Chapter 15 Amber
Amber
The sudden feeling of my skull splitting in half pulls me from sweet darkness; nausea quickly follows.
I'm going to throw up.
I try to sit up before I can get sick, but I can't move. There's something holding me down. No... someone.
“Shh!” He soothes, rubbing a thumb over my forehead like that will chase away the pain.
“Please!” My voice is hoarse, cracking down the middle of a single-syllable word.
My face is wet, and I vaguely wonder if I was crying in my sleep or if the ache is from having a cock shoved into my throat while I was unconscious.
My mouth is dry.
“It's okay,” he soothes, his voice soft and strong. It's not gentle, though, like his patience has a limit that I'm going to meet very quickly. But he hasn't held a gun to my head yet, so I guess I'm in a better place than I was last time I was awake.
“I'm going to be sick.” I warn him, half a second too late.
The bile is already burning the back of my throat; it bubbles up into my mouth as he sweeps my hair into his fist and helps turn my head, and then I'm spewing my guts all over the dark silk sheets.
At least, it feels like I am. All that splashes onto the sheets is liquid, and I can't see it through the tears burning in my eyes, the splitting of my head, and the ache deep inside me as I retch.
I expect anger. I expect a hand across the cheek or for him to shove the sheet in my face, but he does none of that.
“It's okay,” he says again. “Let it out.”
It's not like I have a choice in the matter.
I don't know the last time I had something edible in my mouth.
Too long ago, given how the bile burns a path all the way up my trachea.
I feel like I'm going to suffocate on the mucus in my nose, but I can't stop retching long enough to clear it, and I can't get my hands up to my face to wipe it away.
I'm vaguely aware of the hand slipping beneath my chin, peeling my face off the sheets so that I'm not left to lay in my own vomit.
My body aches; whatever pain it experienced before is worsened by the violent vomiting spell, and I think I'm too tired to continue because it stops slowly and then all at once.
When I finally draw in a breath, I nearly suffocate around the vomit that got stuck in my nose.
The cloth he presses against my nose sparks panic, but I can't fight it, so I simply wait for the darkness to take me again.
But he's not trying to knock me out, I guess, because he leans forward, his face hovering over mine.
“Blow your nose.”
I do it half-heartedly, not having the energy for more, and he wipes my face with the cloth, presumably cleaning me up.
I can feel my eyes rolling, my body trying to drag me back to the darkness, but his hand taps my cheek insistently, making my eyes open wider to take them in.
“Stay awake,” he warns. “Or it will happen again when you wake up next.”
I don't know if that's a threat, but it's not appealing. I hate throwing up... particularly since I have no agency over my own body right now.
“Water?” I try my luck, hoping for something to clear the taste from my tongue.
“No,” he shakes his head. “Not yet. You'll make yourself sick again.”
I close my eyes, certain that I'll die of dehydration if I don't get some fluids in me.
“You're okay. The I.V. is giving you everything you need right now.”
The I.V.?
I let my eyes open just enough to take in my surroundings, wondering whether I'm in a hospital.
But the answer to that is obviously no.
This isn't a hospital room.
It's dark, with richly painted walls and thick drapes.
It's also bare from what I can see. It looks like a torture chamber, a thought that is reaffirmed when he guides my head back against the bed and pulls a loop across it, securing me against it so that I can't move.
My eyes still can, and they flicker to the stand near my bed, the I.V.
machine set up with a saline drip. I wonder if it's only saline being pushed into my veins as I glance down at the needle buried in the crook of my inner arm.
It makes me cringe again, wanting to vomit at the sight, but I take a quick breath in to assuage the nausea, not keen on the idea of choking to death on my own bile.
My stomach twists as he peels back the blankets placed over me, just enough to access the most vulnerable part of me. It’s almost like he's checking on something, and then I become uncomfortably aware of the tight feeling on my thigh.
My heart rate spikes, as evidenced by the monitor on the other side of the room, and I guess the man must have realized I figured it out because he nods.
“The catheter is still in the right spot. You're okay.”
Catheter.
Just the mention of the word makes me want to pull the thing from between my legs, and I feel a phantom burning there.
I put myself through the first year of nursing school, did all the things I needed to do, and I have the debt to prove it. But I passed out in clinical every time I had to draw blood, let alone insert a catheter.
Tears flood my cheeks at the rage and humiliation of having such an intimate procedure done while I was unconscious.
Worse things have happened, and yet it doesn’t dull the anguish of this violation.
“It's not permanent.” He assures me, and I fix my eyes on him to assess that claim.
He doesn't look like a doctor.
He looks like the fucking devil... suave, sophisticated, everything you expect from a man who has enough money and charm to do whatever he wants to people.
He’s gorgeous, too. Dark hair that isn’t styled, the edges just barely brushing the collar of a starched shirt, and a beard that’s just past the point of stubble.
He has a presence that leaves no doubt in my mind that this is the kind of man who can do whatever he wants.
If his good looks can’t get him out of something, his money certainly will.
“Please…” I plead, trying to free my hands from where they're tied down beneath the blankets.
I realize now the reason I couldn't move when I first woke up wasn't because he was sitting on top of me. I realize now he's straddling me, none of his weight on me.
But beneath the blankets, I'm tied down and completely naked.
“It's all right.” He soothes, not for the first time.
But nothing is all right. I don't know who he is or where I am, but I know where I came from before this.
And there's zero chance that anything is all right.
My lashes flutter, a tear clinging to them as I stare up at the ceiling, where a large chandelier glows with all the bulbs half-lit.
“Stay awake.” The man urges, his hand on my cheek, trying to rub some life into me.
But it's a moot point. Even if I could, I don't want to.
I want to die rather than face whatever hell he has prepared for me.
The lights blur together and begin to spin like I’m on a merry-go-round.
And then my eyes close.