Erin
Torch led us to a pickup truck I learned was his. It was a big black 4x4, and it did the trick just fine. The three of us scrambled into the cab, he turned on the ignition, and we were out of there. Not a freaking moment too soon.
We dropped Candy off at her car in the Centerfold lot and watched her drive away, making sure she got out all right. She had to have been as freaked-out as I was, but she was holding it together okay and claimed to be good to drive herself home. She probably just wanted badly to get away from everyone and everything related to Centerfold. I couldn’t say I blamed her one bit.
Once we arrived back at Torch’s apartment, we took a few moments to just settle and unwind before rehashing the events of the night. I knew he was dying to know what had happened upstairs in that nightmare McMansion, but I wanted a drink first, and my feet hurt something awful, and I was freaking cold.
Torch poured me a glass of wine—this biker was proving to have hidden depths I would not have guessed at—then told me to sit on the couch and put my feet up. He disappeared into his bedroom and reemerged with a fleece top and a huge pair of sweatpants. I almost declared my love but thought better of it in the moment. Now was not the time, and I was not sure of how rationally I was thinking.
He rubbed my feet again while I drank that first glass. Neither of us made eye contact; it was as if we were both too raw and we needed time to gather ourselves together individually before we could reconnect with one another.
After several minutes, I felt better. I was breathing normally, my mind was no longer racing, my body was warming up from the shock and adrenaline drop, and I was starting to relax under his firm ministrations on my feet.
He’d noticed the difference. “Are you ready to talk now?”
“Yeah, baby. I think so.”
“Okay. Tell me what happened upstairs.”
So I did. I went through every detail, including those which interested Torch the most: how Owen had ripped down my towel and threatened me, my shoving my knee into his balls, releasing Candy from her bindings, and grinding my stiletto into his hand.
“Damn, Erin. I wish I’d been there to protect you from that sick bastard. But I’m damn proud of you, that you hurt him so badly. Remind me never to piss you off that bad.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that, Torch, not unless you have a complete psychotic breakdown and become a whole different person. I save that nasty for special occasions only. No. Truth is, I learned that shit in a self-defense class. Never really needed it before like I did tonight, though. But something clicked inside me, and I thought, ‘It’s now or never, babe. Break out the worst moves you got.’ So that’s what I did.”
“You did right. Damn. Okay. So, he’s gonna be really, really pissed about this, and there will be blowback. You know this, right? He’s gonna be on the hunt for you. Which makes me very, very unhappy. I don’t feel good about havin’ you go back to your little apartment alone anymore, not while he’s out there gunnin’ for you. I want you to stay with me, here. You down with that?”
Wow. He’d really been processing this situation a lot more than I had, up to this point. I hadn’t even thought that far in advance.
But he was right. Owen would be on the hunt for me, and it would be far safer for me to stay here with Torch. I smiled at him gratefully.
“You are totally right, Torch. You wouldn’t mind? That’s a big ask.”
“I don’t remember askin’. You’re movin’ in here with me. Now come over here, and let me hold you.”
I climbed up over him, and we snuggled on the couch until I fell asleep, not too much later.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized how completely sweet he was being with me, almost all the time, like maybe what was between us wasn’t all just about the stellar sex. But in those moments, like last night, as I lay on top of him drifting off, I was only aware of how big and warm and strong he was, and how I felt safe and secure and cared for. It felt really, really nice.
# # #
The next day started out perfectly.
I woke up snuggled against Torch in his fabulous king-sized bed. I lay there breathing in his scent, lightly kissing his chest and neck whenever I felt like it, drifting in and out of consciousness for a while.
Eventually I realized he must have been awake, too, and that he was smiling at me. When our eyes caught he rolled me over to my other side, lifted my upper leg back over his hip, and worked me up just enough so he knew I was ready for him. Then he slipped inside of me and smoothly pumped in and out, taking me there slowly, deeply.
When our breathing became more labored and his strokes more demanding, and I was grasping the sheets and my head threw back, he bit me at the juncture of my neck and shoulder and we came as close as together as we’d ever come before.
Best. Wakeup. Ever.
We took it easy the rest of the morning, staying away from hot topics, just enjoying being together in a kind of normal way. We made coffee, and he cooked me breakfast. We ate together and made fun of each other, still learning one another. I cleaned up while he went out for a run, and then I showered and investigated his book collection. He returned and showered. Okay, I’ll admit it: I showered again. We had more of the greatest sex ever.
It was a perfect morning.
All good things must come to an end, though, as they say. Eventually, we had to broach the subject and deal with what was really going on in our world.
Torch broke the barrier of happy good times when he dug out the external hard drive from his jacket pocket from the night before. Looking at me warily, he powered up his computer, connected the drive with a cable, and sat himself in front of the monitor.
He hadn’t mentioned it to me at any point last night or earlier in the day, but I could tell from his face this was something he found at that sick bastard’s house.
My mind jumped to the possibility that there could have been digital evidence on that drive—something that could put Owen together with Fletch’s pornos, or with other nefarious activity, possibly even with Thea’s death, though I shuddered to think of a recording of that. However, a recording of that was precisely the point of that, so it stood to reason that Owen kept a recording on hand somewhere. I just didn’t think I could handle seeing it. Torch clearly had the same thoughts rolling through his mind, as he did not invite me to join him at the monitor.
I kept my seat on the couch, my face pointing to the open pages of a book I had picked up, one of those military-spy-mystery-adventure novels that so many guys love. I had no idea what the words were in front of me. They swam around while I tried to keep my breathing even and not freak out about what Torch was finding.
He didn’t say a word for a number of minutes, just kept clicking his mouse, leaning toward the screen, the fingers of one hand lightly covering his lips. Focused, but I could tell he was in search mode and had not yet hit pay dirt with anything.
As the minutes passed by, the tension in the air around us thickened. At one point, he dug out a set of mini earphones and plugged them into the computer and his ears, and I knew there were videos he was going to watch. I kept my eyes away and took a deep breath.
There were times when I’d known he had found something. He’d stop clicking, his eyes scanning the screen, or sometimes even closed as he listened to whatever was happening. I moved myself to the mini breakfast bar between the living room and the kitchen, with my back turned to him so I could no longer see his reactions or watch his every movement. The book, however, continued to fail to engage me.
I felt like there was a screaming silence in the room, and I needed a much stronger distraction. I dug out my smartphone and the earphones I always kept in my handbag, and turned up the volume on Eddie Vedder. I went back into Torch’s bedroom and curled up on the armchair by the window, no longer attempting to read. I just listened to Pearl Jam and watched the clouds drift in the afternoon sky.
That was probably a poor choice; Thea and I had shared huge childhood crushes on Eddie (though really, I think hers was only a copycat of my own). But listening to him kept her with me in those endless minutes at Torch’s place. Still, I didn’t look for a different artist; Thea had every right to be there. I needed her there; she was there.
Finally, after what felt like ages and ages of purgatory, I felt a tug at my ear, and Torch was there, pulling out my earphones and pulling me up into his big strong arms, burying his face in my neck. I just hugged him back, not saying anything, letting him tell me what he needed to when he was ready.
“Got him. We got him, baby.”
I lost it. I did. I just cried. He held me, and I cried.
# # #
Torch called his Pres to give him the update and let him know about the party and the hard drive with the evidence he found. I overheard him speak of the video of “the girl,” and I knew he was talking about Thea.
After a few more minutes, Torch hung up the phone and turned to me. “Hey, babe, I gotta run out. Pres is callin’ church. That’s a MC meetin’ for all the brothers, so I gotta be there. You okay here? Might take me a couple hours, maybe more, maybe less. Okay?”
“Yeah, Torch. I’m okay. You go. Ride safe, okay?”
“Always do. Listen, I put a copy of the video on the computer, so if you don’t want to see it, don’t look at the ‘sick bastards’ folder, okay? But there was other stuff, too, in there; I’m bringin’ it all to the meetin’. But I wanted to have a backup copy of everythin’, too. Just don’t look in that folder, babe.”
“Okay, thanks. I won’t. You go. I’ll be fine.”
He kissed me, hard and quick, and held my eyes a moment. Then he grabbed his stuff and took off.
In his absence, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I wandered around his space for many minutes, unsettled, kind of bored and antsy.
I thought about what we’d discussed about me moving in with him, and I got motivated. I needed something to do, and I needed some normalcy. I needed not to be living in fear. I needed to do something positive.
So I left a note on the kitchen counter, telling Torch where I had gone and when I’d be back, and then I Ubered a ride back to my place to pack up some of my essentials and gather what I’d want for at least the next several days.
I had only been there only about a half hour, throwing stuff in bags and more carefully packing up my necessary bathroom products while jamming out to some favorite tunes, immersed in the mindless comfort of the beats. But I was feeling good, empowered, alive. It was a feeling bordering on happy.
And then I was jarred by heavy pounding on my door. Whoever it was, was also laying on my buzzer. Rude!
I jumped over some stuff to reach the door and threw it open, not even thinking about who it might be. Stupid. It was just a stupid move.
Of course, it was the sick bastard himself, Owen. Shit.
He was pissed. Seething. Waves of evil were pouring off him, aimed directly at me.
As soon as I recognized him, I tried to shut the door right back in his face, but he had already shoved his foot inside to stop that process, and the door bounced back a little. He shoved it open wider, straightened to his full height, several inches above mine, and entered my space like the raider that he was.
“You little cock-sucking bitch. Don’t think you aren’t going to pay for what you did.”
I backed up as fast as I could, keeping an eye on him but also trying to use my peripheral vision to locate anything I could use as a weapon to hold him off. Nothing appeared immediately obvious. I thought speech would be my best option for the moment. “You deserved it, you bastard.”
“You don’t seem to understand who I am, or what I can do. But you will, I promise you.”
And he pulled something out of his pocket, stuck his arm toward me, and fucking Tasered me. For what seemed like forever. I dropped hard. It was like I was completely overtaken by electrical pain in all of my nerves, and my muscles all contracted at once. I had absolutely no control over my body. I wasn’t even sure I was still breathing. Everything was pain, and then I’m pretty sure I passed out.
I don’t know what happened next, or the exact order of things, but when I came to, I found myself stuffed into the trunk of a car, darkness all around me. The smells of oil and gas and dirty socks filled my nose. I was aware of the rumble of the engine. I slowly realized the discomfort of having my arms tied behind me at my elbows and wrists in a tight, scratchy rope, and my protracted inability to control any of my limbs. My mouth had also been duct-taped. If my breathing had evened out before that awareness, it went back into panic mode with the renewed consciousness of my helplessness.
The car ride post-wakeup lasted many minutes more. I lay there in confusion and fear and anger, and tried to focus on getting control of my limbs once more. Slowly, my fingers and toes began to respond to direction, and I began to feel like I’d be able to handle myself again whenever this car ride from hell ended. I tried exploring the small space I was crammed into for any kind of tool to help me, but without the use of swingable arms, I felt more like a fish than a person. Yeah, my ankles were tied together, too. Awesome, right? Fuck. I was fucked.
By the time the car finally pulled to a complete stop, and I heard and felt the engine turn off, then the driver’s door open and slam shut, I had managed to bring my legs a bit closer to the opening of the trunk, and I had rolled myself into a kind of weird yoga fetal position on my back, balancing painfully on my arms and hands underneath me. I steeled myself to attempt to kick the fucker in the torso, with all the power I could muster from this unfortunate position.
It didn’t work very well. When he opened the trunk he was standing back a little, as he would have to for the top to pop up. So he saw my position and read my plan, and he laughed. “Nice try, sweetheart, but no cigar.”
He leaned forward, I kicked out, he side-stepped to avoid the blow, and then he Tasered me again, this time aiming it on my thigh. I contracted, consumed by the pain. My heart sped up scarily, and I was out again.
He must have gone a little easier on me the second time; I started to come to again what could only have been a few minutes later. I was in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder, and from what I could see from my excellent view of his back and legs and the floor and walls around us, I thought I recognized his beautiful ugly McMansion. He was then taking me up the grand staircase—the fucker was strong, I’d give him that—and he made a right at the top of the stairs.
I could only make ineffective noises at this point and was having some trouble regulating my own breathing. My head and heart were pounding, and his shoulder digging into my abdomen wasn’t particularly helping. My shoulders were starting to ache badly from the tight binding.
He brought me into a room at the end of the hall, which I hadn’t managed to check out the night before. It was easily three times the size of any of the other bedrooms; it must have been the master. From my backward-upside-down position, I comprehended that we then entered a walk-in closet. He punched a button in the wall there next to…a fucking elevator?
He had a fucking elevator in his fucking closet in his fucking master bedroom. Holy. Shit. This did not bode well.
Throughout the elevator ride down-down-down, I screamed as much as I could, as loud as I could through the duct tape, certain I was headed straight to my death anyway, so why the fuck not? If anyone heard me, unlikely as that might have seemed, that was probably my only shot at getting out of Sick Bastard’s cray-cray clutches alive.
He let me scream. He actually chuckled a bit at it. And he slapped my ass hard, a number of times. He seemed to be really enjoying himself. But that didn’t stop me. I kept on screaming.
I continued my resistance as the elevator finally pulled to a halt. The doors swept open, and we exited into what appeared to be a long narrow dark hallway lit only by evenly spaced dim sconces. It was confusing and difficult for me to see the actual dimensions of the space, as the walls were all mirrored. I would guess he had that done specifically to confuse.
There was a series of doors. We passed a number of them, but I was too freaked-out and confused at this point to count them with clarity. I felt like life had taken a surreal turn, and that whatever was happening was not even worth noting very well. It was like my brain dissociated and just went out of operation.
Finally, he stopped in front of one of the doors and opened it up quickly and easily; it must not have been locked. He flipped on the light switch, and I heard a loud metallic lock release, leading to the hydraulic opening of a steel cage door.
Oh, fuck no. Fuuuuuck. This guy was truly fucking sick.
I had caught first sight of this cage from under his arm in my upside-down position on his back once we entered the room. The main room door banged shut behind us, clearly weighted and wired to resist the open position.
Despite not having any decent escape plan, I acted only on instinct. I reared up, trying to wiggle and bang my way out of his hold, screaming with even more determination (and probably even less efficacy) than ever before.
He set me down inside the cage, which was probably about eight feet wide and six feet deep, and made quick work of spinning me to face away from him. He hobbled me, forcing me down to my knees, and grabbed at my bound wrists. “Shhh, my little sex bitch, you want your arms back, yes? Then calm the fuck down. Now.”
I did. I wanted my arms back. I controlled my shit for a minute.
He untied the rope binding me, and I was able to bring my arms forward again. I felt painful pinpricks from my shoulders to my fingers as the blood began to flow again. The aching almost worsened, but in a good way, if that makes any sense.
I should have seen the next thing coming, but my mind was not thoroughly engaged yet. He grabbed one of my flailing wrists and cuffed it. The chain was attached to the back wall and left me only enough room to move from the installed cot along that wall to the toilet in the corner. The chain was not long enough for me to reach past the cage door, which was at least three feet from the wall adjacent to the hallway.
I was cuffed to a wall in a cage inside of a cell in a basement reachable from an elevator hidden in a closet in the master bedroom. I was totally fucked.
At this point, Mr. O. sneered into my face. “You just try to get away from me now. You’ll learn, my sweet little sex bitch, that I am not to be denied. Now you are mine. Think on that for a little while.” He straightened and sniffed, and he clenched his jaw. “You settle yourself in here. And don’t worry; your little noises can’t possibly travel far enough to reach anywhere. Feel free to scream all you want. It won’t matter. It might even give you laryngitis, which would ultimately only hurt yourself. Have at it.”
With that, and nothing else, he ripped the duct tape off my face, turned on his heel, and walked out of the cage to the door. Opening that with one hand and flipping both switches on the wall downward, he let himself out of the room, the steel door to the cage clanged shut, and the lights went out.
In an absolute freak-out, I think I must have screamed my head off for several minutes, to no effect. When it finally dawned on me that that was probably not the best use of my energies, I quieted and attempted to take stock of my new space.
It was dark and small. I was chained to a steel loop embedded in the wall a couple of feet above the thin cot, which featured a terribly thin futon-type mat, scratchy cheap sheets, and a very thin blanket. To the side of the cot in the corner was the toilet I had spied earlier. No seat, of course. No toilet paper, either. Awesome. No sink. No water, no cup. No fucking key for the cuff. No way to reach the fucking cage door, and obviously, no way to reach those power switches by the main door into the cell. But really, at this point, who gave a rat’s ass about the light? I only cared about the literal metal trappings.
I was so angry, I started crying.
I was wishing so hard for Torch to come find me. But I knew, rationally, that was pretty much out of the range of real possibilities. I mean, no way would he find this hellhole. I just didn’t believe it. So I missed him, and I was angry, and I was lost, and I cried.
When I quieted, I heard it—a voice, singing. At first, I thought I must have been hallucinating; the sound was gorgeous. It was a female voice, a soprano. It carried in the air, but it was soft, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
The song was unfamiliar; actually, it might not even have been a song, just a voicing of high pitches, unintelligible but audible. And it comforted me, just the tiniest bit.
By this time, I was in full-on fetal position on the cot, covered head to butt and knees to toes by the blanket I had pulled around myself.
And the voice, real or imagined, sang me into a wakeful dullness, as I waited for the next thing to happen.
# # #
All too soon, Owen was back. The door had opened quietly with just a soft twist of the knob, and the horrible fluorescent beams above flickered on.
“I see I’ve given you enough time to acclimate. Stand up and face the back. It’s time to introduce you to your new reality.” He was practically rubbing his hands together. His face glowed with anticipatory glory. I was pretty sure he was completely psychotic.
I remained where I was, cocooned on the bed. Ostriching. If I didn’t see it, it couldn’t be happening, right?
“Now, now, Erin, my dove. Where did my feisty girl go? Huh? Not so feisty anymore, are you? You see who has the power here. Good. Now, get—the fuck—up.”
Still, I held my place. No way was I going to help this guy do whatever he planned on doing to me. No way in hell.
Suddenly I was drenched in a forceful spray of cold, cold water. I gasped and scrambled off the cot, falling on my ass in a tumble of cold wet blanket and limbs, trying to escape the water that shot down from a pipeline positioned just over the cot in the ceiling. I had noticed it but hadn’t realized its purpose.
Realizing my position on the floor, hampered as it was by the useless wet blanket, would do me no favors in the next moments, I scrambled to my knees and then to my feet. I was completely soaked. That pipe packed some force, like a firefighter’s hose. The air down in that room was cold enough to begin with; add in drenched with freezing water, and I had no relief in sight for the shivers that had already overtaken my body.
The sick bastard laughed. “Ah, Erin, you do not fail to entertain. Now, as I said, face the back wall. Feet wide apart. Hands behind your neck.”
“Or what?” I asked, wanting to know all my options.
“Do you really want to be Tasered again, my kitten?”
I turned and did as ordered.
He Tasered me again, anyway, and I fell hard.
Oh god, the pain. The contraction. My heart rate pumped high, my body convulsed, and my mind shut down.
When I awoke some minutes later, I found myself in yet another cell. This one also featured the cage, but no cot and no toilet. Instead, I was positioned flat on my back on a high table of sorts inside the cage area, and he had stripped me naked. My wrists were tied to my ankles, my legs strapped out to the sides, and my torso likewise strapped down. It was the perfect rape table, and I immediately dreaded the next phase of this hell.
I heard him before I saw him.
“Ah, I see you are beginning to come around again. Good. I want you wide awake for this. First, let us check on your sensation level. I wouldn’t want you to miss this lesson because of our little incident with the Taser.”
Right, like the Taser caused the incident.
He pulled on the hair on top of my head. It was still wet from my unplanned shower from hell, dripping cold water down my scalp and on my chest and back. My whole body was freezing cold, still shivering from the combination of that and the electrical-impulse contractions.
“Do you feel this, you sex bitch? Yes? Good. And how about this?”
He twisted one of my nipples, hard. I glared at him in response but said nothing. I would not give him what he wanted. I was determined to fight him all the way, in whatever limited ways I could.
“This, my dear little sex kitten, is just the beginning of your punishment for what you did last night. And make no mistake; it will be a lengthy punishment, and it will be filled with your pain.”
He gave the same treatment to the same nipple again, then bent down and bit my other nipple so hard I was sure he punctured my skin and drew blood. I could not stop myself from screaming out.
That seemed to mollify him in some way, and he straightened again, smiled evilly, and took some steps away.
I didn’t see the next thing coming, but I felt the whiplash sharply against my outer right thigh. It was a shock, and I shrieked again.
He followed it immediately with another lash against my opposite leg, then landed a third directly along the center of my torso, from my solar plexus down to my pubes. He was grunting with every lash he laid, and I knew he was putting it all into each stroke, like a fucking tennis player serving aces. And fuck, did those lashes hurt. I don’t think he was breaking skin yet, but the pain and shock and burn of the lashes was all consuming, and I did not want to open my eyes to see.
He continued to whip me from different angles around the table—on my breasts, across my abdomen, on my inner and outer thighs, even landing one directly on my sex.
He seemed to be working himself up with each lash; his breathing was getting louder, and he was shouting, “Yeah!” with each stroke.
It was excruciating and humiliating, and by the time he was done, my shrieks had devolved into cries. My face was streaming with tears. I was having trouble breathing.
Finally, after I had lost count and was drifting somewhere in a mindless haze of pain and disembodied horror, he must have realized I was no longer really with the program.
He threw the whip to the side and, flipping the switches to lock the cage and kill the lights, left the room.
Very shortly thereafter, I heard the cries of another voice, that lovely high soprano, but this was no ethereal song. This time, her sounds were in agonized rhythmic grunts and keening. I could only imagine what he was doing to her. It was a torture just to listen.