Another voice murmurs something I can't quite hear and someone laughs softly.
They're talking about me. Commenting on me. Probably noting every detail of my body, every imperfection I've spent years hiding under baggy clothes and blanket forts.
My breathing comes faster, shallower. My clit throbs with every heartbeat.
I need to move. I need to follow the instructions, do whatever comes next, or I'm going to stand here and come in front of these invisible strangers just from knowing they're watching.
The cross.
He said there'd be a cross at Station Two.
I force my legs to work and take a shaky step forward. Then another. My whole body feels hypersensitive, like every nerve ending is firing at once. The air moving across my skin feels obscene. The way my thighs brush together with each step sends sparks straight to my pussy.
And then I see it.
A large wooden cross mounted vertically in a cleared area about fifteen feet ahead. Dark wood, smooth and polished, with leather restraints attached at four points. Wrist height. Ankle height.
Spread wide upon the cross you'll wait, exposed for all to see.
Jesus Christ, he meant it literally.
A small white card rests on the ground at the base of the cross, propped against the wood.
I walk toward it on legs that barely support my weight, feeling eyes tracking my every movement. Wondering if they can see how wet I am. If they can tell from the way I'm walking that I'm desperate, aching, ready to break.
I pick up the card with shaking fingers.
Whatever it says, I'll do it.
All of it.
Every single thing.
Because I'm in.
I'm completely, irrevocably in, and there's no part of me that wants to be anywhere else.
Chapter 7
Caleb
The door to the hidden control room between stations 1 and 2 blends in to vegetation-covered rock wall. Primitive and natural. But inside, it's climate-controlled space dominated by a wall of monitors that hum with low electric frequency that makes the air feel charged.
On one side of the wall the screens show Dimitri Volkov’s pathetic progress through the mud on Chaff Island. He got hit with the honey about an hour back and he's been desperately trying to wash it off as the bugs begin to eat him alive.
He is irrelevant right now, so I turn my attention to the other side of the wall of screens, take a seat, and begin switching camera angels around until I find her.
Scarletta stands exactly where I left her on the high platform. It's only been about three minutes, so her hesitation doesn't mean much.
Yet.
I watch her face closely as the reality of my abandonment sinks in.
What will she do?
Give up?
If I thought she would give up at Station 1, I'd never have wasted my time bringing her here.
