Page 92
Twigs and branches snap across my chest as I hurl myself into the woods, running as though my life really did depend on it. My world has become a blur of trees, dirt, the pale sky above. The uneven, rocky ground makes me stumble once, twice, again—but I keep my footing. I have to. I have to try to get away.
And I can hear him behind me. His footsteps coming faster and louder. Even his ragged breath. Jonah’s chasing me with all his strength.
We are both too good at our games.
I reach a clearing and attempt to run faster, but that’s when I’m tackled from behind. We fall to the ground, and I put up the best fight I can—kicking, wriggling, trying to get out from under him—but Jonah has me. All my struggles do no good.
He gets his knees on my arms, puts his weight on my chest. Jonah is breathing hard, dirt smudged across his cheekbone and his forehead. He pants as he looks down at what he’s caught, and I feel the rise and fall of each breath beneath my trembling body. I am powerless to do anything but lie beneath him.
Slowly, Jonah smiles.
• • •
“I’ve been waiting for you. ”
Jonah has dragged me inside this cabin—which is bare-bones, so far as I can tell. One of his arms pins both of mine behind my back as he pulls me onward so fast I stumble. I glimpse only a few sticks of wood furniture, a rag rug on the floor, before Jonah pushes me into the bedroom.
The bed is the only piece of furniture in the room. Barely even a double, with a metal frame that has tarnished to dingy mercury gray over time, and covered only with a stark white fitted sheet—but what catches my attention are the ropes.
Jonah has wound pale ropes around each of the four posts of the bed. They wait for me.
He shoves me onto the bed. One shoe I lost in the doorway; the other falls off now. I try to push him off, but it’s futile. Jonah straddles me and smiles in slow satisfaction as he spreads my arms wide. “Shhhhh. ” He pushes one of my wrists through a loop of rope—it’s soft, silky, like the stuff that holds back curtains, but when he tightens it, I’m bound as inexorably as I could be by handcuffs. “This will go so much easier if you stop fighting me. Much faster. Don’t you want it to go faster? To be over?”
“Let me go—”
Jonah thrusts my other hand into its binding. “Shut up,” he whispers. “Or I’ll gag you with your own panties. ”
No.
Yes.
He slides off the foot of the bed and pulls one of my ankles to the post. Within a moment I’ll be tied down, spread-eagled, open to him and whatever he wants to do to me.
He ties the other foot. That’s it. I’m completely helpless. Only the word silver could save me now.
As he stands at the foot of the bed, between my legs, Jonah runs his hands up my thighs. “I wanted a pretty one. A girl like you. One I can keep. ”
Silver, I think wildly. Silver. But that’s not what I say. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. You could drive me somewhere—let me out, so I don’t know where you are—”
Jonah shakes his head slowly. “I warned you. ”
He reaches under my skirt and rips my panties away. As I watch in a crazed mixture of horror and desire, he wads the cotton into a ball, then climbs atop the bed. One of his hands forces my jaw open, and he stuffs what’s left of my panties inside. I can taste my own wetness, my own need.
As he kneels between my parted, trembling thighs, Jonah takes my T-shirt collar in both hands and rips it open. I went without a bra, so my breasts are exposed to him. As he cups them, he pinches my nipples and smiles as they harden to his touch.
“Let’s see what else I caught,” Jonah says. His strong hands tear through my skirt as if it were made of tissue paper. Now I’m naked, as exposed to him as a person could be. “Oh, I can think of lots of things to do with you. ”
By now I’m crying. It’s not acting, not completely.
“What?” He looks at me, mock-innocent. “Do you have something to say?”
He pulls my panties from my mouth for the pleasure of hearing me beg.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please. ”
“Why should I? Are you a virgin?”
“—no—”
“Then you’re a slut. Anyone can use you. Now it’s my turn to use you. ”
I try to turn my face away, but he stuffs my underwear back into my mouth. For a few moments he watches me, writhing and helpless. My cunt is completely exposed to him—every part of me is laid bare—and I can hide nothing. Prevent nothing.