Page 124 of Savage

Footsteps echo down the stairs leading to my room. I remember that sound so well. I hear it in my dreams, the heavy footfalls, and turn of the lock, the creak of the door. Only now it’s all off; it’s different. There’s a loud thudding accompanying the steps, surpassing them. And the locked door rattles on its hinges as something slams into it. My father curses, and it sounds as if he’s running down the stairs. The key slides in the lock and turns, and then the door is flung wide, and he hefts a very large body into the room.

“Tank.” I gasp and try to sit up, but the rope around my neck holds me down. I claw at it, struggling to be free, winching it tighter and choking myself like a dog on a chain to get close to him. To see him.

“Knock it off, Ivy,” my father commands, and I do, because old habits die hard.

I lie back against the mattress, turning my head as far as I can without choking again.He’s not moving. Dread washes over me. My eyes prick with tears, and I can’t swallow down the lump in my throat. “Is he still alive?” I ask, in a tremoring voice.

My father lifts Tank’s inert arms and drags his body across the room. Tank sags against the wall with a thud, and my father handcuffs one arm to the steel pipe bolted to the concrete floor. He’s cuffed me to that pipe a number of times, and no amount of yanking had loosened it in the slightest. I’d cut my wrist to shreds just trying.

“Would I drag his sorry arse down here if he wasn’t?” he says.

Yes. Yes, he would. He’d do that and so much more. Terror worms its way through my gut because I’ve seen what happens when people get too close to me. I’ve seen what happens to people who try to tear my father and I apart.

“Please don’t kill him. Please?” I sob. If I could get down on my knees right now, I would. I’d do whatever he wanted. “Don’t kill him, Daddy. I’ll stay. You can take off the rope. I won’t run again. You don’t have to hurt him. Please?”

“He fucked my little girl!” he roars, turning on me. His face turns puce, and spittle rains down on me.

“No.” I shake my head. “I fucked him; I wanted it. I begged him to fuck me. I made him do it.”

“I was fuckin’ there, at his cabin.” He grabs me by the throat, squeezing, choking me until my own face flushes furiously with heat and a lack of oxygen. Livid green eyes bore down into mine, and his face is just inches away when he snarls, “Did you forget that? I fuckin’ saw the two of you. So don’t fuckin’ tell me you made him do it.”

He lets go and I cough, gasping like a fish.

“He has nothing to do with it.” I sob. “Please. Just let him go. Punish me. It’s me you want to hurt, not him.”

“No,” he says, hooking his fingers in the rope tied around my neck and yanking it so hard I choke. My fingers claw and scrabble for purchase on his arm, but he doesn’t loosen his hold. “I want to hurt both of you, actually.”

Tears roll down my cheeks as he rips away the bed sheet covering me. He pulls out a knife and slides it between my neck and the rope. I turn my head and hold very still while he saws through it. There’s a good chance he’ll slip anyway and pierce me in the jugular.

One can only hope.

Earlier, I might have run the second that noose slipped free. I might have fought and screamed this house down and attacked him, but now that Tank is here, what can I do? There is only submission and bargaining, and grovelling now. Tithing my pain, so that Tank won’t pay the ultimate price. My father might be sick and twisted, but he’s never wanted my death on his hands.Just my surrender. And I’ll give him that. I’ll give it gladly if it means that Tank can walk free.

I glare up at the man in front of me, the man who raised me, and I spit in his face. He seizes my throat again, crushing my windpipe, forcing me to gasp for breath that isn’t there.

If I had the voice, I’d tell him to kill me, to finally put me out of the misery I’ve felt all these years. But I can’t do that either because that means risking Tank. And I won’t do that. I’d rather lie down on this bed and offer myself up to my father’s mercy than have him hurt Tank.

He throws me back on the mattress and unbuckles his belt. Slowly he slides it through his belt loops until the length of it swings free, and then he gathers it up and snaps it tightly together.

“On your knees,” he commands. I push myself up, and with a shaking breath I kneel up on the bed the way I did so often during my childhood, with my arse in the air, naked and completely exposed to him. The first lash is always the hardest. He always has me wait on trembling fours and strikes hard across the upper buttocks, right where my tailbone is.

I scream the first time.

I always scream the first time.

And then I take my punishment with shallow breaths and silent tears that glance off my cheeks and stain the worn sheet beneath me. When he finishes, I collapse face down on the bed, ignoring the burn from my abdomen as I lie on the flesh he carved out of me just a few hours ago. My arse smarts, my whole body aches from being clenched too tightly, from anticipating his next blow, and I bury my face in my hands, so I won’t see the sheer delight on his.

He steps away from the bed, and I’m suddenly so consumed with fear that he might still hurt Tank, despite me distracting him. He doesn’t do anything, though, just sneers at Tank’s unconscious form as he approaches what used to be my clothes dresser. He opens the drawer and pulls out a length of rope. I scramble away from him, try to curl myself up in child’s pose, but he yanks out my leg from underneath me and binds the rope around one ankle. I kick and claw at the sheets with my hands to get away. I try everything I can to make it more difficult for him to tie me down. But my father grows tired of my antics, and I can only stare up at him in confusion as he drops the rope and pulls the knife from his pocket. I shake. He smiles and takes a step away from me, and a few more towards Tank.

He kicks Tank’s leg, toes him with his boot, and then brings the glinting silver blade to Tank’s face. The room whirls around me. The words are frozen in my throat, stuck there like a sharp piece of food that I haven’t chewed properly before swallowing. It’s only as he shoves the very tip of the knife into the corner of Tank’s mouth, and I see the first trickle of blood, that I find my voice again.

“No. I’ll let you tie me up. You can do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him,” I cry. My father smiles like he’s won a great victory, and in a way, I suppose he has, because I just laid all of my cards bare, and he’s going to take me for everything.

He wipes the knife on Tank’s shirt, and he casually strolls across the room with the ease of a man whose conscience doesn’t burden him one bit. I hold still as he picks up the rope and winds it around my ankle, tying it off in a series of complicated knots before tethering the other end to the leg of the bed with just as much skill. He tests his handiwork by pulling the length of rope that’s dangling off the bed, and with a satisfied grunt he turns and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. The locks slide home, and my heart beats heavy with the finality of it.

I should try to rouse Tank. I should get up, and see how far my new leash will carry me before it cuts into my ankle. I should try and find a way out of here, but I can’t. I can’t move from fear and exhaustion, and the terror that has seeped a little further into my bones with every lash of his belt.

If Tank weren’t here, I’d find a way to end it. Right now. But he is here. So I need to find a way out. Before it’s too late.

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