Chapter Five
The main access road takes us to an old logging trail. I try to remember the route. A right here, a left here, just in case… In case what? In case I escape? I know better than to be hopeful. Even with the map and the compass I’d be lost out here.
I don’t know what I expect when he turns down a narrower, but better maintained path that can only be a private drive. The cabin it leads to is rustic, but well-constructed, with a porch. It would look like something out of a Currier and Ives print if it weren’t for the helipad off to the side. That answers the question of how I got here.
He guides the ATV into a metal shed beside the helicopter pad. I pray he’s going to put me in the chopper, but if God is home, he’s not listening to me today. I’m lifted off the ATV and frog-marched to the cabin. The fact that my captor is completely silent this entire time only increases my nervousness.
When we’re inside, he shuts and bolts the door and leaves me standing in the middle of the large room. I watch as he walks around and begins lighting oil lamps that put out a surprisingly decent amount of light. There’s a woodstove, and he leans down to build a fire, leaving me with a view of his broad back. Possible scenarios run through my head. Even with my hands bound in front of me, I could pick something up and hit him, run out the door. But I know I wouldn’t get far. I’m too scared, too tired.
He stands up once the fire is lit and turns back to me.
“I want to go home,” I say.
He walks over. “No.”
He leans down and undoes the rope holding my hands. I rub my aching wrists as the blood rushes back into them. He takes the rope and tosses it aside. “Women who sell themselves like livestock shouldn’t be surprised when they’re tied up and dragged away.”
My gaze meets his eyes. They’re flint gray flecked with green. There’s no lust in them, no desire. Just a hard kind of disapproval that makes me wither.
“Sit down,” he says, motioning to the sofa. “I’ll fix some food. You need to eat.”
I’m not hungry, not with the ball of tension filling my stomach. I obey, nonetheless. The cabin is open, the kitchen separated from the living room by a bar with a slab of rock for a counter. It’s unique in that it’s not polished or cut to a bevel, but left jagged around the edges. It’s almost artsy. I look up at the exposed beams, roughhewn. I can see a loft with a bed. Will I lose my virginity to this man on that bed? I look over to where he’s in the kitchen, ignoring me. Does he even want me sexually? What does he want?
When I ask, he ignores me as if I haven’t spoken, leaving me to watch him prepare dinner. Or is it lunch? I’ve lost track of time. He’s put a cast-iron pot on the stove. A blue-white flame is flickering underneath and soon the smell of chili wafts in my direction. He sets the kitchen table for two. After putting the pot and a plate of leftover biscuits on the table, he beckons me over and points at a chair across from his. I rise and walk over, obediently taking a seat as I keep a wary eye on my host. I feel like a child as he dishes food into the bowl in front of me. He sits across from me and begins to eat. He’s not talking to me. He’s not even looking at me. I hate this.
“I need to know what’s going on,” I say.
“No, you don’t.” He takes another bite of his food without looking at me.
I don’t know how respond to that.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
“Atticus,” he says. “Atticus Noble.”
I scroll through my mental bank of wealthy men. Although I’d trusted Elliot to screen the applicants, I couldn’t contain my curiosity and spent many secretive hours scouring the Internet for information on wealthy men. It turns out there are a lot of very wealthy men in this world. My research only scratched the surface. It doesn’t surprise me that I don’t recognize the name.
“Why did you bid on me?”
“I said you could ask a question. Singular.” He points at my plate. “Your food’s getting cold. Eat.”
“Is it drugged?”
“Eat,” he repeats. “Or I’ll tie you up in the shed until you are begging me to feed you.”
I swallow my resentment with each bite of the stew. He finishes first and clears his plate from the table before coming back for mine.
“Get up,” he says, but I feel frozen to my chair.
“Why?” I ask. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get what I paid for,” he says. He points in the direction of the loft.
“I…” The words are stuck in my throat. “I’m dirty,” I finally say. “I’ve been in the woods. I’m…”
“You’re mine,” he says, “to be taken when and how I see fit.”
I rise to my feet. I’m shaking. For months I’ve run every possible scenario, telling myself that when the time came I’d know how to react. But I never could have fathomed this.
“You can’t,” I say. “I need to bathe. I need to be clean.”
“Why?” He looks almost amused. “You’re here for me, remember? For my use. For my pleasure. Maybe I like you better dirty? Some men prefer the natural scent of a woman. Maybe it makes me hot to strip you down, to lick the sweat off your body, to see you in your more natural state as opposed to some plucked and perfumed prize.”
I’m trying to formulate a response when he takes one long stride in my direction and scoops me up in his arms.
“Enough talk.” He heads to the stairs purposefully, and my fear increases exponentially with each step. The stairs to the loft are narrow and run up one side of the wall. He takes them two at a time. At the top he dumps me on the bed. I roll over on my back. He’s looming over me, and all I can think is how big he is, how big and how muscular, how powerful. My heart is hammering in my chest.
I’ve made a mistake. That’s all I can think as I watch him peel off his black t-shirt. It all feels so wrong. I’d prepared myself for a middle-aged man with gray chest hair and a paunch who’d come at me with a modest erection jutting the front of his boxers. This man has the physique of a Greek god. He’s the kind of man a woman should respond to, but I’m petrified as he tosses his shirt aside and eases in one catlike motion onto the bed. He slides his body over mine, resting on his elbows.
He reaches for the neckline of my shirt.
“Should I rip this off?” His fingers curl onto the fabric, stretching it down until the swell of my breasts is visible to his gaze. He’s put the question to me in a low, dangerous voice. What he says next is even more ominous. “I could do it. I could rip your clothes off, flip you over, and ram my cock into you without a shred of foreplay. I could muffle your cries with my hand as I fuck your virgin pussy and then your ass.”
“Don’t…” I’m crying now. I hear the shake in my voice. I smell the tang of my own fear sweat. I’ve never been so scared in my life. “Please don’t.”
“It’s a little late to be asking that now, don’t you think? The auction agreement permits me to—and I quote—deflower and train the virgin Maeve Clarke.” He chuckles. “Deflower. What an old-fashioned word, as if you’re some pure blossom in a field. Well, let me tell you something, princess. There’s nothing pure about a woman who puts a price on her body. Or her safety.”
He releases me, and the disapproval I saw in his eyes earlier is back. He lifts himself off me, and I raise up on my elbows, staring at him. I slowly sit up. I blink back tears of shame.
“If you were so morally opposed to fucking a virgin, then why did you bid?” I’ve gone from fearful to angry.
“I had my reasons. For now we’ll leave it at need.”
“Need?” I shake my head, confused. “What do you need?”
“Not me, you. I intend to see that you fulfill the contract. It provides for personal training, and that’s something you need. If you’re a quick study and do as I say, I might just consider fucking you. If you’re lucky.”
“If I’m lucky?” I feel like I’ve been slapped across the face. I scramble to a seated position. “Listen, you son-of-a-bitch. I wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble of either training”—I emphasize the word with dramatic air quotes—“or fucking me. I may be a virgin, but I don’t have to be experienced to know the touch of an arrogant asshole wouldn’t be at all satisfying.”
And this is where I push him. This is where I go too far. I should keep my mouth shut, but I don’t.
“Maybe that’s what this is all about. Maybe you think the only way you can get a woman interested is to force her into it.”
I can’t describe the look on his face, but in that instant I’m reminded of the previous day when the mountainside went from placid to stormy with frightening speed. He grabs me again, and pushes me back down on the bed.
“Force?” he asks. “That’s certainly one way it could go, especially for a woman who offers herself to strangers.” As he talks he reaches for the button of my blue jeans. I hear it snap and then two strong hands jerk the fabric down. I feel the cool air of the room raise goosebumps on my thighs. Then I feel something else, the lightest pressure brushing the mound of my pussy through the thin fabric of my panties. I jerk from the sensation, which takes me by surprise.
“Here’s another scenario for you.” His tone is controlled now, almost hypnotic. “What if I take it slow. Real slow. What if I show you where a man touches a woman to make her melt, to make her fucking beg for it?” I try to clench my thighs together, but his hand is between them. His gaze is locked on mine, holding it captive. I feel his finger slide inside my panties. And now he’s touching me where no man has ever touched me. His fingertip slides up through the cleft of my pussy. The touch is just grazing my inner labia, and then it stops. I feel his finger move against me and my body suddenly seems to have been hotwired into sensory overdrive. I feel a clenching in my core, a pulse. My nipples get rock hard. I know this. It’s arousal. I’ve felt it when masturbating, but this is different. This is sudden and unexpected and uncontrollable and feral. He’s moving his finger and I can’t see what he’s doing, but in my mind’s eye, I imagine a spring between my leg that’s being wound and wound and wound by his persistent touch.
“You’re a virgin, so you don’t understand how a man can play your body, control it…”
I don’t say anything, but I’m getting the picture already. My body is thrumming with pent-up sexual energy, and I’m hypnotized by his words as he continues.
“With the right man? A woman loses control. That’s because the right man will use everything in his arsenal to conquer her body until she squirms and begs and comes. He’ll use his fingers, his mouth, his cock. And when it’s over, he’ll have put his stamp on her. He’ll own her, no matter where else she goes in life. He’ll own her…”
I’m helpless to him. I hear myself panting. My legs spread of their own volition. It’s going to happen. He’s going to fuck me. It’s not going to be so bad after all. In fact, my body needs it. It needs the release. The spring between my legs is so tight that it physically hurts. I arch myself toward him.
And then he moves away.
I stare up at him.
He smiles down at me and sticks the finger he’d been using on my pussy in his mouth. “Mmm,” he says. “Sweet.” Then he pauses. “Like I said, princess. You’re in need of the lessons I’m going to teach you. This is the first one. You can lie all you want but your body always tells the truth.”
I don’t know what to say. My pussy is still pulsing with an ache that feels like hunger. Tears of frustration fill my eyes and spill over to course down cheeks flushed with humiliation.
“You’re going to take a nap now,” he says. “And you’re not going to touch yourself. You’re not allowed to relieve the ache I know you’re feeling. Your body belongs to me, remember? You sold it. That means I decide when and if you finally get to come. I’m going to be downstairs, but I’ll be listening. A moan, the creak of the bedsprings, if I so much as hear any sound indicating that you’re pleasuring yourself, I’ll take this belt I’m wearing and welt your ass. Got it?”
I nod. What else can I do? As soon as he leaves the loft, I pull up my pants, turn over, and sob myself to sleep.