“And you believe this bullshit?”

Anger simmered inside me. “Why are you doing this?”

The words immediately meant more than his antagonism over the story. They were about taking me, keeping me. About hurting me when he could have simply walked away. Part of me wanted the truth, however cruel, while the other part hoped that my words had been swallowed by the hum of the motor, the quiet rush of the air outside the window.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

Not much of an answer, but the raw honesty I heard in his voice felt like an opening, a crack in the veneer. Not that he would let me go with apologies or anything that extreme just because he’d displayed a moment of doubt, but that I could learn something about this man who held me, see around the thumb that pinned me down, see beyond the walls that always penned me in. What made someone like him tick? Why did he do something like this? Had this moral ambiguity always been inside him or was it learned, evolved—forced upon him just as it was me?

“Who gave you that?” I asked softly, gesturing to the beads swaying from the mirror.

He scowled. “A man who will no longer speak my name. Does that make you happy?”

“What did you do before you became a truck driver?”

He looked at me sharply. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I’m curious,” I said defensively, though not really giving up ground—not yet. “It doesn’t matter, right? It doesn’t matter what I know. I can’t do anything to you.”

“No, you can’t do anything to me, not a goddamn thing. You think you’re clever, huh? You want me to open up to you, and then what? Maybe I’ll fall in love with you? Maybe I’ll let you go? Not gonna happen. You’re mine. I caught you, and I’m not giving you back.”

My throat stung, but I refused to back down. Maybe I was goading him. Would it be so bad if he snapped? Then it would be over. The words tumbled forth, unruly and vehement along the dashboard.

“You can keep my body and you can hurt me and have sex with me, but you’ll never really know me. You’ll never really have me, just like she didn’t.” It became a prayer, one for each bead on the rosary. “Never, never, never.”

A low growl seemed to emanate from his chest. “I don’t give a shit about knowing you. I just want to use you.”

His hand tangled in my hair, dragging me down to the floorboards. Tears flooded my eyes at the pain—at the defeat. He unzipped his jeans and shoved inside my mouth, still guiding my movements with his fist in my hair. I didn’t have time to consider whether I’d fight. I was already doing it. Not really sucking, but then I didn’t have to, couldn’t keep up anyway. There was salt and heat and liquid-coated skin, and then I was gagging, choking on it, hearing him tell me he still didn’t care as long as he got what he wanted. He was inflamed, and I had made him that way.

“You’re just like them anyway,” he grunted. “Just like them, just like them.”

Like a prayer of his own.

The body will cope with what it is given—that was what I learned then. My mind shut off in increments, until he hit the back of my throat and I didn’t feel like throwing up anymore. I didn’t feel anything at all, just floating in a sort of trance while he pulled the truck off on an abandoned weighing station. Not even when he pushed me back and I sprawled back onto the floorboard. Not even when he pulled up my skirt. I tensed slightly, braced against the impact of his invasion, but that was only physical—it didn’t mean anything. He couldn’t move me.

Until he bent his head between my legs. At first there was nothing. What was he doing? Then I felt it, small wet caresses. Not blinding pleasure or searing pain but slow licks, sensual caresses, and a little bit of unwelcome comfort. It felt like an apology, as he knelt between my knees. Like atonement.

The blissful paralysis I’d been floating in began to thaw with each wistful swipe of his tongue until I was making little urgent sounds and rocking my hips up to meet him and hating myself, just hating that he could draw me out so easily, disprove my grand denials. He wouldn’t know me? He already did.

He saw into every corner and every secret. He gave me exactly the right touch or word that I needed to submit. There wasn’t anything left to hold back, and he knew that too. His hands tightened on my ass, spreading me apart, pushing me up into his face.

He lifted long enough to say, “Come on, sunshine. Give it to me.”

And I was helpless to resist, too weak to fight the mounting pleasure, too relieved to find myself spread and held and wanted, oh finally, someone did want me, and even if it was perverted and dirty, at least it was new. My stomach tightened first, clenching as I bucked up, seeking more. Then it spread, the tension. White-hot pleasure slid up my spine. My mouth fell open but no sounds came out. Nothing but half-cut gasps and raw groans.

Before I could catch my breath, he slid inside me. His way was easier this time than before, a smooth glide from first entry, and he took full advantage, moving at a brisk pace. He pumped into me quickly, harshly, but I didn’t get the feeling that he sought his pleasure this way.

Instead, he seemed to be making a point, saying with thrusts what he couldn’t put into words and cementing the ones he had. You’re mine. Try to understand, I have to do this. I’m as trapped as you are, can’t you see? Although it could have been wishful thinking, wanting to believe that the man lodged inside me, pulsing and shuddering his way through release, wasn’t a monster.

He collapsed, breathing hard. His weight bore down on me, though not unpleasantly. There was safety in bondage, that much I knew. He turned his head and kissed my temple, the wisp of sweat above his lip mingling with the dampness of my skin.

“You make it bearable,” he murmured, though his voice was slurred, so I couldn’t be sure. So I lay there, feeling his chest push into mine and then mine push back into his. We breathed together, we held each other. There was no acrimony in that moment, no pleasure either. Just a ship pulled into port.

Chapter Seven

The first tightrope walker to cross the Niagara Falls did so in 1859.

We existed like nomads in the following weeks. We used deserted truck stops for bathroom breaks and daily showers. At night we slept in the fold-out bed in his truck. He would fuck me every night, sometimes tenderly, other times rough and urgent—though each time felt more like intimacy and less like coercion.

The hardest part was meals, because where there was food, there were people. We had a somewhat painstaking routine where he would stop a few miles out, put me in the back of the truck, then pull into a diner or restaurant and get take-out. I always debated banging on the walls, but I would never know if anyone was there. Hunter could be standing right outside and punish me for it.

Instead, I would press my ear to the metal, straining to hear anything. If I had heard voices or thought there were people, I would have beaten the door for all I was worth. Instead there was almost complete silence—probably he parked far away from everyone else—and then eventually, the steady crunch of gravel as he returned with food.

We were going through mountains now. The highways were cut into them, sliced straight through like a butcher knife, leaving a tall, straight wall of striated rock. I watched the lines bleed together through the window as the truck rushed past.

My stomach grumbled.

He glanced over. “You hungry?”

I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. He turned back to the road, but I watched him scanning the blue highway signs as we passed each exit, looking for something decent to eat but sparse enough not to be crowded.

“What’s the deal with the book?”