Page 2 of Fearless
Cupping her face, Ethen stroked her cheek with his thumb, then tsked. “Liar,” he lovingly decided, then he punched her.
He moved so fast, Kitty had no time to react. One moment, his hand was on her cheek. In the next, his other fist slammed into her gut and she buckled over, a marionette with strings abruptly cut, collapsing to hands and knees as she sucked, then retched, then sucked for air again. The pain was almost a belated thing, eking in around the shock, because of all the things he’d ever done to her, he’d never punched her before.
And then she heard it, the telltale clank of a buckle working open and the slithering hiss of a belt yanking free of trouser loops. Kitty looked up as Ethen drew back his arm. He didn’t wind the buckle around his hand or fold the length in half. He simply whipped her.
Kitty flattened to the ground. She covered her face with her arms, but each lash bit at her in white-hot bursts of agony that she could not lay still for. She tried to crawl under the car. Grabbing her ankle, Ethen hauled her out on her belly and whipped her harder. She had no air to scream, but the agony retched out of her as he spared nothing—not the backs of her shins, the bottoms of her scrambling feet, or even her head.
It was brutal, but it was brief and he was not even winded by the time he dropped the belt in the snow, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to her knees.
“Get up,” he ordered.
No part of her was free from pain when he flung her facedown over the trunk of his car.
Kitty knew better than to scream, but she was dry when he forced his cock into her. She bit her lip, the taste of blood filling her mouth but she managed not to cry out. Not until he yanked from that hole and switched to a different one. Knowing better did nothing to ease the savagery with which he shoved back into her. Kitty did scream then, over and over again until he yanked her back off his car, dropping her to her knees and forced his cock into her mouth.
When he finished, he left her there. Lying in the scuffle of snow, ice and gravel, in so much shock and pain that she could not move.
“When you’re ready to apologize, you know where to find me.” Once more as calm as could be, he walked away from her. His heavy shoes climbed the porch steps, and then the front door opened and closed.
Somewhere between gasping and panting, Kitty broke down. She covered her mouth with both hands, her sobs ripping out of her in wracking, jerky coughs that made her harness studs jingle. But that would only get her punished again, so she quickly got herself back under control. Rolling over was nothing short of sheer hell. Her back was ablaze with growing welts. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt. Even her kneecaps were red and scuffed where she’d fallen on them, first when he’d punched her and then again when he’d… he’d…
Cold as it was, she lay on her belly, staring aimless under the car. She didn’t know for how long, but eventually the lights in the house winked out.
He never once came outside to check on her. Not one time. But then, why would he? She couldn’t go anywhere. Dressed like she was, no shoes? She’d freeze.
She was freezing now. Every shiver that wracked her, from the cold now instead of fear, made the welts all over her body pull tight, burning and hurting that much more. She didn’t want to get up. Getting up was going to hurt and she was too much of a coward to want to face it.
She was too much of a coward to simply lie here and die too, and it was getting colder. Or maybe now that the attack was over, her body was ready to deal with the next most immediate threat to her survival. Her shivers grew worse. As much as she didn’t want to get up, she had to. Get up, go inside, go to bed. Maybe when she awoke in the morning, she’d find all of this had been merely a very bad dream.
A bad dream that wasn’t over yet. She had welts on the bottoms of her feet and her two littlest toes were already bruising, which made every limping step she took sheer torture. She dragged herself up the stairs by the railing, but when she at last reached the door and pushed her way inside, she found a note waiting for her on the whiteboard by the fridge. None of the lights in the house were on, apart from two Coleman lantern-style nightlights. One by the stove, lighting up the countertop, and the other by the whiteboard. It was bright enough for her to read the stark missive he’d written her.
You are restricted to the kitchen until further notice. You will use your litterbox and you will sleep on the floor. When you are ready to apologize, you will bring me the Punishment Paddle. Until then, you will not speak and you will not be spoken to. For every day you delay, a penalty will be added to your sentence.
Sure enough, he’d pulled the litterbox out. It was tucked up against the wall on the far side of the island, where everyone would see her use it. He’d left no blankets, no pillow. Nothing between herself and the red kitchen tiles. He hadn’t even granted permission for her to take her harness off. In the morning, she would be chafed. But then, she was wet and dirty now, welted and bruised, so really… what did a little chafing matter? What did any of it matter? She was trapped in a nightmare where the worst was far from over and from which there was no escape.
Except, Hadlee had escaped. On a night very much like this one, she had got up out of the muddy mire in which Ethen had forced her to kneel and simply walked away. So… it could be done. But could she do it?
Not dressed like this, she’d freeze to death. She needed clothes, but those were all in Ethen’s room, in his closet with a lock on the door.
Maybe if she had some way to call someone, so she didn’t have to be outside for so very long…?
Frozen where she stood, terrified her slightest movement might give her traitorous thoughts away, Kitty did not even look to the kitchen counter where their cellphones lay charging in a neat row, according to each user’s rank. Ethen’s was always first, then hers, Pony’s, and finally Puppy’s. Hadlee’s used to be last, back when she was Piggy and lived here. The girls in his Menagerie were forbidden to touch their cellphones at the farmhouse. Use was only allowed during the workweek and only when Ethen needed to get a hold of them.
Kitty hugged herself. Every wound on her body pulsed in dread thinking about it, but if she were going to pull a Piggy and walk away from here, then how much worse could it get if she took her cellphone with her? She’d bought the silly thing, with her own money. It wasn’t like she was stealing it; Ethen, of course, would disagree.
The man with the paddle makes the rules. Ethen was fond of saying that.
Everything you own became mine the day you signed my contract. He liked to say that too. He also had tracking apps on each of their phones, as well as apps that logged their usage. He could pull it up on his computer, and he did. Every single day, just to check on them. Kitty could take her phone and run, but if she did, he would find her. If she made a phone call, he would know when, where, and to whom. Her phone, Pony’s, and Puppy’s, they were all extensions of Ethen’s prison.
Piggy’s phone, however, sat in the kitchen’s catchall drawer where Ethen had thrown it the morning he’d found her gone. That had been six months ago. By now that phone would be dead as hell. He might even have shut off service to it, and it absolutely would have all the same tracking apps that hers did. But he might not check it the way he did theirs. And it was a phone, the only one she had access to that he might not think of right away when it came time to hunt her down.
Her heart in her throat, slowly, Kitty glanced at the kitchen catchall drawer. Hugging herself tighter, she looked to Ethen’s bedroom next. Was he asleep, or was he lying there listening for any sounds her movements might make? What about Pony? Pony was a light sleeper and she liked to tattle, but she was also the only one of the Menagerie allowed to sleep in a bedroom. It was decorated to look like a horse stall, complete with hay on the floor. Right now, the door to it was closed.
Puppy, on the other hand, slept in her kennel in the living room. If she heard anything, she’d start barking and then Ethen really would come out of his bedroom.
The whiteboard expressly forbade her from leaving the kitchen. As much as it itched at the back of her head to creep down the dining room wall far enough to steal a peek at Puppy in her kennel, she didn’t dare. The floor there creaked. The floor in the kitchen creaked too, but she could always say she was getting a glass of water. Except that Ethen hadn’t given her permission to drink anything. He hadn’t even set out her food and water bowl. She wouldn’t see those until the morning. Depending on how angry he was with her, she might not see them for days.
Why was she even thinking about this? She ought to lay down, shut off her mind, and go to sleep. What was she doing, acting like this was as bad as it could get? It wasn’t, not by a longshot. So what, if she didn’t have a pillow or a blanket to comfort her? So what, if she had to spend tomorrow or the next day or even the next few weeks, embarrassed because she had to squat over a litterbox? And yes, maybe he wouldn’t feed her for a few meals, to reinforce the message he was sending now. But at least he’d let her sleep in the kitchen. What right did she have to complain when he could have put her in the Box?
