Freeing Lana

by Kristin Elyon

  She was sure Tink would one day get some teasing from this man about her and the fact she was living with him, but she felt fairly confident he wouldn’t say anything to anyone else. He genuinely seemed to care a lot about the man in the bed with tubes running out of his mouth and nose, almost as much as she did, arguably.

  Lana tried to reach Sergio, but his phone went straight to voicemail again, and the only thing she could think of was the way he had described his frustration about hers doing the same when she had been missing. He had said it had almost driven him insane, and she now understood that a lot better than she had back then. And while his refusal to answer his phone worried her more than ever, at least she knew he wasn’t going through what she had been going through when the roles were reversed. Hoping he was just having a well warranted fuck Lana day, and not dead on the side of the road somewhere, she sent him a text instead of calling again. It was brief and to the point. I know I’m a bitch, but I really need to talk to you, Serg. PLZ! That was all it said and she sat the phone on her leg and waited, hoping it would be enough to convince him to call her.

  Tink snorted slightly in his sleep and the phone dropped from her leg when she jumped. After she realized it was nothing, or at least she thought it was nothing, she retrieved the phone and looked at it. The screen was cracked and there was nothing on it even as she repeatedly pushed the buttons. She slid the back off the phone and removed the battery, but after returning it to its place and covering the back again, she was still unable to get the phone to work.

  “Shit,” she said without realizing it.

  Tink moved slightly under the crisp white sheets and Lana quickly forgot her broken phone, as well as any hope Sergio might text her back anytime soon. Leaning forward, she took one of Tink’s hands in her own and squeezed it gently as she again felt the unmistakable pangs of guilt as they nipped unrelentingly at her thoughts. Never again, even if it killed her never again would she go to the prison and see him. The unconscious man sleeping in the bed in front of her really loved her. Maybe not as much as Sergio had loved her, but he loved her just the same and he deserved a woman who could keep her fucking legs together unless she was spreading them for him and him alone. Daniel could go jack off in the prison shower all he wanted, but he would never see her again, and she would never do anything he asked her to do. No matter what!

  Tink stirred again and she tightened her grip on his hand slightly. If he was aware she was there in the room with him, she wanted him to feel her holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes slowly, she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb, trying to let him know he was being taken care of. Then he turned his head toward her and opened his eyes, though she could see the pain medication was still thick in his veins and he was clearly still quite sedated.

  “La…,” was all he could manage, but it made her heart jump.

  “Yes Tink, I’m here,” she said.

  He smiled warmly as he cupped his hand around hers, his eyes still with a glazed over tint to them seemed to light up some at the sound of her voice.

  “I love you, Tink,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from cracking.

  2

  In the moment when everything became perfectly clear for Lana, that moment when she knew what she wanted for perhaps the first time in her life, everything changed. One second she and Tink were coming together like never before, their hearts bonding in the same manner their bodies often had, and the next she was being escorted out if the room by federal marshals. Her protests went unheeded as her questions were unanswered. As they led her out of the room, she looked back at Tink and she could have swore the look on his face was one of shame, rather than the anger or even confusion that should have been there.

  “You can’t do this,” she told the man now standing in the hall between her and Tink’s room, “visiting hours aren’t over yet.”

  The man said nothing, only stood there with his hands laced tightly behind his back. At last, she saw Tink’s doctor stick his head of his office and she tried to get his attention, but he quickly darted back into the safety behind his door. When one of the nurses finally came in her direction, pleading with her to be quiet as to not upset any more of the patients, Lana about lost it.

  “Then tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “Didn’t they tell you anything at all?”

  “No, they just grabbed me and pulled me out of his room,” Lana said, her voicing reaching a higher pitch than she would have liked. “What is this all about?”

  The nurse, an older woman most likely in her sixties if not even older, looked irritated as she shot a glance at the man beside Lana. Finally, she shook her head and walked past him, and then taking Lana by the arm and leading her further down the hallway away from Tink’s room. Lana reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled down the hallway, hoping someone would finally make some sense of all this.

  “These guys aren’t the assholes they appear to be,” the nurse said, tilting her head in the man’s direction.

  “They sure could have fooled me,” Lana told her.

  “The thing is they are usually kept in the dark about what’s going on and couldn’t answer your questions if they wanted to,” she said.

  “Then do you know what’s going on, why I was pulled out of there?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, “he has a visitor coming in to see him and no one is allowed in the room while he’s there, that’s all.”

  “Why, who is it?”

  “It’s his son, the way I understand it,” the nurse said, taking note at the way Lana’s face suddenly appeared confused. “You didn’t know he had a son, did you dear?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Lana managed, trying to understand why not.

  “Oh, the girlfriend rarely does,” she said, offering an understanding smile as she wrapped her arm around Lana’s shoulder, leading her further still away from Tink’s room. Lana stopped where she was and looking past the woman, and the man still standing so rigidly in the middle of the hall.

  “But why is all of this commotion necessary, just because his son wants to visit?”

  The nurse cocked her head to the side for a moment then the realization dawned on her and she again offered that warm smile of hers, only this time Lana began to see the condescension behind it she hadn’t noticed before. Oh, you’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t you? At least, that’s what Lana thought it probably meant.

  “Sweetie, his son is in prison,” she finally said, “but since his dad was shot, they are bringing him here to see him, just in case you know? But don’t let that worry you none; he’s going to be fine. Once the wheels got started in motion, Doctor Mills saw no reason to tell the feds any different. The man had been shot for Pete’s sake, so he saw no harm in letting him see his son while he was here.”

  Lana started walking back toward the man still blocking the hallway. Ok, so Tink had a son. She could deal with that. She could even deal with the fact that he had done something stupid and ended up in jail. Hell, she wasn’t naïve, shit happened. She thanked the nurse for being kind enough to let her know what was going on and took one of the chairs along the wall, the one as close to Tink’s room as the dick in uniform would allow anyway.

  This just might be interesting, and she wanted to be sure and see as much of it as she could. Besides, a glimpse of a younger version of Tink, could that be a hint of what might be in store for her someday, a son with the man she loved? When the outer doors swung open at the end of the hallway, she stood up and took the few remaining steps allowed in that direction. The marshal of course became worried again and stepped in front of her.

  “Relax,” she said, almost allowing a smile, “I just want to see what he looks like.”

  In the moments that followed, perhaps in the years that would follow, she would regret ever saying that, for in that moment just before the heavily armed entourage turned the shackled man and led him into Tink’s room, she did see what he looked like.

  “No,” she
managed weakly, but as the realization sank in, she screamed it, “No!”

  They all stopped, none of them expecting to hear a woman scream on this particular assignment they had drawn, and they looked at her. The man in the orange jumpsuit, his hands and feet shackled together so he had to walk in half steps, was already grinning as he looked up in her direction. And just as the lights went out, just as she fell forward unaware the man who had seemed so rude before was catching her, keeping her from smacking her face onto the tile floor, just before all of that, Daniel Morrow smiled at her, and then stepped out of view into his father’s hospital room.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  1

  Sergio Marsilis stood quietly just inside his bedroom door, leaning against the frame and listening to Lori squirm on the contraption she was still securely bound. He wasn’t quite sure how she had done it, though he was intrigued not to mention impressed, but she had managed to get the plastic dick out of her while he was gone. The condition of it as it hummed lightly on the carpet suggested it hadn’t been out long however.

  He crossed the room, taking notice that her hands and feet were still secured to the wooden frame, and offered no hint they might be about to come free. As he reached down and turned off the vibrator, she stopped squirming and appeared to be listening. He was sure she was wondering if he had returned or if the batteries had just died. He didn’t make her wait long. Taking the new supplies he had retrieved during his night out, he walked across the room and went to work.

  Lori flinched slightly as the paint brush touched her bare stomach, but Sergio ignored this and continued about his work. With painstaking care, and one last dip of the brush into the red paint, he put the last detail on her skin before stepping back and admiring his interpretation of what he had so recently learned to be true: the two women, and quite possibly all women, were one and the same. The brush fell casually to the floor as he picked up the riding crop and with the exerted effort of an Olympian jockey, brought the leather down on her bare flesh.

  The wet paint splattered and her skin reddened where he struck her, while her muffled sobs sang to him from the background, creating a chaotic masterpiece worthy of the goddess herself. It was becoming harder to make out, but the name “LANA” was still readable on her skin, and then the air exploded as the leather cracked again.

  He stepped between her legs and inserted himself fully, relishing in the wetness there. Then bending forward, he allowed his own skin to smear what remained of the name he had painted on hers as he thrust deeper inside of her. The moans coming from under the hood she wore matched his thrusts and he rocked against the sturdy frame violently, making no effort to hold back and not stopping until his legs trembled and he had spent himself inside of her. His face buried between her breasts, he allowed himself to say the name his lips had avoided.

  “I love you Lana,” he said.

  Any trouble he might have had earlier understanding her muffled words under the hood were no longer present and he immediately knew what Lori was screaming now. The name had slipped but he couldn’t take it back and he knew it. Reluctantly, after he had returned his dick to his pants, he reached up and removed the tape from across her mouth.

  “Get me out if this you sick motherfucker!”

  “I know damn well you didn’t just say that,” he shot back, no longer feeling embarrassed and now emboldened by the strength of his own words.

  “I want out of this,” she tried again, this time weakly and a bit intimidated by his forceful reproach.

  “That’s better, but the answer is no,” he said, easily forgetting his mistake and making sure she still knew who was in charge of this situation, “I still have plans for you.”

  “No,” she said, and he thought he might have heard tears in her voice, “revolution, damn it, Goddamn revolution.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am completely serious, revolution,” she said. “I’m done, get me out of this.”

  “Very well.”

  He went about the task of freeing her from the harness, and while she seemed to be angry as well as a bit frightened, he did think he saw some hint of appreciation when she was at last able to look at the contraption he had built. When she was finally free and again dressed in the clothes she had worn when she arrived, she stopped at the door and turned back to him.

  “I won’t be back,” she said flatly, “and you’ll be lucky if I don’t call the police.”

  “Call the police, for what, tying you up and doing what you came here for me to do?”

  “I never asked for this,” she said. “You’re sick!”

  “Fine,” he shot back. “Get the fuck out and don’t come back then.”

  “Don’t you worry,” she said opening the door, “I won’t be back.”

  Once outside of his apartment, standing in the hallway with her hand on the door handle, she stopped. The two of them stood there for a moment, both knowing that nothing they said now would hold much merit, but both still wanting to say something anyway. Sergio did want to tell her he hadn’t meant to call her Lana; it was just that their names were so close and it had been a mistake, but the paint on her stomach said otherwise so he didn’t bother. Finally, it was Lori that spoke.

  “You’re a fucking monster,” she said and slammed the door closed.

  “No, I’m not a monster,” he said softly to the closed door, “not yet anyway.”

  2

  Lana walked away from the hospital with no real destination in mind. All she knew was that she couldn’t be there, not right now. The way she had felt when she thought she had betrayed Tink was nothing compared to this. All along, all this time, he had known that his son was the one who had held her captive, and he had kept that from her. All the while he was fucking her, he knew damn well that his own damn son had fucked her up completely. She didn’t know what to make of it.

  Her mind frantically searched for anything rational to grasp as she walked, anything to help her make some sense of it all, but there was nothing. Instead, nightmarish thoughts from that period assaulted her mind, causing doubt to breed more doubt. Once or even twice while her eyes were covered and she was being forced to do the unthinkable things, hadn’t she thought she had heard someone else in the room? Hadn’t on more than one occasion his hands felt different, larger? Had Tink been there all along? Fuck!

  Her car was long forgotten and she walked aimlessly across the town for what must have been hours, but even exhaustion wouldn’t allow her to stop, or more precisely wouldn’t allow her mind to stop. It instead kept coming up with more and more scenarios where the man she thought she knew, the man she was certain she had fallen in love with, had actually been part of her worst nightmare. Could anything be any worse? She knew the answer immediately and wished like hell the question hadn’t come up in her mind. Of course it could be worse.

  Was it possible that all of it had been part of some insanely grand deception intended to end with her being where she was now, with Tink? There was something dark and sinister about Daniel, something not quite right. Had he really been able to keep her hidden all that time by himself, without any help from anyone? And the elaborate measures he had gone through, almost having her convinced she wanted to be there, he couldn’t have done that by himself. She was almost sure of that now.

  “You need a ride?”

  The voice startled her and she jumped out of reflex, though for a fraction of a second she just knew it had been Daniel’s voice she had heard coming for the car beside her. She had to get her head together. She hadn’t even heard the car pull up beside her. Stepping back away from the street a few feet, she leaned down and looked into the window of the car. Relief came quickly when she recognized the man in the car. It was Mel Massey, and for a moment, she considered letting him take her home, or at the least back to the hospital to get her car, but then she froze. Hadn’t she learned her lesson yet? Who was to say this guy wasn’t in on it as well?

  “No,” she finally ma
naged, hoping she hadn’t clued him in on her suspicion with her delay, “I actually need the walk, I think.”

  “Yeah, I guess I can understand that,” he said grinning, “but it’s awfully late. Are you sure I can’t give you a ride?”

  “No, I’ll be ok. Thank you though.”

  He waved and pulled away from the curb and Lana watched closely as his taillights grew smaller the further they got from her. When she saw his car make a right hand turn several blocks up in front of her, she immediately took off running down a side street to her left. She wasn’t sure where she was, or where she was going, but she didn’t like the idea of anyone knowing where she was, especially anyone who knew Tink or Daniel.

  She ran until she had crossed several streets and then just for good measure made another abrupt left and headed down a small residential street. She hadn’t bothered to check the sign when she turned, but when she reached the next intersection, and had finally slowed to a walk again, she saw she was on Wilshire Boulevard, at the intersection of MLK. She took a minute to gather her bearings and before long she knew exactly where she was. Three blocks up, MLK ran into the edge of the business district and there was an all night 7-11 there. After reaching back and feeling her pocket to make sure she had brought the small wallet she sometimes carried with her when she didn’t want to drag the purse around, she headed in that direction. As it turned out, everyone who had convinced her to stop smoking was actually a dick, so they could go to hell, the way she saw it.

  The short walk to the convenience store went by quickly and she figured in comparison to all the walking she had already done it only made sense. Before she knew it, she was standing on the darkest side of the store with a lit Marlboro in one hand and a Budweiser longneck in the other. But the long haul on the bottle did little to tame the harshness of the cigarette and after a second attempt that turned out as bad as the first, she flattened the Marlboro on the ground beneath her shoe. The beer however, she had no trouble finishing quickly. She put the rest of the six-pack back in the bag, along with the lighter and pack of smokes and started out walking again.