He returned five minutes later in a minivan, parked it in the garage, and shut the door. The van was a purchase he’d made the prior day. A dated model with tinted windows. He'd even gone as far as swiping someone's County Maids advertisement, the huge magnet now clinging to the passenger sliding door.
A hired house cleaner wasn't the best explanation for the sudden activity at a seemingly vacant home. Liv certainly wouldn't have bought it, but she was at the airport, instructing skydiving lessons, and Joshua was tied up in his coaching shit at the high school. While a nighttime capture was preferred, taking Amber during the day avoided the most suspicious neighbors.
He shouldn't have been taking her at all, but after he'd researched the disorders, an idea had formed in the back of his mind. Amber might have many uses, one being an unknowing tool in solidifying a relationship with his daughter. First, he had to redirect her attachments until all she needed was him.
As he strode down the hall and into her bedroom, his insides vibrated with excitement. When he freed her arms, removed the gag, and lifted her listless, vulnerable body against his chest, something strange shifted through him and settled around his heart. It felt warm and gentle and...uncontaminated.
Impossible. Besides, his daughter was the only person he would allow himself to nurture a soft spot for. Anyone else would jump on his weakness and twist it into something they could use against him.
He shook off the unnerving feeling and quickened his pace to the garage. He was a cold-hearted fuck with an appetite for blood, come, and tears. And he had the perfect girl to feed it.
A dreamlike blur of sensations sloshed over Amber. Thick darkness. The sluggish thump of her heart. A draft on her skin. The familiar scent of aftershave.
She blinked, tried to clear the haze, and her eyes met a veil of black. Why was her lamp off? She slept with it on. The mattress felt too firm against her back and head. And no pillow? That wasn't right.
Cool air whispered over her body. Her very naked body. Blood rushed past her ears as she tried to sit up, going nowhere.
Nude, dark, cold, she had to be stuck in a dream, tangled in the sheets. She always slept without clothes when no one was looking. No one would be there. Not in her room at night, in her safe place of flawless lines. If only she could see the order to ground herself in her symmetrical world. Wake up.
She lifted her head and tried to get her bearings. Fabric rubbed her forehead, cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. Pinpricks bit at her hands. She couldn't move them, so she scrunched her face, wiggling the obstruction, and her eyelashes dragged against whatever held tightly over her eyes. A blindfold.
She jerked, and nausea surged through her gut. Her arms and legs wouldn't bend. She yanked and kicked, caught in a web of restraints that dug into her wrists and ankles, pinning her in a spread-eagle position on her back.
A tremor awoke in her chest and exploded outward, shaking every muscle in her body until her limbs numbed and her jaw ached from clenching. Her mind spun through fuzz. She couldn't remember falling asleep, couldn't remember the last thing she did. The nausea, the disorientation, the pounding headache... Had she drank too much again?
Memories swirled in a mist of dizzy fragments. The fading rumble of Zach's truck. A water glass. The drape wrenched from the back door. A fist slamming into her stomach.
Van.
Her heart rate spiked, and pain pounded behind her eyes. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. She let out an ear-piercing shriek that echoed around her, and she immediately regretted the outburst. She did not want to draw attention, couldn't bear for anyone to see her naked.
Her pulse redoubled. Where was Van? Was he watching her with sick amusement? She stifled her breath and listened. No reassuring hum of the A/C unit outside her window. No dripping from the leaking shower down the hall. Oh wait, her water had been shut off. But the mattress... It was too hard, too bare.
She wasn't in her bed. Her heart stuttered and stopped. OhmyGodOhmyGod. She wasn't in her house!
“No, no, no.” She jerked her head side to side, writhed against the restraints, and choked through panting breaths. “Where am I?”
The mattress shifted between her legs, and a tickle of wiry hair brushed her inner thighs. Then the press of hard muscle. Someone's legs. “You're home.”
She froze. His voice, oh God, it came from above her. He was kneeling between her thighs, where he could look at her stretched, godawful shame. She tried to close her legs and failed. The mattress was indented on either side of her shoulders, and she knew his hands were propped there. How long had he been bent over her, watching her, waiting? Or doing whatever he wanted to her while she was unconscious?
Her lungs slammed together, starving for air. Were the lights on? Jesus, fuck, they couldn't be on. He wouldn't want to look between her legs.
Something hard and slick nudged her opening, and his heavy body flattened her against the bed. Her mouth dried. No, this couldn’t be happening. She thrashed, pinned by his weight, unable to escape as objections gathered in her constricted throat.
In the next heartbeat, he shoved himself inside her, his girth stretching her hideous flesh with the brutality of the dry thrust. She bit down her tongue, tasting blood, as the invasion tore her open, plowing ruthlessly and igniting a scorching friction along her inner walls.
Her eyes watered behind the blindfold, the agony and humiliation of what he was doing seizing her heart. Her screech escaped without sound, and her body locked in paralyzing shock. Numb, breathless, her fear was stunned into silence, cringing in the corner of her mind.
“Scream,” he breathed, his thick exhale searing her ear.
A wail built in her throat, but he slammed into her, giving her no time to free it. No pause to catch her breath. No gentle coaxing to prepare her for his size. He fucked her harder, forcing her body to accommodate him, taking her beyond the point of pain and hurtling her into muscle-locking terror.
The straps chewed into her skin, grinding her bones. His fingers pinched and pulled her nipples, and the spread of her hips extended painfully beneath the unrelenting strength of his driving th
rusts.
This was happening. He'd taken her from her house. Bared her before his eyes. He was raping her.
Her heart panted, a helpless terrified thing trapped in her chest. She wanted to ignore it, to be stronger, but as his powerful jabs shredded and battered her insides, death seemed to be a better option.
His teeth scraped across her shoulder, his grunts lashed her skin with wet exhales, and his arms squeezed around her ribs. Could he see all her flaws in the light? Who else had laid eyes on her, judged her? If she wasn't home... Oh no, oh God, he'd taken her outside.
Her pulse went wild, tearing through her body. She bucked in his embrace, but there was no escape. He was too heavy, too strong, plunging in and out of her abused flesh.
The horrifying image of her body spread out beneath him collided with the shackles chafing her raw skin and the cramping pain of her cervix or whatever it was inside her he hammered against so mercilessly.
She closed her eyes behind the blindfold and tried to calm her heart by counting the slam of his hips. One...two...three...four. One...two...three...four. Over and over, she counted until her mind tumbled so far away her body grew numb and limp.
His hand gripped her throat and squeezed. “What are you doing?”
Bright hot reality burned through her, sensitizing every cell in her body. She'd always wanted it harder, rougher, with a firmer hand around her neck, strangling her thoughts. But not like this, with no choice, no safe word. And not with the lights on. “Are the lights...?” Her voice quivered, tiny and reedlike. She swallowed around the clamp of his fingers. “Are they on?”
He tsked and slowed his thrusts. “You don't really know someone until you see them in the dark.” His timbre rumbled through her as he rolled his hips and tightened his hand around her throat. “I'll show you the dark, my beautiful slave.”
Slave. The blackness burst in a constellation of stars as his fingers bit into her tender throat. He flexed his hips, surging forward, pumping faster than the heaving of her chest. Her lungs caught fire, unable to draw air, as her life burned away beneath the vise of his hand.