Chapter 19
Amber
The next morning, I’m shocked when I wake up to whispers coming from outside the room.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
For one horrible moment, I wonder whether he drugged me again, whether I don’t remember falling asleep because it was forced on me.
But then I remember watching the movie, confessing about Parker, and how I broke my vow to myself not to cry as it felt like every bad thing that’s happened in the last few months fell on me all at once.
But it was Ambrosia who cried for her brother. It was Ambrosia who broke her promise to herself. It’s Ambrosia who is a victim—a survivor, sure, but also a victim.
It’s Amber who’s going to put an end to our suffering.
“You can’t let her go!” A voice hisses, and my chest feels tight when I recognize Dex’s voice. He’s supposed to be the good one, so his words feel like a betrayal.
“I wouldn’t if I could.” Cal says calmly, as if he hadn’t even considered it. “She’s too important to me.”
My heart fucking hurts, and his words do nothing to ease the ache.
I’m important to him. Is it because he paid for me? Because I belong to him?
“Well, you can’t kill her, so what the fuck are you going to do with her?”
I lie perfectly still, refusing to give up the fact that I’m awake, that I can hear them. I peel my eyes open just the slightest bit and see them through the crack where the door was left open.
Dex is dressed, with a coffee in hand, while Cal looks as though he just rolled out of bed, boxers and bedhead and… is he hard, or is the imprint in his boxers just that big?
“Hopefully fuck her continuously,” Cal says, far too calmly for my liking. “Constantly, keep the beast at bay for as long as I can....”
That, at least, spurs my heart to begin again.
Three days ago, I woke up tied to this fucking bed, naked and in so much pain. When the drugs subsided, I clung to the safety of sleep, begging it to come back and swallow me so I didn’t have to deal with the reality of my situation, of everything that happened.
I feigned sleep as long as I could, and neither of them has done anything to me. But Cal sounds like that’s exactly the plan.
My time in the captivity of Ma’am and her guards feels like a bad dream, the kind that clings to the fabric of your soul, sending your brain back to obsess over it again and again no matter how much you tell yourself to focus on something happy.
It also prepared all of us for the reality of our eventual reassignment…
the fact that all we amount to is what we can do with our bodies.
Or, in my case, what other people can do with my body.
I learned long ago how to use my body to get what I want. It was a crucial progression for me when I discovered that I either used it for my own purpose or someone else would feel entitled to use it for theirs.
Sex isn’t personal to me. It never has been, and it never will be.
I learned to rewrite the pain of my earlier experiences and shape them into something that I can benefit from, whether it’s just the power of making a man turn into a pleading mess beneath me or the physical catharsis of using my body how I want.
I can be a good little whore if this is what I have to do to stay alive…
I don’t even know where the desire to live comes from. I assume it’s innate, biological, something I can’t turn off.
Cal doesn’t begrudge me for not getting out of bed that day, bringing me snacks that I stare at for a long time before I relent enough to munch on them. And when he comes back to bed that night, he puts on the next movie in our series.
It feels like a betrayal of my own common sense, and maybe even my sanity, but my body has already surrendered to Cal after months of physical bonding that I have no memory of.
He shaped me, without ever realizing he was doing it, and earned the allegiance of my body.
I haven't yet asked him to tell me a date so I can figure out just how long I was his basement captive, to tell me what’s happened in the world when I was unconscious, or to show me any sort of news articles.
In a way, I think my body is protecting my mind from all of the awful things that have happened.
It's as if surrendering to him makes everything that's happened to lead us to this point okay.
I don't know if it's Pavlovian conditioning or if I'm just considerably more fucked up than I thought I was, but the man I share a bed with every night has stolen my body's loyalty, and I don't know how to contend with that, either.
It's been a long few days, unproductive in the grand scheme of things.
Dex comes over and checks on me straight away, asks if I'm okay and if there's anything he can do for me. When I assure him there isn't (because I'm not about to tell him that he could distract his best friend while I make a break for it), he goes to the kitchen with Cal to discuss business. They seem entirely too confident that I won’t make a break for it by throwing a chair through a window and using his bedsheets to shimmy down the side of the building. I suppose I could do it, too, if I wanted to show my hand. But so far, he hasn’t touched me since I’ve been awake, and his apartment is not the worst place I’ve ever been stuck.
He hasn’t tried to fuck me, and he feeds me for free, so I’m not too intent on the idea of escape.
I know what awaits me on the streets. Better the devil I know.
When I finally creep out of the bedroom to find them at the table, discussing work, I gather just enough from eavesdropping to figure out that they work in some kind of film industry.
At first, the revelation strikes terror in me at the thought of what kind of ‘films’ he's making and whether he made any recordings while I was out. I’ve heard of revenge porn and snuff films. I clearly don’t fall into either category, since I didn’t do anything to end up on Cal’s radar in the first place, and I’m clearly alive.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to record himself fucking me, maybe share it with friends, or post it for the kudos of strangers.
The idea should disgust me. But I'd actually like to know what happened while I was under the spell of whatever drugs he had me on. I'd like to see why my body seems to feel so loyal to him, why I'm more at ease with a man who bought me than I ever was in the home I grew up in.
When Dex leaves, I swallow the tiny bit of pride I still have left and decide to bring it up.
Mustering all the nerve I can possibly fathom, I trek to the kitchen and find Cal poring over papers, massaging his temples.
He looks frustrated, and I wonder if I should table this conversation for a safer time.
But it’s too late. Sensing my presence, he looks up and grins. My heart falters, confused.
Now or never. Bite the damn bullet.
“Do you record yourself with women?” I blurt out before I can lose my nerve.
My question seems to take him by surprise, because he just blinks at me like he's trying to process that question.
He’s infuriatingly gorgeous, his sooty lashes longer than mine. Asshole.
“I haven't.” He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck like the thought has just taken him by storm, as though he's never considered the idea, and I've just opened him up to a whole world of possibilities. “I have a security feed set up that I use to monitor the basement, but it’s just a live feed. No recording.”
A security feed. So even when I was alone, I wasn’t alone.
I don’t know how I should feel about that.
Violated? Angry? Probably both, but I don’t feel anything except disappointment as I realize that I’m missing chunks of reality, that I’ll never know the full extent of what he did to me during that time.
“So, you don't have any… clips… of us?”
“No…” His eyes scan my face, looking for any sort of reason for my questioning. “I didn’t think about that.” He frowns. “Is that a bad thing?”
I shake my head and turn, deciding to let that idea go before he can press the matter further. But he stops me with a hand around my wrist, making me spin back to find him face-to-face with me.
My mouth is opening to tell him not to fucking touch me, but the words never come.
I can feel his breath on my lips, and there's a current of electricity between us, something static.
“What is it?” He asks, searching for an explanation. “Why do you want to know if I recorded what I did to you?”
I don't want to tell him the truth of it.
I don't want to tell him that he’s not the first person to claim my body without my consent before and that that man never felt safe to me despite the fact he was meant to be a safe place.
I don't want to tell him that even in the depravity of our situation, Cal had made me feel peace at times.
.. that sleep was easier than being like this, not understanding what my purpose is here.
So, I settle for a version of the truth, deciding lies will do no good for any of us.
“I was just wondering what it was like...” I swallow, trying to summon the courage to drop the last part, “what you're like.”
That takes him by surprise.
His face goes smooth, like he has to clear all his thoughts and start again to try and comprehend what I just said.
“You... wanted to see what I'm like?”
“Yes.” I swallow my shame, feeling the heat in my cheeks deepening. “I wanted to know if it was violent or sensual or robotic…”
This is so fucking stupid.
Asking my rapist to tell me how he did it… how it made him feel. Referring to what he did as rape feels too raw, though it is the technical definition.
So why does what he did feel so different from what others did?