Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
The baby she was carrying meant she had his DNA safely tucked inside her. How could he allow her to live, his child to live, if he had any hope of getting away with what he’d done?
Terror was a stone in her chest, crushing her lungs.
He left without a word. Josie hung her head and cried. Winter would soon arrive. It would be frigid in the room where she was held prisoner. It was already cold, though the mattress beneath her had served to keep her from freezing on the cement floor. Still, she shivered constantly, her teeth clicking against each other as she rubbed at her exposed skin. Temperatures were dropping, and eventually, she’d die of cold or hunger or thirst. She wondered which one would take her first.
She heard Marshall outside her window, his footsteps moving back, forth, back, forth in front of the building. What was he doing? Pacing as he tried to figure out his new dilemma? He was up there, she thought, planning her demise.
But later, he came back, rousing Josie in the dead of night. She startled, her heart racing as he did something over her head where her hands were chained in the position she was in, lying on the mattress. One hand fell free. Her heart rate spiked farther. Was he freeing her? Or had he come to kill her? Hurt her?
She heard his zipper and then he took her freed hand, using it to run down his side as he moved his body over hers. “Touch me,” he demanded.
“Where?” she asked, her voice emerging as a croak.
“Everywhere,” he barked. “Like you mean it.”
Her hand trembled as she ran it down his side and around his back. He moaned, his breath coming faster. A hot tear leaked from her eye, running down her cheek to pool in her ear. He reached for her hand and moved it between them. He was hard, his skin hot. She considered wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing until he screamed. But she was still chained to the wall. If she hurt him, he’d hurt her worse. He’d make her pay.
He ran his hand roughly over her breasts, sensitive from the pregnancy, and she cringed. He feathered his hand down her side, pausing slightly before moving over the swell of her belly. She felt a tiny bump from within, once and then again. Her heart stuttered. The baby. She’d just felt the baby. His breath stalled, his body giving a small tremble, as he removed his hand quickly as though her skin had burned him. Had he felt it too? He ran his hand back up to her breast, his own stomach meeting hers as he lowered himself. He paused again, a strange sound emerging from beneath his mask. Frustration? Distress?
He stood quickly, zipping himself back into his pants. She scrambled to a sitting position, confused, wary. Had her pregnant body, the feel of the baby moving within served to quell his arousal? She was glad of it…and not. She didn’t know what it would mean for her. At this point, it might be her only value.
Marshall walked to the door, and she thought he’d leave, but he only left for a moment, and when he came back in, he had a fast-food bag and a…quilt. He threw the quilt at her, his eyes glittering from beneath his mask with some emotion she couldn’t read. Why was he providing comforts to her? She couldn’t understand it. He placed the bag next to her and then turned and walked out the door. It closed behind him with a click, the lock engaging from outside.
Once his footsteps had faded, she sat there in the dim quiet for several minutes, turning her hand on her wrist, stretching it, glorying in the small bit of freedom. Why hadn’t he chained her back up? Did it even matter? She was still held prisoner, still unable to free herself. But now…now she could feed herself. She could take the food he’d left and bring it to her mouth. A small bit of dignity, something to remind her she was still human.
She removed the burger and fries from inside the bag and took several ravenous bites, hardly tasting the food, desperate to stop the burning hunger in her gut. Another bump from within. She dropped the burger to its wrapper and moved her unshackled hand to her rounded belly, placing her hand over the spot from where the tiny kick had come. She felt it again, her heart squeezing tightly in her chest.
I’m not alone. You’re here, aren’t you?
It felt surreal. Like a miracle in the very last place she’d ever expected to encounter one. She knew it wasn’t—that it could be broken down into simple biology. Coarse language. She’d been raped, and she’d conceived. But to Josie, it felt like more than that. Something that was only hers, something others probably wouldn’t understand the beauty of, and perhaps she didn’t either except on a level she could hardly explain. Starlight in a blackened sky. Blinking to life where before only darkness existed.