Chapter Seventeen
The mattress smelled of dirt and grime, and I still felt Chase’s weight over the top of me.
Pulling my legs apart, someone else secured the ties as he held me down.
Firm hands over my wrists. And now these were tied to the headboard, metal warming as it leached the heat from my hands.
But anything was better than hanging right now, even if the smells flooding my senses, creating noise in my brain, were desperately trying to convince me what had happened on this mattress before me.
I could smell a hint of it. Death. Rot. I knew exactly what it was.
But for now, I was too tired. Way too tired.
My body ached. Bruises on bruises. My stomach rumbling and my mouth dry.
Dried blood scratching and pulling at my face every time I moved or flinched.
My body as dirty and battered as this old mattress.
It was soft, though. Softer than the hook.
My brain screamed at me to move, to fight, to test the ties until my wrists split wider, but my body wouldn’t listen anymore.
Every muscle burned, every joint locked tight, my arms and shoulders on fire.
The air felt heavy, dragging me down with every breath.
I told myself I’d only close my eyes for a second.
Just a second, then I’d be strong enough to tear free, strong enough to run.
The blindfold already gave me darkness, and that darkness pulled at me, thick and suffocating.
My chest rose, fell. The stink of rot clung to the mattress, wrapping around me, whispering of everything I didn’t want to think about.
Still, I sank into it, my body heavy, my brain screaming muffled warnings, but I was too far gone to stop.
Sleep wasn’t safety. I knew that. But right now, it was the only escape I had left.
*****
I don’t know what woke me. Maybe it was the fall, my stomach plummeting like I’d just been chucked off a cliff.
Or the sudden realisation I’d succumbed to sleep.
Proper sleep. Back in that room, up on that hook, I might have snatched a few minutes here and there.
But every time I’d moved slightly, my body swayed, fresh pain coursing through my muscles.
I’d had no real sleep, sleep exhaustion just around the corner.
But now, suddenly, every part of me was awake.
I lay still, slowing my breathing, straining into the dark of the blindfold, allowing every other sense to take over.
The smell was the same. Musty. Dirty. Staling rot.
Nothing made a sound. Not even the faintest sign of breathing, apart from my own.
And the heart that hammered away in my chest, warning of a danger. Something I couldn’t see.
I wriggled my arms, the rope burning at the flesh, grating at the wounds in my skin.
Heat moved down my arms as if my nerve endings had only just woken up.
My arms were pulled into a ‘Y’ shape, stretched out and attached to cold metal.
A metal headboard. My legs were pulled out at the same angle, splayed and tied.
The ropes were tight. No give. No ability to move or turn.
They’d left me with my legs and arms spread wide open and no slack to move from this position.
I was more vulnerable now than on that fucking hook.
The thought swelled in my brain. Vulnerable. Nothing I could do. Whatever they did to me now. I could do absolutely fucking nothing to prevent it.
Fear slid in slow and slick, but it didn’t scream.
It settled inside me, a cold film under my skin that made my limbs feel borrowed.
It started as a tightness behind my eyes, then spread down my throat until swallowing felt like an effort.
My body had already betrayed my brain. The tremor in my fingers, the shallow breaths, the subtle dampness of sweat on my forehead, cooling instantly in the air.
The ropes bit harder through the wounds each time I shifted, and that pain fanned the fear into a louder thing, a thing that wanted me small and quiet and useless.
Count the seconds. Count the breaths. Name the sounds.
Don’t let the panic take shape. Fear liked names; if I kept it to numbers and lists, it stayed a thing I could measure, not a thing that could swallow me.
I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached, forced my shoulders down, and found a place inside my brain that was stubborn and cold and refused to believe I was finished.
Even every nerve ending was tired, but I would not hand them the sight of me folding. Not yet. Not that easy.
Something moved. Something made a sound.
I would have sat up, searching into the blindfold.
I couldn’t. I could only lie and wait. Count the seconds.
Count the sounds. Count the steps. That’s what they were.
Long strides. No effort to mask the sound.
They stopped a few metres away. Something clicked.
No clunked. It was a deeper, hollower sound.
A lock. I could hear it turning now. Count the breaths.
Count the steps. They were softer now. Like they were trying to walk more quietly.
Creeping. But that smell didn’t creep. It stalked.
It assaulted. That same fire-laced spice, warm and bitter like smoke from a match just struck.
I knew it. I always knew it. Didn’t matter if I was hanging on a hook or flat on this filthy mattress; the second it touched me, it was him.
Chase. It always was. The scent that clung to his skin and clothes, that shadow of pepper and heat, threaded with something dark that stayed in the back of my throat. Familiar, hated, impossible to mistake.
And too close. So close it crowded the fear already swelling in my chest, wrapping around me the way his arms had. It was him. It was always him.
“I know you’re there,” I called out, my voice sounding much stronger than I felt.
“Got you something to eat.”
“Not hungry.” That was a lie.
“You haven’t eaten in days.”
“That’s cos you fucking hung me from a hook. And you didn’t fucking feed me.”
“Well, I’m feeding you now.” He answered.
There was a command in his voice. In that deep velvety tone. He’d held me easily when he’d carried me out of that other space and then held me down when I struggled just as easily. Tall, I assumed. His chest had been hard, bulging as he’d closed his arms around me.
“Don’t want it.” I answered.
“Don’t care.”
“I can hardly fucking eat it in this position.”
“I’ll help you.”
He was going to let me up, untie the rope. But I needed my eyes. I needed to see to escape. So I could pick the right moment and run like fuck.
The bed dipped; his weight dropped beside me. He cradled my head up, propping it forward, and then I felt something against my lips.
“What the fuck?” I spat.
“It’s a fucking sandwich. Now eat it.”
“Fuck off.”
He sighed, already exasperated. “Jazz,” he warned. “I need you to eat this.”
“Why?” I shouted now, fear and panic quickly morphing to anger. “Why do I need to fucking eat it?”
“Because you need to eat.”
“Is that it? I need to eat?” I mocked. “What’s the point?”
“Normally it keeps you alive.” There was a hint of something lighter in his voice.
“Yet you bastards won’t.”
He paused. I could hear the faintest of sighs leaving his chest. Slowly. He was trying not to let me hear it.
“Fucking answer me, Chase. What’s the plan? What are you going to do with me? Cos I don’t fucking like surprises.”
“You know already. You’ve heard everything.” That lightness was gone now. That deep, dark tone of his returning.
“Fuck your sandwich. And fuck you. You think I’m going out of here as Grim’s plaything? I’d rather fucking die.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” his voice was deeper than I’d ever heard it now. And even the surrounding air seemed to have grown colder.
I shivered.
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
The bed creaked and moved. Then footsteps. He didn’t try to hide them, and I listened as they moved away from me. Something wooden moved. I narrowed my eyes, concentrating. A wooden door? But not the same sound as earlier.
I hadn’t heard him step back towards me, but the slightest flick of something moving over my body set my brain screaming alarm bells all over.
“You have a choice here, Jazz…” he’d started, but I didn’t let him finish that.
“Fucking choice? I’m fucking strapped to a fucking dirty bed. Where’s my fucking choice? I can’t choose to sit up or roll over. And I can’t choose to defend myself from you lot. And why? Because my brother is a King. Not me. I’m not a King, yet you fucking take me.”
The frustration was cracking in my voice. The back of my throat was burning. My eyes burning with it. Would the blindfold mop my tears? Would it stop them from falling? He couldn’t see that. I wouldn’t let him or them see that.
Chase was quiet. His scent drifted away. Walking away, leaving me. Too fucking coward to respond.
The sandwich must have been close. I could smell the bread, the saltiness of ham.
It filled the air, thick and heavy, crowding my lungs until I could almost taste it.
My mouth watered against my will. The tang of it cut straight through the grime and sweat that coated my skin, teasing me, taunting me.
My stomach clenched so hard it ached, rumbling loud enough I was sure he could hear.
Turning my head, the only movement these ties would allow.
My stomach growled, filling the room. I didn’t want to eat his sandwich.
I didn’t want that fucker feeding it to me like a child.
But I was so fucking starving, and the warm, yeasty smell of the bread in the air, after days of nothing, was enough to make me break.
But suddenly he was back. I smelt him first. The scent didn’t drift in.
It just appeared beside me, and I jolted.
He didn’t say a word, but I felt his fingers over my wrists, unzipping the leather jacket sleeves, pushing the material back.
I clenched my teeth, not knowing what was coming next.
But what came was something warm. And wet.
I jumped, the water stinging the open flesh. His fingers tightened on my wrists.
“I know it stings,” his voice was a low rumble over the top of me. “But these are going to get infected.”
I nodded in silent consent. Letting him wipe the warm water over my wrists, wincing at each sting, at each pass of warm soaked cotton wool.
“This bit is gonna sting like a bitch,” he mumbled.
I had no time to prepare. The liquid burned through my flesh like acid.
And I couldn’t recoil. Couldn’t escape. The rope held my arms in place.
It felt like the scab had been ripped open to the bone, winter poured into the cuts, and I gasped before I could stop it, a small animal sound I hated.
Every pass of the soaked wool set the nerves screaming again, and I curled my fingers uselessly against the ropes.
He held me tighter, solid and steady, that pressure both anchor and cage.
“I know,” he murmured into my hair, voice low and with something almost like pity hiding under it.
I wanted to hate him for touching me, for being the one to do this, and a part of me did, but the other part, the one that was raw and human and stupid with pain, leaned into it because it meant someone was trying to fix it.
The sting blazed, then dulled in slow crescendos, and with each pass the world narrowed to the smell of alcohol and the sound of my breathing.
“Well done, Tiger,” he praised.
I should hate his voice. Hate him. I was really, really trying.
But that low velvety rumble. It sent my insides into a chaotic dance.
His hands didn’t leave my arms, fingertips smoothing over my skin.
Rough and gentle all at the same time. And thanks to the sting of the antiseptic, and the riot of my nerve endings, that touch of his fingers, stroking over the delicate skin under my wrists, was pushing me into a stupid, hot oblivion.
I needed to hate him. And I needed my fucking body to hate him too.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but my voice betrayed me, coming out as a hoarse whisper.
“Checking there’s no more cuts,” his words dusted my hair.
“And have you found any?” That hoarseness again, my throat squeezing out the words.
“Just your wrists.”
His fingers slid further down my wrists, a million tiny, energised tingles erupting where the rough pads moved.
He used his hands. He wasn’t a desk jockey.
His hands were too rough. Even his voice was rough.
I couldn’t see him in a shirt and tie. But he earned good money.
He had to, to bathe in that Victor & Rolf aftershave he’d been wearing every day.
He was clean. There was not a single smell of dirt on him, not even the slightest hint of sweat.
Yet, something else lingered in the background.
Well washed, but no amount of scrubbing could get rid of the oil smell. It was clean. New oil in new bikes.
“Chase?”
“Uh huh?” He seemed distracted.
“Get me out of here.”