“You think you can fool me, slave?” Derek’s full lips formed the words but his voice wasn’t right. It was cold, and it filled every fiber of my body with dread. “Get up,” he barked and dragged me upright, but with the jerk of my arm, my eyes flew open.

It wasn’t Derek. He wasn’t here. The monster was back and he was angry. From my knees, he pulled me up onto my feet and backed me up until my back thumped against the stone. I stifled a cry and stared at my feet. Every muscle was taut, trying to prepare for his next strike.

His hand dropped to my sex and he slapped my clit. I felt it sharply on the surrounding flesh, but not my clit. Not the place that was numbed with the lidocaine cream. I held back the sigh of relief that threatened to slip out. I was numb. That part of me was safe from him.

At least, that’s what I thought until he forced my chin up.

“Your innocence should please me, but coupled with a flagrant defiance…”

When he stroked his fingers gently along my jaw, I knew something bad was coming. He’d caught me. He knew exactly what I’d done. Of course, he did. I’d completely forgotten about the cameras. I couldn’t see any, but they must be here somewhere. How else would the doors know when to lock and unlock? Someone had watched me—probably him among them—while I attempted to clean my body and soothe it with the damn cream. He’d watched as I massaged it into my traitorous clit.

Just like before, he moved swiftly. He’d grabbed my wrists and yanked them over my head before I could jerk away. One big hand held me there. I wanted to kick him, to bite him, to inflict whatever damage I could, but I didn’t. I stood there like a deer caught in headlights, too afraid to move.

He slid a finger on his free hand into his mouth. Was this some reference to the way he’d forced his wet finger into my mouth earlier? His hand then slid between my thighs, but he didn’t stop at my clit. His saliva-moistened finger glided between my dry labia, and I understood what he was doing when he pushed it inside me.

I’d been stupid. Naïve. Not innocent, but foolish.

He stroked along the front wall of my sex, and I gritted my teeth. It wouldn’t work this time. I wasn’t going to allow it.

His strokes grew firmer and he increased his pace. I thought about every vile thing he’d done to me and how much I loathed him. I could kill him. If ever given the chance, I could do it. I wouldn’t hesitate. And it wasn’t just for me I’d be doing it. I couldn’t possibly be the first girl he’d taken, and I likely wouldn’t be the last. Unless I snuffed out his evil existence.

A spark sizzled through my core as his fingers found the sensitive place inside me. He’d been skirting it, but I realized it had been deliberate because he stroked there now with an expert touch.

The spark ignited, feeding a pressure deep inside me.

No. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t want this. I still couldn’t believe my body could be such a wretched traitor. But the proof of it was right there in the drop of wetness that leaked onto my inner thigh.

The pressure built. My cheeks flamed in humiliation behind the cascade of tears.

“Moan. Now,” he whispered roughly.

I opened my mouth to fake the sound, but his fingers moved faster suddenly, and the sound that slipped out wasn’t fake.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair. I didn’t want my body to respond. The monster was sadistic and cruel. How could his touch do anything but repulse me?

“Again,” he demanded.

I didn’t have to fake it. All I had to do was unclench my jaw that was keeping my sounds trapped in my throat.

And then I couldn’t stop them. The pressure mounted. It was almost unbearable. Breathless cries slipped out. Dirty, disgusting moans fell from my own lips. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even slow it down.

I slammed my head back against the stone wall as the pressure he’d created exploded. It shot ripples of pleasure surging through me and released a rush of liquid from my sex.

My misery was like a crushing weight, threatening to drive me to the ground despite his hand that held me trapped. It shrouded every inch of my soul in black. Dark. Dirty. I was a slut, just like he’d said. There was no other way to explain it.

When he spun me around and his whip came down across the backs of my thighs, I welcomed it. I deserved it. Maybe he could beat the dirty slut out of me.

It turned out though, he couldn’t. Over the next five days, he reinforced the rules and introduced a handful of new ones, punishing me every time I disobeyed and sometimes, I think, just because he could. But in between it all, he’d put his fingers or his tongue on me, or inside me, and turn my body against me all over again. Sometimes he’d fuck me to split me open and hurt me as much as he could, other times he’d hover over top of my body, grinding his pelvis against my clit while he impaled me on his erection over and over again until my whore cunt convulsed around him.

My life became a constant flow of pain and unwanted pleasure. If I disobeyed him, he punished me. If I obeyed him, he introduced more rules that were impossible to keep straight in my head. I was bound to mess up, and he knew it. He looked forward to it. And no matter whether I followed the rules or not, he dragged orgasm after orgasm from my body until I was so abhorred, so disgusted with myself that I couldn’t stand to be inside my own body. Loathing welled up, for him, for me. Surely, neither of us deserved to exist in this world.

Five days. Five days and there had been so sign of Derek. I tried to shove away the ever-increasing certainty that he was dead. Not because it meant there was no hope of being rescued. I didn’t want to be rescued. I didn’t deserve to be rescued. I wanted to die, and I wanted to take the evil monster with me. The hope of rescue was no longer what kept me staving off the images in my head of Derek lying lifeless in the Cartago motel room.

I needed Derek to be alive because he deserved to live and find love, and because I was going to die here. I needed someone to remember me as something other than the beaten and broken whore I’d become.

I grasped onto an image of his sexy as hell smile as another orgasm rocketed through my body. Blood from the last whipping still dripped down the backs of my thighs, but it didn’t matter. I’d let my mind wander to where it wanted to be. Not here in hell, but in Derek’s arms, or beneath his thrusting hips, or on my knees with his cock in my mouth, or bent over the motel room bed, watching our reflection in the headboard mirror.

The monster shoved me to the floor and laughed.

Five days. Five days since I’d woken up in hell. God, I hoped it would be over soon. But like I told you, hope could be a very dangerous thing.