Chapter Nine
Kristina
Muted light was the first indication that Kris was awake, but she squeezed her eyes closed and groaned at the intrusion.
The deep, blissful sleep she was rousing from was the best she’d experienced for weeks.
Hours of uninterrupted rest that she was sure had restored her in some fundamental, cellular way, and the last thing she wanted to do was leave that idyllic state of solace behind.
The next thing she noted was the silence. Not just the rumbling hush of her regular household, but an unusual quiet that was laced with a stark, disturbing quality.
Silly. She groaned, wishing she could just go back to sleep. I’m being silly. Calm down. It’s just the quiet of the house.
What was the point in such an excellent slumber if she was already twisting her waking moments into unnecessary panic? She wouldn’t stay rested for long when her heart rate picked up and her old friend adrenaline rushed to meet her.
Adrenaline.
Just like that, the events of the prior night flooded back to the fore of her mind, unfolding behind her eyes like the old-fashioned reels of a black and white movie. She’d gone out for pizza, but then she’d been accosted by three malevolent morons, and…
She gasped, her eyes flitting open slightly as she recalled the awful situation she’d found herself in. She’d been in trouble, and she’d have paid the price had that giant of a liberator not stepped forward to help her.
In her mind’s eye, she could still see him. Absolutely bloody enormous, with dark hair and captivating eyes, he’d glowered down at the remaining assailant before he’d even spoken to her.
He’d saved her, but she didn’t even know his name.
Blinking her eyes open a little wider, the thought was dismissed when she finally focused on the room around her.
So consumed was she with the growing dread of her attack, and the lingering fascination of the man who’d helped her, that it had taken a few seconds for her brain to register her surroundings.
Staring up at the ceiling, though, she was aware suddenly that she wasn’t in her own bed.
Bewildered concern flickered inside her, allowing that fact to settle.
She. Wasn’t. In. Her. Bed.
And wherever she was, it didn’t look like the home she shared with Tina and Melanie.
The ceiling above her head was far too white to be the off-cream one over her bed, which looked like it hadn’t been painted for about a decade. In fact, the shining hue she was blinking at overhead was so bright it was practically blinding.
Where am I?
Turning her face away, she intended to lower her arms and roll to one side.
Ordering her arms to fall to her sides, she frowned when they didn’t respond, or, to put it more accurately, they couldn’t.
She could feel her shoulders and elbows moving, but it was as though there was something at her wrists, stopping her from achieving the rudimentary task.
“What the hell?” Tipping her head backward as far as her neck would allow, she peered at what was preventing her movement. “Is that… lace?”
For a moment, she paused, her brows knitting as she fell flat on the bed again and tried to take stock.
It looked as though black lace had been wound around her wrists, tying her to the structure she was stretched out on.
Firstly, she’d woken on a strange bed, and then she’d realized her arms were bound.
Oh, God.
Her throat dried at the analysis, but oddly, the wave of panic that she’d expected to wash over her didn’t come.
She couldn’t recollect how she’d got to be there, and she couldn’t move to get away, but for some bizarre reason, Kris had the strangest sense that she was safe.
Concerned, yes; intrigued definitely, yet, where there should have been alarms exploding in her mind, there was only a tepid mixture of unease and confusion.
Pulling in air, she turned inward for a moment, conscious of her breath. Her heart rate was a little faster than normal, but she was breathing at a regular rate. Her head had identified her possible peril, yet for whatever reason, her body’s regular physiological responses hadn’t all kicked in.
“How?’ she murmured as her eyes opened.
It was as though something had suppressed her fight or flight reflexes. Her body was trying to act instinctively, speeding up her pulse and alerting her to another potential crisis, but her respiratory system refused to react in the typical way.
“What is going on?”
She tugged at the lace holding her in place, wishing she could at least understand her predicament.
Even if she couldn’t remove the binds and get up, clarity would have been appreciated.
At that moment, she’d have been anything but surprised to have woken up all over again in her bed at home to realize that the whole weird incident was nothing but a dream.
A nightmare, more like.
She snorted, but even as the noise left her lips, she accepted that whatever strange reality she’d fallen into, it didn’t feel much like a nightmare.
She was far too calm.
“Great.” She sighed. “But I still don’t even know where I am or why I’m here.”
Those were the most unnerving questions. Why wasn’t she at home, and what on Earth had happened to her to find her in a place she didn’t even recognize?
Straining her memory, she tried harder to recollect her last memories from those terrifying moments on the street. She vividly remembered the enormous guy who’d scared away her aggressors; his huge, strapping frame and those striking hazel eyes, but everything after that was sketchy.
What had transpired between him stepping in to save her and her coming around in the white room?
Brow rising, she tried to put two and two together.
She’d met an attractive guy, and the next thing she knew, she’d woken up in a strange bed.
Had she, by some miracle, been able to seduce the goliath and ended up back at his place?
It was an enticing theory, but if that was true, then where was her latest lover? And why had he left her bound to the bed?
Bondage wasn’t something she’d tried before, associating the kink mainly with insecure little men who needed to be in control to get a hard-on.
She couldn’t imagine a specimen as impressive as the one who’d rescued her needing to rely on restraints to get what he wanted.
A man like that would not be short of offers.
Hell, based on what she could remember, Kris couldn’t imagine too many women who’d have kicked him out of bed.
I certainly wouldn’t.
She hoped her hypothesis explained what had transpired, that somehow, in her least sexy lounge wear, she’d persuaded the giant to take her home for one reckless, and she hoped, glorious, night of passion.
But if that was the case, there was a disappointing lack of scintillating memories attached to the event.
She squeezed the muscles at the apex of her thighs, as if to clarify the thought. She wasn’t sore, and based on what she remembered of the size of him, she couldn’t envision that a few rounds of nookie wouldn’t have left a lasting legacy between her legs.
No sex, then? She huffed out air in disappointment while the same old question returned to haunt her. So, what happened?
Glancing around again, she took in as much of the strange space as she could from her position on the bed.
The structure was pushed up against what looked like a softly glowing wall to her right, and what little else there was to see was on her other side.
The room’s decor was minimal at best; one solitary chair across from where she lay and a mirror hanging on the impossibly white wall opposite were the only discernible features.
She couldn’t even see a door or a window.
Anxiety stirred in the base of her belly, belying the surface-level serenity her consistent breath rate conveyed, and reflexively, she glanced down her body to identify visually where she’d sensed the disquiet.
There was a light blue blanket covering her torso and legs—the only flicker of color in the room—but both limbs had been separated, her ankles visible, and also adorned with the black lace at her wrists.
Worse still was the abrupt realization that beneath that cover, she was completely naked.
Her clothes were gone, and so was her phone, which she last recalled putting in her pocket.
She heaved in another breath. That all seemed like a long time ago, as though the Kris who’d got peckish was an entirely different version of the woman she was then.
Disconcertingly, though, despite the seeds of unease she’d noted, she still felt preposterously calm.
Naked and bound in a location she didn’t even recognize, she should have been terrified, so why wasn’t fright her primary emotion?
She recalled the terror that had surged through her body when the thugs had surrounded her on the street, so where had that instinctive response to danger gone?
“This is not good.” She shook her head slowly. “How am I here, and where the hell is here?” She paused, thinking through the conundrum as her head lifted to glance down her body. “And why aren’t I freaking out more about being here?”
Yanking against the binds at her ankles, she clenched her toes and banged her ankles against the soft covers in protest. One thing was for sure: someone must have put her in the predicament. She hadn’t sleepwalked her way across town, stripped, and tied herself to someone else’s bed.
Stilling, she tried to think. Who had the audacity to treat her that way? If it was her hulking hero, then where was he? Had he decided to snatch her from the street and then bugger off again?
“Wrong questions,” she chided, her gaze searching the dazzling ceiling again. “I’m all for feeling Zen, but this is ridiculous. I’ve been kidnapped! Why am I so fucking chilled about all of this?”