CHAPTER 2
The unease keeps prickling for the next few days, and whatever little sleep I get is restless. Checking the apartment and peering through the peephole becomes a nightly routine.
After a week, I decide enough is enough and refuse to succumb to my anxiety anymore. Who would break in here anyway? I’m on the fourth floor in a shitty apartment building in a calm neighborhood where the worst passers-by are drunk people headed home.
So when I once more wake up from some strange sound, tense and ready to jump out of bed, I try to keep calm and remind myself how crazy this is. No one is here. There’s nothing to worry about.
I’m dozing off again when a scratchy, metallic sound breaches the silence. Suddenly, I’m wide awake, lying dead still as I listen. The sound is too close, like it’s coming from the hall, right outside my door—maybe at my door? And it keeps going.
Click.
The front door slides open and catches on the chain.
My heart pounds like it’s trying to punch a hole in my chest as I scramble to the floor and slide into the pitch-black darkness under the bed.
Something rattles. The door chain. Maybe it will stop them. Surely they won’t enter knowing someone’s home.
There’s a metallic snap, and terror is like a punch to my gut as the door slides open. A streak of light moves across the floor and disappears as quickly as it came as the door shuts.
Panic pulses through my system, so hard I can barely breathe—I don’t dare to breathe. Footsteps move across the floor, clicking the way fancy men’s shoes do. Two sets. The sound echoes through the night. It’s like they’re not even trying to be quiet—like they don’t care if they wake someone.
Maybe they’re here for someone and not something. Me.
Pressing a hand to my mouth, I suppress the urge to scream. It’s a well-known fact that Eastern Europe has huge problems with human trafficking.
Click, click, click.
The sound of shoes approaches. I picture polished leather and fancy oxfords. Shoes that are in no way appropriate for a break-in. The realization chills my blood, and I stop breathing as a pair of shoes just like the ones I imagined appear before me.
The sheets on my bed rustle as if the intruder is looking for something. Me, probably. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying it will all go away. Maybe this is all just a vivid nightmare.
But it’s not. I know it when I feel a strong presence right in front of me. I look again and stare straight into a set of hard eyes. I can’t see anything else. Only the terrifying orbs. All facial features remain concealed in the shadows.
“She’s in here,” the man in front of me calls out with a deep, resonant voice that seems to vibrate with the kind of power that would set my nerves humming at a BDSM club, but chills my blood here in the dead of night.
I yelp as he snatches my arm and tugs. I grab the edge of the bed as I slide across the floor, but his grip is impossibly strong, and all I manage is to drag the bed with me before I lose my grip.
I open my mouth to scream, but the sound dies in a gasp as he yanks me off the floor. With a hand over my mouth, he slams me into his body—a massive plane of solid muscle. The scream finally rips from my lungs, loud and forceful, only to die in his palm.
Sheer horror descends upon my mind, sending me into a frenzied bout of struggling. I writhe in his grip, dig my heels into the floor, and push and pull at the arms locked around me. But it’s no use. He’s enormous and I’m tiny. He doesn’t even budge when I drop my weight to hang heavily in his arms.
My heart contracts and slams against my chest as a lanky man in a loosely fitted suit appears like a ghastly monster in the shadows before me. His nostrils flare as he seems to take me in, eyes widening like a hungry beast. The thought that this guy might be about to force himself upon me has bile rising in my throat.
I dig my heels in again, this time to push back, away from the frothing beast and into the mountain of a man behind me. When it doesn’t work, I go frantic, kicking at the man restraining me and clawing at his arms. But it’s useless. His legs are like rods of steel, his arm an unbreakable vise.
My only weapon is my voice, and when he releases my mouth, I scream with the full force of my lungs. But only a shrill squeak leaks into the room. The rest dies in a thick piece of cloth that the scrawny man stuffs into my mouth. Pushing my tongue against the fabric, I try to spit it out, but he keeps shoving until my mouth is so full I have to focus just to breathe. Then he slaps a piece of duct tape over my mouth to keep it in place.
I have been gagged before. Red and black plastic balls, spider gags, and even rope. But I have never had my mouth stuffed so fully, and never by two strangers forcing themselves on me.
Tears leak from my eyes as helplessness sets in. I’m like a small bird trapped in large hands, my thrashing no better than the flapping of feeble wings as they rip my clothes off. One man takes my shorts, the other my camisole, and next goes my bra and my panties. Fabric burns across my skin, and all I can do is try to keep my feet steady on the ground as I jostle back and forth between the brutal hands that have no care whether I stand or fall.
I cry out into the gag when the gigantic man twists my arms behind my back, but it’s more out of shock than pain. He doesn’t need to pull tight; he has enough strength and control to immobilize me without hurting me. Yet, I feel the ruthlessness in his motions—in the very air. Both men go about this sordid affair in a mechanical, detached sort of way, and I think that’s about the only similarity between the two.
And the attire,I realize with dread.
These men aren’t simple thieves who happened upon a woman that needed to be subdued. These men are rich and competent and have clearly done this before. There’s nothing haphazard or impulsive. It’s cold and calculated, like they’re working on routine. And worst of all, they’re here for me.
I double over as horror has my stomach seizing in an excruciating cramp. The man behind me adjusts his grip, so I don’t hang by the sockets of my arms. But the relief is short-lived as he throws me onto the bed and my knee slams into the edge. I squeeze my eyes shut, groaning at the sharp pain that stabs into my joint. I scramble across the mattress, away from the hard edges, but I don’t get far before the same man grabs me and flips me onto my back.
He gathers my wrists in an unbreakable grip, but despite his strength, I’m convinced I can free myself—it’s just one hand—and I launch into another burst of useless struggling. When the scrawny man hands him a bundle of rope, he easily replaces his hand with the rough material.
Once again, he proves his competence as an attacker. Tying up someone isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. Only people who have either tied someone up or been tied up know how easy it is to wriggle out of a few circles of rope. This man knows it too. He finishes off by dragging the rope between my wrists and around itself, creating two separate rope cuffs that I’ll never escape.
The other man ties my legs the same way, though with him, I manage to slow the process with a few kicks. But it only makes him go rougher, and the ropes are cutting into my skin by the time he ties the knot.
The massive man hops onto the bed, pinning me with his weight as he straddles me.
As he leans over to reach for one of my pillows, the lights in the courtyard come on, filtering through the thin curtains and revealing a cold set of gray eyes beneath thick eyebrows. A diagonal scar intersects one brow, lending him a menacing look—or rather, enhances the danger that permeates every single feature from his detached gaze to the sharp angles of his jaw and thick bone structure.
I’m not sure how or why, but somehow, I stop thrashing, shocked and mesmerized by the unabashed danger this man exudes.
He yanks the casing off the pillow, and when he places it over my head, about to pull it down, his eyes meet mine. He stops as if something has caught his attention.
I should look away—break the contact instead of staring the tiger straight in the eye—but I can’t help myself. Confusion, fear, and a strange urge to give in become a whirlwind of emotion inside me. My breaths come in heavy drags as I blink, look away, and look back at him.
He should resemble pure evil. And maybe he does to others. But to me, there’s something potent and worthy about him that robs me of air and hits straight into that instinctive place where my submission resides.
His head tilts a bit—only the slightest of motions—as he seems to study me. Then his eyes soften. Again, not much, but enough to make them seem less cold. A trace of something... human?
Without breaking eye contact, he gently slides a hand under my head to lift it, and in that moment, I can’t help feeling grateful. Grateful for the small sliver of tenderness. Tears gather at the corners of my eyes, and I blink to contain them, not wanting to display my vulnerability to this dangerous man.
But as he cradles my head, the pools grow bigger and spill over. It’s only a single tear, but it feels no better than a full-on crying fit when his gaze shifts to follow the tear on its way down my cheek. Suddenly, it’s not fear that has me in a chokehold. It’s the vulnerability I can’t handle. Lying here with my mouth stuffed and distended, my hands bound, and my body naked and exposed. Now also with a pleading need for comfort shining in my eyes when I should only feel fear and hatred.
It’s when he reaches up to trail a finger down the wet stripe that I break. I cry, whimpering into the fabric in my mouth as tears run in streams down my temples.
When he pulls the pillowcase over my head, enclosing me in blinding darkness, I succumb to a despair that has me jerking and shaking my head. Claustrophobia closes in on me. Choking loneliness. I’ve always felt alone, but this loneliness is starker than any I’ve ever known, searing deep into my soul.
My chest heaves as air rushes in and out of my nostrils, sucking the fabric close and blocking my only airway. When he drags rope over my neck, panic fully descends like it had been accumulating during the moment of reprieve. I writhe, kick my bound legs, and scream into the gag.
This time, though, there’s no violence in his movements. He seems almost careful as he lifts my head and winds the rope around my neck. Once. Twice. But his carefulness is not enough to counterbalance the threat of the rope. Not even when I realize it’s only a practical precaution to keep the pillowcase in place can I calm down.
My struggling becomes ever more crazed, and I whip my head from side to side and up and down as I jerk and twist on the mattress. My neck hurts from the thrashing, my throat from the screaming, but I can’t control any of it. All I can do is pant in a frantic rhythm. In and out through my nose, over and over again. But no oxygen reaches my lungs, and foggy spots dance in my mind as I grow dizzy.
A large hand presses down on my forehead, forcing my head into the mattress. I try to fight it but quickly realize the futility of it and go still. Stiff and tense, but still nonetheless. It’s enough to slow my breathing to a steady tempo that pulls me back from the ledge of unconsciousness.
As I give up the fight, he eases the pressure on my forehead. His hand just lies there, and somehow I’m almost grateful for it—grateful that it shoves back the panic and prevents me from hurting my already strained neck further.
At some point, I realize the room has gone quiet. Eerily so. Nothing else happens. We just wait. And I have no idea what for.
The ticking of my clock becomes an obtrusive sound that seems to grow louder by the second until it’s almost deafening. The wind in the big tree in the courtyard cuts through the silence like a storm is rustling its branches.
But I don’t hear the slightest sounds from the men. Barely a breath. I have lost awareness of the thin one. It’s only because I haven’t heard the front door slam that I know he must still be here. The man straddling me just sits there, his hand an unwelcome, yet appreciated weight on my forehead. We’re all suspended in a strange limbo.
My mind goes through all kinds of horrid scenarios as I lie there waiting. What I find most terrifying is the way they seem to work on routine, as if this is just another night on the job. The way they seem to be here for me.
But if they’re human traffickers, wouldn’t they be hauling me out of here by now?
I rack my brain to find a plausible explanation for this strange scenario, but come up blank.
I don’t know how much time passes like this. At first, I try to count the seconds, but my brain loses focus at around five minutes, and after what seems like ten, I give up.
Tick tock, tick tock. Time keeps ticking, darkness keeps pervading, and a slow haze creeps over my senses.
More than half an hour must have passed when the sound of my front door finally breaks me out of the dazed inertia.
Click, click, click, click. The same sound of fancy men’s shoes as before approaches, and my mind conjures images of polished leather, square heels, and perforations. It’s an image I used to love—an image that now instills fear in me. Squeaky sneakers would somehow seem less ominous. Less dangerous.
When the new man stops beside the bed, the massive one hops off to sit beside me. He’s still gentle when he lifts my bound hands over my head and places his other hand flat on my chest. The hand is surely meant to keep me in place, but like when he held my forehead, the intent seems more soothing than restrictive, and my mind struggles to remember this man is my perpetrator.
The warped pull I feel toward him only grows when what must be the scrawny man moves through the room to grab my legs cruelly. I remember how the massive man handled me the same way earlier, and it’s only now that I truly realize the change in him. At first, both men were cold and indifferent; now one is calm and gentle, one cruel and cold. The contrast messes with my head, making the hand on my chest seem protective even though I know it’s anything but.
I startle at the feeling of a third set of hands—the new man. Fingertips graze my thighs almost reverently. Slowly, they make their way down my legs, then back to the junction between my thighs, raising goosebumps along my skin as they go. They find their way to my hip bone and travel up along the sensitive skin on my stomach, ending their journey at my breasts, where they draw small circles around my nipples.
I tense at the intimate touch, expecting the hands to suddenly grab on hard. But they don’t. Instead, the long, slender fingers travel back to my stomach, continuing the circling motions there.
Barely daring to breathe, I lie completely still. The only motion is my stomach muscles that contract when the fingers graze a sensitive spot. They keep exploring my body with startling patience, as if curious to discover every curve and line. I become acutely sensitive, tingling all over while shivers shoot through me in all directions.
At some point, I even start trusting the digits as they show no signs of the untamed violence I expected.
When the hands have explored every little nook and cranny of my stomach, thighs, legs, and arms—even my palms—they find their way back to my chest to knead my breasts. Slowly and carefully. I squirm as I fight the urge to give in to the tempting sensations. The massive man, who still has a hand on my chest, presses down in response, and when I writhe more, he pushes harder, forcing me to give up the struggle again as the weight constricts my lungs.
The fingers move down to caress the sides of my mound, slipping between my thighs, just barely grazing my folds. I whimper and squeeze my thighs together, trying to deny the fingers entrance. But that’s not their intention. They don”t even try to push inside. They just continue the light stroking that I could easily mistake for a lover’s touch.
But that’s not what this is. I know that. The fabric in my mouth and the ropes around my neck constantly remind me what this is. But my body doesn’t care. My breathing deepens and heat pools between my legs as the fingers keep touching. I hold my breath, hoping it will help me control the heat rising in me, but it’s no use. Instead of concealing my reactions, I end up sucking in abrupt gulps of air through my nose when the air in my lungs grows scarce.
A chuckle sounds above me—probably from the man exploring my body—and a single finger slides up through my lips. Shame burns white-hot within me when he drags it down my thigh, leaving a trail of moisture in its wake.
Tears leak from my eyes, and I shake my head. How can this happen? I truly thought my depraved urges remained within the bounds of consent—fake, negotiated violations with men that I had chosen. Not in my wildest dreams did I think my body would respond like this to a real violation. I wish the man would fuck me brutally instead of toying with my body, stirring this reaction in me.
Shame constricts my chest, and sobs stutter in my throat, making me cough as I almost choke on the fabric in my mouth.
“Enough for today,” the man exploring my body says and abruptly removes his hands. I don’t know if he says it to me or the men, but as he leaves the room, the two men holding me down start to untie the ropes.
The man at my feet keeps up the cold brutality, but the one beside my head proceeds with an almost tender touch. He takes his time untying my wrists and the rope around my neck, gently lifting my head and placing my hands at my sides as he goes.
He pulls up the pillowcase, just enough to remove the gag, and proceeds with a strange carefulness as he removes the tape in increments, as if trying to reduce the pain. The irony throbs in my knee as I remember how he caused that pain earlier.
All the fight seems to have drained from me, leaving only paralyzation. Even as my limbs are free, I just lie there, letting the massive man pull the pillowcase back down over my mouth and tuck the comforter around my naked body, like he’s putting a child back to bed after a nightmare. I don’t even move a muscle as the men leave and I hear the finality of the front door clicking shut, leaving a quietness as eerie as the nightmare I just endured.
I can’t seem to break out of the shock, and I have no idea how long I lie there before I finally pull my hands out from the comforter to remove the pillowcase. Then another long stretch of time passes while I stare unmoving into the darkness.