His throat and tongue withered with each intake of waterless air. Maybe they’d already buried him in the box out back. Maybe his next exhale would be his last.
No, he would’ve felt them move the box. And his life was valuable. They couldn’t sell him if he was dead.
Something tickled his face. Another delusion. They’d left him alone for so long, his muscles were stiff from inertia, his fingers and toes numb from loss of circulation. Had they forgotten him? But the noise that had embedded itself in his brain was…silent. Nothing. Gone. In its place was the galloping thump of his hopeful heart.
The press on his ears vanished, replaced by the tingle of cool air. Then the blindfold lifted away. Blinding light stabbed his crusty eyes. He blinked, blinked, blinked, gasping, the chains clattering with his spasmodic attempts to free his arms.
Fingers touched his nose, removed the clip. His nostrils responded with greedy pulls of air, widening, clearing the snot, and filling with the scent of sweat and fear.
As his vision adjusted, the figure towering over him took shape. A gas mask encased its head. Three plastic circles darkened where the eyes and nose should be.
Was the air poisoned? Were they gassing him, drugging him? His heart hammered against his ribs, his lungs struggling to keep up. “What are you—” He coughed, harsh and painful. “Am I—”
“Drink.”
The voice was a muffled tinkling of ice. He thanked God it was her under the mask but didn’t understand why that knowledge had coaxed his joints to relax. She had put him in that box.
She palmed his nape, raising his head. Cool water sluiced over his parched lips, his tongue, trickling down his throat, both abrading and refreshing.
The pressure in his bladder twisted tighter. “Bathroom.”
“You shouldn’t have held it.” The mask’s filter concealed her mouth. He couldn’t read her and wondered if that was the intent. She worked the chains quickly, tugging at his hands and feet. “Your bladder is breeding bacteria as we speak.”
She’d chained him in a box and was worried about a UTI? The restraints slackened, but his wrists remained locked together. He pulled up his legs, bending at the knees and trembling through the effort. He didn’t have the strength to drag his hands to his chest.
Releasing latches at both ends of the box, she let one side fall open and lay flat on the floor. He rolled out in a haphazard tumble, arms bound together, legs free but weak as hell.
A random pattern of eyehooks protruded from the subfloor around him. There were hooks everywhere, the ceiling, the walls. They dangled padlocks, chains, and cuffs of leather and steel.
She left him lying there, heeled boots encasing her calves and clicking on the wood. His view from the floor arrested on the black PVC-like corset dress molding the curves of her waist and hips and stopping just below the creases of her muscular backside. Wrapped in pleather, she was a promise of suffering and ecstasy.
The sudden stirring in his groin shot a burning stab to his bladder and spurred him to his knees. He slid one foot forward, his muscles screaming, and rose, swaying on his feet. “How long was I in there?” He swung his cuffed-together hundred-pound arms toward the box.
Her silence magnified his heartbeat thrashing in his ears.
With unmoving eeriness, her blacked-out lenses watched him stagger toward her, his toes catching on the hooks. He could physically feel his body tensing with hatred for this woman, who regarded him without a twitch to assist his clumsy advance.
When his shins hit the porcelain rim, he dropped his shackled fists on the wall behind the tank, and lost the fight with his bladder. He’d meant to sit. Too late for that. Needing his hands on the wall to hold himself up, he melted into the relief pouring from him, the stream of urine spraying unguided. Thanks to his shaking legs, his aim was marginal at best.
Her mask tilted downward. At the mess he was making? At his nudity?
Let her stare. He’d showered and peed in the presence of others every day in the locker room. This was different on so many levels, but he didn’t have the strength of mind to care.
He’d never been drunk, but it probably felt like this. His brain struggled to engage, his perceptions clouded by fatigue, his legs and arms wrestling to respond. He was nude and helpless before a woman who meant to sell him as a sex slave, and he grappled to keep his eyes open.
Bladder empty, he dropped the weight of his head on a braced arm and angled his face to glower at her. “My parents?”
Her vinyl-wrapped head cocked. “Last check, Mr. Carter was celebrating his empty nest at the kitchen table, wrinkling the lacy tablecloth and toppling over that god-awful ceramic rooster centerpiece as he pounded his cock into Mrs. Carter’s ass.”
He swung his bound arms—To shut her up? Make her hurt? Knock off the mask?—and missed. His sideways motion sent him careening into the spot she’d vacated, tottering past her and into the open shower stall.
The boot slamming into the back of his knee brought him stumbling to the ground in a discombobulation of limbs and defeat. Flopping to his back, he could only glare up at her. Even his frustration required more effort than he could manage.
She squatted over him, a boot on either side of his hips, the gap of her thighs wide enough to expose a swath of black lace. He jerked his eyes away, disgusted with her and himself.
“You can look.”
“No, thanks,” he ground out, tried to buck her off his hips, and failed.
“Soon, you won’t be able to stop yourself.” She grabbed his jaw and shoved her mask in his face. “Requirement number five. Slave will not touch Master or Master’s property in a sexual way without permission.”
Master’s property? She didn’t mean—
“For the next ten weeks, I am your Master, and this is my property.” She released his chin and gripped his penis, sliding down, stretching brazen fingers to cup his testicles.
Blood rushed to his groin. No one had ever touched him there and definitely not like that. He hated the visible response of his body but couldn’t stop it. Nor could he stop his fury. He scuffed his heels on the tile, breaking her grip. His back hit the wall. “You’re a rapist.”
Holding her crouched position, she dropped a forearm over one knee. “The first requirement set by the buyer was your virginity. You will never put your cock in me or any woman.”
Her definition of virginity was too specific, or perhaps not specific enough. That did not sit well. He clenched his butt cheeks, a sheen of sweat icing his spine.
She stood and reached for the yard of chain hanging from a hook beside the shower head. “Raise your arms.”
He tucked them to his chest and stared at the drain, fighting his eyes to stay open. Twenty-four hours in the ear-numbing, sleep-deprived box. Leading up to that had been an exhaustive day of hauling cotton bales, classwork, and the big game. He didn’t have enough steam left to stop her from hanging him in the shower, but he refused to make it easy.
“If your concentrate every breath on anticipating my orders, your time with me will be much less painful.” Her voice reverberated against the tiles, hollow and robotic. “If you swing at me again, I’ll suffocate you with much, much more discomfort than you experienced in that box.” She bent over him, boots shoulder-width apart, hands on her hips. “If that doesn’t penetrate your thick skull, I’ll collect another keepsake from your mother. Perhaps something attached to her little gray-haired head.”
His heart sped up, heated with anger, knotted with dread. When he recovered his strength, he would escape, and he might knock her across the room on the way out.