Page 49 of Blue Velvet

His heavy steps hurriedly thudding down the stairs behind me reinforces his concern. Our eyes meet as soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you okay?!” He’s breathing heavily and his eyes are huge and panicked when he drops immediately to his knees beside me. “Did you break anything? Is anything hurting? What’s hurting? Talk to me. Don’t move.”

I’m trembling. My eyes slowly shift from my hands up to his dazed face, then back to my hands, and next to my legs. I’m sitting in a very awkward position to say the least, my legs sprawled out at an angle suggesting that I might’ve broken or twisted something. I’m pretty sure my ankle is the worst thing affected.

I try to gather myself, pulling my legs closer to my body. My face contorts in pain when my foot drapes over the last step.

“What?!” he rushes. “What is it, toy?”

There it is.Toy.Now that he’s no longer in a state of shock, I’m no longer Ruby.

“My ankle,” I whimper. “I think I might have sprained it.”

His eyes dart over to my foot, quickly scanning it as if to make sure it’s not twisted in an absurd way, and then he gathers me up from the floor, gently picking me up as if I was a child.

And this time, I’m not fighting him. I wrap my arms around his neck, and from how I’m positioned against his strong chest, I can feel his heart beating so fast that it almost scares me.

Much to my sorrow, he doesn’t carry me back upstairs, but follows through with his original intention. He effortlessly opens the door to the dungeon, making sure that I don’t bump against the wall or the door as he takes me into the room, my cell.

He carries me over to the mattress, lying me down as carefully as possible, but I still groan in pain when my back meets the mattress.

His eyes widen. “What? Does something else hurt?”

I shift a little, changing my position to reduce the pressure on my lower back. It seems I’ve bruised that area, as well.

“My back,” I say. “I must’ve hurt it when I bumped against the door.”

Our eyes meet, and the way he looks at me almost makes me cry. He’s so strong, so big, so secure, my master, the man who controls my every move, and now he looks as if he’s completely lost. As if he’s the one that was just broken, and not me.

“How strong is the pain?” he asks. “Can you breathe? Does it hurt to breathe?”

I shake my head.

“And your foot, how bad is that?” he probes. “And anywhere else? Do you have something else that hurts?”

“Pretty sure it’s just a few bruises and possibly a sprained ankle,” I say, narrowing my eyes as I look at him. “You won’t have to call a doctor and explain to anyone how you threw your captive down the stairs when she tried to fight being restrained, don’t worry.”

It just occurred to me that this might be his biggest worry. That he might fear calling a doctor or taking me to a hospital because I’m seriously injured. I wonder if he’d even consider doing that. After all, it would bring this whole game to a quick end - and he’d wind up in prison.

His expression changes, and before I know it, he’s back to the version of himself that I’m most familiar with.

“You could’ve gotten seriously hurt!” he yells.

I flinch at the tone and volume of his voice, but I’m quick to recover and shoot him a comeback.

“You’re saying that as if it was my fault!”

“Itwasyour fault!”

“What?!” I cry out. “How is itmyfault when I merely reacted instinctively to you dragging me back into a dungeon that I don’t want to be in?”

“I told you, you shouldn’t fight me!”

I gasp with indignation, trying to sit up from my horizontal position so that I’m eye-level with him. I’m soon paralyzed by a stinging jolt of pain that lands me back on the mattress.

He lets out a sigh, placing his hands on my shoulders to encourage me to remain where I am. As if I had a fucking choice.

“Well, at least now I’ll be easy to handle for you. Immobile and unable to run, even if I had a chance.”

---