My limbs grow heavy like I’m moving through water.I sag in Rex’s arms, turning into dead weight.He rolls me to my back and lays me out on the floor.My head lolls on my neck, and I stare up at the opaque glass of the helmet Rex is wearing.
He lifts it off, revealing his starkly handsome face.His eyes are black, merciless.
He tackled and gassed me like he would a fleeing criminal.
“Why?”I croak.
He says something but it’s lost to my fading consciousness.
5
Inara
I wakeup to a faint creaking sound and the sensation of being rocked like a boat on a gentle ocean.My throat is raw and sore, but the rest of me is warm and comfortable, cradled by a blanket.
My face feels clammy, and it’s hard to fight my way back to consciousness.That must be from the gas.
As I lie here, fighting the slumberous feeling, I get a sense of deja vu.The morning I woke up after eating at Paisanos and then dreaming of my mystery dom, I felt the same way.There’s a similar heaviness to my limbs.
He drugged me then like he drugged me now.Why did I ever think I could trust him?
I open my eyes, and the first thing I see are the bars.Round and shiny, painted gold, they stretch overhead to create a circular ceiling.
I push myself up.I’m lying on a thick pad, a makeshift bed piled high with blankets and pretty pillows.Light falls over me, bisected by the bars.I look around, and my insides tighten.
I’m in a cage.
I rise, and the structure sways slightly with my movements.The cage is tall enough for someone twice as tall as me to stand and wide enough that it takes several paces to reach the side.A short glance off the side tells me I’m still in the dungeon.The cage hangs in the middle of the room, suspended about ten feet in the air.
He’s done it.He’s caged me like a bird, locked me in here so I can’t fly away.
A wave of weakness makes my legs wobble.I grab the bars, leaning against them until I can stand on my own.My shaky limbs and dry mouth catapult me past frustration and into fury.I can’t believe the bastard drugged me.But now I know there’s nothing Rex won’t do.No line he won’t cross.I never realized how much I assumed he had a basic level of decency when it came to me.I relied on it like a tightrope walker relies on a safety net underneath.
But there’s no safety net anymore.Rex ripped it away.
And now I’m a bird in a gilded cage.
I rest my forehead against the bars.They’re solid and shiny, too tightly spaced for much more than my hand and arm to fit through.I peer at the ground below, feeling dizzy.
My gods, I never thought it would come to this.
But what did I expect from a man who murders people without hesitation?
My strength returns slowly.I can’t stop myself from giving the bars a desperate yank, even though I know there’ll be no give to them.They won’t budge.I go hand over hand around the circular cage, not so much trying to force my way out but to prove to myself that I really am trapped.
At the end of the room, a door opens, and Rex strides through.“You’re awake.”He’s changed into a suit, the sort you wear to a boardroom meeting.His hair is freshly combed back from his face and shiny as a raven’s wing.
I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at him.My animal attraction to him is a weapon he wields against me.He’s proven to me over and over that he doesn’t see me as an equal, and that’s the thought I need to cling to, not the memories of moments we shared together or all the ways he cared for me.
A mechanism whirs, and the cage lowers, but I still don’t open my eyes, not even when it gently touches down.
His scent wafts over my face as he moves closer.“How are you feeling?There’s water for you if you need it.”
I step back into the middle of the cage as if that will protect me from him.My foot hits a water bottle I didn’t notice before.I stoop to pick it up and sip it slowly, washing the dry feeling out of my mouth.
“Do you need anything else?”
I shake my head and recap the bottle and set it down, still half filled.“Is this how it starts?”
