Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (36 page)

T
ime
seemed to crawl by as I waited for Ron to return home. When he finally did, I
began to doubt my whole plan. As I heard the garage door go up and then come
down, panic set in and my instinct told me to run, to get the hell out of that
house before he found me.

I ignored those instincts and stayed where I was,
fighting through the panic and listening to his movements, waiting for my
opportunity. It would be a while before it came, and until then, I had to be
patient and calm. Calm was an important factor in all of this.

Finally, Ron came into the bedroom. My heart beat
furiously in my chest, the sound of it echoing in my ears. I was terrified it
was loud enough that Ron would hear and know exactly where I was.

He took off his clothes and climbed into bed
without becoming aware that I was in the room with him. I almost breathed a
sigh of relief, but didn’t for fear of being heard.

I waited until his snoring became loud and
rhythmic, a slow and steady sound that served as an alarm. Only then did I dare
come out from my hiding place.

Slowly and carefully, I slid out from under the
bed in which Ron lay sleeping. In order to mask any sounds I might possibly
make, I only moved when he snored.

Several minutes later, I was standing beside his
bed, looking down on him as he slept.

My first thought was to kill him. Just kill him
right then and be done with it. It was the sound of the screaming women in my
mind that kept me from doing that very thing. They deserved more than for him to
die a quick and painless death. No. This son of a bitch was going to suffer and
suffer greatly for what he’d done to them.
To me.

Before I’d hidden under the bed, I had retrieved
some of the items from the duffle bag. The bag was too big and stuffed too full
to fit underneath the bed with me, so I’d taken a chance and hidden it in the
closet of one of the other bedrooms, hoping like hell he didn’t have a reason
to go in there. The items I’d taken from the bag went with me in my hiding
place. I now held two of those items, a bottle in one hand and a cloth in the
other.

It was time to use them.

I quietly unscrewed the lid of the bottle and
placed it on the nightstand. I cupped the cloth in my right hand and made a
bowl shape out of it. I then took a deep breath and held it while pouring some
of the liquid from the bottle onto the white cloth.

After setting the bottle on the nightstand, I
braced myself for what I was about to do.

Turning my head away from my hand, I exhaled, took
a fresh breath, and held it. Facing Ron, I prepared to place the cloth over his
face. He was lying too far toward the center of the bed for me to simply lean
over and do it. I had to jump on the bed, hope that I had great aim, and then
wrestle with him when he woke and started fighting.

My stomach clenched at the thought of what would
happen if he overpowered me or if I couldn’t get the cloth over his nose and
mouth. A chill ran down my spine, but I shook it off and pushed all the
negative thoughts aside.

After taking one more deep breath, I jumped. Onto
the bed I went, landing on my knees at Ron’s side. I immediately slapped the
cloth onto his face at the same moment I came down on the bed, hoping to use
his moment of confusion to my advantage.

The cloth wasn’t lined up exactly with his mouth
and nose, but it covered them both sufficiently. I pressed down hard, knowing
that he would shake his head side to side to free himself of both the cloth and
me.

When I landed on the bed, Ron’s eyes popped open.
It took a second for him to realize what was happening, but when he did, he
instinctively brought up his arms to shield himself from the attack. When his
eyes locked onto mine in the dimly lit bedroom, they grew wide from shock. He
had never anticipated that he would one day wake to find me of all people
looking down at him.

Well there I was.

The struggle ended quickly. After taking a couple
of breaths of the Chloroform, his arms fell limply to his sides and the fight
left his body. I hadn’t just met Ron. I knew what he was capable of so I kept
the cloth pressed tightly against his face for another minute to make sure he
was really out and not just faking.

When I was certain that the Chloroform had worked
its magic, I stuffed the cloth in one of the pockets of my cargo pants, got off
the bed, and hurried to finish up before he began to stir.

While hiding under the bed, I’d placed three
tie-down straps evenly on the floor so when I was ready, I could easily grab
them, throw them over Ron’s body, and strap him down, which I did while he was
unconscious.

Once I was satisfied that he was held securely to
the bed, I stood back, caught my breath, and waited for him to come around.

It took a few minutes for his eyes to flutter
open. When they did, I watched as the confusion settled over him. He tried to
raise one arm—probably to rub his eyes or maybe his head, which was undoubtedly
pounding—but couldn’t. His brows furrowed together as he looked left and then
right, where he saw me standing, patiently watching him.

“Nicole.”

I cringed at the sound of my name on his lips.

“You’re back.” He smiled.

I said nothing.

“It’s good to see you again. You have no idea how
much I’ve missed you.” His eyes traveled up and down my body, drinking me in.
“You look different. Have you changed your hair?”

Whether or not the bastard meant it, there was
sarcasm in his question. He knew damn well that I looked like hell. My hair was
pulled back in a ponytail. Around my eyes were dark circles from worry, stress,
and lack of sleep. My skin was pale and I’d lost weight, which could also be
attributed to stress and lack of appetite. I looked very much like I did the
day I’d run from his house.

“What brings you to me? Have you missed me as much
as I’ve missed you?”

I wanted to bash his face in with the lamp from
his nightstand. I thought about how satisfying it would be to listen to the
bones in his face and head snap and pop as they were broken and crushed, and
for a moment I considered actually doing it.

“Well? Have you?”

Seconds went by and I didn’t respond.

“Nicole. Answer the question. Have you missed me?”

“I’ve never had the chance to miss you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Is that so? In what way
do you mean?”

“I mean you haunt my nightmares. Your face, it’s
what I see when I close my eyes. Your voice is what I hear in the silence of my
days. I’ve never had a chance to miss you because you’ve never fucking left
me.”

He smiled. “Aw. That’s really sweet, Nicole.”

“It’s not sweet, you sick fuck. It’s disgusting. I
don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to remember you. I don’t want you
to crawl through my brain while I sleep.”

“Well then, what do you want me to do?”

I looked him directly in his dark, hollow eyes and
said, “Die.”

13

N
icole
was back, which told Ron that he was right. She had missed him. He’d told
himself over and over that her feelings for him were every bit as strong as his
were for her. She felt what he felt and she couldn’t live without him any more
than he could live without her. They were a part of each other, their lives
intermingling, bound together by love. The fact that she was there now,
standing in his bedroom, was proof of it.

She looked rough, there was no denying it. She
appeared to have not slept well in quite some time. She was thin, much thinner
than before. But still, even in her haggard state, Nicole was adorable dressed
all in black—boots, cargo pants, long-sleeved t-shirt—hair pulled back in a
ponytail. Of course his judgment was biased because of his love for her, but he
felt certain that any other man would agree with him.

There was one thing he wasn’t sure of though. If
she loved him as he loved her and had missed him as much as he’d missed her,
why had she bound him to the bed? Why had she not crawled under the covers and
pressed her naked body against his? That would’ve been a great surprise.
Thinking of it now gave him an erection.

He entertained the idea that this was part of her
plan to do exactly that. Maybe she was kinky and liked her men bound. He didn’t
think she was that kind of girl, but maybe he was wrong. He supposed he’d just
have to wait and find out for sure. And if she was that kind of girl, he wasn’t
sure how he felt about it. One of the many things he loved about her was her
innocence. Innocent women didn’t do things like that in the bedroom.

He didn’t want to think anything bad about his
beloved Nicole, so before jumping to conclusions he decided to wait and see
what her motives were.

When Nicole turned and left the room, Ron was left
alone to mull over her words. She certainly didn’t seem to be too happy with
him. In fact, she’d said she wanted him to die. But surely she didn’t mean it.
After all, no one wished death upon their loved ones. He figured maybe she was
just angry, or at the very least feigning anger to make their sex together more
enjoyable. The thought of having angry sex with Nicole made his erection grow
harder. He preferred to be gentle with her because she was special to him, but
if rough sex was what she wanted, he was more than happy to oblige.

Ron wondered where Nicole had gone. Perhaps she
had gone to change into something slinky and sexy, or perhaps she’d gone to
remove her clothes entirely. The thought of Nicole returning to the bedroom
wearing nothing but a smile excited him even more, making his rock-hard
erection throb with each beat of his heart.

For a long time he lay there, waiting patiently
for her to return to the bedroom. When she didn’t, he began to struggle against
the straps, trying his best to wiggle out from under them. It seemed impossible
though. She had ratcheted them down so tight they dug into his skin. His arms
lay on his stomach, held firmly by the strap that crossed his midsection.
Another strap ran across his thighs, while the third strap lay across his
throat. It seemed as though he was going to be there until she decided
otherwise.

14

F
or
a long time, I sat on the couch in the living room, listening to the tick of
the clock on the wall and wondering what I should do next. I could go upstairs
and rough him up a bit, give him a small taste of things to come his way.

Or I could stop being a pussy and open the door
that almost certainly led to the basement.

I stood up and walked to the stairs. Instead of
going up them, back to the second floor and the room in which I’d left Ron strapped
to the bed, I stepped over to the door underneath.

I was positive this door led to a basement. Ron
Redwine
would never live in a house that didn’t have an
underground torture chamber. I held out hope that I was wrong. I hoped with all
my heart to open the door and find nothing more than a few coats and maybe a
vacuum cleaner.

Still ignoring the instinct to run from the house,
I reached out and turned the knob. Pulling the door open, I saw at once that I
was right. My heart sank, taking with it my hopes of being wrong.

A wooden staircase led down to a dark basement.

For a while, I just stood there, staring into the
darkness beyond the doorway. It was impossible to ignore the memories that
washed over me, memories of being carried and dragged into and out of a
basement similar to this one. Memories of watching as Ron carried trash bags of
women’s body parts up the stairs and out of the house.
Memories
of blood and gore, coldness and horror.

I closed my eyes and willed the memories away,
pushing them as far back into the recesses of my mind as I possibly could. I
reminded myself that this time things were different. This time Ron was tied up
in his bedroom on the second floor of the house. He was no danger to me now, no
threat. What happened to me last time wouldn’t happen again.

Summoning my courage—what little of it there was—I
flipped on the light switch and reluctantly stepped across the threshold and
placed my foot on the top step.
Then the next one, and then
the next.
Before I stepped on the next step, a thought occurred to me.
What if I got down there and found a beaten and battered woman clinging to
life? Could I stand to see that? What would I do if I came face to face with a
woman who was begging for her life?

Obviously—assuming I didn’t throw myself into the
nearest corner, bury my face in my hands, and scream—I would set her free. The
problem would be when she fled the house only to return in a matter of minutes
with the police in tow. That wouldn’t leave me time to do all the things to Ron
that I’d planned to do, but I supposed it would be ample enough time to simply
kill him and leave the premises.

It was a chance I had to take.

I took the next step and the next, descending into
the basement until there were no more steps to take. Standing on the concrete
floor, I looked around, terrified of the things I saw.

Though I could tell that the same things were
happening in this basement that had happened in the last one, there were
significant differences. Ron had put a lot more time and money into setting up
this dungeon of terror.

The walls were concrete, but Ron had added wooden
studs and soundproof insulation. I didn’t recall seeing any basement windows
from the outside of the house, but if there were any, they were covered by the
thick insulation, which also ran between the floor joists on the ceiling.

The lighting now was far better than a dim, bare
bulb. Large fluorescents were evenly spaced across the room, the bulbs
protected by a metal housing.