Page 4

4

Deprivation

I hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

The nightmares had changed. No longer the basement, the steel, the agony carved into my skin. Now they took me somewhere worse—back to sun-warmed asphalt and stolen glances, to the way Jace used to look at me like I was something sacred. Back to whispered promises in the sticky heat of a Louisiana summer, fingers tangled in mine, his mouth shaping lies I was too young and too stupid to recognize.

We were never supposed to want each other, but that only made it worse. Made it desperate. Reckless hands and fevered kisses in the dark, our bodies pressed too close in places we shouldn’t have been. His voice in my ear, telling me no one would ever touch me the way he did. And I had believed him.

Because it was fucking true.

I used to dream of escaping back to those moments. But that was before Spider whispered in my ear. Now those dreams haunted me just as much as the nightmares that came after.

Maybe even more.

The cabin’s silence pressed against my eardrums like a physical force, interrupted only by the occasional creak of the old structure settling. Four days of this twisted ritual had left me wide-eyed and jittery, thoughts skipping like stones across a pond, never sinking, never stopping. Coffee grounds littered the kitchen counter, evidence of my desperate fight against unconsciousness. Against what waited for me there.

Each day more scars carved into his flesh. Still not done. Not even close.

I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, barely recognizing the hollow-eyed stranger that stared back. Dark circles had become bruise-like smudges, my eyes too large, too bright in my gaunt face. The fluorescent light flickered overhead, making my reflection stutter like frames of an old film. For a split second, I thought I saw someone else—the girl from before, with softer edges and hope still living behind her eyes.

I blinked, and she was gone.

My hands trembled as I splashed cold water on my skin, the shock of it sending goosebumps racing up my arms but doing nothing to clear the cotton stuffing my brain.

“Get it together,” I whispered to my reflection, voice sandpaper-rough from disuse. “You’re in control here.”

I had to believe that. I wouldn’t fail again. But…

Jace wouldn’t break.

He bled. He endured. And worse—he watched. Not with fear. With curiosity. With calculation.

I wasn’t sure if he was falling into my trap, or weaving me into one of his.

And maybe the girl I just glimpsed didn’t care.

Maybe the sickest parts of me wanted to see what he’d do next.

Not because I would lose.

But because we both might.

And that possibility thrilled me far more than it should.

The floorboards protested under my weight as I dragged myself back into the main room. Even my eyelids felt weighted, the simple act of keeping them open a battle I was steadily losing. The cabin air hung thick with the stale smell of sex—a reminder of yesterday’s mistake—mixed with the sharp tang of sweat, antiseptic, and something deeper, mustier. The scent of captivity. Of waiting.

He was awake, of course. Watching me with those amber eyes that seemed to glow even in the cabin’s dim light. Four days in this hellhole, zip-tied to a bed that was never meant to be a torture rack, and he still looked… too damn good. Like the restraints were merely suggestions he was tolerating. His posture was lazy but controlling, like he was still running the show from flat on his back. The tension in his forearms, the slight strain against the plastic ties—none of it diminished the sense that he was somehow exactly where he wanted to be.

It pissed me off, how little he seemed to give a damn.

“Morning, sunshine,” he greeted, voice rough but steady, the slightest upward tilt at one corner of his mouth. “You look like shit.”

I set the tray down harder than necessary, coffee sloshing over the rim of the mug. “Eat.”

His eyes tracked me as I moved around the room, my ritual gathering of tools taking on the weight of ceremony: knife (freshly sharpened, its edge catching the weak morning light that filtered through dirty windows), antiseptic (running low—I hadn’t planned for this to take so long), gauze, camera. Today I added something new—a thick black blindfold and noise-canceling headphones, their presence a silent promise.

“More presents for my torture? You’re too good to me,” he said, the sarcasm thick in his voice, but there was something else underneath—a curiosity, an interest that shouldn’t be there. Not now. Not after four days of this.

I didn’t bother loosening his restraints like I usually did. Instead, I shoved the crumbling blueberry protein bar into his mouth with more force than necessary, my fingers brushing against his lips. His skin was warm—too warm—against my perpetually cold hands.

“Shut up,” I muttered, flinching back from the contact, watching him chew methodically, his eyes never leaving my face, that defiant glint never quite fading.

He ate slowly, deliberately, like he had all the time in the world. “The nightmares getting worse?”

The question hit like a physical blow. How did he know? What had I said in my exhaustion? What had I revealed?

My knife pressed harder against his pulse point, the throb of his blood steady beneath the blade. “I don’t remember giving you permission to speak.”

A shadow crossed his face, something ancient and knowing. “You don’t need to give me permission for anything, kitten. Never did.”

The pet name sliced through me, opening old wounds that had never truly healed. My grip tightened on the knife, the edge trembling slightly against his skin. One slip, one moment of weakness, and arterial blood would paint the walls of this godforsaken cabin. End this. End him.

End us.

“Shut up and eat,” I snapped, my voice betraying more than I wanted it to.

When he finished, I checked the zip ties with clinical precision, making sure they were tight enough to bite into his flesh without cutting off circulation. I needed him aware for this. Fully present. But not able to move. Not able to touch.

Not able to remind me of what those hands once meant.

“The eighth scar,” I said, my voice taking on the detached quality I’d cultivated for these sessions. “This one’s different.”

“How so?” His eyes followed me as I moved to pull up his t-shirt, exposing the canvas of his torso where my previous marks were healing in various stages—a roadmap of suffering I was etching into his skin one cut at a time.

“After the first year, they realized physical pain alone wouldn’t break some of us,” I explained, fingers tracing the healing scars lightly, ignoring the way his muscles jumped under my touch. “They needed to get creative.”

I held up the blindfold, the black fabric absorbing what little light touched it. “Sensory deprivation. Take away sight, sound, touch… leave someone alone with nothing but their thoughts long enough, and those thoughts become the torture.”

Understanding darkened his gaze, turning those amber eyes nearly black. “How long did they keep you like that?”

The question hung between us, weighted with possibilities. I could lie. Could refuse to answer. Could cut him instead of offering this piece of myself.

“The first time? Three days.” I positioned the knife against the unmarked skin over his left pectoral, over his heart, right where mine had been marked years ago. “By the end, I was begging for them to hurt me. Physical pain was better than the nothing.”

I cut quickly, efficiently—a smooth diagonal line about four inches long, mirroring the scar that crossed my own chest. Jace’s body tensed beneath me, a single harsh breath escaping through clenched teeth, but he made no sound.

Blood welled along the line, vivid red against his tanned skin. I reached for the gauze to dab it away, my motions mechanical, practiced. “They’d leave me blindfolded, earplugs in, restraints holding me completely immobile. Sometimes on a bare concrete floor, sometimes suspended so I couldn’t even feel the ground beneath me.”

I continued cleaning the wound, my touch clinical despite the way my insides twisted at the memory. “After a while, your mind starts to create its own stimulation. Hallucinations. Voices. Pain where there isn’t any.”

“Is that what this is going to be?” he asked, nodding toward the blindfold and headphones, a muscle in his jaw working. “Psychological torture instead of physical?”

“Both,” I replied simply, the word hanging between us like a promise. Or a threat. “That’s the point. They never gave me just one kind of pain. Always layers. Always combinations. Physical, psychological, emotional.” I secured a bandage over the fresh cut, fingers lingering a fraction too long. “Today you get to experience a sample.”

Without warning, I slipped the blindfold over his eyes, plunging him into darkness. His body tensed immediately, an instinctive panic at the loss of his primary sense. Before he could adjust, I placed the noise-canceling headphones over his ears, adjusting them to ensure no sound would penetrate.

Sight gone. Sound gone. Only touch and smell remained, and I would give him precious little of either.

With sight and sound removed, I watched his body language shift—muscles growing more rigid, tendons standing out in his neck, breathing pattern changing as his remaining senses heightened, trying to compensate for what had been taken away.

I didn’t speak. Didn’t touch him. Just watched.

Minutes crawled by, stretching into an hour. I moved occasionally around the room—letting him feel the vibrations of my footsteps through the floorboards, then nothing, creating an unpredictable environment where he couldn’t anticipate what was coming next.

My own exhaustion pressed against me, a physical weight dragging at my limbs. The room seemed to shift in my peripheral vision, shadows moving where they shouldn’t. I shook my head, forcing myself to focus. To remember why I was doing this.

To forget why I shouldn’t be.

When I finally touched him, it was without warning—a sharp pinch to his side, nowhere near his fresh wound. He flinched violently, a full-body jerk against the restraints, unable to anticipate or prepare.

I continued the pattern—long periods of nothing, then unexpected touches. Sometimes painful—a pinch, a scratch, the flat of the knife pressed briefly against his skin. Sometimes almost gentle—fingers tracing one of the healing scars, a drop of water on his lips when his mouth dried out, the brush of my hair against his arm as I leaned over him.

Never enough contact to satisfy. Never a pattern he could predict.

Three hours in, I noticed the changes—subtle tremors running through his limbs, sweat beading along his hairline and chest despite the cool room, jaw clenched tight enough that a muscle ticked visibly beneath the stubble.

Yet still, he didn’t speak. Didn’t beg. Just endured with that infuriating control that had defined our time together.

The same control I’d lost years ago in a concrete room where time ceased to exist.

I leaned close to his ear, removing one side of the headphones, my lips nearly brushing his skin. “You think you’re strong,” I whispered, the words meant only for him in a world that had shrunk to just this bed, this room, this moment. “That you can outlast whatever I do to you. But I had fifteen years of training, Jace. Fifteen years learning how to break even the strongest men.”

I replaced the headphone before he could respond, returning him to isolation.

Another hour passed. His breathing had grown more rapid, shoulders bunched with tension, body coiled with anticipation of contact that rarely came. I watched him wrestling with his own mind, with the darkness behind the blindfold, with whatever demons lived there.

My demons. The ones he helped create.

When I finally removed the headphones and blindfold, he blinked against even the dim light of the room, pupils contracting painfully as his eyes sought mine.

“Four hours,” I said quietly, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears. “That’s all. Imagine three days. Three weeks. Three months.”

His eyes found mine, and what I saw there wasn’t defeat—not even close. Instead, I found something worse: understanding. Empathy so raw it burned.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice hoarse from disuse, the words scraping out like they’d been dragged through broken glass. “That they did that to you.”

Rage surged through me—visceral, overwhelming, a living thing clawing up my throat. “I don’t want your fucking pity.”

“Not pity,” he corrected, holding my gaze despite the vulnerability of his position, despite the fresh wound on his chest, despite four days of systematic torture. “Recognition. Acknowledgment of what you survived. What you overcame.”

I turned away, unable to bear the intensity in his eyes, the sincerity there that threatened to unravel everything I’d built over fifteen years. “Don’t try to connect with me. Don’t try to make this something it isn’t.”

“And what is it, Naomi?” he asked quietly, my name in his mouth feeling like both violation and benediction. “What are we doing here, really?”

The question hung between us, dangerous in its simplicity, terrifying in its implications.

“Justice,” I snapped, the word sounding hollow even to my own ears, an empty promise that had sustained me through years of hell. “Revenge. Making you feel what I felt.”

“And is it working?” His voice remained calm, unaffected despite hours of psychological torment. “Do you feel better? Healed? Whole?”

I whirled on him, knife back in my hand before I’d consciously reached for it, my body operating on instinct and muscle memory. “Shut up.”

“Because from where I’m lying,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, as if there wasn’t a blade trembling in my grip, “this isn’t about making me feel what you felt. It’s about making me understand what you felt. There’s a difference.”

The insight sliced deeper than any blade could have, carving through layers of hate and hurt to the raw, bleeding truth beneath. Because he was right—I didn’t just want him to suffer. I wanted him to know. To comprehend the full weight of what had been done to me. What I believed he had allowed to happen. Condoned. Ignored. For fifteen years.

While I waited for a rescue that never came.

“Understanding doesn’t change anything,” I said finally, voice barely above a whisper, the knife lowering to my side. “It doesn’t undo what happened.”

“No,” he agreed, something softening in his face, something that looked dangerously like forgiveness. “But it creates something new. A bridge between who we were and who we are now.”

I laughed bitterly, the sound like broken glass in my throat. “There is no bridge that can span fifteen years of hell, Jace.”

“And yet here you are,” he pointed out, eyes never leaving mine, a quiet certainty in his voice that unnerved me more than any threats could have. “You could have killed me in that warehouse. Could have disappeared. Instead, you brought me here. You’re talking to me. Showing me.” His voice softened to something almost tender. “That’s a kind of bridge, whether you want to admit it or not.”

I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t process the implications of what he was saying. Couldn’t acknowledge the grain of truth in his words. Couldn’t face what it meant that I hadn’t killed him when I had the chance. That some part of me had wanted this instead.

Wanted him to understand. Wanted to be seen.

“Rest,” I said abruptly, gathering my tools with shaking hands, unable to look at him any longer. “Tomorrow. The ninth scar.”

As I turned to leave, his voice followed me, soft but unwavering: “I’ll be here, kitten. Waiting. Just like I’ve been for fifteen years.”

I closed the door behind me without responding, leaning against it with eyes squeezed shut against unwanted tears. Five days. Eight scars. And instead of satisfaction, I felt only a growing hollowness—a void where righteous vengeance should have been.

The wall clock ticked endlessly in the silence, marking seconds that stretched into minutes. Marking another day of failure.

Tomorrow would be different, I promised myself, sliding down to sit with my back against the door, knees pulled to my chest like I used to do in the dark when I was alone and afraid. Tomorrow I would find the method that would finally ruin him.

But the doubt had already taken root, insidious and unwelcome. Because what if Jace was right? What if this elaborate ritual wasn’t about destroying him at all, but about rebuilding something that had been shattered fifteen years ago in that bayou?

The possibility terrified me more than any torture I’d endured.

Because vengeance was simple. Vengeance was clean.

Forgiveness—that was the true horror waiting in the dark.