“Look at me.”
I turn my head to the side and see him sitting on the chair I’ve been tied to for the last several hours. He rips the plastic package open with his teeth, and I feel my eyes grow wider when I see it’s a hypodermic needle. I swallow thickly as he stabs the tip of it into the small glass vial he’s holding, and draws liquid into it.
“What’s that?” I ask, stunned and scared.
He tuts. “It won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He scoots closer, brings the sharp metal tip down to my arm.
It’s automatic, my struggle. I cry out at him as I fight my restraints, as I press my knees into the bed and try desperately to get up onto them.
“Stop.” One hand on my back, pressing me down, but I ignore him. He chuckles. “I didn’t think you had any fight left in you, Julie. I was getting disappointed there.”
I continue to struggle, even though I know it’s futile. In the position I’m in, legs wide and ankles tied painfully tight to the bed corners, I’ve got no leverage. Face down, with my arms painfully twisted into ropes behind my back, I can’t get away. All I’m doing is wasting my precious energy.
“I said, stop.” He’s less amused this time, trying to stop me as I thrash around, drawing away from the tip of the needle. I can only hope that he needs to hit my vein, and can’t just shove the stuff into my arm.
His smile disappears and he recaps the syringe, shoving it in his jeans pocket. He twists me painfully so I’m on my side and covers my mouth with his large hand. I kick and scream, but he easily holds me in place. I panic as he reaches down with his other hand and pinches my nose shut with his thumb and forefinger.
I gasp against his palm, desperately trying to suck air in, but I get nothing. Before I know it, blurry grey dots are in front of me, and then the world goes black.
***
Black and light. Unconscious and awake.
I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep normally.
Was it beside Jase the night before we fought? The night before I went and fucked everything up?
We should have just run away.
But I couldn’t. The vengeful fire that burns within me hasn’t abated - it’s just been temporarily smothered by my torment and despair. My plan to wreak revenge, interrupted by Dornan’s sick fascination with my blood and screams.
My most primal desires, my basest emotions, are still tied to my desire to see Dornan suffer and die. In the long hours as my legs cramp and my arms go numb, I fantasize about the different ways it could happen.
Maybe he’ll put the knife down. Maybe I could pretend I was still unconscious and take him by surprise. Hide behind the door and storm him as he enters, dig my fingernails into his eyeballs until they burst. Oh, the pathetic fantasies that swim in my mind.
But I can’t get away. I’m always tied to either the bed or the chair – or—more humiliatingly—held by a wrist as I pee in a bucket in the corner. Thank fuck he takes me to the toilet once a day. But even in there, I’m chained to the wall and given exactly ten minutes to get done before he comes back in to get me. So there’s no escaping from there, either.
He’s smart. He knows that no matter how much he hurts me, I’ll always try to run away at the first opportunity. There’s no Stockholm shit going on here. I hate him and he hates me and only one of us is leaving this fight alive.
So until I find some kind of way to outsmart him, to overpower him, to just fucking get past him, I’m screwed. I’m as good as dead.
When I come to I’m still tied to the bed, face down in a pile of bedsprings. A sharp pain in my arm lets me know the needle has found its vein. I moan as liquid burns a fire inside me, spreading from my elbow to my shoulder and then enveloping my entire body. It hurts like nothing else I’ve ever had injected into my body, and I panic as I wonder if he’s decided to just be done with me and kill me already.
He must see the panic in my eyes, because he laughs.
“Don’t worry,” he practically sings. “It’s not poison. At least, not the kind you think it is.”
My limbs feel heavy and my brain feels like it’s been stuffed with tissue paper. It’s all scrunchy and vague inside, and I can’t quite see from one thought to another, each synapse shrouded from the next.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” I say, confused. Why am I talking? I curse myself for engaging with him and bite down on my lip to try and wake myself up a little.
“Are you afraid?” Dornan asks.
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation.
And that’s when it dawns on me. He’s given me something that makes it almost impossible for me to resist his questions. A sedative. A truth serum of some kind.