I don’t detect pollution like I would at home, but underneath the clean scent of ice and snow, there are flowers. I’m ushered along an icy path, and the air around me grows still and warmer. A greenhouse, perhaps? The cloying scent of night blooming jasmine, and roses hangs thick in the air. I wonder how Ares has time to tend roses when the wilted flower he keeps upstairs is slowly dying from a lack of sunlight and fresh air.
Anger shoots through me, a bolt of white-hot lightning from my chest. I wish I could strike him with it. Eviscerate and char him where he stands. Perhaps it’s his brother who tends to the roses. That’s certainly an easier pill to swallow.
The air chills my bones, my exposed flesh, and though I can’t see it, I can feel the moonlight spilling onto my skin. In my mind’s eye I see me standing here like a fool, when I should be running, should be screaming for help, but I do nothing. I’m too afraid that he’ll haul me back inside, and I’ll never feel fresh air on my skin again. Tears sting my cold cheeks. The breeze through the open door toys with me, kissing my bruises, my welts, and I sob behind my gag.
Ares doesn’t touch me, and for a moment I believe I’m alone. I worry he’s left me here. I’m bound and gagged, and unable to protect myself, and then he tugs on my leash.
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back into the confines of that room without windows, my cage. I dig my heels in, and I’m slapped for my insubordination. A series of hard slaps to my breasts that forces them to bounce from the brutality. The sting is so much worse in the cold. He tugs the leash again, and I move, because I have no other choice.
He leads me out of the greenhouse, and back inside, and when I feel the temperate air of my cell around us, smell the sweet gardenia oil he rubs me down with, a sob escapes me.
The first thing he removes are the headphones; the second, my gag. And though I’m still tethered to him by his leash, I take a step back and inhale. I can’t breathe. I can’t get enough air, and even if I could I wouldn’t want this recycled shit, pumped through vents.I want outside. I want snow, jasmine, and roses. Not gardenias and captivity.
“Breathe, Pet,” he commands. I can’t breathe because he forced me back into this room, into submission, and repression. I can’t breathe stale air forever and be okay.
I fall to my knees, clutching my stomach, not caring that his hold on my collar is choking me.Why didn’t I run?Why didn’t I at least try?
He made me wear a blindfold for a reason. He gagged me for a reason, and if it was so important that I be unable to hear my surrounds, does that mean I was surrounded? By what? People? Houses? Buildings? Or was it just to fool me into thinking there was help nearby, that all I’d have to do was ask for it when, really, there is nothing. No one and nothing but jasmine, roses, and the pale moon that mocked me as she kissed my skin.
“Stop crying, Pet.” His voice is low and as unfeeling as ever.
I can’t. I can’t stop. “Why won’t you let me go?”
He crouches by my head and pats my hair. “Because I need you. You’re mine.”
“I hate you. I hate you. Just fucking kill me now and get it over with. Please? I’d rather be dead than spend the rest of my life here.”
“You don’t hate me, and you don’t want to die.” He trails his fingertips over my collarbone and down my breast, where he cups and squeezes. “Perhaps you need a reminder of why you love it here, why you belong to me.”
“I don’t . . .” I shove his hand away, but he places it right back on my breast. He will take what he wants from me when he wants, and I’m helpless to stop it. “I don’t belong to you or anyone else.”
“Bullshit. You’re mine. You will always be mine. I want you to remember that.” He slides his hand over my abdomen, and down between my legs. I slam them closed, but it makes no difference. Ares pushes them apart and pinches my clit. I suck in a deep breath. I’m devastated. My heart has been shattered into a million tiny pieces, but none of that matters to him. Or to my traitorous body, because within seconds he has me writhing on the floor, begging him through my sobs to make me come, make me forget.
I won’t though—forget. I can’t.
“You will always be mine.”
He’s right. I will always be his because I love a monster. That’s as clear to me now as the air outside.
I love him. I hate him. I want to kill him, spear him through the heart until his blood pours thick and hot over my hands, and I can finally take back my freedom.
But in doing so, it will destroy me.