30. Hyacinth
THIRTY
HYACINTH
I have never felt so filthy before.
It isn’t the blood from the cuts Keith left on me, or the sweat from enduring the caning. It penetrates through my skin and eats away at my flesh.
The slime in every one of Keith’s touches, maybe.
The cum trickling down my thighs, definitely.
Keith breathes heavily over me, and even though I used to worship that face, now all I think about is how I want to slice his mouth open all the way to his ears.
“Fuck,” Keith mutters. A bead of sweat drops from his forehead and splashes onto my chest.
I want to say it burns me, but it’s a simple drop of sweat.
Keith bends down and pushes my hair away from my forehead. “You didn’t make a single sound. You’re the only one who can take everything without even flinching.”
If I’d cried out, would it have disgusted him enough that he would stop?
But nothing he’d done was so painful that I couldn’t tolerate it.
I could even call it boring.
A caning. A few cuts. The fucking.
He’d had to extend the length of the chains on my ankles in order to manipulate my body into a proper fucking position.
Not a lot, but it might give me a tiny bit of leverage to figure something out.
Zane is going to be so pissed that I let myself get captured.
So much for me being a perfectly honed killing machine.
Keith pulls out of me and grabs a nearby tissue to wipe his dick clean. Then he looks at me, and he smirks. “You always did look great all messy and dirty. Like a real man, for once.”
I keep staring at him, and say nothing.
He wants to get a rise out of me. He wants to hurt me.
I didn’t see it, five years ago. But now it’s clear that he never actually cared about how I looked.
It was about making me feel like shit.
After all those years with my mother, I should have been able to see through it, but for all her faults, she never had a problem with how I chose to dress.
She’d made me and Chrysanthemum share clothes for the longest time. The skirts and dresses were never only my sister’s. And as long as I could conceal weapons, it didn’t matter.
When I don’t react, Keith frowns at me.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself,” Keith says. He grips my chin and squeezes. “I know what a painslut you are.”
Still I say nothing.
Taunting him isn’t going to help me out of this situation.
Of course, silence can be just as much of a taunt, and he slaps me across the face. I move with it to mitigate the blow.
“Don’t push me,” Keith growls. “You had your fun, but now you’re back with me. Be fucking grateful.”
I’m grateful he brought me to a familiar location. Unless he recreated his old dungeon elsewhere, I know exactly where we are, and I know how this house works.
Keith grabs my jaw again, and this time he forces his lips onto mine. I want to fight him; I want to bite his lips and yell and kick, but I force myself to lay there and take it.
I wish I could say he tasted like bile, but he’s as careful with his grooming and hygiene as he always was. At most, there’s a minty aftertaste from his toothpaste.
I never realized how boring kissing could be when it’s nothing but a tongue spearing itself into my mouth, over and over.
While Keith is occupied with mauling my palate, I glance to my side. The cuffs are still strong around my wrists, but they aren’t locked. If I can reach the cuffing mechanism, I’d be able to remove it.
The question is where I get something to help me reach.
Keith finally gets tired of sucking on my tongue, and he pulls back, his eyes somewhat glassy. “If you’re really good, I might let you out on a leash. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say.
It’s almost the truth.
If I’m out on a leash, I have a better chance of escaping.
If it were Zane holding the leash, I wouldn’t ever dream of escaping.
Keith isn’t naive enough to believe me, though. He gets up and straightens up his clothes. “I have a few things to take care of. I’ll be back in a few hours to feed you.”
“What if I need to piss?” I ask blandly. “Should I soil the sheets?”
Keith rolls his eyes. “Hold it.”
Damn. I was hoping he’d take me for walkies.
Keith leaves, and I hear the door lock shut.
Which means I’m alone in this room that I know every single corner of. I close my eyes and consider taking a nap, although my skin is so sticky and my shoulders are sore enough that it wouldn’t be a comfortable sleep.
That’s another thing I’m used to.
I like Zane’s escape room better. Silly stories, easily found clues, and no need to contort my body in such a way that I dislocate a shoulder.
Because I might need to do that to get out of this.
I sit up as much as I can. The slack in the chain around my ankles allows me enough movement that I can do that, at least, and it affords me with a tiny bit of extra wiggle room up in my arms.
I lean my torso toward one arm, but I’m stopped before I can get too far by the chain around the other.
No amount of flexibility or yoga is going to get my mouth on that cuff.
I sigh and stare up at the ceiling.
Filth aside, the worst part about not getting out will be the boredom.
Keith could at least have left me with some sort of entertainment.
I pull my knees up to my chest. I can’t bring my foot to the wrist cuff either, although I’m not sure I would have had the manual dexterity to open it anyway.
…The podal dexterity? I wiggle my toes and put toe training on my list for my future workouts.
I sigh and lean back against the headboard. It’s made of heavy, sturdy metal, which I know I can’t break. It was one of the things I’d admired when I’d been here last. The one place I didn’t need to escape from, where I could simply let go and not worry anymore.
A memory surfaces, and I sit up and scoot away from the headboard. I peer at the bar near the center.
Is it still the same bar?
I lower my head and wrap my mouth around the bar. On the backside, I find the thin rod I’d taped onto it, all those years ago.
I can’t believe it’s still there.
It takes me five minutes to remove the rod with my mouth and pull it towards myself. The rod has a hook on one end and a point on the other, and it’s long enough that I can use my mouth to direct it toward one of the cuffs.
Keith never once moved the bed.
He never checked behind it, or attached anything to that bar.
And the me from five years ago, who thought he would never need this tool, had just saved me.
I grip the rod with my mouth and use it to undo one cuff. I sigh in relief as soon as my hand is free, and waste no time in freeing my other limbs.
The skin is already red, even though I hadn’t struggled.
All the movement has the cuts on my chest bleeding again, but it’s minor in comparison to everything else. I put the rod back where I found it, just in case.
No need to give away my secrets.
The windows still have bars, so I know I’m not escaping that way. A locked door won’t stop me for long, but I’d rather have a few weapons on hand.
If the rod was still there, what other tools did Keith neglect to clean up?
He’d taken the knife he’d used on me with him, but his other BDSM tools are still in the room. Whips, floggers, chains.
I get on my knees and reach underneath the cabinet, fumbling until I find the wire garotte I’d hidden there.
I’d still rather have a knife or a gun, but these will have to do.
I’d like some clothes, too. The only wearable items in the room are harnesses, though, and I’m never going to willingly wear one of Keith’s ever again.
I end up tying a silk sheet around myself like a makeshift dress.
I’ve done something like this recently, haven’t I? While running from Zane’s home.
I’m regretting that now.
I could have given in sooner. I’d have saved myself so much trouble.
I take a step toward the door to get out of here.
It flies open, with Keith on the other side. He’s in nothing but sweats, his hair damp and clinging to his face.
He’s furious.
He’s also pointing a gun at me.
“How the fuck did you escape?” he asks. “I had you secured.”
“You didn’t,” I say. I glance around the room. “Did you install cameras since the last time?”
I should have checked for those. Sloppy.
I hadn’t heard Keith coming down the hall, either, but the room is soundproof by design.
“I did,” Keith says. “I was checking on you after my shower, and what do I see but you out of your chains. I really can’t leave you alone for even five minutes.”
It’s fifty-fifty on whether I can reach him before he shoots. It’d be nice to say that I’d rather be dead than captured, but if anyone’s going to kill me, it’ll be Zane.
Keith doesn’t get that honor.
Which means I need to play it smart here.
“It was at least fifteen minutes,” I say. I clutch the whip in my hand. Am I accurate enough with the whip to get him to drop the gun?
More things I need to be training in.
I raise my arm to swing the whip.
Keith pulls the trigger. I instinctively dodge to the side, surprised when I managed to avoid getting hit. I’m not actually faster than a bullet, though, and I realize he missed on purpose.
“Get back on the bed,” Keith snarls. “You’re not supposed to fight back. You were always such a good pet before.”
“Before what?” I ask, clutching the whip. “Before I left? Before I grew a spine? Before I realized that I… that I…”
That I want more than you.
I don’t want to be stuck in a small room all my life.
I don’t want to be invisible to everybody but my family.
I want to stand at Zane’s side, and I want to have a hobby, and I want to be able to play a stupid game without worrying about being the fastest or the strongest, and I want to take care of Chrys and Lionel too.
That’s not too much to ask.
“Do you really think I won’t shoot you?” Keith asks. He has the gun aimed at me again. “If you aren’t willing to be mine, then I have no use for you.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, Keith. I was yours for so long. But you didn’t want me.
You still don’t want me.” I grin at him.
“And you’re still underestimating me. You think because I look like this, or because I’m naked, or because I’ve always submitted to you, that I’m not fully capable of standing up to you. ”
Pure fury crosses Keith’s expression.
Then he grins, and his stance even relaxes. “No. I know you can’t stand up to me, because I know how you work.” He keeps the gun trained on me. “Your brother is having a good time at NVU, isn’t he? A bright young student. It would be a shame if his academic career suffered because of you.”
My eyes widen. “Excuse me? You want to blackmail me? Lionel can—”
Before I finish, Keith shoots again.
I move, but this time, Keith wasn’t aiming wide.
The bullet hits me in the arm, and blood gushes out. I stifle a cry even as I drop the whip and the wire garotte.
The pain overwhelms me, and even though I need to keep moving, for one second I’m frozen in place, my vision whited out.
Keith grabs me by my hair and drags me back onto the bed. I try to stand, but Keith kicks me between the legs and knocks the wind out of me again.
“Maybe you don’t need both arms,” Keith says as he wraps his hand around the bullet wound. “Or both legs. I could amputate you and keep you here. You’d never be able to leave me ever again.”
I almost laugh.
The image is disgusting, but I have to give him credit.
I never imagined that Keith’s fantasies ran this extreme.
Keith keeps pushing against the wound.
I need to breathe.
This pain is nothing.
I just need to raise my other arm. I need to ignore the ache in my balls to fight back.
Keith shoves the barrel of the gun into my mouth. It cuts into the tender flesh, and I taste copper along with the metal and gunpowder.
“Suck it,” he hisses. “And maybe I’ll be nice and let you keep your arm.”
I open wider so I can lick more easily.
“I think if anyone should be eating bullets, it’s you,” a dark, beautiful voice says.
Keith whips his head to the door, his gun still in my mouth.
Zane, standing there, his white shirt splattered with blood.
Eyes ready to destroy.
He came for me.
Zane came for me.