Page 67 of Sparks of Insanity
“I… I’ll go with you. You don’t need to do it like this. I want to be with you,” she muttered, knowing she was pushing my fucking limits. Fuck this.
I shoved her through the gap in the fence, and down the lane to my car, stopping her beside it. I’d shoved her phone in my inside pocket, knowing I’d be disabling it soon, but we might need it later.
“Listen to me, Ember, and fucking hear me. You’re coming with me, and you’re mine, but that doesn’t mean you get to enjoy it. This is for me now.”
Her eyes were wide, her blinking rapid, and her bottom lip trembled. “I love you, Ethan,” she whispered, and I fought the waves of anger her words revived and filled me with.
I dug out the cable ties, and fastened her hands together in front of her, walking her to the boot of the car, and retrieving a roll of duct tape from inside. I firmly taped it across her mouth, grinning as her eyes started to fill with fury and fear. Beautiful. She was so much more beautiful when she realised she should fear me.
I guided her into the boot of the car, holding her down when she started to fight me.
“Don’t make me knock you out, Ember. I’d much rather you use this time to think about the things I’m going to do to you.” I used several cable ties to fasten her ankles together, feeling her eyes on me the whole time. Had anything ever felt this empowering, and accomplished? No. Not to this new version ofmyself. My only goal in life now was to own this fucking woman, and use her to make myself happy. Her needs and wants were irrelevant now.
I closed the boot of the car, and dug her phone out of my pocket, sending a quick text to her mother, saying she’d gone for a run, and she’d be back later, then I switched off the phone and dismantled it, pocketing the pieces. That’d keep them off my back for a while.
37
Ember
Inever expected himto come back for me, because he’d disappeared since what happened to him, what he went through with me, and I figured he was gone for good. It had been breaking me a little more every day not to see him, but now… well, now I wasn’t sure the man who just kidnapped me was anything like the man I’d fallen in love with.
We’d driven for so long that I thought I was going to die in the boot of the car, even though I could breathe okay, despite the fact that I could almost taste the exhaust fumes at this point. When the car stopped, he didn’t let me out immediately, and then I started to worry about the reason for that.
What if he hadn’t kidnapped me to keep me somewhere at all? What if he’d kidnapped me to dump me somewhere to die. What if he… oh my god, what if he was doing something freaky, like selling me to someone, or trafficking me overseas? Oh god. What if he set the car on fire with me in it? Or dumped it in a river?
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe so well after all. Suddenly I was gasping and sobbing, struggling against the cable tie around my wrists, and struggling to move, although I had no idea how that’d get me out of here.
When the boot suddenly opened, and Ethan stood there, his bearded face and shaggy dark hair shrouded by sunlight, making him look like an angel, I felt like I’d just been saved from hell. He’d come to save me. To rescue me from this fucking coffin of a car boot. He wasn’t my tormentor in this moment, but mysaviour. My protector. My hero.
“Aw did my little saboteur have a nasty little panic attack?” He reached in and grabbed me, dragging me up onto his shoulder, the pressure against my mid-section making breathing even harder. He slammed the car boot and started walking, through greenery and bushes that completely hid where we were going, and where we’d be staying, hidden from any prying eyes.
Instead of taking me in through a door, he suddenly hefted me down from his shoulder, and through an open window, shoving me inside firmly enough that I fell back, and landed on my ass and side. He climbed in after me, turning to grab a large sheet of wood, and taking a few moments to hammer it over the window. Why would he do that over a window he could close?
I cast my eyes around as he worked, finding the surroundings strangely familiar, from the neutral tones on the walls, to the thick cream carpet under me. When he returned to me, he used a knife to cut through the tie around my ankles, and dragged me to my feet.
“Don’t try anything stupid, or I’ll just leave you in here with the door boarded up too. You can starve to death in here. To be honest, it might be preferable to what’ll happen to you otherwise.”
He sounded so grim, strangely distant and monotone, like he’d lost everything that animated him, and made him sound like himself.
I let him guide me out of the room, and watched as he pulled the door closed, setting down his tool bag, and lifting out what looked like a tube of something. He took time to apply it around the doorframe, and that’s when I realised he was sealing the door closed with glue. What the fuck?
I glanced around the hallway, realising why I found the other room familiar. It was one of my family’s properties, and with a sinking feeling, I figured out which one. The one he’d almost died in. He’d brought us back here, but why the hell would he do that?
I wanted to ask him so many questions, but I had tape over my… wait… I’m so fucking dumb. My hands were cable tied in front of me! I reached up and pulled the tape off my face, scrunching it in one hand as I took a blessed breath through my mouth.
“Ethan, what the hell are we doing here?” He chuckled as he tucked the glue back in his bag.
“Took you way too fucking long to realise you could do that, Em. You seemed so much smarter when you were my student.” Why did he have to keep talking to me like he wanted every word to hit like a knife?
“I was trying to behave myself like you demanded, asshole.”
He grinned, grabbing a fistful of my hair and dragging me along with him to the stairs, and up to the bedrooms. He paused in the doorway of the room he’d almost died in, drawing in a ragged breath, before he cursed and dragged me to the room beside it; the one I’d stayed in before.
He’d obviously been prepared, because there was rope waiting at the four corners of the bed, and the bedding was missing.
“What… what are you going to do to me?” I started pulling back as he hauled me into that room, gasping as he shoved me forward, and kicked the door closed.
“Whatever I fucking want, Ember. That’s the point, isn’t it? You killed me in this house, and now it’s going to be your fucking tomb.”
