the lesson, part three
This is a continuation; you might wish to follow this link to the beginning: Part 1
Elizabeth sat quietly on the bed, her knees drawn up under her chin, chewing thoughtfully on a bagel. The food had appeared for the second time since she’d awoken in the furnished room, both times left on the night stand while she slept. Both times, the pale light filtering through the window into the dark room was unchanged, giving her the illusion that no time had passed. She had seen nobody. Her captor had not come back, and whomever delivered the trays did so quietly enough to not wake her. The first tray had been removed in the same manner, while she slept.
She understood that she was being conditioned. Her captor had removed time and ritual from her existence in an effort to break her more easily and quickly. He left her no means by which to regain that measure of control. The food he provided was of a variety that did not indicate which meal she enjoyed. The window was obviously false, as the light didn’t change, offering her no opportunity to measure the length of a day. She slept and woke according to the needs of her body, and knew even that had been, for an unknown length of time, controlled by drugs. She was reasonably certain she was no longer being drugged, given the return of her usual clarity and focus.
Setting the bagel aside, she stretched out on the neatly made bed, pushing aside the slight embarrassed flutter in her stomach at the thought of her continued nudity. During her last waking period, she’d noted the recessed camaras placed, two on each wall, near the high ceilings of the room. It made sense that he would be watching her, likely recording her reactions and adjusting his methods accordingly. She absorbed this knowledge, considered it carefully, and decided her best defense would be to have no reactions, whenever possible.
And so she lay there, expressionless and motionless, staring fixedly at a point precisely in between the two cameras on the opposite wall. Behind her passive facade, her mind was turning over and over, considering each and every possible option for wresting some semblance of control within her captivity.
Stephen watched her through the monitor, a small smile playing about his mouth. He was almost proud of her, despite the fact that he easily guessed her strategy. Other women would likely not have faced this situation with her level of calm serenity. She noted her environment and accepted it for what it was with an almost regal disregard. When she didn’t move for a full fifteen minutes, he decided it was time to elicit some reaction. He left the control room and made his way down the hall to her chamber, nodding quietly at the burly guard posted outside.
She didn’t move, not even to look at him when he unlocked the door and entered the room. “Hello, Elizabeth,” he said.
He watched, but she didn’t react to his first use of her name. She had likely managed to make the easy leap of logic that, while she knew nothing of her kidnapper, she was anything but a mystery to him. What she didn’t know was the extent of his invasion into her privacy.
He had been appraised of nearly every move she’d made from the age of eleven onward. Twenty-two years of carefully planned and executed surveillance at a staggering price. The freedoms she enjoyed were by his hand. Relationships had begun and ended as a result of his manipulations. Even her roommates were planted. All because, from the moment his eyes had settled on the pictures from her eleventh birthday party, he had recognized her for what she was.
A weapon. A lovely, innocent, valuable weapon.
He allowed his gaze to rove appreciatively along her still form. She kept herself in excellent shape, and he hoped she would manage to find a way to work her exercise routine into her confinement. She couldn’t run here, for the time being, one of the habits to which she adhered religiously. Her rigid, scheduled manner had worked nicely into his plans once she’d graduated from high school and gone to college. This had removed her, for the first time, from her grandparents, who had been the reason for Stephen’s extreme patience. He’d waited, building his elaborate trap, slowly replacing everything Elizabeth thought of as her own with people and things that belonged to him. She belonged to him.
He sat down, as he had the first time, in the chair near the bathroom. She still didn’t say anything, but felt her resolve beginning to crack. She wanted to question him, wanted to know why she had been brought here. She wished to hurt him, too, she found, not for abducting her or for slapping her, but for stripping her of her dignity and bringing her to a level that transcended mere humiliation. She fought the urge to sit up and glare at him, to spit words across the room in a futile effort to free herself. She battled herself without any outward indication, no longer willing to hand him, uncontested, a single piece of herself. And she felt him watching.
“You cannot remain contained within yourself forever, Elizabeth.”
She didn’t respond.
He crossed his long legs and continued speaking. “Nothing belongs to you anymore, love. Your fate was sealed the moment your grandmother passed away. You became entirely and completely mine, Elizabeth, on that day.”
She took a deep breath, then spoke. “And when did that happen, please? How long has it been since my grandmother died?”
He chuckled. “Even that knowledge no longer belongs to you.”
She considered the smooth expanse of ceiling for a while before replying. “You’ll never have my mind, my heart.” She turned her head and looked at him, his face lost in the shadowy corner between the dresser and the bathroom door.
“Oh, but I will. Shall I show you?”
She lapsed into silence again, but he could see, even in the dim light from the false window, that she was trembling. He doubted it was with fear. His eyes probed her profile, noted the hard set of the muscle in her jaw. No. Not fear. Elizabeth was furious.
“Answer me,” he said, his voice chillingly soft.
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then turned to see if she could catch his eye. When she couldn’t she looked in the general vicinity of his face. “No,” she said firmly.
He stood and walked toward her, coming out of the shadows for the first time. Her eyes widened despite her resolve to not react to him. He stopped at the side of the bed and stood, looking down at her. “No?”
Her heart pounded. His hair was dark, cut short and neat, and looked as though it might have a tendency to curl if allowed to grow. His features were hard, seemingly hewn from stone, his dark eyes cold and intense. Despite the hardness, or perhaps because of it, he was handsome, disarmingly so. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t pull her gaze from his until he sat down on the side of the bed and leaned over her.
She gasped and tried, too late, to sit up and scramble away from him. His hand snaked into her hair, cradled the back of her head and brought her face to his. “You can’t keep anything from me, querida. Not ever. Not if i want it.” His lips were so near hers, she felt his breath mingling with hers as he spoke. Those lips brushed hers lightly, and something wrenched, deep within her. She felt as if she were melting, into him, into the bed, and she fought it again, feebly, for a moment.
“I…want…everything,” he said, then took her bottom lip gently between his teeth.
His hand slid from the back of her head to join the other one in cupping her face. He suckled that lip for a moment, and Elizabeth was lost. With a small, strangled cry, she surrendered herself to the kiss, pressing herself up and against him. Tears filled her eyes and spilled from the outer corners, sliding down her temples to wet his fingers. He pulled back from the kiss a moment to whisper a promise against her lips, “These tears are mine. They’re not the last you’ll shed.” His mouth opened again on hers. “Learn, Elizabeth. Learn you will not deny me.”
His teeth, so gentle only seconds ago, now sank cruelly into her lip. She stiffened and cried out in pain as the metallic taste of her own blood filled her mouth.
Stephen let go abruptly and stood. She curled into a ball, a shaking hand pressed to her mouth. She pulled it away and looked at it, took in the traces of blood on her fingers, then looked up at him.
“Even your blood is mine, Elizabeth. Don’t try to hide from me again.” He turned away and left the room.
The tension in this is wonderful.