I gasp and become paralyzed, my memories cruelly snagged away as a finger trails over my collarbone. It moves purposefully from one end to the other and then slowly, tortuously back to its starting point. He makes no sound, no other movement, just a fingertip pressed to my skin so all that rages in my ears is my shuddered breaths mingled with my pulse.

Time passes. Seconds? Minutes? I’m unsure because it feels like an eternity sitting in this suspended state of the unknown.

He sighs into the room and it hangs there like a hand waiting to smother me.

“Bellisima, vuoi essere il mio amante?” His murmured voice hits my ears, a deception to my senses, because even though I don’t understand him, I know it’s sexual in content. I know his voice sounds seductive, but it’s what he’s going to do to me that stops any part of my body from reacting.

“Don’t be scared, sweet bella. I won’t hurt you.” He laughs, rich and amused, and I’m confused, trying to draw into myself and away from him because I know that laugh is a ruse to trust him. To not fight him when I’m sure he’ll violate my body. Scar my mind. Steal my soul. His laughter stops when I whimper.

“You think I lie? You think that I want to hurt this beautiful body of yours?” His voice is firmer now with a touch of anger, a result of my disbelief. The bed shifts as he gets off it, and behind my blindfold my eyes move as if I’m watching. My ears strain to track which direction he is going. “This body is mine. Your body is mine. I do not hurt what is mine.”

I start trembling again. My toes curl and then relax, the only movement I voluntarily make under his quiet scrutiny I can’t see but can feel. Processing his words is just too much—everything too much—because all I can focus on is I’m now at this man’s mercy.

His slave.

His next whim.

“I will give your body pleasure—take the pleasure you give me willingly—”

Like hell I’ll give him anything of me. “Fuck you.” The garbled sound is out of my mouth before I can think, and I realize my mistake a second too late.

Spikes of pain light across my right breast, pin pricks that sting causing my nipples to harden instantly. My breath hitches and I arch my back in reflex to the bites into my flesh, my only reaction to combat the unexpected pain.

And I start thrashing my head from side to side as the contradiction of his words and actions hit me. He’s not going to hurt me? Then what the hell was that? My body vibrates with trepid anticipation because the silence is killing me. I want him to talk again. If he talks then maybe I won’t be obsessively focused on the silence, on the creaks of the floor, on waiting for the next blow to strike.

His hand presses on my neck, covering the entirety of it, and forces my chin up. My mind races. My body freezes. His undetected approach reaffirms my unchallenged vulnerability. Silence screams between us, our only connection his hand pressed against my throat. My lips shock apart when I feel the heat of his breath against my cheek. And yet he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just remains there, reminding me of his constant presence.

An unknown amount of time stretches. When he finally speaks, there is an unprovoked bite in his tone. “Do not fucking question me. Do not talk back. Is that understood?” I can’t find my voice to answer because I’m focusing so hard on trying to find the breath that he’s robbed from me. “Is that understood?” I nod my head as best as I can with his hand still pressed there. “I will fuck you as I see fit. I will use you, own you, make you mine.” I feel his tongue slide down the line of my jaw to the lobe of my ear, and I fight the shudder of revulsion that riots within. His lips brush against my skin. “And when I’ve taken everything I want from you, I will let you go.”

My head startles at his last words. “What?” The word falls from my mouth but all I hear is an incoherent mess of sound. He’s going to let me go? The question is in what condition will I be left when he’s done with me? It doesn’t matter. I can do this. I can survive this—anything—if it means I get to go home to my boys.

My moment of skeptical joy is halted when his finger begins a slow descent over my collarbone. This time he stops when it hits my midline and starts to move down between my breasts. My body shivers at the feeling—at the coarse tug of my skin against his finger, and I realize he is wearing gloves. Leather gloves, I think. The material pulls on my skin, an odd contrast to the gentle nature of the touch causing chills to dance and disquiet to own my every fiber.

He stops at my lower abdomen, and although he leaves his finger there, the floorboards broadcast his methodical movements. I frantically track the sounds as he walks around the perimeter of my bed, my prison. My chest deflates and body freezes—fear firing anew despite his words promising relief. I feel the bed dip near the end by my feet and the anticipation of what is going to happen is almost as numbing as the fear that is now a constant.

His finger never moves, but I can feel it shake, the bed sway, as he adjusts his positioning, and it’s ridiculous because I can’t see him, but I swear I can feel his eyes scraping over every inch of me. Observing. Assessing.

I force a swallow over the fear that chokes me and mentally prepare myself for what’s coming next. The pain, the brutality, the loss of my consent. I try to control my trembling because I have to assume he likes the fight—is turned on by it—so if I don’t give it to him, will this be over that much quicker? Will he discard me and move on to someone who gives him what he wants? Because let’s face it, only sick fucks get off on shit like this, and if I don’t give it to him, won’t he want someone who will?

I garble a cry at the unexpected, my body and mind shocking to the present when the wet warmth of his tongue traces the seam between my thighs. I try to snap my thoughts in line, but his unpredicted action bewilders me long enough that I don’t even think to fight him. And because my body is still and my senses attuned, I can feel the softness of his tongue, the languorous, heat-inducing trail it blazes up to my clit, circling over it not just once, but twice, before sliding back down and deftly parting my folds down to my opening.

My breathing shallows, my teeth bite down on the gag, and I attempt to comprehend, assess, come to terms with what I’m feeling. How I can be scared boneless and yet still have that slow burning ache unfurling in my lower belly. I tell myself I’m crazy—that my mind is playing games on me, my subconscious shutting down so I can compartmentalize everything—but I know I’m kidding myself. I can’t even concentrate long enough to sell myself my own lies because it’s impossible to ignore, impossible to deny the traitorous warmth that spreads through my core and simmers there. Amidst the haze of desire that assaults me, my rationale tries one more attempt—one last ditch effort. It must be the after effects of whatever drugs he gave me because there is no way in hell I should even be remotely turned on by his touch on my skin, his tongue delving into me.

I shouldn’t.

But I am.

I adjust my hips some, tell myself it’s not real, but the ache doesn’t dissipate with movement. And in response to my squirming, his finger leaves my skin for the first time but is back instantly, this time in a different place. Hands grip my inner thighs and pin them immobile. I’m still gasping in the air from the sudden, bruising hold he has on my legs when his tongue plunges into me.

My cry is involuntary. The buck of my hips and arch of my back in response isn’t even a coherent thought but rather a reflex. I fight to ignore the blissful warmth between my thighs, rationalize that it’s my body’s natural reaction, that I won’t succumb to his persuasion of pleasure.

Pleasure that’s unwelcome.

Pleasure that is still pleasure.

His tongue slips in, wetting me, opening me up, manipulating me. My nerves ride a disloyal roller coaster as he plunges in, circles around, and then withdraws to slide up, circling my clit, sucking on it, igniting it, before moving back down and licking back into me.

The first moan that falls from my mouth startles me. My logic attempts to validate why my body reacts this way when I should be locked like a vice … but I can’t focus on anything because his tongue just keeps moving: up, down, in, out, around and around. A tantalizing assault that leaves my head reeling and my body humming.

My muscles tighten as his fingers dig deeper and his tongue laves more fervently. I can hear his panted breath. It disrupts the silence of the room, but the other sound I hear is even more disturbing: my own stifled moans as I try to fight the sensation swelling through me. Time lapses and warmth spreads, nerves ignite, and then my body detonates, splintering into a million pieces of pleasure.

I have no choice but to succumb to the tidal wave that hits and then drowns me momentarily. I can’t close my legs or relax my body as I normally would, so for some reason the exposure makes my orgasm seem more intense, more explosive.

More traumatic—emotionally and physically.

His hands hold me—my muscles still spasming against his possessive fingers—when I feel his lips press against my inner thigh. They curve into a smile against my sensitized flesh like a familiar lover would, and the contradiction hits me—the tenderness displayed in a situation so contrary—makes it that much harder to process what just happened. What I just succumbed to and derived pleasure from.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

What is wrong with me? How can I find pleasure from this man who is holding me against my will? What kind of sick, fucked up person am I? How can I even remotely be turned on?

The bile rises. I try to fight it, try to swallow it down. My head becomes light and my breath shallow as my body becomes starved for the air it needs. I begin gagging, coughing violently, trying to revolt against the object in my mouth. I can’t dislodge it. I yank against my restraints, buck my body as I seek my next breath.

In an instant his hands are at my head. I feel them tug and manipulate something. I focus on the peppermint again, use it to calm myself, but with the blitzkrieg of sensations and emotions hitting me, my connection to the scent is losing its effectiveness. My head dizzies as his mouth brushes up against my ear. “Bella, Bella, Bella,” he soothes with the deep timbre of his voice. “Calmare la mia bella. Breathe slowly,” he commands as I feel his body against mine, his hands at the corners of my mouth. “Calm down.”

Panic continues its smothering grip on my reality, and I shake my head back and forth trying to shove the gag from my mouth with my tongue. He holds my jaw firm, his heated breath against my hair. “Do not scream. I will remove this, but if you scream, I will put a bigger one in and then there’s no telling how much air you’ll get with your next panic attack. Capisci? Understood?”

My breath rattles in my throat as I try to gulp down air I still can’t draw. My thoughts elevating from the depths of despair in which they’ve fallen into momentarily at the chance to yell for help, but I forget them as my consciousness starts to fade.

“Say it goddamn it!”

His voice jars me from the darkness edging my mind, and I try to nod my head in response, but his fingers holding my jaw prevent the action. I know he wants me to say the words aloud, my voice affirming his position of control.

“Yes.” I garble.

The gag is removed immediately. I suck in air like a drowning man breaking the surface. My head dizzies again, but this time from the returning oxygen. I choke on the air as I suck it in, in greedy bouts. My mind feels like it can think relatively clearly for the first time since I’ve awakened into this nightmare.

He backs away to give me some space, but I can still feel his presence. Shouting at the top of my lungs is my first thought, but I can’t see anything. Is he pointing a gun at me? Does he have a knife? Do I risk the chance since I’m literally and figuratively blind?

I make a conscious decision not to scream. To choose to comply. And it seems stupid but everything else about this situation is out of my control so I grab onto the one option that he provides me.

Besides, I’m so thankful to breathe again that I don’t want to risk having the gag put back in my mouth. I dart my tongue out to lick my dry, chapped lips and work my jaw back and forth, my ears popping from the motion. “Why?” I croak the word out in a broken rasp. It’s all I allow myself to say, fear of repercussions holding the rest of my accusations hostage.