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Breathless

I slept restlessly on the cabin’s worn couch, knife clutched in my hand, dreams full of honey-colored eyes and blood-slick fingers. When I woke, pale morning light filtered through dusty curtains, painting the rough-hewn walls in shades of amber.

The color reminded me of whiskey. Of his eyes. The same shade they’d been when he looked at me that night before everything went to hell.

For a moment, disorientation gripped me. Then I remembered.

Jace.

The knife.

The scars.

I rose, my body aching from the uncomfortable sleep, and moved to the small bathroom. The face that greeted me in the speckled mirror was unrecognizable—hollow-eyed, skin pale, dark hair wild around my shoulders. I looked feral. Like a girl wearing unhinged to hide the truly ugly horrifying shit underneath.

Good.

And yet…not good enough. Not broken enough to match what I felt inside. The broken thing they’d made me into deserved a more terrifying reflection.

I showered quickly, letting the lukewarm water sluice away yesterday’s blood—his blood—from my skin. As I toweled off, my fingers traced the constellation of scars that mapped my torment. Fifteen distinct marks, each with its own story, its own lesson in suffering.

Today I would give Jace the fourth. And perhaps the fifth.

I caught myself smirking at the thought. It wasn’t happiness—I’d forgotten what that felt like years ago. This was something darker, more primitive. The confident facade of a predator who’d finally cornered her prey.

But first, breakfast.

I pulled on fresh clothes—black tank top, worn jeans—and made my way to the kitchen. Simple fare: instant coffee, protein bars. I wasn’t here for comfort, that word had lost any meaning for me years ago. This breakfast was better than any I was fed during my captivity. One of the Jackals took obscene pleasure in making me not trust food. The lessons were cruel, vicious and I still wore them.

Sometimes he’d mix ground glass into my meals. Sometimes drugs that made me vomit for days. Sometimes nothing at all. The not knowing was its own kind of torture.

When I finally opened the bedroom door, tray in hand, Jace’s eyes were already open, watching me enter with the unnerving focus of a predator. Despite having been restrained for over twenty-four hours, he looked annoyingly composed.

“Morning, kitten,” he greeted, voice rough but steady. “Sleep well?”

Go to hell and rot. How dare he look so fucking calm while zip-tied to a bed? How dare he still own that voice that slid under my skin like a knife?

I set the tray on the bedside table. “Better than you, I imagine.”

His smile was knowing. “I’ve slept in worse conditions.”

My eyes drifted to his torso. The cuts from yesterday had scabbed over, angry red lines marking where my blade had carved his flesh. Three perfect lines—symmetrical, precise. The third, deeper wound had left a small bloodstain on the sheet beneath him. The crimson bloom had dried to rust overnight, a stain that would never come out. Just like what he’d done to me.

“You need to use the bathroom?”

“That would be civilized of you.”

I picked up the knife from the tray. “One wrong move and I open your femoral artery. Clear?”

“Crystal.” No fear, just that maddening amusement.

Something twisted in my gut—anger that he wasn’t afraid, or worse, that his lack of fear still made something flutter inside me. The girl I’d been fifteen years ago, the one who worshipped the ground he walked on, wasn’t completely dead after all. I hated her almost as much as I hated him.

I cut the zip ties at his ankles first, then one wrist, keeping the knife pressed against his neck as he slowly sat up. He winced slightly—the only indication that his muscles were stiff from hours of immobility.

“Slowly,” I warned as he stood, unsteady for a moment before finding his balance.

He moved toward the adjoining bathroom, each step measured, careful. I followed close behind, the knife never leaving his skin. When he reached the toilet, he glanced at me over his shoulder.

“Planning to hold it for me too?”

You wish. The old Naomi would have blushed, looked away. The new one just stared back, unmoved. Let him see what his betrayal had created—a woman beyond shame, beyond normal human reactions.

“Just hurry up.”

He turned slightly away—a gentleman even now—and relieved himself. I kept my eyes fixed on the back of his neck, where soft blond hair curled against tanned skin. The domesticity of the moment was jarring, grotesque in its normalcy.

His hair was longer than I remembered, but the same golden shade. Even in captivity, he was beautiful—the kind of beauty that made you forget he was dangerous. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

As he washed his hands, his eyes met mine in the mirror.

“You look tired,” he observed quietly.

“Bite me.”

“I will,” he replied with infuriating certainty. “Eventually.”

A shiver raced down my spine—whether from revulsion or anticipation, I refused to examine. The worst part was that some sick piece of me believed him.

I pressed the knife harder against his ribs. “Move. Back to the bed.”

Once he was secured again—fresh zip ties biting into his wrists and ankles—I allowed him to drink water through a straw, then eat half a protein bar. All the while, I sat beside him, knife resting on my thigh, watching.

“The fourth scar,” I said finally, setting the tray aside. “Do you want to know its story?”

Something flickered in his eyes—not fear, but anticipation. “Tell me.”

I lifted my shirt, exposing my right side where a jagged, four-inch scar ran along my ribcage. My fingers trembled slightly—not from fear, but from rage so pure it burned like acid in my veins. This one still hurt sometimes, a phantom pain on cold nights.

“This one was a punishment. For fighting back.”

His eyes traced the mark, jaw tightening. “What did you do?”

“Bit a dick.” The memory flashed vivid and sickening. “He tried to force himself down my throat while another one held me down. So I bit down. Hard.”

I could still taste it—the copper of blood, the salt of flesh. Could still hear the scream that had followed, high and keening. It was the first time I’d felt powerful since being taken.

A sound escaped Jace then—something between a curse and a growl. “Good girl.”

The praise shouldn’t have affected me. Shouldn’t have sent that small, treacherous spark of warmth through my chest. I killed it immediately, drowning it in the flood of what came next.

“They didn’t think so.” I lowered my shirt. “They decided I needed to learn about air. About how precious it is when you don’t have enough.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by something darker. “What did they do to you, Naomi?”

I reached for the items I’d prepared earlier—a clear plastic bag and a roll of duct tape—and placed them on the bed beside my knife.

“Why don’t I show you?”

His body tensed, a muscle in his jaw jumping rhythmically, but he didn’t beg, didn’t threaten. Just watched with those predator eyes as I picked up the plastic bag.

“They liked to multitask,” I explained, voice clinically detached. “Pain and pleasure, punishment and profit.”

I stood, unbuttoning my jeans. His eyes tracked the movement, heat flaring despite the obvious threat I presented.

The room felt suddenly airless, charged with something electric and dangerous. The kind of atmosphere that preceded storms. Or catastrophes.

“They’d put the bag over my head,” I continued, stepping out of my jeans. “Then they’d fuck me while I fought for air.”

I straddled him, the knife still in hand, my bare thighs pressing against his sides. The position was deliberately provocative, a piss poor imitation of intimacy.

His body was hot beneath mine, his skin burning through the thin cotton of his boxers. The contrast between his warmth and my cold purpose made me dizzy for a moment—a vertigo of conflicting sensations.

“Sometimes they’d poke holes in the bag at the last second. Sometimes they wouldn’t.” I traced the knife along his chest, following the path of the fourth scar I would give him. “I never knew which it would be.”

“Naomi,” he said quietly, a warning or a plea, I couldn’t tell which.

I leaned forward, the knife pressing just hard enough to nick his skin. “Want to know the worst part? Sometimes my body would respond anyway. Even as I was dying, I’d get wet. I’d come. They trained me like a fucking dog.”

Pavlov’s bitch, one of them called me. Ring the bell of pain and watch me salivate with twisted pleasure. It wasn’t a choice—it was rewiring, one neuron at a time.

His eyes never left mine, even as the blade began to cut. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“Shut up.” The knife sliced deeper than I’d intended, blood welling immediately. “You are the last motherfucker I need to absolve me.”

The blood beaded in perfect crimson spheres before running in thin rivulets down the curve of his chest. The fourth mark—a longer, curved line that followed the arc of his rib. I carved it slowly, deliberately, wanting him to feel every millimeter of separation as the blade parted his flesh.

I worked in silence then, carving the fourth mark into his skin with methodical precision. Unlike yesterday, he made no sound, though sweat beaded on his forehead, on his upper lip. Slow was infinitely more painful and I wanted Jace to get the full experience, all I had to offer, as far as torture was concerned.

When I finished, I set the knife aside and reached for the plastic bag.

“This is where it gets interesting,” I said, voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. “They’d use the bag when they wanted me especially tight. Fear does that to a body.”

His breathing had quickened, his pupils dilated to black pools rimmed with gold. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or arousal or that sick combination of both that seemed to define whatever remained between us.

Understanding darkened his gaze. “You don’t have to do this. I get it.”

“I know.” I shrugged, failing nonchalant. “But I want to.”

I unzipped his jeans, noting with sick satisfaction that despite everything—or perhaps because of it—he was half-hard. I freed him from his boxers, wrapping my hand around his length.

His cock twitched in my grip, betraying him just as my body had betrayed me countless times. There was power in that—making him want what he feared, making him respond to his own destruction. A dark symmetry.

“Look at you,” I murmured. “Getting off on your own suffering. Who’s the sick one now?”

He strained against the zip ties, jaw clenched. “We both are. I never denied it.”

“The difference is,” he added, voice rough, “I chose this darkness. You had it forced on you.”

I stroked him to full hardness, each touch deliberate, clinical. There was no tenderness here, only power—mine, not his. When pre-cum beaded at his tip, I smeared it with my thumb, a parody of the former familiarity I did not feel with him.

“They taught me well, didn’t they?” I whispered, shifting my position. “How to make a man hard no matter the circumstances.”

“This isn’t about them,” he ground out. “It’s about us. It always has been.”

My body betrayed me then—a rush of heat, of wetness between my thighs. Not because I wanted him, I told myself, but because I wanted this—the control, the reversal of power, the chance to inflict rather than receive.

I positioned myself over him, the head of his cock nudging against me. I was wet—betrayed by my own body just as he was by his.

That was fair.

“There is no us,” I said, and sank down onto him in one fluid motion.

He filled me completely, the sensation both foreign and achingly familiar. For a moment, we both froze, the shock of connection paralyzing.

Something like pain lanced through me—not physical, but deeper. The memory of what we’d been, distorted through the lens of what happened after that night. Victim, villain, him, me blurred.

Then I began to move, setting a brutal pace. This wasn’t lovemaking—it was punishment. A hate fuck, for him and me.

But especially me.

As I rode him, I reached for the plastic bag. His eyes tracked the movement, pupils dilated with both arousal and apprehension.

“Now,” I said, voice steady despite the building pleasure, “you get to learn about air.”

I brought the bag down over his head, smoothing it against his face. His features distorted behind the clear plastic, eyes widening. His chest jerked with a sudden inhalation, muscles tensing beneath me. I could feel every twitch, every involuntary response as the first wave of panic hit him.

“Some of them liked to watch my face as the oxygen ran out,” I continued, rolling my hips in a way that made him groan. “They liked to see the moment panic set in.”

I leaned forward, reaching for the duct tape, using my teeth to tear off a strip. With practiced movements, I secured the bag around his neck, tight enough to create a seal.

My hands were surprisingly steady—the same steadiness I’d learned in captivity. Survival meant control, even when your world was collapsing. Especially then.

Beneath me, I felt him tense, instinct warring with arousal. I didn’t stop moving, didn’t ease the pace of my hips. His cock pulsed inside me, harder than ever. He received the same amount of mercy I did by all those vile men. None.

“The body does strange things when it thinks it’s dying,” I observed, watching as his breath began to fog the inside of the bag. “It wants one last moment of pleasure before the end.”

His chest rose and fell more rapidly now, the plastic clinging to his face with each inhalation, pulling taut across his nose and mouth, then billowing slightly with each exhale. The sound of his breathing grew ragged, desperate—the whisper of plastic and the harsh rasp of air through constricted passages. I could see the exact moment the air began to thin—the flicker of genuine alarm in his eyes, the increased strain against his restraints. It was a shame it was going to end so fast. I should’ve used a bigger bag.

Still, I rode him, my own pleasure building despite everything. Or because of it.

“They’d sometimes make bets,” I said, voice husky now, “on whether I’d pass out before or after I came.”

The power was intoxicating—deciding whether he breathed or not, whether he lived or died. The same power they’d held over me. I understood now, in some terrible way, why they’d enjoyed it so much. The darkness in me recognized the darkness in them, and that realization sickened me even as it pushed me closer to the edge.

The bag was suctioning against his mouth now with each desperate breath. His hips thrust upward frantically, both seeking release and fighting for life.

I leaned down, my lips near where his ear would be beneath the plastic. “I should let you feel it all the way to the edge, like they did to me. Again and again and again.”

His body fought for air even as it sought release—the ultimate contradiction. Like us. Fighting to destroy each other even as we moved toward the same inevitable conclusion. His eyes locked on mine, and in them I saw something I hadn’t expected—not just desire or fear, but understanding. Recognition. He was experiencing what I had endured, not just witnessing it.

How do you like it?

For a moment, I hesitated—the knife still within reach, the bag growing tighter against his face with each labored breath.

“Fifteen years,” I whispered. “Fifteen years of never knowing if this breath would be my last.”

Something shifted in his expression then—not surrender, but something worse. Acceptance. As if he deserved this, as if he was finally paying a debt he’d always known he owed. That look pierced me more deeply than any knife ever could.

His eyes never left mine, even as they began to glaze. The thrusting of his hips became erratic, his body fighting for both release and survival.

At the last possible moment—when his lips were turning blue, when consciousness was beginning to fade—I grabbed the knife and punctured the bag, just inside his mouth. Only deep enough to pierce the bag and scratch his lower lip. His barely split lip was faint compared to the number they did to mine. Air rushed in, his chest heaving with desperate gulps.

I hadn’t planned to give him that mercy. Hadn’t planned to stop. The decision had come from somewhere beyond thought—some instinct I couldn’t name and didn’t want to acknowledge.

“That’s what mercy feels like, not that you deserve it.” I hissed, my own orgasm building as I watched him gasp for life. “Something I rarely received.”

The combination of renewed oxygen and continued stimulation pushed him over the edge. He came violently, back arching off the bed, a primal sound tearing from his throat despite the bag still covering his face. The cut edges stuck to his lips where I gave him life and air.

I could feel him pulsing inside me, hot and thick and unmistakably alive. That life force—the one I’d nearly extinguished, then preserved—triggered my own release—sharp, sudden, and unwanted. I shuddered around him, hate and pleasure twisting together into something unrecognizable.

When it was over, I slid off him, legs unsteady, and ripped the bag from his head. He gasped, color slowly returning to his face.

“Now you know,” I said, voice raw, “what it’s like to not know whether you’ll live or die in the middle of being fucked.”

He stared at me, chest still heaving. “I already knew,” he replied hoarsely. “Every time I was with you. Loving you is fatal and I don’t fucking care.”

The words hit like a physical blow, stealing my breath more effectively than any plastic bag. I stepped back, my spine hitting the wall, needing its solidity to remain upright.

The words hit like a physical blow. I turned away, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze.

“You think this is just about revenge,” he continued, voice strengthening. “It’s not. It’s about reclamation. Taking back what they stole from you. From us.”

“Shut up,” I snapped, pulling my jeans back on with trembling hands.

My fingers fumbled with the buttons, clumsy as a child’s. I hated that weakness, hated that he could see it. Hated that his words were worming their way into the cracks of my certainty.

“They took fifteen years, Naomi. Fifteen years we’ll never get back.” The gentleness in his voice was worse than any cruelty. “But they didn’t take everything. Not if you don’t let them.”

I whirled on him, knife in hand again. “You gave me to them!”

“I didn’t,” he insisted, eyes burning with conviction despite his vulnerable position. “I’ve spent fifteen years trying to find out who did.”

Not this shit again. And yet…the absolute certainty in his voice made something waver inside me. Fifteen years of believing one truth—could I have been wrong? The possibility was too dangerous to contemplate.

“Liar,” I spat, though doubt had begun to creep in, insidious and unwelcome. “They told me—”

“They told you what would hurt the most,” he interrupted. “What would break you completely. That the person you loved had betrayed you.”

My hand tightened on the knife until my knuckles turned white. The room seemed to tilt slightly, reality shifting beneath my feet. If what he said was true…no. I couldn’t afford that possibility. My survival depended on certainty, even if that certainty was hatred.

I pressed the knife to his throat. “Don’t you dare talk about love.”

“Why else would you be here, Naomi?” he asked softly. “Why not just kill me in that warehouse? Why bring me here, keep me alive, if not because some part of you still—”

“Shut up,” I hissed, pressing harder, drawing a thin line of blood. “Just shut up.”

Blood welled beneath the blade, a perfect ruby line against his throat. He didn’t flinch, didn’t swallow, didn’t do anything to risk deepening the cut. Perfect stillness, perfect trust—as if he knew I wouldn’t press harder, wouldn’t finish what I’d started. That certainty enraged me more than anything else.

His eyes held mine, unflinching even with the blade at his throat. “I never stopped looking for you. Never stopped hunting the men who took you. Never stopped—”

“Loving me?” I finished mockingly. “Save it, Jace. Even if that were true, it’s too late. Those men made sure of that.”

“No,” he said with quiet certainty. “They broke you. They didn’t destroy you. There’s a difference.”

Something twisted in my chest—hope or hatred, I couldn’t tell anymore. They’d become so entwined that separating them felt impossible. Like cutting out half my heart and expecting the rest to function.

I stepped back, suddenly exhausted. The high of power, of revenge, was fading, leaving only a hollow ache where satisfaction should have been. It was a cold burn that enveloped the empty black hole where my soul, the one that stupidly loved him, had once been.

“Rest,” I said flatly. “Tomorrow we continue with the sixth scar.”

I reached for the tray, deliberately letting him see the next set of tools I’d prepared—the cigarette lighter, the thin metal rod. A promise of what was to come.

As I turned to leave, his voice followed me: “I’ll be right here, kitten. Waiting.”

I paused at the door, not looking back. “You don’t have a choice.”

“I’ve always had a choice,” he replied softly. “And I’ve always chosen you.”

I closed the door behind me without responding, his words echoing in my mind. In the silence of the cabin’s main room, I sank to the floor, his blood and my release still sticky on my thighs. I pressed my forehead to my knees, fighting the treacherous burn of tears behind my eyes. Fifteen years of certainty, of knowing exactly who to blame—was it possible I’d been wrong? The question itself felt like a betrayal of everything that had kept me alive.

This wasn’t going according to plan. He was supposed to break, to beg, to hate me the way I hated him. Instead, he was turning each torture into a twisted form of communion, each violation into an act of connection.

And worse, some dark, broken part of me was responding.

I thought of the way his body had reacted to pain, to asphyxiation. The way mine had reacted to his. The sickness that bound us together—a darkness that recognized itself in the other.

I curled my fingers around the knife, pressing the still-warm blade against my thigh. If he was telling the truth—if he hadn’t betrayed me—then who had? And what did that mean for the foundation of hate I’d built my survival on? Some truths were too dangerous to face. Some lies too necessary to abandon.

Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow I would find the thing that would finally crush him.

I had to.

Because if I didn’t, I feared it would be me who shattered instead.