Nowthathe’ssteppedout of the room, the door closing behind him, and I’m left hanging in this vast, brightly lit gym: my wrists sting, my legs shake, my clit still aches for him to come back. I feel like such a fool. I let him toy with me all he wanted, enjoying myself while my legs were wrapped around him as he fucked me. When he kissed me, it was so passionate, and yet I wonder if he did all of that to make it hurt worse when he left me here.
I know that in other circumstances I can jump up high enough to grab the pull-up bar, even if it was meant for someone taller than me. But now I’m exhausted, and my tiptoes barely touch the ground, so there’s no hope of me reaching up to hold on to the bar, looping my legs around, and trying to untie myself.
Instead of doing anything useful, I flail around until my wrists scream in pain.
I bite my lip to stop tears from forming. I tried to mask my excitement when he was going to bind me beneath the pull-up bar because I knew he had something fun in mind. I thought we were playing, but him leaving me strung up alone and vulnerable paints a different picture. It’s as if a spell was cast over me as I complied with every instruction he gave me because I craved his touch that much.
I kick against the wall, continuing to flail because I have nothing better to do and the pain in my wrists is relieving some of my stress—or at least giving me something else to focus on. I kick as hard as I can, my body slamming into the hard wall, and I’m sure bruising the entire backside of my body. How long is he going to leave me hanging like this? When he was supporting me, this wasn’t bad, but simply hanging is torture. My arms are going numb, and I feel like I can’t breathe.
“For fuck’s sake, stop it, Sofia!”
The boom of his voice makes me sink down into a heap. I guess that answers that question; he was watching me from the hallway the whole time. Now I feel stupid—of course he was—but I never know if he’s going to turn at any minute and actually behave like a captor rather than whatever the hell it is we actually are.
I can’t bear to look at him as he cuts the resistance band, catching me and gently lowering me to the ground. I try to wrap my arms around myself, but he catches hold of my arm,inspecting my raw wrists. He curses under his breath. “Five minutes. I left you hanging for five minutes, and you do this to yourself?”
“I didn’t know!” I scream at him so loudly it makes him jump. “I didn’t know what was happening—if we were still playing or if you were genuinely torturing me. You confuse me so goddamn much. I used to hate you; sometimes I’m afraid of you, but then sometimes I…”
“You what?”
"I really, really like you.”
I wrap my arms around myself again, feeling myself shake. I don’t know if I’m shivering from the cold or just upset, but the next thing I know is that he’s unbuttoning his shirt to give to me.
“I don’t want it,” I growl.
“Really, Sofia?”
“I don’t want you treating me nicely anymore. I don’t want you to be comforting or protective anymore. I don’t want you telling me about your childhood or talking about yourself at all. And I don’t want you to touch me like that ever again. I want you to act like you’re meant to—a horrible, sadistic captor. Because, this back and forth is worse than if you actually kept me in the dungeon and tortured me.”
He sighs. “You know I’m incapable of doing that. I assume you found a way to relay that message to your family, and the fact you haven’t told mehowis why we got into this mess.”
He finishes unbuttoning his shirt and wraps it around me, refusing to listen. Being surrounded in his scent brings me immediate comfort, which only angers me more, but I’m sick of being naked so I don’t shrug it off.
I slink to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees and resting my head on them as well.
“There was a man on the cleaning crew who abruptly quit recently, Tommaso. Around my age, light brown hair, clean-shaven…”
I never caught his name, but that sounds like the man that helped me.
“And he’s gone now?”
Alessandro sits down so that we’re sitting at eye-level. “Yes. That was him?”
I hide my face again, not wanting to reveal to Alessandro that he has the right man in his mind. He could be lying. But the real reason is—I don’t want him to win this power struggle we have going on.
He groans. “He’s probably fled the country already, Sofia. You’re seriously not going to cooperate?”
“I told you.” My voice is flat. “You’ll have to actually torture information out of me now. I’m done playing hostage one day and playing out these sexual fantasies another.”
I see genuine pain register on his face, but he quickly conceals it with anger. My heart flutters at that, and I question what Alessandro really thinks of me. I always assumed his hesitation to cause me physical harm was the strange culture I’ve been brought up with, where the men can treat one another like animals but freak out at the sight of a woman with so much as a paper cut.
“Marco’s dead.” He gets up to pace around. “You know, none of this was my plan, right?”
“Tying me up beneath a pull-up bar and fucking me?”
“No.” He turns to me, rolling his eyes. “What happened at the wedding? The agreement we developed with your family. The fact I couldn’t treat you like my… like my wife.”
I laugh. “You’ve resented me since day one. Now you want me to believe you were simply following Marco’s orders this whole time?”
