Best of 2017

The magnitude of his frame increases as he draws near, veiled in jeans and motorcycle boots. Every step is a gunshot to my ears.

My breath has gone still, and my thoughts are careening out of control.

I need to convince him not to hurt me. I need to hurt him first.

I need to escape.

He stops next to the bed, and those notions die a swift and brutal death.

A tank.

The man is a goddamn tank. And I’m going to die without mercy under the weight of those bear paws he calls hands. I don’t stand a chance.

"Please," I beg him. "Please, Javi. You don’t have to do this.”

His name on my lips startles him, at least momentarily.

“You know of me?” his voice echoes through the space and sends another wave of terror straight through my chest.

Javi’s file said that he doesn’t speak to anyone. That’s what Art told me. That’s what my father told me. For all the agency knows- he can't speak verbally at all. But it isn’t true.

It isn’t true at all.

His words are accented with a Spanish lilt. Beautifully so.And he said them to me. A low growl rises from his chest, and I try to curl into myself.

“How do you know of me?” he demands. “How do you know my name?”

“Your file,” I whisper. “I read your file.”

Another growl.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t block it out. I can still hear him. He takes a step closer. Then another. And then he is sitting on the bed next to me.

When I open my eyes again, he reaches for me. His fingers touch my face. Rough. Huge.

Lethal.

I wait for his wrath. For my death. But it doesn't come.

His palm drifts down my cheek and over the sensitive flesh of my throat before dipping to my heaving chest. He's only an inch from my breast when he stops and jerks away.

The impact shifts his hood slightly, and I can see him now. See his wild, golden eyes staring back at me.

The scar that slashes right through his eyebrow. He has the bone structure of a Viking. One who looks as though at any moment, he might pillage my very soul.

"Javi," I whisper.

Again, his name on my lips seems to knock his senses astray.

He rises and disappears, only to return a moment later, placing a fresh cut rose on the pillow beside me.

"Why are you doing this?" I beg. "Please tell me."

"Are you ready, beauty?"

"Ready for what?"

He smiles. And his teeth are perfect. His lips, sinister.

“To sing me a song.” He touches my arm with a featherlight caress. “With words only I can hear.”

WHEN HE RELEASES me from my restraints, I dare to hope. I dare to believe that he isn’t as bad as I’ve heard. That maybe there is still some humanity left in him.

A notion snuffed out completely in the next breath.

He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a red rubber ball with leather straps attached. When he moves towards my face, I try to jerk away, but he captures me by the hair and wrenches me back. My scalp burns from the force of his grip and my eyes water.

It doesn’t feel real.

None of this feels real, and I just keep thinking it must be a bad dream. I will wake up and realize this is all some fucked up part of my imagination that conjured up this scenario. It’s the only logic I can find in a situation where nothing else makes sense.

My father loved Javi. He treated him as his own son. And I can’t imagine why he would ever want to hurt me.

Fighting him off is a fruitless endeavor. The man is a brick wall. More terrifying than I ever could have imagined. And the fact that he has something to hide beneath that hood only adds to the escalating fear in my mind.

He secures the band around my head and forces my mouth open to lodge the ball between my teeth. Once it is secure, he taps me on the lips.

“This will stay in place until I have a use for your mouth.”

His words send another shot of adrenaline through my body, and it is pure instinct that has me trying to fight him off again. To flee.

I kick him in the stomach, and pain radiates up through the bottom of my leg as though I’ve kicked a rock. But still his grip on me loosens, and I grasp at the opportunity to run.

I make it ten steps before he’s got me by the hair again. I try to scream, but it only vibrates against my lips. He turns me in his arms, and I cower beneath his shadow, waiting for him to lash out.

This must be it. I expect him to hit me. To kill me. I don’t know what it is he wants from me, and I’m petrified to find out.

He reaches into his pocket again, and this time, he produces a knife. A strangled sound leaves my throat when he brings it to my chest and skims along my collar bone. I squeeze my eyes shut, and water leaks from the corners.

This can’t be real.

It can’t be real.

That’s what I try to tell myself. But it is real. And this isn’t how I want to die. I haven’t even lived yet.

The tip of the blade digs into my skin, and I stop breathing. I think of my father. I wonder how he could have ever trusted this man. How he could have ever cared for him. And then I wonder if Javi is responsible for his disappearance.

The stark conclusion is a shock paddle to my heart.

My eyes open again and seek out the golden orbs beneath the hood. But he is skilled at hiding them. So much so that I can no longer even see the lines of his face. And the need inside of me is real. To know. To unmask him and see him for the monster he really is. The boy that my father trusted and cared for. The one he sacrificed his time with me for.

I hate him. I hate him with a level of passion I have never confronted before.

I try to tell him so, but the words don’t come out the way they should. Instead, spit drips from the corner of my mouth, and my humiliation is real and painful.

But none of that matters. Because he is still wielding the knife against my skin. Edging the framework of my bones. And then he dips lower. So low, he’s tracing over my nipples with the tip of the blade. They harden in response.

My body is betraying me. Disgusting me. Giving him mixed signals. I reach up and wipe the spit from my chin. And then I do something incredibly stupid.

I hurl it at his face.

Another low growl. And he tugs me closer yet. So close, I can feel the sickening hardness of his erection pressed against me.

This is turning him on.

He drags the knife between the top button of my shirt, slicing through the thread. I try to move, and he clutches me by the throat this time, with a palm that could crush the life out of me in one good squeeze.

I am completely powerless to him. The reality of that washes over me again with stark clarity.

I

don’t move. I don’t even breathe.

I just stand there, frozen and numb while he slices through the remaining three buttons. He slices all the way down until only two halves remain.

Tears leak from my eyes when he does the same to the bra strap beneath. My breasts spring free, and he touches them with the knife. Dragging the blade over the soft mounds in an exercise that tests his own will. It occurs to me that this knife is the only thing keeping him from touching me himself.

And suddenly, I am grateful for the blade.

I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the darkness of his mind, but I realize that I need to. If I want to survive whatever fucked up game he’s playing, I need to make sense of this. Of him.

He removes the scraps of my shirt and bra and allows them to fall to the floor. I squeeze my eyes shut again when he moves to my leggings and cuts through them too.

Nobody has ever seen me this way. Nobody has ever seen me bare. I feel raw. Exposed. Vulnerable. And there is nothing I can do.

The last and final piece to go is my panties. I try to beg him. I try to plead around the gag, but he doesn’t listen or care. He slices through the silky material and rips them away too.

I am naked in front of him.

My body is consumed with fear, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I can barely feel my legs as he drags me from the room, a blur of wild roses and shadows.

The floor is cold beneath my feet, and I wish I’d grabbed my shoes. I wish I’d never left my hotel room. I wish I’d done so many things differently.

His strides are too large, and I can’t keep up. My arm burns from his grip, and eventually, he grows impatient with me. Heaving me up like I am nothing more than a feather, he tosses me over his shoulders and clamps his forearm over the back of my thighs.

My head bobs over his shoulder, and my teeth gnash into the rubber ball with every forceful step. I try to count them. To distract myself. To focus on anything than whatever is about to happen.

He stops outside of an open door, and I stop moving too.

I’m gulping down breaths, and my heart feels like it’s going to explode in my chest. I wiggle in his grip and have one last futile attempt at fighting back, kneeing him in the chest while my hands slap at his face.