Three Years

I loved Jason Ross for seven years. One together, then six spent apart, while I festered in my rage and he grieved my supposed death.

Then finally, we were reunited again.

He knew me as a stranger before he finally saw me for who I really am.

Juliette Portland.

A dead girl. A lover. A murderer.

My heart was finally whole again.

But none of it matters anymore.

Because now, it’s all been torn away.

I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.

Before Dornan breaks me.





“Shallow cuts.”

I whimper again, struggling against my ropes as darkness threatens to pull me under.

And I want it to pull me under. Mercy. Blackness. Please, just let me pass out.

He stops, his black eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he surveys his handiwork. My head sags forward, my chin hitting my chest, and I can see the scores of small cuts he’s marked into the skin on my stomach. So far, he’s avoided my tattoo, and the scars that hover below it, but he keeps touching it, caressing me there, and I know he’s planning something painful for that spot.

I’m tied to a chair today, my wrists bound behind me. My ankles are completely numb, tied tightly against the chair legs. Some days he ties me to the bed, each limb stretched painfully and attached securely to the corners of the bare frame. There’s no mattress, and the bedsprings bite at my back as he takes his pleasure making me bleed. I’m still wearing the same thing I had on when he snatched me - a black T-shirt, sliced open down the front so that it hangs loosely at my sides and black cotton bra and panties. He’s taken my jeans from me, probably so I feel the bitter cold at night.

Or to have easy access to my legs so he can drag his knife along every inch of exposed flesh.

He still hasn’t raped me. Hasn’t even touched me down there. It confuses me, and it makes me afraid. I want him to get it over and done with. Do what he’s going to do, instead of leaving me for days at a time, starving and cold, as my blood dries on my skin, coating the tops of my thighs.

“Shallow, shallow cuts,” he murmurs, his low voice rocky and rough. I moan as he drags the blade through my skin again, breaking it open like paper and pressing his fingers into the wound he’s created. He leans forward and I whimper again, knowing what he’s about to do.

I jolt back suddenly as his tongue scrapes along my opened skin like sandpaper, claiming the blood that he’s spilled, drinking in my sorrow. His breath is hot against my cold skin, his tongue like a dirty worm burrowing inside of me.

Agony.

I’ve been down here for so long, I’ve lost track of time. There’s no sunlight in here, only concrete, dampness, and cold. At night I freeze, and during the day I swelter. That is the only way I know if it’s night or day, and even these things are starting to become muddled. I count my days by the fresh wounds, having nothing else to reference time with.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. I could have been down here for a day or a year, and the fact remains the same:

I am never getting out.

I know this now. I fought against him for the first few days, until he broke me. Starved me and beat me and broke my spirit. It’s shameful, really.

I always thought I was stronger than this.

Assumed that he’d never be able to break me - but he did. So quickly.

“I’ve got a surprise for you today,” he says, his mouth quirked into a dark smile, a smile that feeds off my suffering. A smile marked with my blood, his full lips coated in a red sheen.

Surprises are bad. I don’t like his surprises. They always hurt me, make me bleed. I don’t even know if I’ve got any blood left to bleed for him.

I cry softly as I remember the last words he spoke to me in his office before he pressed the rag to my face, and held it there until the noxious fumes in the material stole my consciousness.

“I know you think this is going to be bad,” he had said, his grip against my face almost enough to break my jaw, “but however bad you think this is going to be? It’s going to be so. Much. Worse.”





The door to my room - to my dungeon - slams shut loudly, and I jerk awake from the sleep I’d finally been able to succumb to.

It feels like I’ve only been asleep for a moment at the most, and when I see my blood still wet on his bottom lip, my suspicions are confirmed.

Damn. I was really enjoying that brief interlude of calm unconsciousness.

He’s not holding the knife anymore. Instead, he’s got a small vial of something in one hand, and a slim plastic package in the other. He places both on the small wooden table that sits just inside the room and stalks over to me.

I gasp as he undoes my ropes. Blood rushes to my ankles, which creates incredible pain, too. I cry out as he fists a hand in my hair and drags me from the chair, throwing me onto the narrow single bed face down. Wire springs grab at my wounded skin, tearing at me, and I force myself to lie still, my face pressed into biting metal, and my eyes staring at the bloodstained floor beneath it. I don’t even fight as ropes are wrapped around my ankles and wrists, flaying my aching limbs in four directions, making me completely vulnerable to his whims.