Chapter Twenty

Wednesday, May 22

Jersey lay in a crumpled heap in the center of the bed that was shoved up against one wall of the room called The Toybox. It hadn’t taken long at all to break her down. To muffle the sobs that shook her body, she burrowed her head into the pillow, doing her best to ignore the pain from the bruise she felt blooming on her thigh.

An image of Beau flashed through her mind, the argument they’d been having just before she and her friends had gone to dinner. Given what had been happening to her the past few days, it was ironic really that she’d been so angry and devastated at the suggestion that she play out his twisted sexual fantasies, ones in which he wasn’t even a participant but an observer. Her fingers curled into her palms, the jagged edges of what was left of her fingernails driving deep. Every bit of the pain and degradation, every endless second of it that she’d endured since she’d been dragged here was because of him.

At the sound of a key turning in the lock, Jersey’s muscles tensed as her teeth bit into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. When the door opened revealing the already all-too-familiar face, her tremors morphed into full body shakes, a scream clawing at her throat as it begged to be released.

His eyes steady and cold, the man quietly closed the door, locking it behind him gently as if what they were going to do was nothing more than an intimate interlude that he didn’t want to have interrupted. Only when he slid open the wardrobe closet simply labeled ‘The Toolbox’ did his eyes stray from Jersey to the items organized neatly on hooks before bouncing back to her as if weighing which would be the most painful, the most degrading. His choice finally made, he set the item off to the side and slowly removed his clothes, folding each item carefully before placing it on a chair perched in a corner. As he did, he watched her watch him, ignoring both her whimpers as well as the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes, further soaking the pillow beneath her head.

Then, fully nude, fully aroused, eyes gleaming with pure evil, he approached the bed, his right hand gripping the wardrobe item. And though she knew it was a useless effort, Jersey forced her arms and legs to move, to scramble as far away as possible. If there’d been a window, she would’ve found a way to jump through it, even if it meant leaping to her death.

She made it less than a foot before the snapping sound whistled through the air a split second before the burning sting of leather struck her soft flesh, and this time she did nothing to hold back the agonized howl, allowing it to grow louder as the man roughly grabbed her already bruised body and flipped her onto her back, a sickening grin covering his face.