Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I don’t know what cut of steak he used, but it was extremely tender. So fresh, it’s as if he purchased it from the butcher only minutes before cooking it.
I freeze when a disturbing notion enters my head.
There are no markets nearby. No cabins. We are completely isolated.
So where the hell did he get a fresh cut of steak from?
The sloshy contents in my stomach rush up my food pipe when I recall the murderous hut at the side of the cabin. It’s filled with animals—dead animals.
“What did I just eat?” My stomach doesn’t give the stranger the chance to answer. It’s so eager to evacuate the foreign matter puffing it out, it sits at the base of my throat before I can announce to the stranger that I need to be sick. “Sick.”
He huffs and arches a brow as if to say, I’m not falling for that trick again.
Sadly, my squidgy stomach doesn’t wait for no man. It heaves on repeat, and before its gurgling rolls can be deciphered by the stranger as legitimate, it burst through the cracks of the fingers endeavoring to hold it back.
“Ught,” the stranger groans when the splatters of vomit project far enough to dot his chest. He unpins me from the mattress by climbing off me before he uses the knife dumped halfway between the kitchen and the ‘bedroom’ to cut through the vine holding me hostage to the bed. “Hunn…” he adds, distracting me from considering another escape attempt.
I would have given it another shot if I didn’t have chunks of vomit down the front of my shirt. If I turned up at the local sheriff’s office looking like this, I’d most likely be put on a twenty-four-hour mental hold. Since that could unearth my fear paralysis, I let the stranger guide me into the bathroom instead.
“Uhn?”
I’m not sure when I learned how to speak caveman, but I nod my head to the stranger’s question before stepping away from the vanity sink holding almost as much of my stomach’s contents as the bed. “You should warn a person before feeding them a foreign product. I could have been vegan.”
The woes of my stomach seem nowhere near as bad when the stranger huffs. It wasn’t a gruff, menacing puff of air. It was hinged with laughter—laughter that vanishes when he takes in my stained shirt.
“It’s fine. It’s hardly noticeable.” I breathe heavily out of my nose when he whips off my shirt in one fell swoop. I could argue, but really, where would it get me? I’ve learned pretty quickly I either do things his way, or he’ll force me to do it.
My logic is disregarded when his hand moves for the waistband of my panties. They’re untouched. The vomit didn’t get anywhere near them. So why the hell is he taking them off?
I lose the chance to ask when the removal of his clothes soon chases mine. He strips out of the sweatpants he’s wearing sans underwear before he drags his shirt over his head in the familiar back-of-the-neck gather and pull.
The memories that have trickled in my head the past twenty-four-plus hours are proven accurate when my eyes rake the stranger’s body. He is as big as a beast but without the shrinkage you’d expect if he were a steroid junkie. His muscles are as naturally sourced as the dark hairs spread across his chest and the meal he just fed me.
Although his body is a work of art, it doesn’t change anything.
He is my captor, not my savior.
“Enjoy your shower. I’ll wait for you out there.” I whine like a child when my attempt to leave the bathroom with my morals intact is thwarted by the unnamed man banding his arm around my waist and drawing me back.
I try to act oblivious to the large chunk of fleshy muscle brushing my backside, but try as I may, my libido picks up on it long before my astuteness shuts down the inanity. “This is wrong. I’m a taken woman. You can’t force me to shower with you.”
With ignorance his strong point, he walks us into the shower stall, switches on the water, then holds me under the spray to clear the chunks of vomit my shirt missed. What the water can’t budge, his hands take care of. He glides them over my breasts, down my arms, and around my stomach, only stopping when the tip of his pinkie finger reaches the apex of my sex.
“Why stop?” I push out with a half sob, half groan. After peering up at him, I say, “You’ve already taken away all my rights, so why act all high and mighty now?”
I’m angry, and rightfully so, but not all my anger is for the unnamed man. I’m mad at myself as well. My body should be repelling from his touch. Just the thought of him touching me should make me sick, but for some stupid reason, it doesn’t.