Her head started to throb. It felt like something dark and nasty was crawling through her veins, slowly, like a thousand nasty spiders. She hated spiders. It felt like there were thousands of them crawling through her body. Her heart hurt. Her throat was dry. She felt sick. She tried to struggle but his grip was too tight.
He let go abruptly and snarled,
“Does that tell you anything about who you’re fucking with?” his irises were black.
Then he let go of her mouth and pointed at her. She hit the carpet, limp and lifeless, feeling like the life had been drained out of her and replaced with something oily and rancid.
He looked like he was about to say something else and then decided against it and turned on his heel and exited the room, slamming the door and leaving her on the floor. She crawled slowly toward the bed and curled into the fetal position on the floor beside the nightstand. Her mouth was agape and her body was wracked with shudders but no sound came out. Her arm was still bleeding. He hadn’t stopped the bleeding before he left.
She grabbed a tissue box from his nightstand and pressed a tissue against the wound. It still felt like her skin was crawling. Bile rose in her throat. She clambered to her feet and staggered to the bathroom to throw up but just had the dry heaves. It went on for ages, contracting her body until she was so weak she had to crawl back toward the bed. She made it as far as the sofa. She wished she’d throw up whatever vile thing he’d unleashed inside of her.
She’d had no choice but to try to escape. It just wasn’t in her to succumb to her circumstances. She was just trying to keep the promise she’d made to herself so long ago…to never ever be a victim.
This vampire prince who had been so demanding had also been so sweet so many times. She guessed her actions would mean that Mister “I just want to hold you” was gone. She thought back to earlier that night, the way he’d held her, the way they’d stared into one another’s eyes. The way he’d called her Princess. The emotion that had washed over her and through her and how intensely she had held onto him...she felt an immense sense of loss right now after feeling that rage and hate coming from him, bleeding into her veins.
He very obviously wanted her to feel it. And she did. It was hatred crawling through her veins and clawing at her heart and it felt like it was still there even though he wasn’t. She cried for a long time, feeling like her heart was slowly being ripped out of her chest. She wanted to close her eyes but where was he and when would she be able to shake off the hatred that still tingled inside of her? What was going on downstairs? Was anyone being hurt or had they just hypnotized the police away? She silently prayed her actions hadn’t cost anyone their life. What would he do to her when he came back? Maybe she should close her eyes, try to escape from her reality until she had no choice but to face it.
As she drifted to that stress-free place somewhere between awake and asleep she heard the door. He was back and so was that horrible sinking feeling. He purposefully strode in and dropped a pile of chains on the bed.
She felt confusion for a beat and then spotted shackles attached to the chains. Oh no. He strode to the sofa and grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her over to the bed.
“No.” She tried to fight as he quickly secured her, not looking at her face, not paying any attention to her sad and ineffective attempts to wrestle with him. She could see that he was seething with anger. He cuffed her right wrist and attached it to the scrolled headboard. He left the left one free. He quickly examined her arm’s bite wound, which had already stopped bleeding, and dropped her arm without being gingerly about it. She winced. He cuffed her left ankle and attached the chain to the footboard. He left the right one free. The chains were long enough that she wasn’t uncomfortable but they certainly wouldn’t let her leave the bed.
“Tristan, please, I……” She was trembling all over.
For once he seemed unaffected by his name being spoken. If anything, it looked like it made his jaw tighten even more. When he was finished he leaned over and grabbed her throat. She sputtered. He loosened the grip but didn’t let go and stared directly into her eyes. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
“Look at me!” he hollered. She opened her eyes and whimpered.