Page 33 of Captive Souls

It was driving me fucking crazy. Seeing her pick at food that was barely enough to keep her alive, let alone fuel her body for the constant movement throughout the day. A lot of people—most people, actually—would spend their time in captivity curled up in a ball. Sleeping. Escaping their reality. She had books. I knew that because I’d looked through her suitcase during one of her runs. And she had flashes of colorful clothes, lacy underwear that had made my cock weep at the sight of them. I slept with a pair of her pink panties curled in my fist at night.

It was fucking creepy, crossed a line even I thought I wouldn’t cross. Stealing panties like a fucking sex offender. But I couldn’t stop myself.

It was sick. That my thoughts were solely counting how many calories she was consuming, expending, calculating whenexactly she’d succumb to the consequences of malnutrition and mild starvation.

Her cheeks were already hollow, dark circles ringing her eyes, even though she collapsed into a dreamless, exhausted sleep for over ten hours a night. Her frame was shrinking, clothing that fit her like a second skin a week ago beginning to hang off her.

Yet she still ran.

And chopped wood.

Hacked away at the overgrowth surrounding the cabin with rusty shears she’d found fuck knows where.

She’d managed to repair the shutters. She was … sprucing up the place where I was holding her captive, and I had no idea what the fuck to do with that.

I’d been expecting some kind of mental break. It usually happened a lot sooner than people anticipated. People fantasized how long they might survive in deadly situations. Self-aggrandized about their mental and physical strength. But when taken from familiar surroundings, creature comforts, and forced into survival mode, people generally withered within days.

Not Piper. She was waning, yes. But not withering. Even though she was showing a physical toll, her eyes were bright with life. Stubbornness. She sat at the table with me every night, head held high, nibbling at what food she could tolerate while staring defiantly at the plate of meat that must’ve been appealing to her animal nature, desperate to survive.

Her principles were stronger than her baser nature. Not many people existed like that. Certainly not in my world.

She was a flower, none of the bloom fading despite the lack of care and attention she received.

It impressed me plenty. But it didn’t weaken my resolve. The stronger she showed me she was, the more desperate I becameto be the one who broke her. Then she’d be mine somehow. Even after I handed her off to Stone, part of her would always be mine.

When she’d been gone for fifty minutes, I started looking for her. I wasn’t a tracker by any means, but I knew I could find her wherever she was in these vast woods.

It didn’t take me long.

She was sprawled facedown in the dirt, unconscious. Blood trickled from a wound in her head.

Such images were not shocking to me. Blood. An unconscious person. Yet my heart rate increased, my breathing became shallower, and the tips of my fingers prickled with something.

Though new voices inside of me that made me uncomfortable urged me to run to her, I purposefully slowed down my gait. Approached her unhurriedly. As if I didn’t care. I didn’t.

I didn’t care about Piper beyond the pieces I broke her into.

The few seconds it took to get to her side, kneel, to put my fingers to her pulse felt like an eon.

It was there. Sluggish, almost concerningly so, but she had a pulse. Her skin was still warm, and I failed to stop myself from breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with the bitter yet not unpleasant twang of her sweat.

Even in her prone state, I wanted to lick the perspiration off the side of her head, to taste it. I wanted to run my fingers through the stream of blood from her forehead, coat myself in it.

There wasn’t time for me to indulge in my increasingly strange yearnings. There was never a time for that. I had a task. To break her. But not kill her. I was doing my job, I told myself as I picked her up.

She was light. Too fucking light considering her stature a week ago. She let out a tiny sound and nestled her head into my chest, proving she was wholly without survival instinct. Sheshould’ve been battling out of my arms, even in her semi-conscious state. Yet she was as helpless and fragile as a fucking baby.

I kept my eyes on her as her eyelids fluttered then groggily tried to focus on me. The image of her mud-stained, blood-smeared, gaunt face was more beautiful to me than I could describe.

But her awareness and consciousness only lasted for a handful of seconds. I watched as the force of her exhaustion, malnutrition, dragged her back down again.

“Piper, don’t you dare pass out on me again."

Even as I commanded her to stay, she left.

And she took part of my sanity with her. Part of my soul lapsing into the darkness with her.

Piper

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