattoo resting on his abs. How ironic that tattoo is. Life imitating art. Me, his Lily, caught in his web. His chest rises and falls, face relaxed, and I wonder how he can rest so peacefully knowing what he did to me. Asher has been a constant in my life for the last seven years. Maybe I did use him for sex, but I felt something for him too. I might not have felt exactly the same way for him as I did for Dale, but I loved him in my own way. Besides, I thought Dale and I would never be more than friends. Even if a large part of me wished it could be otherwise.
I blow out a silent breath when I think about how I used to fantasize about having both Asher and Dale in my life. How just after Dale called things off, I wished I hadn’t opened up to them about my past so things would have always remained the same. So my heart didn’t have to choose. And how I felt like I was safer with Asher than I’d ever be with Dale.
My heart, anyway.
I realize now, how wrong I was. Pain threatens to swallow me whole, but I push it down. I can’t afford to think about this again today. I can’t afford to get choked by remorse. Even if I deserve to be. Not when I need to fight for survival, even though I know I won’t survive.
I move slowly, trying to get into a comfortable position without waking Asher. Being trussed up the way I am has wreaked havoc on my back and hips. The chains are now long enough that I can lie on my side, but then I end up tangled in the heavy metal. On my second night here, Asher had unchained me so I could go to the bathroom, and I tried to escape. That resulted in a broken nose, which is only now healing, as well as the revocation of my freedom.
I feel like I’m slowly suffocating in this basement. The only glimpse of the outside world is the occasional small sliver of sunlight that stubbornly breaks through the grimy basement window. Man, I miss the sun. The way it kisses the clouds and trees. I miss the feel of its warm rays soaking into my skin.
I’ve never been so cold in my life. It’s a chill the settles deep into my marrow and has my jaw tense from keeping my teeth from chattering. I long for a warm shower to wash the filth away from my body and to give me a momentary respite from the bone-aching chill. I’m naked now; it’s easier for Asher this way. Every morning, he gives me a bed bath with a bowl of warm water and a cloth. The warm cloth against my skin is agonizing cruelty. The small sliver of heat I get moments before the frigid air creeps over my skin is almost unbearable. Then when the bathing is over, I know what’s coming next.
Asher turns over in his sleep, and my heart catches in my throat. Nerves race through my body, and I hold my breath. He settles back down, and I blow out a relieved sigh.
Last week, Asher left me alone to help Dale “further investigate my disappearance” and cancel upcoming tour dates. Really, what he was doing was trying to frame poor Bianca. When I asked Asher what he’d told Dale about his own absence, he said he’d just told him we’d had a fight, and that’s why he’d left me alone. That if he’d been with me, “Bianca” wouldn’t have gotten to me. Then he told Dale he had rented a fishing cabin in the woods so he could get away. It worked well to corroborate the guilt he was supposedly feeling over our fight.
I bet he played the grieving, guilt-ridden boyfriend part perfectly as they followed lead after lead that was going to get them nowhere. While he was gone, I counted every second till he was back, terrified that something would happen to him while he was away, and I’d end up starving to death in this miserable shithole.
So why now, was I wishing he was gone again?
Living with only my thoughts has taught me some strange shit. Like, anticipation is the worst form of torture. In the dead of the night, when everything is pitch black with not even the shapes in the room to distract me, I wonder what he’ll do to me when he wakes up in the morning. Some days it’s worse; other days, better, but regardless of which kind of day it is, the suspense of what will happen is slowly killing me the most.
Waiting and watching for every agonizing second to pass before he uses my body is, by far, worse than when he’s inside me. Some days, I get a glimpse of the old Asher—the one who used to pretend to love me. Those days fuck me up the most because I crave them and cling insanely to any
