Page 51 of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“That’s two years, Gage,” I manage to get out through kisses.

“Two years.”

In two years, he’ll take me away from here. He loves me. Gage St. James loves me.

Predictably, once the light filtering around the door dims to twilight, I hear him outside fumbling with the lock. Quickly, I throw the T-shirt back on to cover my body, pick up the rivet with my toes, and move back over to wait beside the door.

He looks surprised to see me standing so close to the exit. Usually, I press myself as far back against the wall as possible on the mattress.

“There a reason you’re standin’ here?”

“Hungry,” I lie. “Can I please have my bar?” Only feeding me one granola bar once a day, he swallows it up easily. Houdini hefts himself inside, and when he’s making enough noise not to hear, I slide my foot over to place the rivet in the track.

Houdini reaches in his back pocket to pull a semi-flattened granola bar and throws it at my head, exactly as he does every time. I fumble trying to catch it and the bar falls onto the floor. A ruse today.

I squat down to pick up the bar and tear open the filmy packaging in order to covertly watch him slide the door shut.

The rivet works, allowing the door to shut fully enough not to raise suspicion, but the lock fails to fully engage.

My heart becomes giddy with hope and excitement, even if my face remains solemn.

“Sure you wanna eat the whole thing now?” He laughs, referring to the times I’ve puked, which means I know he’s going to hurt me again.

The bar goes down my throat like sandpaper.Compartmentalize. The pain will go away. Don’t break down, Liv. Gage. You have to get back to Gage.

I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off him. It’s not until I feel his hand fist my hair to haul me up that I realize my mistake. My scalp burns as I slap at his hands several times and he gives me a rough shake as he drags me over to the welded horseshoe. There he throws me down half on, half off the mattress.

I cry out in pain when my knee clips the horseshoe.

On the mattress, I rub at my knee, distracted by the pain. He likes to see me in pain, the fact that he laughs while I wince would be enough evidence, but since he’s started the torture sessions, I swear he gets himself off afterward. He either gets himself off or finds someone to get him off as hard, as he gets once I begin screaming. I noticed his erection the second day, so on the third, I tried to hold back the screaming. It didn’t work.

The scream escaped my lips and then he punished me extra for denying him.

So now I let myself scream.

From the black, plastic garbage bag, he again pulls the thick, leather collar and chain to secure to the horseshoe. The shackles are bad, but the collar, the collar is the worst. It makes me feel less than human. I know there are people who get off on the bondage thing, and I don’t judge them, but that hasneverbeen my scene. I don’t fight him when he fastens the collar around my neck. He tightens it just tight enough to leave red marks when it’s removed and to make breathing just that little bit difficult enough to remind me he’s the one in charge and can take my life at any moment.

Once he feels confident I’m secure, he removes the tripod from the bag to set up. Secures the phone. Pulls up the video app. But unlike the other times, he not only pulls the prod from the bag, but Michael’s switch. Or one just like it, the one he’d used to beat my back.

He turns me so my back faces the camera and lifts my tee up over my head, not off. It catches on my arms. His hand glides against the skin from the middle of my back down over the curve of my naked ass, and even if I can’t see, I know he’s recording touching me to get at Gage.

“I want the Hollister whore and the bastard,” he says, I know not to me. The message is for the Lords. Then he slaps my bottom a couple times. I brace, waiting for what’s to come next.

Per the usual, he touches the prod to my thigh and I scream. My muscles convulse, but he tugs on the chain connected to the collar to keep me on my feet. It chokes and I gurgle, clasping at the leather with shackled hands to pull it away from my neck. There’s still air in my lungs—it’s that constriction. Constriction goes against life and thus feels unnatural.

Thankfully, he jerks the charge away, but knowing from days of this treatment, the reprieve is temporary. I brace for a second go. What I don’t expect is to hear the whoosh of the switch right before the sting cracks against my skin. The pain so different from the charge, coming so unexpected, although it shouldn’t because I saw him remove it from the bag, noted it in my mind. I guess I’d been so focused on preparing for the prod charge that I neglected to let it penetrate why he’d have the switch.

My back bows away from him, legs shaking violently and I fall to my knees. There’s no reprieve this time; he tugs me up by the chain again and before I’m upright enough to ease the strain against my neck, he’s pressing the charge against my thigh.

Back and forth, back and forth, compartmentalizing becomes harder and harder with each attack. He finally stops when I’ve used up all my tears and no sound comes when I scream and I drop to my knees one last time.

He doesn’t pull me up again. Instead he rubs his erection beneath his jeans along my jaw and bends forward to whisper in my ear. “That was beautiful.” Then he kisses my cheek.

The revulsion I feel can’t be described in my current state and I flinch from his touch. This time, he takes no offense or at least doesn’t appear to until he clips my chin with a bent finger hard enough that I know it’ll bruise.

Houdini unbinds me before he turns to leave, using a key to open the sliding door. I hold my breath as he jumps down and rolls the door closed again.

For the second merciful time, he doesn’t notice that the lock fails to fully engage.

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