I feel dizzy and disoriented in the darkness. I lose my sense of where I am and where he is.
“I don’t want to be down here,” I say.
“And where do you want to be?”
“With you!”
“You are with me,” he says, cold and harsh.
“Not here!”
“You had another option—and you fucking threw it away!”
“That’s not fair!” I shout.
“I don’t fucking care!”
I let out a wordless shout of frustration and bolt toward the vague grayness that I can see now that my eyes have adjusted. It’s a lighter darkness. It’s the doorway.
Andre lets me get there. He lets me run along the hallway to the stairs. I can see more light, faint light, and I stumble up the stairs toward it. Heart pounding, I race out into the main room. Street light drifts in through the high windows, but it’s mostly dark.
There’s nowhere to go, and I don’t want to go anywhere, but I still run to the other side of the couch as Andre’s unhurried footsteps come up the stairs. He emerges into the room like a darker shadow in the already dark space.
I fall back into the fantasy. It’s easy. It simplifies things. It’s where I want to be. And, yes, it’s a test.
For a second, I’m terrified that Andre won’t enter it with me, that he’ll just let me run straight out of the fantasy and away, but when I bolt in the direction of the outside door, he charges to cut me off.
His snarl is vicious and it lifts the hair all over my body as I reverse course and race across the room, elated. Relieved.
I go for the stairs, but it’s a mistake. I’m repeating what I did last time, and he anticipates me. He catches me all too easily.I flail, but he clamps onto me and carries me up the stairs. He wrestles me onto the bed and rips my jacket off me.
I’m hard and ready for him, and I can feel the stiffness of his cock, but just uses his weight to trap me while he forces a cuff onto my wrist. He pulls my arm up and locks the restraint to the railing at the head of the bed. I pull against it, but I would need my other hand to free myself, and Andre has control of it. He gets the other cuff on and locks it to the railing as well.
He yanks off my shoes, then my pants. I hear the click of a knife and gasp, but he uses it to cut the shirt from my body, tearing away the shreds of it. Then he gets out of the bed—and fucking leaves.
“Stop!” I shout as he tromps down the metal steps.
“Should I fucking stop when you didn’t?”
“Andre!”
I listen to his boots, terrified that he’ll walk to the door, that he’ll leave, but when he gets downstairs, he starts pacing.
“Andre!”
“You fucking left, Elias!”
“I was going to come back—”
“No, you fucking weren’t! You wouldn’t have come back because you would’ve been fucking dead!”
My chest starts heaving. I know he’s right, but it doesn’t feel fair. “I didn’t want you to get hurt. I was trying to deal with it myself because he’s my—”
“He’s fucking nothing to you!”
“This isn’t—I can’t think right now! Come back!” I yank at the restraints. “Andre!”
“I can’t, Elias, I’ll fucking hurt you.”
