Page 17

17

Ryder

“Come,” he told me.

I sighed and started to stand up, but he grabbed one of the handholds on the harness and pushed me firmly back down.

I glared at him. “You told me to come. I’m getting up so I can do what you fucking wanted.”

“Not that way,” he said. “Hands and knees.”

“No fucking way,” I told him. “I’m not going to do that.” Not only would it be demeaning as hell — one more slip in the downward slide — but it would hurt like a bitch. The concrete wasn’t exactly kind to my feet as it was. The mitts would protect my hands, even if they would make it hard as fuck to move, but my knees would get torn up.

“Are we really going to go through this again?” he asked, like I was a child refusing to get dressed and go to school instead of a captive refusing to fucking crawl.

“Yes,” I grumbled, refusing to move my ass an inch.

“You know you’re just going to give in anyway,” he told me as though it was simply a done deal. “Why are you fighting this? ”

I didn’t admit he was right.

“Because I have to,” I said honestly.

He considered me a moment, then slowly nodded. “That’s only going to take you so far, Toby—”

“Ryder!” I interrupted him hotly.

“That’s the problem. You’re still thinking of yourself as Ryder, when you’re never going to be that person again.” The words were spoken gently enough, yet they felt like nails being driven into my coffin. “Let go.”

“I’d like to see you just let the fuck go,” I spat, staring up at him as he continued to hold the harness in place.

His eyes flashed, and I hesitated, not liking what I saw in them. “You really, really don’t want me to let go,” he said. The softness was gone from his voice, replaced by something ironclad and horrible.

I tried to shy away from him but couldn’t get far with his grasp on the leather. “Dude. Dude, okay, chill out. I was just—”

“Be careful how far you push me,” he warned.

It was like he was a different person entirely in that moment. I didn’t recognize the man who had been firm but patient, who had been cruel but almost… kind about it at the same time. This man was harsh, with lines that would be easy to cross, and there was a beast simmering beneath the surface where it waited to break free.

For some reason, that scared me more than if he’d been fucking and torturing me the whole time.

“My knees,” I finally said, reluctant but not wanting to see that look in his eyes any longer, not wanting to see his face twisted in the way that made his scars look demonic instead of just… tragic.

He frowned. “What about your knees? ”

I wanted to snap at him that he’d thought of everything else, so why couldn’t he figure that out?

He clued in before I could say anything, the smoldering anger fading from his eyes. “Oh. I put down a soft set of mats out in the basement where we’ll be working. You’ll be fine.”

Fine never meant fine.

And working ? What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

“You need exercise,” he said, as though that was supposed to sound anything but ominous.

“Yeah, so let me walk around a little bit again,” I countered. “Or I could go running outside. That would totally count as exercise.”

“With your balls swinging in the wind?” he asked, quirking a brow at me. A smile tugged at his lips. “I’m not planning on giving you gym clothes.”

Of course he wasn’t.

But if it meant getting away from that psycho, yeah, I would totally run around naked. I’d catch a cop’s eye fast enough, and I could get them back here to arrest this freak.

I might get arrested in the meantime, but I’d rather be in the most fashionable prison garb than dressed up in this fancy leather getup.

“Yeah, whatever,” I mumbled.

He smiled. “Good boy.”

“Oh, shove it,” I muttered.

“What was that?” he asked, a little bit of that dangerous quality seeping back into his voice.

“Nothing important,” I lied.

He didn’t believe me, but he let it go.

He pulled something out of his pocket, and it took me a moment to recognize it as a leash. I groaned, not liking the idea of this at all, and I shook my head.

Ignoring me, he snapped the leash into place toward the front of the harness, nearest the top of my spine, and tugged.

I stayed put. He hadn’t attached it to the collar around my neck, so he could drag me around like a dead body if he wanted me to move. That was the only way I was going anywhere.

He sighed and looked at me. “I have choke collars and shock collars,” he said softly. “I was being nice by hooking this to your harness. Do I need to go get one of those instead?”

I blanched. “You wouldn’t.”

He gave me the look people give everyone who pulls on a door that clearly says “push.”

“You would,” I concluded with a sigh. “But come on, dude. We don’t have to be like this.”

“Master,” he corrected me.

I didn’t like that he was starting to come back around to that again. “Whatever.”

“Say it.”

“Oh, come on, ” I whined. “Do we really have to do this now?”

“Shock collar’s going to be my first choice,” he said mildly. “I even made sure I had the right kind of batteries.”

“You’re a sadistic bastard,” I informed him, just in case he wasn’t already aware of that fact.

“Master,” he prompted.

“Go die in a fi—” I stopped. Even I wasn’t cold to tell him to go die in a fire on purpose. “Sorry. Master,” I said hurriedly.

But was it going to be enough ?

His back straightened, his expression going utterly and completely flat. This was worth than the dangerous anger. It was like he’d locked away all of his emotion behind a blank mask, and I couldn’t see beneath it.

Hell, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see beneath it, not when I was sure there was a whole hell of a lot of anger behind there…

And hurt .

No. No, I was not going to fucking sympathize with my captor. I had apologized. I’d even called him Master , just like he’d wanted, for fuck’s sake. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do now that the words were out there.

His jaw was tight, and I watched him swallow hard as his hand trembled on the leash enough for me to feel it pull against my skin. Oh, fuck. I’d really hurt the guy.

I started to feel bad, then I remembered that he’d — oh, I don’t know, kidnapped me, gotten me to strip, forced me to give myself enemas and eat out of dog bowls and drink out of a phallic waterer and put on a collar with a lock on it and wear this stupid get-up and sleep in a dog bed with a goddamn tail, and—

And things. He’d done things.

The erection hadn’t been my fault.

All right, so he’d almost really died in a fire, and maybe it had ruined his entire life even though he’d saved someone else in the process, and maybe—

Oh, for motherfucking fuck’s sake, I was not having this conversation with myself right then. No. It wasn’t even going to happen.

I waited in silence, completely unsure of what he was going to do.

For a moment, I thought he’d walk away without a word. Instead, he tugged lightly at the leash .

“C’mon, boy,” he said, his voice a little rough. “Let’s go for a little walk.”

As expected, the cement hurt like a bitch as I crossed it. As he’d said, there was a nice little mat covering the floor that dulled the impact it had on my knees.

“This is still gonna rip my knees to shreds,” I told him. He’d had every inclination of wanting to take care of me in the past. Surely he’d listen to that?

“Right now, I don’t particularly care,” he muttered, his voice so low I could almost think I imagined the words.

I flinched. I didn’t know why it hurt so much to hear him talk like that, but it did. God, I was so fucked up. Why did he have to go and make everything so complicated?

Why did I have to be thinking about an old Avril Lavigne song at a time like this?

Great. Now I had that stuck in my head along with everything else, stuck on fucking repeat.

I paused for a moment, trying to get used to the awkward crawl he’d forced me into. He gave me several seconds then tugged again, more insistently.

“Okay, okay,” I mumbled, still feeling a little docile from what I’d done not long before. I started to walk again — well, crawl, and we went faster that time. His pace kept picking up, and it wasn’t until I finally collapsed onto the mat, exhausted, that he stopped.

“Good boy,” he told me, crouching down and running his fingers through my hair.

I eyed him wearily through the strands, wanting to reach out and knock him off balance onto his ass. It wasn’t worth it, though. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, not when he still held the handle to the leash.

Nothing would accomplish anything.

I let out a half-hysterical little laugh, hating myself for coming to that conclusion but unable to think about anything else. Nothing I did mattered. Nothing I did was going to change this. Nothing I did would get me out of this mess. I was solely dependent on the outside world to figure out who’d abducted me, and the more time that passed, the more hope I lost.

“Shh,” he said quietly, still stroking my hair and wiping sweat from my forehead. “You were good. You were such a good boy. You made your master proud.”

I didn’t want to make my master proud. The only thing was, making him proud meant I got to just relax there for a moment instead of being forced in a ring around the basement in a rendition of a fucked-up children’s song.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

When had I turned so fucking morbid? I was usually only this morose when I was drunk.

I’d have killed for a beer or six right then.

“That’s enough for today.”

That had been more than enough for that day. I was fucking exhausted, and I knew I’d collapse the second I hit that bed.

“I’ll bring you food, so try to stay awake a little longer,” he told me. “You need to keep your energy up.”

Right. Food. That stuff I needed to survive, which he was going to make me eat out of a dog bowl.

And I was having weird, sympathetic feelings for the fucker? No. No thanks. I’d pass on that.