Chapter 15
Fifteen
Lane
The basement door opens, but I don’t turn around to look at Ryell. I simply pull my legs closer to my chest, my damp fingers pressed against my lips, trying to will away the tears that have gathered at the corner of my eyes.
I don’t even know how many days have passed since my bath, but it’s long enough for my mind to feel fractured. It’s like I’m two people—a member of law enforcement that’s fighting to get his freedom from a maniac and a boy that spent his entire childhood ignored by everyone.
I’m not sure the law enforcement officer is winning.
What happened to me? A few weeks ago, I was an FBI agent that hunted down serial killers, bank robbers, and the worst of society. Now, I’m a pitiful prisoner, stuck in this cell with no end in sight.
No matter how I try to shake this…melancholy, I keep getting transported back to my childhood, and I can’t pull myself out of it. I’m stuck. I just want words, conversation from the only person around. But he won’t even look at me.
I’m invisible.
I’m forgotten.
I’m not good enough for his words.
I can feel Ryell’s presence at my back, but he doesn’t place the food down on the floor and slide it through the small opening.
I don’t care. I’m so fucking numb right now, my brain checked out to anything besides surviving from one minute to the next.
How long will he keep me here now that I’m no longer entertainment for him? How long will I remain alive?
That shocked feeling at not caring if I live or die doesn’t even crop up anymore. I simply don’t care. Being dead can’t be as bad as being disregarded.
After years of being separated from my childhood, having it come back now when I need to be strong is what’s breaking me.
I can’t focus on my survival because my brain isn’t in this cell.
It’s back in that mausoleum I called a home from when I was five until I left at seventeen.
Trying to protect my brain from my past and trying to survive were two things I couldn’t do at the same time, so my brain retreated, and now my body is just here… waiting for the inevitable.
“Lane,” Ryell says in a deep, gravelly voice.
Like I’m doused with cold water, I jolt and turn over, looking at him with wide eyes. Did he really say my name?
He’s looking at me, actually looking at me, not off to the side, not to the corner of my cell. He’s meeting my gaze.
“Lane,” he repeats, and I watch his lips move. A flush blooms over my body, and my heart races.
My body starts trembling like I have the ague, making it hard to sit up. “Ry-ry-ry—” I can’t stop shaking, can’t stop my teeth from chattering.
He’s speaking to me. He’s looking at me. He sees me.
The cell door opens, and Ryell steps inside. He walks over and kneels in front of me, placing a tray of food down. “You okay, Agent?” he asks, pushing my filthy hair back from my forehead. I don’t even care about the note of condescension in his tone. It feels good for someone to touch me again.
Since our night together, I missed his hands on me, missed how his touch was so sure, so commanding. Even now, when I can’t stop shivering, can’t stop the tears from spilling down my cheeks. “No,” I answer in a voice I hardly recognize.
Ryell stands to his full height and turns his back, and I cry out, not wanting him to leave me. But he simply retrieves the baby wipes from the sink. Kneeling again, he cleans my face, and I see the filth on the material.
“Have you been washing up?” he asks, wiping down my neck.
“What’s the point?” I ask in a thick voice. “You haven’t even noticed I haven’t.”
“Your stench is enough for anyone in a five-mile radius to notice.”
I can’t even muster the energy to be offended. I do smell. There’s no reason to get up from my bed to make myself presentable when he didn’t even see me.
“Come on, Agent,” he mutters when he tosses a third soiled baby wipe on the floor. “Let me clean you up.”
Ryell stands and removes keys from his pocket. He unlocks first my ankle, then my wrist.
As soon as I’m free, I’m on him, slapping and punching him, fighting him with everything I have. Tears leak from my eyes as I scream and curse him, calling him every name I can think of for ignoring me. All the things I wish I could have done to my mother and father.
“Fuck you, Ryell, you fucking son of a bitch,” I shout as I punch him in the jaw. The blow barely affects him I’m so weak. “I fucking hate you!”
“I know, Agent,” Ryell says and grabs my arms, pulling me in close.
The fight leaves my body, and I slump against his chest, letting the angry tears flow. “Why? Why did you do that to me?” I ask, sounding more childlike than I want. It’s the burning question I wanted to ask my parents every day.
He shushes me, letting my arms go. Instead of trying to make a break for it like I know I should, I wrap my arms around Ryell, burrowing into his chest. I shudder against him when he holds me, rubbing my back in slow circles.
“Will you be good for me, Lane?” he asks, his warm breath drifting over my face.
“Yes,” I whisper, my heart thudding under his attention.
He tips my chin up, and I meet his dark eyes and sinister smirk. “You’ll do what I say?”
“Please don’t make me kill anyone,” I whisper. While I need his attention like I need my next breath, I don’t want to cross that line. But if he asked, as long as he didn’t leave me again, I probably would.
His smile widens, but he shakes his head. “I’d never ask you to join me in my darkness, Agent. That’s not what I want you to do.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to pose for me. Whenever I say. No matter what.”
“Will you hurt me?” I’m not sure if I mean physically or mentally.
He chuckles darkly, and a shiver rolls down my spine. “Oh yes. But you’ll want it.”
I shake his finger from my chin and push away from him, even though my body craves his touch. “Ryell…are you going to kill me?”
He tilts his head as he studies me. “Do you want to die?”
“If you treat me how you’ve been doing, I think that would be the best option.”
His crooked grin has a lethal edge to it, and my body sways toward him.
No matter how much I shouldn’t or how wrong it is to want his attention, my fractured brain has latched onto him.
Ryell is the only person that can put me back together.
I don’t know what that says about my life expectancy, but I don’t care.
As long as Ryell is talking to me and seeing me, I don’t give a fuck.
“I won’t kill you, Agent,” he says. “I’ve grown fond of you, actually.”
“Can you feel anything for anyone?” I ask, some of my fire coming back, though it’s only that one slip. More than needling him, I genuinely want to know.
He laughs and holds his hand out to me. I take it before I even knew I was moving. “Yes. Deeply. I’ve never had anyone besides my brother around to feel anything for, though.”
My brain gobbles up that tiny morsel of personal information, since I’m not sure if he’ll share more. “You have a brother? Is he older or younger?”
“Older.” Ryell walks me to the bathroom and sets me on the chair that he occupied when I was in here last. I shiver, thinking about how he didn’t glance in my direction when I was in the bathtub, how he pretended I wasn’t even there.
He’s giving me attention now, but the memories send fear through my veins.
He could do it again. He’s capable of fucking breaking me further by not giving me any consideration.
“Brush your teeth while I run you a bath,” Ryell orders.
Cheeks flushed with embarrassment, I hurry over to the sink and grab a new toothbrush and travel toothpaste from the basket. It’s odd that he has all this extra stuff. Did he really take care of other victims and lied to me about it?
I don’t know why that hurts, but it does. It makes me feel less special, like he’s doing something he’s done for other people.
My eyes are down on the toothbrush wrapped in plastic and the small box of travel toothpaste when Ryell steps up behind me. “You’re upset.” He didn’t frame it like a question, but I still nod. “Why?”
“You have…” I hold the supplies up so he can see. “This stuff in here. Where my cell is.”
Ryell is silent for a few seconds. I look up into the pressed metal mirror, but I can’t make out his face in the distorted surface. Is he mad?
“You think I had someone else here?” He laughs, the vibrations rumbling through my back. My cheeks flame, and I duck my head, tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
Wrapping an arm around me, pulling me more into him, he says, “I’m a dentist, Lane. I always have a surplus of supplies. This is just where I keep things.”
I gasp, an unknown feeling pass through me. “You’re telling me a lot of personal information. That means you’ll kill me when this is all over.”
“Or I’ll keep you.” He shrugs like either prospect will do. “For now, you’re safe.”
Swallowing hard, I nod, and Ryell lets me go. He moves back to the bathtub, turning the water off and I get busy cleaning my teeth. Like last time, it feels so good to have the minty flavor hit my tongue. My teeth are no longer fuzzy when I run my tongue across them, and I sigh in relief.
I’ll never take getting a bath and brushing my teeth for granted again.
“Come,” Ryell says, and I hurry over to him. “Strip so I can clean you.”
I remove my clothes and toss them as far into the corner as I can. I really do smell awful. Embarrassment fills me, but it’s quickly replaced by relief when I step into the tub. Being in a warm bathtub feels better than any words I can think of.
Ryell lathers up a washcloth with a bar of soap, then rolls the material over my body, cleaning away the dirt and grime. He even takes some kind of stick thing and cleans under my nails.
I can’t reconcile this Ryell with the one that left bodies behind and the one that ignored me for so long that I broke. This Ryell is almost…gentle.
“Can you promise me something?” I whisper. It could go either way. Either he’ll shut me down, or he’ll hear me out. I hold my breath, waiting.
His gaze flicks up to mine briefly. “Maybe.”
“Can you promise not to leave me again? I can’t…” I reach up with a shaky hand, pushing my fingers through my filthy and matted hair. “I can’t handle that.”
To my surprise, Ryell leans forward and kisses my forehead. “I think I can manage that.” I let out the pent-up breath and give him a shaky smile. “Now tip your head back so I can wash your hair.” I do what he says, and when his powerful fingers scrub my scalp until it’s clean, I sigh.
After he squeezes the excess water from my hair, he takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. The water sluices down my body, the faint droplets hitting the water audibly.
Ryell’s eyes track my body, and my dick stirs, though I’m too tired and lightheaded to want to do anything about it. My body couldn’t handle how hard and roughly he’d probably want to take me. How hard I want it.
“You’ve lost too much weight,” he says with an unhappy edge to his tone. “You’ll have to start eating two meals a day.”
I peer down my body and see the hollowness of my belly, how much my pelvis juts out from the lack of calories. My stomach growls just looking at my weight loss.
“Okay,” I whisper.
Walking over to one of the shelves on the wall, Ryell pulls down two large towels. He wraps one around my hair and the other around my shoulders, the warm, but scratchy material feeling surprisingly good against my skin.
“Here.” Ryell drags his shirt over his head and passes it to me. I awkwardly grab it and pull it against my chest. Ducking my head, I breathe in his scent, desire coiling in my belly at his musky and masculine smell. “Wear this until I can get you some clothes.”
“Underwear?” I ask.
He sends me a devilish smile that I’m starting to think he only shows me. “Why would you need those? You’ll pose for me later.”
I nod and duck my head. “Okay.”
But when I take a step, my knees buckle, and I almost crash to the ground. Only Ryell’s strong arms around me keep me upright.
“Fuck, you’re probably dehydrated,” he tsks. “You’ll need more than one bottle of water, Lane,” he scolds. I don’t have the energy to remind him that it’s he who’s responsible for feeding and watering me every day.
He scoops me into his arms and takes me back to my cell. Placing me on my bed, he covers my legs with the thin blanket then forces the bottle of water into my hands. “Drink it all or I’ll give you an IV to hydrate you.”
Tipping the water to my lips, I guzzle as much water as I can handle but stop before I can drink more than half. Ryell curses and looks down at me with fire in his eyes. So I drink more, forcing the water into my too-full belly.
Before I finish it, it all comes up, and I vomit, getting most of it on Ryell. He just looks at me with a blank expression as I fall back against the bed.
“An IV it is, then,” I hear Ryell says as if from far away. I close my eyes, then slip into unconsciousness.
I come to when I feel a prick in the crook of my elbow, the slight pain making me hiss. Ryell is standing beside an IV pole, the saline bag mounted, and he opens up the gauge fully to hydrate me quicker.
I glance over at Ryell through sleepy eyes and whisper, “Thank you,” before I’m pulled under once more.