Slowly, almost reluctantly, I took inventory of my body. My hands were tied behind my back, cuffed at the wrists by something soft but intractable. My feet were similarly bound, though I couldn’t see them at all. I was lying on something mildly soft, maybe a padding or a thick blanket.

And I was naked. Of course I was naked and damp and aching down there where he had entered me. I didn’t even know what to call that place. My vagina. That seemed wrong, too clinical. A gasping, desperate laugh escaped me. I could barely put a name to it, but he’d been inside there. Inside my cunt.

My innocence suddenly seemed sinister, as if it were the true cause of my predicament. Maybe if I’d had more experience with men, I would have anticipated this. If I’d had regular sex, I would be able to handle this.

It seemed to go on forever, the whistle of wind, the rumble of wheels. Occasionally we would slow and turn, but then we’d find some even road again to barrel away for hours. Untraceable hours away from my car, from my new job, from my mother’s house. She wouldn’t even know I had gone missing. Suddenly that seemed like a relief. At least she wouldn’t know. It would only make her more afraid. It would only make her gloat.

I must have been dozing because the screech of brakes startled me. The long drive had calmed me into a sense of complacency, as if I could exist forever in the dark, but I knew it would end. I’d have to face him and whatever he would do to me.

The roar of metal rushing against metal assaulted my ears before white light blinded me. Before my eyes adjusted, he flipped me over. He untied my hands and my legs, sending a rush of pinpricks into my fingers and toes. A moan escaped me.

“It’s okay, sunshine,” he murmured, rubbing his hands over my arms briskly. “Just a few minutes and you’ll be right as rain.”

Gradually, the physical discomfort faded and I became aware of a new sensation: hunger. Ravenous hunger that sharpened into pain and the wonderful smell of cooling fast food. He smirked, handing over a bag. I had no dignity left. I ripped into the bag, scarfing down half the container of fries before I glanced up at him. He was watching me. There was no judgment on his face, only a kind of unnerving fascination that was somehow worse. I wasn’t even worthy of his pity but some curious creature, something lower. I bent my head and polished off my fries and burger and washed it all down with the soda he produced.

My body felt a little more solid now, but my emotional state frayed. He was even more handsome in the morning light, like someone I would have had a crush on but never would have had the guts to approach. It twisted me inside because as sick as it was, I wanted him to like me. I was still desperate for a friend. I started to cry.

He pulled me into his arms, curled on his lap. I held myself rigid for only a minute—small rebellions—before sinking into his warmth. He smelled of musk and spice, and I turned my face into him, letting my tears soak his shirt, clinging to him as if he could save me even while his arms held me captive.

I cried for having stayed with my mother too long, not knowing what a normal life would have been like. I cried for finally summoning the strength to leave, only to have all my worst fears prove true. Most of all, I cried because I felt relief to have been captured.

The outside world was terrifying, but here inside this large tin box on wheels, none of that could touch me. Only he could touch me. Even as I sobbed in his arms, I felt his erection harden beneath me. He made no move to use it on me, not yet, but I had no doubts that he would. That was my purpose here.

Eventually, I quieted, sniffling every so often. I may have even drowsed that way, still affected by whatever drug he had given me.

“It’s okay.” he said, his lips pressed against the crown of my head. “You’re so pretty when you cry.”

I felt myself blush even as my stomach turned over. But I couldn’t hate myself for the small pleasure I took. There were so few pleasures in life, and even less in the back of this truck, but I could accept his compliments. I could accept his pleasure too.

There were some men you didn’t say no to.

I wriggled my body experimentally. I told myself it was only to test my limits, but maybe there was a part of me that wanted to seduce him. It was sick, but I wanted him to touch me more, to hold me tighter. I wanted the intimacy from last night in the absence of any true connections in the whole wide world.

I didn’t know him at all, but he had touched the deepest part of me and in my own way, I had touched the deepest part of him too. There was a strange but addictive magic to sex. It tied a thin string from his soul to mine with every joining, and I wondered how many times it would take before we were inseparable. They were fanciful thoughts, but I felt that way—like dreaming, like lightness. He would bring me back down. He would ground me.

Scooting aside, I placed my hand on him, there. The denim was stiff against my palm, no give at all. I paused, glancing up at him.

Surprise was in his eyes, and lust too. “Go on, sunshine. You want to see what I look like? How I’m made? Take it out.”

Carefully, I unzipped his jeans and opened the flaps. He wore nothing underneath, and he fell heavily into my palm, thick and long. The skin was silky smooth against my palm. I closed my fingers around it, and it jumped.

“That’s right,” he praised. “Touch my cock. Stroke it for me, baby. Make it good and hard so I can fuck you with it.”

It was so wrong, but I let it happen. So dirty, and it washed over me. If I went into a sort of trance, he couldn’t really hurt me. It even felt good. Wasn’t that better than pain? Than fear? My mother had lived in fear, and she was safe—but she was still afraid. I was the opposite of safe here, but I didn’t have to be afraid. Maybe that was the ultimate freedom.

I tightened my fingers around his length and tugged. His cock. That was the word he used. Tentatively, I slipped my hand down and then up again.

He groaned. “More. Again.”

I stroked him until his hips bucked into my hands, and I found a sort of power there. In bringing him pleasure, I empowered myself. I could wield it in the withholding of pleasure, hesitating before the next stroke to hear him beg. A small rebellion, like syrup for my pancakes.

“Get on the bed.” His voice came out gutturally.

I lay down on my back, my legs slightly parted. Together enough to hide me from sight, but the small space between them was a message—I wouldn’t say no to him. But he didn’t climb between them, not yet. He knelt astride my body, a knee on either side, his cock resting thickly in the valley between my breasts.

He rolled my nipples between his fingers, setting off sparks that I felt down to my core. Harder, he pinched. I whimpered in response, but that made him tighten further. Only when my hips bucked up of their own accord did he release me. He pushed my breasts together, wrapping the pliant flesh around his cock.

With slow glides, he thrust between them. It should have done nothing for me. They were just breasts, and he wasn’t even stimulating them really. He was just using them for his own pleasure. But the sight of the dark head of his cock excited me as it peeked from between my pale skin.

The feel of the dampness in the crevice as his tip leaked his seed. The sound of his pants above me, growing harsher, more ragged. Heat gathered in my sex, and with nothing to assuage it, my legs fell open, begging without words, without thought.

He noticed, glancing back with his cock still trapped between my breasts. “Goddamn,” he breathed. “You are too perfect. I can’t let you go.”

It almost broke the spell, that reference to how I’d come to be here in the back of this truck. Almost, but I held onto the trance, to the cloud of arousal that made this all okay.