Page 53 of The Accident

“Hold out a wrist,” he says.

“What?” I whisper, eyes wide. “Are you joking?”

But he doesn’t wait. With a kind of calm efficiency, he snaps the cuff around my wrist before forcing me to sit on the mattress and attaching it to the bedframe’s steel bar, like this is a perfectly normal thing for a man to do to a woman in a cocktail dress.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. Just takes a step back to look at me, one eyebrow arched. The cuff is cold, heavier than I expect, and the metal bites into my skin just enough that I can’t forget about it, not for a second. I’m still in my dress—black, too tight, too short, clinging to my body like a bad decision—and the absurdity of the situation is almost enough to make me laugh out loud.

I don’t, though. I just look up at him, eyes wide, lips pressed together to keep from saying the first stupid thing that comes to mind. I’m expecting him to gloat, or to smirk, or to lecture me about responsibility and consequences, but instead, he crouches down so we’re face-to-face. The lamp on the desk throws a ring of yellow light between us, casting his features in strange, shifting planes. He’s silent for a long time, just watching me, the blue of his eyes even brighter in this little box of a room.

“You understand what’s happening here, don’t you?” he says finally, his voice silky.

I nod, but I don’t. Not really.

He lifts my chin with one knuckle, careful but not gentle, and there’s a flash of something in his eyes—pride, maybe, or hunger, or just the satisfaction of a plan perfectly executed. “Like I said, you get one night to adjust,” he says. “Tomorrow, you’ll start paying down your debt.”

“But what does that mean?” My voice sounds small, not even mine.

He stands, lets his gaze drift over me—every inch of exposed skin, every rumple of the ruined dress, the way my legs are pressed together. I don’t know whether to be angry, ashamed, or downright fearing for my life.

“It means you’ll serve me. In every way I see fit.” He says it simply, like he’s talking about the weather.

I shiver, and it’s not just from the AC.

He’s at the door when I work up the nerve to ask: “But for how long?”

Trevor looks back over his shoulder, blue eyes glinting.

“Until I’m satisfied,” he says, and the way he says it makes me feel like I might never leave this room again.

Then he closes the door, and I hear the lock snick into place.

I pull at the cuff, just to see if it’s a joke, but it’s not. The metal is snug, the chain just long enough to let me sit on the edge of the bed or lay down, but not enough to reach the bathroom or the desk. How is that going to work? I take in the rest of the room, trying to memorize every blank inch: the cracked white paint on the ceiling, the neat seam where the baseboards meet the floor, the faint, yellowed outline on the wall where maybe a picture once hung. The only thing that isn’t white or wood is the lamp on the desk, which burns without hesitation, making the shadows on the walls swim and flicker like something alive.

The minutes crawl. I try to sleep, but my brain is on fire, running every possible scenario in fast-forward. Maybe Trevor is just fucking with me, and in the morning he’ll bring me a coffee and say it was all a lesson, a test, some billionaire’s version of tough love. Maybe this is just a kink thing, some power trip he’s on, and by lunch tomorrow I’ll be laughing about it with Stella over mimosas. Or maybe—and this one makes my pulse stutter—maybe I’ll never get out, and this will just be my life now, forever at Trevor’s mercy.

His doll.

His toy.

His plaything.

Why does the thought make my heart flutter?

But there are too many emotions swirling through my head at once, and at some point, I’m overcome with everything that’s happened. I start to cry, but it’s not the good kind of crying. It’s silent, slow, the tears seeping sideways into the pillow so I can pretend it isn’t happening at all.

When the crying stops, something else takes its place. A warmth, spreading from the base of my throat down through my chest and into my belly. I can’t name it, but it’s bigger than anything else I feel. It’s hot and embarrassing, and it makes me want to hide under the covers, but the cuff rattles when I try and I end up just laying there, totally exposed.

Eventually, I fall asleep, the city a white noise machine humming forty floors below. When I wake, it’s still dark—just the lamp, just me, just the cool weight of the cuff reminding me where I am and what I’ve become.

I’m his.

And I am, impossibly, exactly where I’m supposed to be.

19

MY STEPSISTER, MY TOY

Trevor