He won.
I can keep fighting, but there is nothing I can do now. I can’t break the chains holding me.
With one arm encapsulated, he grabs my arm on the floor and yanks me up. I try to kick, to fight, I even spit to try and get him to stop. He’s relentless.
My free hand goes into the next handcuff over my head, and finally, my arms are locked in a wide V over my head.
I get in several vicious kicks as he slides down my body and moves to grab my ankles. But I’m weak compared to him. He attaches a chain with a metal cuff to each ankle until my legs are spread apart, and I can’t move.
And then he’s standing in front of me looking solemn. I know what comes next, and it’s the worst. He still won’t look beyond my eyes to my naked body. I stripped myself of clothes rather than have someone else strip me, but that was the only control over the situation I have.
“Please,” I say, one last time.
I can hear him swallow, hear the pain in his throat, see the heartbreak on his face. But he won’t stop.
We both know it.
Then I feel the gag against my mouth. I open—I’m the one making this decision, not him. He ties it tightly around the back of my head.
One more sense gone.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I try to turn off my hearing before he places the earplugs into my ears, cutting off all sound.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I can’t hear.
There is one step left, and it’s the worst of them all.
I close my eyes—trying to gain my composure before the blindfold goes around my eyes. Once it’s on, I open my eyes. I can’t see anything.
I can’t move.
I can’t talk.
I can’t hear.
I can’t see.
The only sense left is smell, and I’m pretty sure they’d cut that sense off too if there were another way for me to breathe.
He’s taken everything from me. I no longer have any control over my body. The only thing I could do is try to cry out a safe word. That would get my gag removed long enough to see if I was using my safe word or not.
But that would only be a temporary solution. Once they removed my gag, and I didn’t call out my safe word, they’d resume.
I take a deep breath through my nose, trying to gain any knowledge of who is in the room or what’s going to happen next. I don’t smell anything except smoke. I never got a good whiff of Beckett, so I don’t know what he smells like. I’ll have no idea if he’s the one touching me or someone else.
Right now, no one is touching me.
The not knowing, the waiting—that’s the worst part of this all.
I try to meditate in my head, but I’ve never been very good at meditating. I can feel my pulse rushing, my body warming, sweat bubbling on my forehead and neck.