Renata
The gap between Kian entering the room and me slamming the stool into his head feels like it lasts forever. I have long enough to see him freeze in place when he realizes the chair he bound me in is empty.
That the leather straps he used stretched when I tugged hard enough and let me slip my hands free.
And when he puts all the pieces together, that’s when I swing.
As the stool hurtles through the air on a collision course with Kian’s skull, I feel a pang of guilt. I bite it down, furious at myself for choking. He doesn’t deserve my hesitation. He doesn’t deserve my guilt. He killed both my parents.
And yet you fucked him.
I didn’t know that back then.
You knew he killed your father. You watched him do it. And you fucked him anyways. You came on him, with him, for him, and asked for more.
The thwack of the stool against his head is sickening. He stumbles back, his eyes rolling around in their sockets like billiard balls.
I don’t wait to see how much damage I’ve done. I just drop the stool and run.
I’m halfway up the staircase when I hear his thundering footsteps behind me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I thought I’d bought myself some time, but apparently, he’d recovered fast.Which means the only thing I’ve succeeded in doing is pissing him off.
I speed up, trying not to lose my balance in the climb. I reach the landing. The black door is right there. The last barrier between me and freedom. My breath is coming in hot gasps. I stretch for the handle—
And then Kian’s hand clamps down on my ankle and drags me back into the shadows of the stairwell.
“No!” I scream. But I know that no one can hear me. These walls are thickened stone that swallow up any sound.
I’m on my own.
I flail my arms and legs, hoping that he’ll loosen his grip, but his fingers are like iron vices. He twists me around, and I manage to get a slap in, but it barely seems to affect him.
When I twist around to face him, I expect fury in his eyes, but he looks relatively calm, especially considering that I’d almost knocked him out back there. In fact, he looks like he’s expected this.
“I have to say,” he tells me in the voice of a man who definitely does not seem like he just had a stool swung into his head, “I’m getting kind of tired of wrestling with you.”
“Stop kidnapping me,” I suggest. “Then you won’t have to.”
“Or you could stop being stubborn,” he growls, dragging me back towards the staircase.
“I’m not going back down there!”
“You prefer your old room?”
“I prefer my fucking freedom.”
“You’ll get your freedom,” he responds, “when you’re safe.”
“Like you care about my safety!”
“I wish I didn’t,” he snaps. “But I do, and that makes me the fool here. Now move—or I’ll make you.”
Left with no choice and tired to the bone of fighting the same fight again and again, I allow myself to be pushed back down the stairwell. The darkness of the descent soothes my throbbing head. You’d think I was the one who’d been clubbed in the back of the skull.
Once we’re back down, Kian takes me back to the same bondage chair. This time, he cuffs me to the metal spokes of the chair.
“Please don’t do this,” I plead.