He gets his knees on my arms, puts his weight on my chest. Jonah is breathing hard, dirt smudged across his cheekbone and his forehead. He pants as he looks down at what he’s caught, and I feel the rise and fall of each breath beneath my trembling body. I am powerless to do anything but lie beneath him.

Slowly, Jonah smiles.

•   •   •

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Jonah has dragged me inside this cabin—which is bare-bones, so far as I can tell. One of his arms pins both of mine behind my back as he pulls me onward so fast I stumble. I glimpse only a few sticks of wood furniture, a rag rug on the floor, before Jonah pushes me into the bedroom.

The bed is the only piece of furniture in the room. Barely even a double, with a metal frame that has tarnished to dingy mercury gray over time, and covered only with a stark white fitted sheet—but what catches my attention are the ropes.

Jonah has wound pale ropes around each of the four posts of the bed. They wait for me.

He shoves me onto the bed. One shoe I lost in the doorway; the other falls off now. I try to push him off, but it’s futile. Jonah straddles me and smiles in slow satisfaction as he spreads my arms wide. “Shhhhh.” He pushes one of my wrists through a loop of rope—it’s soft, silky, like the stuff that holds back curtains, but when he tightens it, I’m bound as inexorably as I could be by handcuffs. “This will go so much easier if you stop fighting me. Much faster. Don’t you want it to go faster? To be over?”

“Let me go—”

Jonah thrusts my other hand into its binding. “Shut up,” he whispers. “Or I’ll gag you with your own panties.”

No.

Yes.

He slides off the foot of the bed and pulls one of my ankles to the post. Within a moment I’ll be tied down, spread-eagled, open to him and whatever he wants to do to me.

He ties the other foot. That’s it. I’m completely helpless. Only the word silver could save me now.

As he stands at the foot of the bed, between my legs, Jonah runs his hands up my thighs. “I wanted a pretty one. A girl like you. One I can keep.”

Silver, I think wildly. Silver. But that’s not what I say. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. You could drive me somewhere—let me out, so I don’t know where you are—”

Jonah shakes his head slowly. “I warned you.”

He reaches under my skirt and rips my panties away. As I watch in a crazed mixture of horror and desire, he wads the cotton into a ball, then climbs atop the bed. One of his hands forces my jaw open, and he stuffs what’s left of my panties inside. I can taste my own wetness, my own need.

As he kneels between my parted, trembling thighs, Jonah takes my T-shirt collar in both hands and rips it open. I went without a bra, so my breasts are exposed to him. As he cups them, he pinches my nipples and smiles as they harden to his touch.

“Let’s see what else I caught,” Jonah says. His strong hands tear through my skirt as if it were made of tissue paper. Now I’m naked, as exposed to him as a person could be. “Oh, I can think of lots of things to do with you.”

By now I’m crying. It’s not acting, not completely.

“What?” He looks at me, mock-innocent. “Do you have something to say?”

He pulls my panties from my mouth for the pleasure of hearing me beg.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please.”

“Why should I? Are you a virgin?”

“—no—”

“Then you’re a slut. Anyone can use you. Now it’s my turn to use you.”

I try to turn my face away, but he stuffs my underwear back into my mouth. For a few moments he watches me, writhing and helpless. My cunt is completely exposed to him—every part of me is laid bare—and I can hide nothing. Prevent nothing.

“So many things I can do to you,” he murmurs. “First I need my toys.”

Toys? That could mean anything. I told him not to cause me serious pain—so not a whip, probably—but the list of things he could use to bind or humiliate me is endless. They run through my mind, a kaleidoscope of sexual perversion that lights me up inside.

I hear him outside, then at the door. What else could he have brought?

When he walks inside, he casually tosses a bag near the foot of the bed, then smirks to see me there, tied so that he can see my exposed cunt. Jonah steps closer and thrusts his fingers inside me. He works his hand in and out, slowly, then steps back. His grin is wicked as he unzips his pants.

I don’t want to want this, but I do—I do—

“You want to beg me some more?” Once more he tugs the panties from my lips. I think he likes this, shoving them inside, silencing me.

“You don’t have to do this.” My words come out shaky.

Jonah laughs. “Say anything you want, bitch.”

Then he climbs atop me, his blood-dark cock thick between my legs for the moment before he pushes inside.

It burns. It aches. It’s so fucking good I could scream.

His cock fills me, inch by inch—he’s taking it slow, tormenting me with how long it will take. “Yeah,” he whispers as he sinks in deeper. “That’s it.”

He’s in me all the way now, and starts thrusting, still going slow—but strong, so strong he pushes my body upward on the bed, and the ropes around my ankles strain. I groan in mingled satisfaction and pain.

“Shut the fuck up,” he says. His hips rock forward, so that he’s buried in me to the hilt. “Or I’ll pound you harder, ’til you bleed.”

Jonah slides into me. Out of me. Every stroke burns; every move aches. My traitorous body responds to him, wanting more even as the ropes bruise my wrists.

“Taking it slow,” Jonah says. “Do you know why?”

I shake my head. My hair is stuck to my forehead with sweat

“Because I’m not going to come in you yet. You have to wait for it. Soon you’ll beg for it, because that’s the only way I’m going to stop.” He pushes in again, burying himself deep inside me, and whispers against my shoulder, “Stop for now, I mean. I’m going to fuck you again. And again. I’m going to fuck you blind.”

“Don’t—”

“I told you to shut the fuck up.”

Jonah pushes the panties back into my mouth, and this time he won’t take them out again. He pumps into me, his hips pistoning faster and harder until the force of it feels like it’s going to rip me apart. He’s spread my legs so far apart that I can see where he sinks into me, the faint glistening of my wetness against his rigid cock as he slides in and out and in again. My ragged cries are muffled by the cotton in my mouth, and I can tell he loves how I try to scream, and fail.

When I’m on the verge, I can’t help rocking my hips up to meet his—but that’s when he pulls out, denying both of us release.

For a moment he kneels there, his cock jutting forward as he looks at his prisoner. He reaches up to cup my breasts, squeezing hard.

Then he slides off the bed.

He goes for his bag and pulls out something small and white, U-shaped. What in the world?

“I’m going to roll you over,” he says. “You’re not going to kick me, or fight, or do anything else stupid. If you do, you get spanked. Understand me?”

Nobody’s ever tried to spank me before. Is Jonah talking about light, playful pats, or something more brutal?

Probably the latter. I mean to find out.

When he loosens one of my ankles, I do nothing more than flex my foot. Renewed circulation sends blood rushing through my heel and arch and toes, tingling in a way both painful and welcome. But when he releases the other, I use my newfound traction to push myself farther up the bed and kick at him.

“Bitch.” Jonah lunges over me and sinks his teeth into my shoulder. Pain ripples through me—has he broken the skin?—and I freeze. This is what he wanted. He turns me over as best he can. While my arms are still tied to the posts, most of my body lies on my left side, and he’s now scooting down the bed to tug my legs to the opposite bedposts.