by Raven Dark
Tears sting my eyes, helplessness wrapping itself around my throat like a noose. Dee and Monica were my friends once, or I thought they were, but within the space of fewer than twenty-four hours, the respect I thought we shared has turned to hate.
Because I betrayed them.
Closing my eyes, I push the tears back, along with the loneliness that threatens to shatter what’s left of my resolve. And the hatred for Spider that eats at my insides like acid.
In the Colony, they taught us that hatred isn’t just a sin. It serves no purpose except to consume the heart and destroy the soul. Maybe it’s true, but right now, I don’t care. Right now, that hatred burns away the sense of powerlessness, staving off the helplessness that, if I let it take over, will leave me an empty shell, without hope. It keeps alive the need to escape, to find Sarah, to take my life back.
Hours pass and no one comes into the room. Thanks to the clock on Spider’s bedside table, I’m aware of every minute that ticks by. With nothing to occupy my mind, anxiety shreds my insides as my mind spins with thoughts of what lies ahead of me.
More than once, the pastors talked about what men in the outside world do to women. Kidnapping. Torture. Worse.
It’s funny, but over the six months since I’d escaped His Holy Peace, I’d begun to realize those stories were lies. Except, obviously they weren’t. Not everyone in the outside world is a monster, but I’ve somehow managed to run into one who’s every bit as bad and scary and twisted as the pastors made the whole world sound.
Not for the first time, I almost wish I’d never left the Colony. Until I consider what would have happened if I’d stayed.
If I’d stayed, I’d have been forced to follow through with the plan the pastors had in store for me. I’d be married by now. At eighteen, I’d be married to a man almost three times my age. A man who’s so corrupt that his previous wife decided it was better to risk eternal damnation by ending her own life just to avoid spending one more minute with him.
I’d be barefoot and pregnant, a baby-making machine for a man who’s convinced everyone around him that he’s the perfect gentleman, the perfect husband and father, the perfect servant of God.
Seth.
I shudder. The magnanimous, gentlemanly face Seth wears in front of his congregants is just a façade. Living with him would be no better than spending the rest of my life here. If the misery, the pain and sadness I saw in his wife’s eyes the day before she died is any indicator, he might be worse.
No. If I hadn’t run when I did, I’d have ended up trapped just like her, in a life without anything to live for. I might have ended up so wracked with misery, loneliness and pain that I saw ending my life as a better alternative, even if it meant defying God’s will and leaving my family to deal with being shunned by the church that they could never be allowed to leave.
I got out of the Colony. I’ll get out of here, too. I just have to figure out how.
Several hours after Spider left, I receive my only visitors. Keys jungle outside the door and the lock clicks. I jerk my head up, tensing.
The door opens and Monica steps in, carrying a tray. She closes the door.
As soon as she sees me, any hope that she might help me instantly vanishes. She takes one look at me, tied up and spread out on Spider’s bed, and covers her mouth, stifling a laugh.
“Oh, this is too good.” She takes a few steps into the room, then stops and cocks her head. Her eyes gleam with satisfaction. “You know, I bitched at the idea of having to come in here and deal with you, but seeing you like this is totally worth it.”
Humiliation and anger well up. She’s getting a kick out of this? I grit my teeth, keeping my eyes on the ceiling, stifling the urge to tell her off. Getting into it with her would only make things worse.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I tell her.
It’s not a lie. Until now, I’ve managed not to think about my bladder, but it’s ready to burst.
“Yeah, drinking ten bottles of water in a few hours will do that.” She sets the tray down on the bedside table.
I look at her.
“Tequila said you were guzzling water back from the minute you got into the barroom.” She crosses her arms and assesses me, making no move to untie me. “You’re smart, I’ll give you that. We should have realized you were trying to store up so you could make a run for it. None of us picked up on it until Spider told us you rabbited.”
Is that how he knew I was planning to run? No. If the women didn’t catch on, then they couldn’t have told him before I tried.
Man, I can literally feel my bladder stretching as I lie here, threatening to let loose. I wriggle, tugging on the ropes. The idea that I have to beg her for anything galls me, but the alternative is too humiliating to bear.
“I have to pee like a racehorse. Please untie me.”
“Yeah, right. So you can try to bolt out that window again? I don’t think so.”
I huff in frustration. “I’m not trying to get you to untie me so I can escape. Did Spider tell you not to untie me for any reason?”
She cocks her hip.
“Look, I know you think I deserve this, but unless you want me to urinate all over his bed, I suggest you let me use the restroom. I don’t think he’d be thrilled if he came back and found out you let me make that kind of a mess.”
Monica’s eyes narrow. Her expression tells me that I’ve said something odd, but what? She shakes herself as if deciding it doesn’t matter and takes something off the tray she’s carried in. It’s a blue container of some sort, shaped kind of like a kidney, and a few inches deep.
“What is that?”
“It’s a bedpan.”
“A what?”
“Seriously?” She clicks her teeth. “It’s for you to piss in, Martian girl.”
I sigh. “Great.” She brought one of those so that she doesn’t have to untie me. So that she doesn’t have to risk my overpowering her when she ties me back up. But it also means I have to relieve myself into that thing right in front of her.
This is humiliating.
She unties my legs and then puts the bedpan in position. As soon as I’m done, she takes it to the bathroom and empties it. The toilet flushes.
I glance at the tray. There’s a sandwich with what looks like roast beef, and apple slices cut up in a bowl. My stomach rumbles.
Monica comes back into the room and reties my ankles. Then she picks up the tray, sitting on the bed beside me.
“How do you expect me to eat if I can’t use my hands?”
She picks up one of the sandwich slices and holds it up to my mouth, looking bored. “Open wide.”
“Seriously?”
“Do you want to eat or not? I’m cool with letting you starve.”
My stomach growls in protest. This is ridiculous.
I open my mouth and take a bite, glaring at her.
“Did he tell you to do this?” I ask around a mouthful of roast beef with mustard. “Did he tell you to come in here and feed me like a baby?”
“I do what I have to for the club.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Just what I said.”
As if that explains everything.
“You want some water?” She holds up one of the bottles. A few drops of condensation drip onto my stomach. They tickle as they trickle down my side without my being able to wipe them away.
It’s cooler in here now. Someone must have turned up the central air.
I nod.
Monica unscrews the cap and holds the bottle to my lips, letting me take a few gulps. The liquid is cool and refreshing.
I take a few more bites of the sandwich, and then meet her eyes. “I don’t get it. How are you okay with what’s happening here?”
She gives me a humorless smile. “Trying to appeal to my conscience, Sticky Fingers?”
Yeah, it’s probably pointless to try to appeal to any sense of female solidarity here. From the minute I saw the way the women reacted t
o what Dee did, I could feel there is a strong sense of sisterhood among the women. The problem is, I’m not part of it. And if what Tequila said is true, I never will be.
“Yeah, I guess I am. But I really want to know. Doesn’t this bother you?” I flick my eyes to one of my bound wrists.
She gives me the last bite of the sandwich. She looks right at the ropes, then at me without sympathy. “Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Why?”
She sets the tray down and draws back. “You really don’t get it, do you?” She sighs. “Let me clue you in, Martian Girl. This?” She waves her hands around the room. “This place, these people? This club is everything, Stephanie. This is our whole life. Everything all of us do is for the club. Loyalty is the name of the game. No one goes against the Outlaws. No half in, half out. You’re either in, or you aren’t.”
I lean forward, or I do so as best I can under the circumstances. “Wait a minute. Monica, are you being forced to do this? Are they keeping you here?”
I’ve heard this kind of thing before. Sort of. In the Colony, the pastors talk about how everything everyone does is for the good of the whole, how we must remain loyal, not only to God, but to each other. Once, I’d believed in their us against them garbage. That the world was a terrible place, evil, out to get us, and the only way to survive was to keep the rest of them out and stick together.
I get the feeling that there’s nothing Godly about what the men do here, but she still sounds like the women in the Colony started to sound once I’d seen the truth. She still sounds like a woman trapped in an organization that uses intimidation and plays on their fears to keep them in line.
But as soon as I ask the question, I know I’ve misread the whole situation.
“Pfft. Hardly.” She laughs. “Trust me, I’m not being forced to do anything I don’t want to do. I choose to be here.”
I process this, letting her words sink in. Theoretically, everything she said could be chalked up to fear. She could have convinced herself she’s better off here than trying to leave.
Over time, I’d begun to realize that when some people in the Colony talked about how much they loved the fellowship, how much they loved the church, it wasn’t loyalty they were showing. It was fear. I’d seen it behind their eyes, fear I’d been blind to for my whole life. I’d seen it in the way Sarah would glance at the guards. I’d seen it in Seth’s wife when she thought no one was watching her. But this is different. I can hear the loyalty, hear the adoration Monica has for this…club, and it isn’t a blind adoration one shows when they’ve been brainwashed.
She means what she says. She isn’t a prisoner.
There’s a rapping on the door. Monica grabs a big towel from Spider’s bathroom and comes back, throwing it over me.
‘What are you doing?”
Without responding, she fiddles with the towel, clearly making sure all of my lady bits are covered. Then she goes to the door and opens it.
A tall, slender biker with a clean-shaven face and sharp grey eyes steps in carrying a leather satchel. Monica gestures to me, as if to say, She’s the one you’re here for.
He nods and crosses the room to me, setting his satchel on the nightstand, while Monica sits beside me on the bed again.
“Who is he?” I ask her. “Why is he here?”
A smile twists her lips. She says nothing, evidently enjoying watching me squirm.
The grey-eyed biker opens his satchel as he looks me over with an amused sparkle in eyes that are half hidden behind tinted spectacles. “Spider certainly has an interesting way of dealing with women who go against him.”
I click my teeth, my face burning with humiliation.
Grinning from ear to ear, he rummages through his satchel and pulls out a syringe.
I jerk my shoulders up. “Whoa, what is that? Are you going to drug me now?”
“No drugs.” When I twist in my bindings, he grips my shoulder. “Relax. I’m a doctor, and this is a birth control implant. Spider’s orders.”
“An implant? Is there such a thing?”
“Don’t tell me, you’ve never heard of those, either?” Monica quips.
“No,” I snap. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
They didn’t have anything like that in the Colony. I find the concept of something so technical baffling.
“The implant can be removed easily any time. It will not prevent you from having children once Spider has it removed, and it’ll remain effective for five years.”
I sigh and stare at the ceiling, refusing to watch the needle going in, shutting out the pin prick of pain. The notion of having the decision to bear children taken from me, however temporarily, by a man I don’t trust is frightening. Other implications—that my body belongs to Spider to do with as he wishes, and that his taking me is inevitable—settle like a brick on my chest.
My eyes sting with tears of fear, a trapped feeling wrapping around my throat. I push the tears back, refusing to let either of them see me cry.
The doctor goes over the potential side effects of the implant. Mood changes, weight gain, headaches, changes in menstrual cycles. He tells me that if I have any symptoms, they should be mild and temporary, passing within a few months, and that if I have any more serious ones, to let Spider know. I barely register what he says, his voice a muted buzzing in my ear as my brain tries to process what’s becoming of my life. Spider’s control over me has never felt so absolute.
After the doctor leaves, Monica removes the towel. So now I’ll have to lie here in the nude for who knows how long until Spider comes back. Can this get any worse?
Monica gets up and picks up the empty tray. “If you need to piss again, yell.”
Then, just like that, she leaves, locking the door behind her without another word.
I close my eyes, but it does nothing for the hopelessness that sinks its roots deep. Any hope of finding common ground with her drains out of me like water out of a wrung out sponge. We were friends once, but that time has passed. She isn’t going to go against Spider, and she isn’t going to turn on the club.
Until Spider lets me go, I’m stuck here.
Until he lets me go…or he kills me.
11
Conqueror
At some point after Monica left, I must have dropped off to sleep, because I jerk awake to the sound of keys rattling outside the door and the lock clicking.
Is she back?
Ignoring the ache in my arms from being in the same position for too long and the urgent need to pee, I lift my head, looking into the bathroom. Light streams through the window, but it’s the yellowish glow that comes from the lights at the back of the clubhouse, rather than from the sun.
It’s nighttime.
I glance at the clock. It’s going on ten. It’s been hours since Spider left me here. Is that him at the door? If it is, what will happen to me now?
Anxiety clenches my gut, eating away any relief I’d feel at his return. The door opens. Spider steps in and shuts it.
“Hello, gorgeous.” Pocketing his keys, he takes his time crossing the room, watching me squirm on his bed.
Somehow, I’d thought that after being tied up in here for hours alone, he’d look different. He’d no longer be the sexy devilish image of sin who’d made my body heat up with just a glance. I’d see only the monster, a man who cares nothing for my welfare and sees me as something subhuman, not worthy of compassion.
Wrong.
He’s as perfect as ever. Sweat slicks his hair and face, oiling the tattooed muscles on his bare arms and making the designs stand out against his tanned skin. There’s a hint of red on his arms and face from sunburn. The man has lost none of his magnetism.
Spider’s gaze lingers on the swell of my breasts, on my sex, heating my skin like a caress. His throat works and his chest rises on a sharp breath. My blood still hums with awareness of him, my body burning under that hungry gaze.
Nope. Even after all this, he still makes my body r
espond to him.
I tear my eyes away, looking at the ceiling, humiliation burning my cheeks at his perusal of my nakedness. He crosses his arms, watching me in silence for a long moment. Making no move to free my limbs, even though they’re aching enough that I groan.
“Are you hungry?” His throaty voice wraps around me, seeping into my pores. “You gotta piss?”
The questions are innocuous, but when I glance at him, his eyes are burning spheres of lust.
Before I’d tried to run, he’d said he’d thought about fucking me. Is that what he’s going to do to me now? My fingernails dig into my palms with fear, but my core heats up with the same need I’d felt last night while he was using my mouth.
The man is a monster. How can I want him?
“Yes.” I hate how sullen the word sounds.
Spider comes to the side of the bed and brushes a stray lock of hair off of my cheek. I jerk my face away from his touch and he hums in approval. “Still pissed at me.”
For real?
I glare at him and he bends down. His mouth hovers a hair’s breadth from mine. For one heart-stopping moment, I’m sure he’s going to kiss me. Instead, he kisses my nose.
“Let me go,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
“You really think I’m going to do that?”
“I mean untie me.”
My bladder is on the verge of spilling itself again. Of course, he could make me use the wretched bedpan Monica left on the nightstand.
“I hardly think you’re in a position to tell me what to do.”
“I have to relieve myself.”
He wrinkles his nose, the puzzlement in his eyes making me wonder what I’ve said that sounds off. I’m always saying things that make me seem out of place.
I wriggle. “Spider.”
“Say please.”
I put my head back. “Please.”
“Better.” One at a time, he unties my wrists but leaves the ropes tied to the bedposts. “You need to learn to speak to me with respect. I don’t take demands from women.”
