But we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Not anymore.
And even if we did, the first thing he signed to me was, “Don’t turn around.”
I remained where I was, deeply aware of my naked form.
Without my daily walks to and from the train stations all over Tokyo, I’d gained the freshman fifteen and then some. And yeah, I represented for the cute and chubby club--especially on the rare occasion that I could drag Lena out for drinks. But it was kind of hard to be as body positive as I wanted to be when somebody was assessing all the changes in me for the first time in four years.
“Stay facing the mirror, no matter what,” he signed. His eyes were so flat and dark. They seemed to suck all the soft lighting out of the room as he opened a gold foil square.
You’d think having my back to him would be some kind of reprieve, but it made it even worse. Like having to watch the Chinese version of Candyman put on a condom before he started walking toward you.
Victor stopped directly behind me, so close I could feel the heat coming off his hard body.
He raised one hand above my shoulder so that I could see him sign, “What do you think of me now?”
Air expelled from my mouth. A breath disguised as a shudder. But I told him the truth. “I think you’re a monster.”
He smiled. Not for real, though. It was that same malevolent grin he’d given me down in the car right before he pulled out a ring.
He took my breasts in his hands and hauled me back against his body. His cock pressed into my spine, hard as steel as he worked my tits. Caressing them, rubbing them, tweaking the nipples until they turned into tight, aching buds. Both my body and mind were unprepared for what the sight of him manhandling my breasts in the mirror would do to me. Lightning bolts of pleasure zapped straight down to my core, making me squirm. Making me want more.
I was panting by the time he abruptly released one breast.
“Watch this monster,” he signed single-handedly, spelling out the signs that required both hands. “Watch him make you wet. Watch him make you beg.”
Then his signing hand dipped down between my legs.
No, he was no longer that boy. The one who had kissed me for months to get me ready for him and made love to me slowly to make sure I came.
Instead, his hand worked me expertly, rubbing around but not directly on my clit with just the right amount of pressure. Soon I was wet enough for him to sink two fingers in, and God…I let him. My legs fell open to receive him, telling the truth I would never let cross my lips. That my pussy had been waiting for this moment.
Waiting for four years.
He watched me in the mirror while he pumped his fingers into my core, steady but relentless until I was slick with arousal. So slick, we could both see how much I desired him, how much I wanted this in the mirror.
Then he pulled his fingers out.
“Taste and ride,” he commanded before sticking his fingers in my mouth and his non-dominant hand back into my pussy. The taste was tangy and mixed with the salt from his fingers.
I watched…
I watched as I sucked my essence off his fingers. I watched as I rode his hand at the same time.
I wish I could say I was only doing this because he commanded me. But a well of pleasure was already building inside my womb, making me grind into his fingers, my body yearning for more.
Instead of giving it to me, he pulled his hand out. “Do you want to come?”
His signing was less angry now. More cold and precise.
Those fingers. I wanted them back inside me. I had tried. Every chance I got, I had tried with other boys. But this…
This was what I had been missing. What I had never been able to achieve with any of the guys I hooked up with after parties or drunken meet-cutes at bars.
Yes, yes, I wanted to come. I nodded and reached for his hand.
But he didn’t let me have it.
“You forgot to beg,” he signed, raising his hand comically high in the air where I couldn’t possibly reach it.
I would love to say that this was the part where I found some pride I didn’t know I had and told him where he could stuff his request. Maybe I would’ve gone that route if the moaning, “Please,” hadn’t fallen out of my mouth so fast.
A hard beat. Anything could’ve happened next. He could’ve laughed and made fun of me for actually begging him to make me come.
But he didn’t.
He roughly placed my hands on the mirror, forcing me to brace myself against the cold glass.
“Now watch this monster,” he signed. “Watch this monster fuck you the way you fucked me.”
He fisted my braids and plunged into me without any warning beyond that.
A surprised moan fell from my mouth when he filled me with one stroke. It was somehow a shock and a relief all at once. Three times…we’d only done this three times in Japan. But I’d missed him. Missed this. Missed us. Him inside of me again was the weird homecoming I hadn’t known I wanted.
This wasn’t like before, though. There wasn’t any care. No gentleness. Victor just took me hard and rough. His strokes were merciless and demanding.
I wish I could say I was the victim in this. Someone who wanted no part in his games.
But it didn’t work like that. My rules…the feelings I should probably be having about this encounter fell into a murky pool of grey.
His hand dropped down to my clit, rubbing me savagely as he thrust into me from behind.
And oh, my God…
The orgasm overtook me, obliterating everything in its path and leaving nothing in its wake.
All my morals. All my pride. All my dignity. Nothing survived.
And just when I thought I couldn’t be humiliated any further, he abruptly pulled out. All I could see from my vantage point in the mirror was his arm jerking. Then he threw his head back, his teeth clenching before I felt a warm splatter against my backside.
It took me a moment to process what he’d done. He’d pulled out of me instead of coming inside of me. But why?
The answer came back, immediate and unvarnished: Punishment. This was another part of the punishment. He was denying me the intimacy we’d shared the other three times we’d done this together. Debasing me. Showing me that for him, this was just a fuck. Not love.
Not what it had been before.
I wasn’t going to cry. I refused to cry.
“Was that hate-fucky enough for you?” I asked instead, keeping my voice tough and mocking.
Instead of answering, he got up and disposed of the condom he’d taken off just to punishment spooge on my ass.
He wasn’t looking at me, but I watched him as he walked over to a pile of clothes just outside the open door and calmly started putting them back on.
What would come next? I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the cafeteria. Would we go out now like we used to on the weekends when I convinced my mom to let me hang with “the girls from art club?” Have dinner to celebrate our insanely fucked up wedding?
After he finished getting dressed, he raised his hands. I figured to command me to put my clothes back on too. Or maybe to take a shower. I was a naked mess.
But he just signed, “Do not leave Rhode Island without permission. This state is now your home.”
My heart sank with more disappointment. Lena and I had talked about me coming up to Boston, or maybe her coming down to visit me in New York. There was no way I’d be able to explain this huge house, so I’d have to go to her.
I asked the next logical question, “How do I ask for permission?”
Victor regarded me for a cold few seconds. Then he walked out.
He left. He just…left.
I pulled on the sports shorts and Mount Holyoke tee I put on that morning. Back when I was still just a fresh college grad, preparing to enter the next phase of my life with a Peter Pan bus ride to New York.
But by the time I got back down to the living room, I spied the Bentley pulling out of t
he driveway from the large front window. He was leaving without a sign of explanation or any indication of when he’d be back.
For what had to be the millionth time that day, I asked myself, What in the entire fuck?
6
DAWN
The next morning, a guy walked into the house’s front hall, carrying a big cardboard box in his arms. He just walked in without even knocking.
The night before, I’d taken advantage of the house’s frontloading washer and dryer, which I could use without inserting any quarters whatsoever—yay! So luckily, I was dressed in a clean version of my Mount Holyoke shorts and t-shirt. Otherwise, he would’ve gotten a show when he looked over to the living room where I was sitting on the couch. I’d been watching the first season of RSW: College Mic Drop, the latest Rap Star Wives spin-off, starring Nitra Mello, the daughter from the original RSW flagship show.
“Who are you?” I rose from the couch and inched closer to the fireplace rack. Most home invaders don’t bust in carrying boxes. But I wanted to be within arm’s reach of the iron poker just in case.
“Oh, hey, I’m Yaron. Victor sent me…”
He set down the box, allowing me to see him better.
This Yaron didn’t look like somebody Victor would send. No visible tattoos or muscles that I could see. He had one of those super multicultural looks that made it seem as though he could be from anywhere. Black hair, slightly tanned skin, tilted brown eyes, and out-turned ears like President Obama. He sported a sloppy man bun, but his hairline sat pretty far back. So maybe he was older than he appeared. He also had a slight accent, which I couldn’t quite say for sure was Chinese.
“Hi, Yaron,” I answered, just to be polite before I asked, “Why did Victor send you?”
“To drive you around. Keep anybody from messing with you. Make sure you don’t get in any trouble while he’s gone. You know, stuff like that,” Yaron answered as if this was a list of things that every prisoner wife got after agreeing to marry the devil.
He hitched a thumb toward the door. “I got a few more of your boxes to bring in. Hold on.”
Wait, the box he’d brought in was for me?
I turned off the two college-aged reality stars arguing on TV to shuffle over to the front hall and check it out. The box’s flaps were just folded on top, with no packing tape, so it was easy to open up. Inside I found a bunch of the things I left behind in my dorm room.
Whoa. What kind of weirdo kidnapped someone in the middle of packing but makes sure to complete the job? I even found my Sidekick iD phone in the box, a way cheaper version of the Sidekick 3. It had been the nicest phone I could afford back when the first iPhone came out. Guess Victor wasn’t scared about me having it.
I entertained the thought of calling my family and letting them know what was going on with Victor. My father was in international law enforcement. Surely, he’d know what to do. Maybe we could all go into witness protection or something.
But almost as soon as the ideas occurred to me, I decided against them. Even if I could get a message to my father before Victor could call his cartel contact, we’d have to stay in hiding for the rest of our lives. And there was no guarantee we’d be safe.
I trusted Victor to keep his promise to let me go and leave my family alone at the end of ten years. I also trusted him to hunt us down like dogs and slaughter us if I tried to escape.
“I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want to humiliate you the way your father did me. I want you to lose everything.”
I set the phone aside without calling anyone. New Victor wanted to punish me. And letting him was the only way to keep my family safe. I’d just have to bear whatever he had in store for me next.
I braced the entire day for whatever that was, but Victor never showed up.
And the next afternoon, Yaron left some mail on the front porch’s table. Two large envelopes, both addressed to me. One was from a pharmaceutical company. It contained a year’s supply of birth control pills. I recalled Victor’s caveat about me getting pregnant and vowed to take my pill on the regular to ensure nothing else would chain me to that monster beyond these ten years.
The second envelope was from an international bank that had been gobbling up smaller banks since the beginning of the most recent recession. Inside I found a bank card with Dawn Kingston-Zhang written across the front, along with some checkbooks that bore an address I didn’t recognize.
Elite college graduate here, but it took me a few frowning moments and another trip outside to solve the mini-mystery. Yep. The slat of wood next to the front door bore the same address number as on the one written across my new checks.
More whoas. I had no idea you could open a bank account without an in-person visit. Much less for someone else, who never agreed to change her name. The list of questions for Victor was piling up. But he was a no-show on May 27th, as well as May 28th.
The following week a cleaning lady showed up, a stern Polish woman who announced, “Sonia speak no English!” when I tried to introduce myself. Sonia spent the entire day deep-cleaning the house from top to bottom. And the only other words she spoke to me were “See you next week!” when she bustled out the door with her huge plastic tote filled with cleaning supplies.
I bought my own bottle of Windex after that, just so I’d never have to live through the embarrassment of having an unsmiling Polish woman wipe my sex handprints off the mirror next time.
But Victor didn’t show up that week either, or the week after that. Before I knew it, June had come and gone without a peep from the man who was now insisting on calling himself my owner. Cultural sensitivity didn’t seem to be a thing in New Victor’s world. Actually, sensitivity of any kind didn’t seem to be a thing in New Victor’s world.
By July, I’d run out of On Demand episodes of Rap Star Wives to watch and had acquired a pretty impressive day drinking habit. I had to do something other than sitting around waiting for Victor to show up. So instead of cracking open another bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, I looked up an address on the iPhone Victor had given me and grabbed my Mount Holyoke tote.
“Where are you going?” Yaron asked, jumping out of the car when I came charging out of the house.
“To the library,” I answered, hitting the gate’s inside button. “It’s within walking, so I don’t need a ride.”
“But—” Yaron started to say after me.
“Back in an hour or two!” I called out before he could finish his protest. And I waved over my shoulder as I slipped out of the gate.
Just as I hoped, Yaron didn’t follow me. If the house was my cage, that meant Rhode Island was my prison yard. I could go wherever I liked, and that was something. It had to be if I was going to survive these ten years without going insane.
I signed up for a card at the library and checked out a bunch of books with names like “Anyone Can Cook” and “Cooking For Dummies” and “Dinners For Beginners.” And for the next couple of months, with the help of library books and foodie blogs, I taught myself to cook something other than Korean food made for a family of four.
I got pretty good at it, too. By August, I leveled up to cookbooks with words like “Cuisine” and “Gourmet” in the title. I also began developing instincts the same as my mom and no longer had to do things like measure ingredients or consult a recipe book every time I wanted to make Yaron and me dinner.
Yaron, I’d found out, after a little bit of prying, was from the Philippines. And when I made chicken adobo for him, he’d told me it was better than his girlfriend’s. He also liked all the recipes I tried from the library book Gourmet Cooking for Two.
He was stationed at the carport, so I fell into the habit of bringing him a plate every night. Yaron appreciated all the meals I made for him, and he insisted my pork bulgogi made him want to fly to Texas and thank my mom personally for passing down the recipe.
I preened under the compliments. Maybe Victor would have been impressed with the kind of dinner I could make if he showed u
p. But he didn’t.
And suddenly, summer was nearly over.
“Are you sure you don’t have time for a visit?” Lena asked during a catch-up phone call in late August. “It doesn’t have to be for a whole weekend. Maybe just one night? How about this Friday? I could come to you.”
“Ugh, I wish!” I answered while massaging a mix of salt, pepper, olive oil, and lapsang souchong tea leaves into the last of the summer lamb I’d gotten from Whole Foods a few days ago. “But this internship is non-stop. And we’ve got back-to-back deliveries scheduled on Friday. There’s just no way to make this weekend work.”
I hated lying to my best friend, but I couldn’t tell her the whole truth. That I was currently in a weird prison wife situation with some Chinese mafia boss in Rhode Island, not in New York where she and the rest of my family assumed I was. This was already a big enough mess without getting my best friend involved.
Still, it felt way too symbolic when I moved to the sink to wash the mess of blood and spices off my hands.
“That’s too bad,” Lena said, her voice even sadder than the last few times I turned down her offers to come to visit me in New York. “I’m not sure when I’m going to get the chance to see you again.”
God, how upset would she be if she knew I was really in Providence, less than an hour’s drive from where she was currently enjoying the best summer of her life.
I took a swig of the glass of Cabernet the internet had assured me would pair well with the lamb dish I was making, then hedged, “Maybe in the fall. I might be able to get a couple of days off then.”
Victor: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad) Page 3
