12

SHE SAW IT COMING BUT COULDN’T PULL HER ARM BACK IN. HE was too fast as he positioned his weight over her back and then pressed down until she couldn’t breathe. She gasped as she heard something snap in her shoulder. The pain was so intense that her muscles quivered.

He gripped her left arm tightly and tugged her back so that she rolled onto her stomach. Pinned underneath his body, she went limp and her muscles relaxed.

“Lie still.”

His voice was so close to her ear that a stream of air filled her ear canal.

She noticed that his weight eased up slightly off her back as he leaned over to get a better grasp of the arm under her. She quickly flipped over onto her back, and he lost his balance as she pulled both legs up and kicked him as hard as she could. The impact when she hit him sent a jolt through her body. He reflexively grabbed hold of her ankles. It felt like a knife cutting in deep as he cinched the cable ties.

She instinctively scratched at him before she began hitting out whenever he was close enough. His cheek was bleeding, and she noticed the aggression radiating out of his dark eyes and prepared herself for another blow.

She had vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but had nonetheless ignored the warning signs. He had been attentive and courteous. She had found it strange all along that he didn’t want to exchange pictures, but she had taken that as a compliment, since he had written in one of his first e-mails that he could tell she was different from the others. He could tell that from the tone of her e-mails.

A reproachful voice popped up in the back of her mind and mixed with the fear: You were playing with fire. Fight!

She had been enjoying it; she’d flirted. It had been titillating and exciting to write back and forth, looking forward to their first meeting.

She screamed as he tied her wrists together, and kept on screaming as he pushed her down onto the floor. The fitted sheet had come off on one side. She had seen the transformation happen when at one point she had taken control in the bedroom. It had turned her on that he was so nervous, so hesitant and slow in taking off his clothes. A diamond in the rough, she teased him in her mind, as he stood next to the bed fumbling with his shirt buttons.

“Here, let me,” she had said affectionately once she had taken off her own clothes. She started undoing his buttons, and that’s when she noticed him change. Something had settled in between them like a chill in the air she was breathing. He stood motionless as she slowly undressed him.

She had smiled at him as he pushed her onto the bed, not seeing what he was hiding in his hand. She thought it was a condom that he was too embarrassed to let her see. Now she realized it had been the sharp bands that he used around her ankles and wrists.

She struggled further onto the floor until he yanked her back up, intending to push her down onto the mattress. She managed to keep her balance on her tightly bound legs and with tremendous force she swung her arms at him. The blow knocked him down, and she was afraid the rage she had ignited in him would kill her.

The silence following their struggle hung thick in the bedroom as he sat, just in his boxers, straddling her chest and arms and forced something hard into her mouth. He reached over for the roll of duct tape he had set on the bed as she lay there on the floor, and bit off a piece of tape as she writhed beneath him. She felt his sexual arousal distinctly, and noted to her own astonishment that the fight had also left her own groin quivering and tingling. This helped her relax a little, thinking it would be over soon. It was a game that was exciting to both of them. She had just underestimated him; she hadn’t thought he’d be into this kind of thing, and they hadn’t gone through the rules of the game because she had started undressing him too quickly. So she let him put the tape over her mouth.

She interpreted it as conciliatory when he stared into her eyes intensely, leaning forward into her face, as an expression of their mutual enjoyment. But when he pulled back a little and heavy-handedly forced her knees apart and jammed some hard object up into her, the pain was so intense that everything went black. Her body’s pain reflexes tensed her already-contracted muscles so the only reaction was a small jerk that made her arms and legs twitch. She was so stunned by the pain that was tearing her apart that she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she would suffocate if she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She frantically turned her head to the side; the pain stopped, and she heard him drop something onto the floor. The dildo she kept in the drawer of her nightstand fleetingly entered her mind; that might be what he had found, but before she finished the thought she felt his hands around her neck. Tears blurred her vision as she looked at him to see when it would stop. He wasn’t squeezing, just letting his hands rest there as he settled on top of her with his full weight and plunged deep between her thighs.

She relaxed a little again. Now it was done: he had had his orgasm. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that it was okay, she had gotten through it, but even before he yanked her over so she was hanging off the edge of the bed she could tell he had no intention of stopping. Rage shot through her with the same intensity as the blow she had laid into the side of his head. She gathered her strength, and when he tried to flip her onto her stomach she kicked out at him again. Furious, he turned his back to her and left the room.

With difficulty she got up onto her legs and looked around for a weapon, but before she made it around the bed she sensed him behind her. It happened so fast that she didn’t have a chance to parry the blow. Nausea set in as the next blow thundered into her face, and everything went black before she hit the floor. She lay there behind the bed with her eyes closed and heard him getting dressed as she felt nausea overwhelm her.

She tried to hold it back by taking steady, deep breaths. Her relief at hearing the main door slam shut behind her made her relax a bit, but it was too late to stop the powerful wave of vomit surging through her like a convulsion. Her immobilized body flinched reflexively, and she fought for air. The next minute felt like an hour.

Another wave of vomit came, but she was no longer aware of it. Unconscious, she lay heavily on the floor and didn’t notice her throat fill up and her cheeks distend.