Chapter 8
Eight
One Week Later
Piper
M y lungs were crying out for mercy.
Same with my thighs. My hamstrings were taut, feeling as if they might just snap at any moment. The growling in my stomach had stopped, replaced by a gnawing, seemingly endless emptiness. All I thought about was food. I’d scoured the woods already, looking for edible plants. There were none. Or my brain had forgotten how to distinguish food from poison. Soon, I wouldn’t care. Soon, I’d be stuffing any plant into my mouth, willing to risk death just to stop the pain.
Every night, I sat at the dinner table with Knox as he ate juicy cuts of meat that smelled better and better every time. He always put some on my plate. I didn’t have to sit there, he didn’t force me at gunpoint. He didn’t do anything to me at gunpoint. He wasn’t holding me hostage against my will.
Although he wasn’t cutting me with a blade, his stare, his presence, was just as sharp. My body was constantly in a state of fight-or-flight, unable to rest properly.
The days were long. Not just because I got up at dawn to run in the woods. Knox didn’t follow me like he had that first morning, but his eyes did from the moment I got out of bed.
I did my best to ignore him, even though my entire body hummed with fear and desire and hatred.
Yes, I hated him. For being so calm, for being so unflappable. So resistant to my charm, immune to anger. Even when he’d hurled the mug at the wall, he hadn’t done it out of fury. He’d done it calmly. To make a point. That was so much worse.
The shards of it still remained where they fell. No way was I cleaning up his mess, and he didn’t strike me as someone who would either. Well, that was a lie. He did the dishes from every meal. Everything in the cabin was kept spotless.
But the shards remained. A reminder.
My body was weakening. There was no fresh fruit left, even though I’d tried to ration. The bread that remained was stale and hard. And with the calories I was burning from pure fear, from running, pulling weeds in the area that could roughly be called a garden, from chopping wood, it was nowhere near enough fuel for my body.
Running was stupid. Expending energy I didn’t have. But I had to. There had to be some way to release the adrenaline, to feel like myself. Running had always been my therapy. My one solace. Escape.
I wouldn’t let him take it from me. Even as my body failed me.
Black spots danced in my vision, and I rapidly tried to blink them away. I was only a couple hundred yards from the cabin.
I’d make it. Couldn’t a person last for like months without food? I had water. And it’s not like I was technically starving. People in L.A. ate less than I did and managed to star in movies and walked catwalks.
Dramatic. I was being dramatic by thinking the trees were turning sideways. There was no way I was going to pass out.
Then the trees moved jerkily, the ground rushed toward my face and with a loud thump. With a flash of pain came blessed darkness and thankfully, no more hunger.
“Fuck.”
The single, four-letter word filtered through my groggy brain, mixing with the gnawing, urgent hunger that had become a part of me like a barnacle against a reef.
It was hard to think around it, even in my half-conscious state.
That was likely why I heard emotion in that single, four-letter word. Emotion that sounded incredibly like worry laced with an edge of panic.
I must’ve conjured that, though, in my desperation to have someone care for me.
Before I could register his closeness, Knox’s arms were wrapped around me and I was up off the ground. The movement made my almost empty stomach lurch as I fought to hold on to the meager nutrients I’d ingested that morning.
Plus, vomiting on Knox would be kind of embarrassing.
I somehow managed to steady my nausea, even as we started moving. He held me close to his chest, his arms like a band, absorbing the impact of his steps so he barely jostled me.
He smelled of pine and the ocean. Again, something I must’ve made up. And warmth I felt against his chest. That couldn’t have been possible; he was a human block of ice.
He didn’t speak, so all I heard was the low thump of his heartbeat. It was nice. Calming. It beckoned me back to the darkness.
“Piper, don’t you—”
Again with the urgent, worried and commanding tone. But even he couldn’t call me back from this blackness.
Fortunately.
Knox
Her runs lasted forty-five minutes to an hour.
The past few days they’d been closer to forty-five.
Because she was hungry. Weak. Expending too much energy by running through rough terrain followed by spending the day in the garden, pulling weeds, chopping wood. Doing anything but being still, reserving her energy.
It was driving me fucking crazy. Seeing her pick at food that was barely enough to keep her alive, let alone fuel her body for the constant movement throughout the day. A lot of people—most people, actually—would spend their time in captivity curled up in a ball. Sleeping. Escaping their reality. She had books. I knew that because I’d looked through her suitcase during one of her runs. And she had flashes of colorful clothes, lacy underwear that had made my cock weep at the sight of them. I slept with a pair of her pink panties curled in my fist at night.
It was fucking creepy, crossed a line even I thought I wouldn’t cross. Stealing panties like a fucking sex offender. But I couldn’t stop myself.
It was sick. That my thoughts were solely counting how many calories she was consuming, expending, calculating when exactly she’d succumb to the consequences of malnutrition and mild starvation.
Her cheeks were already hollow, dark circles ringing her eyes, even though she collapsed into a dreamless, exhausted sleep for over ten hours a night. Her frame was shrinking, clothing that fit her like a second skin a week ago beginning to hang off her.
Yet she still ran.
And chopped wood.
Hacked away at the overgrowth surrounding the cabin with rusty shears she’d found fuck knows where.
She’d managed to repair the shutters. She was … sprucing up the place where I was holding her captive, and I had no idea what the fuck to do with that.
I’d been expecting some kind of mental break. It usually happened a lot sooner than people anticipated. People fantasized how long they might survive in deadly situations. Self-aggrandized about their mental and physical strength. But when taken from familiar surroundings, creature comforts, and forced into survival mode, people generally withered within days.
Not Piper. She was waning, yes. But not withering. Even though she was showing a physical toll, her eyes were bright with life. Stubbornness. She sat at the table with me every night, head held high, nibbling at what food she could tolerate while staring defiantly at the plate of meat that must’ve been appealing to her animal nature, desperate to survive.
Her principles were stronger than her baser nature. Not many people existed like that. Certainly not in my world.
She was a flower, none of the bloom fading despite the lack of care and attention she received.
It impressed me plenty. But it didn’t weaken my resolve. The stronger she showed me she was, the more desperate I became to be the one who broke her. Then she’d be mine somehow. Even after I handed her off to Stone, part of her would always be mine.
When she’d been gone for fifty minutes, I started looking for her. I wasn’t a tracker by any means, but I knew I could find her wherever she was in these vast woods.
It didn’t take me long.
She was sprawled facedown in the dirt, unconscious. Blood trickled from a wound in her head.
Such images were not shocking to me. Blood. An unconscious person. Yet my heart rate increased, my breathing became shallower, and the tips of my fingers prickled with something.
Though new voices inside of me that made me uncomfortable urged me to run to her, I purposefully slowed down my gait. Approached her unhurriedly. As if I didn’t care. I didn’t.
I didn’t care about Piper beyond the pieces I broke her into.
The few seconds it took to get to her side, kneel, to put my fingers to her pulse felt like an eon.
It was there. Sluggish, almost concerningly so, but she had a pulse. Her skin was still warm, and I failed to stop myself from breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with the bitter yet not unpleasant twang of her sweat.
Even in her prone state, I wanted to lick the perspiration off the side of her head, to taste it. I wanted to run my fingers through the stream of blood from her forehead, coat myself in it.
There wasn’t time for me to indulge in my increasingly strange yearnings. There was never a time for that. I had a task. To break her. But not kill her. I was doing my job, I told myself as I picked her up.
She was light. Too fucking light considering her stature a week ago. She let out a tiny sound and nestled her head into my chest, proving she was wholly without survival instinct. She should’ve been battling out of my arms, even in her semi-conscious state. Yet she was as helpless and fragile as a fucking baby.
I kept my eyes on her as her eyelids fluttered then groggily tried to focus on me. The image of her mud-stained, blood-smeared, gaunt face was more beautiful to me than I could describe.
But her awareness and consciousness only lasted for a handful of seconds. I watched as the force of her exhaustion, malnutrition, dragged her back down again.
“Piper, don’t you dare pass out on me again."
Even as I commanded her to stay, she left.
And she took part of my sanity with her. Part of my soul lapsing into the darkness with her.
Piper
Something warm brushed against my forehead. Not the same warmth of the chest I’d been pressed against. Nothing was warm like that.
This was softer, wetter.
A washcloth, I deduced without opening my eyes.
My head throbbed painfully, so I assumed that opening my eyes to the reality of the situation would only make it worse. I decided to keep them closed a little while longer. Damn, they were heavy, impossibly heavy. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t know if I had the strength to open them.
There was a crushing, unyielding weight over my whole body. My limbs were heavy, and my stomach was excruciatingly empty.
Though I felt sluggish and out of it, my hunger was visceral.
The warmth at my head disappeared, replaced by a sharp sting.
My eyes popped open as I let out a hiss of pain, unable to move myself because I was too weak.
I was met with an icy, intense gaze.
Knox.
Inches from my face, watching me with a practiced concentration, cold expression in place.
“Hold still,” he ordered as I tried to wiggle. “I need to clean this.”
More pain at my head, eliciting another hiss between my teeth.
I glanced down at the coffee table. There was a bowl of water with a washcloth in it, the washcloth was stained crimson. My blood. I’d hit my head on my way down, obviously, which might have been the reason for losing consciousness. Or the mild starvation. Or the trauma of the past week.
I held still, considering the sequence of events, gritting my teeth as Knox cleaned my wound.
Then it struck me.
He was cleaning my wound. He had carried me in the gentle cocoon of his embrace after I fell. Which meant he’d come looking for me. Then he’d washed my blood.
My eyes traveled to follow the journey of his hands into a first aid kit.
“Doesn’t need stitches,” he told me, focusing on my head and not my curious gaze.
He was speaking too. Volunteering information when he could’ve just stayed silent. I hadn’t asked any questions. I was too shocked, tired, sore and hungry to do that yet.
He was speaking. Why? Did the silence make him nervous? Surely not.
And had I imagined the concern on his face as I’d briefly woken up.
Could he … care about me?
I was considering this as he put butterfly bandages on my forehead. His fingers were gentle and cool, my body reveling in the caretaking touch from such a violent man.
He leaned back as if to create distance. “Stone wouldn’t like you if you were … damaged.”
Cold water washed over me.
I flinched away from him, pushing myself upright on the sofa, bracing myself as the room tilted much like the woods had. My head pounded, my stomach lurched, and I saw stars.
“Well, I should’ve fallen harder, then.” I sounded too weak for my liking. “I’d rather disfigure myself for life than be pleasing to that monster.”
I considered that as a very real, albeit drastic option. Do something to myself to make me unappealing to a sick fuck who liked his victims to be pretty. Would that save me?
The vain part of me recoiled at the prospect, but only for a moment. I didn’t treasure surface beauty. I wanted freedom and would be more than willing to sacrifice for that, though it sickened me that that’s what I might be pushed to do.
Hurt myself so I wasn’t pleasing to a man so he wouldn’t want me. I’d been so sure that the world had moved on from such brutality, having never considered the possibility that mutilation would be required to keep me safe from men. But times hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought. The tyrants just moved further into the shadows, like Knox, or got better at disguising themselves as men, like Stone.
Knox had been inspecting me the entire time I mulled this over. Like I was an insect under a magnifying glass, and he was considering whether to set me on fire or not.
“You would do it,” he nodded, as if he were reading my mind. “You would scar yourself for life if it meant getting out of this.”
“In a heartbeat.”
“But you’re extraordinarily beautiful.”
My throat went dry.
It wasn’t said as a compliment. He said it as if it was a statement, an indisputable fact. The sky was blue, grass was green, and I was extraordinarily beautiful.
I wasn’t falsely modest; I knew that my features had arranged themselves into a way that wasn’t abhorrent. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself extraordinarily beautiful .
And though he uttered it in his same cruel, lifeless tone, the words shook my insides.
I swallowed, trying to hide whatever effect he had over me, my head still throbbing.
“Looks don’t mean anything to me if they’re going to be a collar a man thinks he can hold around my neck.”
Still, Knox inspected me. “Even scarred, disfigured, you’d still be gorgeous. It wouldn’t save you. It would be a mistake. And messy. Don’t do it.”
He got up and walked in the direction of the kitchen. My eyes didn’t follow him. I just stared at the space he previously occupied, feeling numb to the conversation we’d just had. The dichotomy of his gentle touch, confusing words and ice-cold demeanor.
There was a clang in the kitchen, the whistle of a boiling kettle, yet I still remained motionless.
It was in part due to weakness and the fragility of my stomach. I might’ve had a concussion, and I was exhausted. It felt like there was no passage of time.
Then Knox was back.
With a steaming plate and mug.
“I’m not going to eat that.” I flicked my wrist toward the plate. I couldn’t see the contents, but I assumed it would be meat since it was all that was left.
My gnawing hunger urged me to snatch it, eat it with my bare hands, keep myself alive by abandoning my principles, markers of my identity. I could get those back when I was free.
But I’d never be free if I submitted to Knox.
Despite the power of those thoughts—my finger even twitched—I held fast.
Knox didn’t say anything, he just placed the plate and the mug on the coffee table in front of me.
I blinked down at the bowl.
It was a heaping portion of rice topped with beans of some kind. No sign of meat. My mouth watered. Again, the instinct to jump on the food was overwhelming.
Instead, with all the willpower I possessed, I looked up at Knox.
“You’ve had food for me this entire time,” I deduced slowly. There was no way I’d just missed a bag of rice and a can of beans. When you were as hungry as I was, looking for food became a constant thing you did with desperation. Food was a background thought throughout the day, hunger a part of my being.
“You’ve been watching me slowly starve knowing there was food that I could eat,” I realized out loud.
Not even an ounce of guilt crossed Knox’s expression.
“You enjoyed it,” I hissed. “Watching me hurt. Watching me starve.”
No reaction.
My cheeks heated from my hatred toward him. And his fucking games.
“Can you hurl wrath at me and eat at the same time?” he asked mildly.
I ground my teeth together, furious, starving, confused. I wanted to hurl the plate at the wall, just like he had with my mug of tea. It would be the thing to do, to establish my strength, dominance, to show him that he couldn’t break me.
But I needed to survive too. And therefore, I had to make the choice between a show of strength or possibly looking weak in order to help me stay strong.
I gave him one last scowl before leaning forward to grasp the plate, my movements stilted and wobbly.
He didn’t offer to help as I fumbled with the fork with numb hands, he just watched.
Knowing that he was eyeing my every movement, I didn’t shove the fork in my mouth like an animal as I was desperate to do. With forced casualness, I leaned back on the sofa, slowly bringing the fork to my mouth as if I hadn’t been surviving on handfuls of fruit and bread for a week.
I bit back the moan that built at the back of my throat once the food hit my mouth. It was good. Anything would’ve tasted good at that point. It was well made, the rice buttery and perfectly cooked, the beans dynamic with flavorful spice and herbs.
I swallowed with relief and delight.
“Good girl.”
My entire body jolted at the praise coming from Knox’s mouth as he watched me swallow.
I looked at him, my entire body having a visceral reaction to the words. Heat, warmth pooled in my core, my nipples pebbling.
It must’ve been my head injury because suddenly Knox did not look cold and cruel; he looked hungry, ravenous … for me.
My hand holding the fork shook as I battled against my own hunger.
“I. Am. Not. Your. Good. Girl.” I spat the words out as if they were made of gravel. They were that heavy to speak too, not entirely truthful.
I wanted with all my independent, feminine fury for them to be true. But in my darker heart, I questioned it.
The hunger that I might’ve imagined left Knox’s face.
“Keep telling yourself that.” There was a slightly arrogant yet sexy drawl to his normally lifeless tone. “When I come back, that plate will be empty.”
And then he left the cabin. Left me with food I didn’t want to eat on principle and feelings that were absolutely depraved.
Yet I finished the bowl. I damn near licked the bowl. I finished the tea too. And, although there was no logical reason for me to even think of doing it, I lay back down on the sofa.
It was where he slept. It smelled of him. The scent enveloped me.
Pine and salt and darkness. As if darkness had a smell. It did, though. Rich and deep and enchanting. Forbidden.
He slept there. I wondered what he dreamed about. Did monsters dream? Did his sins build up and sit on his chest like a kettlebell? Or did he sleep peacefully? Without regret.
Or, I wondered, did he dream of me like I dreamed of him?
Without knowing I was doing it, my hands went to my leggings, slipping beneath the tight fabric and finding my panties.
I toyed with them, biting my lip, knowing what I was doing was impressively fucked-up, knowing that Knox could walk back in at any moment.
But I didn’t care.
Not enough to stop.
My fingers went to where I was aching, where his words had stroked me. My teeth sank into the flesh of my lip, drawing blood as I circled my own clit, thinking of Knox’s hands. Imagining him coming in here and finding me like this, pressing me down on this sofa that smelled of him, ripping off my leggings then violently thrusting into me, bordering on painfully.
I writhed against the sofa as I imagined him pounding, his fingertips biting into my hips, filling me. Losing control with me. Claiming me.
My orgasm found me hard and quick, lost in a fantasy that was completely taboo.
My limbs were rigid from the way my body tensed against the overwhelming pleasure, and though I tried to silence it, a moan left my mouth.
Knox could hear me. Could walk in right now.
But wasn’t that what I wanted? Wasn’t that what made my orgasm that much more intense?
As I came down, my breathing was heavy, my shame weighing on me like a lead apron, unable to fully take root because of how good I felt.
The reality was heavier still.
I wanted Knox.
My cruel captor.
The man who would not save me from the devil, but eventually, once broken, he’d deliver me to him.
Despite all of that, my body yearned for him stronger than it had any substance on the planet.
Curling into the sofa, stomach full and soul tattered, I lapsed into a troubled sleep.
Knox
I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. It had taken every ounce of control honed over years and years not to go in there and finish her myself.
Not to yank her leggings off and bury myself in her cunt.
I’d walked into the cabin expecting to find Piper glaring daggers into me. That’s why I’d come back, wasn’t it? Because I craved her anger like it was my lifeforce. More so when she was strong enough to wield it.
Yeah, I had been hiding the food. Because I was trying to break her. Not kill her. It had been insurance I didn’t think I’d have to use.
It took a human around a month to entirely starve, give or take, but that had some long-lasting and messy effects, so I hadn’t intended to drag it on that long. Hadn’t thought I’d need to.
But seeing her eyes close, seeing her trying to hide just how fucking starving she was… Yeah, I needed to. I wanted to cook every one of her meals for her to see her body react like that.
I’d come back in to ensure that she had eaten it. I was almost certain she was smart enough to give herself the energy she required, but she was also stubborn as fuck, so I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if she’d left something in the bowl to challenge me.
If she had, I’d planned on punishing her, relishing the thought.
What I hadn’t expected was to walk in, find her reclined on the sofa, eyes closed and writhing in ecstasy as she made herself come.
It had stopped me dead in my tracks to see that. She was so far gone she didn’t know I was there, watching her. I’d never been so captivated in my life. My cock was straining in my pants so hard it was almost painful. The need to stroke it overwhelming. If I so much as brushed it, I felt like I’d spill in my fucking pants like a teenager. Not that I got the chance to have any regular sexual experiences as a teenager. Never did I have a feeling of need or desire without it being tainted with shame.
With the silent gait of a predator, I backed up from where I came, never taking my eyes from her.
I wanted to stay. Fuck, did I want to stay. Close enough to hear the crescendo of her shallow breaths, smell the scent of her in the air. But staying meant that I ran the risk of interfering, marring a moment that was nothing less than absolute perfection.
I made it to the door, skulking out of sight at the edge of the window, watching her finish. Because all I was good for was being a voyeur, witnessing her experience this pleasure while denying my own.
There was nothing there for me.
Yet I wanted it all.