When he comes for me the next morning, I am exhausted. And emotional. The fear of the piano room still lingers, but my hostility cannot be contained.

"You can't leave me tied up like this," I tell him. "I'm not an animal. This isn't right, Javi. You have to know this isn't right."

He looks at me, but I can’t make him out from beneath the hood this time. It's pulled low over his eyes, and he has to tilt his head just to see out of it.

"Is that challenge I hear in your voice, Bella?"

Even though his voice is harsh, he sounds pleased. I don’t understand it.

I did not imagine the accent during my breakdown. It is still there. His words are not disjointed. They are eloquent and musical. And I think that his file was wrong. I think he has been speaking for many years without a hitch. It is perfectly natural to him.

"What do you want from me?" I ask. "You need to tell me, Javi. I can't do what you want if I don't know what it is."

“This is not your concern,” he says. “I will have what I want regardless, my Bella. You will stay here. And I will own you.”

I swallow and try not to lose it completely. I need to be calm. Freaking out will get me nowhere right now. Because if I'm calm, then maybe he will let his guard down and I can run.

"For how long?" I press. "How long do you want me to stay, Javi?"

His reply takes longer this time. The drawn-out silence only makes my anxiety worse. His voice is too quiet when he speaks. And this is how I know he means it.

"Forever," he answers.

Forever.

The word ricochets around my skull, obliterating what little hope I had left.

I can't breathe.

He really is going to kill me. Except, he's untying me now. Gently.

He's so much bigger than me. There's no way I will make it past him. There's no way I can fight him off. He removes the bonds from my ankles and wrists and then allows me to sit up, gesturing to a tray next to the bed.

Breakfast. He brought me breakfast.

I want to cry. I want to plead with him. But he doesn't let me do either of those things.

“Would you like to eat today, sweet Bella?”

I want more than anything to eat everything on the tray. But I am not naïve enough to believe that it will come for free. Everything with Javi will come at a cost. To my self-respect. My dignity. My humanity. And there’s a part of me that wants to pretend that there is still a fight left within. That I am stronger than him- at least mentally, and I can defeat him in that way.

But basic human needs are a motivation unlike any other. When you have gone without for so long, morals fall by the wayside. Everything else falls by the wayside.

“What do I need to do?” I ask.

He tilts his head down, giving me just a glimpse of his dark beard and a flash of gold eyes.

“Lay back,” he tells me. “On the bed.”

I do as he asks.

“Spread your legs.”

This time I don’t move. His voice grows harsher. Huskier.

“Spread your legs, Bella. Or I will spread them for you.”

I spread my legs and hate myself a little more. I can feel his eyes all over me. Assaulting me in the most intimate way possible. Visually penetrating the place I have never allowed a man to see before.

I am humiliated. Ashamed. Degraded. And he is turned on, evident by his heavy breathing.

“Play with yourself, beauty,” he says. “Show me how you like it.”

Again, I hesitate.

A low rumble thunders from his throat. And his next words remind me that I have no choice.

“Or perhaps you would like to play some more games with me, instead?”

I reach between my legs and touch myself. It is robotic. Stiff. Awkward. My eyes are squeezed shut.

I jump when his fingers find my breast, skimming over my nipple. My body responds to him, and a storm of emotions festers inside of me. I try to swallow them back down.

This monster is the worst kind of evil.

The kind that doesn’t feel like evil when he touches me. The kind that feels… good. And when his mouth captures the soft globe of flesh and he groans, I am wet for him. It is the worst kind of deception. The worst kind of betrayal from my own body.

There is the sound of a zipper, and I stop breathing. Waiting quietly for what comes next. I need to be mentally prepared. And I am not mentally prepared.

“Open your eyes,” he demands.

I open my eyes. Slowly. Hesitantly. He is right there. Solid cock in hand, next to my face. Swollen and throbbing with his want for me. I try to force my legs shut again, to prevent him from seeing the lie between my thighs. The arousal I don’t want or need.

I can’t control it.

His fingers grip my thigh and pinch.

“Don’t try to hide the truth,” he tells me. “I can smell how much you want me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head.

“No.”

“You will take me, Bella.”

“No,” I say again.

“You will take me,” he repeats. “Or you will die.”

I glance up at him, so close I can almost make out the lines of his face. His mouth. He is rigid. So, so rigid.

And I don’t believe him.

Maybe I just don’t want to. But I don’t believe he will kill me. I sense the struggle within him. I just don’t yet know what that struggle is.

He watches me study him… and he doesn’t like it.

“Suck me like a good girl,” he tells me. “Get me nice and wet.”

I breathe out and do as he asks.

I draw him back into my mouth, sweeping over the velvet exterior of his heavy flesh. The salty taste of his arousal coats my lips and tongue.

He doesn’t let me have control. The moment he’s inside, his restraint is gone.

He cups my head and thrusts deep, hitting the back of my throat and choking me. I gag around him, and he grunts out his satisfaction when spit drips over the sides of my lips and down my chin.

“Yes, my Bella,” he praises. “Good girl.”

His approval eases my nerves and encourages me. I relax into him and let him use my mouth. But the better I do, the more tumultuous he becomes. With his pleasure comes his wrath.

The next words out of his mouth are not praise at all. He calls me a lazy slut and tells me to go harder.

I do.

He grunts and then asks if I think I’m too good to suck his dick. I tell him I’m not. He rubs his cock all over my face, smearing my spit along with it. He tells me I need to do better. Learn faster. Do as he asks. But all the while, he can’t stop groaning. And I rise to every one of his challenges, meeting them with determination. Because I can hear the lies in his voice. How much he doesn’t want to like it.

It chafes at him. And it gives me power.

He must know that I know. Because he shoves my face away, allowing his own hand to take over as he glares down at me from above, telling me I couldn’t suck a dick if my life depended on it.

I open my mouth to argue, and he squeezes my face in his palm to shut me up.

“Play with yourself,” he orders again.

But I already am. Nothing is happening. If he thinks I will come, he really is insane.

“That’s right,” he says, and his voice is cruel. “I forget that this beauty can’t even do that right.”

To prove his point, he touches me himself. Jacking himself off with one hand while he fingers me with the other.

I don’t want to like it.

I try my best to stay numb. But my body is a war zone of pleasure and pain. Humiliation and want. My legs fall wider, and he praises me again before criticizing me in the next breath. He says I don’t deserve to come.

But still, he fingers me. And still, I am wet. So wet for him- for this- that I can hear his fingers slapping against me.

He hears it too. And he likes it whether he can admit it to himself or not. Because his breath is guttural. Broken and agonized. His hand squeezes the life out of his cock, jerking so violently I am certain he is punishing himself too.

But I can’t focus on any of it. Because molten heat is surging inside of me like a volcano.

I try to fight it off. To resist. To focus on anything else. But I can’t. I fracture around his fingers with something between a sob and a wail. My eyes fall shut, and I succumb to the pleasure, my ears ringing and my vision dancing with flashes of light.

Javi comes too.

Releasing himself onto my breasts with a long, tortured growl. He empties his cock completely and then smears the evidence over my skin. Leaving it to dry like last time.

Marking me.

Claiming me.

And I think this is it. I am humiliated but sated. Hungry. Starving. Now I will get my food.

But when I open my eyes, the temperature in the room has plummeted. Javi is erratic. Enraged. There isn’t time to question or predict his behavior. He flips me over and pins me down with the weight of his body, settling onto my lower thighs.

My adrenaline spikes and my muscles lock when he removes his belt from the loops of his jeans.

I try to wiggle away. His hand crashes down onto my ass cheek, searing a hot palm print into the flesh.

“Stop.”

The command is simple. Deep. Terrifying. And I obey.

But then he grabs my foot, and the terror is real.

“I did what you asked. I did everything you asked.”

“But you didn’t please me.”

It’s a lie. And I know it’s a lie. This isn’t fair. I can’t play the game when the rules keep changing. When he punishes me for doing exactly what he asked of me in the first place.

I try to tell him so. But the words get swallowed down my throat when he lashes the bottom of my foot with his belt. It is an agony unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

It is raw. Scorched nerves. Fire and hell. He doesn’t hold back when he does it again.

And again.

And again.

I try to scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I try to move, but he is too heavy, and his grip is unyielding. I try to beg him, but the words don’t make sense. And I’m crying now.

A sniffling, inconsolable mess.

When I think it might be over, he starts in on the other foot. I am so certain that I am bleeding. Flayed wide open. But when he stops and climbs off me, my feet are bone dry.

I scurry as far away from him as I can. Huddling against the corner of the bed.I rock back and forth like a lunatic trying to comfort myself.

For two minutes, he stands there. Quiet. Watching me. Judging me.

I hate him so much. But then he comes to sit beside me, this tormentor of mine. And he becomes my solace too. Taking me in his arms and holding me. Rubbing my back and kissing my temple.

It is so much what I need that my mind can’t comprehend this is the same man who just inflicted the pain. Because I am broken. All I can do is cling to the comfort.

Bleeding more of my sanity.

My pride.

My dignity.

He is stripping me bare with his methods. Destroying me piece by piece. And he makes no apologies for it. I am certain he feels no regret. His next words only prove me right.

“You are mine to play with, beauty,” he says. “I can do whatever I want because you belong to me.”

I sniffle and allow my hair to fall in a veil around my face, shielding my eyes from this monster who torments me so. But it does not help. He is not finished. He tips my chin upright and forces my gaze back to him.

“Now thank me,” he demands. “Thank me for making you come.”

I stare at him in disbelief. Horrified. The very idea is so disgusting to me all I want to do is spit in his face. And yet, the words come out of my mouth.

Proving only one thing.

My mind is a prisoner now too.

And I am merely a puppet.