Olivia had stopped trying to guess what the man she’d dubbed Big was going to do an hour ago.

At least, it felt like an hour. In all reality, she had no idea how much time had passed since they’d strapped her to this weight bench. There were no windows in this corner of the basement, so she couldn’t tell how bright it was outside, and as far as she knew, Cade didn’t have a clock down here.

She couldn’t tell by her captors, either. No one so much as glanced at a phone or a watch, though the one they’d made go upstairs to stand guard had poked his head in at some point, just to see if it was his turn yet, he’d said.

But it wasn’t. It was still Big’s turn, and he was an evil motherfucker.

“I should’ve kicked you in the balls,” she gasped, and flinched when he struck her inner thigh with the zip ties.

“You think?” Big said casually, and hit her again.

Fucking zip ties, she thought as pain layered over pain, the sting of the most recent blow a sharp counterpoint to the deep throb of all the ones that had gone before. He held a bundle of about fifty of the little plastic strips in his hand, and when they’d first emerged from the Duffel O’Sadism at his feet, she’d been confused. She was already tied securely, arms and legs spread wide, so she’d assumed they were just for scare.

She’d been wrong.

He wielded them like a short, mean, cat-o-nine tails, and her body bore the marks. Thin red welts decorated her inner thighs, her belly, her breasts. The tender undersides of her arms had been treated to a round, before he’d moved on to the bottoms of her feet. They’d had to adjust her bindings for that, and each ankle was now tethered to a fifty-pound kettlebell. Ironically, they’d had to use some of the zip ties to link the ankle cuffs to the handle of the weights, to the irritation of the sadist known as Big.

He’d looked down at the diminished bundle in his hand, annoyed, then decided having less meant he’d have to do more.

More had apparently meant ‘hit Olivia harder’.

He was working her inner thighs again now, stinging little slaps that were coming dangerously close to her pussy. The closer he got, the more agitated she got, until she was squirming uncontrollably, watching those plastic snakes climb her thigh. On the next slap, one strand caught the edge of her labia, and she reacted on pure instinct.