Page 32 of When Sinners Fear
She tilts her head and stares at me, before turning back to look out into the gloom. “Is it worth it?” That's not an answer worth discussing with the likes of her either, and I’m not about to justify myself to the very person I’m doing my best to protect. “Is that soda?”
“Yeah.”
She moves, desperate for a drink, I’m sure.
I watch until she’s almost touching it, tussling with what’s best for her. We’re not dead yet, though. I’ll make that decision for her when I’m ready. I'm not yet. “Leave it, Peyton.”
She turns to look back at me, hand recoiling. “Why?”
“It’s poisoned. You stay with me. Promise me.” Her eye's bruised, and the swelling stops it from opening properly. All that crystal blue marred with red. Still, she still nods at me. Good. “I’m gonna sleep for a while.”
~
Time morphs into some unending hole of constancy. One second. One hour. One day, two. A fucking week. It’s all rinse and repeat, over and over again. I beat her; they beat me. We fuck again as if it’s rape, and I use anything they give me on her. An iron pole. A rake. I torture her with pain until she’s as battered as me in some ways. I make her cry, and I watch the tears fall with little in the way of sympathy for them. This is the way she stays alive. If we ever get out of this, she’ll thank me for caring enough to bother thinking about how best to hurt her so she recovers in time.
Stay with me. That’s all I've got to help her understand. A few hushed words to try and make her see.
It’s all there is for both of us.
Sleep, if it can be called that, is anything but restful. Most of the time I keep one eye open to see if she does drink that soda. I’ve passed between wanting her to and refusing to let her if she moves even an inch towards it. But with each beating, the need to give up and the pull towards drinking it myself grows. No one’s coming for us, and it feels like months have gone past with us in this black hole of hell. It’s only the thought of her alone in this, and killing Reed, that keeps me going.
The next round of pain comes along sometime later and involves more pretence of rape. We’re both hauled out into the main space and chained together like some freak show for Reed’s amusement. I’m beaten, she’s whipped, and then I inflict the pain, and she whimpers and screams like a good girl when she’s supposed to. My hands are lighter, though, and she can feel that. I stay focused on her eyes as best I can, keep hers on mine. I nod each time something new is coming, and she nods in reply. It’s subtle, all barely there for the others to see, but we know it’s happening.
Stay with me.
She pretends my hands are heavy. She wails and groans and shouts her pleas for mercy, but under all that, she knows I’m holding back. It’s partly sheer exhaustion on my part. We’ve barely eaten or drunk, and every hit to my kidney is taking its toll on my ability to survive this. The fucking is degrading for us both, and yet there’s moments in it of silence – of just us two, despite the goddamn performance we’re putting on. She’s a feast for me to indulge in, and every time she even thinks about moaning some pleasure out, I harden so she shuts the hell up.
I wish I could say I didn’t enjoy it, but I do. Some part of me loves every second of fucking and hurting her, regardless of Reed watching us. I love the smell of her skin, and the dirt we’re in, and the thought that no one’s ever done this kind of thing to her before me. I love the moment’s our eyes lock in the middle of it – while I’m buried deep inside her and she’s looking terrified of me. And I’m almost incensed with need when she utters those quiet moans of enjoyment under the sound of the chains rattling.
Coming inside her is on another level of pain, but it’s laced with sheer fucking bliss. Relief releases some tension, and for a split second, we’re not here – we’re not being used or abused – we’re free and at my place. Or at hers with her father disapproving of me. Or in some motel where we can bathe before I fuck her again. Shit crashes down real fucking fast when one of the dicks hits me over the head with something, though, and tension builds again, regardless of exhaustion, when they look at her like they want a piece.
She skitters sideways into me, rolling her body so she’s tucked in tight.
“More,” Reed says.
My eyes roll, exhausted with all this. “What do you want, Reed?” mutters out of me. “Where does this end?”
“You’ve both got a way to end it,” he says, standing from his chair. I move onto my back, pained and about fucking done with everything. He looms over me and smiles, loosely kicking my ribs like a plaything. I buckle inwards at the pain, fingers digging into her skin. “You’ve had it for some time, Knox. It’s just a drink. I’ve been waiting to see you give up.”
He looks over at Peyton, as she huddles herself up two feet from me. “You don’t want to drink it?” She shakes her head and looks at me. “You’re quite pathetic, aren’t you?” She’s far from that given what she’s taken from me. “Naja never looked as useless as you do. She fought. She was clever about it. That’s how we got away, but you – look at you. What is your point? You’re just a fucktoy. Here to be played with. You do know he doesn’t really care about you, don’t you? He’s just playing with you to save himself. And that won’t happen. I’ll kill him, and then who will you have, Peyton? No one. Just me and this pair. And they’re hungry.”
She doesn’t say anything or even look at him. She stays fixed on me like I’m a saviour in all of this. I’m not. I’m getting weaker by the day, and this is only going one way if she doesn’t drink that poison of her own accord. I’m not going to be able to protect her like this soon. I know it even if she doesn’t. Reed certainly does.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind,” Reed says. I frown, wondering what else he could possibly do to make her want to drink it. The only thing I can see is them raping her – them abusing her. “Put them back in the cage.”
We’re both heaved and hauled until we’re back where he wants us, and I stay up front in the cage so she can rest first. It’s become some unwritten rule in the confusion. She sleeps first, and then I try. Maybe it’s a slither of control, some plan to follow.
She curls up, knees up to her chest like a dog. She isn’t one. She should be stretched out and lounging on a beach somewhere.
The door opens again, and one of the dicks comes over with two plates of dry bread. I’m too exhausted to bother eating or moving, and Peyton? She stays exactly where she is. No flinching, no aim for the food, no response at all until the dick has gone and the door’s slammed shut.
“Knox?”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to me.” Her voice is threadbare and pleading.
“What about?”